Ars Magica character generation - Would anyone care to help?

[Jon_Dahl]

I have absolutely no idea about Ars Magica. Today I'm really busy, so I don't have time to study about the system. This evening I'm going to create a character for the game, but my gf has fever so I wouldn't like to stay for long. Knowing my GM, the character generation might take a while since he's very precise.

I don't know what sort of game he's thinking about and I don't know about the specifics, but I'd appreciate that I could think about the character and plan it in advance.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd be happy to hear them. I just want to create the character fast and run.

[BWR]

Quick run down of the Houses (sort of like Clans in V:tM - they are collections of abilities, philosophies and politics, to greater or lesser extent).

Bjoernar - shapechanging pseudo-hippies

Bonisagus - lab experimenters or politicians. architects of the Order of Hermes.

Criamon - Greek-based philosophy and transcendant

Ex Miscellania - the leftovers. Can find any number of minor traditions or ideas here

Flambeau - BURNINATE! Alternatively, destroy things in other amusing ways

Guernicus - lawyers and bureaucrats and investigators. Keep the Order running smoothly

Jerbiton - politics, like to get involved in mundane nobility and the Church.

Mercere - messengers and information. Many don't have The Gift, but are officially wizards nontheless.

Merinta - Faerie-magi. Like the Lands Beyond.

Tremere - military, organized, unified.

Tytalus - strength through adversity. Aggressive, combatative, provocative

Verditius -crafters


If this is your first AM game, I would suggest Gentle Gift as your Major Virtue. It isn't quite as fun as several others (Mythic Blood is a favorite), but not having Mundanes run in fear from you is terribly convenient.
Minor Virtues: Cautious Sorcerer (those botches can ruin your day - this helps), Second Sight (never know when this will come in handy), Mastered Spells (spell mastery is expensive, but very useful)

Flaws: go for Story Flaws. They, as the name suggests, give the GM hooks to work with for crafting stories. I've had a lot of fun with Curse of Venus (you fall in love with very inappropriate people, or others with you, always to some misfortune).

Abilities: depending on the type of game you are playing, you will want to have decent scores in several abilities, around 2-3. Like any game, the higher you have, the better, but it gets expensive quickly. around 3 shows you are somewhat competant.
Magic Theory (spellcraft, for lab work), Latin (for being able to write things, at least 4), Artes Liberalis, Parma Magica (magic resistance, very useful against other magi), Penetration (get through Parma), Finesse (manipulate things with magic, like throwing a rock at someone or opening a door). You will likely want at least one interpersonal skill, like Etiquette, Folk Ken (sense motive), Guile, or Charm.

Arts. Magic skills are divided into two major components, Forms and Techniques. Techniques are more versatile and more useful.
Techniques
Creo - creating any sort of effect, like fire or healing or electricity.
Intellego - understanding things
Muto - transforming things from one state/form to another
Perdo - destroying things
Rego - controlling things.

Form
Animal - says itself
Aquam - water
Auram - air
Corpus - body
Herbam - plants
Ignem - fire
Imaginem - image
Mentem - mind
Terram - earth
Vim - power/magic

So if you want to toss a fireball you would need to use Creo Ignem (create fire). If you want a cold-ball, Perdo Ignem (destroy fire/heat). To lift a rock you'd need Rego Terram, to lift a person you'd need Rego Corpus.
To force a person's movements to do what you want is Rego Corpus, but to enchant his mind to do what you want is Rego Mentem.
Vim is, for lack of a more detailed description, metamagic, and affecting the magical essence of magical beings.

So choose one or two things you want to do, because you can start anywhere between "pretty good at one thing and suck at all else" and "I know a lot of sucky wussy spells, but at least I have a score of 1 or 2 in all Arts".
Then choose a few spells that fit your theme.

Hope this helps. If not, just ask some more.

[endoperez]

Character creation is tedious business in Ars Magica, definitely not a big point of the system. To encourage the creation of an interesting character, there is an extensive Virtues and Flaws list to choose from, and just reading through it takes a while. Houses are integrated part of character creation so you have to understand those as well, and to make a powerful and/or useful mage, and to be able to cast magic on the fly, you need to be familiar with the list of spells your mage could cast. And then the actual creation is math-intensive as well.

