You don't have to like it better, but I'm quite fond of my house rule (quoted in the FAQ) that magic either needs to change either the shape, substance, or motion of an object to make the object bounce. This eliminates the pink dot proper and creo vim spells, but leaves every other way to do it open to defense. The advantage is that if you actually want to change the shape substance or motion of an object you're looking at base 3 or higher meanwhile the imaginem spells were built off of base 1 effects so my house rule adds two magnitudes to pulling off the pink dot defense rather than eliminating it.
But this presupposes that there is such a thing as a "Pink Dot Problem" to be solved. Because in essence all we've been concerned about since the PDP was first coined is that it makes an arbitrarily feeble spell arbitrarily useful. If I wasn't adding a pink dot to every sword in the room I could turn the swords to wood, or to another metal, or dust even. Yes, it's more difficult to pull any of these out of the bag as a spont, but I'd still be changing the substance. And if I added a very slight curve (the Curve of Least Effect) to each blade, then I'd still be making a material change.
I guess they ease the frustration by making the "problem" less gimmicky, but the spell levels could still be relatively low and the resistance is still powerful. That's why I maintain that the "problem" won't be solved until Magic Resistance, and Parma in particular, is re-assessed.
I agree. In fact there are so many possibilities I can't imagine why someone would try the pink dot thing, unless they were either a) trying to cheat, b) just examining the MR rules for the sake of debate, or c) not innovative enough to think of the myriad legitimate possibilities with Imagonem.
Well I was never too upset by the "problem" as a whole it's just that pink dot at voice, diameter,individual was level 4 that made it a go to choice for everyone (not that anyone ever did use the pink dot in my games I just hated the thought that their failure to do so was not easily explicable given their motivations i.e. keeping from being stabbed) in a good aura with loud voice extravagent gestures and a strong stamina a characrer who has a 5 in both arts can cast this as a non-fatiguing spont. I much prefer my terram focued magi to cast terram spells and my herbam focused magi to cast herbam spells and so on.
But you're right it doesn't "solve" the pink dot "problem" it just makes it more tolerable.
I suppose you would all frown on my new magus idea. An Imaginem master of the followers of the Illusionist the Great Pendule.
With a Minor Magic Focus in Pink Dots.
I suppose just "Dots" would qualify as a Magic Focus, it doesn't matter what color they are.
A magus casts a D:Sun spell to make the air in a room smell of roses with zero penetration.
How does the standard ArM5 MR rules cover this situtation:
Magi in the room can breath normally, but smell no roses
Magi in the room cannot breath.
Other
A magus uses a D:Mom Creo Ignem spell to heat a crossbow bolt. A grog then fires the bolt and hits a magus.
How does the standard ArM5 MR rules cover this situtation:
No MR
2a) D:Mom effects are in fact 'active magic' until the round ends. If the bolt is fired in the same round the spell is cast, then the bolt will be stopped by MR. The following round the bolt is still hot and MR does not resist the bolt.
2b) The following round the bolt immediately returns to its original temperature and MR does not resist the bolt.
The bolt is stopped by MR until the magically created heat disapates
Other
Using the same logic:
A magus casting a D:Mom spell to heat the air in a room to 'white heat', 6000 C.
Instant death to anyone in the room - unless they are resistant to heat somehow
2a) Magi have until the end of the round to exit the room. The room burns around them, they may be injured by exploding pots, falling timber/stone or smoke inhalation, but the the heat itself cannot harm them that round.
2b) The room burns around them, they may be injured by exploding pots, falling timber/stone or smoke inhalation, but the the heat itself cannot harm them. The next round they only need to deal with secondary effects, the 6000C heat is gone.
The magi cannot breate in the air until the heat has disapated.
I guess this is a good time to weigh in. Good questions!
Presumably this is Chamber of Spring Breezes, which doesn't actually affect the air in the room, it creates wind which kind of stirs up the air, making it less stale. A Wizard's Sigil might make it smell faintly of roses, or perhaps an Imaginem requisite?
