Ars Magica, the TRoS way....

[Morfedel]

That reminds me. We need to add a section on maintaining spells with dice too. Ala TRoS.

[grot]

Reposted all files...

I'd take out the 2 successes in smack. I'm generally of the opinion that multiple successes should not be required for a spell to do anything, barring overcoming resistances.

Reload, i caught that too, that was a remnant from an old version.  An error.

Second, I havent looked at AM for awhile, but wasnt there a vis cost for implanting spells and effects as well? If so, that needs to be accounted for; if not, well, my poor memory. I'd have to look it over tonight.

Another error.  I had in there a line about "1 pawn of the appropriate art per EL of the spell" and must have deleted it.  Fixed.

You know, going back to the whole TN and formulized spells, it occurs tio me we could just take out the -TN; since you are getting extra dice anyway, that would be an important component. The extra for -TN may not be needed... but I'm not sure. I think it would work though, since formulized spells got a -2 to TN and spells of three got the exra dice in the original TRoS material.

So, just remove the whole concept of spells of three/many, and remove the -2 for formulized spells. Then, formulized gets the bonus dice, and ritual even moreso.

I had tossed out the one/three/many thing from the get go, replacing the pool modifiers with spont/formulaic/ritual.  I see your point on TN, but I really, really like the idea that a formulaic spell lowers the "gating" factor. That is, if I have CrIg of 6, I can only cast a TN7 spell if my master writes it down for me.  We could make it just -1TN - as I showed before, a 1TN drop is a LOT in probablity space. My inclination was to leave it as TRoS, since we're already smacking Jakes creation around an awful lot.

With that in mind, a comment on spells. We might want to edit Mana 1/2's TNs, add in Mana 3.... I'll look at the TRoS book and contemplate it.

I wasn't attempting to make an exahustive list, I assumed Mana3 was there...  Mana2 was SUPPOSED to have an EL of 2, that was just an error on my part.  So Mana 1 = TN2, Mana 2 =TN3, Mana 4=TN4....

One harder than TRoS I believe, but also gets you one extra die per success.

We also need to discuss using multiple arts, when there is overlap, although I think saying you use the smallest of each pre requisite would be fine.

Agreed.  I'll make that explicit. Parma added.  Reposted the files, work from the new ones.

[Morfedel]

You know, going back to the whole TN and formulized spells, it occurs tio me we could just take out the -TN; since you are getting extra dice anyway, that would be an important component. The extra for -TN may not be needed... but I'm not sure. I think it would work though, since formulized spells got a -2 to TN and spells of three got the exra dice in the original TRoS material.

So, just remove the whole concept of spells of three/many, and remove the -2 for formulized spells. Then, formulized gets the bonus dice, and ritual even moreso.

I had tossed out the one/three/many thing from the get go, replacing the pool modifiers with spont/formulaic/ritual.  I see your point on TN, but I really, really like the idea that a formulaic spell lowers the "gating" factor. That is, if I have CrIg of 6, I can only cast a TN7 spell if my master writes it down for me.  We could make it just -1TN - as I showed before, a 1TN drop is a LOT in probablity space. My inclination was to leave it as TRoS, since we're already smacking Jakes creation around an awful lot.

Lets keep it as the -2 TN after all. I was thinking of something else, but it makes the spells easier to learn, in addition to easier to cast. And that was the entire point. :)

As I said, I did like your replacement of the one/three/many. See, I'm very reasonable at times! :)

You are doing great work, thanks for the effort.

[grot]

New files up.

http://www.nadig.com/Personal/arstotros.htm
http://www.nadig.com/Personal/arstotros.doc

One last little change:  Vis Pumping...  Here's a cut and paste:

----------

Vis Pumping
Casters can use raw Vis (magic in physical form) to aid them in casting spells.  It must always be Vis of the form or technique of the spell being cast.

Spontaneous spells can be pumped to give you extra dice.  2 dice per pawn seems about right.

Formulaic spells have an additional option, the caster can either take two extra dice, OR, he can raise one attribute of the spell WITHOUT CHANGING THE TN.  So, for instance, a caster wishing to throw a really nasty Pilum of Fire, who can normally only cast a CrIg of 8, could use a pawn of Ignem Vis to up the damage level of his formulaic spell to EL4, up from EL3.

Some amount of Raw Vis is required for ritual spells, and is required for any magic which causes permanent changes (like regrowing an arm).  The amount is left up to the seneschal, but a good guideline is 1 pawn per level of effect.

[Morfedel]

Looks pretty good.

I'm going to look over the AM ranges and durations one more time, and see about a possible revision on range and duration based on that; I'll decide one way or another this weekend, but barring that, I"d say this looks pretty good, and we should call this an almost complete first draft for playtesting.

[grot]

At which point we should see if we can get Jake to link it, and get redcap to link it as well.

[Marc Hameleers]

great stuff guys...I haven't gotten TROS yet, but I love Ars magice, except for the combat....I love what i see that TROS did with combat....

combine the two :)

Great stuff!

Marc

[Morfedel]

Well, it was either change TRoS' magic system or change Ars Magica's combat system.

TRoS was the easier way to go, heh!

thanks for the compliment. Get TRoS, it does for combat what AM did for magic. Then, plug our magic system in! Playtest it for us and tell us whatcha think? :D

[grot]

OOoooh, I like it, I bastardized so much of Morfedel's work that it's now "ours" (grin)....

Seriously, the CONCEPT of Ars was what was so awesome, but frankly, I never even liked their dice mechanics.

The beauty of the TRoS system (for any kind of die roll, not just combat) is that it forces/allows the player to make actual meaningful decisions that are both relevant and realistic to the situation at hand.

Frankly, whomever is revamping Ars for the 5th edition should just license TRoS.  It's combat system is VERY much in keeping with the intent of the Mythic Europe setting.

[Morfedel]

Actually Grot, you didnt bastardize it that much; only a couple minor issues, so intellectually the work is still primarily mine.

But you did a great job of assembling it into a word document and laying it out (I'm horribly disorganized), and you did have a gerat idea or two, and you put it on the web, etc etc, so from the standpoint that you did some good work on it too, yeah, I guess a "we" could qualify.

I'd call it:

Morfedel - Creator and Designer
Grot - Editor and publisher

or something like that

[grot]

lol.... yeah, we better make sure we come to a financial arrangement for all the money we're gonna make off it too!

[Marc Hameleers]

I'll try to add

Marc Hameleers: playtester

asap to that list :)

[Morfedel]

haha! Ok, we each get 105.4 % of the profits. sound good? :)

[grot]

deal.  I'll by dinner at Gencon next year too!

[Jake Norwood]

I'll want to be in one of the TROS/Ars games at Gencon. I wanna play.

Jake