I'm assuming you have access to the rulebook. Read up the basics of the setting, and at least skim through the descriptions of the houses.
The rulebook has an example character of every House, and customization notes for each of those. Start by reading through those, and if possible, use one of them (at least as a base).

Read up the flaws and virtues the character template has - they follow a very different logic from D&D. Being nosy is a flaw, as is gossiping. Not because it's bad, but because it makes for better stories. It's basically a promise to the DM - "if you throw me the 'he's hiding something' hook, I'll try to uncover it". The animal companion (a Ranger's wolf, not the Druid's dinosaur!) is a flaw in Ars Magica! Then come up with the personality - flaws are a big help there, or specific personality features might count as flaws, letting you get more fun stuff or drop other flaws you don't like.

Then, read up the spells your character can cast. They will be important. Your character will also be able to do spontaneous spells, but it might be better to just stay with minor stuff similar to D&D cantripps until you are more familiar with the system.

As you can see, that's a lot to read even for an existing character without doing any of the math. It's much easier and safer to stick with an existing template.


Besides the 12 templates in the rulebook, the Project Redcap webpage used to have many more character templates you could use, but the site seems to be changed now (it's more Wiki-esque) and the links are broken. Here's the current page, and the Internet Wayback link to an older page where some of the links seem to be working:
http://www.redcap.org/page/Character_generation
http://web.archive.org/web/20120415083954/http://www.redcap.org/page/character_creation


To make the character creation math easier, there are various spreadsheets and other tools that do most of the math for you:

Metacreator is a commercial one.

I've seen few Excel files around, you might be able to find one of those. For this, you could copy one of the starting characters, and then remove the stuff you don't want, and it shows you how many points that frees up.
http://www.chaomancer.net/blog/?p=304


This one calculates the point costs - press "Start Period" and enter the amount of points rulebook dictates a starting character should have. This might be easier for building things from the ground up, and it should be an easy way to spend points in the future.
http://rpg.ekkaia.org/ampcc/

[Jon_Dahl]

Thank you for the advice and inspiration, much appreciated.

I was thinking about this sort of character, kind of healer type (should be useful, right?):

Name: Jamal Tinto
Place of birth: Scarborough, Tobago

House: Pharmacopoeians of the Ex Miscellanea

Major Virtue: Gentle Gift
Minor Virtues: Cautious Sorcerer, Second Sight, Mastered Spells

Flaws: Heir, Humble, Possibly: Compassionate (Major)

I will put one point on every Characteristic except Presence.

I will concentrate on Creo Corpus, so that my character will became a healer.

As "skills", I'll take Magic Theory, Parma Magica, Penetration and Etiquette.

[Andrewmoreton]

For stats you probably don't need a good strength or Quickness so leave those at 0 and put Int or Sta up to +2 (Int is good for lab work)

You should generally take the full 10pts of virtues and flaws as they are useful.
Looking at your character concept
Personal Vis source Creo or Corpus (You need Vis for the best healing spells)
Puissant Creo
Puissant Corpus
Inventive genius/book learner (One of these two is never a bad thing)

Flaws
Heir is probelmatical for a Hermetic magus as you are prevented from intefering with mundanes. But if your GM is happy with it great.

Deficient Perdo (Opposite of Creo so appropriate if poor)
None combatant (Makes you very poor in a fight , but that does not look to be your thing)

Spells for Creo Corpus make sure to take a spell for boosting recovery rolls as well as the direct healing spells, and go straight for the one which heals all wounds the lesser healing spells are not worth the vis.

You only need penetration for combat casting you may be better spending the points on Medicine, or I believe there is a skill associated with the Pharmacopian virtues and improving that would be a good idea. Also Second sight has a skill roll so boosting that is a good idea.
I find Awareness is the most rolled skill with Folk ken a close second

There are never enough XP

[JusticeZero]

The other big thing is that you will make 3 characters: A mage, an adventurer non-mage, and a henchman. You'il do most of your adventuring with the non-mage, because a mage only gets xp for sitting in a library for 3 months minus one week out of every 3 month block of time, and the secondaries are the 'away team'.

[Doug Lampert]

The other big thing is that you will make 3 characters: A mage, an adventurer non-mage, and a henchman. You'il do most of your adventuring with the non-mage, because a mage only gets xp for sitting in a library for 3 months minus one week out of every 3 month block of time, and the secondaries are the 'away team'.

