I bought the new Ars Magica 5th ed. yesterday and have been reading it ever since.

And to my horror I found a spell that is a potential game-breaker in a campaign I plan to run, namely End of Mighty Castle (PeTe lvl 25)
"A single stone structure, such as a Castle Keep or a manor house, crumbles to dust and small pebbles etc."

This spell, can easily be learned and cast by a freshly created RPG focusing on Perdo, with a tiny fraction on Terram.

Suddenly, spending all those years and enormous amount of money on constructing medieval castles doesn't sound like a good idea anymore...

Such spells were possible at a comparable level already in ArM4.

Kind regards,

Berengar

//Suddenly, spending all those years and enormous amount of money on constructing medieval castles doesn't sound like a good idea anymore...

I have thought about this.

If magi are so prevalent that they can be considered a real threat, then wouldn't it behoove you to hire magi to cast an Aegis of the Hearth on your castle? Work out a deal something like this: you let the magi have their little "covenant," a dozen or so warriors, and some land. They don't pay you any taxes, but you do require them to do this funny magical ritual that makes your castle much less vulnerable to hostile magic.

Magi would agree to this because it's a way to keep running their covenant the way they want, without being treated as an enemy by the local nobles. Nobles would agree because it's a small price to pay to protect your investment in mundane fortifications.

The one big concern is that your "vassal" magi would get uppity, quit doing the ritual or turn against you. Well, at that point you have the same options you have against a mundane vassal who rebels, plus one: you can possibly complain to the Order of magi that your erstwhile vassals are giving you a hard time.

Yes, you can poke holes in this scheme if you want to. Or you can make it work if you want to. My point is that the mere existence of "End the Mighty Castle" does not destroy the credibility of castles in Mythic Europe.

Yes, it's interfering with mundanes, but there's more...

I find it funny that people tend to measure spells' usefullness by the fact that how much they can cause damage and destruction. Most of my players compare their characters and the one that seems to be the most cabable to kill all the other characters (even if he would absolutely not do that) is considered the most powerfull. This might be a bit exaggerating, but you get the point.

If you consider the environment the characters live in, wouldn't the most powerfull spell be those that help gain the trust of mundane population, like a spell that makes sure the fields produce well this year or a spell that purifies a ruined well.

So, what I'm trying to say is that it's not a problem if there are spells of mass destruction. It's more a problem if all spells the PCs know are those of mass destruction. After all, magic has so many different possibilities and destroing things is only one.

This spell almost laid my carefully laid plans to ruin just the other day. I had orchestrated a glorious battle where my PC magi would have to assault an evil wizard in his tower, safely protected by his Aegis. The intent was for the wizards to have to fight their way to his tower, while he fired off spells from a window high above, then have to get inside, then have to deal with him and his minions, despite the penalties associated with the Aegis; to ultimately be rewarded with magical and mundane treasures, vis, etc.

One of the PCs got ticked when he almost succumbed to a Pilum of Fire (on first check it had incapacitated him, but then we recalculated an determined he forgot to add in his Ignem specialty for Parma, and that increased his resistance just enough to thwart the spell). Anyway, he knew this spell and decided to try and cast in on the wizard's tower. He used Confidence, he burnt vis, he rolled.... his penetration came up 3 short of piercing the Aegis.

At first I was kinda frustrated that the character had the potential to do that in the first place, but I reminded myself that what I like most about the Ars Magica system is that it gives wizards the power they lack in games like... um, everything else. On second thought, I realized that what really bothered me was not the character being able to do the spell, but that he (a wizard) tried to do it, even though it would most likely result in the destruction of all the vis, magical items, books, etc. in the tower. My players are very short-sighted about things like that.

"On second thought, I realized that what really bothered me was not the character being able to do the spell, but that he (a wizard) tried to do it, even though it would most likely result in the destruction of all the vis, magical items, books, etc. in the tower. My players are very short-sighted about things like that."

You mean they wouldn't try searching through the rubble (moving things with ReTe effects) to find the objects, then develop rituals to mend the books? (CrAn rituals, repairing the books) The people I game with would try something like that.

The scary thing is, if they know they are going to have to deal with the wizard and have a season to prepare for it, they can enchant a 1-shot arrow with End of the Mighty Castle on it and load it up with Penetration to cut through the Aegis....