Super-charging Ars Magica

Erik, if you remove 2 of the core elements that make powers skyrocket, you start seeing that they do not skyrocket for that same reason :wink:

What Make us say so (IMS) is that

  1. books are really high level. it is rather easy to reach your 30's in an art score.

  2. vis is way more plentiful. Debatable, since 4th never got an official statement of vis availability IIRC, but still

  3. Massive peentration levels can easily be achieved using official V&F and item creation rules. That throws away the problem of spells being much lower in penetration. It also changes the focus of the game from mages to magic items in our opinion (more akin to ArM1 being a supplement of DnD)

That is still our perception. But not really the "porblem". The problem is the consequences of 1 and 2. 3 is a sidenote.

Flying castles being extremely common are a clear possibility in the rules. They are not in the setting. THIS is what bothers us. This is what makes us talk about power creep. I can easily build myself a flñying castle and live without contact from humanity up there forever. Sounds like Forgotten Realms to me. The rules support this while the setting of ME does not. Or not a lot, at least.

The power creep I am talking maybe should be labelled more accurately as "fantasy creep". Might suit my explanation better.

Cheers,

Xavi

I realize that this is a side point but you've said several things that I believe are incorrect and feel compelled to answer them. (I appologize in advance for taking us down this path.

books have lower values than they did in fourth ed.

Personal vis source has been significantly toned down as has vis extraction. The rest is as you say debatable yet at this point in the debate I don't have much sympathy for your position.

In previous editions massive penetration was inherent in every single spell or effect a magus created. You couldn't by the rules enchant a level 60 effect without at least 60 penetration

this has always been the nature of the game (and first edition was not a supplement to D&D).

I'd advise you to look at how many years it take a character who doesn't have Verditious elder runes to go from apprenticeship to the owner of a flying castle. Make them trade for books by writing other books or spell note or giving up vis. Devote half of their time to other pursuits. Give them between one and two pawns of vis per year that aren't spent on rituals (the vis income levels in the saga chapter are for before the Aegis or other rituals. A strong Aegis and two other rituals per year make that amount seem just about right.).

I really do think that your perception regarding fantasy creep it very much influenced by the painfully screwed up virtue of Verditious elder runes. If this one virtue were different than we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Vis availability:

Our group struggles getting enough vis to cast our Aegis! We usually have to use valuable lab-time extracting vis just for this...

Books:

Availability of books vary a lot depending on the saga/covenant... I'm in a spring saga with a few good books, and a winter saga with several good books, but none available to the players...

Saga-speed:

In a fast saga, the magi will grow considerably, in a slow saga the magi will grow rather less...

Maybe I have a "gfolden age" vision of the previous editions, but that might be caused by our sagas starting in 3rd edition, going into fourth and then becoming a mishmash of HR stuff. I would have said that 4th ed books were lower in level (they certainly were for us in 4th, compared to the examples in 5th)

Personal vis source has always been looked down IMS and vis availability was quite low

I have rercreated our Autumn covenant. It would be in the low power section under the current rules (286 pts IIRC), while it dominated the Iberian tribunal in the later stages of our most successful campaign. Under the current rules I have created a low level covenant that skyrockets to legendary in 1 year's time if I strictly follow the rules (basically you take 200 points in vis stores and trade them all for tractatuses). It is an intellectual exercise, but shows a glitch in the system unless you start placing constraints into it that are not in the system. More or less the same can be said of the magi, IMO, but we are bound to difer here.

The mechanics should reflect reality, no9t the other way around. We feel that there is a power creep when each supplement feels the urge tio introduce new "kewl powerz!!" into the game, specially when they belong to the Mercere chapter rules or the kind of Verditius runes. I like magic being special and requiring effort. It does under our HR, but we find more and more that the supplements are amazing for background feeling, but they fail abysmally in the rules section. YYdoesV. No problem about that, but the power creep that I perceive in the rules do not match the setting well. IMO mages should be less powerful, with a flying castle requiring 3-5 mages working for 15 years or so (maybe more) non stop in its creation, not the single mage creating it in 1-2 years as ilustrated by an other poster in an other thread in this same forum.

Oh, I know 1st edition was not a suipplement of DnD, bt it was a reaction to that, so there you go with my statement.

