D&D General How much Ars Magica is in Dungeons and Dragons 3e?

[Shades of Eternity]

I listened to a reading of D&D allowed, and Ben Riggs had Jonathan Tweet on it.

In 3e, it felt like spellcasters were given supremacy at the expense of every other class (ex., CoDzilla), especially compared to their 2e counterpart. I always assumed it was Monte Cook's love of mages (and coined the term "Cookisms" when this alteration arose).

I'd like to apologize to Monte Cook.

It sounds like Jonathan Tweet had a lot of decision-making that ultimately led to what 3e became.

So I'm asking

How much Ars Magica is in Dungeons and Dragons 3e?

I'm not too terribly familiar with this rpg.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How much Ars Magica is in Dungeons and Dragons 3e?

Basically nothing.

Ars Magica is built around an improvisational magic system (which was later seen in Mage: The Ascension and Mage: The Awakening). That's the central, most defining aspect of the game.

Otherwise, the game is about a fantastical medieval Europe -- but much less fantastical than D&D -- with a time frame that spans decades and centuries, rather than the high-speed sprint to superheroic power typical of WotC-era D&D.

 

[Arilyn]

Ars Magica is roll d10 and add modifier and has talents which feats may have been inspired by. The wizards in 3e are not even remotely like Ars Magica.

 

[Voadam]

My memory is that abilities in Ars Magica are similar to ability modifiers in 3e.

AM Mages are designed to be more powerful than grogs (warriors) or companions which is different from the 3e goal of all classes being balanced against each other. AM balance comes more from the troupe style play where you rotate through playing different characters in different sessions.

 

[SableWyvern]

I can see a little bit of Rolemaster influence in 3e, but absolutely nothing from Ars Magica.

Casters were progressively having many of their limitations removed over the course of previous editions. 3e continued this process and combined this with revamping the save system so that spells, overall, became much harder to save against for higher level characters. These things all combined to result in extreme caster power, but they're not really related to Ars Magica in any way I can see -- nor do I think they were part of any push to make casters all powerful. I think it's much more likely it was simply seen as a way to make casters more fun, with little regard for the impact this would have overall.

Edit: My answer is based on the assumption that the OP is drawing a connection between the philosophical principle that mages are powerful in Ars Magica and mages are powerful in D&D 3e. If it was a more general, "Did the mechanics of one influence the other in any meaningful way at all?" I think that's even less the case. There may have been a limited, philosophical influence, but D&D was already trending in the direction anyway. There is basically no mechanical influence I can see.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The magic from "Ars Magica" was "verb+name", for example a fireball would be "(I) create fire". It wasn't class levels or spell-slots at all.

 

[Tonguez]

nothing to do with Ars Magica and misrepresents what the designers were doing with mages. There was no deliberate decision to make spellcasting more powerful rather than was a symptom of the design philosophy that pushed balance by removing class limitations and making things more flexible.

unified d20 mechanics meant that everyone got the same action economy and feats and Skills and BAB, so Thieves loss their Skill dominance and Fighters lost their combat niche. Only Spellcasters kept a niche of spellcasting which with the increase flexibility and “caster level = class level” made them abusable so that Mages could use spells to replicate skills or become better fighters with an exponential progression to dominance.

 

[overgeeked]

Interestingly, Ars Magica 5E was released under a CC-BY-SA, so, as long as you don’t charge for it, you can write as much of Ars Magica 5E into D&D as you’d like.

 

[Cadence]

Interestingly, Ars Magica 5E was released under a CC-BY-SA, so, as long as you don’t charge for it, you can write as much of Ars Magica 5E into D&D as you’d like.

It reads like CC-BY-SA allows your work to be commercial, but it has to be CC-BY-SA too:

Deed - Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International - Creative Commons

creativecommons.org

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

3e did often devolve to "Casters and caddies", but Ars Magica was set up with that intent: Mages were pretty superior in everything, even mundane things compared to their grogs.
However Ars Magica was also set up on the basis that its not much fun to always have to play a sidekick: The intent was that the players have multiple characters and swap around who was playing the mages and grogs over adventures.

Mechanically, the two systems are very different.