Design Notes: the Art of Combat

DESIGN NOTES: THE ART OF COMBAT

The Ars Magica Fourth Edition combat rules were, it Second, physical combat should be dangerous. The must be admitted, broken. They had the consequence rules should encourage people to find ways other than that, the more armor you wore, the more damage you fighting to solve their problems. took. This was, needless to say, not the intention. Third, shield grogs should be useful. They’ve been a Other quirks of the weapon statistics meant that, part of the background since the beginning, but under according to ArM4, the mightiest force on the Fourth Edition rules it was virtually impossible for medieval battlefield was a naked man with a stick. them to protect a magus. Fixing this was up at the top of the list of priorities for ArM5. Finally, the combat rules should be able to handle groups where one player is dealing with three grogs at My initial thought was that this would be one of the easier bits to fix. Just change the statistics for the weapons and armor, and the main silliness goes away. Then, I thought, I could concentrate entirely on the magic system, a much more subtle and complicated part of the rules. I was right about the magic system being more complicated, but wrong about how easy the combat rules would be to fix. The immediate feedback from playtesters was strongly in favor of rather more radical changes to combat. So, I threw away the old combat rules, and started again. Initiative, Attack, Defense, Damage and Soak seemed to be good basic statistics, and would ensure at least some familiarity between editions. After that, I thought about the place of combat in an Ars Magica game. First, physical combat is not the central emphasis of the game; the central emphasis is magic. Thus, the combat system should be quick to use, quicker than ArM4. Further, magic should integrate straight into combat, rather than being relegated to a segment stuck onto the end of the combat round. once, without bogging things down. sive weapons made victory almost inevitable. So the I revised the rules along those lines, and sent them weapon and armor statistics had to be reworked back into playtest. The new rules introduced the con- again. All weapons of the same cost are roughly cept of groups; a small number of fighters working equivalent in power, but they have different strengths together, and controlled by a single player. and weaknesses. More expensive weapons are better, Unfortunately, the first draft meant that a dragon but if you are much more skilled than your opponent, fighting with his five pet mice was functionally you will still probably win. equivalent to six dragons, and the playtesters took At the same time, there were complaints about the great delight in pointing such problems out to me. A lack of rules for unarmed combat, or for trying tricky couple of groups also took the opportunity to com- maneuvers. I added a framework for those, and sent plain vigorously about the fact that, in ArM4, a char- the rules back for playtesting. This time, they only acter could die from six paper cuts. needed minor tweaks. So, I started revising. More restrictions and clarifica- The end result is a combat system that plays, I am tions on groups made them less problematic, while told, much more quickly than ArM4, particularly if making it a major advantage to be part of a group you have more than half a dozen characters on a side. trained to fight as a team. (So train your grogs togeth- Shield grogs are extremely useful to magi, and spell- er!) A completely revised wound system means that if casting is part of the standard combat sequence. you take six paper cuts, you just have six paper cuts. Combat is dangerous, particularly if you botch your Unless one of the wounds becomes infected, you defense roll, but it’s dangerous in the right ways. A aren’t going to die. This also has desirable effects on fully armored knight with a greatsword is a serious damage from spells that do damage continuously over threat; a naked peasant with a stick is not. a duration; if they only do a little damage, they won’t In the next set of design notes, I’ll talk about another kill anyone. one of the central features of Ars Magica — the labo- After another round of playtesting, one group ratory rules. So be sure to check back! revealed, by detailed analysis, that differences in David Chart weapon quality were too large; having more expen- Ars Magica 5th Edition Developer

Copyright 2004 Trident, Inc. d/b/a Atlas Games. All rights reserved. Ars Magica, Mythic Europe, and Covenants are trademarks of Trident, Inc. Order of Hermes, Tremere, and Doissetep are trademarks of White Wolf, Inc. and are used with permission. Illustration by Scott Reeves. DESIGN NOTES: A MAGUS’LABORATORY