Appart from elder runes (that certainly do influence me a lot here), some stuff in the mysteries, the mutantes rules (minor virtues? Come on!) and other stuff like that also influence my view here. I really like the core ArM5 rules (except for the combat rules thatr suck big time IMO) but the creep of rules in the supplements have made me end up disliking a lot of the additions finding them unnecessary, powerplayer-friendly and screwers of the setting. Going a bit over the top with the statement (I have incorporated several of the rules IMS), but yopu get the point. Most of the rules are complicatred, leading to unnoticed glitches and/or more number crunching than necessary or advisable in a narrative game. Sometimes I feel that in some cases the chaper is amazing until I get to the rules section. There I would burn the pages with glee if I hadn't paid so much money for the supplement.

Cheers,

Xavi

Xavi:
I suggest writing an article about how to reduce the power level of ArM.
It would be a constructive solution because others can learn something from it.

I have 6 articles or so on the pipeline already!! Givwe me some rest!! LMAO :laughing: :laughing: Might be an interesting exercise, but I think that would be more along the lines of deep HR foer ther system than actual reducing the system: it is a revamp more than footnotes. I don't know if this would be suited for an ezine article or so.... :confused: We run our sagas on the low power level end, it seems. I hadn't realized how low it seems compared to pother people's sagas! The overall pace of the saga I would say is similar, but our enemies are weaker, but since we are weaker as well they are a deathly match for us as well.

In the end everything balances out to "do your group enjoy the saga?" " do you find it consuistent with your desires? Go for it, then" :slight_smile: Having fun with your mates is what matters in the end

Cheers,

Xavi

Never a truer word spoken ...

Hi,

Achieving Arts scores of 30 or better has become easier in the 4th and 5th editions, because of the way books now provide xps.

Around a year ago or so, I posted (yet another) set of house rules that deal with this issue to the Berkeley list; I later revised them. Starting magi are slightly better off, but senior magi find themselves hitting a brick wall, and even the most devoted specialist is not likely to exceed an effective Art of 30; most magi will learn to be satisfied with less.

Another effect of these rules is that a newly Gauntleted magus cannot simply read his way to a new specialization, but is likely to retain the same distribution of Arts even after spending a few decades in a good library. The effects of apprenticeship endure throughout a magus' life.

I can repost them if you wish. :slight_smile:

Anyway,

Ken

Hmm.

Or you can look at nocturne.org/~ken/ars/amarts.html

I agree that there is a bit of power creep happening, especially due to the supplements.

However, I think that the Line is still doing a good job. Its allowing all sorts of sagas.

IMO Mythic europe is a low power setting because of factors outside pure magic. The mundane/church/OoH politics and Magi still being a bit individualistic for one thing. Also, all the Mystery Cults etc (where much of the power creep has been for me so far) are small, rare, mysterious and secretive. Take the Verditius Elder Runes for example. Probably the reason that we don't see flying castles in Mythic Europe is that they would a) unbalance politics and get people in trouble for screwing around in public, b) expose the Mystery Cultists to identification (or at least let other Magi know that something big (and dangerous) is going down with this lot) and c) there's probably only 2-4 Magi (if that) around at the top end of the cult that have enough info and power to create said castles, and if any of those few were interested anyway, they are probably too busy being mysteriously powerful and keeping their power to hare off on insane side schemes that will just cause trouble anyway.

Number crunching players tend to lack a few perspectives. I enjoy number crunching as well, but just because something is technically possible does not mean it will happen, no matter how 'cool' it is, because real life will get in the way - all the more so when the population is effectively only a couple of thousand magi or less, and the actually 'competent' (have the right virtues and initiations etc) ones can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

However, the rules are there because not all sagas are set in mythic europe and the game is meant to be flexible. Translate to a high-fantasy setting where Magi are openly powerful, more numerous, better organised etc, and you can do the flying castles thing all you want, using the same mechanics, but having fewer of the 'real life getting in the way' problems because 'real life' in such a world is different.

I agree that there is a bit of power creep happening, especially due to the supplements.

However, I think that the Line is still doing a good job. Its allowing all sorts of sagas.

IMO Mythic europe is a low power setting because of factors outside pure magic. The mundane/church/OoH politics and Magi still being a bit individualistic for one thing. Also, all the Mystery Cults etc (where much of the power creep has been for me so far) are small, rare, mysterious and secretive. Take the Verditius Elder Runes for example. Probably the reason that we don't see flying castles in Mythic Europe is that they would a) unbalance politics and get people in trouble for screwing around in public, b) expose the Mystery Cultists to identification (or at least let other Magi know that something big (and dangerous) is going down with this lot) and c) there's probably only 2-4 Magi (if that) around at the top end of the cult that have enough info and power to create said castles, and if any of those few were interested anyway, they are probably too busy being mysteriously powerful and keeping their power to hare off on insane side schemes that will just cause trouble anyway.