Characters with Magic Resistance can breathe normally, because the air is natural. They can even smell the roses, because this is an Imaginem effect which creates species, and species are not resisted. They won't feel the breeze, though.
I think it's 2b, meaning that the bolt is resisted that round, but returns to normal the following round.
2b. You can't really target the air with this effect, but you can target the area, so let's say you somehow make a large object in the room hot enough to make it glow red hot (I think that's the highest guideline). Or you could just create a huge ball of flame. This will almost certainly cause other things to catch fire and explode that round as you describe. I'd call that at least +30 damage to anyone close to the effect, unless they have Magic Resistance or can ward away heat and flames of that magnitude. After that round, there will be secondary effects, fires still going and so on, that are a threat to magi, but their Parmas will protect them against the initial burst.
I always start thinking that there must be something you can do with Imaginem's unusual properties, how CrIm creates something that produces visible species, but it doesn't create the actual species themselves. If you create a pink dot, just sort of floating in the air, it isn't resisted. So the pink dot problem is when you use MuIm to change a target's appearance so that it has a pink dot on it-- you might as well change it so it's completely pink, or even looks like a loaf of bread instead of a sword. This is resisted because the Parma keeps out the magic, just like it would if you cast a PeIm spell on an object. It makes it so you can't, for example, put a viper in a magus's bedchamber and then use PeIm to make it imperceptible to every sense.
Personally, I'm inclined to allow the pink dot defense, silly as it is, as it seems appropriate to the sort of characters that typically specialize in MuIm in my sagas. It doesn't work in every situation, but it gives them something fun to do with Muto in circumstances where they are directly under attack.
And in both of the heat cases, i would 100% certainly said 2a because otherwise it breaks the norm that the effects on the surroundings by a spell remains after the spell ends???
Otherwise the damage of a CrIg attackspell would disappear once the spell ends...
Eric: Presumably this is Chamber of Spring Breezes, which doesn't actually affect the air in the room, it creates wind which kind of stirs up the air, making it less stale. A Wizard's Sigil might make it smell faintly of roses, or perhaps an Imaginem requisite?
Sorry, this wasn't my intention. If you want me to specific the effect, make it a MuAu effect. The air has been magically altered - similar to a sword with 'edge of the razor' on it. Such a sword bounces off Parma, why not air? So your response doesn't appear to address this.
Eric: I think it's 2b, meaning that the bolt is resisted that round, but returns to normal the following round.
This answer does shut the door on a whole set of Parma work-arounds - but is it ArM5 canon?
However this answer opens an interesting issue. You are saying that magically created heat 'disappears' when the spell that creates it expires- I see issues. Imagine your magus is on a journey through Finland in winter. He casts a CrIg spell to melt ice for drinking. A D:Mom spell isn't going to work. He uses a D:Sun spell. As the sun sets his entire party dies as their core temperature drops to fatal levels. Direct CrIg spells on bodies suffer the same problem, instant death once the heat disappears...
Eric: 2b. You can't really target the air with this effect,
Can you explain why not? Do I need an Au requisite to only effect the air. In any case I didn't want to debate such details. Can we not agree the spell is possible?
Eric: but you can target the area, so let's say you somehow make a large object in the room hot enough to make it glow red hot (I think that's the highest guideline).
Are you saying I cannot make the air hot at all? Surely a CrIg T:Room spell can heat all things (without MR) to a very high temperature? The point is that breathing superheated air is instakill. Restricting it to air has other advantaged (potentially) wrt MR.
Eric: Or you could just create a huge ball of flame. This will almost certainly cause other things to catch fire and explode that round as you describe. I'd call that at least +30 damage to anyone close to the effect, unless they have Magic Resistance
So you are saying that MR protects against exploding pickle jars - as the magical heat caused vinegar to boil? So you have 'magic heat' - boiling vinegar - flying pottery - hitting magus. So the flying pottery is 'magical' even though it is twice removed from the original magic?
