She'd like to be able to send spells back down any arcane tunnel that is opened to her, thus a spell like Eyes for the Lurking Assassin InVi45 (Projects p 83) is pretty key
Her intelego vim lab total is 51 so she could learn it from lab notes if she could get them, but her In Vi casting total is only 20 + Aura so she'll never be able to cast it. So here's a substitute that she'll enchant into her talisman in one season (her lab total becomes 60 with other enchantments, the talisman bonus, and a material bonus for rock crystal)
She'll open up the attunement +4 Harm human and animal bodies, this leaves two pawns open of the 15 original pawns that she opened her talisman with.
15 seasons left (edited when I remembered that she had an apprentice and I could add a few points to her lab total)
Ha! I was literally calculating and typing up an effect for this as you posted.
But something to help her as she sleeps is another good idea. Here's a lesser device that Andreva can pull off in a season
I'm assuming at least 4 points of lab total from her apprentice on this. Once again her lab total forced her into a target room effect rather than a magical sense spell ( I suppose smell would be a reasonable option that I didn't use).
Now cribbing from the core book she and grace get this out in 2 seasons. the level calculation is a bit weird because it relates to the spell in the core book, not a guideline.
As a familiar bond enchantment this does not cause warping.
Grace develops a like for sparring and Andreva a taste for oats
I'll pause for a bit for feedback, really Arcane Tunnels Revealed and A Stab Across Europe are the ones I have uncertainty about.
Years ago I was thinking about wizardās war and NPCās. Philipus Niger in Guardians of the Forest is one of the most formidable magi published for fifth edition. How would you best him? It occurred to me that parma offers no resistance to effects generated by a magiās familiar and his familiar was able to kill people by looking at them.
Andreva is going to try to make spells to exploit this avenue of attack. An applicable guideline is ReMe base 20 make the target carry out one instruction to the best of their ability. Basel 20 is going to make it tough for Andreva to get much penetration, but the reason to learn the spell in the first place was to find ways of getting around a magusā parma so low penetration , while unfortunate, isnāt crippling.
The guideline is really broad, the spell will be useable for lots of other things than just setting a familiar on their magus. Yet Iām not going to try and find or create a more narrow guideline, āworks like the level 20 guideline but only upon familiarsā seems like a cheesy thing to do.
Andreva hates this spell and doesnāt advertise that sheās created it.
I've no good ideas on how to integrate her sigil
This could be used to do so much more than just exploit the weakness in a magiās defenses presented by a familiar but Iām going to look at the chances of an attack through a familiar working.
The silver cord allows the familiar or magus to try an break any mentem effect on the other 1x per day on a roll of silver cord level verses an ease factor of 9. So initially this looks pretty formidable as silver cords, from what Iāve seen, tend to stay at lower levels than bronze cords or golden cords. However getting a familiar comes with the virtue true friend which, by granting a loyal personality trait, grants a +3 bonus to this roll. At least thatās my take on it, I found no true friend virtue listed in the virtues and flaws chapter just a description in the laboratory chapter on page 105. This +3 bonus means that, even with a strength 1 cord, the attack will fail 58% of the time, with a strength 2 cord 69% of the time, strength 3 79% (weird numbers are because Iām assuming a stress die with one botch die). But I also need to factor in confidence. By spending a confidence point the chance of this attack succeeding drops to āonly if they botchā. But rather than give up immediately, Andreva with her flawless formulaic magic is going to earn to multicast it, which at least gives her a chance of draining the targetās confidence and then getting an attack to land. Also, taking into account of how powerful/ useful the spell is on normal people multi casting is pure gold.
An alternate and probably better tactic to use instead of multicasting and hoping the dice fall her way would be to develop a perdo mentem spell to inhibit the familiarās capacity to feel loyalty and cast it first (or with an automatically triggered device similar to the School of the Founderās Advocate (found here: catnip & garlic) . But Andreva is deficient in perdo while having flawless formulaic magic so Iām not taking her down that path and with her distaste for wizardās wars Iāll probably never have her take the practical step of doing both.