Number crunching players tend to lack a few perspectives. I enjoy number crunching as well, but just because something is technically possible does not mean it will happen, no matter how 'cool' it is, because real life will get in the way - all the more so when the population is effectively only a couple of thousand magi or less, and the actually 'competent' (have the right virtues and initiations etc) ones can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

However, the rules are there because not all sagas are set in mythic europe and the game is meant to be flexible. Translate to a high-fantasy setting where Magi are openly powerful, more numerous, better organised etc, and you can do the flying castles thing all you want, using the same mechanics, but having fewer of the 'real life getting in the way' problems because 'real life' in such a world is different.

I agree that there is a bit of power creep happening, especially due to the supplements.

However, I think that the Line is still doing a good job. Its allowing all sorts of sagas.

IMO Mythic europe is a low power setting because of factors outside pure magic. The mundane/church/OoH politics and Magi still being a bit individualistic for one thing. Also, all the Mystery Cults etc (where much of the power creep has been for me so far) are small, rare, mysterious and secretive. Take the Verditius Elder Runes for example. Probably the reason that we don't see flying castles in Mythic Europe is that they would a) unbalance politics and get people in trouble for screwing around in public, b) expose the Mystery Cultists to identification (or at least let other Magi know that something big (and dangerous) is going down with this lot) and c) there's probably only 2-4 Magi (if that) around at the top end of the cult that have enough info and power to create said castles, and if any of those few were interested anyway, they are probably too busy being mysteriously powerful and keeping their power to hare off on insane side schemes that will just cause trouble anyway.

Number crunching players tend to lack a few perspectives. I enjoy number crunching as well, but just because something is technically possible does not mean it will happen, no matter how 'cool' it is, because real life will get in the way - all the more so when the population is effectively only a couple of thousand magi or less, and the actually 'competent' (have the right virtues and initiations etc) ones can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

However, the rules are there because not all sagas are set in mythic europe and the game is meant to be flexible. Translate to a high-fantasy setting where Magi are openly powerful, more numerous, better organised etc, and you can do the flying castles thing all you want, using the same mechanics, but having fewer of the 'real life getting in the way' problems because 'real life' in such a world is different.

I'm not sure that I do.

Certainly there is powerful stuff in the supplements but on the whole I think the most powerful stuff is in the main book

There are a few stinkers in the suppliments (the afore mentioned verditious runes, extra laboratory time) but there were missteps in the main book as well (penetration on charged devices).

I think that we are seeing coolness creep rather than power creep. It is harder to write a good book with covenants than it is in the main book. Hermetic research is darn hard. The Mysteries are rarely worth it for characters less than 20 years out if apprenticeship and after that they provide an enticing alternative to developing the monster spells and totals that Xavi dislikes.

I'm no so sure about this.

First, I don't think that's so easy, as it requires a lot of time, commitment and vis. I don't think there are so many magi out there able to do this. Remember also that we're only a few generations away from the founding. There haven't been much "time" to create such things.
Just slightly reducing the vis available for longevity rituals has huge effects on the scores mages can attain.

Second, Auras and Vis sources are location-dependant.
If flying castles means no aura and no vis, well, they're no so interesting.
This is especially true about mundane ressources. If you can't eat because you've got no food or cattle, too bad.
Of course you could have your castle standing in one location, but this is sure to frighten mundanes a lot more than some weird magi. If no one wants to crop your fields, it doesn't matter if you've got some. And when the priest comes calling down the wrath of god on the arrogant magi that try to set themselves above... ouch.

There may very well be a very few flying castles out there, but that's all. After all, would you want to live in something supported by an art and not a science, especially knowing that god(s) love to knock icaruses out of the sky? After all, we've all heard these stories about how the Flying Covenant of Eagle's Nest crashed onto the sea when its magic failed it...

On a side note, even if something is possible, it doesn't mean it is common: Flying castles may be just something that's outside the "box" of hermetic thinking.

Exactly.
Thing can get powerfull, but they're not bound to, and people may have other goals than building mundanes castles.
=> I don't really think there's a problem here.

The only rule that I'd possibly HR away are the penetration rules for items. Make them similar as spell penetration (even adding the magus' penetration when creating the item).

I hadn't heard this complaint before. You think they're too powerful? Would you mind elaborating on how you see them being abused?

