This is rules-as-written, and rules-as-intended. Spells do not condense into a single slot.
Nope, definitely not. Those are not similar spells. The effects are not closely related. (Obviously, this is just my opinion, but I once again get to write errata to make my opinion correct.)
Similar spells clearly needs a new thread, even if I don't use it with Adaptive Casting.
Is this really that useful? You need to put 30 XP in to get two mastery abilities, because one of them has to be Adaptive Casting. You will also get a low bonus, and quite a few of the mastery abilities are based on the level of the mastery ability. You can only use one Ability at a time, so while you do get some increased flexibility, the most sensible one here would seem to be putting all the XP into one ability to get a decent bonus from penetration mastery.
When you us Mastery Ability to talk about both the skill and the special abilities that come from increasing the skill then it causes weird parsing. Like abilities based on ability. That is specifically why I use the word skill, to make it clear which I am talking about.
As for the spells being closely related or not, that is very much just your opinion with the way the rules are written currently. They use the exact same general write-up, with [Realm]. And while you might get to write the errata to "make your opinion correct", that just puts more in the errata that people will ignore if they dislike it. In the short period of time I have been on the forums, I have seen many instances where the reaction to someone pointing out the errata has been "Oh heck no, I am ignoring/HRing that!".
I would much rather burn Adaptive Casting to the ground and nuke it out of existence than use it with "similar spells". And I play a character with Flawless Magic. It has been so broken as to be unusable without HR since it was originally written.
Yeah, Demon's Eternal Oblivion at level 5 and also Faerie's and Dragon's Eternal Oblivionses at level 5 seem to fall well within the current similar spells guidelines for "closely related effect, at the same Range, Duration, and Target", the spells are even the same level! An example is "causing damage with Creo Ignem" and "reducing might with Rego Vim" feels much the same.
I can definitely see where being for different realms means they don't count, but as written right now I don't think that's a slam dunk at the table.
You're making two mistakes here.
The first is that you can only use one at a time. Adaptive Casting lets you use the options from one with the other. It doesn't stop you from using the other's options, too. That's something you were considering above for the errata because it isn't how Adaptive Casting currently exists. That's why I explained above that normally the condensation to one Ability does not raise the power of Flawless Magic as you could basically already do that with Adaptive Casting or you could use this method to go nuts.
Given that, the second is a mathematical issue. Consider someone with Flawless Magic with DEO 30 Mastery 11, with every level-based Mastery option. Now the magus wants to get faster with it. Option 1: spend 6 seasons of practice to improve to Mastery 12. A few things will get a touch better, but initiative will only go up by 1. Option 2: spend 1 season inventing DEO 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, and then spend 2 seasons of practice on two of them. Now initiative goes up by 2, you've spent 3 seasons rather than 6, you've picked up 2 experience of exposure for that lab season, and you've got three more spells already developed and ready to be similarly improved.
That's why it's currently so useful.
The mathematical issue is horrible. Doing things like you and I have suggested also made it extremely complex. Hopefully David will better understand what I was trying to get at with your input.
Are you sure about that? HoH:TL 99 only says "You may use your mastery score and all the special abilities associated with this spell whenever you cast the same spell at a different level". It doesn't say "You may add up all mastery scores that you have". That's really quite a jump, because you can normally only use one mastery score with a spell. Does the other location (which I forget) make that explicit?
In any case, UHO, that interpretation makes Adaptive Casting seriously overpowered, so the minimum change needed is a clarification that you cannot use more than one mastery at a time.
(UHO = ut humiliter opinor = In My Humble Opinion in Latin. I haven't had a chance to use that for decades.)
I didn't say you could add all the Mastery scores. Look at what I did. Using the level-30 spell with its Mastery of 11 and options, I then have Adaptive casting with another which lets me use its Quick Casting with the level-30 spell, and then I have another that also let's me use it's Quick Casting.
Notice it doesn't say anything about replacing other things. Just that you can use these Mastery options with the other spell. That's precisely what I'm doing.
The sacrifice is that I didn't get an extra +1 for Penetration, Multiple Casting, etc. since I didn't increase that Mastery 11 to Mastery 12, but that wasn't the goal.
This is especially effective in other circumstances. Let's say you have Flawless Magic and you want Quiet Casting x2, Still Casting, Fast Casting, Disguised Casting, and Obfuscated Casting with your level-20 version of a General spell in your specialty and you're not worried about Casting Total nor anything that triggers off the level. Option 1: after developing the spell you spend 10 seasons of practice to reach Mastery 6. Option 2: after developing the spell you spend a season developing levels 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, choosing Adaptive Casting with each; then you spend 6 seasons practicing Mastery with each. 7 seasons gets you 2 extra experience and all the Mastery options you wanted compared to 10 seasons the other way. Sure, you don't get the other perks of Mastery 6, but you didn't need them.
