I'm working on an NPC for a game, a elder magus named Aeternos with a lot of problems (as elder magi have), one of which is a drive for fixing his magical flaws. I was hoping for some input in case my designs have some... flaws in it. He's designed some effects into his talisman to assist.
First, Aeternos has a basic spell so his talisman can detect his surface thoughts for command(InMe 25); Another effect to have the Talisman inform him mentally of the spells it has stored(CrMe not calculated yet); He also has enchanted his talisman to store spells for later use(ReVi spell containter); and to maintain spells for him for long durations.
Mind as One looks good, I like how you've taken advantage of range personal for Talismans and given it duration concentration rather than constant to reduce warping. Is level 26 a lab total thing, because for the same amount of vis Aeternos could have 24 uses per day?
Magica Aeternum needs to use the guideline for maintain a spell cast by another rather than maintain a spell you have cast, so at base 20 it can only sustain spells lower than level 22.5 (less than one half of base level +5 magnitudes).
Bind the Insantaneous neatly avoids the indefinate duration and self triggering issues. I've done this enchantment before, you probably noticed it in the Ranulf thread. There are some gray areas regarding targeting if the spells, bu tI think that it's ok. Once again I'm wondering why not just a few levels higher and get more uses per day? Aeternos could go up to 50 uses per day for six more levels and not use up any more vis.
Mind as One: The technical way to do Constant is Sun, 2/day, Environmental Trigger. You can do it the way you have it. Based on what's written explicitly or in explanations of examples, the way you have it the magus must choose to start up the effect, and the effect will not continue through sunrise/sunset unless the magus maintains concentration on it.
Edit: Actually, yes, keep Mind as One with Concentration. Then he can maintain it with Magica Aeternum if that gets revised, and it can be turned off via the suggested PeVi effect. That keeps the value of the reduction in Warping while also avoiding the sunset/sunrise issue.
Magica Aeternum: If you really want to sustain spells indefinitely, there are better ways. First, this has the same issue that the caster is going to have to maintain concentration on it through sunrise/sunset. That could easily end the idea of indefinitely when you realize he could miss any one sunrise/sunset and have to restart. +1 Touch is correct for spells he casts, as this is his Talisman; that has been confirmed in the books. So try this instead: +1 Touch, +3 Moon; +3 Linked Trigger, +10 Unlimited Uses. Now he just has to renew each one once between each new/full moon and they will last forever; that's just maybe a bunch of minutes at any point over a two-week span. There is no limit to the number of spells maintained this way, except that that bunch of minutes could become a much bigger bunch eventually, and you'll see the final level is noticeably lower.
Bind the Instantaneous: This one is trickier because of releasing as desired. The release happens when the spell ends. Yes, that works well with Concentration. It also works well with the Ritual version, but that won't fit in the Talisman. But if he's maintaining the spell with Magica Aeternum, then stopping concentrating doesn't end Concentration. Make a PeVi effect at R: Touch to dispel a Vim effect. Now he can force Bind the Instantaneous to end whenever he'd like by ending this or Magica Aeternum. Not only that, if it's strong enough to end Magica Aeternum, any maintained spell can be ended. My personal preference would be to have Bind the Instantaneous be a Formulaic spell that is maintained by Magica Aeternum, because then there is no limit to the stored spells and you don't have to build a whole bunch of these into the Talisman. I also prefer the PeVi effect to be Formulaic because you can then master it for Multiple Casting so you can end several spells at the same time.
That would be true if it weren't his Talisman. And then it would need R: Voice, too. But the books showed that his method is valid for a Talisman. I don't remember where right now, though.
This is why he has several versions of the same effect. The 50/day Concentration is one effect that can be turned on and off 50 times per day, not 50 different effects, and so it will only hold one spell at a time. This is both the advantage and the disadvantage of Concentration.
If you could find it I'd very much like to see it. We've been through this before and no one has brought up that example. It seems to contradict the rules in the core book.
