Virtues that grant xps, especially Affinities

Games Discussion Ars Magica
61

Hi,

It's taste, then. I'm sure you do not stand alone in your preference but I stand elsewhere.

As I've said before (and will say again...), I don't like botches or fumbles in most circumstances. I do think they have a place in some games, like Paranoia or Warhammer (40 and Fantasy), where fumbles really make the point that things suck in the setting. You can't trust your experimental blaster (well, in a sense you can trust it), you can't trust magic, you can't trust your friends. No one really understands anything. Gonzo fumble and critical tables help a lot here.

Part of the fun of a high-powered game, which AM can be, is getting to use that power. In my opinion, a high powered game tends to be less about "can I do it" but "do I really want to do it" and "how do I want to do it?"

So yeah, if I'm playing a Flambeau, I want to burn things. With fire. FIRE! I suppose lightning is ok too. And I think the game should encourage this.

I think it's more interesting to explore "you burned down the county and now everyone is afraid of you, even your beloved Mathilda, but it was so easy, think what else you can accomplish" than "am I willing to cast the spell and risk rolling 6 botch dice and something random happening?" Unless, of course, the campaign and characters are so dead boring, that playing Russian roulette with a character is more interesting.

But that's me and my pedestrian tastes!

I think there's more of a place in AM for botches and fumbles when trying to push the boundaries of what is considered possible, such as testing the bounds of a Lesser Limit (or Greater, I guess) or Hermetic Magic, or trying to do something unskilled (what does this button do?). Also when things go badly in a natural way, perhaps represented by a roll failing by some margin.

I also suspect that you adore stress dice, although I think it's an idea whose time has passed, at least as implemented. An exponentially increasing die roll is simply a mistake. I think I'd prefer something like "Roll a d12. On 1-9, add the number to your total and stop. On a 10, add 0 to your total and stop. On an 11, subtract 10 from your total and roll again. On a 12, add 10 to your total and roll again." Especially combined with options to not have to roll the die at all.

Again, a matter of taste.

Anyway,

Ken

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62

Considering that I absolutely hate botches (despite understanding their necessity and appeal to some people) and that I'm probably the last person in my troupe to recommend going in with PoF and/or ReMe, I find your reasoning ... interesting.

Indeed, from my own experience, the players I see being incautious and going in "guns" (PoF) blazing, are generally also the ones willing to accept botches and who can't be bothered to mitigate risks via eg cautious sorcerer. Clearly your saga may vary. :slight_smile:

63

We are all humans (supposedly, at least), and humans are, generally, risk-averse. Of course most players will want to minimize the risk of botching. They also lean to minimizing the risk of failure.

However, from a psychological standpoint, a game mechanic that reduces risk/increases success is horrible. It provides bad gameplay experience. Of course, there is some degree of subjective interpretation to this, and I'm not saying that every and any attempt to increase chance of success and reduce risk of failure/catastrophic failure is bad... But if I where to defend my stance in a shallow way offering little to no comment on the subject (which is actually what I'm doing now), yes, I'd say they are bad, period.

Note also that I'm not saying that players shouldn't pursue ways to mitigate risk or improving their success. My point is against mechanics, not against player decision.

Well... maybe I should elaborate at least a bit on my opinion. Just a little bit.

Some players equate botching mechanics with "the SG can randomly f&ck with the story and my character". While I will concede that there are SG's who use them this way (on the basis of statistical probability), this is not how they are supposed to be used. All in all, botches are just one more tool in the GM's toolbox, and a powerfull one if used correctly.

At it's core, botches offer necessary risk to the action. You tried to climb a wall and failed? Ok, you can just try again. You tried and botched? This is going to have consequences. Faced with the possibility of botching a player should either face it boldly or say "yeah, maybe I should find a ladder". And a botch doesn't need to have death or injury as outcome (though it might). "It seems your fall was heard. Someone is approaching, and by the noise it seems to be a soldier in armor. What do you do?"

By removing/reducing botches, failures, etc, we slowly slide the dial towards the "roleplaying" in the "roleplaying - game" spectrum. Taken to the extreme it ceases to be a game entirely and becomes purely a colaborative storytelling experience. Which has it appeal, of course, but it is not a game anymore (not to say that there aren't consequences, or that things are going to be boring).

To end my digression (I could go on other tangents, but it's better I don't), I'll partially agree with null: magic should be unreliable (not necessarily unsafe). A magus should only in exceptional circunstances say "I have complete mastery over my magic and nothing ever will go wrong when I cast a spell or work at the lab". In that sense, Ars is already a very "magic is safe" system, and I wouldn't ever push it further down this road (can I take this chance to complain about Stalwart Casting mastery? No? Ok).

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64

This is much better phrasing for what I mean. I think Theurgic magic systems are great. Not spell spirits from Hermetic Theurgy which is merely a slower, slightly different way to skin what Hermetic magi already do, relatively safe-to-cast magic, but real Theurgy, magic which is based on summoning, placating, and bargaining with powerful entities.

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65

The possibility of botching is important, since it introduces a small risk to using magic (and other actions for that matter), which generally result in players not using magic absolutely all the time when they don't need to, and adds a small random element such that no matter how good you are, success is not 100% guaranteed. The possibility of failing makes success feel better.

When botches actually happen though, that is generally not very fun. Occasionally it can lead to interesting consequenses, but most of the time nobody much enjoys the results.

1 Like
66

Precisely.