Never said anything on the contrary. We play in Mythic Europe and use the ArM setting in a broad sense. We changed a few things on book and vis availability at covenant creation (and further progression) and there we go with a fairly OK saga from our POV. No needs to massively change the general syastem, only puting some caps at different levels than what the actual setting says. We do not use supplement rules either since we think they can be abused and/or can be handwaved easily without the need to introduce exctra mechanics in the system. That is a trupe preference, not a line problem per se. We dislike the kewl powerz approach, but we are sure other players enjoy them, so no biggie here.

We have yet to approach the item penetration problem since nobody has shown an interest in creating them yet. It is bound to be HR territory there. Again, no biggie.

I do not agree that flying castles would be uncommon given the power levels of the vanilla mage. They have access to too much resources in our opinion. But we are on the side of people that LIKES to struggle over magical resources, so that might color our perspective

The mutantes stuff, I recall having tyhat impression when I read TL. Will have to watch them up and return to you later since we simply ditched them as unneded complications for our saga along with the certamen schools (outside descriptive value) and other similar stuff. As I said, we tend to take only very selective stuff from the supplements, even ifI use a lot of the material as background information and story hooks. In that sense I find ArM5 to be amazxing since you can develop hooks out of almost every paragraph in the supplements.

Xavi

Yup. I was refering to this as well. it seems According to the others we might be missing something, though

Read. Nice!! I am unsure about the XP stuff you posted there (I didn't get the reasoning behind the change), but it looks solid. I could have used it if we had been aware of it when the saga started. Back engineering characters is something my players do not love. I like the design concept behind it, thopugh, since it keeps the focus and deals with covenant libraries in one elegant pen swoop.

Kudos to you, man :slight_smile:

I might even suggest taking it offline and submitting it to Alex White for Sub Rosa with some reworking to clarify stuff (making it less "dry"). If you want it to be in an ezine instead of available online, that is.

Cheers,

Xavi

Sorry if I came across as defensive, Xavi. :slight_smile: I just was curious why you had such a strong reaction to the Mutantes Virtues. I'm not saying they /aren't/ more powerful than other Minor Hermetic Virtues -- I think they are -- but I hadn't thought of them as obviously overpowered. I would rank them with Puissant Art -- good enough to be commonly found among Mercere magi (all twelve of them!), but not so good that you can't do a good character without them. Of course I'm biased, so I'm curious what you and others think.

John, as far as superpowering your saga goes, I think giving every character a Major Magical Focus would do it. That would allow all the players to do some really nice things in their area of specialty, spontaneously as well as formulaically.

First of all, apologies for the earlier triple post.

My reaction to Mutantes Magic was first glance, overpowered, second glance, oh, not actually all that overpowered at all, third considered opinion, very very powerful indeed - for a typical 15+years game time PC.

Mutantum Magic
You are descended from the Mutantum lineage, and can thus invent formulaic spells and magic items that take advantage of Boosting, Harnessing and Tethering (see Mutantum Magic, under Magic, above). You may also take the Tamed Magic virtue, and half of your starting spells may be “tamed” versions of common spells. Most characters with Mutantum Magic belong to House Mercere and consider themselves Mutantes, and all of them must be descended by blood from the Founder or one of his ancestors.
Boosting
By spending a pawn of vis when casting formulaic spells you may “boost” the Range, Duration, or Target of the effect by one magnitude. You can do this multiple times for the same spell. For example, boosting Range from Touch to Sight and Target from Individual to Group would cost you four pawns of vis. This has no effect on spontaneous or Ritual spells, though you can still use vis to boost your Penetration as normal. Note that while magi with Mutantum Magic (see below) can invent spells that allow this, they cannot boost spells that were not designed to do so without taking this Virtue.
Harnessing
You have great control over your spells. You are able to cancel any of your spells simply by concentrating. You can even cancel the magic in magic items which you created. The act of canceling your magic should be treated as if you were casting a spell for timing and concentration purposes. If you are distracted and fail a Concentration roll, another attempt may be made in a later round. Spells and magic items can be canceled out over any distance, but once they have been canceled, you must recast a spell or reinvest a power in a magic item to start the effect again. The drawback is that when you die, all of your spells and magic items sputter out.
Tethering
You can pass control of your non-Ritual spells to others, just as if they were the caster, “tethering” the magic to them for the spell’s duration. You may also tether a spell to an object, which can then transfer the spell to an appropriate target when it comes into range. This can even be done whenever you activate an effect in a magic item. However, a side effect of this sort of magic is that all of your spells and the effects of any magic items you activate are arcane connections to you.

