Little Rules Tidbits that Make You :roll:

Games Discussion Ars Magica
81

Someone said to speak up if their experiences were different. I thought maybe you but maybe someone else.

The recent incident in my saga you refer to. Roberto goy badly huurt retrieving an Arcane Connection from a jinni. If instant healing was available then he would have employed it or Soloman could have, and he would have used the AC himself (and fail probably). Solomon used the AC, and only when the action was over could they consider healing.
The one maga could cast the first spell with Fatigue replacing vis because of her Virtue. Roberto cast the second, and has the spell Mastered, so I waved it to move on with the story (he is NPC in this tale and I stated my opinion on Mastey and calm casting).
...

82

It was me. And your story proves my point. The healing was largely a bookkeeping exercise, reducing some vis, oh wait. But then time was incurred, oh, wait, you moved on with the rest of the story.

Allow me to be smarmy, this was different because it (the first spell) didn't actually cost vis, while the time element of the ritual was ignored in the interests of advancing the story. Whereas, I was coming from the point of view that the vis is deducted as a bookkeeping expense, and the time element of the ritual was ignored in the interests of advancing the story. :unamused: Which brings me back full circle to ritual magic generally being a rules tidbit that makes me :unamused:

:mrgreen:

83

But it wasn't ignored: Throughout the combat, there was an injured person with penalties and increased danger.

The handwaving occurred after the combat. "So, 30 minutes later...."

84

Or, another way to put it for a more abstract game:

Ritual Magic takes a long scene to accomplish. If you have no expertise in a given ritual, it is also dangerous to cast.

So, in that game...

GM: Ok, you cast your spell on Bobbius. The rest of you can take a quick rest, unless you want to do something else.

So it still makes a difference.

The ritual can be easily interrupted by the kobolds one cavern over, who don't enjoy the chanting, for example. The rest of the party can search the room and accidentally vanish into a regio "No, you don't notice because you were, like, chanting." Or nothing at all.

85

I'm not talking about the penalties during combat, I'm talking about the ritual after combat. A healing ritual would happen outside of combat, it's unlikely to deal with any sort of time crunch, or if it is going to be subject to a time crunch, it's going to be SG fiat saying it is, or at least the SG saying, you don't feel safe, yo're not going to be relaxed while casting the ritual, which is little different than SG fiat. Which I hate as a player and dislike doing as an SG and smacks exactly of the thing you say you are against, imposing additional botch dice on players who go out of their way to make characters who are botch resistant.

A good enough corpus expert, or grogs armed with charged items to cast the Bind Wounds (although this would happen prior to the next combat, not during the current one) and Endurance of the Berserkers with D:Sun will be able to power through combat without any appreciable penalties, and no increased danger, except for maybe a defense roll or two...

86

In that other game, healing surges are automatic, no? Not subject so some ridiculous risk that might take the magus out of the scene for hours? I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying that it probably won't be done, because of Marko's (really any SG, myself included in that) interests in advancing the story, or because the SG (probably me) wants to be a richard cranium and impose botch dice for %reasons%, because you can't possibly be relaxed with the kobolds that you don't know about being annoyed with your chanting.

87

In Marko's saga, sure, all the grogs have charged items of this kind; in low resource sagas, maybe not. And there are a lot of those on these forums. Not every group has resources, not every group has a healing expert.

As for SG fiat, at a certain point, most of a story is SG fiat. "So the nearby baron (who exists by SG fiat) decides (because of SG fiat) to visit his outlying manors, and he is not happy with what he sees (because of SG fiat.) His crossbowmen (which he has because of SG fiat) seem very nervous (because of SG fiat)....."

I'm not against constricted circumstances causing stress. I'm against having an SG inflict five botch dice on the character with Cautious Sorcerer and one botch die on another magus in the same circumstances because he wants to see more botches.

I'm completely ok with a SG saying, "Congratulations, you have slain the Slime Trolls. The stony cavern is slick with their entrails and viscera, and the stench is like... well, let's just say they smell even worse on the inside. The hot, stagnant air presses down like an anvil. The stone walls no longer seem so safe a barrier, not since the trolls oozed forth in howling rage. Are you sure you want to cast your 30 minute ritual here?"

88

I wasn't describing D&D, just an arbitrary game based on abstract scenes. The ritual still matters, even without rules that account for minutes and magnitudes.

89

Charged items take no resources, except a magus's time. Granted, a magus's time is very valuable, but in the interests of making sure a magus survives, along with a few grogs, it's a small price to pay, and then there's a lab text to create even more the next time, or let someone less gifted create the same items. But in low resource sagas, charged items are huge, and as I've demonstrated, somewhat superior to rituals.

