A Few Questions

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

#1 If I entrap a demon (with might 20) in a Circle of Demon Warding (Level 30) on the local field. Is there a way for him to escape it?
i.e. Can he pick up a twig inside my circular ward and screatch the ring i have drawn in the earth to break it, or can he jump up and down and have the circle collapse?

#2 While we are talking about circle spells, can the example demon fly up into the air and escape my circular ward

#3 Yet another Circular ward question: can he dig his way out from it?

#4 My main campaign has a tailor that is looking to make a buttload (I just learned that this is a real measure, although for whiskey) of manufactured silk as he wants to make a wardrobe of silk clothes for himself, as well as dressing up his sanctum in flowing silks, he wont be selling it and make an income. How would this spell look like?

Creo Animal 30
R: Touch, D: Mom T: Group [Ritual]
Creates 1000 threads of silk each silk thread is approx 300 meters long (300 is below average as silk threads can be up to 1300 meters long)

(Base 5; Touch +1, Group +2, Size +2)

#4 How would the craft magic spell be to make these into manufactured thread look like?

2

For 2 and 3, I'm sure I read somewhere (I'm on holiday without my books, so Noble's Parma) that the ward is dome shaped above . Alas I cannot recall where. I think the same for below was not mentioned.

Bob

3

#4 It will be Rego Animalem spell. The base line is 3 "Treat and process items made of animal products", Touch +1, so ReAn 4 (Touch, Mom, Ind). It is also mentionned that for greater complexity, add one or two magnitudes. (Covenants p50-51).
You will also find an example in Magi of Hermes, Julia has (p58) The Clothier's Craft Done in an Instant, ReHe 4 (Touch, Mom, Ind) - it is lower because of her Faerie blood virtue.

Then, it is about setting the ease factor accordingly. Since most cloth don't take a month to be manufactured, there is no additional modifier to the Ease factor for extra fast work (p49 Covenants). Doing simple cloths by mundane means is a EF of 6 (easy), for truly remarkable cloth with embroidery EF probably starts at 12+. So you need to add the generic +3 modifier for any Rego craft magic and you have your final ease factor.
"EF is 9 for clothes of standard quality since it represents a day's work done in an instant" (Magi of Hermes, p58).
15 for extraordinary cloth. You might want to consider a spell with Terram requisit if you want to wave golden threads in it.

#1 I believe the Ward needs to penetrate, but once it is done, the Demon is trapped.
#2-3 It is not stated explicitly in the rules, but my take on that is that the trapped Demon cannot do anything to escape, he needs help from a third party. It can be a demon outside the ward or an earthquake disturbing the circle.
There was on this forum a lengthy debate on the limitation of these Wards and there was - as usual - no general agreement. For example, if the Demon has the ability to control wood (or any physical item), how it is possible that the Ward prevent him to use his power to move an item outside the circle to disrupt it ? The ward does not have any Rego Herbam/Terram/Aquam component preventing such item to touch and destroy the ward. The Ward does not have the effect to suppress the power of the trapped entity neither - at least it is not mentionned in the rule.
However the Ward guideline says :"a creature warded against cannot directly affect the target physically or by magical means". It does not say anything about the ring itself.
It is fair to assume that the ring is also immune to the creature power or physical intervention.

I would suggest that with your troupe, you define ahead of time those subtle details so people using these spells knows what they can expect and what is there limitations, whether it is to protect somebody or to trap an entity.

4

Wards are one of those things where the basic rules are fairly easy to understand, but are unfortunately a mite vague in the details:

A. Wards do indeed need to penetrate - so your level 30 Circular Ward vs. Demons needs to have an additional 20 levels of success in order to contain a lvl 20 demon. So, the caster needs to be able to have a casting total of 60 or higher to take full advantage of a lvl 30 ward. (it can still be cast with less penetration, though - possibly by a magi who learned a high-level ward, and is hoping to grow into it over time.)

B. Wards work both directions - so a demon on the inside of a ward can't directly affect the circle, nor can a demon on the outside. "Warded things cannot act across the circle, no matter which side they are on, nor can they damage the circle, directly or indirectly. (AM5th, pg. 114, 'Magical Wards').

C. The general consensus is that wards are either spherical (most common), or else cylindrical, with the max height being debatable - some few have argued that they're infinitely tall, but most use something like "twice the width of the circle." For non-geometric wards (such as an Aegis Boundary effect) it's usually considered "as close to spherical as you can get, if you include the height of the actual boundary". So if your boundary is on a castle that has high walls, the actual 'bubble' part of the ward would protect the entire wall. Others just go straight up, and have a tabletop roof. Personally, I allow both styles in my games, as determined by the caster.

C. As such, the issue isn't whether or not they can damage the circle: they can't. The only question remains is "just how far does 'indirect' go in terms of protection?"

D. There does seem to be a general agreement that that a warded creature can't use any technique, in and of itself, to directly affect the circle - so, no slashing at it with its claws, and no using magic to levitate something across the boundary. The not-so-obvious questions, though, are the following:

a. can a demon throw something at the circle? In Aristotillean physics, a flying projectile is moved by the air, not by the thing that threw it. Thus, there would need to be an Arum component to avoid such issues.

b. can a demon outside a ward get something above the line of the circle, and then drop it? Because (again), according to Aristotillean physics, objects naturally drop due to their own accord. You'd need the appropriate Form (Terram/Aquam/Animal/whatever) to avoid this.

c. Can the demon call across the boundary (with perfectly ordinary, non-magical words) and try to convince someone to break the ward for them?

