[Ars Magica 5] OOC: It's PeIm for darkness, not PeCo

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 2:13 pm

What are your thoughts on the Rusticani? The close relationship with mundanes seems to fit with my idea of covenant patronage, and the crafty things all seem to fit. Was there a specific reason you didn't recommend them?

It skipped my mind. There's a lot of stuff in Ex Miscellanea that I've never really delved into in a game. Rusticani are pretty cool though, and I'm a big fan of weird little local Ex Misc groups generally.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 2:15 pm

Cool, then. That's currently top of my list, I think. Just making sure there wasn't some awful debilitating factor I'd missed, or that Craft Magic wasn't completely useless, or whatever.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 2:20 pm

I make no promises about Rusticani due to never having seen them in play. I've heard people online bitching about how "Rusticani are so good they make Verditius useless" and about "Rusticani are a waste of time" but you can go anywhere online and hear that about anything, so I remain unswayed by it.

I'll take a look when I get time.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 4:50 pm

I wanna make sure I get all this. I'm using the Rego Ease Factor rules on Societates p60 to adjust the required levels given on City and Guild p67, using the times given on City and Guild 68.

Say I wanted to make a fabric outfit. The Rego Herbam guidelines put "Weave thread into a tunic" at 15. I'm not sure how to adjust that for raw plant fibers instead of thread. Creo Herbam lists "Create a plant product" at 1 and "Create a processed plant product" at 2, so I'll treat it as +1 magnitude. This gives me ReHe 20 (+1 Touch, +0 Momentary, +0 Circle) = ReHe 25. (I figure there's nothing keeping me from piling all the cotton or linen or whatever in a pile and drawing a circle around it; if I don't have time for that, I won't be casting this spell).

So I have to make Rego+Herbam+Stamina+1d10 vs 25 - pretty straightforward. Then I have to make the Finesse roll.

This is where things get a bit funky. The times given are for craftsmen with Craft Ability 5, and others are proportional. That is, with Craft Ability 1 you make things in 5x the time, with Craft Ability 0 you take forever. That last bit is important, because I'm thinking you aren't expected to have Craft to do things with ReHe, so there should be something else to use to determine time. I presume we just work with the base of 5 and time modifications are made by increasing the difficulty of the Finesse roll per Societates. This gives us a base time for the garment of 2.25 days. The Finesse roll to do this all at once is thus the mundane craftsman's Ease Factor +3(Base Magic Adjustment) +3(To do what the craftsman could do in a month). Assuming we're making a Standard outfit, that means a roll of Finesse+Intelligence+1d10 vs 12.

Is that correct?

If so, how much of that is a rigid part of the spell, since 25 is a bit much for Spontaneous casting? "Turn plants into clothes"? "Turn cotton bales into a dress"? "Turn cotton bales into a Standard-quality dress with pleats in front"?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:02 pm

On the other hand, even if the crafting is "very unnatural", as opposed to "natural" or "slightly unnatural", none of which terms I understand, crafting metal objects is only 10 (5 +1 Touch) and stone is only 5 (4 +1 Touch) so I don't have to worry about formulaic definitions there, probably.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:04 pm

I'd be down for playing Ars Magica.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:17 pm

There's a Rusticani weaver mage in Magi of Hermes, who has a bunch of similar effects.

The Clothier's Craft Done In An Instant is one of her spells. ReHe, base 3 (if starting with cloth) or 5 (if starting with raw fibers) +1 touch. So, level 4 or 10. Finesse EF 9 for standard quality clothes.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:31 pm

Well that neatly fucks every single one of my calculations. Why's it only 3? How'd it get calculated to be a day's work? And while we're at it, what the hell is the point of a spell that makes wool that lasts 2.25 days?

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:50 pm

Leartes since the core rule book allows a Major Magical Focus in "Damage" i.e. direct damage, would you allow a MMF in "Indirect Damage"? It would allow me to build a Rego specialist who throws things at his target or even just throws the target itself.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 6:01 pm

momothefiddler wrote:Well that neatly fucks every single one of my calculations. Why's it only 3? How'd it get calculated to be a day's work?

