On game balance, again.

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

After seeing the venerable 16 year old necropost, I started to think about the points raised in that thread.

At the risk of rehashing an argument that is as old as the game itself, where do you draw the line on being unbalanced?

While directly killing someone is a PeCo30 effect, I would argue that to be the absolute maximum and that creative spells can kill much earlier. I don't think that most people have any problem with striking someone with lightning which is effectively a base 25 for exceedingly unnatural situations (see incantation of lightning) and essentially kills or incapacitates most mundane threats.

As a slight tangent on the thread that sparked my interest in this, I feel that the "blood to oil" effect would simply turn the blood into oil, while maintaining the life-giving element, much like how turning a person into stone does no direct harm, whereas it is the inherent nature of a poison to damage things(see Dragons blood from Hermetic Projects, turning the users blood into lava only requires a rego component to stop the burns, not to prevent death from your blood being rock).

As I see it, with creative enough use of magic you should be fully able to kill a human at around lvl15 spells, but I would love to see other opinions.

Edited to fix level of PeCo killing spell.

1 Like
2

The game isn't 100% fully properly balanced.

/thread.

4 Likes
3

Sure. Fine. So what?

I mean, ok, that may trivialise a few problems that depend on killing some mundane character, but there are plenty stories left to tell. What reputation do you earn from killing people lightly? How do you deal with your Hermetic rivals? How do you deal with obnoxious bishops with MR granted by their office?

1 Like
4

I disagree. General game balance, yes, irrelevant. Most magi can dispose of most mundanes threats with a trivial amount of effort. The most min-maxed combat companion falls to nearly any magi who puts some effort in to self-defence and dealing with physical threats. Also, the min-max combat munchkin can get taken down by a good archer as if the knight had the training and armour of a peasant.

Magical game balance matters. Someone who has focused on getting the Incantation of Lightning or the heartstopper; having that apex spell which required significant effort to achieve being copied by someone with minimal effort is a bad thing.

3 Likes
5

Also in Hermetic Projects you have Sulphurous Membrane, wich deals +1 damabe per round for a duration of Sun, wich if timed properly is statistically a death sentence at level 10.

I guess when you consider a concept like balance, you have to establish against what it stands. ArM isn't balanced in the sense that killing a mundane is mostly trivial, the stakes are higher and the balance should be drawn somewhere else.

Think that ArM is not a game aboug gathering power (well, it is. But it is easy, and you start with a lot of it: in other games you end campaings getting what here would be a just gauntlet magus), but about what you do with it and the implications of that.

1 Like
6

The level at which you can trivialize such a problem does matter though, if you can kill someone at level 15, that makes larger targets cheaper as well, scaling up into greater and greater impact, for how long should a gang of ruffians be able to threaten a magus? What about an army? While not the main focus of ars magica, if no amount of mundane power can threaten even some apprentices, that does make for a massively different experience than if a local noble can send a gang of ruffians as a serious threat.

Sidenote, piercing MR is easier with lower level spells, so that makes dealing with rival magi and bishops through violence easier, but that's not the point.

I feel the game changes on a very deep level if the only power the magi will ever answer to are other magi, than if they can be kept in check by local temporal authorities.

7

This gets at the core of why I was thinking about this. My friends first magus was specialized in auram, with the stated goal of getting to cast Incantation of Lightning and function as the main combat magus, he couldn't get it from the start.
But another player had an effect that essentially instantly killed a mundane, which he got almost incidentally while trying to do other things and it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

The core of the problem I feel, is the ease by which some forms can do things that they are not supposed to, especially muto, which seems to me to invalidate perdo often, effectively solving the same problems for similar levels by shrinking or changing the target into a form that no longer poses a problem.

If the game is not balanced, it can be important to discuss the signs and symptoms of that, and what impacts it can have on the game.

I am a fairly new player, and with the lack of easily accessible resources out there to solve or alleviate these problems, or even to explain to players what is intended.

As is, the game does not adequately explain whether the expected level of a spell that can kill someone should be 30 or 10.

1 Like
8

Sure, it is a different experience. It is the long-term experience of enemies made by earning the reputation for killing armies, instead of the short-term experience of actually killing someone.

The balance is maintained, because the more you kill the more enemies you make.

The overlord can hardly ignore the threat which wipes out the army of their vassal.

1 Like
9

I see two aspects to this question.
The first one is how easy (=spell level) it should be to kill/neutralise an antagonist ?
The second one is how each Technique/Form combo should compare to other ?

