Can the supernatural ability Premonitions warn the user of an impending botch or similar disastrous failure at a critical action - like a combat or spellcasting roll?
The easiest way to implement this would probably be to allow the character to "pre-roll" any potentially dangerous action; if the result is a disastrous failure, roll to see if Premonition detects it; if Premonitions does detect it, ask for the character if he would change his intended course of action.
I would argue that premonitions would never warn a character about their own actions. They warn about threats from other agents and external events.
That does mean that there might be a warning about a threat that would be activated by the botch, but if the character chooses to act, he chooses the risk.
Another way to say it is that you can have premonitions about a danger, which may or may not happen, depending on your actions. It does not tell you which actions are safe.
No. It may warn of the possibility of a botch, but no more.
Premonitions (and all other forms of scrying the future) can show possibilities and dangers, not what will happen.
Being able to roll a dice to avoid every single botch seems too strong for a minor virtue.
I'd use premonitions for when the dice ruins someone's day. ie. the enemy rolls well and there's a crippling wound or kill coming, roll premonition. For every point over the target, and for mortal threat it is a 3, add that number to the initiative check to fast cast, and/or for non-magi, add the premonition result to the defence roll.
This answer kind of opens up the old conflict between "only God knows what is fore-ordained" and "Humans have Free Will". I can't reconcile them in a way usable for role-playing simulation.
Is a player rolling a botch part of Free Will, but Premonitions get a glimpse of what is Fore-Ordained?
Right. If you can offer a reconciliation usable for real life, I would be most pleased to hear that instead.
I haven't even succeeded for a low resolution RPG. Please don't ask for something way harder.
Unless God chooses to tell you, you won't get so much as a glimpse of what is Fore-Ordained - assuming anything is.
What Premonitions (and other types of Divination) can tell you is stuff like
"There are bandits waiting in ambush further ahead on the road. Danger!"
"Don't go sailing today" (Because there will very likely be a heavy storm starting around midday in that area.)
"There is danger ahead on this path." (Because last months rain undermined some slopes, so an earthslide is likely to occur and may hit any travelers)
No type of divination in Ars Magica can tell you what will happen, only make predictions based on the current situation.
For what's worth, note that Premonitions "can be called upon by you or the storyguide, as appropriate, whenever there is a chance to avoid danger." (ArM5 p.67). So it seems that, by the corebook, Premonitions does not "get a glimpse what is Fore-Ordained." Instead, it gets a glimpse of possible possible "bad" paths in front of you, when good paths are also present. Given that it can explicitly activate even for a "minor inconvenience", it seems to me most botches except perhaps in the most trivial tasks would qualify; in particular any combat or supernatural ability roll would seem to qualify.
I think the big deal is how to use it in a way that's a) simple b) balanced. As for the latter I don't think a minor Virtue having the potential to warn you of an incoming botch is necessarily unbalanced.
First of all, in some cases there's little you can do: if you are in combat for your life, and you know with certainty that on your next blow your blade will snap ... I guess you can start thinking about what to do next, but not much more.
Second, I expect that in many cases Premonitions would activate even if no botch would be forecoming - e.g. warning you of the possibility of slipping on that pool of blood that you would have avoidded anyway. In this sense, Premonitions could even be a hindrance... or at least become less useful, as you have to ignore most of its warning in order to maintain your focus.
So, hmmm. I'm still a bit stumped about it.
In a sense, yes. Premonitions may well tell you that this battle is a dire risk to your life and health (duh!), or even that one particular opponent is a particular danger due to exceptional skill (less duh). If you heed the warning you stay out of the battle. If you choose to enter the battle, the outcome depends on your own action. You may botch, or you may roll a critical, but either one is due to your own action, which remains under your own unpremonitionable controll.
In terms of magic, it could tell you that you are in a level 8 faerie regio, and the risk of botching is increased with possible ten-fold botching, but it remains up to you to complete your spell skillfully or with a botch.
