Ars Magica 5th Edition

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Pierpont Oldham

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:00:50 PM8/3/24

to ozapapef

I'm not looking for an exhaustive list of all the small details, but I'm guessing there are a few big changes between 3rd and 4th edition, and from 4th to 5th edition. Can someone give a short list of the biggest changes?

The largest change in setting comes from the supplements (Art and Academe is a must buy for anyone interested in that time period. City and Guild is a horrible supplement.) There is a much lower focus on "magic" in the world and more focus on the world qua itself. This complements the absence of vis-boosting which means magi cannot trivially take out mundane armies, especially with Realms of Power: The Divine in play. The world as presented is open to significant amounts of interpretation, just like in earlier editions, which suggests the ability to dial for whatever game you want to play. (My current game is mostly focused on resource management and survival in a hostile political atmosphere, and I'm happy to share how I figured out highly-granular accounting schemes for the covenant in a different post if poeple are interested.)

One of the larger mechanical changes that will impact how players think about the game is confidence. In 4th ed, if you had enough confidence, you could spend it all on every roll and, barring a botch, always succeed and get it back. In 5th, confidence is split into Confidence Score and confidence points (and roughly each realm has an [Hierarchy (Infernal),True Faith(Divine),Fable(Faerie)) score to reflect increasing affiliation with that realm. The magic realm doesn't have a unique one, which reflects the centrality of the core book. Players earn confidence points by role playing and can spend them (as the rules are written) on any stress die roll that happens for a specific event. I run with the house rule that confidence can be spent on anything, which significantly ramps up the rate of power increase.

To summarize: 5th is more refined and an excellent revision to 4th. It streamlines and "balances" (not in terms of nerfing, per se, but a rationalization of equivalent power). It's quite feasable to port over a 4th edition game to 5th without any real prep. It would not require any significant editing of the world like a 3rd to 4th would have.

A big mechanics difference between 4th and 5th ed was a widespread 4th ed house rule was made official, which is that the roll to penetrate magic resistance went from casting total + penetration > MR, to to casting total + penetration > MR + spell level. This made confrontations between magi and magical creatures/other magi/divine/etc very different (and more interesting, IMO), because you no longer just blazed away with your best spells, but quite likely had to use weaker spells to try to penetrate MR (or use sneakier/less direct spells that didn't require MR). So opponents with MR (which could include magi and companions, divine power of kings or clergy, magical or faerie beings, some hedge magi, etc) became more of a threat to magi.

A big difference to the setting actually took place late in 4th edition - The Mysteries sourcebook added a huge number of secret societies each with powerful variant magical virtues. This meant many magi had very variant magical powers, gave an in-game mechanism for virtue acquisition, and many many plot hooks. It made hermetic magic potentially much more diverse, and Hermetic culture and society quite a bit more complex.

These rules were variant in 4th Ed. and became fully integrated into the game in 5th ed (several Houses - Criamon, Merinita, Verditius, Bjornaer) became canonically regarded as examples of mystery cults).

In addition, both 4th and 5th introduced many non-Hermetic magic traditions in full detail, many of which are close to being as powerful in hermetic magic (and some of which may qualify as magi). 5th ed has expanded this concept to include playing magical or faerie creatures.

To add on, what I always felt was the big departure with 4th edition from the 1-2-3 legacy was how experience went from something discrete (either you gained a skill/art level or you didn't) to something continuous.

The 3rd edition introduced a new Realm, "Reason", which was promptly dispatched with in the 4th edition. That's largely because White Wolf, then in charge of Ars Magica, wanted to tie it together with its own "World of Darkness" and "Mage: The Ascension".

Every new edition of Ars Magica, bar none, has introduced a new combat system. None of them, in my opinion, have been good. But that's just me being contrary, and Ars Magica has never been about combat.

I was curious if you veterans of the game would have the ability to try to express what the key differences are between editions. I can't imagine ever scoring 1st edition, but I have 2nd on the way and have had 3rd-5th for a long time, but only played a handful of times over those years at conventions for the most part.

