"Need" is a big word to use here. I'm not even certain I'd support "Want".
But one page summaries of "Stereotypical options" might have a use.
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On the whole, I'd probably like to see a much more story-oriented game. It probably shouldn't be called Ars Magica 6th edition, but maybe something like "Ars Magica [Stories/Tales/Sagas/etc.]" Lighten the math a lot, probably still keep the Techniques & Forms, social effects of the Gift, and other core concepts. OTOH, give players more meta-mechanics – how to start the campaign, choosing themes, play length, giving characters focus in scenes, table conventions, etc. The flavor in the game is strong, but I know I have a lot of friends who aren't sure about learning all the rules to effectively play their characters. The heavy rules also work against shorter campaigns.
In any case, new Tribunal books for places not covered in 4th or 5th edition would be appreciated.
And, as for all RPGs, a few explanatory modules would be nice. Even though I have a lot of GM experience, it's always nice to have examples how the game creators envision their game to be both run and played.
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lighten the math? There is something simpler than addition?
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There is something simpler than addition?
For sure not, but spreadsheet is the best character sheet, and that for each new lab activity (aside from Vis harvesting) you need to recalculate your lab total for all the variants (shape, material, affinity if relevant, help in the lab, highest known spells etc). So for those who can do mental arithmetics it is not an issue, but when a player just stalls for 5 minutes to add everything up it just breaks the flow.
I would say more streamlining in a way L5R 3ed went to 4th Ed, not dumbing things down to FATE level.
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IMO, one thing which needs changing is this:
Magi suck at knowing magic lore.When you need to know something about an obscure magic tradition or a weird beast, rules-wise, chances are you'll be calling a companion or grog, not a maga, because she can't spare the time to raise such a skill when she's got Parma, Penetration, Finesse, the Arts, Concentration, AL, Philosophiaie...
That's not to say that magi should benecessarily better at this than mundanes. I quite love the idea of the loremaster. But they should be at least good enough.
But maybe we could tie it to something else, like saying that Magi automatically get Magic Lore equal to the lowest of their magical skills.
Same goes for Merinita and Faerie Lore. How many merinita out there with Faerie Lore 5+?
Yes, Merinita magi know knothing about faerie ice zombies.
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I'm thinking perhaps magic lore should be able to be 'defaulted' from magic theory with a penalty of some sort, and perhaps the same for faerie lore from faerie magic. It is done with languages in later books, and would make sense here. Similarly divine and infernal lore from perhaps theology?
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I rather like that magi have so many different things they need to master. I think it is one of the main limiting factors on a magus' power and for that reason I would not try too hard to reduce the amount of abilities that a magus needs.
I also think it is appropriate enough that Magic lore fills the role of practical knowledge about the magical world. This allows for the characters to fill the roles of scholarly magus with very little knowledge about anything outside his/her lab and the worldly magus with a perhaps less raw magical power but more practical knowledge.
The current system in my and experience fosters a variety of different social niches that magi can fill. Some are labrats that prefer to stay away from the scary or distracting practical world but they often need access to vis, ingredients, magical sites and creatures and apprentices, while being poorly able to get these things. Other magi are specialists in finding all of those but need help with getting access to lab texts, books, enchanted items etc. Under the current system those two groups of magi have something to gain from each other. If you remove Magic lore and other practical skills then the balance tips in favor of the lab rats allowing them to bypass the need for trade with more worldly magi.
Regarding Faerie lore and Merinitae I would argue the same case. A player who plays a Merinita should need Faerie lore in order to navigate in their dealing with the fae. By giving them Faerie lore for free the character no longer has to dedicate precious seasons in order to be a special assest for their covenant and to fullfill their faerie meddling ambitions.
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What if all four Realm Lores were combined as a single Arcane Lore? Or what if the amount of Vis you can use in a season was Magic Theory x Magic Lore (or whatever Realm the vis is from)? The first idea would reduce Ability bloat. The second would be a great motivator and provide a tangible immediate benefit.
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Arts as Abilities, and then all of these lores are Int+Vim. Or, not AaA, and Int+(Vim/5).
IMO, more skills are needed, not less. Player characters don't need to master everything that would be handy to master. If they want good warriors, they should invest in warriors, if they want good scholars, invest in scholars.
In the spring they should invest in finding good people and see to it that those people pass down their skills to the next generation. The covenant should build training facilities, academies, libraries for covenfolk, sponsor travels for gathering of lore of all kind.
