The issue I have with those rulings is that a botch is basically a 1-in-100 chance of occurring. Therefore, there is a 1-in-100 chance of anyone walking around a thick stone or metal circle (at least 1 foot thick and several feet deep) and somehow breaking it. Which violates my suspension of disbelief in terms of how stone vs. the human foot operates.
(EDIT - if we assume that all ring/circle castings have botch dice associated with their castings via the Concentration roll - which I figured was the point of this discussion)
That being said, if we go with the "symbolically break by drawing a line over it", then maybe: the concentration goes awry, the magi trips, and skews his tracing line in such a way that the line goes 90 degrees against the grain of the actual circle. If that's considered "breaking" in your saga, then I suppose it's possible.
Well, I certainly agree with that. But in that case, what are the circumstances in which non-botch concentration checks for ring/circle spells occur? My thought is mainly as follows:
Heh - just thought of this: if no scenario existed in which you couldn't botch, then the "Practicing a spell for mastery" rules (pg. 164) would not exist for some spells: casting it thousands of times would make Twilight pretty much an inevitability. So it's safe to say that, at the least, the first round of the spell includes a freebie.
The ground shifted, there was a flaw in the stone, the metal was brittle and fractured. Page 112 says that large circle spells aren't worth the risk. The botch doesn't represent just the foot, it represents all the conditions present. You botched because you didn't notice the problem until it was too late. I find it a greater suspension of disbelief that a magus can hold onto the power of a spell for a circle of nearly any size, with little to no risk.
I've stepped un a supposedly solid piece of granit and broken it, because of an internal fault in the stone. I worked with some wood that appeared fine on the exterior, but cutting into it revealed rot.
I never said no scenario existed, I was answering the question off the cuff. RAW suggests what I said, though it doesn't say it explicitly. Rolls for concentration only become necessary beyond 1 round.
Answering your middle point, I don't believe there should be any conditions for non botching concentration checks when working with large circles.
A Stress die is always a Stress die. Sometimes the rules tell you that it is "a stress die with no botch", but that doesn't seem to feature in the rules around maintaining concentration on spells.
Other times, like Formulaic Spell Casting (ArM5, page 81) the rules tell you it is a "die" that is rolled, in which case the troupe determines according to circumstance whether it is Stress or normal die. Hence, it is possible that the die roll for Formulaic Casting is not a Stress die (hence, why you can safely practice formulaic spells for spell mastery purposes). But the die rolled for Concentration (while spell casting) (and also for Spontaneous spell casting, for example) are specifically Stress Die.
Remember that if you botch the Concentration roll associated with drawing a ring, you are botching the roll to concentrate on casting the spell (while trying to simultaneously draw the ring). You are not necessarily (or even likely) to be failing to draw the ring, you failing to concentrate properly on the spell at the same time.
Yeah, it even says "In such cases, no botch dice should be rolled." But the previous sentence strongly suggest the botch actually happened but did not matter. If you spent an evening penning a letter, it doesn't really matter that you had a few ink blots on your draft. So a stress die can always result in a botch, but sometimes you don't care as long as the final result is ok.
As Mr Love stated, doing something that requires concentration while casting is always stressful. And that resolves your spell practice issue.
ArM5 p183 "Auras also affect the number of botch rolls for an attempted supernatural act in a foreign realm."
The specific scenario Jonathan and I were discussing is the botching of a concentration roll when tracing a circle on a large, permanent stone or wood circle. (Say, a foot wide, and several feet deep, and whatever circumference is necessary for "sufficiently large" - buried in the ground except for the top inch poking up out. At least that's how I'm imagining it.) Jonathan's claim is that the botch on the concentration roll could very well cause the circle to break (despite its rigorous construction), as there could very well have been something in the environment that would cause it to do so. While I could see that for a line-in-the-sand style of circle, my general argument is that being distracted near a multi-ton stone ring isn't likely to make it suddenly crack, even if you didn't realize the ground was wet and ended up slamming your foot against it.
And while I understand that Jonathan isn't saying that it would automatically happen (as that would imply that Concentration has some sort of telekinetic component), my argument is that it's a functional non-issue: even if you do botch the concentration check, there is not a 1-in-100 chance that such a stone ring will break. There's not even a 1-in-1,000 chance. It's well into the one-in-a-million chance, and at least for me, lands outside narrative plausibility.
What's much more likely to happen (at least in my experience with hopping across rocks and being distracted) is that the individual in question will fall off and either twist their ankle or whack their head. The ring doesn't beak: the person does.
And because the stone ring wouldn't break, it wouldn't cause an auto-botch. And, as we have discussed, if it's a memorized or Mastered spell, it won't have botch dice (EDIT - at least not in a non-stressful environment). Therefore, there is no meaningful chance of failure. Meaning that, in optimum circumstances, it's really just how long the magus feels like going with a 1% probability of loosing concentration each round.