2nd Ed was pretty good. Considered the 'One True Edition' by many until the 5th edition came, and even for a while after that. Long-term activities were now based on seasons. I would still play this edition. It was a smaller and simpler game though, and the setting was much less well researched.

3rd Ed was the 'Infernal Edition' to many - published by White Wolf, it had a lot of demons and dark metaplots - particularly the 'magic is fading' and the 'reason aura', which made no sense what-so-ever in a setting where magic was provably real. IIRC, this was when Wizard's Twilight (now Warping) was introduced.

4th Ed was - IMAO - an f-ing mess. Due to popular demand, Arts were forced to use XPs (a mistake IMO), but unlike 5th ed, you divided the XPs instead of simply needing more. You also added Concentration (and intelligence?) to study totals when reading books, leading to certain unique bits of silliness.
Mechanistic spell design was introduced, but not fully thought through. I have seen magi fireballing England (size there was no size modifier) and starting characters building flying castles.
I don't miss the 4th edition, and in fact consider it overpriced on e23. But opinions may differ.

5th Ed ... works. Sometimes I miss the simpler libraries of the early editions, and quite often I miss Arts not interacting with XPs. But 5th edition is my GOTO edition these days. Pun intended, if inversion required.

Personally I think the biggest problem with the 'rational' aura as not calling it a 'skeptical' aura instead- plus the fact that libraries were inherently anti-magical where magic was very academic. It was clearly an attempt to root the Mage:the ascention rules into the Ars Magica setting, where AM was a historical piece of the mage universe. There were signifigant problems with the cosmology, most especially in terms of how it was vampires got more powerfull while the overall strength of the supernatural waned (similarly with werewolves, etc). I never tried 1st or 2nd edition, but grogs made a lot more sense when stats were being rolled instead of assigned...

Sooo, I can blame White Wolf for Warping? Its sad that while the aura of reason was removed warping wasn't. (I fundamentally see nothing fun about Paradox or Warping or any other thing like that. I want my magic users to be able to use magic. Which is why I have it so that those with the Gift are immune to all sources of Warping beyond the one you get when you like super botch.)

As an aside which edition included Pace as the main size, becuase really, that just made things muddled. I would have been fine with Feet or Meters but to use a non-standard size system makes things frustrating.

The idea of you picking a Form and Technique and then a effect level and then add parameter modifiers is just great. While there is much flexibility the base capability of what mages can do is the same. I like that.

In 3ed (and before) the Hermetic Wizards, and their companions, where the only characters worth playing. Hedge wizards were supposed to be too weak to bother with rules. Infernal characters were lost to Hell and not suitable as PCs. There may have been rules for faerie companions, though, and the Shamans supplement, but those were exceptions.

4ed caused some chagrin (in my circles at the time at least), with Hedge Magic upgrading hedge wizards to almost magus level. And 5ed has taken it all out, with Mythic Companions, and C&G and A&A rules to create a whole new playing field for companions.

Looking over the development history of Ars Magica, it took 13 years and 5 editions to get a magic system, that derived (well, nearly) all its spells and effects from a flexible framework and still did so within the Mythic Europe setting based on 1220 Europe. It took a few more years to allow the magic framework itself to develop and grow in the saga, and to provide vast (and mostly working) mechanics for Mythic Europe proper.

There was always an assumption that magic had a warping effect on mundanes, but this was not made concrete until 5ed. That is of course a great step forward ... now we know how to deal with grogs in the level 10 aura. If you want your magi to take constant and high-level effects without warping, that is easily house ruled without breaking the other aspects of warping.

Another things that constantly changed was combat. 4e had a strange "engagement" mechanism, which essentially made everything a duel, and lots of combat Ranges. Characters also only had one Body Level of each type.

Third edition combat was similar, but without the many Ranges, and with the strange additional rule of pushing the opponent back if your had Initiative (First Strike) (and possibly a bonus to hit too).

The rules are actually referenced in the 2nd Edition corebook: "HOUSES OF HERMES: Details the schools of magic (Houses) within the Order. Also, new spells (including those exclusive to certain Houses) and rules for Wizard's Twilight. Due out fall of '89." (IIRC, it was actually released as Order of Hermes in 1990.)