My players are rather accepting of the limitations of the magic system, so I haven't yet had someone ask, 'If I can always hit, can I just Pilum of Fire his eyeballs? Maybe bonus damage, maybe blind him?" The closest I've actually had is a player asking if he could deliberately Pilum of Fire the town guards' spears so he won't feel bad about hurting them.
I like having less dice to roll, but I also feel there needs to be a worthy common ground between the wound penalties never mattering for spells, or becoming crippling quickly.
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Did you allow it? Presumably casting PoF on an unattended spear would be considered perfectly allowable, but I am uncertain what to think about a spear held in someone's hand.
Game mechanics are an approximation of real life, and will never be perfect. When you have an in game situation where a player leaves his foot in scalding water for 2 minutes, then I'll be more willing to accept the criticism.
Many magi have a -1 or -2 strength. A 6 year old, who when fully grown will have a +3 strength would beat an adult in an arm wrestle. That's ridiculous too. I could keep going with how rules due to being an abstraction, create a poor result.
Let's see what happens if wound penalties don't apply to magic damage. A fire mage keeps throwing pilums doing heavy wounds but never rolling 1, so doesn't kill.
Then a 6 year old throws a knife at the guy with the -25 wound penalty caused by the pilums, and the thrown knife kills him. I accept this is a cheesy example, however, a normal grog can do the killing strike, which seems strange, when what seems clearly more damaging, a searing blast of fire, can not without exceptional luck.
I honestly believes it's clear the rules expect wound penalties to affect these damage rolls, but even if people think they aren't clear, having hard core damage spells not being able to kill a heavily wounded person, but a paper cut can be a finisher, is a poor result.
I allowed a Finesse roll. A failure indicated that he hits the person wielding it instead. His botch hit the guard captain in the head, so that was a mess that caused him to be hunted through a few cities.
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I showed above how situations like this aren't really as extreme as several of you claim.
First scenario:
6-year-old via Apprentices:
At this age there is a -4 to Dex and a -4 to Str. Let's say this child grows toward Dex +2 and Str +2.
At this age there is a maximum of 15 points (everything available) put into Thrown Weapon, which with Puissant and specialty give 2+2+1.
The thrown knife itself give Atk +1 and Dmg +2.
That gives a maximum of 3+10+roll=13+roll Attack Advantage, which gives a wound based on 13-Soak+roll.
Pilum:
The wound is based on 15-Soak+roll-roll.
So the child built for this purpose has slightly better odds (roll-2 ahead) than the mage who put no more effort into learning combat stuff than picking up a single standard spell. But the odds are not much better, so it's not like you need exceptional luck in one case and not the other.
Second, more likely, scenario:
Grog:
Let's make the grog pretty good, toward the top end: Dex +2, Str +2, Affinity/Puissant Single Weapon for 8+2+1 with a long sword (Atk +4, Dam +6).
That yields a maximum Attack Advantage of 27+roll. The wound is then based off of 35-Soak+roll.
Magus:
Let's make the magus an actual combat magus, also on the strong end of a starting character. BoAF with Mastery 3, including Multiple Casting.
That results in 4 wounds based off of 30-Soak+roll-roll.
So the grog is ahead with the roll on average, while the magus gets to roll at 4x the rate. Against Arkliss (RoP:M) we have 23+roll to hit 21 v. 18+roll-roll four times to hit 21. Both will kill Arkliss in a round, most likely. We need to look at something much tougher to be in the "exceptional luck" realm. Against Polymathes (RoP:M)? We have 11+roll to hit 49 v. 6+roll-roll four times to hit 49. Now we're talking. What are their odds? The grog is more straightforward, needing to roll 38, which kicks in at 2x2x10 or 2x2x2x5 or 2x2x2x2x3 or anything with more 2x. So the grog's odds are 0.00169. The magus, with two rolls, is a pain so I'm going to ballpark it. With each ball the odds are a little better than 0.00049, which gives odds of roughly 0.00196 in that round. So the magus is more likely to slay Polymathes at this point.
So, what if we apply Wound Penalty to Soak? Well, putting your foot in ice water for a couple minutes is deadly. Is that better than the above two results, which disagree with multiple peoples' the statements about the grog's much better odds?
A better solution is one that I first saw from Marko: give a Mastery option that adds to damage. I think his was +3 each time you took it. Now with Mastery 3 you might have +6 to damage four times in a round, which swings the odds in the magus's favor much more strongly (about 0.00232 v. the grog's 0.00169). Or use this idea of a weak spot and let Finesse help, as suggested above; that's better, too.