EDIT - the only way I can see this not working is if someone claimed that extending a ring beyond 1 turn is, by definition, a stressful scenario for memorization/mastery. But the Concentration rules already imply that it's entirely fine to roll a simple die for a spellcasting while Concentrating. Which brings us back to: 1% chance of failing the spell, at which point you just try to cast again.
Sure. How do you feel this applies to casting a spell over and over again that has a 1% chance of granting a point of warping each time you cast it? (which functionally is what happens if we assume "Concentration rolls are always stressful, and have a pretty good chance of breaking the circle of the spell you're casting.")
At the least, there needs to be some scenario in which there is no potential for botch. And actually I agree with Jonathan on this one - it's the 1-turn casting version. (Which was actually my point a few posts above - I was agreeing with him, but for a slightly different reason.)
Not quite seeing that one - perhaps it's late. To me, if a concentration roll has to be stressful, and there's always a potential that botching that concentration roll means you could very well break the circle of the spell you're casting (and thus auto-botch the spell), then that means there is a pretty good chance you'd kill yourself with Warp before the season was out. Thus, there are some spells you simply can't practice for a season. Can you expound?
I could make the ring break IMS. We are talking about magic going out of control here! The circle starting spinning like a diabolo could also happen. However, I would only break it if a high level spell was being cast, and then it would be one among a multiplicity of potential results. Not the first one I would choose, for sure, in any case, since the circle breaking does not have INCOMING!!! consequences. It is just a broken circle. The spell doing weird things or lashing out and causing problems elsewhere is much more interesting. Maybe you were casting a spell to make your crops hale, and suddenly the crops are so hale that you cannot cut the stalls. And they are 6 feet high now and are attracting A LOT of attention from the local mundanes. That kind of botches are much more fun for us The magus breaking a foot, and his talisman in the fall (requiring an adventure to fix it, not redoing it from scratch) is also cool. Or sometyhing ñlike that.
The spell is memorized, and cast under good conditions. As per the rules on Concentrating while casting:
Memorized spells cast under good conditions don't use stress die: they use simple die. Therefore, the spell does not go out of control.
And that's my main argument - it violates my narrative sense to believe that a single botch on a Concentration roll can cause a large, stable stone ring embedded in the ground to suddenly crack. In this scenario, it's a foot thick (and potentially made of granite.)
Break the magi's foot? Sure. Cause them to trip and break their talisman (as you suggest)? Eh, possibly. Cause a multi-ton stone edifice to be sundered? Not so much.
EDIT - I would believe that a light wound would be taken - representing a trip or bad fall made as a consequence of concentrating REALLY hard, and as such not watching where you're going. Which, in turn, would conceivably keep a magi from doing this too often: falling on your face every couple of minutes, trying to cast a big circle spell, would probably get painful - and after doing it a few times, would start to get into Medium Wound territory. Which is in and of itself a limit on how often you could try this. But the ring itself cracking? Eh, no. I'm not seeing it.
I think the important thing to remember is that large circles are rarely worth the risk. If the concentration botch doesn't cause the spell to botch at least some of the time, then large circles don't have any risk. I can understand this may be a rule 0 issue for your troupe, but for a strict reading of the RAW keeping the risks is reasonable.
Kevin, you seem to be viewing the concentration botch as a strictly causal event. The botch causes something bad to happen when it could be the opposite. Something caused the botch to happen, something previously unnoticed by the magus before casting the spell.
However, you are absolutely right that if a Formulaic, ring spell is cast under non-stressful circumstances then you don't need to check for a botch on the spell if the Concentration Roll (to concentrate on the spell casting while drawing the ring) fails.
However, that does not preclude the possibility of the Concentration Roll (which is always a Stress die) itself botching. What happens if the Concentration Roll botches is up to the troupe, and will obviously depend on the circumstances, and what seems plausible to your troupe. The consequences of botching the Concentration Roll might include breaking the ring/circle, but if that is not possible for some reason, then obviously something else happens. The RAW just tells you that a botch happens, it's up to you to interpret that in a way that makes sense for your saga. Of course, as it is a Concentration Roll to concentrate on casting a spell it is quite plausible (I think anyway) for the botch consequence to be something supernatural related to the attempted spell.
As an aside, a large stone ring is not exactly invulnerable to accidents. If you watch any House Rennovation programme on TV, you will observe that sooner or later somebody will crack a huge marble kitchen benchtop / or marble fireplace by seemingly doing something relatively safe.
For the purposes of practicing a formulaic ring spell for spell mastery? Of course, there is. Cast a small ring in non-stressful circumstances.
If it is non-stressful there is no chance of botching the Casting Roll, and if the ring is small you don't need to make a Concentration Roll at all.