Granted, a lot of the story is SG fiat. However, no episodes survives the first action of the PCs, and a lot of what I've had to do involves winging it because they've zigged when I expected them to zag, or vice versa. Sometimes that's annoying, sometimes I'm going to be harsh on PCs because of this. This is changed a lot since I've gotten older.

But you are also are not in favor of botches generally, so how does the botch play into it? It certainly didn't in Marko's case, which was exactly my point. Who decides whether something is botch-prone is the SG, and if the SG doesn't want a botch then, he'll lower the difficulty, if he does want to see a botch he will raise the difficulty, and you have a situation which you describe anyway.

Considering the shortest ritual is 60 minutes...? If they don't want to cast the ritual there, what are their options can they go back to camp and do it there, at the cost of delaying things for a day, and then coming back fully healed and ready to take on the rest of the denizens of the dungeon?

How does it matter? That it costs vis? If the only thing about rituals that matters is that it costs vis, then why attach botch dice to rituals with vis?

90

Hi,

If we're going to have a general conversation about botches, rather than a conversation about ritual botches within a context in which botches are considered part of a healthy breakfast, then sure, I'm with you 100%:

Let's mostly get rid of them.

Hmm. I don't remember that. I thought the shortest is 20m, 5m/mag.

Why attach botch dice to anything?

But why specifically vis, I can handwave: Vis is concentrated magical energy, especially difficult to use and control on short notice. Using it in a spell is therefore always dangerous.

I don't have to handwave! If someone says, "let's get rid of botches," I'll agree. If someone says, "Let's get rid of most of the rules that force you to use a ritual in Hermetic Magic, and save it just for permanent Creo effects, healing, effects that last longer than Moon and some weird mysteries," I'll probably also agree.

(Yet another possible House Rule: Limit the requirement for rituals as above. Then, if a magus invents a spell as a ritual when it does not already have to be a ritual, he can invent the spell in a single season if his Lab Total meets the spell level.)

The game would not even break if you got rid of vis altogether.

Anyway,

Ken

91

Rituals and ceremonial magic are 15 minutes/magnitude, since all rituals are at least 1 hour in duration. On top of the vis costs, there is a long term fatigue cost to the magus, unless he has stalwart casting on the ritual.

My point is that, by and large, I see a lot of troupes handling rituals as non-events, logging the cost of vis, and then moving on, whether it is because of Spell Mastery 1 or because of other reasons, I don't know. I just don't see people paying the risk cost that the RAW seems to suggest (to me).

If someone has an experience where they regularly cast rituals under stressful conditions, without heavily optimized characters designed to mitigate the risks of botching and they don't treat it as fait accompli and log the cost of the ritual and move on, I'm all for it. Marko's case is one where there might be a time-sensitive issue to it, and in the interests of moving on they decided to move on, instead of making a big deal about it. And that is 100% OK to do, but it is certainly a case of the SG saying, I don't want any botch dice, let's just call it done. If he does it during a pause in an adventure, it's hard to imagine that he asks for it at the beginning of the session to cast the annual Aegis, and if he does, it is because he has something planned.

The longer we talk about this, the less I like the fact that rituals have huge risks associated with their botch dice and the less I like the other point: that Spell Mastery 1 allows relaxed casting and no risk of botching any ritual, unless it truly is a stressful situation, in which case they are in for a world of hurt should they roll a 1, because they only ever bothered mastering it to a score of 1... :unamused:

So, yes, in some respects this is a case against botch dice, because my experience is that they are implemented capriciously, in the interests of advancing the %story%. We don't check for botch on the annual Aegis, but if you roll that healing ritual, you're darn tooting, even though we're back at the covenant and largely the same conditions exist as if the Aegis were being cast. That, right there is imposing extra botch dice, unless of course the Aegis caster and healing ritual caster are one in the same, and have virtues and spell mastery to mitigate all risk of botching...

92

You could botch for all things but SG never seem to want to make it a point. AoH is the only one I've ever seen handwaved on a regular basis.

We had an example of casting a healing in game in your ruins game where Korvin took 40 minutes ( basically stopping a stressful moment where everyone was rushing around) to heal someone. But then he was not going with them to the vampire nest.

93

Actually, if memory serves, he executed to castings of Incantation of the Body Made Whole, one for Mufarjj and one for Insatella.

And, to be fair about it, your casting scores were sufficient without the roll, but because it was a ritual that Korvin had not mastered, I had to ask for the rolls by, RAW. So, you undertook a 9 botch dice risk of casting that ritual, and didn't even have the fall back of saying it was mastered...