When the covenant is older they have all these things. Magi with awesome magical power, scholars with knowledge about all kind of lore, warriors with skills and fighting techniques passed down from generation to generation, craftsmen that can make the best of equipment, weapons and armor. Their mundane economy have grow to amazing heights and if that isn't enough, they can use their Arts to get more. The only question is how much they can abuse their powers before the larger economy take notice and other covenants get annoyed.
Thus, more skills are needed. Players should need to make choices, the characters should not be able to master everything. If they want to be awesome at fighting with weapons, then something needs to be sacrificed. If the character has the interest to be a master swordsman, they will sacrifice other things. If not, they will bring along people bred and trained to protect them. The same goes for lores and everything else.
They should start with very little and work hard for improvements, earning the power they will have later in life. The power of older covenants isn't that they have DC comic level of magical power where each magus is a master of the Arts, know all lore and can kick everyones ass, it is the sum of the covenant itself. The different resources of the covenant will need to complement each other, infrastructure, economy, politic, expertise etc built over time by the characters.
I get that this clearly isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for me this is the way to go. Characters have a limited amount of seasons to spend before they die or the campaign end. They should spend seasons with great care, knowing that they can't master everything. That is a good thing, that means that mastery of something is valuable. What they learn matters, they become unique.
Parma delenda est
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I 100% agree that decisions and sacrifices should have to be made around skills. I don’t know if more skills is the way to go. Honestly, what I think is necessary is a skill system of similar elegance to the magic system. With the magic system, there is great guidance on how to resolve the use of magic in an incredible away of situations. With skills though, I find it is much much more varied and hard to improvise.
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You can try dividing the skills into skill groups. When a character have a few skills high enough they can learn the skill group that works as a knack for all similar skills in that group. Just have some guidelines for when they can buy a point in a skill group (like number of skills, values, how dedicated they are etc) and have a limit for how many skill groups they can get.
Parma delenda est
having a skill default to another at -3 or -4 I a pretty significant drop in ability, and I don't think it negates the effectiveness of diverse skills. More skills would definitely be good, but I think along with this there is a need for more ability point availability ( and a bit more consistency between various rules about how to gain them) and remove or increase some of the effective ability caps, so the decisions become more pronounced. Craftsman may need to learn a variety of craft abilities that focus on a single goal, warriors should have a greater variety of weapon abilities, as well as some abilities that relate to tactics or fighting as a group instead of simply filing that under leadership...
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Likewise with Profession abilities.
Craft is simple enough to understand, although it's breadth is no so clear.
But if a merchant has thinks like Folk Ken, Bargain, Area Lore and such, what's Profession: Merchant for?
Likewise with Profession soldier, or profession courtesan once you take out "needed / sensible" skills
It does make sense as a catch-all for skills not covered by the system which are neither crafts nor lores, like Prof: Fisher, but not for a lot of the listed examples.
Unless it's redefined.
I wouldn't mind having a general Profession: Soldier that allowed you to do anything that falls under it, at a default.
Yet, this brings up the issue of default skills, which suck.
Or you could have a limited set of skills, with a theoretically unlimited list of professions.
When doing something which is clearly a skill roll, you roll skill + appropriate profession.
When no skill applies, the difficulty is lower, but you roll only a profession
Fewer skills, rather than more. And then a profession, to cover stuff not covered by those fewer skills, and/or can add to one of the normal skills.
A profession is then represented by a virtue or flaw, perhaps even being a category of its own, partially replacing social vfs, because getting more than one of these should be hard. Each profession then gets a description of what it is, how it fits into mythic medieval society, and an indication of what abilities are core to the profession and what are peripherally part of it.
But that's just me, and my crazy preference for grogs and companions that fit on an index card (no, not because they are Size -6). Oh, what's an index card? Fine, on a smartphone screen.
Anyway,
Ken
This is how we use Profession Soldier: Camp life (make camp, simple food etc), maintenance of weapon and armor, half the value of the skill counts as Strength for carrying stuff on your person, if your Strength is lower, rounded down. Understanding military life and the command structure and other small stuff.
Most professional skills have plenty of petty skills, the way of life for that profession. General knowledge, repair skills etc. A merchant would know the system, how to get permits, tolls, what sells when during the year. A fisherman would know how to make simple repair of what he use in his work, where the good fishing waters are, contacts for selling the fish for better prices and so forth. Both those profession could use the skill as a sort of reputation in the community.
Even with plenty of skills you will have petty skills not really worth having, or things you don't really want as skills. I like to use profession skills as a sign of knowing your work. If you are a soldier who has 0-1 you are a noob or militia and all experienced soldier see that. You take forever to put up the tent and then it turns out it is in the wrong part of the camp, can't keep their weapons sharp and well oiled, don't know how to do simple repair on your armor, gets dead tired on marches and so on.