The Laboratory rules are one of the central features of They are now potentially much more powerful, and Ars Magica. Certainly, they are one of the features that the talismans of dead magi are likely to be sought- most attracted me to the game, way back when. I did- after treasures. Still, it takes time and vis to make a n’t want to change anything too fundamental here; this really powerful talisman; the main advantage it has is part of the Fourth Edition rules that works well. over other items is that you can get far more powers However, it was also part of the rules that had lots of in one place. different rules jostling for position. The rules for Second, familiars. Simply switching to the standard inventing a spell were different from those for learn- laboratory rules made a big difference here; bond ing a spell, which were different from those for mak- qualities are gone, although the three cords are still ing a potion ... you get the idea. This makes it hard to remember what the rules for a particular activity are. So, the first set of changes was concerned with unify- ing the mechanics. All laboratory activities now work from the Lab Total. There are no exceptions or strange variations. Similarly, any activity that uses a Lab Total now needs a Lab. Similarly, all Lab Texts now work the same way, whether they are texts for spells or enchanted devices. Learning spells is now more a mat- ter of reinventing them based on someone else’s notes, although the rules for doing so are still much the same as before. Since enchanted item Lab Texts work the same way, they are much more useful than they were in earlier editions, and characters might actually want to take the trouble to use them now. The change to item Lab Texts fitted into the second set of changes. The laboratory activities described in the core rules should all be appealing, and accessible, to young magi, since most player characters are young magi. This required major changes in two areas. First, talismans. While nice in principle, these never really seemed worth the bother in earlier editions. there. In addition, you can improve the bond, in all devices are basically identical to the rules in ArM4; respects, over time, so there is no reason not to bind those were rules that worked well, and there was no your familiar when you are a fairly young magus. need to change them. Unless, I suppose, you want to bind a dragon; that In the next set of design notes, I’ll talk about two ele- would be quite hard. ments of character generation that I knew had to be The final set of changes was simply concerned with addressed in the revision: Virtues and Flaws, and the cleaning up presentation and fixing minor glitches in mismatch between character generation and charac- the rules. After five rounds of playtest, I think it’s ters developed in play. So be sure to check back! much clearer what the laboratory rules are, now. Still, David Chart the rules for inventing spells and creating enchanted Ars Magica 5th Edition Developer

There were two main issues with character creation ing the player define the character. After a few rounds that had to be addressed in the revision. The first was of clarification with the playtesters, I made it explicit Virtues and Flaws; what they should cost, and how that these Flaws were only supposed to come up once they should be organized. The second was the mis- every ten sessions or so for a given character. match between character generation and characters Roughly speaking, one Story Flaw would come up developed in play. per session, or per story, so the precise frequency The solution to the first ended up as a fairly radical depends on the number of characters. Thus, these overhaul. I quickly realized that there was no way to Flaws don’t really disadvantage the character at all; accurately grade Virtues and Flaws on a six or seven they just make the storyguide’s job easier, as he point scale, especially given the varying importance knows how to get that character involved in a story. of different Virtues in different sagas. Instead, I con- solidated them into two groups, Major and Minor. This is a much easier distinction to make, although there are, of course, still borderline cases. However, with only one borderline instead of five or six, things are much easier. Further, most Major Virtues are Major whatever the saga style, and similarly most Minor Virtues are Minor. It also makes the arithmetic of character creation rather easier. The other change concerned Flaws dealing with per- sonality and story. These have always bothered me; story-producing flaws are a good thing to have, sure- ly, and all characters should have a well-defined per- sonality. However, if the storyguide tries to make these flaws into disadvantages, you end up with one character dominating the saga, or a character with flaws that never come into play. Neither of these are good. Thus, I changed the way I was looking at those Flaws. Suppose that they were designed to give the storyguide ways to get characters involved in a story. Then, they’d be useful to storyguides as well as help- Then I made them all Major Flaws, unless they had time, and have them look more or less the same as some attached advantage, in which case they were magi advanced in play. Under ArM4 it was impossi- only Minor. This makes them a really good deal for ble to generate advanced magi using the character player characters, and makes it very likely that all generation rules, and companions generated that way magi will have such a Flaw. (Normally, character are were significantly weaker than those created in play. only allowed one, because more would lead to a sin- In ArM5, the character generation rules cover magi of gle character being central in too many stories.) This any age, and magi and companions created that way gives the storyguide a useful hook by which to drag seem to match those generated by going through all magi out of their sancta and into adventures; if you the seasons. It still takes a while to generate a magus took the Flaw, you can’t refuse to follow the adven- over 100 years old, but it’s much, much faster than it ture hook when it’s dangled in front of you, because was under ArM4. And these rules define what elder you have decided that your character will drop every- magi will look like in all ArM5 supplements, so final- thing to deal with this issue. ly the game will have a consistent base power level. As a result, ArM5 characters tend to have a very dif- In the next set of design notes, I’ll talk about the heart ferent mix of Virtues and Flaws from characters gen- of Ars Magica, it’s magic system. The spell guidelines erated under Fourth Edition. define what all the numbers in the magic system The second problem was much simpler in principle, mean, so mistakes and problems here can have very but quite hard in practice. The results of character wide-ranging consequences. So be sure to check generation should be very close to the results of play- back! ing a character through every season of his life. Thus, David Chart the character generation rules should allow you to Ars Magica 5th Edition Developer generate experienced magi, in a reasonable amount of

