If the Arm6 rumor is true - what must be changed?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

OK, that's a weird choice, but it's yours and you are entitled to it. 8)

Oddly I did, back before I went vegetarian. My family owned a butchery as I was growing up.

That's not my point: it's that my egg whisk is not designed to intergrate with my ice cream scoop. Tools have tasks. The assumption that every tool needs to be fitted for every task is a false one IMO. You get things like rules for playing unitelligent animals as characters, or uncommunicative objects as characters, and at that point I think your could really draw a Sanity Line and say "I'm not sure that every animate thing needs to be a player character class in this."

...but my microwave stuff doesn't work with my stove. Or my stove stuff with my microwave. And there's no assumption it should.

I prefered it to 4th, myself...

In game, because Bonisagus discovered something founded in the deep cosmology of the game universe. There really is a bit of the Magic Realm that's Ignem, and there really isn't a nit that's the Viking rune for Oxen. Hermetic magic is best because it best encapsulates the underlying forces of existence.

OOC, two reaons:

  • because it's too annoying to try and master the new rulesets, and so people just skip them.
  • because we have the best system for doing RPG magic now, and for some reason we keep surrounding it with these dinky little minigames. It'd be like Carwars, the premiere system in its genre, saying "Oh, but these rules are only for Toyotas. If you want a Ford, you need to use the 12 pages in the following supplement. And then Mazadas will be six pages over here, and then Holdens, well, they get a whole quarter of a book." or Pedragon going "Sure, you can play knights with this attribute and skill system, but if you want to play Irish knights. then we rename all of your attributes and skills, and change your target numbers." I get why we do it, I'm just not sure that more people wouldn't play hedge traditions if they just used the same rules as Hermetic magi.
42

Change concept of fantasy magi in medieval Europe to mystical/esoteric/traditional magi in medieval Europe. Reduce power level of experienced magi.

Make everything simpler.

Reduce specialization.

Reduce the power of the Order and/or introduce more orders.

43

Seconded. I think it is possible to have the best of both worlds, if one spends enough thought and ink on explaining the difference between spell guidelines and spells. A good example in my opinion is Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie. What it actually does is pretty straightforward - detects when someone is lying. But it doesn't do it in a rigid mechanical way: it has an organic, magical feel just because of the particulars of the spell description.

If the spell design rules were written in the right way, I think it could help. Start with the full details of how the spell works: what Laws of Magic (if any) it uses, how it looks, how its effects are specific and grounded in the game world. Only then, determine what guideline applies to that specific effect. If one starts with the guideline and works forward, one tends to end up with very generic, straightforward, pragmatic, bland spells.

Example spells with very different effects, that all use the same guideline, would help to illustrate how a guideline is not a spell. For example if the guideline is "control a person's movements" you might have one spell to root someone in place, another to make someone walk wherever you tell him to walk, and a third that makes him strike someone with his hand.

And of course, spells should not in general be as generic and flexible as the guidelines that are applied to them. Changing how the guidelines are written could help: for example, "control a person's movements in one specific, natural way" is a better guideline than "control a person's movements" -- the latter seems to imply that one spell can control the person's movements in any way the caster wants.

44

Everything he said! Yes, yes, yes!

45

I have to admit I am puzzled why other players make such extensive use of multiple casting. Do their magi have Concentration scores of 9 or something? Serf's parma, but I am pretty sure the Concentration roll for casting two spells at once is danged hard (12 or 15 or so?). I have never seen anyone pull it off in my Saga. And I mean, never in 20 years of playing ArM.

That said, I have seen people in PbP games totally ignore the concentration roll for multiple casting, in which case multi-casting becomes rather more powerful. :wink:

46

You intrigue me, sir, and I would like to nominate you to (re)write that section for the book and this is exactly what I would love to see.

47

I completely agree. The Limits of Hermetic Magic are known, but the way that the Limit of Essential Nature and the Limit of the Divine are written, there's no real telling of what magic can really do. So, players rely on the guidelines - and if it isn't there, then it's a negotiation. My experience has been that SGs tend to limit magi rather than empower them, meaning that unless a spell can perform according to guidelines, then it's probably violating a Limit.

You wouldn't need to give this robust, detailed treatment to every spell, but a section with a good selection of spells would help to encourage creativity more than just reading off the guidelines list.

...

+1 to there being way too many social skills. If Artes Liberales and Philosophiae and Magic Lore are all single Abilities encompassing a massive range of subjects without unbalancing the game, social skills should be as accessible. Right now, it's exactly as easy to become a master of all the world's science, math, logic, and economics (Artes Liberales + Philosophiae) as it is to flatter the bishop's daughter (Charm) while managing to not spill the soup on your lap (Etiquette). It's actually easier to master all that than it is to be able to consistently go have a drink without getting sloppy (Carouse), pick up a girl at the pub (Charm) and then explain to her father why you're not really the reason she's pregnant (Guile). Considering the hefty XP costs of Abilities, the list of social skills need to be tightened up.

Carouse, Charm and Etiquette should be one Ability.
Guile, Intrigue, Folk Ken and Bargain should be one Ability.

48

Well, thanks for the nomination, but I'm not sure nominations are currently open. :wink:

What I can do is write this up as an article for Sub Rosa -- advice on how to make unique and interesting spells using the spell guidelines. If that strikes a chord with David Chart or (Heaven forbid) his successor, then some similar language may indeed find its way into a new edition.

49

Before anyone else jumps on this, I'll say my first thought was "Whoa! The bishop has a daughter!?" Then my second thought was, "well yeah, in the Eastern Orthodox Church the priesthood isn't celibate." So mean_liar probably plays in the Novgorod or Thebes Tribunal.

As to mean_liar's actual point about social skills - having recently created a Jerbiton magus, I can say wholeheartedly that I agree. There are way too many social skills to spend points on.