I presume that if this effect were duration diameter or moon you'd be ok with it running multiple instances at the same time. There is, that I've seen, no justification in the printed rules for restricting duration concentration in this way. I think Aeternos would be able to hold 50 spells at once with 50 uses per day.
There is certainly justification for it in that an item maintaining concentration holds an effect as opposed to many copies of an effect. Read through the whole paragraph and you'll see it talks about starting, stopping, and maintaining a singular effect. The bigger thing for me is that it provides a value to D: Sun (not constant built via Sun, but regular Sun). Otherwise D: Sun in items just declares your magus to be a bit clueless. In my game, if someone were to ask for it, I supposed I might permit adding the +5 multiple times. Now, it's certainly not 100% clear one way or the other, but there is justification.
The first thing I took away is that I should make sure to maximize my vis-usages.
I am maintaining the option to level up the uses per day, I probably should have it be 6. I just wanted to double-check the personal range on the forums. I know I can make it a lot bigger, and you're right there's no reason not to up it to 30 levels total. The only reason to lower it is because he can then fit it in with another season's work, however since it's his talisman, he probably would go all out.
This was designed using the first rule of Talisman attunement,
So the interpretation was that if PART of you is casting a spell,the idea was that it counts as cast by 'you' the talisman. If I am wrong, I would glady fix this and dump more (planned) lab time into this
Ooh, I have a good answer for this one! My troupe's decision here was that an item with (ex.) 25 spells active and a linked trigger, can't recast the spells 50 times to maintain the enchantments. It can only recast and maintain a single spell. While the magus could touch his talisman and maintain the spells himself at sunup and sundown, there's no reason to risk being unable to touch the talisman and suddenly having a plethora of spells trigger as their spells all end. By having numerous instances of the enchantment, the spell maintains its ability to hold them forever, while being able to release the spells at will.
Aaaaand this actually very neatly fixes the problems with Bind the instantaneous. I actually did not think about the fact that the Magica Aeternum could maintain the Bind the Instantaneous for him. That said, he is definitely going to put at least one Bind the Instantaneous into the talisman, because he would have done that long before he actually tried to enchant Magica Aeternum into the talisman.
Hmm. I have re-read the wording on Short-Lived magic as a flaw, and there is the point that it only affects spells cast, not magical effects enchanted (I admit I had been mentally including his enchantments into his short-lived effect). However, there is a very good reason as to why he's going with the other route of spells: He doesn't like it. Even if he can cast a moon-duration spell once per day and maintain 30 spells ad infinitum, it's inelegant, and he's better than that. No, he's building a glorious reaching, spreading tree of vim that bears infinite fruits of spells, healthy and hale and ready to pick. the spell should have an environmental trigger instead of a linked trigger, however. Or possibly in addition to, because it lets him cast the effect whenever he desires, and it will sustain itself every cycle of the sun.
Awareness of Eternal Vim (InVi 40)
R: Personal, D: sun/constant, T: Touch
This enchantment gives the talisman a sense of awareness of its own workings. The talisman can detect all the active magics maintained by and apon it. This enchantment was designed with the purpose of tracking a number of maintained as well as stored and contained spells. While it is a simple spell to detect magic currently active and its magnitude, this enchantment goes above and beyond: It also detects the technique and form of the magical effect(2 magnitudes); whether the effect was cast by the talisman, its wielder, or another (1 magnitude); and some basic information about the target of the spell (1 magnitude). This last is used for the purpose of spells which target other spells. (It also has a third use per day in case it somehow becomes dispelled)
(Base 5, +1 touch sense, +1 Sun duration +4 complexity;environmental trigger +3, 3/day +2)
Of One Mind (CrMe 23)
R: Per, D: Mom, T: Ind
This effect is exclusively designed to share the information from Awareness of Eternal Vim, above, with the talisman's owner. The spell is designed to transfer incredibly complex information in a relatively easily understood memory. Due to the caster's talisman, this information is delivered as a branching, twisting tree that spreads out across the techniques and forms, making it easy to track what spells
(Base 5, +1 complexity; unlimited uses +10, +3 linked trigger [Mind as One])
I could be wrong! But I don't remember any InVi guideline that tells you about a target.
It kind of doesn't make sense to me either. What kind of information about a target would the InVi spell provide? His appearance? That's InIm. Age? If it's a man, InCo; a plant, InHe; a canal, well, that's tricky, but InVi seems improbable. And so on.
I was a bit unclear: The information from the InVi spell would be the spell data for meta-magic style spells; Specifically, spells stored within spell-containers and maintained by sustaining-spells.
I picked up more on T: Touch. If I have this right, you're allowing the Talisman to detect spells it is touching. InVi is correct for this. But you have a problem. You're delivering the information to the Talisman through its sense of touch. Consider a blind magus casting an InVi spell at T: Vision so detect spells and have the information delivered via his sense of of vision. The magus will get no information. "This information is easily distinguished from mundane information coming through the same sense, but it is subject to the same limitations as the mundane sense" (ArM5 p.114). So to pass information to your Talisman through its sense of touch, you need grant it a sense of touch.
I believe Ovarwa is looking at "some basic information about the target of the spell." That doesn't seem to be just spell data. I can't just cast a CrVi spell on someone to mark them magically and then use InVi to figure out whatever I want to about the person by detecting stuff about the target of the spell. That's nearly just letting InVi replace all other InFo combinations. If you want to detect things about the target, you should be using InFo with that Form matching the target.
Hmm. Do you have any suggestions on how the Talisman could detect the spells on it? Do I just change it from T: Touch to T: Ind? I based it on a memory of the wand talisman from Through the Aegis (Will need to go back and look up the specifics, it's in Longmist and it just detects what auras its in.)
Yes.. I think InVi is the correct form for detecting the targets of Bind the Instantaneous and Magica Aeternum.
Actually, Touch could work if you change the description. Since it's a Talisman, it can grant R: Personal effects to the owner when touching it. So the magus could use the sense of touch to know about all those spells.
Ovarwa's point still stands because you haven't said anything about all those spells and their non-Vim targets.
I'm still looking. I don't have electronic versions of all the books I have, though, so this may take a while. I'm pretty sure I saw a Talisman with either a MuVi effect (via Consummate Talisman) at R: Touch or a ReVi effect at R: Touch designed to work with spells from the magus. That's what we need to find, as R: Touch only works with spells you're casting or concentrating on, not those from another.
So.. you're saying I need to clarify that the spell which was designed to detect and track spell-containers and sustaining-spells can only work properly if your spells containers and sustaining spells are targeting spells? By definition, the only things this spell can target are the spells its using to sustain or contain, and spells actively cast apon it or its creator.
I think the problem is that that is not what you wrote earlier. For instance, you didn't say it would detect the maintenance spell, but rather all the spells being maintained: "The talisman can detect all the active magics maintained by and apon it." All those spells could have quite a variety of targets. So if you want it to detect only its container/sustaining spells, then you should change your description to say that.
a) MuCo(An) Conc that is currently tranforming a grog into an eagle.
b) PeHe Conc version of Treading the Ashen Path, cast on and by the magus.
The Talisman can reasonably use InVi to detect that it is maintaining two spells and even what the spells are. The Talisman cannot reasonably use InVi to detect that the caster of the spell is a human or a magus or the Talisman (but fine to detect that the spell is Hermetic Magic, though this is probably obvious based on the maintenance effect's design), or what the target of either maintained spell is, since neither target falls under Vim.
Hmm, some of the primary problem seems to be that my original post was not clear, and obviously I know exactly what I mean, and as the original writer, I can't clearly understand why you don't psychicly know my reasoning.
Flavor-description of the effect aside, what I want (or feel) the effect would be able to detect the following:
The talisman is concentrating on one spell container, and one sustaining spell.
The sustaining spell is targetting a ReTe spell of Range touch, Target Individual (not target, but Target).
The spell container is currently holding a ReCo spell of Range personal, Target individual.
the talisman is currently under the effect of a MuRe spell of Ranger Personal, Target part.