94

Memorable botch dice moments in my ArM5 experience...
When I first switched to fifth, right when the only splats available were GotF and True Lineages (and I think I only had one or the other at first); I had converted all the characters from my Ultima Thule saga and we finished out the story. My buddy ran an adventure wherein my character challenged an archmagus and the contest was to kill a frost giant king.
Giant tried to freeze me. We had to figure out if it was a Corpus instant kill or an Ignem damage application. Versus the one I would resist and versus the other I would soak a lot. Buddy got frustrated but we moved on. We were still figuring out the new rules.
I hit the giant with my Mastered death spell, which in retrospect would not have worked anyway because of Size. But still, I lobbed the spell at him using a but load of vis. That is what we were used to doing from 4th edition, when every pawn was +5. We were coping with the new Penetration rules and I opted for overkill.
Rolled a zero.
Rolled close to twenty botch dice.
Only a quadrupal, failed twilight comprehension, fell out of the sky and broke both my legs.
His character, as NPC, rescued mine and killed the giant and lied to me and said I did it.
...
PbP game here years ago, I foregt the name. Played a Roberto wannabe. Jebrik was there. Some fire spirit was tearing up the covenant. My character tapped the vis resrve, and sponted the best penetrating PeVi spell I could.
Rolled a 0.
Falls, the SG, rolled the botch dice for me. So I cannot eyewitness the result. But I believe his astonishment.
Close to twenty botch dice. No Botch.
So even with a roll of zero, the vis bonus was enough to rip it to smoke.
...
Andorra, years ago, Octavian of Tremere in Certamen. U think he used vis. Botched it, Twilight with good result, Minor Essential Virtue of Powerful Eyes.
But he lost face and was p$$d.

95

Marko, I wasn't seeking memorable botches, but even if I were, none of them were from ritual spells, which is part of what I was talking about. Ritual spells simply are not cast in stressful, time crunch situations, is my point, and I'm seeking other examples or experiences of people working ritual spells.

96

I was talking to Ken about Botches and offering anecdotal testimony for others to weigh and jusdge the dangers and consequences of Botching with Vis, which after all is the root of the botch dice pool for Ritual Spells.
:smiley:

However, this and another topic (about high scores have made me realize something. Rule bits that make me :unamused: are that there is A) no reasonable cap on how miraculously successful you can be, and B) Botches are a slippery subject that players and sg's tend to skirt around or over intensivy (purposefully and inadvertantly).

And another thing. About the Aegis. It's just so convienient to handwave the damn thing and I've been doing it so long, that I have no idea who actually does it any more. I thing we are using a Casting Tablet. Now I'm feeling guilty! :laughing:

An innovative idea I just now had. Not going to use it now, just a thought. But what if certain rituals, a limited few that I can think of excuses for; but what if they didn't need to be re-cast jut perpetuated?
For example, Notatus cast the original Aegis over Durenmar, a powerful one. Every year since then, magi of Durenmar conduct a ceremony to perpetuate the Aegis, feuling it with vis and no die roll involved.
Which could lead to stories, such as something trying to prevent the Durenmar magi from conducting the ceremony on time. And perhaps way back in the day everyone had a powerful Aegis. But circumstances of the Schism War messed up many ceremonies and magi had to invent lower level versions they could manage. Magi press ever onward to reinvent and cast that original twentieth magnitude version with Penetration 101.

97

That's give me an interesting idea.
Since the Aegis is admittely only partially hermetic, why not have a house rule, sopecific like for longevity ritual ?

Only a few magis in the order managed to truely understand the Aegis (maybe they need a specific combination of virtue like Mercurian magic and affinity with Vim or focus (Ward), or it is part of an initiation).
When a covenant settle for the first time, the magi call for one of these specialists. One spend one or more seasons (depending on the magnitude) in the covenant designing the ritual, casting with all mages the first time, getting paid and off he goes.
Then every year, the magi repeat the ritual, similarly as somebody would brew another batch of longevity potion. The difference being a longevity ritual stops working when it fails, whereas the Aegis last only for a year, no matter what.

Then when the covenant expands or wants a stronger Aegis, they call the specialist to redesign the new Aegis.
Thematically, it would fit well with the idea that Aegis is really something unique, not fitting well within current hermetic theory.

It makes the order unique through 3 things: Parma, longevity rituals (although several traditions have alternative more or less powerfull - usually less) and Aegis.

98

Marko, you illustrate perfectly why ritual magic is an area of the rules that cause one to :unamused:. If the Aegis ritual took a season, and lasted for several years one could be assured that it were recast, because almost all players are meticulous about tracking what their characters do seasonally. All of my current characters have a map that goes out for a dozen years, it isn't necessarily a hard and fast thing, but some of the things to do are. In the case of a character with an apprentice, I know what he is teaching and when.

Ther is a desire to treat a lot of rituals as a bookkeeping exercise, and as an SG and player both can see that rituals are treated inconsistently. You hand wave the Aegis, to the point you aren't even sure how it is being cast, thinking it might be cast with one of the riskiest methods for casting the Aegis, though you remove a lot of risk in not requiring the Aegis to penetrate.