I don't know about the current edition of the rules, but in previous editions a mage got MORE XP than anyone else for adventuring, it was just STILL LESS than what he got for labwork (so you still wanted the companions to do as much of the adventuring as possible).

Similarly grogs weren't necessarily made by any particular player but were a group resource.

[BWR]

I'm pretty sure 5th edition has the same amount of xp no matter who adventures, but yeah, magi still have to be pried away from their lab with crowbar.

On the topic of grogs, if this is your first AM game, Jon, make sure to make a few grogs. They don't need much by the way of stats, just a few interesting personality quirks. They are meant to die easily but can become some of the most fun characters in the game quite simply because they are expendable so you can do fun stuff without worrying about them.

A couple we've had:
- a fat, Jewish (in 13th century Europe) cook who got an unearned reputation for bravery and a semi-earned reputation for cooking skills (he exploded one die roll rather immensely and got invited to become the Holy Roman Emperor's personal chef)
- one poor shield grog who always spent 8-10 months of every year (like 10 years in a row) in convalescence after being injured on every adventure, even if nothing dangerous occurred.

[Tyrrell]

another flaw that you might consider for the character is short range magic. It's quite a serious disability but it might work with the healer idea.

Also, if you're going with a healer, and you can do it take gentle caress of Asclepus from HoH: societates instead of chirurgen's healing touch (or you can go for the heal all ritual as suggested above). In fact take duration sun versions of healing spells (or duration concentration if you have rego vim magic to sustain it for you) that are non ritual, to get your people out of harm's way or functioning well enough. then use the recovery boosting spells after your "healing" has elapsed its duration.

If you are going the healing route consider the other uses of creo or corpus. You'll want high scores in both and mastering healing alone won't keep you busy for decades.

longevity rituals and rituals to increase physical characteristics are two other things that are done with your creo corpus total. People will love you for putting in some effort to do these things well.

Regarding the choices of virtues from above I would go with affinities in creo and corpus rather than puissant creo/corpus. Puissant means that you get results beyond your knowledge- you have a knack that allows you to perform beyond your experience. An affinity means that you pick up the subject faster than normal and you learn more from a given source than others. At low levels puissant is a bigger boost after moderate competence affinity is more powerful (of course you could do both but that's a lot of virtues in a single "i'm more powerful but not more interesting" place).

Leper magus and holy magic are the kings of healing centered virtues (aside from perhaps magical focus: healing and magical potency: healing) but both of them demand quite a bit in regards to characterization. (I admit that I don't recall the abilities of the Pharmacopians, perhaps that's impressive as well)

I like the idea of a personal vis source in creo or corpus but make it cool. This virtue can be blah if you don't put any effort in to it.

[Tyrrell]

So what's the story with a birthplace on an island near the coast of south america in a city that, from googleing, I see didn't get founded until 1654?

[Andrewmoreton]

The other big thing is that you will make 3 characters: A mage, an adventurer non-mage, and a henchman. You'il do most of your adventuring with the non-mage, because a mage only gets xp for sitting in a library for 3 months minus one week out of every 3 month block of time, and the secondaries are the 'away team'.

This is very game specific. My Ars Magica campaigns (6 campaigns, 3 GM's +online games ) have companions rarely and no one has every played a Grog . It is the default but it depends on the group dynamic and game style

[Andrewmoreton]

I'm pretty sure 5th edition has the same amount of xp no matter who adventures, but yeah, magi still have to be pried away from their lab with crowbar.
.
Nope.
You can get 1 XP source a season which can be labwork, Story(adventure xp) training etc. In general mages get more xp as lab work /reading tends to be more efficient and they get all 4 seasons. Grogs and Companions tend to spend at least half their time working which is often only the measly practice xp

[Andrewmoreton]

In fact take duration sun versions of healing spells (or duration concentration if you have rego vim magic to sustain it for you) that are non ritual, to get your people out of harm's way or functioning well enough. then use the recovery boosting spells after your "healing" has elapsed its duration.

This was a great idea in 4th ed, in 5th ed not so much it is + 10 levels onto the spell so to heal any signifigant wound you need a ridiculously high level spell




Regarding the choices of virtues from above I would go with affinities in creo and corpus rather than puissant creo/corpus. Puissant means that you get results beyond your knowledge- you have a knack that allows you to perform beyond your experience. An affinity means that you pick up the subject faster than normal and you learn more from a given source than others. At low levels puissant is a bigger boost after moderate competence affinity is more powerful (of course you could do both but that's a lot of virtues in a single "i'm more powerful but not more interesting" place).