Personally, I would say that the first two are covered by "indirectly", while the third isn't. The basic argument is that "indirectly" has to have some meaning, and casting a spell on the ward still seems fairly direct. However, others have argued differently. To be consistent, I go with the idea of "last willful intent" - for any given object that may potentially cross the boundary, what was the last free will action in the chain that ultimately made the object move? If the ward protects against that, then it can't cross the boundary. (For scenarios in which no will is involved, the wards protect as-is: so a water ward will protect against rain, and a corpus ward will protect against a person both trying to cross, as well as if they were thrown across by no intent of their own.)

To use an extreme example: if a circle against natural beasts (ReAn) was hit by a flood, normally it would be washed away. However, if the flood was ultimately caused by a beaver tearing down its dam, then the circle would protect against the flood, as a natural beast was the most-recent actor in that causal chain. If a human being knocked the dam over though, then it wouldn't protect it.

F. What counts as "breaking" a ward? Obvously, actually facturing the circle counts. But what about just laying something across it? How about ceremonially breaking a permanent ward with a piece of chalk or a stick? It's not explicitly stated anywhere. Personally, I go with " semi-permanent circular wards can be temporarily suppressed with a piece of chalk, but only if you make a magic theory roll. Just dropping a stick on it won't work. However, temporary wards (ie, those drawn in the dirt or mud or with chalk) are very easy to disturb, so the stick may break it anyway."

5

I'm assuming that the Ward has penetration enough to affect the demon inside (21+). In that case, the demon cannot affect the Ward directly in any way.
However. that's not entirely the end of it.

  1. If the demon can persuade someone else (not a demon) to break the circle, the ward will be broken. However, the demon must do this via mundane means (persuasion), as it cannot use it's powers to reach across the Ward and simply compel compliance.
  2. If an infernal aura arises in the location (from the presence of the demon itself - or perhaps it manages to persuade your apprentice to perform horrible deeds in front of it), that will mess with the penetration, potentially allowing the demon to eventually overcome the Ward.

Then such a ward would make much sense, eh? KevinSchultz covered this

I would only add that previous editions more explicitly described these wards as spherical, and that flying out of an infinitelt tall cylinder by definition takes for ever.
I personally strongly prefer spheres.

This is really the same question as above. To an insubstantial being (such as a demon), there's no real difference.

6

Not sure why you wan the size modifier? Size goes by weight and a base individual for Animal is size +1. So about the size of a pony. Call it 300 lbs (150 kg). T: Group already gives you 10 times that, or about 300 lbs (1500kg) of silk. +2 size just makes for 100 times as much, which is... nice of course, but a pretty ridiculous amount.

7

The "Creo Animal Guidelines" box on p116 of the ArM5 book has under level 5 "Create an animal product, such as spidersilk or wool.(Note that an individual is a single hair, a single hide, or a single tusk)" - therefore following this guideline literally you would need the group + extra sizes to produce a thousand threads.

The "does size go by weight count for herbam and animal products?" question isn't always straightforward - while a base herbam individual can be the size of a bush, the spell in Art&Academe to produce herbs produces 10,000 individual dried herbs rather than 10,000 cubic paces of herbs. Likewise the spell to produce pearls in Transforming Mythic Europe needs a lot of individuals. Entilzha's interpretation looks close to RAW, even if tellus's interpretation makes sense.

8

The way I read the box on Targets and Sizes on p. 113 lead to the following conclusions:

  1. You need Group because you make multiple strings.
  2. T: Group allows for the creation of multiple objects, for a total mass no greater than 10 times the mass of a single standard individual. Box, p. 113
  3. As mentioned, a basic standard individual for Animal is about a pony (Size +1), ArM5, p. 117
    Meaning that, unless a single thread weighs about the same as a pony, you do not need extra magnitudes to make silk, unless you're making rather a lot of it.

EDIT: I can also recommend some of the threads on creating grain on this forum :slight_smile:

9

The box on page 113 and the creo animal guideline in the box on page 115 are in contradiction with each other. Two pages apart, and very different definitions of "individual". sigh

Reducing the modifiers for size in this way will drop Etilzha's spell to the level 20 minimum for a ritual. Hooray for Etilzha.

10

That's not my point. I was building off of the definition of 'group'.

12

I note that a genuinely infinitely tall cylinder would be a violation of the Limit of the Lunar Sphere.

13

How is that? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I can't find it. Some of the trouble may be that my page numbers don't match what you wrote (page 116 for the CrAn box, but I think I'm looking at the right box on 113, though you didn't specify which box).

14

I'm one against "spherical" wards, because they can be a problem when smallish: the "stereoypical" ward that the magus draws with the tip of his staff while standing in place is generally too "low" to protect his head.

So, for me, usque ad sidera, usque ad inferos :slight_smile: But that's technically a cone (possibly truncated, depending on what's at the center of the Earth), not a cylinder!

15

I go with a prolate spheroid or ellipsoid for exactly that reason. But I'm happy with a hand-wavy, rough eccentricity so I don't have to worry about particulars like a slender wizard raising his hands, for instance.

16

If you are getting a service from the demon, my take is the demon would be unlikely to attempt to escape- after all he is effectively shielded from rival demons and has a complicit mortal whose soul he can corrupt. You want to make a butload of goods to sell? We can work with greed...