Magi are the greatest weakness of Ars Magica?!

Thats why i prefer playing rather loosely with especially the "court magi" restriction nor be so strict about keeping out of "mundane affairs". I also use tribunals/organised magi far, FAR outside of Europe.

I toyed briefly with the idea of a wizard-less or almost-wizardless game in setting up my current saga-in-development. I was so excited about the political atmosphere of pre-Conquest 11th Century England, until I realized that the set-up of the game by the RAW meant that magi would tend not to get to play much role at all in the unfolding of events.

Ultimately, however, I decided that Hermetic Magic and the lab and all of those things were too integral a part of my enjoyment of the game to dispense with them all together. So like several others here, I chose instead to relax the standard enforcement of those provisions of the Code. To my mind, this yields the best of both worlds.

Apparently, playing Magi is what draws my players in bot hmy sagas to them like moths to a flame. Because I can't drive anybody to play anything else. Previos sagas saw play with both companions and grogs. And even some very fun adventures with just grogs. Or, at one point all magi and all first tier characters were out on several simultaneous adventures, so this one adventure was done with the elderly and almost retired characters. The Grog Captain had to do all the hard work, because the other two characters were the elderly librarian and cook respectively. Great fun.

I wouldn't be as interested if there were no magi.

The problem with this is that, unless you have this change happen during your saga, the background makes no sense at all.

"Magus! I demand that you obey the commands of your lawful king! I am backed by a hundred knights..."

"Pigeons."

"...er, pigeons. That will be all. My lord."

A deep and fundamental problem with Ars Magica is that it presents truly powerful wizards in a truly medieval setting, and the combination is not actually consistent. Still, the combination of quantum mechanics and relativity isn't actually consistent either, and in both cases, as long as you don't concentrate too much on the problematic locations, you can get some great things out of them.

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LOL, I liked the analogy.

I agree with the problem. My favorite "solution" is to make Arts scale like Abilities (with XP); this doesn't completely resolve the issues, but it makes them less severe.

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You have holy relics? Ah, well, how about I build you an enormous castle? It will take a morning.

Given Mythic Europe as written, magi almost certainly wouldn't take over, but they would break medieval society, and end up in the ruling class. If you take away the part of the Code that says that magi are trying not to break medieval society, suspension of disbelief gets a lot harder.

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Given the Order as written, magi already are a ruling class. They often control territories at least as large as a wealthy landed noble and maintain standing armies of highly trained warriors. All without owing allegence to anyone but themselves. Plus, based on the rules, they are wealthier than a wealthy noble as represented by the fact that they have four completely free seasons... they owe no duties or service to anyone. Put all that together and magi are absolutely a ruling class, at least within their domains. A whole host of problems are, of course, attendent with this.

Essentially, you can either ignore the problems or try to fit magi into medieval society and ignore the problems that result from that. I favor the latter option.

Essentially, with or without the "order rules", any magi who stirs things up too much gets slapped down by too many mundane means to have any chance of stopping it all.

:laughing:
->quotes file.

And that creates other problems unless you add a lot of changes. I much prefer stretching the base guidelines apart so that its harder to do "very radical" things while even Sponts can still do the really simple stuff.
With Arts as abilities, you can almost ignore Fatigue-less Spontaneous casting as few will be able to use it.

I won't disagree entirely but I do think that the issue is only partially the inherent power of Hermetic Magic as per the rules. The Arts system scales from low power to extremely high power but there’s no reason Magi need to reach the heights.

The other component to Magi power is the existence of the Order of Hermes. Without the OOH and its traditions of discovery and shared knowledge Magi wouldn’t have enormous libraries that allow them to advance their Arts quickly and to learn spells from lab texts in a season. Without the ability to purchase longevity potions, Magi would spend lots of time working on the related arts and brewing up their elixirs of life. Just obtaining the equipment for advanced laboratories would be a challenge. Magi would also have to be more worried about the other supernatural forces without having a global order to back them up. So even without rules changes, we would have weaker Magi that would work better within society.

The Order of Hermes was the granddaddy of all of the White Wolf splats of the 1990’s and over the years has suffered from the same circular effect as the rest. The Order started out keeping Magi moderately separated from society. To keep things interesting, then the order had to be developed and elaborated with its own completely made up politics. Inevitably, this lead to stronger Magi – just as one example, longevity has increased in every edition of the game. Stronger magi meant more separation from the mundane world and more emphasis on the Order. Rinse and repeat.

Not that the OOH hasn’t been a lot of fun over the years, but I’m ready to try something different within medieval Europe.

I was planning to try this but ran into some of the problems I'm thinking Direwolf refers to and so abandoned it in favor of a couple of other ideas. I plan to put these ideas into practice in my next saga, and we'll see how they work.

First, and somewhat radically from a 5th ed standpoint, I'm giving magic resistance back to the people. By allowing even hedge wizards to have magic resistance and produce minor devices which grant magic resistance to others, suddenly low levels of magic resistance become potentially common and the whole pidgeon-knight spell becomes a little harder to pull off.

Secondly, if magi live within the world they must work for a living like everyone else. So, magi have two free seasons and two work seasons just like everyone else. This cuts in half the amount of time they can spend studying and doing lab work, and logically should roughly halve their power.

Finally, as Jabir mentions, a powerful and structured Order of Hermes leads to powerful magi. Removing or weaking the Order (I haven't yet fully decided on which I plan to do) removes that factor. With in Hermetic book cycle, not massive libraries and no buying of longevity points, the field changes dramatically.

We'll see how it goes in practice.

That will probably not work out. Any decent magi will be able to come up with some kind of spells or magic items that can add enough income to the covenant to support them almost fulltime.

