Using sound to deafen, damage, or shatter glass

I was thinking about sonic booms and sound pitch that can shatter glass, and trying to suss where these would fit in the Arts. Specifically if you wished to use sound as an instrument to inflict damage (a distracting thought I had while waiting for a server to come up).

• Base Imaginem 1, to create a sound, likely to be at a volume appropriate for R: Voice.
• a very intricate image is +1 mag, so a very loud noise would be +1 mag too.
• Based upon a loud sound (above), I think it would need an extra step +1 mag to break glass, for the sake of complexity. Or make the the magus roll Finesse with a high target to control the sound as needed against the glass.
• Based upon a loud sound (above), perhaps a +2 level of complexity could deafen people near the effect, but that sound would not break glass.
• I'd be tempted to make inflicting damage with sound (as in a momentary explosion of violent unnatural sound) to be +4 on the base 1, making a +5 effect that inflicts a small amount of damage. Base 1, +1 for unnatural sound, +3 for very bloody loud. Effect inflicting +0 damage, then allow additional mags to increase the damage up from there.

So breaking glass is base 3, and deafing a person might also be base 4, and using sound as a weapon as Level 10 to inflict +5 damage.

As a first thought it seems to be Imaginem, but perhaps the damage aspect has a place in Auram too, or a Perdo req when inflicting damage. Perhaps adding the Perdo in there is too 4th ed in thinking. Not sure.

cheers,
IBT

Sound can be used to deafen - see CrAu Jupiter's Blow or what it's called (serf's parma).

But medieval sound is a ll species and no sound waves, so physics are completely different, I guess.

I use CrIm as in creating a noise so bad that it damages things to be roughly in the region of Base Level/2 for anything close, a few m at the very most. So, Base 20 +2 Voice CrIm allows you to cause +10 damage in a radius of maybe 2-3m around a target location.
It´s a nice way to make Im capable of direct attack spells without hurting balance, you get an area effect spell but one that is comparatively low damage levels. If you want to be severely restrictive, use (Level/2)-5, that makes the above small area effect spell as hard to cast as the RAW lightning spell which causes massively more damage to a single target.

Comparing it to real world Kiai-jutsu it should be reasonable in damage, able to kill small animals with a single hit but only hurt a normal human.

Modern thinking. Unless you consider sound to be a weather effect?

Nah, that would imply that you´re causing damage to the sound...

But sound can still damage then, just as it can now and this leaves no sane Form to use for Soundbased spells.

While I agree that modern physics should not be applied overly to ArM in general, note that it might work in your saga. Ask the rest of the Troupe. Although science and sound waves should probably be left out of the spell discription, I wouldn't be against a spell using sound to break glass. I'm pretty sure some singers were able to do that through mundane means at that time anyway (maybe with a minor supernatural virtue, though).
As mentioned above, Jupiter's Resounding Blow, as I recall it, does deafen using Auram, yes. So one might work in this direction. Whether Auram can cover the sound you're looking for in general though, I'm not sure.
Creating sound through Imaginem is more about species, so I don't really like using it for damage. Confusion, fear etc. are all good, but not pure damage IMO.

Is there a medieval explanation somewhere of how species is defined somewhere?

I did a bit of digging and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought, but its not as targeted as it needs to be.

By creating a crash of thunder, which is a "kind" of weather. So the sound is an indirect effect. For me it would be strange if you couldnt do the same as direct effect.

Keep it low and it becomes a very interesting option that diverge from most others, ie. drop the amount of damage for the ability to get an area effect.

Its is one of the times where there two spell effects can be created to facilitate a desired outcome. There are may ways to make something colder, or make a weapon more effective, or even to increase soak. I think both should apply, and the feedback in the thread has been really valuable in changing my impression of how to do it, or how easy/hard it should be.

Creating a boom effect via CrAu is certain to be effective, and that the boom will function like "natural" thunder (its no different from creating a fire which generates light but not heat). If the caster wished to increase the effect to make it have more impact, that makes it an "unnatural" version of the same effect, which should increase mag. Seems fine, and the real trick will be as DireWolf has mentioned: getting the scaling correct so its good but not broken.

So to it should be plausible to create sound loud enough to harm or deafen people using CrIm. I understand that it might rub against the species of sound in the paradigm, but it follows logically that a sound can be made, or made very loud, or made so loud as to cause harm with the same set of arts.

