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

[overgeeked]

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

Ah, yes. You can sell it, but you have to also release it for free under the same CC-BY-SA license. At least those parts based on the CC-BY-SA material.

 

[Tonguez]

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.

pretty much, the Ars Magica system is essentially just flexible skill-based spell casting, and theres lots of attempts at that for DnD

 

[Voadam]

My understanding is that while flexible verb noun casting was the big innovation, it also had levelled spells like D&D (just not vancian slots and spell levels generally going up to 40 or so). So while you had magical skills in Creo (create) and Ignem (fire) and could spontaneously come up with creating fire effects, there was also the pilum of fire spell that you could learn which was a creo ignem effect at a certain level and if you knew the spell it was easier than trying to spontaneously do the effect.

This model was then later adopted by Mage the Ascension with rotes.

Spellcasting takes three basic forms. Formulaic spells are those that have been recorded and can be learned by anyone, provided a teacher or reference material is available. Ritual spells are carefully planned ceremonies that may take hours to complete, but whose effects can be very long-lasting; they are a subset of formulaic spells. Spontaneous spells are created “off the cuff” by combining Forms and Techniques. Spontaneous spells are generally not as powerful as Formulaic spells, but since they can be created on the fly, they are far more flexible in application.

Creo Ignem Spells

Level 20

Pilum of Fire
R: Spec, D: Mom, T: Ind
Aimed: +1
Spell Focus: A Javelin (+1)
A 2-foot, thick, spear-shaped jet of fire flies from your palms (consuming your spell focus, if you are using one), doing +25 damage. One point less is done for each pace of distance between you and your target. Beyond 25 paces, the flames dissipate.

Pilum of Fire always seemed to me to be the inspiration for 3e's scorching ray, a small nod to Ars Magica.

 

[Voadam]

There is also the dual stat adventure Black Monks of Glastonbury which has some 3e mechanics for doing Ars Magica in D&D. I believe the big Ars Magica Order of Hermes edge against other spellcasters, the Parma Magic or Magical Shield magical skill, is done in 3e as a feat which gives spell resistance.

I also liked thinking of the pagan shapeshifting Germanic Bjornaer mages as an order of D&D druids and had that as an option in my 3e games.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think there's more of Ars Magica in Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: The Ascension than in D&D. After all that's where the Tremere and Order of Hermes came from.

 

[Greg K]

I do think that there is some Ars Magica influence, but it is in the switch to the unified resolution system (die roll + stat modifier + skill mod+ other modifiers vs DC) and the Commoner standard. Jonathan Tweet's article, "One Roll to Rule Them All", in Dragon Magazine 274 is his designer explanation of the unified resolution system and DCs being based on an untrained human with no modifiers. It immediately reminded me of the Ars Magica resolution system, but switching from a d10 to a d20 .

 

[VHawkwinter]

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...

My understanding (fuzzy), is that 3e was trying to compensate for mages feeling some kind of underpowered in AD&D 2e, and the playtest went poorly / was in a limited, megadungeon combat grind low-level environment that was - and as a result they significantly underestimated the power of 3e casters at release, particularly the Druid and Cleric, due to the Druid and Cleric's playtesters playing them very suboptimally, a confluence of factors which led to an underestimation of the power and versatility of casters.

 

[pawsplay]

Basically, a unified skill + attribute system. Also, the ability modifiers from Ars Magica map pretty closely to the 3e-ified ability score modifiers, and that's about it. Tweet also worked on Talislanta 3rd edition, and I'd say there is more Talislanta in 3e than there is Ars Magica.

Most of 3e was a straight line from AD&D 2e, with some conceptual borrowings from the Rules Cyclopedia. 3e's skills were more like RC skills than NWPs; prestige classes came from the Companion set (and also the Dragonlance modules); more even ability score modifiers; a more parsimonious weapons table; maximum hit points at 1st level; lots of alternate monsters-as-PCs. Otherwise 3e is mostly a cleaned up AD&D with a right-side-up AC system and unified saving throws.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Basically, a unified skill + attribute system. Also, the ability modifiers from Ars Magica map pretty closely to the 3e-ified ability score modifiers, and that's about it. Tweet also worked on Talislanta 3rd edition, and I'd say there is more Talislanta in 3e than there is Ars Magica.

Most of 3e was a straight line from AD&D 2e, with some conceptual borrowings from the Rules Cyclopedia. 3e's skills were more like RC skills than NWPs; prestige classes came from the Companion set (and also the Dragonlance modules); more even ability score modifiers; a more parsimonious weapons table; maximum hit points at 1st level; lots of alternate monsters-as-PCs. Otherwise 3e is mostly a cleaned up AD&D with a right-side-up AC system and unified saving throws.

And no more simultaneous combat turns / segments. (I don't know where 3e copied its combat turn structure from though). And RIP divine magic spheres and specialty priests.

I recall reading somewhere that they thought casters were too weak in AD&D. I think the biggest oopsie in updating 2e was removing too many of the AD&D spellcasting limitations.

There's some other design choices I think went poorly as well (WBL tracking and punishing prerequisites, requiring too much progreasion preplanning), but the one I think most people find the biggest issue is the casters got too much of a buff.

 

[billd91]

My understanding (fuzzy), is that 3e was trying to compensate for mages feeling some kind of underpowered in AD&D 2e, and the playtest went poorly / was in a limited, megadungeon combat grind low-level environment that was - and as a result they significantly underestimated the power of 3e casters at release, particularly the Druid and Cleric, due to the Druid and Cleric's playtesters playing them very suboptimally, a confluence of factors which led to an underestimation of the power and versatility of casters.

I suspect it was less about compensating for mages feeling kind of underpowered in 2e than removing official rules complications that people tended to throw out anyway. There are a lot of fiddly bits wizards have to deal with in AD&D that were gone in 3e that, if used, tended to put some brakes on the wizards. Add to that magic item creation and things could skew very badly from AD&D experiences.