In many cases it can be seen as a way-of-life skill you pick up when you live the life, a sub-culture knowledge skill.
Parma delenda est
In our game Profession (sailor) is common. My mage picked it up within the first year (with the longship specialty), and his potential apprentice that ran away and got lost in Arcadia had it with the fisherman specialty. i think one of the player's companion also has it with airship specialty.
We have two flying ships for transport and live on an island, so not only is it very important for our grogs to be proficient sailors, even the pool of mundane people teem with it.
Other good professions would: Innkeep (and variants like bartender/maid), midwife (or similar healing related, "squire" would make sense as a profession too for someone who squires for life (not rich enough to become a knight) and it also works for "managerial" professions like steward, chamberlain etc
If I were to change something, it would be the scale:
now we have 1d10+ something (often -5 to +5) + abilities (which "pro" is 6, normal is 3 and 0 is nothing). That amounts to something like 8 basic.
the d10 is too big.
So I would:
- either use a d6 (i don't like it)
- triple the ability score + double the charact.
I'm not fan of the fact that magi going to +5 intelligence is the way to avoid putting 45 xp in almost every academic and arcane ability. It reduces the need to improve those, and do not reward players who do seek to upgrade their ability.
each characts should have their "basic" abilities numbered and equaled.
Stamina is more important than dexterity, and it is intrinsically badly designed.
Intelligence > prs for that matters.
(I'd say that: Sta > qck > str > dex and int > com > per > prs but ymmv)
To be more clear: 5 abilities per characts.
It doesn't prevent the SG to ask something like "do an awareness + intelligence roll" if he wants, but knowing perception has awareness, hunt, finesse, folk ken and animal ken related to it, helps the player to know how to put XPs and strenght/weaknesses of his character.
Idem for stamina, like with concentration, parma magica, carouse, athletics and swim.
Obviously intelligence: Magic theory, art of memory, nobility lore, church lore, arcane lore.
.. you get the idea.
I would also put every armor at a constant malus : when you wear armor, you do not have the encumbrance mechanism (no player remembers that when it "suits" him...) but : for each 3 soak points, you are at -1 fatigue level if worn for more than X minutes per day.
I'd also give X fatigue levels (sta value) during each fight.
I'd also give X "bonus damage" levels during each fight (related to str).
So if a character wants to do an epic feat because he has +3 stamina, and tires himself wearing heavy armor all day AND still fight long, he can, but the one with +3 str can maybe not tire himself so much, but gives himself +3 dmg per hit, 3 times a fight, which is not nothing.)
(I'd reduce fatigue level -1 per 3 round, automatically, to make fights end at most in 15 rounds when mundanes are concerned, to reduce the lenght, because mundane fights are not interested, but players still like to shine during them)
magi's fight ends relatively quickly: the first magus who uses a +200 pen charged item, or with enough finesse to do a vilano standard arrow in the neck, wins... in my IRL saga, all magi use armors and have such soak as +20... without fatigue. That's boring. And for the one magus who has only 2 soak, every fight is a dead end.
It encompasses reality (wearing armor seem something anybody trained for can do amazing stuff with it, but not for long), and it provides advantages for those who use magic to create an armor at the begin of a fight and dismiss it at the end.
It rewards player for having virtues which renders fatigue more easy to deal with, etc.
Other than that... there are so many things we changed in our IRL saga to encompasses better play but it seems so linked to our saga than it feels useless to write here.
(After many edits, i'm sorry if i'm not very understandable, i really struggles with the new post little box.)
For me the incongruity of the setting is the biggest issue and I don’t think I’d buy another edition unless the setting changed to make the powerful magic and supernatural realms fully integrated into the lore of the game setting.
I say that respectfully though as I’ve loved the three different editions of Ars I’ve played, much of the changes here are very clever and important tweaks; but don’t represent a big enough change to call it a true new edition.
Wizard and demons walk the earth and have done for thousands of years yet the material presented is served up in a very historic way, which just would not have happened. It’s not fine to just say that folklore is real. Either greatly reduce the power level of all the supernatural realms (which is dull) or make the RAW setting fully reflect high powered creatures and sentient entities.
IDGAD about much of the mechanics around combat it which dice to use, that’s really secondary to the story.
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I take the approach that history worked out the way it did because of wizards and demons walk the Earth. Science and technology are magic that has been refined. The coming plague is a manifestation of the Infernal.