The AoE aspect is interesting as a side discussion here too - creating an image has certain inherent impacts outside the typical Range, Duration, Target, and I think that creating sound should have the same. i.e. A created sound should behave as sound does normally, unless the magic is further changed to change it's effect.

i.e. creating a sound blast in a cone should be harder than creating one that occurs and can be heard by all.

I'm going to keep pondering, and will write up some worked spells with some baselines soon.

To add another tricky question - how is MR resolved for sound spell effects?

We don't get a MR to avoid a visual illusion, what about a harmful sound spell? Perhaps a muted result, where the mage knows of the effect, but was protected from the nasty effects?

Unless A&A has something to say about sound I'll be drawing blanks.

But my gut feeling tells me that using sound to break glass reeks of modern physics and not ArM natural philisophy. Said in another way: it does not fit my vision of ArM.

Although i can easily see sound being the focus of a Magus, I do not care much for the notion of it being used as damaging spell, with the possible addition of magnitudes of damage. I might be able to accept a sound source dealing +0 damage, but not much more than that IMO. Creation of sound is a very versatile tool, and could cause indirect effects similar to the direct effects of other Forms; but it should always be slightly weaker than that:

A booming sound might deafen people; Perdo Corpus deafens people.
A high-pitched volume might send animals fleeing; Rego Animal sends anymals fleeing.
An eerie sound might make people afraid; Creo Mentem makes people afraid.
A horrible noise might cause people to cover their ears; Rego Corpus causes people to cover their ears.
An powerful shout might alarm the guards; Creo Mentem alarms the guards.
An intense noise might hurt your advesaries; Perdo Corpus hurts your adversaries.
...

What you give up in assurances and discretion though, you win back in flexibility and indirect targeting. Depending on your saga, MR might not always apply against some of these effects (as mentioned in the above post). And even if MR does apply, attacking with the form of Imaginem is likely to give you a 5-15 points lower MR, compared to Mentem or Corpus, through reduced form resistance and a good shoot at dodging a Parma speciality. Also, since the attacks are indirect, you won't have to worry about creating seperate spells for different targets; a loud sound will be heard by poeple, animals og other creatures alike.

I'm not found of sound doing actual +X damage, I don't think thats really Mythic Europe material. Causing pain, yes. Deafening, indeed. Damaging, no thanks... Unless we are talking creative indirect damaging such as hitting that particular high pitch sound that breaks the Mosaic Window of the new St. John's Cathedral while the awestruck clergy stands beneath it. Or creating a sound of such intensity as to provoke an avalanche swallowing the entire mountain village of Brehm. Or even just severely frightening the young mare of the heavily armored veteran knight as he crosses the river bridge. I would employ magically created sound much in the same way as I would illusions.

For an offensive spell, I could see your Magus casting a particularly powerfull CreoImaginem spell that polluted an area with extreme sound, however - something like this:

Wizard's Wail
Cr(Re)Im 15
R: Voice D: Concentration T: Ind
[tab][/tab]The Maga wraps her hands around her neck as if to strangle herself, with her thumbs pointing downwards; putting pressure on her larynx. She then opens her mouth alomst impossible wide and a shrill sound emanates. For as long as the Maga keeps 'wailing' she continues to pollute a circular area, 20 paces in diameter, centered on her, with an high-pitched noise of unbearable volume. Anyone being subject to this extreme noise, is immediately overwhelmed by a desire to let go of anything held and cover their ears.
[tab][/tab]Any targets that effectively covers their ears within the first round, and continues to do so for the duration of the spell, takes no further damage. With an appropriate Personality Trait roll of Brave or Reckless, or the expenditure of a Confidence point, targets may fight this sensation to cover their ears and continue attempting to taking actions. Whether choosing to not cover ones ears or being unable to do so, any unprotected target requires a Stamina roll of 6+ each round in order to take any actions other than fighting the pain and distraction. The difficulty of this roll increases to 9+, if the target attempts to move closer to the source of the sound. If, at any point, a target rolls a Stamina 12+, that target is unaffected by the spell for its entire duration. Similarly, a target that botches one such Stamina roll is deafened (for a period matching the Wound Recovery Intervals, where 1 botch die equals a Light Wound; 2 equals a Medium Wound; 3 a Heavy Wound, and 4 or more results in permanent loss of hearing.)
[tab][/tab]Note that sound-based communication within the area is effectively impossible for the duration of the spell. This does nothing to limit other sounds within the area, but merely drowns them in high intensity sound. Thus, this spell does nothing to hamper the effective range of Voice range spells, but it does invoke a -3 penalty to casting total for not being able to hear oneself speak the words. Also, all Concentration rolls made while under the effect of the spell, are at -3. Animals are particularly vulnerable to the effects of this spell, owing to their finely tuned hearing, and tend to flee the area as fast as possible. The Rego requisite is added to control the sound created and to protect the caster from the 'wailing'.
[tab][/tab](Base 1 - sound produced by one adult, +2 Voice, +1 Concentration, +1 Size (sound volume), +1 particular high pitch, +1 Rego requisite)

Edit: My original wording before posting was 'everyone within 10 meters', which i then translated into something more in line with discriptions of other spells, and I mistakenly put in 'a circle 10 paces in diameter'. I've now corrected it to be '20 paces in diameter'.