In Hermetic Project, the Intangible Assassin covers well the first aspect.
To complement that, the cornerstone of how easy it is to kill is a mechanical balance between the effect and the penetration. No matter how artificial it feels, it is important that an effect can instant kill, but with no/low penetration because of its level or can easily bypass defense, but requires multiple casts to take down the target. Anything else (=instant kill with high penetration because low level), will completely undermine the core aspect of the Order: Parma Magica allowed mages to see eye to eye because of a relative feeling of safety.
If a ST introduces means of killing with low level spells/high Penetration, his saga will need to find another justification why the Order exist at all and is not run by a handful of paranoid tyrants.
The other balancing act is that indirect effect require Finesse and should leave a chance to the target to mitigate the damage (dodge/fast cast/ other).

The second aspect also require that some facts are agreed within the troupe.
First one is not to use modern knowledge to justify low level spell with killing power. Like designing a ReAu that prevent oxygen to reach a target (ReAu Base level 3 seems to fit the guideline, YMMV).
It becomes more difficult to argue when somebody propose MuAq 10 (Base 2, R: touch +1, T: Part +2, D: Diam +1) to turn the target blood into water for 2 minutes, killing him in the process.

My approach to adjudicate such spells is to look at the intent of the spell and not the mechanic, then select the appropriate guideline. In this case, turning somebody blood into something that will kill him fits more the general guideline "Change a liquid into a liquid that does +(level) point of damage on contact", setting at +25 or +30 the base level instead of 2.

Issue will arise if a spell was design with a non-lethal intent, then a mage finds a lethal application. Then I will adjudicate that since the lethal effect was not part of the initial spell design, the lethal aspect does not work as expected. Obviously, early discussion during session zero can prevent future frustration and disappointment.

And as ST, you should be transparent about that: just say that within Mythic Europe paradigm AND for game balance, spells work according to such and such guidelines.

Also, mention the symmetrical effect: if the PCs have access to it, NPCs as well. That tends to cool down over-enthusiastic murder-hoboish behaviour.

Finally, regarding PCs killing willy-nilly, don't forget that the Divine might decide to intervene: by killing people, mages prevent - even harden criminal - of any opportunity for redemption...

3 Likes
10

My favorite approach is that PeCo sets the standard for damage, and to twiddle player-wrought spells of other PeCo combinations to be as, or often more, difficult. With core books spells excluded, i.e. kept as-is.

I do think the game will benefit from a paragraph in the Storyguiding section, explaining the issues and the ramifications of choosing like this or otherwise.

11

Creo Terram 3
Gea's stomp
R:Voice, D:Mom, T:Ind
This spell creates a large, horizontal wheel of clay, about 5 paces across and half a pace thick, which then falls to the ground (crushing any person unfortunate enough to be caught underneath it) and quickly disappears, all over the course of a single round.
Base 1 (create up to 10 paces of clay in a simple shape), +2 Voice

Up to third edition the level of spells was much more a function of their ultimate effect. Thus, killing a human easily (or, equivalently, destroying a target's mind) was about level 35. Level 30 would introduce some limitation (such as kissing the victim, or whispering something in his ear), etc. In fact, guidelines were not modified by RDT, one just eyeballed existing spells and if something provided much more or much less flexibility, the resulting level would be modified.

Fourth and Fifth edition brought a more "mechanical" feel to spell design, where you have a guideline at a certain level and then modify that by R, D, T, size, complexity etc. etc. The result is at the same time easier to adjudicate, and more fun (because it becomes a more interesting challenge to find how to creatively obtain what you want from a low level guidelines). On the other hand, the results can be dramatically unbalanced, and often have a much less "mythic" feeling since the most efficient way to do things is not necessarily what you'd expect from a wizard of legend. So ... a tradeoff. After many years, I must say I probably miss ArM2/ArM3 "eyeball the level based on the functional results" approach.

5 Likes
12

Hermetic magic can kill people pretty easily. We can fiddle around with the specifics and debate the spell Best Way to Skin a Cat (PeAn 5), but your basic point in the OP is absolutely right.

I respectfully suggest that trying to fight that is a mistake. Because this is how the game was designed.

Ars Magica was designed by two college dudes who were tired of playing wizards with d4 hit points, wizards who forgot a spell every time they cast it. They wanted a game in which wizards were the baddest of bad-asses and, four editions later, we are still playing that game today.

I often see GMs struggle to rein in their magi. They choke magi by making vis rare, by nerfing specific problematic (that is, powerful) spells, or by making good books and common lab texts impossible to find.

I sincerely think this is a fool’s errand.

