The first step to creating a magus is to develop a strong concept, which then guides the selection of characteristics, personality traits, virtues/flaws, abilities, arts, and spells. In an attempt to help someone who is relatively new to the world of Ars Magica come up with a concept, I’d like to posit five choices that help define a character concept for a magus. I wanted to include some typical examples to hint at the spectrum of what’s possible in this game. My hope is that after thinking about these five points, it will be easy for an experienced player to help fill in the mechanical parts.
Pre-generated characters or the character templates for the book are nice, but in my case, we already played an adventure with pre-gens, and now the players want to try creating their own character. Another way would be to narrow the player’s options, (as an extreme example, present them with the ten most common virtues and tell them to pick five of them) but I do not want to do that. I also do not want to present them with the „mechanically best“ virtues (of course I’d give some counsel when they have trouble deciding between a virtue that gives xp and one that reduces botch dice). I want them to have some ideas in mind that help them navigate the wealth of choices that are part of character creation.
With that in mind, here are the five choices. Comments and feedback are welcome.
A house. Simply go through the short description of the twelve houses and note which ones sound interesting. Use the description as guidance, but don't feel constrained by stereotypes.
A role in Hermetic society. Here are a few examples:
A scholar dedicated to magical research
An explorer who searches for traces of past magical traditions in ruins
A politician who wants to hold the order together and strengthen it
A diplomat who deals with relations with non-hermetic wizards and tries to learn from them or integrate them into the Order
A warrior who hunts non-hermetic wizards who pose a threat to the Order (or are easy prey)
A demon hunter
A diplomat who deals with the secular politics of the nobility and the church
A Quaesitor who acts as a judge, arbitrator, prosecutor, detective and/or notary
A hoplite who enforces the rules of the order as “magical muscle” and supports quaesitors on difficult missions
An artisan who makes special magical items or offers longevity rituals
A mystic who seeks knowledge or enlightenment through esoteric means
A role in the covenant. How does the maga contribute to adventures? A few examples:
Face: This role can usually be filled very well by a Companion. Mages are limited in social interactions by their gift and often have other priorities. Mages are better suited for negotiations with other mages, fairies and other supernatural beings.
Muscle: Grogs are the first choice for confrontations with mortals because they are more inconspicuous and expendable. When it comes to supernatural opponents and other mages, a battle mage is very helpful.
Certamen Duelist: Many conflicts are resolved through a Certamen duel. A champion who is able to accept challenges strengthens the covenant.
Healer: Even a medium wound is a serious limitation for a mage because it prevents him from working. For non-mages, there are barbers and surgeons.
Scout: Someone who can remain hidden, find auras or entrances to regiones and detect the invisible.
Detective: Someone who is able to analyze spells and reconstruct magical crimes.
Enchanter: Magical items make Companions and Grogs stronger and allow them to fill other roles.
Tinkerer: Someone who can disarm magical traps and analyze found magical items.
Ritual Specialist: No covenant can last long without Aegis of the Hearth with good penetration.
A personal goal: What are the maga's long-term goals? Some examples are
Become the head of a house (Prima) or a tribunal (Praeco)
Perform outstanding service to the Order
Kill feared enemies of the Order
Write a book that becomes a universally recognized standard work
Develop a spell that is widely used
Create a magic item that amazes everyone
Expand Hermetic theory, e.g. integrate other traditions or push the boundaries of Hermetic magic
Start a family before (or despite) having to rely on a longevity potion
Train apprentices who keep her name alive
A thematic focus. What kind of magic suits the maga? Which form and technique is her specialty? Examples:
I hate the implication that every PC magus is driven by a desire for fame. Some characters might be egotistical enough to start out knowing they want to be the best but for others it might well be better to define what they want to do
Usefully serve the Order (or their House perhaps)
Fight the opponents of the Order
Write useful books
Develop spells
and so on.
Mostly this is personal boredom with the idea of PCs who set out to be the best/most famous and, guess what, end up becoming the best/most famous because they are the PCs. Especially when all the PCs have this type of personality!
Specific to Ars Magica I also constantly find myself coming back to the idea of mages who want to be left alone to study or even just to goof off in clearly non-optimized ways. In a sense they have won the Mythic Europe lottery and made it through the magical grad school into tenured land. Now they want to move to a remote covenant and chill but, as PCs, of course there are things that keep getting in their way so they have to act.
