Other thing is that you can create a natural spring or swamp of something black and deep... like the "petra Oleum" or asphalt...
Heh. Would that be a Terram, Ignem or Animal requisite?
And indeed, wikipedia refers to a pitch spring on the greek island of Zakynthos (or Zacinto, since the island in period is Venetian). Not sure how good that would be as ink, but nevertheless... I retract my objection, as long as the player couches it in such terms. A spring of processed ink I would still veto as a permanent creation via momentary creo.
In the medieval worldview, does a spring have a source, or is it an act of creating water then and there?
While Spring is the base quantity, your creo AQ spell would create the amount of water in the spring and that is it. It would not renew it, it would not keep creating it and when you used up that amount of water, it is gone.
You can create rivers and lakes too with higher magnitudes but again, they don't refill and you would eventually run out.
Creating the ink is a lot harder since you are making something that requires crafter efforts and so there would be finesse to determine quality of the ink otherwise it is just colored walter and not very good for books (add terram or herbam requisite since the mages would know that ink is watery elements plus something to give the color). Again, you create a quantity, not an endless supply.
"Create a spring with a high/low rate of flow"base 5/4... Where is the amount of water stated?
I agree with you that there should perhaps be a limit, but i dont think RAW agrees with us.
Sieges are meaningless against magi, most covenants certainly those with mages more than 10 or so years out of apprentice ship can completely mess up any conventional siege or conversely take any castle defended only by mundane means.
In the saga I play in at home we had a siege of the covenant , the only reason we allowed the attackers to live was because of the risk of being seen as intefering in mundane affairs and becasue we trusted our mundane defenses , we did magically provide some supplies . But we could using fairly subtle magics have done the lots of the following
- Wrecked siege engines
2)Spoiled food and water - created panic and dissent
- Bad weather
- Hardened the walls and gate so they could not be broken
or as we where tempted - Wipe out the besiegers with a hail of fiery death
I have a certain maga in a saga that is 5 years out of apprenticeship. She can make 30 enemies unable to hold their weapon in one hand per round (sure it lasts only 2 minutes but that is a long time). She will soon be inventing a version of that spell to take out a hundred for sun duration and mastered for multi-cast so both arms of a 100 soldiers at once, repeat as necessary. The more powerful spell will be only 1 season of work.
A Ritual to create water enough to last out a seige is minor.
I know that an Individual's worth of Aquam can cover a spring. But I find it highly unbalanced if doing this makes the water flow indefinately, compared to making an individual's worth of a lake. You'd still need a Duration, for the time which the water flows. Why would the spring be any more permanent than the lake. Lakes sometimes dry out, but so do springs.
The spell'd need to be in a location where one could naturally occur, else it needs to be "unnatural" or even "highly-". Also the Duration need to be more than Momentary, and asper 5th ed rules it can't be permanent. It can last for an entire year, as a Ritual though.
A spring of Ink would be "highly unnatural" wherever it was made (even from inside an inkwell) since this does not naturally occur.
Whilst springs do dry up, they last until they do, so to speak. Lakes do not dry up of their own accord, but because something else has changed, and so too it would be for the spring. Permanent, in this context, does not mean eternal, but rather that it has an indefinite duration based upon its normal, nonmagical properties and cannot be dispelled.
As for the Ink, yes, it'd be highly unnatural, but that does not mean you cannot create it with Creo rituals - it merely means that the spell is of higher magnitude (or not, given the minimum level of 20). Indeed, since coloured springs do exist, making a spring which is merely more usefully coloured is arguably only slighly unnatural. In Mythic Europe, such things can and will exist and "A wizard did it" is a perfectly legitimate reason for such a thing to be found. You can use a Creo Animal ritual to create a dragon, so why not a dribble of something which can be used as ink from a cliff-face?
I guess it would be acceptable to make a permanent spring if there was a suitable source of water under the ground nearby (though that might be a Perdo Terram effect rather than a Creo Aquam effect,
I do think that the Creo Aquam effect would be a touch unnatural for permanence,
But then its not CrAq any longer, its ReAq. And you cant make those permanent. :mrgreen:
While i mostly agree "in spirit", i dont think you´re correct based on the rules.
