Breakthroughs in the Recent Past

In another thread, I said:

Then Ken said:

Then Kal said:

This made me think, what other things are "normal" in 1220 which can be cast as recent inventions rather than having been there since the days of Notatus and Trianoma?

I'd like to expand on Kal's suggestion for recent improvement of Longevity rituals: I think it would be fun if even Magi in the recent past didn't have very good ones. The history of the Order isn't actually very long, and it gets a lot shorter in human terms when we remember that individuals can easily live for a century or two. I understand that some people might like there being living survivors of the Schism War, but it doesn't do it for me.

Which discoveries has your saga had in the recent past? I will totally steal them for my saga.

I like to use the canonical Integrations in various books (such as Legends of Hermes) as either having been done in the recent past, or will be published in the upcoming Bonisagus Folio. Such as "Longetivity potions no longer cause sterility", or that "I can make horse-headed humans" thing or "I figured out how to grow and cultivate plant-based vis".

Cosmetic longevity potions are recent in 4th edition. This explains why old Magi look old, instead odd-looking thirty until they crumble just before death.

There are also the not-so-recent integrations of Aegis and Vim - ie, Vim used to be 4 separate realm-based forms, but were folded into one meta-form a while back.

By HoH:TL p.96f Mutantes, Triceres' Muto Vim metamagic - that is, all ArM5 p.159f Muto Vim but Wizard's Communion - was hidden from the Order, before his great-grandson and only apprentice 'Mutantus' with his own followers started to refine and divulge it.

Especially sagas, whose players have problems with ArM5 p.159f Muto Vim and its layered errata (like in the discussion following this), can thus easily redefine the date of the publication of Triceres' results, and thereby make all of ArM5 MuVi but the Wizard's Communion and its derivatives (like TtA p.137 Day of Communion) either hard to access or completely unknown to most magi but the Mutantes.

Cheers

These are great, thanks very much!

Do you have an index of those canonical integrations? I remember an example of a possibly-canonical one (the idea that the arts used to be difficult, and each one being made non-difficult as a breakthrough), but this is one of those things, like canonical books on arts, that I'd really like an index for.

Where's that one from?

Marcus of Criamon, also from Magi of Hermes.

Oh, for clarity: the Integrations I'm talking about aren't ones that exist per the publication of 5th Edition - rather, I'm referring to those that have been described as personal projects, and would PROBABLY be published if the magi in question would care to do that. So, nothing like Difficult->Non-Difficult, as that's already been established as of 5th Edition.

And with that in mind: no, I don't have one - instead, I just go look at the sidebars in Magi of Hermes and Legends of Hermes, etc. and pick out a few that either the players want and like, or else completely don't care about. The former is a nice benefit, while the latter just acts as background fluff for when the Grand Tribunal rolls around. (I'm assuming a few people have saved up their research projects to get them better exposure by releasing them at Grand Tribunal.)

you can also get a good sack of stuff PC's don't care about, but was probably important to someone, by claiming that someone has Integreated a not-particularly-useful Mystery virtue from TMRE or Ancient Magic. My personal favorites - someone finally finds the Enochian (2) Syllabus described in Ancient Magics, and publishes it. it's a nice bit of flavor that Hermetics use the eqivalent of a 5-year-old's vocabulary to improve the penetration of their magics. Another "seriously, I don't care" magic integration would be Rote magic from TMRE. (Which I would personally modify to "If you can cast a learned spell at 1/5, you don't need to roll, and you gain Silent and Subtle magic for it"....as that's how I visualize non-fatiguing spont magic anyway: the magi barely even gestures in a direction, and things happen.)

It's a way of showing that there are OTHER magi in the Order who have their own plotlines and "it's not about goals, it's about the consequences of reaching those goals" that seems to be the theme of AM5th.

Of course a longevity ritual will also warp a mundane to where they acquire a minor flaw in 5 years. not necessarily something they will see as a benefit...

In fact the longevity mechanics make me think that that actually just happened; there aren't many magi older than 200 years old, but any simulation I made about that suggested that living over 200 years was easy with current rules. So my personal take was precisely to assume that Longevity Rituals just got better recently.

Some other thing that I feel is quite recent is the use of the Intangible Tunnel at low levels as a very effective method; the lack of a Flambeau combat school about it and the few hoplites that I'd seen using these methods tend to suggest that.

I like to say that non-ritual teleportation is a recent invention, given the massive impact Leap of Homecoming has on sagas.

One of my players discovered some Diedne spells from the shortly before the schism war, which were top secret at the time. The spells are the talk to elements and trees ones from the core book, i.e. using intellego to converse with non-animals/humans was pioneered by House Diedne, and only became widespread in the rest of the Order after the Schism War.

Hm. The Intangible Assassian chapter in Hermetic Projects does make mention of this - mainly in the "Wizard's don't train to be soldiers or try to kill each other usually, so they mostly don't develop things like Shieldbreakers or many Wizard Duelling spells", However I do agree that low-level Intangible tunnels (plus low-level Maintain the Demanding Spell effects) are both really, really, REALLY freakin' handy.

My guess is speed - ie, in a straightforward combat situation (ie, sight-based against a non-hermetic target) using an Intangible Tunnel requires an additional round of casting. That might simply be too much time spent when you could be otherwise Pilluming your opponent.

The solution could be a lesser enchanted item that casts the tunnel for you. But that starts to get the following questions:

  1. How do you see the tunnel from your end?
  2. How do you aim it?
  3. Can you activate the item and cast in the same round?

There are solutions to these questions, but...yeah. Not necessarily clear.

Thanks.

Well, most spell dealing with stuff in the old way are R: Voice. So going with R: Sight spells can actually save you time; you can start tunneling from far away, and actually do all your tricks never entering R: Voice. Hey, you can even Leap back to your lab and launch the rest of your repertoire from there, with your cozy aura around and from inside your Aegis!

Besides, I think any prominent Intangible Assassin will have Deft Vim. In that way, without gestures nor voice, you can get your R: Sight tunnel up and ready before things get heated.

I would feel really really nervous about such an intangible-tunnel-boring item. I think I remember that Muto Vim enchantments could only deal with other item effects. Probably that tunnel would only work in the same way, with powers embedded into the item.

Or you could halve the level of the effects that can be cast through the tunnel, by analogy to the other ReVi guidelines:

This is discussed a number of places - you can cast through another's Tunnel just fine, with no restrictions...as long as

  1. You're hermetic as well, (a Tunnel is an explicitly Hermetic thing), and
  2. You can perceive it. (Standard Hermetic restriction - it's a vim construct, and thus invisible to regular sight. I think that implicitly suggests that if you are the creator, you know EXACTLY where it is regardless of perception magics, but if you aren't you need to either be absolutely sure where it is, or else have some sort of InVi effect going.)

I think (Serf's parma) that these are both mentioned in the core ReVi description of the effect, and expanded on in the Intangible Assassian section. (I'll look it up this evening.) From what I recall, it's meant to be a restriction on Tunnels: they go both ways. Requiring that a tunnel be halved if it isn't yours means that low-level tunnels (ie, lvl 5) are essentially counter-proof, as you'd be forced to use a lvl 2 or lvl 3 spell. And who has THOSE memorized?

Beware! Tunnels general guideline says that effects can be base +5 magnitudes, which means that to have a 5th level tunnel should have base 0,which is odd. We ruled that spells should have base > 0 to avoid strange things, so tunnels minimum ‘size’ is 10 (and The Sorcerer’s Fork is quite useful to narrow them).