With range touch sheāll need to do something about targeting more distant minds. In the long run but for now she knows Minute of Reckoning at level 40 which should suffice to bombard a familiar with commands in hopes that at least one of them is not broken. Iāll see if she has time to put an arcane tunnel effect at range sight into her talisman at the end of the period.
I believe a crossbow bolt to the back from a shield grog he had threatened earlier did for him in one of CJs sagas. Not having any form of Terram ward and not habitually wearing armour makes you vulnerable to this sort of thing, especially with the combat grogs players create. Still, murdering someone through their familiar has all the hallmarks of a great Ars Magica murder mystery that will baffle quaesitors so you should develop this.
Andreva faces a problem in dealing with an Arcane tunnel spell directed at her. She has a deficiency in perdo and neither her perdo score nor her vim score is particularly impressive, so dispelling a tunnel is impractical. She does however have a solid rego score (18) so she can at least, in theory, shut down a tunnel.
I looked at the spell to do this in Hermetic Projects (Arcane Seal on p 81) and saw that it only could target the casterās own spells. A spell to close someone elseās tunnel would need to use a different guideline. āSustain or suppress a spell cast by another with level less than or equal to half the (level + 5 magnitudes) of the Vim spellā.
Thatās hard, but still easier for Andreva than going the perdo route.
(Edit: it's easier than I thought. There is a guideline in HoH: Societates that is art specific and does not require doubling of the spell level. I decided to stick with the original guideline, because it allowed her to target any spell, and also I'm really kind of lazy)
Sheāll spend a season opening up more space in her talisman (16 more pawns because why not?, it uses all of her pawns per year available but I could schedule things to make this practical)
In doing so sheāll open the attunement +5 clairvoyance on her talisman
Her Rego vim lab total with the talisman bonus, bonus for other spells in the talisman, 5 points from her apprentice, and the shape bonus for block a single attack is 80. Thus if she spends two seasons working she can create a level 54 effect.
In Enchanting this she will open the attunement +4 Aquam on her talisman. Her talisman now has 10 pawns open for enchantment
I added the bit about being able to target the effect (and therefore dispel it), this wasn't in Arcane Seal but I think it probably should have been.
Six seasons left (and four things on her to do list, she might make it)
"True Friend" is another version of the "True Love (PC)" virtue - see the last sentence of that virtue's description.
It feels like a mind-control effect to make a familiar kill their master would run a strong risk of running into the "if any enchantment keeps you from your true love's side, the power of your devotion can probably break it" clause in that virtue - even if this particular approach isn't explicitly forbidden, it's not something I'd want to rely on working.
In fact reading further I find the statement "no magic can make you ... truly betray him." well then, I guess that scraps my idea. I can't use a familiar to attack their magi, at least not with a direct Rego Mentem effect.
Well dang it the lab chapter specifically calls out the virtue, in that case I've already accounted for the +3 to the silver cord roll and everything is as I worked out above.
Unless they should get their loyal personality trait and a further +3 for their true friend virtue, in which case rego mentem would pretty much never work on anything except a botch. ( OK, you probably could suppress both the loyalty and the familiar's confidence with perdo mentem spells, and then make it work, but Andreva is not going to do that.)
Anyone care to venture an opinion on if the loyal personality trait should be added to the silver cord roll to break a mentem effect in addition to the bonus from true friend? With a bonus from the virtue it seems less clear that we should be adding personality traits to this. The description of personality on page 18 doesn't really support their inclusion. Looking back a few pages in this thread a year and a half ago I apparently found the statement "added to appropriate rolls" but as I'm looking right now I can't find where I read that.
Have any of the other characters done anything with poison protection? If there are lab notes for something functional that Bausas made to heal folks or Janus made for the red caps I'd give them a look.
