"Bind Magical Creatures" bound by hermetic limits?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Good evening,

I have been thinking a bit about how the Major house Mystery "Bind Magical Creatures" is supposed to be used.
The rules states that
"The magus may also bind a power of the creature to his Gift"
and that
"It [the power] is treated like a Hermetic spell, translated from the creature's power into a formulaic spell with appropriate Technique and Form".

This obviously means that the power is to be rewritten as an Hermetic spell in order to give a proper spell level and so on. But does it mean that the power must adhere to the ranges and durations specified in the design chapter for hermetic spells? All ranges and durations (including those of special traditions) or only those in the core rules? And powers that do things that Hermetic magic or formulaic spells are supposedly unable to do, are these powers "translated" to something completely different or are they allowed to break the limits of Hermetic magic?

For the purpose of game balance it is probably safer to design these powers strictly as regular formulaic hermetic spells. On the other hand that is not completely satisfying as the powers aren't exactly designed using hermetic magic theory. The way I read the text they are rather extracted from the magical creature and attached directly to the magus' Gift.

I may be the only one worrying about these things, but once you start looking at the powers of the magical creatures in the core book only a fraction of the powers actually can be described as formulaic spells using the regular design rules. The "until" duration seems to be VERY common, for example.

By the way, "whatever makes the game fun for you" might technically be an answer, but well, no need to tell me about it.

However, I would very much like to hear other peoples views on what they really meant by "translate" as opposed to "mimics" as seen in the rules for the Faerie-Raised Magic Virtue on page 86.

It really is a shame that they couldn't find the space to give us an example or two of how this rule is supposed to be used. "Elder Runes" got one and it's not even near as ambiguous.

best wishes
// Fredrik Hertzberg

[edit: minor spelling errors]

2

I think there is no reason for the bound power to be subject to the limits of hermetic magic. The in-game explanation begin that it is still the creature's power that you have bound, not a mere hermetic duplicate. The out-of-game explanation being that it is a Major Mystery and as such is entitled to break the rules.

Furthermore putting your hands on a creature with the power you need and binding it is a non-trivial operation (i.e. as difficult as the storyguide wants): the creature isn't going to meekly let itself be so mutilated. Not to mention that you're also limited in that you can only ever bind one power per species of creature.

Whichever guidelines best approximate the creature's power. You may obviously have to extrapolate and make judgement calls.

And it significantly increases the lab total required to bind the power in the first place.

3

We seem to think very much alike here. Even though I wouldn't be exactly surprised if it turned out that we are completely wrong.

True, the Mystery shouldn't need to be any more unbalanced than he storyguide wants it to be. That is, not unbalanced at all most of the time.

Not really, the spell level doesn't seem to have any effect at all. The only important parameter is the creature's Might, which conveniently can be lowered with the very same mystery. This actually feels quite weird, I wonder if that's really meant to be.

"Bind Magical Creatures" is a very nice mystery by the way, reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy 6. And as that is one of those games I played as a child, this is a very very good thing =)