Jonathan - the issue I'm having with your description of events is that it does not, in my mind, describe the idea of an optimum scenario that someone specifically attempts to set up. Rather, what you describe is, to me, scenario with multiple potential botch dice. "Clear sky, solid ground, ring firmly grounded and in good shape, and we check it out before hand? OK, one botch die." as opposed to "the ground has been flooded for the past few years, the ring looks a bit rotten, and we don't have time to do a walkthrough beforehand? 3 botch dice." I can see the latter, if you triple-botch, as breaking the ring: As both you and Richard have mentioned, it actually IS possible to break a large stone object, if it's thin enough in one spot, you bring a lot of weight down on a hard point, and the universe is conspiring against you.
However, I do not find your argument persuasive for 1 botch die, as it requires a number of elaborate failures that do not, by my definition, exist in a 1-botch die scenario. Perhaps in your games stone rings shatter whenever someone catastrophically fails at maintaining proper mental focus due to hithero-unseen structural weaknesses. Personally, I give Middle Age stonemasons more credit than that. Ignoring plausablity for a moment, I also don't see it as neither narratively necessary nor coherent. 3 botch die? Sure - that represents the scenario you describe, to me. And I'll grant the 1-in-a-million chance for 1-in-ten-thousand (1 potential botch + 3 botches): this is a story, after all. And hidden botch dice, where the players THINK that the scenario is sound, but they failed to make the appropriate spot checks? Again, I can see that as well. But such activities occurring on a single botch? Nope.
Re: getting a botch on the Concentration check, and having it affect the spell - fair enough. The rules mention only failing the roll, rather than botching it. Thus, it is plausible that the spell somehow goes wonky. And again, I would agree that with a drawn circle, any sort of unforeseen magic effect (sudden-but-powerful gust of wind, or the magi's Sigil suddenly becoming incredibly powerful and overwhelming, or whatever) can cause the circle to get scuffed. I wouldn't go so far unless it was an extremely powerful circle to affect a stone ring, but that's me - for that, I concede the point.
This now begs the question as to how one practices metamagic effects (MuVi - AM pg. 159), which actually use explicitly the rules you imply here - if the concentration check for a metamagic feat botches, then the spell botches.
The issue here is that the rules for MuVi are explicit - which implies that MuVi a special case. Which means the general case (ie, any other use of Concentration+spellwork) isn't necessarily covered by the "if one botches, they both botch" ruling. Which implies that such a ruling is a Troupe call. (I do agree that it is a plausible one - but one that, shown here, doesn't seem to be mandatory according to the rules.)
EDIT - and yes, I do realize that Richard's post pretty much says this. Mainly I'm pointing this out as further evidence that, at least by RAW, focusing heavily on the "Concentration Botch = Spell Botch" certainly isn't necessary.
But even if we concede that a single botch die might screw up the ring (regardless of its construction) or mess with the magic of the spell (regardless of formulaic/mastered status), that just moves the conversation back a level, to Cautious with (Concentration). This virtue (AM, pg. 40) functionally makes it impossible to botch a Concentration check in optimum and near-optimum scenarios. So, we're back to where we started, albeit relying now on a minor virtue rather than general game mechanics.
Alternately, we can rely on Ring/Circle Magic (HoH:S, pg. 113) - which explicitly grants an automatic success on the concentration check when walking a ring. It also turns boundaries into rings (that don't need to be walked) with a simple sigil mark. In fact, in reading through the description, it pretty much excludes Concentration as a requirement from the whole warding process as PART of the minor virtue. To be fair, this is a hermetic virtue that is part of an Ex Misc tradition, and as such is usually paired with a Major Supernatural Virtue/Major Hermetic flaw.
But yes, I do acknowledge that if you didn't want to be part of the Columbae, you'd have to come up with a reasonable story as to why a magus knows the minor virtue without being formally part of the tradition. Of course, the canonical response to that seems to be "eh, just make up your own Ex Misc tradition, slap together the Virtues and Flaws you want, and give it a decent backstory." But ignoring that, there's an entire group of magi running around, blithely making ginormous rings and boundary effects, willy-nilly, in direct contradiction to the dire warnings on AM pg. 112. But again, the Columbae are the ones who probably wrote that warning, with the unspoken addendum of "...unless you're us, in which case, have fun mocking those who are not as fortunate as we are."
As such, it seems that there are two minor virtues in the game which do pretty much what you're trying to avoid: make it really, really, easy to make large rings. and in looking at other minor virtues and what they do - most don't seem to have such a huge impact on the rules. Therefore, we can either assume that these virtues are incredibly overpowered, or that the rules for rings aren't quite as brutal as you're making them out to be.
I'm not describing any specific scenario, I'm speaking in generalities. Maybe symbolically breaking the circle is bad, too, while the spell is being cast, and a rabbit darts across it. You mentioned this yourself. My point is to maintain the general guideline that large circles are rarely worth the risk.
