Rules Insights from Veteran GMs

This is somewhat controversial, but the way we interpret warping is that it only affects anyone who is directly affected by a spell. In the case of a magically created fire, only the fire would be subject to warping, not those who are burnt by it.

Otherwise, one can get into very tricky territory very quickly. If you rule a Ball of Abysmall Fire warps whoever gets burnt by it, then you'd have to rule that a magically created wolf warps whoever gets bitten by it. At that point, you'd probably have to rule that anyone who gets to stroke a magically created cat -- or perhaps just a mundane but magically controlled cat -- gets warped. And it soon gets silly.

That's in an insert on the top of page 113 of the MRB. Reading that a bit more deeply, "A spell to create a part of something is either a healing spell or a Muto spell, depending on the part created. A Creo spell with target Room cannot be used to fill a room with something." Reading this together, I would interpret that someone CAN create a spell that heals with a Target other than Individual or Group.

This may be a YMSV interpretation. But a healing spell does not violate the above statements from the MRB. Since nothing is being filled.

Or the Burn/Heat something, you can't create Fire, but you can make burn something with Target Room. Restoration is other example of Creo + Form with Target Room or near, like i think that we all can imagine one effect in this sense.
The bad thing about the Cricle and Ring is that you are evading the damage, not real healing. But one Circle Momentary Ritual should be kosher.

This is a good point.

In our saga we solved this by the players each making up the companion character for another player's magus. Basically, first session we sat the players in a circle. Everyone makes up their own magus and the companion character that goes with the player/magus seated to their left.

(And we also assigned each player to be the primary storyguide for the storylines involving the magus/player seated to their right).

My last troupe solved the problem by kind of embracing it. It was quite usual for one player to play each of his maga, her familiar, and even her trusted grog. In the same session. Practically in the same breath. It didn't really cause us any problems, especially once the maga and her familiar started squabbling.

Similarly, I played both a Verditius and his venditor, who he didn't like and ultimately had banished from the covenant to live out his years in the nearby monastery; close enough to see the covenant tower.

So for us, it didn't really matter. In fact, we kind of enjoyed the experience as each player had domain over their own little piece of the covenant and could weave their own little stories into the saga - they're all just troupe characters really and we tended to swap and change as needed. It didn't make any difference to us whether they happened to be aligned to our magi or not.

Wow, sounds like you've got a pretty good troupe! Wish I our playing group had a handful of players with that amount of creativity, dedication and undestanding of the game :smiley:

Miost troupes fail here in the first (generally failed) saga. After that, they tend to accept that gaming principle really easily :slight_smile:

Some play around this concept isn't a bad idea. Letting players munchkin to a certain degree and giving them all they desire can result in entertaining stories, as well. May your players' characters live in interesting times.

Yeah, it certainly can work, I guess.

We weren't really worried so much about the individual players not being able to handle playing both sides of a pair of characters who argued. We just wanted to avoid too much of everybody else sitting around watching one player talking to himself.

A lot of what people have already mentioned I've run across too. Yay superpowered apprentices!

For myself, the things I've learned through trial and error:

  • Don't require players to make a magus and companion on day one. Instead, I'd suggest a magus and a shield grog as starting characters. Create companions that work with the covenant once the covenant and setting is a bit more established in the minds of the players. Players are going to want to spend some time with their newly made magus character, so let them. Expect your first adventure or two to involve all the magi; don't be afraid to have an early Tribunal session to introduce the major players of the area.

  • Enforce Gift penalties! Unless a magus is Gentle Gifted, any attempts at social interaction with Mundanes should fail. Blatant Gift should make an otherwise normal situation unpleasantly hostile if the magus tries to be the spokesperson for a group. The Gift gives your companions and grogs an area where they can shine. To start out with, err on the side of being too harsh, not too lenient. If the players wanted to talk to the townsfolk but scared them with a Gifted person, don't have the townsfolk forgive them five minutes later. Make the players work hard to overcome that initial blunder - it makes the magi appreciate their Custos better.

  • Keep your adventures/stories short. Two encounters is pleanty. This way each character gets to spend some time with their story flaws in a relatively timely fashion.

  • Early adventures close to home should let players swap characters in and out in a relatively timely fashion.

  • Don't be afraid of seasons rolling by. A good rule of thumb is to do ~two stories/year when starting out. You can adjust that up or down as you like. If you can, one year/session is a good starting point - otherwise you won't use some of the best elements of the Ars Magica system.

  • Don't expect players to self-motivate to begin with. As they get more experience with the system, the setting and their characters you can expect the Magi to start hatching their own plans. Initially, though, they will probably need some very well signposted guidance.

  • Have a friendly older magus or two around as NPCs to help the players out. If the players are part of a Spring covenant, make sure they have allies and sponsors who are there to back them up when it all goes wrong. They don't have to live in the covenant. Parents are great for this, as young fresh-gauntleted magi will scrape their knee and need to run to someone on occasion. If you want to ensure there are hooks/boons for this, use your 'SG perogative' hook/boon selection for the covenant to make this happen.

  • Have each player provide a name and brief description of their parentes as well as their magi. Make this a requirement of character approval, don't put it off.

  • Don't be stingy with vis. Aim for at least 5/year/magus as a starting vis income, preferably more. Extremes (very high, very low) make good sagas once you're a bit more practiced with the system and know what to expect.

  • Don't be stingy with available lab texts for spells from other covenants. Pretty much any spell in the core rulebook should be realtively easily available for trade from someone.

  • Do be stingy with available lab texts for item enchantments! Read the lab text rules carefully before handing out item enchantment texts! Read them again!