Huh, so the spell claims to use the guidelines from Covenants, and the base 3 is 'manipulate items made of plant products,' while the base 5 is 'treat and process items made of plant products.' But it looks like the person who wrote up Julia didn't see the follow-up: for greater complexity add one or two magnitudes e.g. base 15 might be used to weave thread into a tunic.

Now, Julia doesn't care because she has some sort of spider-faerie heritage that lets her turn raw materials into cloth independently. And once the cloth is woven, turning it into a garment probably is only base 3 because the weaving is by far the most complicated part of that. But absent that or some other bypass method, yes, it's a deal harder than that write-up makes it.

what the hell is the point of a spell that makes wool that lasts 2.25 days?

What?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 6:09 pm

Hm. So I could probably pull off a spontaneous spell to weave it and then another to tailor it, thus avoiding the need for formulae. Maybe one to spin and one to weave.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:What?

Shearing the Unseen Sheep has a duration of Sun and creates wool that she ostensibly uses to magically craft further. Normally that would last 0.5 days, but her Enduring Magic virtue multiplies that by 1d10, average 5.5. So it's 2.75 days, sorry. Point is, the wool goes away way too fast to be useful.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 6:18 pm

Yeah, that is weird, unless she's doing the Cinderella very-short-term-rental thing. It would make a lot more sense if it were duration Moon, which would avoid the need to spend vis, but still make wool that lasted a fair percentage of its expected durability anyway.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 6:26 pm

Regarding weaving:

The guidelines in City and Guild are there for mundane craftsmen. Use the ones in Covenants for magical craftsmen. The two systems don't quite work together, sadly.

Let's work through this with the base book first:

Rego Herbam guidelines, p138: "Control an amount of wood", where wood stands in for any other plant material. Level 3. Weaving something is simply a matter of controlling it, so it doesn't need to be unnatural in any way.

(By contrast, unnatural would be if you're doing something that could not be done naturally by a craftsman. For example, creating the cloth in loops in such a way that it would be topologically impossible to spin would be unnatural. However, we're not doing that here.)

Since it's not your own body that you're weaving, you need to add a magnitude to get it from Range: Self to Range: Touch. Duration: Momentary and Target: Individual are probably both fine. This gives a final magnitude of 4, which is what the Mages of Hermes book says.

On p51 of Covenants, it expands on this to add a new guideline: "Treat and process items made of plant products", level 5. This will enable you to weave it from raw flax instead of from thread. Adding +1 magnitude to get it to Touch makes it a final level of 10.

p49 of Covenants is something that you'll be very interested in when doing craft magic: it's got a breakdown, step by step, of how to do it. More importantly, it has the Finesse guidelines. It tells us that "doing a day's work in an instant is just 'normal magic'", requiring no Finesse penalty, and weaving cloth is an Easy task for a weaver, making it a final Finesse Ease Factor of 9.

Does that make sense?

Laertes since the core rule book allows a Major Magical Focus in "Damage" i.e. direct damage, would you allow a MMF in "Indirect Damage"? It would allow me to build a Rego specialist who throws things at his target or even just throws the target itself.

Yes, I'll allow that. However, I'm going to be pretty strict about it not applying to general telekinesis spells which can be used for damage but can also be used more generally. When you're using the spell offensively the focus will count, when you're using the spell for other uses it won't count, and in the lab the focus won't count either.

If that's okay, then you're welcome to take it. With two Rego magi it could turn out a pretty synergistic covenant.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 6:29 pm

Shearing the Unseen Sheep has a duration of Sun and creates wool that she ostensibly uses to magically craft further. Normally that would last 0.5 days, but her Enduring Magic virtue multiplies that by 1d10, average 5.5. So it's 2.75 days, sorry. Point is, the wool goes away way too fast to be useful.

I think angel's right and this is, most likely, a Cinderella spell: it lasts just long enough for you to sell it, and then you move on. (This is a good way to get a really bad reputation.)

I'd be down for playing Ars Magica.

