Hello! I bought the Ars Magica 5th edition core book a few years back when researching new games for our group to play; unfortunately, briefly after that we ceased playing anything altogether. Recently, however, we've resolved to begin playing, and this past Monday, we had our first session. Overall, it went well, but there were a few kinks in our play which I've decided to ask about here. I've searched the forums (and book) and haven't found any answers to these questions, but if I'm simply not seeing something, please point me in the right direction; it would be greatly appreciated.
Mainly, my questions deal with combat.
My first question is about falling down and, perhaps more importantly, getting back up. I do notice that tripping is mentioned under Special Effects in ArM5 p.175, but I don't see any references to standing back up. I guess the main question is: does standing back up after falling down take an action? No prone penalties or anything along those lines are mentioned, at least as far as I can see, in ArM5 -- any thoughts on this?
The next is about spell-based damage in combat. I see on ArM5 p.181 that spell damage uses the same rules as non-combat damage, but the problem that we were having is that it seemed to be essentially impossible to then kill anything with a spell. Take, for example, the spell "The Crystal Dart" (MuTe 10, ArM5 p.154), which does +10 damage. My enemy, an infernal being, has a magic resistance of 10. If my casting total + penetration is less than 20, my spell has no effect. If my casting total is higher than 20, I then roll a stress die, and add that to the +10 base damage. My enemy rolls a stress die, adds it to his soak, and subtracts this total from my damage total. Correct? On average, our stress dice with roll the same, so my spell is doing essentially 10 - the enemy's soak total -- say 5 damage, a light wound. From how I am understanding the damage system, I could repeatedly cast this spell on the enemy forever and he will not die at this rate, because the wound penalty never factors into the damage he is taking, unlike normal combat damage. After 10,000 times being hit with this spell, at a -10,000 penalty, if i then went up and punched him, he would take 10,000 damage and die. ------- All of that, at least, is how we're currently understanding the combat system, which is slightly problematic. I am convinced that we are missing something, but I have been over this book again and again and cannot, for the life of me, figure out what. Can anyone enlighten me as to where we're going wrong?
One last, quick question, before I go: in our first session, one of the most viable strategies upon which we stumbled was to put the enemy to sleep (via "The Call to Slumber", ReMe 10, ArM5 p.151) and then slit their throat -- because they don't get any kind of saving roll against falling asleep; it just happens. Are we doing it wrong?
I'll stop there. I'm sure I do have more questions, but those are the most pressing (honestly, the second one most so), and I can wait for anything else. I really appreciate any help you guys can give.
Thanks a lot!