Thats a darn nice spell described Lasse. Is the Rego component there so that the caster is unaffected by the noise?

My intent was to also allow created noises at a range distant from the caster, so that the caster could avoid the target area. I agree too that sound should not be a perfect effect, rather it should reply on resistance checks (eg. Stam vs noise) and also require Finesse checks for targeting and also for fine control such as used for shattering glass. It makes sound a more graceful and delicate weapon.

Fair call. I was not confident that +x scaling my magnitudes is fair either, but do think that sound has a place inflicting damage against targets. It might need to be moderated by the target of the sound as to how much damage they would take as well, as it should be nigh on impossible to "hurt" some sybstances, but others should be easily affected.

On that basis of not fitting to a Mythic style though many of the spells that are core in Ars also could be called into question, as they have little representation in legends of Europe's history. I'm not widely read in terms of myths but I can't recall lightning bolts or fire effects that were not used by titans or gods instead of mortals. Imho most of the direct damage dealing effects are not well presented in lore. Also too many of the more subtle effects (like all of mentum) are generally not presented in lore, but are allowed as they have no contradiction.

A siren's call or the shirek of a harpy is mythic enough to allow use; and my overall approach is to propose that increasing volume to inflict damage with sound is no more non-mythic than increasing a small candle flame into a pillum of fire, or arc of firey ribbons. Both are a significant increase in volume of material created, the complexity of effect is far higher, and the control needed increases.

Essentially though being able to create sound is perhaps more "natural" than being able to create fire.

My understanding is that all species are natural: it is impossible to differentiate between CrIm species and mundane ones. That would mean that MR does not apply to Imaginem spells unless you are the target.

Another problem is that species will affect anyone within range, which could be large Groups, without requiring extra magnitudes. For that reason, I would compare to CrAu sound/stench effects to determine spell levels.

Perhaps then the resolve is to houserule that a species created beyond that which could occur naturally in the world is affected by MR. i.e. use some spell guidelines which deal with natural species vs effects which are unnatural.

So the Wizard's Wail spell above would be resisted by MR, but creation of a loud noise which is not harmful would not.

+1.

Legends have been made real in AM with much less reality behind it, would be odd to arbitrarily say no.

Thanks. Put some real effort into it, so that you might be able to use it for your character. Also, I was afraid i might come off a little bit negative towards your sound Magus' approach - so i wanted to show you what kind of spells I DO like using sound And yeah, Rego is for protecting the caster.

Creating sounds at a range is already possible, so that should not be a problem. For reasons of flavor I did the design like this, but it could have been designed with the sound having a different point of origin - possibly with a duration of Diameter instead. If we are talking about Mythic equivalents, I believe the Wendigo is using this in his 'faking-human-voices-ventriloquism', luring victims away from safety by imitating a desperate cry for help or the sound of a crying babe.
BTW I like the 'makes sound a more graceful and delicate weapon' comment I can totally hear your Magus say this with booming pride! Although some of your Giant-Blooded, Warhammer-wielding Weathermage colleagues might call you a fag for it, i believe it will get you far with the girls

If you moderate the damage towards specific targets then sure; sound should be able to inflict damage. I mentioned quite a few examples of indirect damage in an earlier post, and I stick with them. I just think it would loose some flavor if sound become a direct 'min-maxable + magnitude scale able damage tool'. It has more potential IMO. But as I said earlier - that depends on how you and your Troupe feels about it. As with everything, just keep it within the normal boundaries of damage, and let it be at least a little bit less effective than fire - and you should be fine. Your arguments about needing extra control and higher complexity make sense, but for me that isn't really the issue. I'm not worried about unbalancing the game, I'm confident that you're going to work that out with an extra magnitude here or there as required.