You'd be very welcome. Have you played Ars Magica before? What sort of thing are you interested in?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 7:14 pm

Without using City and Guild, how do I find out what "a day's work", "a month's work", "a season's work", and "a year's work" mean? I can't find such definitions in Covenants.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Thu Jun 05, 2014 7:15 pm

Laertes wrote:
Laertes since the core rule book allows a Major Magical Focus in "Damage" i.e. direct damage, would you allow a MMF in "Indirect Damage"? It would allow me to build a Rego specialist who throws things at his target or even just throws the target itself.
Yes, I'll allow that. However, I'm going to be pretty strict about it not applying to general telekinesis spells which can be used for damage but can also be used more generally. When you're using the spell offensively the focus will count, when you're using the spell for other uses it won't count, and in the lab the focus won't count either.

If that's okay, then you're welcome to take it. With two Rego magi it could turn out a pretty synergistic covenant.

My understanding of the virtue is that it always applies to related lab activities - that's part of the point of taking the virtue. Why wouldn't it apply in the lab when inventing or learning indirect damage spells?

Another tack might be for the PC to have spells that specifically attack spells, not just generic telekinesis?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 8:36 pm

Without using City and Guild, how do I find out what "a day's work", "a month's work", "a season's work", and "a year's work" mean? I can't find such definitions in Covenants.

Your Finesse would govern the quality of the final goods, not the speed with which you make them.

The time taken to make them and volume of them would be determined by the City and Guild guideline for a person with an Ability of 5, since that's the amount that "a day's work" would be relative to.

If you wanted to make more, you can always boost the spell up to Group. 2 magnitudes to produce ten times as much volume.

My understanding of the virtue is that it always applies to related lab activities - that's part of the point of taking the virtue. Why wouldn't it apply in the lab when inventing or learning indirect damage spells?

Another tack might be for the PC to have spells that specifically attack spells, not just generic telekinesis?

I agree. Perhaps if we explicitly make it apply only to explicitly damaging indirect spells? The problem I'm seeing is that the category of "Rego spells that can potentially be used to do damage" is just too broad for even a Major Focus.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:09 am

Explicitly indirect damage is fine. Stuff like throwing a tree or rocks or people etc

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:19 am

I've never actually played Ars, but I read through most all of 4th for ideas for an urban fantasy heartbreaker, so I have a basic idea of the system.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 5:34 am

Explicitly indirect damage is fine. Stuff like throwing a tree or rocks or people etc

So long as we agree that you wouldn't then get the lab bonus for general telekinetic Rego spells that could be used for damage, I'm fine with that.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Fri Jun 06, 2014 5:55 am

Laertes wrote:
Explicitly indirect damage is fine. Stuff like throwing a tree or rocks or people etc
So long as we agree that you wouldn't then get the lab bonus for general telekinetic Rego spells that could be used for damage, I'm fine with that.

I agree!

Now, that said, what are you actual ideas for the covenant setup and boons/hooks?

I've always been partial to being part of the OoH hit squad that deals with unpalatable problems that Order would like to think don't exist.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:58 am

So. The following is a worked example to momothefiddler, because it occurs to me that his very first example of how Ars Magica works should be made as clear as possible. It's very long so I've spoilered it.

As we've seen, a level 4 spell can weave a day's worth of cloth in an instant. Since there are 6000 combat rounds in a ten-hour workday, we can see that you can do 6000 days' worth of weaving in a day. That's approximately twenty full years, or 80 seasons. Since the average craftsman in Ars Magica works two seasons a year, this gives us a result that in one day, you could do more or less an entire lifetime's worth of weaving.

S John Ross's excellent Medieval Demographics Made Easy essay tells us that weavers are approximately 1 in every 600 people. Adjust this number sharply down for urbanised places like Flanders or Lombardia, and up for wild places like Ruthenia or Ireland.

In other words, doing 6000 days worth of work in one day is the same as putting 6000 weavers out of work for that day, which is the same as you doing the weaving for a population of 3.6 million people. Which is like half of France or three times England. If you do that work every day, you would put them out of work permanently.

Magic is awesome, and mass production wrecks industries.

