Based on some feedback from the community (Tim Franzke, Alfred Rudzki, Adrian Brooks, Richard Robertson) and a bunch of hours over the weekend, here is the next iteration of humours and how they relate to harm in ArM World. Your feedback is welcome and appreciated!
In the medieval paradigm, health is tied directly to balance between the four humours. A person becomes ill when the body contains too much or not enough of one or more of the humours. The humours are:
Humour – Negative – Positive – Increased by
Choleric – rage – strength – anger, fire
Sanguine – lust – courage – blood loss, air
Melancholic – sadness – clarity – bruising, exhaustion
Phlegmatic – apathy – peace – confusion, drowning, cold
There are many sources of trauma in ArM World that can cause imbalances in the humours, and adjudicating the way these traumas interact is an important part of the GM’s job.
General Principles
– A single trauma will usually impact two humours and should move them in opposite directions. Examples: (getting burned increases choleric while decreasing phlegmatic; getting stabbed decreases sanguine while increasing choleric; falling decreases sanguine while increasing melancholic; cold increases phlegmatic while decreasing choleric)
– Degree of illness is determined by the greatest spread between highest and lowest humours. This is referred to as the number of points of opposition.
– When a character has two humours in 6 points of opposition, he falls unconscious and will probably die soon.
– It is possible for a trauma to have a healing effect (classically this would include “bleeding” someone with an excess of sanguine humour).
– The fiction should reflect imbalances in the characters’ humours. GMs should remember the “tell them the consequences and ask” move and follow it up with “inflict harm” if characters are pushed against the limits of their humours.
For example:
A magus who was wounded earlier in the session (-1 sanguine, +1 choleric) gets in an argument with the reeve of a nearby village. The GM warns the player that with his choleric humour out of balance there could be consequences for actions taken in anger. The magus lashes out with his magic, incinerating the impudent reeve. In addition to the standard effects from the move, the GM inflicts +1 choleric on the magi to reflect the anger displayed.
A maga with +2 melancholic needs to stay up all night to complete a ritual to close a portal before a demon comes through. The GM points out how tired she is already feeling, but the maga pushes on. She closes the portal and saves the covenant but suffers an additional +1 melancholic to reflect her complete exhaustion.
– There is no need to track humours for NPCs, though the GM may choose to do so. An NPC will be out of action (unconscious and possibly dying) when she suffers anywhere from 2-5 points of harm to a single humour with a single attack (this is the NPC threshold). Attacks that do less than the threshold should be included in the fiction, but the GM doesn’t need to record anything. Use caution when setting thresholds. It can be difficult for magi to inflict 4 harm with a single attack, and 5 might make a creature nearly invulnerable (which is OK, as long as that’s your intent).
– Magical beings have strengths and weaknesses (and perhaps immunities) to the humours. For example, a fiery demon might be immune to choleric imbalance – it’s as angry as it’s ever going to be! On the other hand, a dragon could be immune to fire, but other effects might still imbalance its choleric humour.
If I am understanding this correctly then a mage with -3 sanguine and +3 choleric will fall unconscious and die without treatment, correct?
Yep, you’ve got it.
The math behind it is supposed to keep things roughly in line with the 6 segments of the countdown clock from AW while allowing a broader, more thematic array of “harm”.
However, if I only need to inflict -3 sanguine onto somebody to kill them then this system is deadlier than standard AW.
That’s not a bad thing, just pointing it out since it hasn’t been explicitly stated.
Well, that’s only true if all 3 points of damage were from a source that affected an opposing humour as well.
More deadly but easily moderated is the plan.
So, if a character takes -1 sanguine they don’t automatically get +1 choleric?
I thought it was 1-for-1
Each instance of harm should impact 2 humours, but the exact humours are up to the GM to adjudicate. For example, hack and slash could impact sanguine + choleric once or twice then sanguine + melancholic to represent exhaustion, followed by an additional choleric to finish off.
Ideally it should take 2-5 hits for a character to be taken out. That seems roughly in line with AW, doesn’t it?
Minor damage could also be limited to a single humour. That would be the case with most spell casting mishaps, for example.
Does the GM always adjudicate where the damage goes? Even player-vs-player damage?
Still working on the PvP stuff. Attacking another magi outside of certamen or a wizards’ march is a major breach of the code, so it shouldn’t come up too often, but I’ll make sure there are some guidelines.
Like, let’s say I have a short sword. What sort of damage does that do? Just 2-harm, spread out amongst 2 humours; or does it do 2-sanguine?
Harm is less weapon based and more fiction + character based. Most NPCs will do 1 harm +/- regardless of weapon. After all, the baseline is fireball 😉
I appreciate the pushback though – it’s easy to get lazy about this.
As a player, the first character I always make in a system is a combat hog. In a supers game I make a brick, in a fantasy game I make a non-magical fighter, in a sci-fi game I make a gun nut, the first time I played AW I chose the Chopper. I like to push a system when I’m learning it and see how far I can go in combat. That’s just my style.
If I were a player in this Ars Magica hack I would be making a mercenary type character, somebody who could easily act as a chaperone or a guard for the other mages. Not knowing what my weapons are capable of would be disenchanting, and the first time I need to turn my blade on another PC this concept of adjudicating damage would likely interfere with what I see as the rules of the game.
Don’t misunderstand. I really like this idea of the four humours. At first I was picturing weapons that might deal specific kinds of damage and wondering how the fictional narrative complies with those mechanics. But I think this is obviously something that needs a little more structure.
Keeping the harm levels of each humor relatively low means a deadlier game, but when I played Ars Magica way back in the early 90s I remember it being pretty deadly too.
Yeah, this will definitely require some playtesting. I’ve only been working on the hack for a week though, so I’m sure things will clarify as I go.
Jared, do you have a Gdoc we can see? Did I miss the link?
I haven’t posted a full document yet – at the moment it’s just a bunch of disjointed sections in Scrivener. I expect to get some blocks of time over the weekend so I might have something coherent to share soon.
I’m looking forward to it!