Damaging specific targets with sounds of a certain type is much better. You talk about different substances, and this sounds much more promising to me. In an earlier post, I defended the breaking of glass through high-pitch sounds, and maybe impossibly shrill sounds could destroy stone or make metal brittle? This might start to cause some overlap of Arts, but i wouldn't mind much if your Troupe likes it. It certainly has the right feel to it, doesn't it? You might also be able to make rocks shake and start avalanches with particularly deep rumbling sounds of immense power, and maybe you could even design a spell for damaging rock golems/elementals. I'm okay with all of this happening in Mythic Europe.

There are many Mythic sources of sound hurting targets. You mentioned Sirens and Harpys, and I made a reference to the Wail of a Banshee in the spell discription above. To me this is much more 'in tune' (pun intended) with Mythic Europe than many of the spells in the Core Rulebook. That's why I just designed a spell like that - to show you that I am a believer We know now that you could actually be killed by being subject to too much sound, if you created a big enough loudspeaker. But even some 800 years ago, people knew that sound could hurt, if that bloody war-trumpet was blown straight into your ear. So small amounts of damage, stunning, deafening is great - and even to some extent I don't mind high amounts of damage. But as soon as sound starts to operate with modern physics for sounds, I'm raising the alarm. But that doesn't mean that it's a no-go, there are spells like that in the Core Rulebook. I would never myself design a spell like Eyes of the Bat for instance - but it doesn't unbalance the game so it's not that much of an issue. In Mythic Europe I would personally like the bat to be able to see in the dark, but what do I know...

Also, you mention out-of-place spells to call lightning, but again I don't mind much. It's not a common legend no, but if a Magus has seen a lightning bolt, he is going to try to fire one, for sure. As long as we don't start using modern knowledge of lightning in a discussion about wearing rubber boots, or a SG deciding that the entire party died while swimming in the pond, because the Auram specialist cast a lightning bolt in the water trying to fry a Salmon. And the reason why the more subtle effects of Mentem are not that much present in lore is... well it's quite obvious isn't it In my saga you can cast as many fireballs as you like, but don't try to invent spells like Vision of Heat's Light, because they will fail utterly

I agree. If we were discussing whether producing sound should be harder than producing fire, this would even be a valid argument Creo Ignem base 4 creates fire, where Creo Imaginem base 1 produces sound - the guidelines already agree with you. To go from there, to saying that damaging people with sound should also be easier (possibly 3 magnitudes) than damaging them with fire, is a long shot I know that's not where you're trying to go, but it reminds me of a Danish play (theatre) where the main character Eramus Montanus comes home to his small home village, after taking a fancy education in France. He has learned the art of dispute (he believes) and has a quote that goes something like this: "A rock cannot fly. Mother cannot fly. Ergo: Mother is a rock." Needless to say, it's a comedy :mrgreen:

Hi,

My personal preference for this would be to look at the effect rather than the cause: a loud shriek which has the intent to deafen could be mimicked with a PeCo spell; the loud noise is cosmetic. Likewise for shattering glass (PeTe). This solution doesn't run into the problems that CrIm spells are not resisted. The Corpus version would work exceptionally well for Bjornaer Sensory Magic...
The reasoning behind this is that it is not the noise that is deafening, it is the body's incapacity to cope with the noise that causes the damage. The effect is damaging the body, and PeCo is the means for that.

But there are many ways of skinning a cat.

Mark

I agree with the reasoning. In an earlier post i wrote:

In my opinion you should just apply common sense, when diciding for or against MR.
If the spell does something that would otherwise be resisted my MR, then this spell should too.
The Wizard's Wail above for instance, would need to penetrate (with me as a SG).

Any spell that tries to cause a direct effect is resisted in my book. If resist a sound damage spell, you still hear it(to some extent) but it´s just the noise.

MUCH less than fire. Fire is generally Level +5 and other damage causing is roughly from Level -5 to at most +10.
Hence why i consider Level /2 or /2-5 (or even (-5)/2) is fairly suitable. Base 20 would then cause +5, +8 or +10 damage. A PoF with the same base do +25 damage but is a point attack.

What if someone creates a "Sight of the serpent" drawing on some ability to sense heat?

What about a magical spell causing a strong enough sound to cause injuries has anything at all to do with modern physics?

Seconded.

Agreed.
Always go lower than fire. Here i would go lower than most other arts as well. When making these comparisons i always assume that we are talking the same amount of subjects affected. Thus, if we are talking about an area effect, compare damage to a grouped Pillum of Fire instead. And then go at least one magnitude (I'd prefere more) up.