It's magic, it's inherently unstable. You hold it inside yourself for a couple of minutes, and you mess up in the release of it, bad things happen, even bad things you didn't count on. It's the Art of Magic, not the Science of Magic.
Make sense, because there is a form of metamagic at work here, in that magic is being held by the caster until the tracing of the ring is complete. The spell was cast during the first round, now he has to hold onto it, until he traces the ring.
No, it isn't necessary, but is it reasonable. Consider that under your framework large spells of T:Circle and D:Ring have no effective risks associated with them. They can be cast at will, and the only obstacle is time, and not risking a Twilight check. This makes them infinitely better than rituals in multiple ways: duration, no botch risk, no twilight risk, no additional warping points if it does botch, and it doesn't use vis!
I'm actually fine with that, it means the character was built with a clear vision, and virtues bought have an opportunity cost, in that they can't buy other virtues. It also says to all of the other players, this character is likely going to be casting a lot of T:Circle, D:Ring spells. And it is a use of game mechanics, to mitigate a risk. Players do this all the time with building magus concepts.
Yes, but Ring/Circle Magic, IMO, is exclusive to the Columbae. If a player wants to be a hedgie that is their choice.
And Hermetic magi are mocking them as hedgies, unable to do what they do. Not sure what the point is. However, all of what you are saying does nothing but reinforce that large circles are rarely work the risk. Now, if you have ways of mitigating that risk through a character build, excellent, more power to you. That build has costs associated with it, too.
We cannot assume the virtues are overpowered anymore than any particular virtue is overpowered. A minor virtue taken to mitigate a lot of risk? That's something I'm actually fine with, it happens all the time. No virtues taken and the risk isn't gone? That is something I do take issue with. Again, I said it before, let me reiterate it. This may be a rule 0 issue for your troupe. That's fine, then there is no need for someone to take Ring/Circle Magic, and no need for the Columbae to exist within your particular version of Mythic Europe. There is less of a need for Cautious with Concentration, although this still has uses for those poor souls who are afflicted with Magic Addiction. So your choices with respect to large circles do preclude some types of magi ever being made. I don't think moving twice as fast is enough of a tradeoff to make choosing Columbae magi worthwhile.
Play with big circles, but don't pretend that by RAW they don't have any risk associated with them. It is quite clear to me that they do or should, and anything that ignores that risk (excepting virtues that mitigate or remove the risk) is a house rule.
Consider The Bountiful Feast a 35th level spell requiring 7 pawns of vis, which is a botch risk of 8 botch dice, without any virtues that mitigate that risk.
Then some upstart circle magician invents a T:Circle, D:Ring version of the spell that covers the same area (circle with a diameter of 6 miles). The level of the spell drops because it is T:Circle and D:Ring, it is now a 5th level spell. Hardly seems fair to the player who's character always cast The Bountiful Feast who was a Mercurian, and had mastered the spell to mitigate his chance of botching. Because casting a circle with a perimeter of 18 miles has no risk, The Mercurians have very little to do. T:Bound becomes necessary only for Aegis of the Hearth.
Does that seem fair? Sure a Columbae could do this spell without risk of a botch, and so could someone with Cautious with Concentration (but I would also rule that trying to navigate 18 miles while holding onto a spell is probably going to increase the number of botch dice to a ridiculous level) could reduce their risk, but I have a really hard time seeing no risk. But even ratcheting it down in size, I still have issues in seeing that it isn't risky, and it effectively becomes a 4th or 5th level spell...
My opinion on large circles is that they're generally not worth it except, perhaps, under very controlled circumstances.
If the spell is designed with any duration other than Momentary, the effect is immediately terminated once the ring is broken - something that becomes more and more likely as the circumference of the circle is increased. Furthermore, while there are certainly benefits to the 'Boundary' Target (it wouldn't exist if there weren't), there are a lot of cases where one can get the same effect with judicious application of 'Part' or 'Group' in conjunction with appropriate Size modifiers. It increases the level of the resultant spell somewhat, but might be worthwhile if the spell is required to persist for any length of time.
I cannot believe nobody read ArM5 p82 Concentration before blathering fantasies. This has been going for what, 3 days? More than enough time to take a peek.
The circle starting spinning like a diabolo could also happen. However, I would only break it if a high level spell was being cast, and then it would be one among a multiplicity of potential results. Not the first one I would choose, for sure, in any case, since the circle breaking does not have INCOMING!!! consequences. It is just a broken circle. The spell doing weird things or lashing out and causing problems elsewhere is much more interesting. Maybe you were casting a spell to make your crops hale, and suddenly the crops are so hale that you cannot cut the stalls. And they are 6 feet high now and are attracting A LOT of attention from the local mundanes. That kind of botches are much more fun for us