I always knew that revising the spell guidelines and Target for different Art combinations. Further, would be an important part of the new edition. They some Arts, such as Auram, just didn’t fit the old sys- are, after all, the heart of Ars Magica. The spell tem very well, and whole classes of spells, most guidelines define what all the numbers in the magic notably wards and magical senses, seemed to be con- system mean, so mistakes and problems here can stant exceptions. Finally, the playtesters, by going on have very wide-ranging consequences. Further, the about it repeatedly, convinced me that it should be existence, and importance, of spontaneous magic harder to affect larger targets, in most cases. means that they have to be quick and easy to use, At one point during the revision process I recruited a while still being comprehensive enough to cover the small group of playtesters and threw completely dif- vast range of effects possible with Hermetic Magic. ferent ideas for revising the spell system at them at a There were a number of known problems with the rate of one every other day. After a couple of weeks, I ArM4 guidelines. The most glaring issue was that settled on one of the less radical proposals, to mini- invisibility was far too easy. This was an easy prob- mize the change for experienced players. After a lem to fix. Other problems were not so easy to han- quick check with a playtester outside the initial group, dle. One was the “level shaving” problem, for exam- to make sure it was comprehensible, this revision was ple. Under ArM4 it was often possible to reduce the included in the last few rounds of the playtest. Range, Duration, or even Target of a spell, and then All Technique and Form combinations now have the get a very powerful spell at very low level. Another same base Range, Duration, and Target, and all are problem was the wide range of base Range, Duration, based on the lowest available level in each category. One thing that won’t look familiar, but which I think Thus, creating a spell from scratch only involves will be very useful, is the design breakdown. Every counting up, now. Magical sense spells have their spell lists, at the end of the description, the base level own target categories, based on the kind of sense for the spell, and the magnitude adjustments applied that they grant, and wards have been substantially for Range, Duration, Target, size, and any other rea- clarified. son, to reach the final level. These were originally There are now five levels of each of Range, Duration, included to make it easier for playtesters to check my and Target, with additional level modifications if the arithmetic, and make sure that all the spells were at target is larger than normal for the Form in question. the right level. However, they were so popular that This has meant rewriting spells that used categories they are now part of the line style, and all future that no longer exist, and a few spells have been delet- spells and enchanted items will include them. You ed because they no longer made sense, given the new should get to see the first examples in characters from guidelines. On the other hand, a few new spells have Semita Errabunda, in the near future. been added, to make use of particular features of the Overall, then, the new spell guidelines are more con- new guidelines. Quite a lot of spells have changed sistent, easier to use, and more clearly presented than level, sometimes because they were too easy or diffi- previous versions. Which should make games of Ars cult before, and sometimes because they had simply Magica flow even more smoothly than they did in the been added up wrong for ArM4. Some spells have past. even changed Arts, as ArM5 has clarified exactly That’s it for the Ars Magica 5th Edition design notes, what you can do with the various Arts, and as a result but I hope you’ve enjoyed them and gotten a taste for some spells were found to be in the wrong place. what the new edition of the game has to offer! Most of the ArM5 spells will still look very familiar to old hands, though. David Chart Ars Magica 5th Edition Developer