Ars Magica is a game about all-powerful wizards. Let it be that. It’s a game about giving players lots of rope, and then standing back and watching them hang themselves. There are stories this game doesn’t do easily—like mysteries, and melee combat. The solution to this is to avoid running those kinds of stories. Instead, try to run stories the game is good at playing: stories of hubris, of breaking the Code (which, let’s be honest, outlaws virtually everything fun most players will want to do), of breaking the limits of magic, of creating a legacy that outlives you, and stories of Twilight.

In those games, balance isn’t really an issue. Indeed, in order for those stories to work, the characters must be powerful.

I argue those are the stories Ars Magica was made to tell.

12 Likes
13

While I get what you are saying, and agree with most of your points, I do kind of think that you are missing the point.

What I was trying to get at is the intended level of actually killing someone. While the game is intended to be high power, I am trying to find what people think that killing a standard human with few caveats should be worth.

The book presents a clean killing spell as being somewhere around level 30-40, but as we can see from @ezzelino s Gea's stomp, they could also be something that an apprentice that just had their arts opened yesterday could reliably spont' (even assuming no stamina or aura).

After some thought I do feel that my initial statement of lvl 15 is a tad low, but I would want a non min-maxed recently gauntleted magus to be able to learn a spell that could incapacitate a single attacker. Which goes with the books but goes massively against the spells mentioned in this thread, at 15, 10 and 3 respectively.

3 Likes
14

For a guaranteed insta-kill you should need a level 30+ spell.
Lower level spells can also kill, if damage roll(s) are high enough or similar, but they can't create a guaranteed insta-kill effect.

For merely incapacitating an attacker, we have canon spells like The Call to Slumber (ReMe 10).
It can easily neutralize a single attacker, leaving them open to have their throat cut, but it does not kill outright.

1 Like
15

I would argue that a low level Creo Terram Spell that drops a rock on a person still has two key defects:

  1. Still can be resisted by Magic Resistance
  2. Must be Aimed with a Finesse roll.
1 Like
16

Back in the day, the word went around about the ultimate dual heartbeast Bjornar. Now, you cannot have a dual heartbeast in 5ed, which is good, but a score of 2 in shapeshifter does the trick too. You don't have to be a magus even.

Sparrow and bluewhale. Fly over your target as a sparrow and then shapeshift into a bluewhale and drop. In 3ed, it was only two virtue points, since neither form is battleworthy.

1 Like
17

I have a general concept that magic doesn't need to make sense. It is not testable by scientific method. For example - If someone does a test by having someone at roughly 50 paces and casts a voice range spell 100 times with the person moving forward and back, there will be no pattern. Sometimes the spell fails at 46 paces. Sometimes it succeeds at 57 paces.

Why am I saying this? Magic knows the blood to oil spell is a kill spell and is thus a higher level. One can make a huge block of clay and if it's not above someone head to kill, it's low level. The moment one tries to cast it as a kill spell, high level.

One puts out a fire by perdo aurum instead of perdo ignem. Nice, creative, fun, low level, it works. Perdo Aurum choke spell, high level. The magic senses rules munchkin shenanigans, and says no to low level killers.

2 Likes
18

Good point.

So when we talk about game balance, we should expect the players to have balanced levels of joy. Maybe we could monitor dopamine levels during play testing and tune the game balance accordingly?

1 Like
19

This is a really interesting point that I hadn't considered before, while don't agree completely it is a good addition to the conversation.

I agree completely with this, and run targets and durations in this way.

I don't quite agree with the concept of the difficulty of doing a thing changing depending on the intended use case, a spell to create a puck of clay will always be the same level, no matter whose head you cast it above.

I have used the allegory of a trying to throw a ball at a moving target with your eyes closed, there are so many variables at play that even an expert can't reliably hit, there could be a gust of wind, or the target is not exactly where you thought it was. But a sufficiently skilled player can predict the movement or with some new technique (open his eyes) become reliable.

In my stories, magic is more akin to a fickle but still logical phenomenon. Where magi, much like historical alchemists, toy with forces that they know the general concept of, but do not actually understand.

I guess that it will eventually come down to a difference in philosophy.

I think that fun is, at the lowest level, the goal of any game design, and that having mechanical balance is often a good indicator of fun balance. But I guess that is a much bigger element for more traditional games than for rpgs, especially ars magica.

But as @Fishy brought up earlier in the thread, if a character was built around doing something in the intuitive way(smiting peasants, building bridges, usurping power), but another character can do the same thing in a (subjectively) much lamer and cheaper way that can feel really bad.

4 Likes
20

Both Heartbeast and Shapeshifter in 5e have limitations on Size, and a blue whale would be well outside of those limits. You'd need to do this with MuCo spells.

3 Likes