7 League Stride question

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I have a player that wants to teleport across England using "Seven League Stride". He keeps demanding to go the full distance using line of sight. Often by levitating to the top of a nearby tree to get a better sight line.
I am suggesting that England is still a green and pleasant land, so you will not usually see the full range because of forests in the way.
Roads have curves, and teleporting into fields have issues, not to mention rolling hills.
Yet he wanted to go from London to Libellus Covenant in half a dozen castings, by following the route I suggested - up the road to Cambridge, turn right to the road to Bury St Edmunds, another right down the road, and follow the path the Libellus. On a rainy night, using the InAu spell "True Sight of the Air" and MuCo(An) "Eyes of the Cat". And complains about not being able to go directly as the crow flies.

How easy should it be to do long-range line-of sight teleportation in 13thCE England?

I wish I had seen this thread before last game session.

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I think, it will be pretty inconsistent and dangerous.
First, it is not because the mage can see far, that he sees the detail where he will be landing, without additional spells. From my room, I can see the top of the mountain, which is at least a league away. It does not mean that I can see a flat, safe, unoccupied spot to move there.
So Finesse rolls are mandatory (as per rule p135). If he needs to do that 6 or 8 times, there is a fair risk of botch without Cautious with Finesse. Being relax and not threaten at the time of casting does not help with the Finesse roll, when a mage is stretching his capability that far, so it will always be a stress roll.

Remind him that if he sees only the top of the trees - England had a lot of forests at the time - the mage will be landing at the top of the trees and free falling.

You can ask him to do an Int + Area Lore to plan the most adequate "set of jumping spots", and the success or failure impact the ease factor of Finesse rolls and the number of spells required to cover the distance. Once he has done that four or five times, the Area Lore roll can be neglected, but the Finesse rolls remain.

Regarding the distance of a league, the thread you pointed gives good estimate: roughly, the distance covered in one hour by a walking man, so 4 to 5 km, about 3 miles.
To make it simple, the seven league stride would allow to cover a distance further than one can see (about 5 km at sea, without elevation, which is limited by the curvature of the earth).

This wiki page gives you the distance you can see based on your altitude: Horizon optique — Wikipédia

At 5 km, our eyes won't see any details, just some colour and contour of large items.

And to complete the discussion, using AC to perfom such jumps, require properly fixed AC. If the mage just collect some stones while walking or landing, to come back, once such stone is stored in his pocket, it will quickly loose the property of "being a stone nearby the river of XXX location" to just being "a stone in the pocket of a guy", or "a stone kept in a drawer for so many months".
So he 6 jumps are needed, 6 AC are needed, and one season & one pawn will be needed to fix properly each AC.

Teleportation is one of the most game altering effect, so discuss with your troupe how easy or difficult you want to make it:

  • effect of 6 magnitude and above grants warping unless specifically designed for the target. Applied on a non-specific target - a grog for example - and with five jumps, the target has 5 warping points that bring her to the first level of Twilight with an appropriate minor flaw if non-magically aligned;
  • requisits are required to carry items through TP. We ruled that anything that has 0 "Load" can be carried without additional requisit (which is usually only the clothing - no armor, and possibly a small pouch), but you can adjust that with your troupe. Especially consider the familiar case: unless a very small animal (mouse, sparrow) cannot be included in the TP without a requisit.
  • it means books are bulky and requires Herbam/Animal requisit to be carried with the mage, weapons and armor Terram and Animal (metal and leather), etc...
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This is unreasonably punitive, and completely ignores the rules. "rock or metal from a specific place" is one of the rules examples of Arcane Connections that last Years before they begin to fade.

The rules state that Arcane Connections are created "if the connection was very closely associated with the target, often by being a part of it." There's no reasonable interpretation that would include carrying a rock around in your pocket/drawer as "very closely associated" with that pocket/drawer.

Seven League Stride doesn't use an Arcane Connection, anyway. That's the Leap of Homecoming. Just because the player is trying to abuse the rules, there's no need to abuse the rules yourself.