Eric: or can ward away heat and flames of that magnitude. After that round, there will be secondary effects, fires still going and so on, that are a threat to magi, but their Parmas will protect them against the initial burst.
My thought was that the heat is so intense that the jars explode the same round. By making the hot thing only the air everything else is not directly affected by the magic - thus the interest wrt MR.
Hmm... well, Fifth Edition improved a lot of the guidelines so that they don't refer to "air" as a target, but rather as weather. For example, I'm pretty sure the description of Auram says that air means distinct phenomena like clouds and wind, not invisible gases like we know air to be today. But I also recall that the Muto guidelines say air, unfortunately, and I agree that's confusing.
I think it works better if characters don't target air directly, because of all these wacky issues regarding Parma and having to breathe. Air is just always there, and if you want to make someone suffocate, you use a Perdo Auram phenomenon to make "stale air" or "bad air." To transform air, you need a wind or something like that first, like in the Talons of the Winds spell.
Well, what happens when you create a pilum of fire? The fire appears at the spot you target, can catch other things fire, but disappears afterward. Likewise, when you create heat, I would imagine conditions return to normal the same way.
I'm afraid I don't follow you? If he casts a Sun CrIg spell to melt ice, the ice melting is a secondary effect of the magical heat. When the heat goes away the ice doesn't unmelt. Likewise, magi won't benefit from the heat of a magical fire unless they lower their Parma, or unless it sparks a natural fire that they then huddle around.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the guidelines say you can heat an object? The air isn't an object. And as I said before, to my eyes you shouldn't be transforming air into things like flames, because air isn't a target, weather phenomena is. But you could just create a big fire in the room, of course. Either way, I prefer it that you're not affecting the air with your magic, because that's really hard to adjudicate and again it kind of messes with the medieval feel.
Not with Creo. Creo can't use T: Room to create things, it has to be T:Ind or T:Group. I guess it's kind of like "creating heat" rather than "heating a target". But I imagine that due to the differing perceptions of air in the medieval paradigm, you can't heat it. A housefire would be very smoky, and this will make the air particularly bad to breathe, of course.
No, that's not what I meant. Those would be secondary effects from the heat, natural and thus not resisted. I'm not sure that creating heat hot enough to make something glow red is enough to cause jars to explode, though. It may be that things can't get that super-hot in Mythic Europe, since there aren't guidelines for it.
If it is possible to make it that hot in a room where there are jars, I would agree that the exploding jars would not be resisted.
As a CrIm spell, the answer is 3: The air is unchanged, and the roses are smelled because the 'olfactory image' of the rose was created, which emits species.
As a MuAu spell, the answer is a bit more complicated: Either the answer is 2, because the magical medium is kept away, or the answer is 3, that casting the spell must Penetrate because the air in the room is already in contact with the magus and affected by the protection of Parma.
No MR; the bolt is hot once heated. However, if there is any appreciable heat, the bolt will probably miss; I'd feel quite comfortable causing other problems. Things that are not designed to withstand heat often warp or burn.
Well, first you need to find the spell guideline that lets you do this. I can easily see a SG simply not allowing mere Ignem to create something hotter than the surface of the sun! There is no 6000C in Mythic Europe. Think about it: It takes a level 30 spell to create an Ind fire that does a mere +30 damage, which is much cooler than 6000C and much smaller than a room. So you need a SG to agree that air in Mythic Europe can even be heated to 6000C. And if he allows it, you're looking at a ritual spell.
A SG who would accept the kind of environmental effects you mention would also not have the pots explode or the timber fall or there even to be any smoke for a few rounds. Smoke doesn't just appear! Heat needs time to spread! Etc.
But.... a spell of this kind still has nasty consequences if the air is made 'very hot', so let's go with that. A CrIg that indirectly heats the air would allow the magi in the room to breathe the air and suffer the consequences of the heat with no MR--but it would take a few rounds for the air to heat up and affect the environment. So a variation on 2a.
