That makes a lot more sense, and the number do seem to be allright. Your idea of having to scramble for ACs instead og making generic kill-o-zap-devices is sound. How about integrating ACs into devices? In this case you both need to find the AC and make a device so specific that it only works on this critter.
Also, many Verditii (well, at least the ones I see in play) have Puissant Magic Theory, so they truly become the masters of devices, gaining an edge over others. Sure, many Bonisagi also have Puissant MT, but they lack the item making skills of the Verditii mysteries. And otherwise you just need to use low-level spells to get high Pen.
Or you can throw a tree or boulder at the offender and bypass his MR 
I like john post's idea on items. Not that items are popular around here (we dislike them after a few cases of "mega-item of doom" breaking down the game for us), but it is a idea that I wouldn't mind seeing in Ars at all
Cheers,
Xavi
Me, I'd just limit penetration to (Te+Fo + eventual focus). Roughly similar to casting totals for magi.
Another option would be to limit it to Penetration*5, and to allow arcane connections to apply.
I think the biggest limitation I'm going to place on the power level of elder magi is that fact that they are more intergrated into society. As a result, a typical magus only has two free seasons. So they'll be getting about half as a much study and lab time as they would normally. While with hard work, dedication, focus and teamwork magi can still achieve powerful effects, those who do will be somewhat fewer and farther between. At least, that's the theory. Hopefully, I'll see how it works in play.
I'd explore a limit of Penetration*5; and give no bonuses for arcane connections but remove the limit if you incorporate one.
Having each point of lab worth only one point of Penetration works for me. So does banning all penetration from charged items, although I could see allowing penetration up to Magic Theory for these also.
It sounds draconian but right now the game makes Parma useless against all the tricks for penetration.
What an ironic statement, given the lengths to which this edition of the game when to enhance the power of the parma magica.
Unfortunately everything else got enhanced somewhere along the line too. Parma stops mega spells but a magus is just as dead from a minor one.
I should add though that I didn't consider Parma in an Arts as Abilities game when I wrote that. It must rock in such a setting.
I would strongly suggest the opposite.
Consider running the Arts at twice or triple the XP cost of normal instead, making them the same as Abilities has some side effects at least im not happy with. And *2 or *3 is still a serious dent in the power level.
Running Arts as Abilities will tend to cut effective totals to about 1/3 for older magi and to a bit under 1/2 for younger and kills off generalists quite well, while also making Magic Focus extremely desirable, again reducing the ability of generalists.
Also, items becomes REALLY good. And players WILL stack up with high Sta or Int or both far more.
Excellent idea.
You could also add other modifiers of similar kind. I have a fairly large set of modifiers where you incorporate something in a spell and the rarer, more odd or more extreme it is the greater a reduction of levels you get to the spell, but while inventing, that same level adds to the spell, basically making you pay for the lower casting level by having a higher level for inventing it.
For example, Caster adds the need to draw a drop of blood from theirself while casting, this would make a level 20 spell into a level 17, but would be handled as a level 23 while inventing.
Making a spell that only works during a thunderstorm would lower it by 6 for casting and raise it by 6 while inventing.
A spell changed for use only during a celestial event that happens once a century is -+15.
And so on. I think this would be a suitable addition for you as it would make good use of Magic theory as it would likely get fairly high while allowing highly thematic requirements for spells to get included as a way to be able to cast them.
These can also be limited so that each needs a Virtue to "activate" of course. Ie the above 3 spells would then be Blood, Weather and Celestial cycle Magery.
I´m afraid that wont be easly achieved by making Arts into Abilities, because you drastically reduce the versatility when you limit them this much. Everybody will still be able to cast level 10 spells, but few young will be able to cast level 20 spells of more than a couple of Art combinations, and among old magi, Arts above 5-6 will likely be uncommon except for a couple of favored ones. And getting fatigue from casting will be very common, while casting while fatigued will be severely less preferable. Also, words and gestures becomes far more important.
The biggest equaliser for versatility will be that spells are still cast even up to casting total 10 below spell level.