However, you're limited by the same two factors that limit real industrialisation: raw materials, and markets. While we don't know those numbers, we can assume that the amount of thread woven is equal to the amount grown, and that the amount woven is equal to the amount sold. Therefore, if you were a full time mass-production mage, you would need to dominate both the selling and buying markets of a mid-sized nation. Which is a real thing and it's called being a merchant prince and the issue with that is that you're competing against other merchant princes, and that can get sticky very quickly.

Which is a cool story hook for a campaign, actually, now that I think of it.

At this point HTH or another experienced player will jump in and say that "you wouldn't do this since it leaves you no time for study." And he'd be right. That's why you wouldn't do this yourself: you'd enchant an item and give it to a grog with good Finesse. You might even enchant additional items if you wanted your covenant to be a manufacturing centre in line with the great cities of Flanders or Lombardy. The grog with a wand doesn't even have to live at the covenant; you could put him at a transport hub to make it all easier. But then it raises the question of how much you trust him not to decide to become a merchant prince in his own right instead.

If you wanted to go down that road, you could probably just make such a wand and sell it to an existing merchant prince for enough cash to pay for your lab and living expenses for multiple decades. Which isn't bad for a single season's work, and is what Verditius magi do, but isn't really what I imagine you wanted to do as a craft mage.

Making it yourself would also bring up the matter of Hermetic law. You see, if you start using magic to become a merchant prince, the other merchant princes won't just stand by. They'll go and get magicians of their own. In fact, within a few years any merchant prince without a magician will be obsolete and unable to compete. This causes a magical arms race between mundane factions, and means that over time nobody gets any lab work done because the mundane lords want the magi to be working for them instead. This has happened before and will happen again, usually between rival kings, and it's always messy, and it's why if you interfere in a meaningful way in the mundane balance of power, the Order of Hermes will put you to death.

So what can you do?

You can do what most covenants do: make enough to pay your bills, turn your covenant into a post-scarcity paradise, and spend your time doing interesting projects that don't just duplicate the work of a large number of mundanes.

Many new players to Ars Magica, especially if they came from D&D, are amazed by the fact that Ars Magica takes the gloves off magicians. It doesn't molly-coddle them or try to restrict them to only doing stuff that's in line with their mundane partymates. A single magus can do horrible things with the intelligent application of even a low level spell. Wiping out armies, destabilising countries, assassinating kings: yes, if you want to, you can.

That isn't what the fun of Ars Magica is about. The fun part is about asking "what happened then?" Actions have consequences, and the world is a place which is full of people who will react to events, either rationally or irrationally. For example if you killed the King of France you wouldn't become the king, that's not how being king works. The next king would go and get a magician of his own to defend himself, and then would make a point of having you publicly wiped out because that's what happens to regicides.

In short: Ars Magica isn't about dungeon crawls and level appropriate monsters. It's about a world and the people who live in it. It isn't about having power: it's about examining what you do with it.

Which to my mind, is a much better roleplaying experience than most, because you can tell me that your character is Lawful Good until you're blue in the face, but actually watching how they handle power and what they do with it is where the test of morality actually lies.

Short answer: How much cloth can I weave in a season? Enough to provide all the cloth that 3.6 million people need, if you get enough thread.

Oh yeah, and historically most cloth was woollen, not plant fibre, because cotton wasn't climate-appropriate for Christendom. So it would be Animal rather than Herbam. But that's nitpicking.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 8:27 am

Heaven's Thunder Hammer wrote:
Laertes wrote:
Explicitly indirect damage is fine. Stuff like throwing a tree or rocks or people etc
So long as we agree that you wouldn't then get the lab bonus for general telekinetic Rego spells that could be used for damage, I'm fine with that.
I agree!

Now, that said, what are you actual ideas for the covenant setup and boons/hooks?

I've always been partial to being part of the OoH hit squad that deals with unpalatable problems that Order would like to think don't exist.

That hit squad would have to be pretty high level, because some of those threats (Muspelli, rogue Adulterations, Diedne, diabolists) are fairly badass. However, I could definitely see the fun in that.