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Actually, you're wrong about the Arcane Connection point, see the spell below, emphasis mine.

Seven-League Stride
Transports you to any place within seven leagues either that you can see or that you have an Arcane Connection with. If you fail an Intelligence + Finesse stress roll of 9+, your arrival goes slightly awry.

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As for the notes about AC's (not sure why they were brought up), sure they must be stored carefully, but that is not the same as fixing them. And a stone from a specific place will take a very long time to fade.

Arcane Connections must be stored carefully, or else they become links to different people or places.

That's not really true. A troupe could decide that. They're definitely needed once the carried items become a very significant amount of what is being carried. How little is up to the troupe, and your 0-Load decision leans toward the restrictive side.

Back more to the OP, if the mage is levitating, the mage could teleport from treetop to treetop on a reasonably straight path. At that point, details aren't too important, and you don't really care if you arrive a little off from your target spot. Clearly the character has put some effort into developing this, as you're talking about four spells, across a bunch of TeFo combinations, one of which is pretty high level. Sure, the mage might want to do a few more hops, each one being slightly shorter, to deal with terrain and vision, and would probably have to make an Area Lore roll for navigation if they don't just follow a clear path. But overall this seems reasonable.

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And if they last ears why bother to fix an arcane connection when you can just send some grogs to pick up the appropriate rocks...
especially if the group will actually do grog adventures, maybe include a companion to direct...

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I find it quite reasonable that rocks taken from the soil that would last "years" if stored carefully, only last months if left in your pocket or in a bag. I would have preferred a different word than " "stored" as my comprehension of AC's is that it starts forming new ones if left in the same space for too long. Moving it would hence prolong the original arcane connection as it prevents the formation of a new one. I think CrVi effects can also prolong them.

CoreBook p.84 says "However, the spell must have a range of Arcane Connection, which makes casting spells like this harder than casting them on a target who is actually present" yet 7 league stride somehow allows the use of ACs. I'd say it is a minor breakthrough that was not integrated and only works that that spell and cannot be replicated with other parameters unless it is arcane connection. Kinda makes sense as it is credited to Praefactus of Bonisagus

I'd even go as far as the AC allows for safer teleportation and once the teleportation landing areas are established and safe, I'd even forgo the finesse roll.

On the opposite side, the teleportation in the air to a location you cannot see properly should get you extra botch dices but they can be mitigated by using an effect like Eagle's Eyes and having a ReCo effect on yourself to avoid falling. Mastery of the Teleportation effect also helps.

I like using Aura's as wild cards for teleportation. Divine/Infernal auras tend to appear following minor miracles or sacrilegious acts which are daily common. If the Magi attracted the attention of a realm recently by doing some activities (ex. killing=infernal, meddling=fey) there might be more of these aura's on his travel itinerary.

A troupe needs to be clear on the dangers of Teleportation if any. It needs to be a choice, not a surprise, should there be something that happens. By choice I mean, player chooses Teleportation knowing the risks. You can set the setting by having a redcap report of the number of injuries/disappearances linked to teleportation accidents. Or a letter from the parens warning of xyz.

W

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The Seven-League Stride is limited to 7 leagues in distance, no matter how far your line of sight goes, or that the caster is using an Arcance Connection. And, as mentioned by @Ezechiel3571 , the Finesse roll must always be made to provide a safe landing and is always a stress roll. On these points, it doesn't matter whether you are using a line-of-sight or an Arcane Connection.

Exactly how hard it would be in a specific saga is really up to the storyguide and/or the troupe. What we can suggest are elements that can make it harder, rather than easier.

At one end of the spectrum, your troupe could decide to handwave it and say, "Fine, you can travel the distance quikly. Make one die roll for the whole trip to see how things go." (Probably adding 1 botch die for each additional casting to account for the distance.)