  • The seasonal diary thing. Do it. Enforce it. You'll be glad you did.

This is a good idea. And this can be as simple as just picking an existing magus from those described in a Tribunal book to be the parens. Which is also a nice way of embedding the characters' backgrounds into the Tribunal.

Not to thread-jack but I'm curious why you feel these two points are essential?

From a pure rules approach:

Remember that all spells need to penetrate. No exceptions. Come to peace with it and apply it from the outset.

Don't worry about "pink dots" or other implications of the penetration rules that might seem odd. They are far less odd than the alternatives and don't present as big an exploit as some make out.

From a gaming approach:

Give your players what they need to achieve their goals. For instance, if you have a magus who wants to integrate some kind of ancient magic you should give him artifacts, texts, teachers, etc. If you have someone who wants to join a mystery cult, give her the stories she needs to get there. No saga is forever (some come close) so do your best to help everyone achieve your goals.

Players always want new toys to play with so make them available. You don't need to give it all away, and they'll appreciate having to work for it, but make sure that the toys are within their grasp rather than out of reach.

Promote the use of vis - do it by example even - as you can't take it with you and it's better to use it than sit on a stockpile of numbers that don't do anyone any good.

The first point: because new players want to be able to try stuff out. If on your first saga you make it a mountain to climb to get even a simple lab text, you're not really giving either yourself or your troupe the opportunity to explore what the system offers. It means characters can recover more easily from poor spell choices - and first-time players are more likely to make bad decisions than Ars Magica veterans. The more of the 'base' spells you get to see active in the field in your first saga, the better prepared you'll be regarding the spells you like, don't like, creative uses, etc. in the second. Furthermore, the more the players get to experiment with and enjoy the system in the first saga, the more liklihood you have of running a second with the same troupe.

Second point: to highlight that lab texts for enchantments are a lot more specific than for spells. It sucks to take things away from the players when you realise you did it wrong, hence my suggesting being careful reading the rules here - and realising just how specific item enchantmet texts are (greater/lesser, specific form bonuses, specific penetration amounts, etc) is part of the reason that getting exactly what you want in trade is going to be harder. I raised this point to highlight this, hence my suggesting re-reading the rules on that.

I think the thing that creeps-up on you the most is how Magic Resistance can be overcome relatively easily. Keep your combat-monkey's Penetration in mind, but also keep in mind that they can use various resources (Arcane Connections & Sympathetic ones are the coolest, but also raw vis or wizard's communion, or making items with pumped-up penetration) to get much higher penetration. You can plan that into your stories (getting the dragon's "true name", so you could affect it), but I recommend stating at the outset that MR for creatures would be set by you, not necessarily equal to their Might, to give you more leeway. (And of course, lots of people do Rego/Finesse to get around MR entirely.)

Likewise, wizard's that work on their Parma and relevant Forms will tend to have rather high MR, making most monster's powers impotent against them. Which is not necessarily bad - but take it into account, too.

One exception: spells with Personal range need not penetrate your own MR (p. 85). Yes, this does mean that lots of spells you might want to cast on yourself actually do need to penetrate, so you may want to consider inventing a Personal-range variant of them.

While true, I would suggest not being heavy-handed about it. Standard effects and items should be available, especially from Durenmar or other large library that had time to stockpile lots of items. Boots of Seven League Stride, a Bolt of Lightning enchanted onto a staff... that sort of thing.

Don't worry about rules too much!

typical beginner storyguide errors (especially when playing by pbp):

How to blow it:

Allow characters that use concepts from exotic supplements. Found your own covenant, using the most detailed rules you can get your hands on. Choose a tribunal that has recently detailed in an Ars magica supplement, so your players can help you if you say something non-canonical. Prepare a detailed site, with a detailed library full of high level, high-quality books to keep your players happy. Do not neglect statting everyone at your covenant. Don't forget to be democratic and involve everyone in debating a charter. A charter that has not been formulated well will ruin any game because it is the central element of any Ars Magica campaign. Before you start, have everyone create a magus, 2 grogs and a companion.
Do not start with combat because Magi are scholars, not fighters. Better choose a mundane murder mystery. Ignore the effects of the Gift because the social penalty of the Gift will ruin everybody's social interaction and therefore stifle roleplaying.

Brilliantly put! :stuck_out_tongue:

A HUGE +1 to that.

Actually, i dont think we ever bothered to actually write out any kind of charter, just fluffed past that and noted if there was anything special the characters needed to know about rules and regs of the current covenant.

Let me see now...

I did just about all that.

I let them choose to found a new covenant. I did give them the choice and didn't insist. For a new GM starting with an already established covenant is just as daunting as starting with Spring so why the heck not?
(And have you considered the difficulty of inserting up to half a dozen newly Gauntleted magi into an already established covenenant? You'd have to pull some quite spectacular bullshit in the story line to justify that.)

I did insist on having them OK the charter but they went along with the default one with a few modifications. It did effect the decisions they made as a group and I think it was worth while to get the group dynamics clear.

I only asked for a Magi and a companion. The grogs were standard types and provided (and initially played) by me.

The Library.... Oy, the Library was the issue that killed my game at the end. Trying to figure out what should be there. If I'd actually given them just a greenfield site instead of an abandoned covenant it wouldn't have been so bad: they could have ordered what they wanted and it wouldn't have been a concern of mine but no... I had to get clever...

There was combat but not a huge amount of it. I never did get the hang of the group combat rules.

Ah well, next time it will be different. (Third time lucky, eh?)