The Point at which Affinity is better than Puissant is art levels of 18+ which are not reached in many campaigns beneath that the Puissant art gives a better bonus


Leper magus and holy magic are the kings of healing centered virtues (aside from perhaps magical focus: healing and magical potency: healing) but both of them demand quite a bit in regards to characterization. (I admit that I don't recall the abilities of the Pharmacopians, perhaps that's impressive as well)

I like the idea of a personal vis source in creo or corpus but make it cool. This virtue can be blah if you don't put any effort in to it.
Pharmacopians are already deficient in Perdo making that bad advice from me.
Root cutter reduces the vis used in healing riituals by up to half, Mythic Herbalism allows the cheap production of magic potions without Vis

[Jon_Dahl]

So what's the story with a birthplace on an island near the coast of south america in a city that, from googleing, I see didn't get founded until 1654?

It makes no sense and just shows that I had no idea what the game is really. I made some assumptions, but that's ok, really.

I really like the way you playgrounders are introducing me to this game and it's very enlightening, but...
My idea of being fast and well-prepared just didn't work. My GM wanted me to wait all the time until everyone were finished with choosing characters... then choosing virtues and flaws... then calculating XP... It just took forever, and I wasn't allowed to fast forward the character generation. My idea failed.

[Tyrrell]

Nope.
You can get 1 XP source a season which can be labwork, Story(adventure xp) training etc. In general mages get more xp as lab work /reading tends to be more efficient and they get all 4 seasons. Grogs and Companions tend to spend at least half their time working which is often only the measly practice xp

But if a companion a grog and a magus all study from the same source they all get the same xp. (baring applicable virtues and flaws).

Way back in second edition grogs got 1 xp per adventure, companions 2, and Magi 3

[BWR]

Nope.
You can get 1 XP source a season which can be labwork, Story(adventure xp) training etc. In general mages get more xp as lab work /reading tends to be more efficient and they get all 4 seasons. Grogs and Companions tend to spend at least half their time working which is often only the measly practice xp

How does this contradict what I said?

Adventure XP is the same no matter who adventures, and magi get more (generally) from lab work and have to pried away with a crowbar to do something as dangerous and unproductive as adventuring.

[Tyrrell]

The Point at which Affinity is better than Puissant is art levels of 18+ which are not reached in many campaigns beneath that the Puissant art gives a better bonus
Puissant adds 3 to the effective level of an art. Affinity multiplies all study totals by 1.5 rounding up.
44 xp gives you an art score of 8, 44 multiplied by 1.5 gives you 66 xp which is an art score of 11. They are equal at art score 8/ 44 xp and affinity gets progressively better after that. Also note that, because study totals are rounded up, 1.5 times the experience is the worst that affinity can give you. Putting one point of exposure experience into an art with an affinity gives you an extra xp for the season and has often been done by the players in games that I've run.

Running my spreadsheet further, at 102 xp affinity is at 17 while puissant is at 13+3. That's the earliest affinity is clearly better, again assuming that rounding up never happens - which is not what I've observed.

[Tyrrell]

My idea of being fast and well-prepared just didn't work. My GM wanted me to wait all the time until everyone were finished with choosing characters... then choosing virtues and flaws... then calculating XP... It just took forever, and I wasn't allowed to fast forward the character generation. My idea failed.
Tell us about the character that you did make.

[Tyrrell]

This is very game specific. My Ars Magica campaigns (6 campaigns, 3 GM's +online games ) have companions rarely and no one has every played a Grog . It is the default but it depends on the group dynamic and game style
On the other hand I've had games where everyone loved their companions and no one really wanted to get their magi out of their labs at all. But I agree, it is very game specific.

[Jon_Dahl]

Tell us about the character that you did make.

The game is set in 110 AD Rome, so my previous character concept was a bit off...:smallbiggrin:

My character is a Roman Ex Miscelnae healer. He's 29 years old and he entered the 15-year Mage training at the age of 10.