To make it harder, there are other factors one can consider. What are the land conditions for a good line-of-sight and a safe landing? Do you mind appearing in a place where other people are travelling? Even with ACs, conditions can change quite a bit with the passage of time. In spring the riverside where you picked that rock may be overflowing and covered by several feet of ice-cold water. That nice forest meadow from last summer might be swampy in fall or covered by a yard of snow in the winter. There might just happen to be a battle being fought in that field. A bear might have selected that cave for its lair. Brigand may have taken over those ruins as a place to make camp. So the troupe could require individual Finesse rolls for each casting of the spell, and impose additional botch dice based on knowledge of the land (based on Area Lore), presence of good lines of sight and properly identifying landing points if using line-of-sight (based on an Awareness roll each time), etc.

The point is, no one can make that determination of how easy it is to make the crossing using TSLS for your troupe. Like so many things, they have to decide that.

As for how many castings it takes to travel from one side of England to the other can vary a lot, depending on where in England you are crossing. Some latitudes are much broader than others, so the distance changes.

For example, from Birstol to Colchester is about 250 km as the bird flies. That translates roughly to 50 leagues in my books (5 km to 1 league). So it would take a minimum of 7 castings of the spell. A troupe could easily rule that travel using the spell is harder and decide on more.

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As has been mentioned, it really depends on the exact departure and arrival points.

However, if you want to travel long-distance, it should not be too hard to teleport high up into the sky - say, at a height of 1000 paces. From this height, a man takes (in the real world, Aristotelian physics may differ but should not differ too much) a little over three rounds to reach the ground falling, giving ample time to recast the teleportation spell before that happens. Recasting the spell allows the magus to regain lost altitude and still move almost the entire seven leagues forward.

That said, as Arthur mentioned, each casting requires a stress Int+Finesse roll of 9+, or the jumpt goes "slightly awkward". The wording seems to exclude lethal consequences unless the roll is botched ... in which case, it's up to the troupe.

In my troupe, we'd be fairly lenient. After all, a magus who can do this sort of thing must be heavily invested in Rego Corpus. Compare with a spell to levitate a large boat/small ship for D:Sun (ReHe 25: Base 4 (move a Herbam object in any direction you want - see also Base 4 ReCo for Lift the Dangling Puppet), +1 Touch, +2 Sun, +2 Size), plus a spell to create a strong wind to propel it forward, once it's up in the sky (CrAu 5, Base 3, +1 Touch, +1 Conc, possibly paired with an ever-useful ReVi 10 Maintain-the-Demaning-first-Magnitude-spell-for-D-Sun). Sure, travel won't be instantenous and one would need a boat to start with, but one would still be able to cover hundreds of miles over a single night, in greater comfort, with greater safety, and transporting other people and stuff without warping.

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:slight_smile: 18s of freefall is hardly ample time

True but I'd say that this is in standard non-stress situations of which free fall is not one of them.

CONCENTRATION
Focusing your mental faculties on one task, particularly for extended periods of time. If you are attempting a feat that demands your extra attention, or if you have just failed an action and are trying again, the storyguide can call for a Concentration roll before you can make the attempt. This Ability is especially important for magi because it helps them maintain concentration on spells despite distractions. Specialties: spell concentration, reading, lab work. (General)

Concentration
A maga must concentrate in order to cast a spell. If she is distracted, she must make a concentration roll.
CONCENTRATION ROLL: Stamina + Concentration + Stress Die
If the concentration roll fails, the spell fails. If the spell casting roll involved a stress die, you must still roll to see whether the maga botches, and you get one extra botch die. The Ease Factor for the concentration roll depends on the distraction. Corebook p.82

Most will consider a maximum of 18s of free fall as a situation that is distracting and as such, casting a spell requires a concentration roll. The Table on p.82 suggests a target of 3+ when walking to cast a spell that does not require anything special like maintaining a line of sight in free fall. Being hit by a bolt while casting triggers a concentration roll of 15+. Line of Sight + Free fall probably is a bit less of a distraction/difficulty than being injured but not by much.