I'll take a break from what Andreva perceives as the depressing and distasteful work of dealing with violence and present something for the desert sailing boat/
The size for sand would be 10,000 cubic paces, stone is 1000 cubic paces, I chose to keep the maximum size for stone rather than make it variable depending upon target, would it be better if it changed?
I made the wand somewhat difficult to weaponize because of my sense of taste. Is that out of line? Would it be a better item if it was designed to also be able to easily drop 20 tons of gravel on a moving target?
Andreva is going to make a spell to protect against poisons.
One thought would be a creo corpus spell that gives her a bonus on stamina rolls to resist poison similar to the bonuses that creo corpus can give to recovery rolls.
There is no resistance roll guideline to work from here, base 10 gives a +15 bonus to recovery rolls. Adapting that, Andreva can produce this in a season
This seems very powerful as poisons (per core book page 180) can have a maximum ease factor of 15. I could lower the bonus or perhaps making a body resistant to poison is an unnatural change rather than a perfection of the body.
āMake a body more resistant to damageā is a guideline for Muto Corpus, itās just that it is always tied to soak not to poison resistance. Ease factors are generally incremented by 3 for each increasing difficulty. I āll start with a +3 bonus at base 5 and increase it by 3 per magnitude.
Andevaās strongest technique is Rego. I could have her make a ward against poisons
Looking at the form bonuses I see that there certainly Terram, Animal, and Herbam poisons. Sheāll stick to those 3 forms for her spell. If there are some weird Auram or imagonem poisons then she might regret not being more cautious but it would also make a cool way for a PC to get the upper hand on her.
Here are some relevant guidelines
Level 15: Ward someone against mundane plant products.
Level 2: Protect the target from animal attacks (only affects animals without mystical abilities).
Level 5: Keep all dirt away from your body, or ward a target against dirt.
If you raise the terram guideline two magnitudes to cover poisons that are metallic in nature then it comes to the same level as the herbam guideline. Animal is curiously much much easier to do. These guidelines are appropriate to ward the target against everything in their realm. Andreva wants to be warded against poison, the guidelines would ward her against clubs, bec de corbinās and sabertoothed tigers as well. Itās overkill. Making it more specific is a sloppy exercise in spit balling appropriate guidelines and I really dislike all on / all off wards any way. [strike]so Iām not going to post a rego candidate spell.[/strike]
Some other issues are: Does the spell need an intellego requisite to know what to ward and what not to? Does this qualify as a spell that thinks and is therefore not possible?
New spell: transformation of the venom. Base 5, transform a liquid into a venom causing an incapacitating wound, range personal, duration diameter, target individual, total 10. The guidelines on ArM p123 say āyou cannot transform liquids within someoneās body unless the spell is designed that way (and has a corpus or animal requisite)ā. Therefore, you can affect venom glands of an animal by using MuAq(An). A Bjornaer who is venomous should be able to use personal range to transform the venom inside their own venom glands. For duration, I suggest diameter is enough to transform it, attack shortly afterwards and have it take effect and do damage before vanishing. You would need to fast-cast to create it as you attacked. (Would instant duration, that is no more than 1 round, be enough to injure someone if created as you attacked and lasted for a couple of heartbeats after being injected into the victim? I would argue it isnāt).
The other point is what is the difficulty level to resist ā if you transformed water, it would be base 3. The base difficulty of an adderās venom is 6 ā would this carry over when transformed? The argument for yes would be that Muto is enhancing the natural toxicity of the venom, the argument against is that Muto is completely transforming the substance into something else magically and only the potency of the magic counts. If the latter, it does create the interesting possibility of a fast-cast defense against poison ā ādilute the venomā MuAq(Co) 5 ā base 2 ātransform a liquid into a poison causing a light woundā, +1 touch, +2 duration sun ā when poisoned (whether through ingestion or being bitten/stung) you fast-cast on the poison touching you, and have to make a Stamina roll ease 3+ or take a light wound ā instead of whatever the original damage would have been. You then have until sunrise/sundown to make sure the poison is purged from your body when it returns.