Note that AM, like Champions and D&D, generally deals poorly (IMNSHO) with secondary damage caused by 'typed damage'. A player who wants to take advantage of 'realism' of this kind will probably not be very happy when it is used against him. I don't see this as a flaw in the player, as some on these (and other) rpg boards do, but as a flaw in the rules.
(Also note that my parma house rules circumvent a lot of this. If you heat up the air in the room using a CrIg spell under those rules, the spell is resisted and is dispelled if any resistance succeeds. Thus, there is no having to deal with exploding pots or any cleverness of that kind. When I first posted those rules, people wondered why I wanted the dispel to be part of resistance--spells of this kind are part of the reason.)
To me it looks like this issue wasn't thought about. ArM5 made a lot of changes to Auram, but I think the motivation was an aesthetic one about Target and weather effects. In any case guidelines are not presented as an exhausive list of possibles, just a guide.
Imo making air, as a substance, untargetable would be special pleading. Plato named Air as an element, it is a material thing, people know air can be hot or cold. If you cannot heat air, you cannot heat water or any other fluid by the same token.
Pilum of Fire creates the element fire. This is clearly a magical substance which vanishes at the end of the spell. Heat is a property of a material, so it doesn't necessarily follow. After a fire had gone out and the light gone, the heat of the kettle and its contents remains.
Having the heat go away is a valid position, but not a necessary one imo.
N.B. Caloric theory is OOP of course.
I'm afraid I don't follow you either. How could it do otherwise? If the crossbow bolt returns to its original temperature, why wouldn't the water? What is the difference between a crossbow bolt and water in these examples?
Sorry, but that's a fairly thin argument. If I wanted to heat water in a kettle I don't think you'd be objecting. Imo if you can heat water in a kettle you can heat air in a room. It may be T:Ind with a modification for Size, but things like this are covered by the targetting guidelines.
Imo your 'air does not exist' position is not consist with medieval thinking, acadamic or practical.
That's a very narrow view of the guidelines imo. Medieval people could make fires hot enough to melt iron (about 1500C) where the glow is yellow. As a SG I would object to 6000 C - but this was to make a point about MR. Whether the 6000C spell is Hermetically possible or not isn't really the issue at hand.
In any case, we agree that secondary effects are not protected by MR. Imagine a glass jar filled with water and nails. D:Mom spell to make the water 1000C - very nasty...
Well all right, so if you want a guideline to heat up the air, how do you think it should interact with Magic Resistance?
What does it say in the description of Auram; how much air is in an Individual?
I don't know if there's a canonical example to settle this question, but it seems straightforward to me that creating heat works the same way as creating flames.
Well, primarily that the heat doesn't cause the bolt to melt. I was thinking you were targeting a bucket or something like that with your heating spell, to melt ice placed in it. If you targeted the block of ice with the spell, I imagine it would melt naturally, just as if it were next to a very hot thing. A piece of parchment would burn if you magically set it on fire, wouldn't it? The parchment would not be restored after the spell ended, nor would the water return to ice, because their burning or melting were secondary effects.
I wouldn't object if you wanted to heat a kettle or a pot. Those are clearly objects.
Pity, because it solves the problem with Hermetic magic and the Parma rather nicely, I think.
But how far would this air protection extend? If it is the whole room, why not the whole building or even town? I think this would be another worm-can.
The same way hot water does, the same way hot iron does, the same way heating any material thing does.
The SG is free to rule. I'd use the examples in the other elements - Aquam touches on this quantity issue iirc.
Your digging yourself a hole here! So if I CrIg an iron rod to molten iron the iron remains molten and mundane after the spell ends...
So if I heated the the ground to 1000C, it would become lava and it would stay at 1000C after the spell ends.