Say you succeed at your 12+ concentration roll, then you need to do the Finesse roll of 9+ to land gracefully on the target area that you managed to maintain line of sight on while casting for a full round in free fall. Failure of the concentration roll probably means death for the character unless there is some kind of intervention.

A cautious Finesse & Concentration Magi that has mastered 7 league stride in Concentration/Finesse at a decent rank to be able to hit both targets most of the time is still playing with fire when attempting to Teleport in free fall as per RAW but Ars Magica is not for the faint-hearted and you can HR to make it easier as troupe desires.

W

Bungee/Catapult Master Instructor with 12 10,000 ft skydives. Ah! to be young.

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I disagree: If you know how to cast a spell, and it generally takes 6 seconds to cast it calmly, 20-22 seconds really is ample time That's far more than the average opponent charging you from outside Range:Voice takes to reach you, and I've never seen troupes call for Concentration rolls in such cases. Want to have more time, a bit over six rounds? Jump to 2000 paces. And free-falling is not any more distracting than standing still once you've practiced it a little.

I do agree that casting roll would be stress, rather than simple, in such situations.

But, really ... just add a ReCo 5 Lift the Dangling Puppet (R:Per, D:Diam) effect - something a magus who can cast a Seven League Stride can easily manage spontaneously, possibly without fatigue - and any objection disappears.

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For maximum munchkinism: do not waste your magi's starting spells/Art xp in means of magical transportation. Instead, just create an extra grog-level character: a Lone Redcap associated with the covenant, with the Minor Virtues Lone Redcap and Magic Items, the latter providing 25 levels of enchanted items as follows:

  • a small enchanted boat that can accomodate two passengers and their equipment, and can rise and descend in the air as fast as smoke rises (ReHe 15: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Siz, +5 levels maintains Conc) and
  • a windstone, that can create and control a stiff wind (Cr(Re)Au 10: Base 2, +1 Touch, +1 Conc, +1 Rego, +5 levels maintains Conc), enough to propel the boat at some 25 (land) miles per hour.

When a magus, or other character, wants to travel quickly to some destination within 300 miles or so, the Redcap can take them there during the course of a single night! Taking the Magic Items Virtue twice instead of once allows a much larger ship, faster winds, and/or additional effects.

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If he wants to go by sight, then he also needs a sight improving spell, like Eyes of the Eagle under Intellego Imaginem. That + SLS is a potent combination.

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Lol sure. 22 seconds of free fall before certain death is no more distracting that standing still on solid ground. Got it.

In my experience, remembering to pull the left cable and not the right cable as the right one would be wrong was already stressful. By your logic, the concentration table does not make any sense. Practice walking a few times it and it becomes as easy as standing still? Practice getting injured a few times and it becomes as easy as standing still? I think it is assumed that you have as much "practice" as you can get of say, walking, to justify the 3+ concentration roll requirement to cast a spell. Same goes for running, being jostled, tripping/free fall & Injury (15+). I'd add to the difficulty of the table for someone trying to walk but that does not know how and is attempting to cast a spell at the same time.

But yes, a simple ReCo resolves the issue if free fall. Many SG would still require a concentration roll as standing still in the air is not the same as on ground. You might get vertigo or a gust of wind might surprise you. Maybe a 3+ roll...

Remember that you are not just standing still, you are precisely conducting a cooking recipe with verbal and somatic activities. All that coordination puts a toll on you and if you are cooking outside your normal kitchen (2 feet on the ground), you need to roll for distraction as it is not the normal environment where you cast a spell. I imagine that most magi have reference points when casting. Index pointing Treeline followed by circling the sun with both hands while which are different in the sky. A Levitation spell that is not concentration also limits your movements a bit like having your two feet in cement. Making it concentration so that you can change the facing direction, height, etc. adds another concentration roll. This tells me that a concentration roll of 3+ would be reasonable even with the levitation effect.