50

Nah, you caught me. I'd have used the term "Metropolitan" for "Bishop" if I was thinking the Orthodox church.

51

Between kings and emperors granting bishoprics to their supporters, some of whom are ordained as priests an hour or so before becoming bishop, a lack of priestly behavior among many of the clergy and the fact that clerical celebacy is not universal and in some places relatively new, the bishops daughter is hardly unheard of.

52

All the more reason for those social encounters then - a friendly (or at least scared-of-Scandal) Bishop is always a good thing to have nearby.

53

The difficulty here is that in a game with multiple players, the line between player character and non-player-character is difficult to draw. Say the magi in my saga's covenant hear about a scary black dog terrorizing the moors, and they decide to hunt it down. When they catch up with it, instead of killing it, they capture it and take it back to the covenant. They then devote time and resources to taming it, and they succeed. So now the player characters have a scary black dog character that lives at the covenant. It's not really an NPC any more. How do we decide who plays this character, and how much of the focus of our stories it requires? What powers should it have, what does it need to live, how does it age and grow in experience?

In your analogy, is your egg whisk a character, and your ice cream scoop another kind of character? If so, I think you'll find that they both still need to integrate together in a few ways. For example, if one is a faerie and the other is a magical creature, they both have Might Scores and powers. They have Characteristics and Abilities. A whisk and a scoop both have handles designed to fit comfortably in a human hand, and I use both when I make ice cream and muffins. These mechanics and tools should work the same way, for consistency. I find that I have a much easier time with the tasks I want to use each of them for when I don't have to master a new method each time.

In any case, as storyguide you don't have to write up stats for every object the players might come across, at least not until it matters to the story your troupe is telling. As an author for the line, of course, you kind of have to plan for lots of contingencies.

Heh, you mean, we should use the same tool for every task? :slight_smile:

Well, every author wants to put his own spin on things, inventing new powers and enhancing existing powers. Heck, I'd argue that most players want to do this, too, to invent exciting and different stuff within the framework of our game. A few years ago I would have agreed with you that the magic rules should all work the same way and use the same mechanics-- for consistency and ease of play-- but I've seen some very creative and interesting ideas since then that make me hesitate. Yes, the rules get bloated with tons of stuff we don't need, but there are always diamonds in the rough. I would hope that whoever eventually compiles a Sixth Edition or whatever it is can incorporate some of these gems into the framework.

54

This is a good point. I think there is a way to get the best of both worlds here as well, though. They key is to have a system for non-Hermetic magic that is sufficiently regular that players can learn and understand it (including understanding the balance implications), and sufficiently flexible that each non-Hermetic system can still feel different and leave room for innovation on the part of the author.

What I am talking about here are meta-rules for designing other magic systems. Imagine for example a framework where non-Hermetic magic uses the same basic spellcasting mechanics: they have a Form and Technique, their Casting Total is Form + Tech + Attribute, penetration works basically the same as in Hermetic magic, the level goes up if you increase the Range/Duration/Target, and so on. But, each hedgie tradition has its own Arts, and each set of arts has its own spell guidelines. Maybe for the Viking rune-wizards there are only four forms, say "battle," "weather," "fate," and "craftsmanship" (using of course Scandinavian words for those terms) or something, and three Techniques ("help," "harm," "study"). Then you would write spell guidelines for each Form/Tech combination -- note that this system has only 12 whereas Hermetic magic has 50. Maybe it is easier to do certain things in Viking magic (lower magnitude guidelines) than in Hermetic magic. Maybe Viking magic has different R/D/T categories or it makes it easy to do things like create a rune that triggers later. But then this non-Hermetic tradition doesn't have the same coverage as Hermetic magic: there is a lot it can't do.

The benefit of such a framework is that you could have a lot of symmetry with the Hermetic magic rules, so it's easy to learn and apply the rules, but sufficiently different that you can capture the flavor of completely different magic systems.

55

Mmm, what? What concentration roll for multicasting? We´re talking about the Spell Mastery option here, NOT casting several spells at the same time, which DOES require a concentration roll.

56

A clarification on natural resistance.

I like natural resistance. Not for all spells, though, but it makes sense to me that a spell designed to make you betray your love would have a chance to be resisted.
Yet, although this appears in individual spells, this is absent from the guidelines. And thus, most player-character spells either discard it (making them more powerful than similar RAW spells) or are just in the dark as to what to do about it.

Maybe parma could work like this, too. Soak against damage for direct magical spells, and bonus to resistance for spells that affect you directly. As for indirect spells, you're still toast. I don't know if that could work, though.

About "magical spells", maybe a simple way to do it is to have each spell require a description as how it appears. Wait, this exists, this is the sigil. But it's overlooked somewhat.
For exemple, a frosty breath analogue, with the same guideline, could have, instead of the breath, fires flicker if that corresponds to your sigil. Or the target's eyes glow briefly. Or you hear music afar. Or you feel a light pain. Same guideline, but more magical feel
The only thing to do, then, would be for each spell created from scratch to have to describe how your sigil applies to it, while raw spells have the sigil fixed.
Isn't that the way things are mostly already supposed to work?

57

Yes, but there is IMO not enough emphasis on that, which could be why some people complain the spell guidelines make magic seem too mechanical.

58

Agreed.
So, change nothing, but emphasizes it more? Like "Any spell designed must include a description of how your sigil manifests through it"?

(And re-reading me, I find myself rather condescending, while I was mostly unsure. Hope I didn't come of as wrong).

59

Funny - that's almost the opposite of what I want.
I like the way each tradition has its own system - indeed there's too much stream-lining in non-Hermetic magic in this edition!

60

I side with Timothy. I remember the days of rolemaster (that went so far to include a birth complications chart)