Does your Magus know that serpents lick the air to sense moisture and heat? If not, i can't say I like it. If he does - I'm 100% okay with it. But don't expect it to be fully operational heat vision, like that from Predator. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be inspired by the animal kingdom, or even legends. I just don't like it when we go "oooh, i want a GPS-spell!". Anway, we were talking about Sound, and i personally don't like Eyes of the Bat. But since it's completely vanilla, most people with sound as a focus would pick it - and rightfully so.

To answer it shortly: Nothing!

... Then the long answer:
Oh my Direwolf - if you want to, you could probably cut out parts of my earlier sentences and have me say: "I don't like... spells... in general".
Read the entire post, please. Heck, you're even welcome to read the spell I designed above if you feel inclined to do so....
Sound spells that cause injuries are fine with me. I even designed one. I also wrote that sound spells that do direct damage are fine with me and given examples of Mythic Europe Legend material that already does so. Personally, I'd just rather use sound for something different. And i wouldn't like sound to be as effective at damaging through sheer volume, that it could match say Auram or Terram in damage compared to magnitude. If so, I'd like it to be more along the lines of +5 damage per two magnitudes as you suggested.
The thing is, that I believe that sound as species, the phenomenon of sound in Mythic Europe, is covered by Imaginem. And the Form of Imaginem as written, is particularly bad at doing direct damage. On the other hand, it is extremely good as causing indirect harm, through confusion, obscuring of senses, illusions etc. Thus I think using sound like this is a good idea, by scaring people, causing confusion, luring people away etc., and I'm already working on an NPC maga for my Finland Campaign (inspired by the OP). But to give Imaginem the possibility of doing +X direct damage, on top of everything else it can do, it just doesn't feel right - and blurs the limits of the Forms IMO.
Before you make a clever counterargument Direwolf, would you care read the post again, and see if you actually agree? Or at least undestand where I'm coming from?

Say what? Snakes that sense heat have a pair of points located on the head similar to eyes, enough to "see" a small mouse a few m away. Wether this is known at the time is a big open question. Anyway, point was that the ability exists naturally regardless of rules or guidelines.

Heh, well that i can certainly agree to a point at least. OTOH, it´s magic, make it high enough in level and i think it´s open for discussion.

Heh...
-I´m at 60 degrees North and 17 degrees East... So what the **** does THAT mean!? :mrgreen:

Ie. a "GPS spell" might be rather useless depending on how it´s done, and to get one that is precise and super easy to use? Again, you pay for that with a high base level or complexity magnitudes. Keep the kind of spells you´re not happy with high enough that they end up as level 45-50 spells if playing by RAW. That way only a specialist can use them, and they cant be everywhere all the time.

I dont agree, that´s kinda the point isnt it?

If real natural sound CAN do it, why shouldnt magically created sound be able to do the same? If it cant, then Im as written is wrong. (and this is why i don´t like playing with fake physics, because then either a played will find a way to exploit the fake, or they will find good justification for exploiting it by bending the fake towards real physics, and this in my experience happens regardless if players are consciously trying to find exploits or not)

The forms are already more blurred than this adds to. You add the ability to cause low direct damage as an area effect, something other forms are generally not as good at. I can only see it as complementing rather than blurring.

Remember, Im is "size" based theoretically on a single human, it´s far easier to abuse the Auram individual size.
Also, do note that for my own game i´ve used the more restrictive /2-5 most of the time, but that´s because i run in games with fairly much XP. Still though, using the (-5)/2 also keeps it low, which makes it useful but weak.
A base 15 to get +5 damage isnt something to worry about, and how much radius you want to give it IS up to the SG, IIRC i placed it as a couple of m. So for maximum effect you need Finesse to place the effect just right in the middle of a tightly clustered group and hope they dont have too good soak.
You do +35 damage with a lightning spell, that´s pretty much instakill, with a sound attack as above at same level and RDT, you would do +10 damage to at the most perhaps 10ish people, with damage effectiveness being proportionally less effective the lower you get, well in comparison you can cause a guaranteed medium wound to 100 targets using PeCo spell at an equal level 35. Or heavy wounds to 10 people, thats far more effective.

As a comparison, i´ll add that by my game, Vim can also be used to cause direct damage, even though it´s very poor at it.
As a rulesmonkey, i mod more than i play and the one thing i don´t like is when something is arbitrarily and categorically stated as "must not be used this or that way", that´s an excessively boring limitation since it lacks reason. If it doesn´t cause problems to a game and is well enough inline with the game then there´s no good reason to just kneejerk away from it, it´s just a matter of fixing up rules for it that are good enough.

Anyway, this:

Is exactly what i´ve been saying from the start...