But most troupes do not enforce much the concentration rules. Maybe because it isn't stressed enough the the books. I think my reference is the only place it is written. Serf Parma but I don't think it is mentioned in combat exemples anywhere else. I also usually get strong reactions when folks go back and re-read it. I also tend to forget it ... as it does get in the way of a lot of cool stuff and failing most spells due to concentration checks because you forgot to build the character with a decent concentration skill kinda sucks. Most magi designs (in the books and in play) I've seen aren't built to achieve 12+ concentration check roll which is indicative that the rule of concentration is not well represented.

At the start of the saga, if a magi is interested in casting in non-normal environments, and that it is pointed out that a strong concentration skill would be required, then it would allow that character to excel at that concept and then I'd recommend fully enforcing that RAW rule (make the character shine). Otherwise, I'd be lax on it.

W

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I stand by my judgement :slight_smile: What would be distracting you? The fear that some mistake might cause your death? Then any casting of an Incantation of Lightning or of the Seven League Stride ought to force a Concentration check. And no, it does not.
I can tell you I tend to be more worried about the mistakes of others than about my own, and I really can sleep soundly in the passenger seat of a car speeding along a highway, even though I know the driver constantly has to make decisions, within a handful of seconds (far less than 20), that could result in my death.
Now, I do agree that the sensation of sudden falling might be extremely distracting the first few times you experience it. But after a few seconds most people recover their wits, particularly if they've done it a few times. Most people with half-a-dozen parachute jumps would testify to that.

It seems to me that you'd ask for a Concentration roll in any situation where the caster is not completely relaxed. But that's not what the rules say. Just being under pressure means a formulaic spell is cast on a stress die rather than a simple die, it does not automatically enforce a Concentration check. All examples of Concentration checks are either a) sudden, unexpected things that capture the attention of the magus or b) secondary activities that the magus is trying to perform while casting or maintaining a spell.
But one should not ask a magus for Concentration checks whenever he's in a place where he's never been, or when he is worried about the dragon attacking his grogs. That's what stress casting rolls are for.

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Yes. Fear of imminent death would be distracting to me.

I think that a magi would need some sort of merit to explain why free fall would not be normal for them

  • Bjornaer that has a flight capable hearth-beast would not need to roll (maybe)
  • Immunity to fear or things tied to free fall merit would mitigate the difficulty
  • Clear Thinker Merit might help
  • Death prophecy might help if you really believe (erroneously) that all will be fine
  • Charmed life
  • Might be convinced that the carefree and or Ambitious flaws could help

Rule on casting a spell when distracted is pretty clear. Table on p.82 lists a bunch of things that distracts and force a concentration roll. Your "Unexpected thing" example falls 9+ I think.

Agreed but the free fall premise is not just a new place. Your arm movements that you do to cast will send you swivelling. The air pressure will prevent you from speaking properly. Most likely, your gear will not be balanced so you'll be spinning out of control and some of your lose clothes will just tear off. You have a bag full of vis that isn't hermetically sealed that blows open as you fall! And once you have all that under control, you're about ready to hit the ground. Oh, was I supposed to keep line of sight all that time on my destination? I mean this is a medieval setting not a show on navy seals finishing their 10 year training to air drop behind enemy lines. Flying is the kingdom of birds and clouds. You want to be a native to the sky kingdom (not be distracted), show me what part of your essential nature belong here (See the merits & flaws above I listed for exemples).

Situation Ease Factor

  • Still Trivial (0)
  • Walking Simple (3)
  • Running Average (9)
  • Dodging Hard (12)
  • Jostled Average (9)
  • Sudden noise or flash of light Average (9)
  • Knocked Down Hard (12)
  • Damaged this round Very Hard (15)

Continuing Situation Ease Factor

  • Answering a single easy yes/no question Hard (12)
  • Conversation Very Hard (15)
  • Casting another spell Very Hard (15)
  • Maintaining another spell Hard (12), +3 for each spell beyond the second
  • Injured 3 times wound penalty to Concentration rolls (this is instead of the normal penalty)

Again, as I said, if the character creation process didn't stress the importance of the concentration skill for the concept of the character then move some XP's to make it work or HR the concentration rule to make it work. The rule is obscure and impacts all spell casting (almost) in adventure settings... I mean, unless you are in round 1 and you have the initiative, there will often be something distracting in your way.