The Mutantum Mage can use these effects only on spells he invents himself. Which means no using other people lab notes to learn spells fast etc. They also only don't work with Spontaneous of Ritual Magic, which is very very limiting, especially initially.
Harnessing is useful, but a relatively minor power - smart Magi don't need it, but can use it effectively. Its drawback is either utterly irrelevant or hugely critical to a character's self image and life goals etc - but more a role-playing thing than a game function - especially if other PC's are unaware, as generally they are unlikely to be IMO.
Tethering is kinda cool, pretty showy in a crowd of Magi actually. "Here, can you please hold the concentration on this image, while I'm busy with this other spell..." "What? how do you do that?" But it's not generally that useful and has a BIG disadvantage.
Boosting however, is waaay powerful - if you have lots of vis. This means it is generally not very useful for young magi, who have neither a large range of formulaic spells, nor generally, a large amount of burnable vis. However, a 20 year veteran who has spent large portions of the past 10-15 years in the lab inventing useful spells - and accumulating vis, can do some awesomely powerful things with relatively low arts. Invent a touch based PoF variant for example (Lvl 15) - chuck in three paws of vis when casting and hit someone at arcane range - with the increased penetration from the original spell being only level 15 to boot. Or a Lvl 10 MuMe spell to make a major change to a persons memory of an event (Voice Sun Individual) is invented and boosted at casting to (Sight, Moon, Group Size +3) for 7 pawns of vis to make all 10,000 people at the battlefield believe that the King was slain during the battle for the next month. Heck, a fresh from gauntlet magus could pull that off if he had the vis, without even having any skills in that area (as long as he qualifies to learn the spell at creation).
On the other hand, I have a mutantum magus, and he hasn't used a single boosted spell in the first 2-3 years. Not enough Vis, not in the right arts etc etc.

Besides which, Boosting itself is a minor virtue allowed to anyone, and probably better for power gaming, though less stylisticly cool, than Mutantum magic anyway. It avoids any disadvantageous side effects and can be used on any formulaic spell the magus knows, not just those he invents himself.

Hi,

I've heard that before on the Berkeley list.

I like to assume that npcs are generally just as clever as the PCs. Under the current Ars Magica rules, cooperation among magi is so stupendously powerful, nothing else makes sense. I see a tractatus economy as the organizing principle behind the Order, itself justifying Redcaps, a legal system and everything else.

Other folks assume that Bad Things prevent such an economy from happening; what I believe they mean is that the GM will do nasty things to anyone who gets out of line.

Wow! I suppose I shall have to get used to my house rules being liked! (Never mind that AM is not played in my house...)

As for my reasoning behind the change, do you mean the different table for Arts?

That's key to making the system work. I give with the right hand and take away with the left.

In my right hand, I give ten points of the new Puissant Arts virtue to every magus. That's great stuff, the equivalent of a 5 in ten Arts (150xp canonical), a 10 in three Arts and a 5 in one Art (180xp canonical), or various other combinations. If the magus puts all of it into one Art (120xp canonically) he doesn't do as well, but that's the point.

Still in my right hand, I give new magi rapid power growth in every Art. They all start at 0, which means the guy with Creo-11 isn't shafted relative to the guy with Creo-0 and Muto-11 because the covenant library has a summa for Creo-10 and nothing for Muto. All the way up through a score of 10, the revised table makes it much easier to learn Arts.

So far so good. But in my left hand... the revised xp table is exponential. It costs 10xp to get Art-5, 50xp for Art-10, 250xp for Art-15 (canonical 120xp--oh, dear!), 1250xp for Art-20 (canonically 210xp), 6250xp for Art-25 (canonically 325xp), and x5 for every further 5 points in the Art. Getting an effective score of 30 in an Art is now a major, major, major commitment. It can be done with a 15 from ten allocations of Puissant Arts plus 250xp of study; this leaves nothing else during character creation, which is far from optimal. It can also be done with a 10 from Puissant Arts and 1250xp from study; that's almost 25 years of dedication to the study of a single Art, assuming that great books are always available. At that cost, it hardly hurts to let the magus study.

As a consequence, awesome summae are no longer possible. An 11 is awesome, the product of a dedicated scholar; a 14 is unthinkable.

The xp table is key. It gives new magi a break. It limits specialists. More subtly, the character of a magus' power is similar throughout his career; at the beginning, all of his Arts scores (less Puissant Arts) are 0, and the end, the Arts scores will likely all be between 10 and 15, again excluding Puissant Arts. Thus, a magus will always excel in the Arts he favored as an apprentice.

(The new vis study rules can change this, and perhaps deserve another revision.)

As for taking it offline... I'd offer it to the e-zine if it were free. As it is, I'm glad you enjoy the rules!

Anyway,

Ken