A CrAq spell with Momentary cast as ritual means it becomes permanent. Guideline only specifices high or low flow rate. And if you look at "Mighty torrent of water", it can be argued that it creates more than 1 individual of water already.
But as i said, personally i agree that you should be required to have a Duration limit how long the spring actually produces water.
Hmmm. I think part of why I disagree is that I don't think that they really do - a spring is not a hole in the ground leading to water, but a hole in the ground which produces water. Spontaneous generation of water from rock, so to speak, and perfectly permitted in Mythic Europe. Whilst I would be happy for the argument to say that a spring is a more complicated individual than a lake, requiring extra magnitudes to affect, as for Terram and gemstones, I feel that the setting suffers for making springs more mundane. The source of a river should be a special place, rather than just a convenient confluence of many underground rivers and a handy aquifer. The spell just replicates that in miniature.
As far as balance is concerned, the end result is something which requires three months work by a rare specialist (rare for there world, magi are common in covenants) and a reasonable supply of a valuable resource to, in effect, mean that you have a supply of drinking water. There are easier ways for a magus to do this, and cheaper ones, magically speaking, so long as a supply of water exists within the area. I don't see it as unreasonable.
Based on WHAT???
You think people used to dig wells just on random chance?
While i doubt many, or perhaps even anyone at all understood it all the way top to bottom, by medieval times i doubt anyone thought the water appeared out of nowhere. 2000 years earlier that argument might have been fine. Maybe.
Specialist? Base is just level 4 or 5. Its a level 20 ritual! Unless a mage has a deficiency of some sort, most should easily be able of casting it. Many will be able to cast it right after apprenticeship.
Sure, but you know how extremely valuable it is to be able to create a new river in the right place? For an extreme example, put a covenant in some desert, then go around and do some landscaping work, then create a few new rivers(or even small streams) and suddenly you have a brand spanking new area of a reasonably high level of growth potential.
Based on "Mighty Torrent of water", a "high rate of flow" probably means creating around 1 individual worth of water per round... Add a single +1 of size, or even 2 and you still have a fairly low level spell with immense implications.
Lets say:
Flooding the country:
CrAq 30
Base 5
Concentration +1, Size +4
So, the spell creates roughly 100.000 cubic meters of water per round, as long as you want it. Better be standing somewhere really high though(and no friends nearby)! :mrgreen:
And then you make that a ritual and cast it someplace you really dont like much. Of course, thanks to no need for the duration, you can actually make it produce a million tons of water per round for the same level.
Anyone who has seen a dam burst or an extreme spring flood in a large whitewater river knows this is a very deadly spell.
Guess why i asked how long it would take to FLOOD THE WORLD. With a serious specialist, well lets make it a level 45 ritual, that would create a billion tons of water per round. A level 60 ritual, well within the ability of a good specialist with some experience would mean a TRILLION TONS of water per round.
Still think its a good idea to allow it?
The duration is the key: Your ritual is touch, momentary, individual
So for one moment you have the volume of water equal to a spring that moves at low or high pressure. When the spell ends, you have that quantity of water created but no more water is being created so that spring effectively dries up.
Individual is volume of water you are effecting. A stream with a low rate of flow is X gallons of water (admittedly it is a large amount compared to something like earth, animal or corpus). It is a fixed amount. to keep it flowing, you need to create a lot more to be released over time or have a much longer duration.
Still if you have the aquam vis: base 4, +1 touch, +3 moon (CrAq 20) and you have a water supply to last out a seige as you have a stream that lasts a month and the water lasts forever if you catch it in barrels and such or have some sort of reservior
Intuituon, I freely admit, and the fact that the Divine in on record as splitting a rock and making water pour forth (Exodus 17, I believe). The powers of God are not those of Magi, but mainly because Magi require vis.
As opposed to the eels, mice and flies? Digging a well is not the same as finding a spring, but even ignoring that, the game is not set in Medieval Europe. It is set in Mythic Europe. and these things do happen. The time period is, in fact, irrelevent compared to the physics of the game world.