Right now, rituals cost Vis, and some measure of risk, they cost an insignificant amount of time with respect to the season. Doing them during the course of the adventure doesn't seem to be a major focus of the adventure, and so the rolls for that might be handwaved, especially if the person mastered the spell, and subscribes to the view about mastery and being relaxed mitigates all botch dice. The time aspect of a ritual during an adventure can easily (is often easily?) overlooked or rolled into the story in favor of advancing the story. As an SG, I don't necessarily want the player to botch a ritual, because it might interrupt the flow of what I have planned. I don't mind if players go in a different direction, that's different than rolling a botch for a spell and the results take out a key player for a period of time.

99

It is purely a personal feel for why we have rituals are what they are and his highly speculative.

I feel it is purely a mechanical reason behind it. To prevent certain games/scenes to become ludicrous, there was a need for some spells to be impossible to cast rapidly, repeatedly, without cost.

Specifically: healing spells.
When Ars magica 2nd ed came (I cannot talk for 1st ed), the standard for medieal RpG was to be some form of heroic adventure. If a magus can cast repeatedly healing spells, you remove the heroic part of most challenges. Hence the invention of ritual: it allows to recover from a almost deadly adventure so the flow can resume, yet, it does not make a combat lasting forever since nobody can "instant heal" in the heat of the action.
This is what a ritual does: it allows access to some spell that would mechanically break the adventure if they were cast without limit (and therefore should not exist).
How could magi be unpopular if they could heal any wounds, any illness with a few seconds of casting ? You can slam as many malus you want on social roll, when somebody is on his death bed, they will let the healer reach them. And they will remember it. For them, for their wife, children, parents. After a few people saved from their deathbed by a magus, no matter how smelly and foul his presence is, they will learn to appreciate him and trust him.

Other games are/were limiting this potential abuse with number of use per day, or fatigue, or any other economic (meaning there was a trade off with a limited currency of some form). Ars was one of the first game saying: if you are good at a spell, there is no reason you should not be able to do it all day long, even for powerfull spell.
But there is the need to have a way to control certain spell in a elegant way, with some form of logic/mechanic: rituals were invented.

Now, there is a nice background story explaining why Creo healing spell should require virtus. But you can go through 2nd ed, and there was nothing like that. It was just: healing spells are ritual full stop.

This concept of ritual was nice and convenient, and was applied to other spells.
With the overhaul than 5th ed brought, because there is nice, systematic rules, this kind of issue are creeping, legacy of the past.

So there is a need and room for rituals, for the sake of balance and game mechanics.
Yet, if we apply raw, it creates some interesting statistical issues. It can be handled, but it need to be capture in the background of the Order or a change in the rule:
Case 1: the botch rule remain the same, but mastery allow to reduce the risk to 0 if cast in relax circumstance: every covenant has a "Master of the Aegis", who is in charge of casting the ritual
Case 2: the botch rule remain the same, but mastery only reduce by 1 the number of botch dice per mastery level: there are specialists that can be hired for a few pawns to cast the ritual. They are probably mercurian magicians with the virtue allowing them to apply their mastery to similar spell (forgot the name). It means that for a few days around winter solstice, some covenants won't have an Aegis, until the specialist finally arrives. Or will have one, but cast by somebody without the full safety net. Politics and favors are traded to make sure that the specialist is available on time for those who can afford it. Much opportunity for stories.
Case 3. Aegis is an oddity which does not conform fully to hermetic theory, therefore .

100

Yeah, it's a personal feel. I agree. One of the things that I'd like to see in a next edition of Ars Magica is that the game mechanics make sense within a setting. I mean, it's possible that the Ritual rules make sense if mastering a ritual allows one to consider it relaxed, in a relaxed environment, then you have no risk of botch. But the point you raise, about limiting healing to rituals is apt, it won't be done in the field, except under the gravest of conditions, but then those grave conditions make the casting of such a ritual in the extreme. And I'm not looking to overcome this limitation of the system, that healing magic require rituals. As a bookkeeping requirement, they are fine, but they lack gravitas when they get used in stories (they are handwaved, in Marko's example), and almost every single troupe handwaves the casting of the Aegis. Oh, they pay lip service and ensure that the infrastructure is in place (magi who can cast it, master it, commune if necessary), but it doesn't really serve any sense of story to make that Aegis roll, and it frankly isn't.

And it's for those reasons that I find ritual magic is a rules tidbit that makes me :unamused:.

Akriloth, my apologies for derailing this thread, but ritual magic is definitely one of these, and it's used (or ritual effects are used) often enough that seems inconsistent with the mechanics designed to operate it.