Magic auras or the lack of them becomes very important.
Oh and Life Boost becomes a superduper overpowered must have for any selfrespecting munchkin.
One option to look at could be changing the function for spellcasting total vs spell level works.
One possibility would be to allow a spell to still work also with higher negative numbers but raise the amount of Fatigue inflicted. If for example you set -1 to -5 as 1 fatigue, -6 to -10 as 2 fatigue and -11 to -15 as 3 fatigue, that raises the max level attainable for all mages at the cost of much more fatigue and also adds fatigue faster "in the middle" range.
Another option could be to let 0 to +10 cause 1 fatigue(ie only if casting total is at least 10 higher than spell level do you get zero fatigue), -1 to -10 cause 2 fatigue, and then optionally -11 to -15 =3 fatigue, -16 to -20 =4 fatigue or -11 to -20 =3 fatigue. Or any kind of combination of these. If you for example pick the above one where you get fatigue unless you´re 10+ above spell level, that alone will seriously lower the power level of magi, this might actually be a preferable change rather than, or in combination with making only Techniques difficult or similar, changing all to difficult(or just doubling or tripling XP cost).
In other words: +5 to casting total per fatigue level sacrificed willingly. Can make for all or nothing spells, where you try to boost your casting total throwing vis and energy (fatigue) against the tough enemy that is crushing you in hope of beating it down.
I like it Much more mythic than the current system for me, at least.
A good thing to do under this system would be to drop the covenants book completely, and only allow minor bonuses for labs of up to +`3 or so (1 season to set up a +1 lab, 2 seasons more for a +2 lab...). At least this might prevent lab totals skyrocketing over casting totals. If you want that, of course
Cheers,
Xavi
How do you figure? Top Arts become 20 instead of 40, so a basic "top" total starts at 1/2, not 1/3. Since a lot of an elder magus' bonuses would be tied up in other bonuses, however (Talisman, Potency, Mysteries...), the total would actually be larger than 1/2.
I'd recommend cutting the bonus from Magical Focus down to size anyway, cutting it in half. Then with Arts as Abilities it provides at most a +10 bonus - which is still a lot for a Major (let alone Minor) virtue, but comes at the cost of providing much less in early years so it is still sort-of-balanced. If you change it in this way, Magical Focus becomes approximately Just Another (Major) Virtue. If you don't change it then sure, it is a powergaming must-have - as it is in RAW.
For the record, the appropriate fraction relating Ability scores to Art scores with the same number of xp is 1/sqrt(5), which is about 0.447. Not counting bonuses etc.
Are you sure? Isn't that the limit as the Art gets very, very large, larger than it ever gets? I thought it was (Ability)=0.5*(sqrt[1+0.8(Art)^2+0.8(Art)]-1). This agrees with you when the Art is very, very large. The problem is that things never get that large so such a limit is invalid. With smaller scores 1/sqrt(5) is terrible, and that is the region in which most Arts lie. Art 5 <-> Ability 2, which would be 2/5 or about 0.4, and that is where the majority of Arts (those outside of specialties) tend to be around. Art 14 <-> Ability 6, which would be 3/7 or about 0.42857. Roughly Art 23 <-> Abillity 10, which would be 10/23 or about 0.43478. Even roughly Art 43 <-> Ability 19 still only gets us almost to 0.4419.
My quick guess would be 0.42 or so gets you a reasonable result on average.
Chris
There´s the effect on Magic Focus, it alont gets rather drastic.
Due to the effect you get from having to spend so much more even on non-preferred Arts, you get shorter on XP in total for your preferred ones. And it becomes much more realistic and advantageous to put XP in Abilities overall(and not to forget spell masteries, just 15XP to raise score by 2, compared to the 195 XP to move an Art from 18 to 20 ) and Magic Theory especially. Putting XP in Arts simply becomes so much less desirable that the end effect is very likely to be closer to cutting spell levels to closer to 1/3.
That was the big problem with 2nd edition, magi got lots of low to decent Ability scores instead of raising Arts as it was just as easy.
