It seems @David_Chart is considering an Errata that would remove the "Disease Recovery section by Hermetic Magic" from A&A. For those trying to figure out what I am talking about, A&A page 56 has a section which clearly states that Wound Recovery and Disease Recovery are two different things under Hermetic Magic, each with their own Bases. Therefore separate spells/effects are required to provide a bonus to the rolls for each.
Art & Academe, page 56
Magical bonuses to Disease Recovery rolls can be provided by Creo Corpus spells or equivalent magics at the same levels as Wound Recovery rolls. Different spells are required for providing magical aid to Disease Recovery rolls and Wound Recovery rolls, for the healing process works in a different manner. ...
The Core book is mostly silent on this, only providing a slightly related note in the Creo Corpus Guidelines box where is states that spells to heal wounds cannot cure diseases. This section is up to interpretation on if you consider adding to a Recovery roll to count as healing/curing or not (I personally do).
ArM5, page 130
However, a spell to heal wounds cannot cure diseases, no matter how high its level, and vice versa.
With the changes all "Give bonus to Recovery Rolls" (Wounds, Disease, Poison) would be under the same Bases, while separate Bases would still be required to actually "Heal" a Wound, Disease, or Poison.
Callen calculated the changes required depending on which way this goes
I personally lean towards A&A being correct and this is the way my groups have always played it. Previously I submitted Purification of the Festering Wounds for Errata during the massive Errata check a few years ago even if the change was not made then. To make things easy to track, I have added a poll so people can just vote on which they prefer.
Well, to be honest it does a spell that explicitly covers both using the single guideline as well as another that seems just generally applicable to all Recovery rolls. So there is a little more than that CrCo healing note.
If we look at just the two choices given, there are two main forces pushing towards opposite directions.
The first is maximizing logical consistency: wounds and diseases (and poison) should be treated either in the same class, or in separate classes, in a consistent fashion by the spell guidelines. In this, A&A is clearly better than ArM5.
The second is minimizing incompetence creep. As more supplements are added, the scope of what a basic character can do tends to shrink, both in relative and absolute terms (an ArM5 minstrel could get away with Music, under A&A he'll need Profession:Minstrel and Craft:Music too). This is very bad from a gaming point of view, because it makes players feel punished for expanding their game library, and has the potential of invalidating a character designed with the corebook alone. From this perspective, merging together wounds and diseases (and poison?) as ArM5 does is clearly the better choice.
One could actually attain both goals by deciding that both A&A and the corebook are incorrect, and wounds, poison and disease fall under the same class both for Healing and Recovery Rolls. That would be my preferred choice. If that is not an option, I think that minimizing incompetence creep is slightly more important, and thus I voted for "A&A is incorrect".
Note that in general a spell can have a more limited effect than the corresponding guideline allows (for example, to allow a Focus to apply when learning it). So, even if "A&A is incorrect" and Recovery bonuses have a broad scope, there is no need to change spells that only provide "narrow" bonuses.
Another important point to remember is that most people do not have all the books. Even people who have quite a large library might not have A&A. However, everyone does have ArM5. If a supplement accidentally contradicts ArM5, the presumption should be that the supplement gets errata'd. This is only a presumption, but it's extra weight on the same side as concerns about incompetence creep.
This is a very good rule, and I think the only real exception to this would be if the corebook had simple rules, and the supplement specifcally states that it has different or more in depth rules (RoP books for creating creatures comes to mind, and the Covenant Library book rules).
That's why "accidentally" matters. If we deliberately decided to change the core rules in a supplement, it might have been a mistake, but it's not errata.
So they bought the 'science' background of Mythic Europe just for the sake of completeness of a collection?
In that case my compassion is verrry limited.
Could be, or they may have skimmed through it to find that it does not improve the game and hence is not worth reading. But the reason for not using all the books do not really matter. There are many good reasons, and they all support the same conclusion of David's.
"Finding" without "reading" here means forming an opinion without sufficient information, right? At least if you care enough about an RPG to obsess about completeness?
Possibly, given my phrasing above. However, the conclusion would be the same if the opinion were that the expected improvement from further reading is the improvement that would be gained by researching or designing settings and stories or whatever else one might do. Information has a cost, and «sufficient information» is not really meaningful. We always have to optimise under uncertainty, and the time spent information gathering is part of the optimisation problem.
We all need to optimize information gathering by considering our interests and needs. We all can only know so many things - and need to own our ignorance.
I do not appreciate peddling opinions just based on "skimming", though.
Especially, if they involve that something
That is close to those anecdotal medieval rulers letting their court scholars skim old books or libraries, seeing that they cannot possibly be Christian or Muslim, and then judging them as "not worth reading" with sometimes dire consequences - also for the 12th and 13th century scholars A&A is about.
That's hardly close at all. It would have close if I had suggested that it is never worth reading, and the books should be burnt, PDFs removed for listings and shops, and any player found reading them should be banned from the game. Deeming that it will not improve the story is something else completely. Obviously I was talking about the story being played in whosever context was making the the judgement. I never suggested someone making judgement for the contexts of others.
It seems like you are saying "(2) because (1)", but I really can't see how one logically derives from another. I can, by principle, stand behind (2), but not behind "(2) because (1)".
Also, accidental perhaps, but surely not without thought? The author of this section of A&A was clearly following a principle and trying to achieve a degree of logical consistency, as mentioned by Ezzelino. IMO this is, at the very minimum, worth examining.
I once tried to create a healer magus and I resigned because the spells can be high level and there's too much of them. So, I vote for simplification for the sake of playability.
I honestly think this is one of the best arguments. Ars Majica magi are better than mages in nearly any other game. Healing is a notable exception.
Also, I think most would agree, healing is boring. It's more of a group thing with limited personal appeal. Anything to make healing a better option is a good thing.
Of course, there is an implicit premise or two here. Errata make a nuisance, and annoying fewer people is better than annoying many people. Now it follows, because every player has the core rules and fewer players have the supplement. Therefore it is better to errata the supplement than the core rules.
It all depends on how you look at healing. If you think of it as immediately fixing wounds, then yes, Hermetic magi have a hard and (vis) expensive time doing anything. If you think of it as helping and speeding up recovery, then they are extremely good at it. Since the average sorceress in Arthurian literature spends plenty of time helping their brave knight recover from wounds, that would seem to be the right way round.
Comparing to other games, the big difference is not in how good the wizards are but in how bad wounds are to start with. In history and in Ars Magica, a significant proportion of patients are supposed to die from complication after the incidents. In most games they don't, and anything short of instant healing spells would be irrelevant. In Ars Magica, the +9 recovery rolls is a big deal.