Water-Ice is water that is very cold - ice cold. If you heat water-ice as hot as blood it is a liquid. If you make it as hot as a red-hot iron it is water-steam. This is common medieval knowledge. The spell gives heat to the material, any state-change the material experiences is irrelevant to the spell - the spell just make the material X-hot. If magically created heat vanishes when a spell ends the water (whether solid, liquid or gas) returns to its original temperature - ice-cold. It doesn't matter if I heat a bucket and the heat flows into the ice, the heat will still disappear once the spell ends- if that original temperature is ice-cold the water will immediately freeze.
Ice + Heat = Hot Water
Hot Water + Heat = Steam
Steam - Heat - Heat = Ice
If I heat a deeply frozen parchment to 1000C it combusts and turns to ash. Once the spell ends the ashes be as warm as it's own combustion made it - no more. If the parchment were cold enough to start with, the ashes might still be cold.
Consider, I am not heating the crossbow bolt, air or ice by applying a flame to it or making the container hot. I am changing the temperature of the material directly via magic. The heat is not being applied to the material, it is given to the material.
I guess you have your answer, then. What base level do you imagine this guideline would be? Seems to me like a spell that used it would be fairly popular among combat magi.
Terram does too, I think. So as SG, how many paces of air would you rule I can affect at T:individual?
What's with the "gotcha"?
If indeed you can cause iron to melt with a spell to create heat, then yes, I believe the rod remains melted after the spell ends. But it wasn't the magic that made the rod melt, it was the heat from the effect, so as I see it the heat should end when the magic does, and not the change of state which is a natural result of the conditions created by the spell.
I have gotten a quick look at my core rulebook now, and it looks like I was incorrect about the heat dissipating as soon as the effect ends. The spell Heat of the Searing Forge makes clear that a Momentary spell heats the metal to a burning temperature during the initial round, and then the metal begins to cool down over subsequent rounds. So I will change my answer to your crossbow bolt question to 2a.
Going with the intent of your example, 2. (Yes, there are ways to do this to get 1, but there are probably ways to do it to get 2.) The air is under a magical effect. It's only level 5 to give yourself enough air to breathe for Sun duration, so spontable by almost any magus. Also, this affects the air in that room at the time of casting for Sun, not any air that enters the room later, so unless the room is airtight, this is a bit of a waste of time.
This is probably the sort of trick that gets Tytalus apprentices in a lot of trouble.
3, I think. Heat of the Searing Forge actually has a duration of three rounds, which is much shorter than Diameter and so still Mom for spell design purposes.
I think this is (4). The heat is magical, and can move. Anything that has been heated is under a magical effect and thus bounces off Parma (unless it penetrates, of course). I also think that everything would cool down at the end of the round, which might be enough to extinguish some of the fires. You do, however, almost certainly have a big mundane fire, although there are probably easier ways to do that.
That said, I'm not actually sure I'd allow this spell. If you want to set everything in the room on fire, use that guideline. Level 20 at Touch Range, I think. Heating the air to 6000C doesn't feel at all medieval. (And if you do set everything on fire, the magi don't ignite, but there are mundane fires afterwards which could cause them a lot of trouble. A higher range than Touch is probably advisable.)
Even discounting the HotSF (since it's a legacy spell and they're all deeply suspect from the point of consistency), the magically created heat cannot disappear at the end of the spell without causing some odd effects such as magically heated food being pointless since depending on your parma interpretation you can't eat it whilst hot and under the effects of the spell and becomes instantly cold when the spell ends. Likewise, the same logic would put out mundane fires started by magical ones since their initial cause is gone.
I tend to favour the interpretation broadly supported by the Rego and Muto spells and rules which is that if the end result is mundanely possible then it persists when the spell ends, otherwise it ceases. That way a sword heated over a magical flame is still hot when the flame goes away, a pile of clay shaped with Rego remains in the shape after the spell ends and stone transmuted to mud, allowed to flow into a mold and the spell ended, returns to stone but in the shape of the mold. Any other interpretation introduces too many odd consequences, like the arm of a man turned to stone and his arm then broken off reattaching itself when the spell ends.
