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 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: CHARACTER CREATION 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.

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