Hence my comment about covenants. A magus is a specialist as far as their scarcity and value as entities in the local economy are concerned. Trivial for a magus is a completely different thing from trivial for a mundane, and comparing them doesn't really achieve much. Magi are in the minority, and are prohibited from interfering with the mundanes. As such, they can't go around selling water supplies. At most, they can easily ensure their own. They can do this in many, many ways. This does not destroy the world.
Yes. Do you know how extremely valuable it is to be able to put a thought into someone's head? A few simple spells later and the king is at war, the bishops have been imprisoned for treason and a local merchant has killed his wife for adultery. Congratulations, you now have a market for your goods, fewer people agitating against you and the main competition for a vis source has been gaoled or at least fined into poverty.
Do you know how valuable it is to create sparks at a distance at will? One little spell, carefully cast, and suddenly the grain reserves are destroyed.
Do you know how valuable it is to make yourself silent and able to climb walls like a spider? Every home in the land is suddenly trivial to burgle, and mundane secrets are yours to overhear.
Any of these is even more trivial for a magus, and has the potential for completely rewriting the world, as do countless others. They're all also almost trivially low level. Allow 40 magnitudes more and, frankly, any continuity just breaks. House Tremere have a set of ritual spells which allow them to summon a massive army, invulnerable to mundane attacks. With non-ritual spells, they can turn a battlefield against their enemies, rain fire from the heavens and rot to dust the weaponry of their foes.
Magical balance is meaningful only in the context of other magic and the magical nature of the setting - any capacity you have which an opponent lacks, especially one as versatile as Hermetic Magic, results in a completely unbalanced situation. What matters is does it destroy play, and destroy fun, which in part also involves destroying the suspension of disbelief for the players. Does evapourated water return to the water cycle in Mythic Europe, or is it destroyed by the Fire of the Sun and refreshed from the Sphere of Water which rests upon the Sphere of Earth? (Actually, if Mark could answer that one, I'd be very interested to know.) Having a player work and spend resources to have a water supply, for me, breaks nothing. Having a player work and spend a great deal of resources for an incredibly potent and destructive spell which is useful in only a handful or circumstances (A flood to wash away a castle, provided you have somewhere to cast it from undisturbed) breaks nothing save a castle. It rewards ingenuity, and adds to the fun. In my Mythic Europe, the body's health is governed by four humours, there is no momentum and a spring is, very literally, a source of water.
Not touch, Personal.
Not from how the RAW seems to be written.
Where or how does that say in any way?
The guideline specifically says "create a spring with x flow level". Otherwise you´re not creating a spring, you´re creating water, which has a 1-2 levels lower base, which pretty much makes up for the Rego requisite that would be needed in conjunction with just creating water to make it act like a spring.
Oh yes, i agree that is a MUCH more "realistic" use of it.
And yes im very much playing devils advocate here.
So what? The Divine takes precedence over reality. The Divine can make the world tapdance if it wants. :mrgreen:
Considering that "mythic" is based mostly on historic ideas(even if sometimes very incoherently), its very relevant.
Which makes it false argument. You say its fine because its fine...
Oh allright, i didnt read it as that.
Eh... You might want to start experimenting with some numbers here...
Uhm, i think you fail to see the difference between affecting the world and annihilating it.
I HOPE you meant levels? Especially since RAW doesnt really have high enough guidelines or R/D/T:s to make a level 200+ useful and/or possible.
So what?
Use my Concentration duration spell(though raised another 2 in size or more preferably) and that army disappears beneath the waves, along with any people not forewarned to move to VERY high ground.
Yes, because it can literally flood the world in a fairly short time.
Doesnt matter when so much water is added so fast.
Agreed.
Me neither, but i would prefer any permanently created spring to be considerably higher base level at least.
OTOH, water created with long enough duration(minimum Moon Phase remaining duration) is able to sustain people and anything else living in "my" game, so regularly casting a CrAq of duration Moon or Season in a big container would take care of it.
I dont think you understand the level of destructiveness we´re talking about here. And a castle is probably one of the things that will break last from a flooding spell, unless you manage to position yourself so the water flow is straight at the castle or its not solid stone foundation.
8640 trillion tons of water per day.
8640 cubic kilometers per day. A block of water 86 by 10 by 10 KM... Per day.
In 431 years, from ONE SINGLE such source, you would get as much water as all that exists on earth. If that happens less than 5% of earth would be above ocean level(probably much less, i only ran some very simple and basic numbers).
