More Terram Damage

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Does anybody have a good system for applying Terram damage?

Looking through old posts, I saw a topic on Terram damage. People gave some good suggestions on specific types of Terram magic, but nobody had a good system for all Terram-centric damage.

Thanks.

2

I don't think that I'd like to seee a base terrram damage guideline like the "base level +10" (going from memory that's probably wrong) guideline that we have with ignem.

What specific spell are you wanting to derive a damage score from?

3

I had a look comparing the damage spells from Terram and Ignem.. and I'm still generally fine with them doing more or less the same damage.. terram has the downside that it's just plain trickier to use.. with ignem, you can just chuck a bolt of fire right at people, and make it hotter if you want more damage.. with terram, that involves using more and more mass.. which certainly isn't going to be any use in tight quarters

But the problem with the lack of damage guidelines for other spells, is that it causes problems trying to decide on damage for other stuff ^^

4

I guess I'm just looking for general guidelines. For example, what would the damage be on:

  1. A baseball-sized rock (both throwing and dropping on someone's head)
  2. A basketball sized rock
  3. Small boulder
  4. Large boulder
  5. Castle-sized?

Once you have base damages for each of those catagories, you can tweak them based on the situation and density of the material.

I also have questions on Rego in general. Like, how much mass can you rego at each spell level.

And yes, I agree that there is a lack of damage guidelines for spells in general. This can be frustrating.

5

Speed of the moving stone also needs to be considered.

In the case of droping a stone then some variant of the +1 damage per 2 feet (from falling) should be considered. I am not sure on this, but there seems to be no mention in the RAW of anything like terminal velocity having existed - as there is no damage cap on the falling damage IIRC. So it may very well be if you drop a bucketfull of gravel from the edge of the lunar sphere you get an impressive result.

(Please, if someone who is well read in the physics of the day knows about the terminal velocity thing do speak up :slight_smile: )

In the case of creating / hurling a stone then speed is also a factor. Not only is this evident to us in a RL newtonian physics sense, it should eveident to those in Mythic Europe (as it is fairly well established a quickly thrown rock does more damage than a slowly tossed one - i.e. catapults and trebuchets).

Thus I could see high damage terram spells without huge masses of stone. Creating / hurling metal would also be a reasonable way to up the effective damage (again an in settign example, rather use a metal arrow head than a stone arrow head).

6

Start from how severe a wound you'd expect it to do on a Size 0 creature and work from there.

  1. I'd expect a Light to Medium wound.
  2. I'd expect a Medium to Heavy wound.
  3. I'd expect at least a Heavy wound, a kill is likely.
    4,5) You're dead.

So, off the top of my head, I'd say 1) +5, 2) +10 to +15, 3) +20 to +25, 4 and 5) don't bother rolling damage.

An other approach would be to try to scale the target up to reduce everything to the first case. How big a giant do you need that a castle would look like a baseball? What's his damage increment?

One magnitude dedicated to a size increase multiplies the size by a factor of 10. The base individual size is in the guidelines for the specific form.