I keep seeing suggestions that all of the real world's athletes should be dead for having had a bag of ice on their body would be more realistic than the current rules. Meanwhile, no one has given an example where the current rules are actually so far off as they claim.
We seem to be coming at this from different angles.
The thematic angle is critical. Magi are meant to be the central characters. It's Ars Majica, not Ars Thumpica. Let's say a mage has thrown 6 pilums and due to not hitting that good luck die roll, has not killed. He decides "stuff this" and walks up and punches the guy and has a much better chance to kill. Thematically thas is flawed.
I'll go into the realism argument though. You've cherry picked peculiar situations. Environmental and magic damage will rarely be isolated to one location. Someone in a burning building, someone in cold so extreme to cause frostbite, etc, it is rarely limited to one location.
A wood fire is +5 damage. To kill an average person requires a +21 result. Let's assume a 5 soak roll to make it simple. So we need a roll of 21. Over 100 rolls on average. I'm being kind and accepting after the two 1s, the next roll is 6+. While turns are deliberately vague, if I'm being kind and deciding a turn is short, 6 seconds, you are saying a person can just lie in a decent sized wood fire and it will take 10 minutes for them to die. Seems unrealistic.
In those extremely rare occasions where the damage is limited to one non critical location, an SG can do a home rule. Say the wound penalties can't be more than heavy, and even say once the wound penalties add up to -5, a heavy wound is considered to be received, and that's it, or any other house rule to deal with the peculiar situation.
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Sure, except your "much better chance" just isn't true at all. So that thematic flaw just doesn't exist.
But I'm not really cherry-picking. I'm just giving one of many examples of how ridiculous it is. Let's take a polar-bear plunge, for example. That starts at +4 damage. Odds are better you'll take a Medium Wound in round 1 than no Wound at all. Round 2, now you're most likely at -4. Applying Wound Penalties to Soak, you've got maybe 30 seconds to live once you hit that water; unless you can make it into a warm environment sooner (and note that you have to get there even faster since you'll be Incapacitated sooner). Almost everyone who does a polar-bear plunge dies, right?
How many more examples do you want? As I said, I'm really not cherry-picking.
Except that you're using the mechanics totally wrong! Lying in that wood fire does +20 damage. Almost a 50-50 chance you die on the first round, average death around 12 s. 12 s =/= 10 minutes. You're off by a factor of 100.
This demonstrates just what I'm saying. I keep seeing that people who say the current system is so terrible without applying Wound Penalties to Soak rolls are making mathematical errors to arrive at their conclusions.
PS: Rounds really aren't that vague. They're repeatedly stated as about 6 s. This has come up a few times recently, and I've posted a bunch of quotes out of multiple books that all agree on this.
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This is the 2nd time I haven't read close enough. I got a history one wrong too. I played years ago and have only just got back in to it, so I should do my homework better. Complete immersion * 4. Rolling in the fire is a quick death.
I first seriously thought about the damage system when we may have had a need to fight a +4 size creature. That's a +37 to kill. For a big monster, I'd assume a +6 or more soak. Needing a +28 on an opposed die roll for someone throwing Pilums is hard. Having blast after blast slowing wearing the monster down so a final spell killed or incapacitated seemed logical.
That's probably why you're off on rounds, too. They've made them much more specific, though still very slightly vague, in 5th. I can very quickly get you half a dozen quotes on this from the core book, Lords of Men, and Magi of Hermes. I haven't even bothered to check most the books as I'd already hit so many quotes.
Yup. But needing about the same with a punch really isn't much more likely.
And this is where we just let the SG hand wave stuff for a better story, and everyone accepts that it's reasonable and moves on.
honestly it seems to me there are a lot more rules needed, depending on type of damage- Re type damage (hitting someone with a magically controlled object) should not have any real difference aside from parma from a physically wielded object- so there should be an attack advantage and a defense allowed, and possibly a bonus to attack for extra levels of magnitude. Fire shouldn't gain any bonus from wound penalties but should probably have a chance to cause fatigue damage in addition, as well as not allowing a defense and bypassing armor soak...
Perhaps a simple solution might be to add Finesse to spell damage. Or perhaps Penetration (just because Finesse is already useful enough).
the problem I that there is already a simple solution- it just doesn't makes sense, and what does make sense difference depending on what type of attack you are making, because fire and sword do different things.