Ability 20 is 1050 XP, for an Art you get score 45 (1035 XP) for that, not 40. For the XP of Art 40 you get Ability score 17 not 20.
So no, straight conversion of XP is a bit below. Yes other bonuses can make up for some but that means assuming that all characters makes use of them, many dont.
Yup, that was roughly the aim. You can fairly easily finetune it to get the kind of result you want.
It goes very nicely with the often shown "picture" of a magi barely able to move after casting a big spell.
Art 40 is 820 XP, which is closer to Ability 18 (-25 XP) then to Ability 17 (+55 XP). But yes, Ability scores are slightly below 1/2.
The great difficulty of increasing them will indeed lead magi to not increase them to such heights, lowering them even further. This will be even more true if you retain RAW Focus, but I don't see why it affects Arts as Abilities more than RAW. However, these lowered Arts are not really a further reduction in power level. The magi could have just developed their Arts, after all. If they choose not to, it is an indication that a greater power level can be found that way, i.e. that it is even more powerful then the slightly-below-1/2 we're at.
Since for any magus what goes into the Lab Total (and to some extent Casting Total) is not just Arts, we get even higher power. So, about 1/2, and above.. Yes, for some magi this "above" will be more significant than for others.
In short, I don't see the 1/3. I see about 1/2, probably more, especially for Lab Totals.
Good pont Chris. The exact formula depends on whether you want to convert the minimum xp for an Art, or the maximum, or start from Ability instead of from Art....
Here's a graph that shows exactly what Art and Ability scores can correspond to each other. Art scores are on the horizontal axis, Ability scores on the vertical axis. For example, the horizontal blue line at height 5 goes from 11 to 13, meaning that an Ability score of 5 could correspond to any Art score from 11 to 13, depending on the exact number of xp. The vertical red line at Art score 11 goes from 4 to 5, meaning that an Art score of 11 could be an Ability score of 4 or 5; the red dot at (12,5) means that an Art score of 12 always corresponds to an Ability score of 5.
The diagonal line drawn in is Chris's estimate of multiplying the Art score by 0.42 to get the Ability score. It does seem to be a good compromise: a little too large for small scores, a little too small for large scores.
(By the way, the graph shows us the known facts that the number of xp needed to reach Art 5 is exactly the same number of xp needed to reach Ability 2, and the same for Art 14 and Ability 6. If you're willing to consider unattainable scores, it's a cool number theory fact that there are infinitely many xp numbers where the Art and Ability scores both jump at the same time. The next few are Art 99/Ability 44, Art 260/Ability 116, and Art 1785/798.)
dixit ArM 6 : A point of conflict model for Ability selection - #69 by Teufelted
Taking :
- {2 Ability = 15 = 5 Art}
- {6 Ability = 105 = 14 Art}
You get :
9 Ability = 4 Art - 2
Error is below 1% anything higher than 1 :
- {1 Ability = 5 | 6 = 3 Art} = 32%
- {14 Ability = 525 | 528 = 32 Art} = .6%
Not worth it any longer. Spending 30 or 40 XP to gain +1 Score, yeah sure thats doable and doesnt take forever and ever.
Spending 100 XP to get +1 Score? That gets really tedious. Much better to spend that on MT instead which affects all items and research you do. Or in Parma and get impenetrable defence as long as you can avoid any foes getting Connections. A Verditius gets even more powerful because they spend on Crafting, Philosophiae and MT, they will get REALLY powerful...
Closer doesnt count until you get the remaining 35 XP from somewhere.
Lab totals will be much higher than usual when compared to casting totals. But casting totals will overall be rather low. Its fine if you want it, although the "every mage is a jack of all trades" effect is likely to happen, but the common power level will drop a lot. Players simply wont push Arts as high even when comparing XP.
It does have some nice effects but never forget to fear the Verditius.
A much simpler way to achieve this goal is to halve the Lab Total and the limit for the highest level spell during character generation.
Less work, no balancing problems and the higher level formulaic spells have a good penetration since the Casting Total (which is not divided by 2) is automatically much higher than the spell level.