Oh yes, that works well. Havent done it that generalised, but SGs usually come up with ways to have appropriate NPCs given some degree of resistance.

It's not actually a matter of income. It's a matter of responsibly and obligation.

It's also a matter of being a part of the mundane world and having to face the consequences of your actions. It's one thing for the group of Magi who live somewhere hidden in the hills protected by their army of grogs to play games with the local Baron. It's quite another when your Magus is a noted scholar at the University of Paris who's already under scrutiny by the Church for your advocacy of possibly un-Godly arts. Besides, aren't you supposed to be working on that Summa on Theology you've been talking about for years instead of doing God-knows-what with those herbs and glass vials in your room?

I'd agree, with the caveat that in a truly medieval setting, God would smite the magi for their sins on a pretty regular basis, and leave things in the feudal mode because God himself is a king, quite likes kings, and won't let his pets misbehave.

I tend to believe that in a "truly medieval setting" God won't do anything, but what I'm really interested in is playing in a "highly Mythical setting" - a setting including variations on lots of myths, based somewhat on the middle ages but with fun anachronisms and wild fantasy.

What consequences? A scholar in a university in Paris is under pressure to work many seasons because he needs to earn money from his students. Without significant and even drastic changes to the ArM rules, any covenant can quite feasibly earn enough money through magical means - creating resources directly, or improving other's labors so much that it would be worthwhile to let the magi do what they want in return. There really isn't any need for magi to be comparable to university professors, and much of the system (such as the effect of the Gift) works against that.

As to threats by the Church or mundane armies, even with the assumption of divine magic by RoP:D rules their power is rather minuscule. I've drawn up a highly-Mythic version of the Templars just to see what the Divine-practitioners can marshal up - and it's not terribly impressive even though I've taken some liberties with the official rules. Without direct Divine aid, humans - even ones powered by the Divine - shouldn't be able to threaten with serious consequences any reasonably powerful covenant or the OoH at large.

The key word here, of course, is "without". Direct divine intervention is the ultimate trump card, and action by His powerful agents (like archangels) can likewise be decisive. I don't like the kind of game this creates, however, with magi being kept in line by God and his emissaries; it feels too much like a power struggle against God or the Storyguide, which is a rather futile and silly game to play. I much prefer bolstering the power-level of supernatural beings and letting more local, weak, figures act as plausible foils for the players' designs and a check-and-balance for the Order at large.

I agree that Arts-as-Abilities tends to make non-Fatiguing spontaneous magic rather useless for anyone but elder magi. I don't agree this extends to regular (fatiguing) spontaneous magic, which in my (limited) experience was still applicable and useful. At any rate while I think it's a good idea, it seems difficult to attract players to such a game - not that I can afford to run a game right now anyways...

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Yes, yes, rhetorical point to you, but it's clear I meant a world based on true medieval myth.

In true medieval myth I'm not sure there are -any- good wizards who actually do magic. Don't try to palm me off with nativity magi either. If you are playing a magus, you -are- the villain. Deal with losing.

If you're not teaching or writing, then you're not a scholar of the University of Paris. If you're living off your magic, then you're not living in society.

It's simply a matter of different assumptions. Yes, if you want to play a game where magi can live completely off their magic and ignore the society, you can. Then you need to hand-wave away the problem that by doing so magi could completely break medieval society. If you want to play a game where magi live within society and play roles in it, then you need to ignore the fact that - by the RAW - they could live completely off their magic.

So really, the answer to 'why don't magi just earn all the money they need via magic and not work' is that that's not the kind of game we (meaning my group) want play. So we don't invent those spell or create those magic items. Yes, the rules would allow them to do so. That doesn't mean you have play the game that way.

Much of the power of Magi in the canonical setting derives from their separation from society. Living in covenants is a very privileged existance, with no real concerns for material goods, nearly all of one's time available to study magic, and at least partial immunity from mundane authority. Things are really good for our canonical OOH magi. If you take this away you find that Magi are less overpowering . It might not be enough - something along the lines of Arts as Abilities might be necessary too - but it will make a big difference. A scholar living in Paris who starts making gold, if he escapes being burned by the Inquisition, is going to be whisked off to spend his days repeating the process for the King or some noble.

The rule on effects of the Gift would be a problem in this setting. It's easy enough to remove.

Love the image there.

I agree with the deep problem. But the thing is that any fantasy game - to some extent, I think, any roleplaying game, is going to break if you push it too hard, whether the fractures form within inconsistencies in the setting material, flaws in the mechanics as a reality-simulator, or (usually) both. A certain amount of handwavium is always required, assuming that you don't want to eschew actually playing a game and spend the whole time chasing lines of logical consequence (which is sometimes fun in it's own right!)

For me, cursed with LOVING both the story ideas of A) an almost real-politik conspiracy concerning a totally 'mundane' succession crisis (will the players change history and usher in the glorious reign of King Harald Hardrada in the Norwegian Conquest of 1066?) and B) a magus and a loyal party of followers facing down a dragon of the North in his lair, the handwaving has to be delicate and precise - but I think the payoff is worth it.

As for the specific issue your analogy brings up - I figure my way around it will be to say that in my Mythic Europe, the precedents of the Peripheral Code clearly bar magi from overtly interfering with mundanes via flashy magic, but give them wider berth than 'canonical' in interfering through mundane intermediaries (or in a totally mundane capacity themselves, though this is looked at very critically.)

As for how the 'real history' will intersect with other 'mythic' aspects of the setting unbound by Peripheral Codes and Quaesitors (dragons and hedge traditions, for instance) - that's something I'm working hard on developing just the right 'handwave' for. :wink: