A steel familiar

[callen]

@ezzelino

Oooohh. I had missed that! Can you provide a link? Just curious about how he addressed the issue.

Originally it was the former, this being the basis behind not fixing The Anointing of the King in the errata. Focus on the last part.

@David Chart

@callen

On p. 101-102 The Anointing of the King has a few problems.

This one does seem to have problems.

@callen

First, the Base is 32, not 42.

Right.

@callen

Second, those extra levels come from +10 for penetration, which fixes the prior error vis-a-vis the level of the effect. Of course, I'm not sure why a penetration of 20 is used when it's supposed to affect a Might 30 ghost (stated at the end).

Yes, this needs to be 30, to match everything else.

@callen

I also don't understand why it works 1/day on a spell cast 2/day.

Because the other effect is not actually cast twice a day. It's a constant effect, so it's one effect. If the initial casting is changed to transfer control, that applies to the effect for as long as it continues.

The Anointing of the King does not work as written without 2/day if the effect keeps restarting at dawn/dusk. But if it is one effect that is truly ongoing, then it works. So the interpretation had been the first of the two. Then David changed it here:

@David Chart

I would say yes. The item is maintaining the effect, so the target needs to be within range. It isn't a permanent duration effect originating from the device, but it is a single effect. The only way to cancel the effect, other than PeVi, would seem to be to move the device out of range and wait for sunrise/set.

One reason for doing constant as 2/day, environmental trigger, Sun, is that it means you cannot have a device with unlimited use constant effects in them. A constant effect can only affect one target at a time. (That means that the design in the first post won't work.)

This may not be entirely consistent throughout the line, because I don't think anyone has asked the question exactly this way before.

You can now see that The Anointing of the King has been changed in the errata. I sent that in after David's post. That makes things more consistent, maybe totally. Of course, you could also take the last line to allow for open interpretation and that either method is valid depending on what method the maker chooses.

You'll also spot flaws in the reasoning if you look closely. He cites the 2/day, environmental trigger, Sun as the reason you can't have unlimited constant effect stuff, that it only works on one target. That really isn't true. If this is all a constant effect is, a continuing repetition of casting this way, I can easily design nigh unlimited constant stuff using other parameters and some cleverness. Also, all you need to do is switch to T: Group to get more than one target. Meanwhile some things can be essentially disenchanted without a ritual, whereas previously they required one. Hermetic "Constant" used to be something special; this ruling really renders it non-existent, just a term applied to one of many ways of having a repeating effect.

Prior to this, I had considered things like the steel familiar, though in less questionable territory. My thought had been to turn fire into a solid to wear it as a Talisman via Trapping the Fire (ArM5 p.142) - start by maintaining a D: Concentration version and then enchanted a Constant version. I thought it would be cool to clothe an Ignem magus in transformed fire. No need to deal with the Essential Nature issue there like here, though.