Twilights can also be interesting, and depend on botches. But they are even rarer. I'd prefer to have them more common, but recognize this can seriously derail / slow-down a game.

Such magic is evocative and immersive, but is a totally different flavor from vanilla Ars Magica. I prefer to keep Ars Magica as-is, and leave such theurgy to specific characters (or other game systems).

67

I was merely using that as an example of what I meant by unreliable magic being better.

68

In that sense, one thing I don’t appreciate very much is how hedge magic, mysteries and etc. are generally as safe as hermetic magic. The Order had about 450 years and a lot of practitioners to find and correct the "bugs" in the hermetic system. As you start to leave this framework, things should get less stable.

For example, let’s take folk witches, which seems to be a fairly developed tradition, and their kitchen, in which they can experiment. All we would need is something in the lines of "a folk witch must always experiment in the kitchen" to have it be a bit more unpredictable without changing rules or balance. And then we can apply research rules to improve the FW system, if there are players interested in that (or just pick a suitable virtue, such as careful sorcerer).

We don’t need to actually codify all in rules terms, and I think this would be counter-productive. But at the bare minimum it would be nice to have some blank space. In that sense, Theurgy (the hermetic virtue) leaves some space when talking about summoning daemons and what they might request, were the SG and player can improvise without being constrained.

I think a mix of "enforced unreliability" and blank spaces would do wonders for hedge/secondary traditions. Even for Ex Misc. In a sense, the mandatory hermetic flaw of Ex Misc is exactly an enforced unreliability.

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69

And this aspect of Hermetic Theurgy I really love.

Unfortunately it's usually a reliable weakness in their magic. Unreliability is actually best represented by dice.

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70

Hi,

Which is why I don't consider the possibility of botching important: It is generally not very fun and most of the time nobody much enjoys the results. A spell's success is not quite the same as a character's success, and often spell failure just feels wrong.

(I imagine the original players and designers of AM tended to run highly improvised games, applying, disregarding, modifying and creating rules as fit the moment, with the story going wherever it went. Fumble? Sure. Twilight? Sure. The whole play style is about winging it anyway and seeing what happens.)

Anyway,

Ken

2 Likes
71

Hi,

I would enjoy magi having access to Conditional durations a la Gruagachans (sp?). I find these flavorful and evocative, allowing for a certain amount of whimsy and unpredictability that corresponds well to the people and circumstances involved.

(The problem is that it forces additional creativity on players and especially on the GM, who already has enough to do. So there's something to be said for a simpler system. If redesigning the magic system (or designing a new one that encouraged spell invention and promoted wizardly supremacy), I'd probably make Duration even simpler, because I don't even want to track how long a Diameter is, or need to track the moment of sunset or the end of a month. I'd rather create a new Hermetic Ability whose score represented the number of spells a magus can have going simultaneously, including any spell being cast. Duration is then indefinite, but that's fine because in many ways this is more limiting than what we currently have. A magus cannot cast a buff on his legion of grogs, one by one. We can then also consider removing the Warping penalty (and bookkeeping) for being subject to a spell for a long time, since a magus now has a different limitation on the number of spells he can have active.)

Anyway,

Ken

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72

See, this feels like you telling me that I'm having wrong/bad fun, which is something not very many people enjoy.

I like the roleplaying element - there are plenty of board games for those who don't.

But then, I do get the impression that some people here want to play a story about the danger of summoning, while others want to play the story about what you do with this entity once you have it summoned. Surely there's room for both?
But this means that Cautious Sorcerer is not a bad virtue, just a bad fit for your play style/the stories you want to tell. And the same is almost certainly the case for Stalwart Casting, since you mentioned that one too.

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73

A comparison before trying to go on topic:

I have one player in my saga who takes ALL the steps to avoid any risk or botching, and another who tries to find an in-character excuse to experiment every time he's in the lab because it's more fun to have the chaos. I have a third character who is playing a very active Flambeau and had a lot of fun when he botched twice in an adventure... and started to really get fed up when he had his fifth spellcasting botch in a faerie aura in one night.

It varies. I like the idea of keeping risk and botching, but also giving players safer, slower ways to do things. What's that quote? "Fast, Cheap, Quality; you get to pick two"? I view it kind of like that; If players take time and effort to eliminate botch dice, they often can. (Except foreign auras, that's where the fun happens.)

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74

There are some virtues that have a linked flaw. I'd like to see cautious sorcerer have a linked "can not experiment in the lab" drawback for example.

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75

Hi,

I used to like the idea of virtues with linked flaws but now dislike these virtues from a design perspective, except for story flaws, and perhaps if Houses were designed with a mandatory set of virtues and flaws (such as are packaged into Criamon, Verditius, Bjornaer and kind of Tremere).

  • Packaging virtues and flaws reduces character concepts. Nothing prevents me from creating characters who can reduce botch dice but cannot experiment well in the lab, but I can also create characters who can do both. For example, I can explain how being meticulous and careful hinders experimentation, but can also explain how it makes a character an even better experimenter.

  • Packaging virtues and flaws requires a difficult extra step, to balance the virtue and the flaw. Diedne Magic is imo best either rewritten or represented as a Minor Hermetic Story Flaw. The value of the flaw is indeterminate and the virtue is not nearly as good as LLSM. Mercurian Magic has also enjoyed controversy over its value. Unbinding the virtue and flaw improves design.

  • Packaging virtues and flaws blows through the +10/-10 (for magi) character creation limit, effectively allowing a character to have more virtues, albeit balanced by more flaws.

Anyway,

Ken

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