There are so many variants on this. Your suggested erratum to restrict everyone to using a single Mastery Ability and its options for a single casting gets rid of this mess, as does merging all the experience.
I'm kinda curious why Wizard's Vigil exists. The Day of Communion (p. 137 Through the Aegis) is the general version of this spell, and I specifically remember that suggesting that only one of them were left in, during playtesting 
That said, there is a general version, the Day of Communion, p. 137, top of right column.
Honestly, I'm deeply curious why either of them exist. Like, I get the immediate reason- the MuVi errata killed the sole use case for Wizard's Communion- but why did that need to happen? Particularly since Wizard's Communion was already called out as "partially Mercurian, doesn't fully conform to standard Hermetic guidelines, don't question it" in its own description?
Is there some serious abuse case I'm unaware of with the original reading of the MuVi rules that applied equally to both general metamagic and the classic WizCom+Aegis combo? Did it lead to some exotic logical discrepancy or contradiction?
And if none of those, why the bleeding hell would you not just except WizCom from the errata (add a line in the errata about how WizCom's duration specifically doesn't need to cover the duration of the spell as part of its general non-standard-ness) instead of nuking it, accidentally killing Mercurian Magic as collateral, and then inventing two different versions of functionally-identical-but-slightly-worse replacements in places new players will probably never find?
Anyway, Day of Communion doesn't even work. It claims
a Wizardâs Communion as found in ArM5, page 160, but with a longer duration. In accordance with the errata for Muto Vim such spells need a duration at least as long as the casting of the target spell. [...] It is highly useful for casting an efficient Aegis of the Hearth
but the MuVi errata say
A Muto Vim spell, like any other Muto spell, can only change its target for as long as the Muto Vim spell is in effect. Thus, its duration should normally be at least as long as the spell that is its target.
very clearly specify the target spell's duration, not its casting time, meaning that a Wizard's Communion variant would need to be a D:Year (and therefore a Ritual) to be useful for Aegis. And ain't nobody gonna sextuple the vis cost of their Aegis (and blow the fatigue and risk the stress rolls on five more major ritual castings) just so all five magi in the covenant can feel like they contributed their paltry share to their Aegis's penetration.
Edit:...I should probably go throw that in the errata thread, actually.
Edit edit: Apparently the errata for ArM5 first printing are separate from, and were not errata'd to match, the errata for ArM5 second printing. Which is blindingly stupid, but also technically on me, since they are in fact listed in the same document, just a couple pages down, and I missed 'em. Disregard the struck-out portion of the post, please.
For what it's worth... a house rule my troupe has been using for years is that "adaptive casting" is automatic for Similar spells. I.e., you can automatically treat the mastery in any one spell (more precisely the mastery score, and the abilities connected to it), as the mastery of any Similar spell, without the need to take any "adaptive mastery" ability. We did it to encourage people to spend xp on mastering spells (which virtually nobody was doing, save for very specialized magi in one-shot games) and to make books on spell mastery of slightly greater value. From years of experience, it breaks nothing -- in fact, it still leaves spell mastery a little underwhelming.
Adjudicating it is not hard at all; in fact, the results are less jarring than with General spells. For example "General spells with a cap" (e.g. CrCo spells boosting characteristics) are not, technically, General. But it seems awkward that they should not benefit from adaptive mastery. Extending "adaptive" to encompass similar spells solves the problem, and just sidesteps many doubts about what counts as a "General" spell.
1 Like
There are canonical examples of General spells with caps, and they don't violate the description of what a General spell is.
What I am trying to say (that's why I used quotes, and gave an example) is that there are some guidelines that, although not General, are effectively General in all but name, e.g. providing an increasing bonus for every bump in magnitude within a restricted interval of magnitudes. In our games, it felt rather unnatural to treat them differently from "explicitly" General spells.
Yes. And there is nothing whatsoever in the description of General spells that says they require a general guideline. We have examples of canonical General spells without any listed general guideline, with increases at only magnitude steps rather than level steps, and with caps. That's probably why it felt unnatural: because it would have disagreed with the written rules.
A lot of people think General spells require general guidelines, but that is a misreading. I've only ever seen variants of one argument that they do require general guidelines, and that has always boiled down to something approximately like "they both say 'general' so I just assumed."
1 Like
The main argument for General spells requiring general guidelines that I can see is that General spells can be "learned at any level of difficulty" - which is pretty much the definition of a General spell.
It is hard to see how one can learn a spell at "any level" unless the guidelines include 'in-between' levels.
I am curious what canonical General spells you refer to that don't use any listed general guideline?