Virtues:
Gentle Gift
Cautious Sorcerer
Second Sight
The Gift
Hermetic Magus
Wilderness Sense (herbalist stuff, GM recommended this)

Flaws:
Compassionate (minor)
Humble (minor)
Deficient technique (perdo)
Heir
Major hermetic restriction (may only cast spells while dressed like a monk or beggar without jewellery or bling-bling of any sort)

I have allocated 45 XP (I didn't know what these were):
Latin 5 (free)
Knowledge (Lazio & Rome) 1
Awareness 1
Survival 3
Athletics 1
Stealth 1
Swim 1
Gallic language 1 (learned it while healing slaves and such)
Second Sight 1
Wilderness Sense 1
Magic Theory 3
Artes Liblahblah 1
Parma Magica 1

Right now I have 240 XP from the training period, 75 XP from childhood and 120 XP after graduating. I have also 120 spell points. I have to figure out how to use these and I'd be very happy to take tips and advice.

Many of the selections were based solely on the advice given in this thread, as you can probably see. Thank you, once again.

[endoperez]

Major hermetic restriction (may only cast spells while dressed like a monk or beggar without jewelry or bling-bling of any sort)


This is such a beautiful flaw, I just can't stop thinking about this. There are so many implications, socially and otherwise. And him being an heir as well... Oh man, this is so amazing. :smallbiggrin:

[Tyrrell]

Well there may be a bit of house ruling going on above and beyond the setting change.

It doesn't look like your virtues and flaws are balanced, the gift and Hermetic magus are free so I see 8 points of virtues if wilderness sense is a major (going from memory here). I however see two major flaws and three minor making nine points of flaws.This doesn't cover your Ex Miscelania set which includes deficient perdo so perhaps you've got things misbalanced the other way 8 points of virtues and only 6 points of flaws. (or, more likely, you've got house rules).

You get 45 xp and you native language at 5 from your early childhood (up to age 5) Your character has this and a bunch of other stuff as well. Wilderness sense and Second sight give you a score of 1 with the virtue. But accounting for that: you've got 110 points of abilities purchased with that 45 xp.

It looks like you've got the "list of things every magus should know ere they gauntlet included" with your early childhood or something. My suspicion is house rules but your description sounds like rules straight from the book.

If the GM is not just awarding more xp (and its just fine if he is) stealth and swim should probably be paid for by 10 xp from your childhood allotment of 75. Magic theory artes liberales, and parma magica should be paid for by 40 from your apprenticeship allotment of 240 and 5 xp for Gaelic should come out of your post apprenticeship allotment of 120.

As for how to use your xp, I'd raise magic theory to 4 or 5, I'd purchase one level in both philosophae and profession scribe (specialization copying texts) level one in both of these abilities is really useful. Specialize your artes liberales in either ritual magic or ceremonial magic and put your philosophae specialization into the other. It might be considered a cheap move but, if you're ok with it, concentration is a general skill and can be purchased with your childhood xp. I'd throw a bunch of xp into arts. To do this I'd choose a bunch of spells that you want, then purchase the arts that you'd need to get these spells (it's easier to do it this way than to do it the other way around). Put the extra in arts that will get you closer to the spells that you want to get later. In particular I'd focus on Arts now because it is more fun to be in the laboratory inventing stuff than it is to be in the library reading.

I'd also raise up your parma magica to at least 2, perhaps higher.

For second sight, look at the difficulty chart for how hard it is to notice stuff, figure out what sort of rolls you'd need to reach these difficulties, use this knowlege to decide how much to invest in it. Something you might think about is that I believe second sight runs off of your perception score concerning sight (I might be wrong about this, double check me). You could develop a muto corpus spell to give yourself better sight (leveraging your high corpus score for other ends). I believe that there is an example spell (Eyes of the Hawk) in the book Hermetic Projects (a rather ancillary book, but one that I find quite cool).

Medicine is an appropriate skill for your character but it might not do you any good if you can use your magic to resolve medical issues. It's cool for role playing but it might be "wasted" in that you'd never roll it.

[BWR]

Looks like a fun guy. That Major Restriction was a nice touch.
Oh, and wilderness Sense is Minor.

[LibraryOgre]

If you like, I have some sample characters from old games posted on my old web page.

http://www.editors-wastebasket.org/nexx/ars.html
http://www.editors-wastebasket.org/nexx/pbr.html

Zorya, Theodolphus, and the grogs on the first page are in the 5e style; the others are 5e.