Botch

In Ars Magica, a botch is a disastrous failure or accident that can happen at unfortunate times. A botch may happen any time a player rolls a zero on a stress die. The storyguide then assigns the player a number of botch dice to roll. If any of those come up zero, a botch has occurred.

Number of Botch Dice

The number of botch dice is left to the judgment of the story guide. Guidelines for how many botch dice to assign vary from one edition of the rules to another. In Fifth Edition, the rules for assigning botch dice are on page 7.

Effects of a Botch

The effects of a botch are somewhat open-ended and are left to the imagination of the storyguide. Whatever the character was attempting fails, usually in a dramatic way. For example, a warrior may drop his sword or a magus may accidentally cast the wrong spell. In general a botch should be unfortunate, but not necessarily fatal.

It can be fun to let the player offer suggestions as to what the effects of the botch should be. The final decision belongs to the storyguide.

Defense Botches

There are special rules in Fifth Edition for what happens if a character botches a Defense roll. See Combat Botches on page 171.

Multiple Botches

Occasionally, a player may be so unlucky as to roll a zero on two or more botch dice at a time. This is called a multiple botch. A multiple botch is the same as a single botch but the effects are proportionally more severe. For example, with a single botch a magus might cast a spell on the wrong person, and with a multiple botch he might cast it on himself! Or, a multiple botch could represent several things going wrong at once: the warrior drops his sword and falls off his horse.

References

• Botch Dice, ArM5 page 7