Momothefiddler mentioned that he's interested in a Spring covenant setup, and since he instigated this campaign I kind of feel that I owe it to him to run that sort of game. Here's two ideas I had.

Beyond the Borders

Deep in the endless grasslands of Ruthenia near the Cuman border, civilisation is a difficult matter. Magic runs high and monsters abound, but mundane resources are few and far between. The locals live as nomads on the fertile black soil, tending their herds and avoiding threats.

The local king has approached the Order with a proposition: he wants a secure anchor point, a fortification to shore up his boundaries and act as a seed for development. If they can give him that, then they're welcome to any magical resources they can harvest from the endless steppe.

We've Been Here Before

When the hell-rift opened under the cathedral and the local villagers rallied to resist the forces of Satan, nobody thought to contact the wizards. After all, to most people there's little difference between a magus and a demon worshipper anyway, and right then they needed reliable help. So they called the Poor Knights Fellow Soldier of Christ, better known as the Templars.

The templars, on the other hand? they called the magi as soon as it became apparent what had happened wasn't a one-off and that this was a permanent thing.

See, the problem is that necromancers and diabolists constantly want to get in, which makes it harder to keep demons out. Which in turn means you need a permanent presence. Enter the Order of Hermes. After all, building underground labyrinths full of monsters and with locked doors to keep adventurers out can't be that hard, can it?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:03 am

Thanks for the worked example.

Laertes wrote:You can do what most covenants do: make enough to pay your bills, turn your covenant into a post-scarcity paradise, and spend your time doing interesting projects that don't just duplicate the work of a large number of mundanes.

Sounds good to me!

Well, I feel like a low-powered, starting-out sort of thing would be easier on new players, which most of us are, but I don't think one person overruling everyone else at game start is a good way to make a pleasant campaign, so I'd rather my preferences be ranked equivalently to everyone else's.

That said, both of those look cool, but Beyond the Borders seems significantly more so. Magus: The Homesteading.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:30 am

Mask_de_H wrote:I've never actually played Ars, but I read through most all of 4th for ideas for an urban fantasy heartbreaker, so I have a basic idea of the system.

Cool. We'll be running this under 5th, which is better in every way, except possibly the combat system where both of them are far too crunchy and slow and it's difficult to say which is better. You'd be very welcome.

Notably for people coming over from 4th, Concentration is no longer the "win the game" button.

Well, I feel like a low-powered, starting-out sort of thing would be easier on new players, which most of us are, but I don't think one person overruling everyone else at game start is a good way to make a pleasant campaign, so I'd rather my preferences be ranked equivalently to everyone else's.

I agree. However, getting an established player to enjoy a Spring start is easy, but getting a new player to not be terrified by a complex high-level start is much, much harder, which means you have to lean towards the newbies in order to be fair. It's a newbie-friendly game and that's what I'm aiming at.

I get the sense that momothefiddler is into magitech worldbuilding, judging from his thread about Pathfinger magic items in a town, whereas HTH seems to be more into monster hunting and adventuring. That's fine, we'll be doing plenty of both, but it's useful to know what players want so that I can run that game rather than something else.

Here's a third start that occurred to me. If you guys have ideas I'd love to hear them - more heads means more creativity means better ideas.

...And After Winter Comes Spring

When the last magus of the ancient covenant of Hastalia went into Final Twilight, the covenfolk faced a difficult choice. On the one hand, the few of them who still remained were comfortable here, even if the legendary wealth was gone and the magic had disappeared over the years. Going elsewhere and being mere peasants was unappealing. On the other hand, they had no way of keeping local warlords and monsters from claiming the ruins. Distraught, they appealed to the Order of Hermes.

After due deliberation, the Order has decided to sponsor a rebuilding effort. There might be ancient treasure still lurking here and there, but most of Hastalia's might is going to have to be rebuilt from scratch. Her shrunken covenfolk population will need to be rejuvenated, and her revenues and vis sources will need to be reestablished. It's almost more work than beginning entirely afresh.

On the other hand, how many wet-behind-the-ears magi get to sit on the ruling council of a four hundred year old covenant and lay claim to the legacies of archmagi?