I have been musing over spells with the boundary target. I have a few queries, a grumble and some thoughts. Please indulge me with your own thoughts.
Grumble first: a basic boundary is 100m across. This is tiny. To give an example of a real world castle, Pevensy castle in the UK has an inner set of walls slightly more than 100m across. The outer walls are nearly 300 metres across. An aegis of the Hearth spell wouldn't even cover the inner walls. I think the basic boundary could do with a boost in size.
Query 1 next: of you cast a boundary spell, does it only affects it those within it at the time. Aegis of the Hearth does not but that's a special case anyway. Can you, for instance set up a spell to make people happy in a boundary that will affect the people who enter it after its cast? If not, how could one do this without Hermetic architecture?
Query 2: could you use a boundary delineated by posts or markers such as a area ringed by a series of obelisks or marked trees or metal poles?
Has anyone got some fun and inventive boundary spells that they found useful. I am considering the following.
Here's the Idle Dead
R: touch, d: moon, T: Boundary
ReMe45
Created by a necromancer in an effort to make locating and binding ghosts easier. This spell puts a compulsion on every incorporeal undead in the boundary to move to the point that the caster designates. This point is usually where the caster waits ready to bind any spirit that arrives.
(Base 5, touch +1, moon +3, boundary +4)
The Unwelcoming Woods
R: touch, D: year, T: boundary
ReMe45
Created by a Bjornaer who really did not want any humans exploiting the forest that he considered his personal fiefdom. This subtle spell makes the forest seem unwelcoming and scary. Anyone passing the borders marked by engraved standing stones feels a rapid onset of a creeping dread, a feeling of paranoia and a sense of a malevolence. All but the most determined or brave quickly desire to leave.
(Base 4, touch +1, year +4, boundary +4)
For large boundaries, you only need to add +1 magnitude to multiply by tenfold the area covered.
Any spell with boundary parameter is a ritual, so the two spells you are proposing should be ritual. Then increase their duration to a year (and their magnitude by one), and it becomes slightly harder, but also more vis-cost efficient since you only increase the cost by one, for a duration much longer.
Good point on the size modifier but my main thoughts were that the base boundary is too small to be practical for almost all purposes that you might want.
On the upgrade to year for the first of those rituals (which I did indeed miss out), if the spirits don't get there in a moon, then they ain't getting there in a year. In general though yeah, if you have boundary target, you might as well knock the duration to year if you can.
I am thinking that boundary with a size mod of +1 might be. Better base. 300 paces across should be sufficient for most purposes such as covering a covenant.
My guess was that the initial view of a Covenant was more like a large tower (typically from CtMT), a manor or a large farm and in this case, the guideline is suitable.
Very large covenants, not fitting within 100 meter diameter looks to me more the exception than the rule.
And this 100 m paces fits along the progression of the area guideline: Room, then Structure (about 10 rooms, a small manor), Boundaries (a small manor with its dependencies).
Err... yep, very true. Maybe the spirit of a crippled snail ?
Unfortunately this doesn't work for the Aegis, as you can't change any of the parameters without a major breakthrough (although when we ran into this problem on one saga, we just house-ruled it away by saying the size could be changed after all).
Boundary is enough to cover the Motte of a Motte & Bailey castle (using Clifford's Tower in York with its 200ft across Motte as a reasonable example), or to cover a small hamlet. It doesn't cover the larger fortifications, but this may be that the original designers thought most covenants would be a keep or fortified manor house with a couple of outbuildings rather than a large fortress (and the OP uses Pevensey castle as an example - where the headland it is on forms a natural Boundary, but allowed a larger fortification than was typical for the Romans or Saxons in England)
Pevensey is big only when you consider the Roman outer walls. The inner walls (i.e. the Norman bit) is quite diddy.
Aegis certainly works if you only need to cover a tower or manor house and a few out buildings. But the order has some very impressive covenants too. Do they use multiple Aegis (expensive), a modified aegis (require breakthroughs) or only protect a select part of the covenant (leaving some of it vulnerable).
In fact, would we define a size boundary as a different parameter? Or merely an increase in one of those parameters? I can see the argument either way.
I'm pretty sure the "parameter" is "Boundary." Adjusting the size of the Boundary does not change the "parameter." "Parameter" is pretty well, though not perfectly, defined in the book.