One other way which works quite well, and may well be easier, is to start with a spell.
Pick one or two spells from the core book of level 20+ that you want your mage to be able to cast.
Then work backwards from that - choose Arts such that they can cast the spell. Pick virtues/flaws that work together with those spells. And so on.
The overall thema of the magus can often be derived from the spell.
One thing I'd strongly emphasize is going down the stereotype is fine, but it is not necessary. There are more than the 12 stereotypes houses magi. All bang mages don't have to be Flambeau, for example. The one exception, (unless they want to completely nerf themselves) all artificers needs to be Verditus.
2 can be rolled in to 3&4. 3&4 are really important. Admittedly I'd change "want to be famous" with "want to achieve". With luck 5 comes together, once 3 and 4 are decided upon.
You're absolutely right. I was looking for possible goals and did not pay attention to the motivation. While I definitely second the argument against mechanical optimization, I still would like them to have an intrinsic motivation to do something great. I'm not a fan of having to send the adventure to their doors every time.
I could either simply delete the part about wanting to be famous, or ask for the motivation as well (which is a lot more difficult, but might also be helpful):
A personal goal: What drives the maga and what is her long-term goal?
Does she strive for power? Is she determined to become the head of a house (Prima) or a tribunal (Praeco)?
Is she striving for fame or is she in competition with a rival? Perhaps she wants to write a book that will become a universally recognized standard work, develop a spell that will be widely used or create magical objects that will amaze everyone
Is she seeking revenge or justice for past injustices? Does she want to kill a feared enemy of the Order?
Is she driven by a strong sense of duty? Perhaps she is putting her life at the service of the Order?
Does she want to expand the boundaries of Hermetic theory, e.g. integrate other traditions or push the boundaries of Hermetic magic?
Does she simply want to start a family before (or despite) having to rely on a longevity potion or train apprentices who will keep her name alive?
(I copied this into the starting post so people don't have to scan the whole topic for updates.)
I think the House stereotypes are helpful when creating your first character. You can of course go against the stereotypes, that's why I'm asking the players to just note houses they find interesting and not choose one right away. I added a sentence to clarify that.
You can definitely make viable enchanters that are not Verditius, and I would not discourage a player from making e.g. a Mercere that creates items for Redcaps.
There is a lot of overlap between the different points, but I still want to keep them separate. I do want the players to think about both their character's role in society and during an adventure.
I certainly understand. I'd contend that a covenant full of magi and companions doing each wanting to do something will generate plenty of natural hooks even without having all of them aim for something great but at that point perhaps it is semantics.
Those two sound more like personality traits of lifelong pursuits to me. Goals should be attainable, and you'll never be done looking after your covenant.
"A sense of duty", "striving for fame" and "expand Hermetic magic " are also goals you'll never be done with. We aren't doing appraisal goals here, these are to give the character motivation and depth, and drive stories.
When we talked about motivation above, I pondered whether to include that in point 4, and did, so each bullet point contained both a drive and a goal. The drives were what you picked out.
I now changed it back, to make the point more precise. There can be different motivations for each goal, and they are not essential to mechanically designing a character. They may play a role in picking a flaw, but that's it. The point of this list is to help easy new players into Ars Magica and guide the mechanical character creation. I intentionally excluded the character background. It's an important part, but it's not specific to Ars Magica.
Sometimes it's useful to think not so much of goals as phrases that mean something in some way to the character. Things like "There is always another way" or "No one can make you do anything" from Glorantha for instance. "Beware of Tytalus magi bearing gifts", which while a perfectly sensible attitude, does beg the question as to what happened to the character to make this important. Quite a few RPGs use techniques like this through character generation.
It turned out that just helping with the concept was not enough. Creating your first character is hard, and new players definitely need a hand. I found it was more effective if players had a first draft of their character that we could go over together, instead of going through the whole character creation process together for the first time. That’s why I expanded the above list into a little document that is supposed to help you turn that concept into a character:
Edit: Apparently, some interaction between the Forum and Overleaf results in a link to an “Unsopported Browser” page. Just click on the URL there and it should take you to the document.