I had preferred that interpretation and had played that way until it was stated which way was intended. Not only do I prefer the similarity you mention, but I also like that using Attack Advantage requires one fewer roll on both offense and defense.
And, as Mastery can boost Finesse for such an attack, you're even more likely to kill via magic this way than via a grog in the scenarios above.
I think you can bypass Protection by heating a Target rather than creating a fire next to a target, and that heating should bypass Protection just like cooling does. Of course, magical beasts rarely have much Protection, while people tend to have a lot of their Soak come from Protection.
From what I can see, there seems to be 2 sort of views of how the wound penalties act in a thematic sense.
One, you've got the heavily wounded fighter, swaying from side to side from the pain, falling to his knees and struggling back up, raising his sword in a weak parry, then he makes a pathetic desperate attack, misses, falls on his face and is beheaded. The wound penalties makes a coup de grace easier.
Two, the wound penalties have weakened him so much, another wound which might be a light wound in usual circumstances, combined with the sheer weight of blood loss and wounds does the job. No need for the beheading, a stab, it's over.
The coup de grace option means applying wound penalties to attacks and damage which don't involve some kind of active defence, doesn't makes sense. My personal opinion is option 2, the last wound being the tipping point is the better choice. Which means I'm in favour of wound penalties applying to the soak roll. The rules tend to support that also.
Working through some examples (and reading certain parts of the rules again) I've come to the conclusion the damage system works most of the time. It does seem to need some SG hand waving to fix things like the polar swim, and not overly deadly environment exposure.
I'm more comfortable with a SG cludge to get around the way mid term environmental effects work, than the consequence of not adding wound penalties for soak rolls.
The rules tend to support that also.
They do not. They explicitly state the opposite of what you favor.
Ars Magica Core rules, page 178 There is no maximum limit to a character’s Wound Penalty, and characters cannot die immediately from non-fatal wounds, no matter how many there are.
Did we already have this argument: If you do not defend/dodge the PoF, then your Defense score is 0 + modifiers (in which I would include wound penalties)? Attack Score - Defense Score + Damage vs. Soak. Interpretation: the PoF is automagically guided to its most potent effect.
In other words, you don't get an automatic Attack advantage of 0 just by choosing not to defend/dodge. Even for +X damage spells as long as they act through "physical" means.
You are confusing combat and magic, and how they are handled and Pilum of Fire cannot be dodged. There is no attack score, there is no defense score. Review page 181, under the subheading "Injuries" where magical attacks are described.
Damage=Damage Bonus + Stress die
Soak=Soak subtotal+Stress die
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No, not quite. If you're totally unable to protect yourself (e.g. tied up, paralyzed, and so on... such as so wounded you can't protect yourself), you have a fixed -10 with no die roll.
And that's aside from the whole issue Jonathan pointed out with how you deal with PoF and similar spells that use non-combat damage methods instead.
The rules support wound penalties affecting the soak roll. On Page 178.
"The character suffers a penalty to all actions (rolls and totals) equal to the sum of all penalties due to his wounds, ".
The word "all" seems clear.
Page 179
"Recovery rolls do not suffer from the Wound Penalty."
Considering it specifically states would penalties don't apply, on page 181 where it covers magic damage, as there's no mention of wound penalties not applying, the "all" word used on page 178 should apply.
"Non-combat sources of injury have a damage bonus, which is added to a stress die to determine the amount of damage done.Typically such a roll would have only one botch die, and a botch would mean no damage done. In most cases, only the bonus is written, so a fire might be described as Bonfire (+10), which means that it does a stress die + 10 damage.Soak against other sources of injury is calculated by adding a stress die to Soak. In some cases, such as immersion in boiling water, armor may provide no protection, at the storyguide’s option.These rules are also used for calculating damage inflicted by spells.
NON-COMBAT DAMAGE TOTAL: Damage Bonus + Stress Die
NON-COMBAT SOAK TOTAL: Soak Total + Stress Die.
I had to think about this a bit as to why it would be relevant. Is your point that "the last wound is the tipping point" is equivalent to saying "the last wound wasn't actually a fatal wound, but the sheer accumulated wound penalties killed him"?
I think you've got to assume that the damage rolls are done less frequently than every 6s in this scenario whichever damage approach you take. Otherwise you're still accumulating (say) a -1 to your wound penalty total every 6s, which means that after a minute you're at -10 and probably unable to swim. Even if you survive that, you're going to be useless for at least a week whilst you wait for your wounds to heal.