It would however only take a few years to drown over 50% of dry land.
And hey, we´re still not close to being extreme in spell level. Make it a level 75 ritual instead and it takes less than 6 months to almost completely drown the world.
( I´ve always leaned towards wanting to change +Size to tripling the mass instead of making it *10 for this very reason, but since its so much less convenient...)
Alas, I cannot remember any other examples off the top of my head, but it does give me, at least, the impression of spring as being a thing itself, rather than merely a leak in a water supply.
::coughs::
Neither you nor I have any direct evidence that either of our views represent the accepted medieval or ancient views. Nevertheless, the theory of Spontaneous Generation was considered a valid belief until the early 17th century and, in Mythic Europe, really does occur for some things. Extending it to other, equally impossible or difficult to probe things seems reasonable.
Numbers for what? The flying cart loaded with water barrels? That's not difficult, especially not with a magus driving, so to speak. A suitable Roman-inspired magus can use Craft Magic to construct pipes and aquaducts without difficulty. Powerful magi might just teleport water from a source of their choice, or summon clouds to cause rain or indeed just collect rain as it falls and store it. Either way, the net effect is that the magi do not die of thirst. Each method has its own drawbacks, of course, but none are really out of reach of a determined magus about ten years post gauntlet and earlier for a specialist.
No, but I do see a difference between nuclear power and nuclear bombs. Any determined magus, with time on his hands, can bring the structure of Mythic Europe crashing down. He can slaughter thousands, shred economies, overthrown or sponsor nobles and make fish speak in the sets, driving fishermen mad. Though probably not all at once. Most do not because they fear the consequences, they don't care or they don't think of it. The status quo is comfortable and when you can be comfortably rich and live twice the time of your fellows, why bother? That this spell is, at a lower magnitude, capable of great destruction doesn't matter. CrIg is better for killing humans than PeCo, because that's the way it is. This does not mean CrIg is inherently unbalanced. (Though PeCo is to my mind somewhat crippled by size restrictions.)
Erm, yes. Levels. Sorry. ::hangs his head in shame::
So it does. Your concentration duration CrIg spell could probably do more damage to people without damaging the valuable stone buildings though. As could summoning up a storm and then casting a slightly more powerful Talons of the Wind. I agree that it has the potential to be very powerful in specific situations. By the same token, ReTe can be used to flawlessly assassinate a man from a very long way away just by hitting him with a rock. Do that to the Holy Roman Emperor at the right time and the loss of a single army might be trivial. Circumstances are everything.
Unless it is just absorbed by the sea - after all, rivers pour into it constantly and the level never rises. I agree, meaningless in the modern world, but Ars Magica is not set in the modern world and does not conform to the same laws.
Likewise in mine, actually. I rule that magically created things are real for as long as they exist, and their secondary effects persist, since otherwise fires have to go out and the like. And as I said, I have no objection to Spring being the Gemstone to a pool's dirt, but I do think that once there, a spring should be a spring.
Plenty enough. When people went out to find water they didnt wander around aimlessly, if they were about to dig a well they knew where to look and what to look for(usually).
Thats not exactly a truth written in stone. Arguments were made for it yes. That isnt the same as "valid belief".
"Creationism" is argued today and calling it a valid belief(as in based on reality) is just ridiculous.
Chinese philosophers talked about the flat earth hundreds of years after they KNEW it was round, does that make "flat earth" a valid belief as long as the philosophers used it as theoretical or philophical arguments?
Check my next, previous post.
Yeah, but that doesnt mean they create thousands of cubic kilometers per day worth of water.
Sure, but here you have an ability to destroy the world as it is from such a long range consequences are unlikely.
Nope, but try destroying a city on the other side of earth with it, without any kind of arcane connections.
CrAq can do it(together with the rest of the earths cities of course, just the low lying ones first).
Nearly all civilisations includes the myth of one or even several great floods.
The tides alter the sea level all the time.
In a game based on chinese myth? Yes.
And a magus filled by hubris inadvertently creating a new biblical Flood by an ill-conceived CrAq 70 ritual? I see absolutely no problem with that. I'd encourage it.