king_pellinor | Feeling old and tired

Playing Ars Magica last night, I came up to an aging roll. For these, you roll a d10, add a modifier based on age and living conditions, and check the table. You need to get 10 or more to have a problem, and 20 to have a bad one, so rolling low is good.

Roll the die: it comes up a 1. Hurrah!

Elation is moderated when I remember that this is an Ars Magica die, in which a 1 means "roll again and double it".

OK, roll again: 1.

Ack. "Roll again and quadruple it": 7

That's a total of 28 (on a 10-sided die!), plus modifiers. The chart only goes up to 22, even for ancient magi living in hellholes. My poor character got a month in bed and is now feeling decrepit.

Why can't I get die rolls like that when I'm trying to cast a crucial spell that *needs* a high score?

Ho hum. At least it's not as bad as the repeated botches I got when crossing a puddle that took all the GM's ingenuity to save me from drowning :-) I do like games that allow for the occasional bizarre extreme result, just to keep you on your toes. Every time I say "Pah, it'll never happen", Ars Magica finds a way to make me eat those words :-)

On the bright side, I took the GM aback when I declared I was going to make an apprentice, a good five years or more before he thought I'd be able to. "What? Give me your character sheet!" :-D

AND I squished that narsty librarian.

Cheers,

Pell.R.