W

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@lvgreen as you can see there are many ways to skin this cat.

The point you need to be aware is that Teleportation has the potential do drastically impact your saga:

  • it can allow nearly immediate reinforcement in dire situations
  • allow sourcing of rare, far away good trivials
  • makes breaking-and-entering scenario trivial
  • shrink Europe to a modern day accessible location: instead of taking months, any location is within an hour travel with repeated casting of SLS.
    There is a reason why in TME there is a whole section dedicated on fast travel - even a paragraph on Requisit for TP (p 107) or what is considered a load requiring requisit.

It is up to you and your troupe to discuss if you want to make it a commodity or a rarity. The very different views expressed here highlight the tools you have at your disposal to make it easy or difficult. How much Concentration and Finesse rolls to you want to handwave, how to handle AC, how many additional spells would be required to make TP safer/easier (levitation spell, long-range sight,...).

My personal take is to make it hard, so the one character who dedicates his research into this field has his schtick. If he invests virtue like Puissant and/or Cautious with Finesse and/or Concentration, toss a Fast cast mastery into SLS, levels more or less equally Co/He/Te/An so he can handle most requisit, then, he deserves to enjoy it.
If it becomes only a matter of having a decent ReCo total, then any mage after a couple of decade should have such spell in his arsenal, making it too common to my taste.

We found it would be warping our Saga too much: we are settled in Novgorod and wanted to keep large distances a defining feature of this Tribunal. Thus trivialising TP would remove it. So we applied probably more strict limitations to TP than suggested and we definitely did not handwave away challenges like Finesse roll.

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People talk about Seven League Stride and other Teleportation as trivializing travel, and forget that there are many ways for Magi to do it.
Even a MuCo(An) spell can change you into an animal that can move faster than a human, or taking the Shapeshifter, or Skinchanger Virtues, or being a Bjornaer with an appropriate Heartbeast.
My Golden Eagle Heartbeast Bjornaer can cover on average 45-52 km/hour according to wikipedia. That's about 1.5 castings of Seven-League Stride without need a spell, or a Finesse roll. And being able to see where you're going, and being much better at it than most Magi.
And that's even his max speed.
Not to mention the fact that ReAu and ReAq also offer ways to travel faster by air or by water, or other more esoteric ways, like ReHe a boat to be able to fly.

As for how common it is, that really depends on the magi in question. In one saga I play in, my Bjornaer, as noted above, has the capacity to travel faster, and the Herbam-focused Verditius has enchanted a ship to be able to fly and travel fast. The other Magi have no such fast travel, though the Verditius does allow them to use the ship.
Some magi will enjoy walking the countryside, and exploring it. some might want to skip the dangers. Some might simply not have high enough Arts to research such spells. Not every Magi will have such capabilities even if he can research them, because he might have better ideas on how to spend his seasons. And all of the above are valid options.
If your saga wants to stay without such capabilities, all the more power to you. Have fun with it.

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I don't know if this needs a separate thread, but I don't find the above to be reasonable.
A piece freshly chipped off from a larger stone should last years as an AC to the larger stone (and its location). Just be careful that the larger stone is not moved - eg a flood washes it into a deep river.

But I have always imagined that a random loose pebble would only have a weak AC to where it was dug up. What associates stone to soil? And soil is dynamic, being turned over by earthworms, fresh layers of mulch each year, etc. (though I concede it may be modern nature documentaries biasing me, ME people might not consider soil to be dynamic)

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If I recall a recent documentary, most fears are learned. Babies are not afraid a of snakes, spiders and what not.
But a Fear of Falling is one of the few we are born with, effectively hard-wired in. With a lot of training you can reduce the fear, but it is still distracting. (though there are suggestions that some psychopaths have the wrong hard-wiring)

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