Yes, I'm taking that sentence into account. I broke it down more thoroughly before:
Does âany levelâ mean there can be no maximum level? If so, then it would be impossible for a Formulaic spell to be a General spell because âFormulaic and spontaneous spells may not have a level greater than 50â (ArM5 p.114). Since General spells explicitly can be Formulaic spells and Formulaic spells are explicitly limited to level 50, a level limit does not violate "any level."
Some SGs donât like spells above level 5 that arenât divisible by 5 (sometimes unless General, sometimes including General). But what does canon say about this? âMost spells are assigned a level, which is usually a multiple of five. It need not be, however, and magi may well invent spells of intermediate levels. Spontaneous spells often have other levels, as wellâ (ArM5 p.115). So we know restricting intermediate levels is a house rule and not an issue here. An SG might not rule there is any benefit outside of being harder to dispel by adding a level to your spell, but you're allowed to.
Note that this does not specify that the increase must be linear, just that increasing level increases power. So, for example, this does not rule out an ordered sequence by magnitude such as 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, âŚ, even though the increase from 1 to 3 is not the same size as from 3 to 6, 6 to 9, etc.
Must the spellâs power increase from one level to the next, or is a monotonic increase sufficient? Fortunately, we have many examples of General spells that have monotonic increase, not continuous increase, in power: Shell of False Determinations (ArM5 p.157), Mirror of Opposition (ArM5 p.159), (The runemaster) curses the wound with blood he spilled (HMRE p.128); (The runemaster) speaks of friendship among men (HMRE p.129); I, (the runemaster), ask for Freyaâs blessing (HMRE p.130); I, (the runemaster), dedicate helmet-destroying hail (HMRE p.131); I, (the runemaster) bless the work (HMRE p.131); I, (the runemaster), sharpen my axe (HMRE p.135); (The runemaster) defies his rival and laughs at his misfortune (HMRE p.135); I, (the runemaster), step most surely in sunlight (HMRE p.136); I, (the runemaster), fight for my companions (HMRE p.136); I, (the runemaster), need strength for my trials (HMRE p.138); Thou wilt prolong the kingâs life: and his years as many generations (RoP:tD p.50); As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him (RoP:tD p.51) â and this one only every 10 levels.
Edit: Apparently I also left out that even if you don't allow in-between levels for guidelines that skip by magnitudes, "learning a spell at any level" could easily mean at any level that exists. That is very common in English in the real world. Besides which, as levels haven't been forced to be a given set of numbers, we would also need to make the argument that skipping non-integer levels, leaving out negative levels, etc. are OK.
The quickest one of the top of my head is Aegis of the Hearth. I believe there are one or two others in in the core book.
Proposed errata:
Adaptive Casting (p. 99): Replace as follows. "You may use your mastery score and all the special abilities associated with it whenever you cast a similar spell. If you have two or more mastery Abilities that apply to a single spell (because you have mastered two or more spells that are similar to the spell you are casting) you may only use the score of one Ability, and the special abilities taken for that mastery Ability. For example, if you have mastered Demon's Eternal Oblivion 30 with a score of 3, and the abilities Adaptive, Fast Casting, and Penetration, and Demon's Eternal Oblivion 25 with a score of 4 and the abilities Adaptive, Quiet Casting twice, and Still Casting, you are must use the score of 3 if you want to use the Penetration ability, and the score of 4 if you want to use the Still Casting ability, and you cannot use the Penetration ability with the score of 4."
4 Likes
Personally, I would have made Adaptative Casting the default for all general spells. Meaning that General spells only have a single Mastery ability. And Flawless Magic would only giv out a free 5 xp the first time you learn the General spell.
Right now, the usual notation is to have:
- Wind of Mundane Silence (PeVi 15) - Mastery 1 (Fast Cast)
- Wind of Mundane Silence (PeVi 20) - Mastery 2 (Adaptative Casting, Unraveling)
This would transform it into:
(Under spells)
- Wind of Mundane Silence (PeVi 15) - Mastered
- Wind of Mundane Silence (PeVi 20) - Mastered
(Under Abilities)
- Mastery: Wind of Mundane Silence 2 (Fast Cast, Unraveling) +5 xp
It would not provide any benefit to Flawless Magic while also making things simpler.
But I understand this might not be a popular choice.
2 Likes
A similar spell? That's ... very broad.
Did we ever finish the debate about similar spells btw?
Yes, there was a big worry above that similar spells may be too broad.
No, the debate over what qualifies as "same effect" or "closely related effect" continues. "Same effect" is the bigger deal, as we're pretty sure "closely related effect" becomes more of a judgement call and will vary from troupe to troupe, while things like DEO v. Ball of Abysmal Flame at different levels of base tend to devolve into important game mechanics being based on semantics.