I do not understand why. We know that Premonitions can warn you of dangers that you can avoid.
Now, a botch can take many forms, but generally it means you made some choice that, through bad luck or carelessness, resulted in a disastrous outcome. You might choose to back away from a blow rather than parrying it ... and in so doing stumble on something you had not noticed. You might attack the opponent's weak leg ... without realizing he was only bluffing. Or your blade might simply have been weakened enough that the next strong blow will shatter it.
Why wouldn't Premonitions warn you of this stuff?
Mainly because of the level of detail required. You already have the premonition of great danger in the battle. You ask for a very specific premonition about a very specific situation. I grant you, you have a case for getting that in some of the situations you suggest. I am not sure what the EF ought to be, but it should be a lot higher than more general imminent threats.
Obviously, every such question has two answers. One narrative and one for the game balance. Thinking about game balance, I would put the EF at 30 minumum, and maybe above 40.
Premonitions can't warn you that you will botch, because it can't know that you will botch.
It can warn you that your weapon is likely to break, or that an unseen opponent is trying to sneak up and stab you in the back, or that it would probably be a bad idea to attack your opponent's "weak" leg.
It can't tell you what the outcome of any specific action will be, only if it is likely to bring danger or not - and in combat just about all actions can potentially bring danger.
I do not think that's the point OP is driving at.
The problem here is information theoretic.
As players we know that the probability of a botch, in any typical situation, is 1%.
When a botch happens, we invent a post-hoc definition for why the present case was that one in a hundred. such as a previously unnoticed crack in the blade, or a mudhole in the ground.
If we break this up into two separate events, the botch (B), and the «bad circumstances» (C), we may have something like
(Everybody has read the basic probability theory I hope.)
It seems that we may agree that a premonition about B is impossible, but one about C is quite plausible. How do you deal with that?
As written, it should. A botch that sends a magi in to twilight, that is a disaster.
The problem is, in effect, the magi gets to dodge every single warping point and twilight trigger, by deciding not to cast a spell where the dice say botch.
I return to my earlier point that on a meta level, it is too strong for a minor virtue to give that level of benefit. Major supernatural virtue, maybe.
Post-hoc explanations of why a botch happened can't (for practical reasons) be detected by Premonitions - only those potential dangers ("bad circumstances") that someone at the gaming table knows about beforehand.
That may be so, but it creates a narrative problem, if the premise is that the character has premonitions as described. Then you need to augment the narrative to explain why premonitions do not work in certain situations. You cannot explain it with what players new in advance, because players have no place in the narrative.
Then, OTOH, it may not be so. After all OP suggested a fix. It may not be an acceptable fix.
Now, I agree, we should dismiss it for reasons of game balance and ease of play, but I am not quite satisfied without a justification which works in the narrative.
Premonitions work just fine as it is.
It can warn of dangers, but not always of the details.
It can warn you that you are in danger when you go into combat, or try to climb an icy cliff, or try to cast a powerful ritual inside a cathedral.
It can't tell if you are going to botch, or what the results will be if you botch, but if there is a risk of a really nasty botch, it can tell you that it is a potentially dangerous action.
For game balance, it may be worth noting the following.
Charmed Life (from HoH:TL) is a Major Virtue, that provides the benefits of the Minor Virtue Luck and allows a character to reroll any 0 on a stress die in "dangerous or deadly circumstances", for the cost of a Confidence point. The latter effect (which is then worth 2 Virtue points) crucially requires no investment of xp or successful Ability roll.
It does cost a confidence point, and crucially, it's reroll the zero. In the OP you wrote
I read that to mean a botch, not a zero. To be able to choose not to accept a botch based on a die roll, as opposed to choosing to re-roll a zero prior to botch test for the cost of a confidence point is a large difference.
If premonitions was every zero, not every botch, it is still very strong, but maybe not unbalanced.