You might want to double-check this. Yes, it is explicit about the target leaving. However, it is not explicit about part of the target leaving. Thus the question that was asked.
2 Likes
Exactly! The text in the core book says "The spell lasts until the target of the spell moves outside a ring drawn at the time of casting, or until the ring is physically broken." with no mention of "any target or part of the target" at all. My interpretation of the Ring duration has been that if you do a spell that makes everyone inside the ring blue and then one of the three people leave, the spell ends on that individual because he has moved outside the ring, but the other two inside the ring have not and so continue to be blue.
In effect, the spell has ended on that individual because he left the ring, but the target of the spell (the group of 3 people) hasn't left the ring and so the spell continues for those inside the ring. I can see the read that ends it for everybody, but that's not the only read possible with the wording of the core book.
If the new circle parameters make it clear that it is meant to be any target or part of the target that leaves the ring ends it for everybody then that's fine, I would just like it to be clear that it is indeed that and that it working that way doesn't break any existing spells, which is the intent of the thread. Sort of, it's about circles but ring duration is relevant!
For example, a ring version of Bountiful Feast cast on a flowerbed. A petal or a seed pod or something falls off one of the flowers and is blown outside the ring. Does the spell end entirely? Or just for that part that is now outside? Or from only the flower it fell from? Both ending entirely and it being just for the part that is now outside feel equally easy to adjudicate and doing only the flower it fell from feels too fiddly for me. If the spell ends entirely then that makes for weaker Rings (and more complicated, both in and out of game) to use, while it only stopping on the part that is now outside makes for stronger Rings (and more straightforward both in and out of game) to use.
It matters for Ring/Circle mages because you can use a natural boundary as your ring which complicates things. One of the examples is an entire forest, does your spell on the trees of the forest end when a single leaf blows outside the boundary in autumn? Perdo'd things don't count as leaving so you're ok if a leaf falls and rots away within the boundary.
Yes, this is my interpretation and the one I think is most logical and consistent with existing spells - anything that leaves the circle is no longer affected but targets that remain within it still are. It feels odd for smoke to drift out the circle and cancel the spell on any smoke left in it.
This argument over whether parts of the target are still inside and whether the spell applies is extremely counter-intuitive as applied to auram. For one, I find it entirely implausible you can get an entire auram individual / phenomenon to fit neatly within the circle in the first place, so the argument as to what happens if part of that phenomenon drifts away and whether the spell breaks is missing the point that the spell is already claiming to be able to affect only part of the phenomenon in the first place.
If we're not looking at affecting the entire auram individual, then we can't proceed with a target circle, we need a target Part with Ring duration. Otherwise by applying the logic of affecting part of the auram phenomenon with target circle to a different form, I could affect someone's leg who was standing accross the circle with just one leg inside. We shouldn't be treating an individual of auram differently than an individual of corpus or herbam in this case. Either the auram phenomenon was fully inside the circle, or it wasn't. If it wasn't fully inside the circle, it is only a valid target if spell was designed with target part. If the circle was designed by target part, then if any part drifts outside the circle ceases to be affected by the terms of the Ring duration (since, remember, the text goes "The spell lasts until the target of the spell moves outside a ring drawn at the time of casting." Part is the target. Part drifted away.)
Therefore it makes a lot of sense to get an effect such as "Be Rid the tell tale smoke", because a perdo auram effect kind of keeps the phenomenon within the circle, but it makes very little sense to hope that a Muto Auram spell refreshing the air within the circle will somehow be useful beyond that circle's limit. As to whether the spell breaks, I would say yes, unless the spell included a rego requisite to prevent the magical air from drifting, or the circle incidentally happens to correspond to a natural border such as an otherwise air-tight circular room from which the air won't naturally drift away. In the later exemple, target part wasn't required.
What about the Touch/Ring/Circle Creo Herbam to make the plants healthy example? Say it is Circle with 3 flowers within the circle. Does a single petal getting blown outside the ring end the spell? The target is Circle, but I would say it's replicating "Group" here and by "Part is the target. Part drifted away." logic then "Group is the target. Part drifted away." would mean that the spell inside the ring does not end, and the petal that has moved outside the circle is no longer effected by the spell because you'd use Circle definition B from David Chart's post.
Actually! Thinking about it, I think Circle only really works with Ring with definition B. Definition A and Ring just.. ends when they leave the ring and it always ends if the ring is destroyed so there's no point to using that with Ring duration.
edit: I did just notice the buff to Circle type A though, allowing the circle to be destroyed but have the spell continue instead of having to protect the circle afterwards.
1 Like
This is more or less how I see it, yes. The petal wasn't the target, the flower was. I don't think a lost human hair flowing accross breaks the spell either for the human inside. However, a wind blowing through is different. And again, its largely because I don't think most auram individuals can fit neatly within a circle, the odd campfire smoke aside, and so such spells are likely to either not work because the hermetic target was incorrectly picked, or have weird quirks because of how those targets work.
Target:Circle should not be a cheap version of T:Group or T:Room. That puts a hard limitation on its capacity.
T:Group can disperse once the spell is done. T:Room activates when new targets enter the room. T:Circle can't be as versatile.
An effect that stops smoke from leaving will not affect smoke coming through, only what in generated inside the circle. You could argue that smoke is warded from entering too, though.
2 Likes
I generally agree with Temprobe and Ethan's interpretation of a Circle. From my view the high points are:
-
David's B definition of a Circle is the one that should always be used with a Ring/Circle. His A definition in general is weaker with a Ring/Circle, though for non-Ring spells it can prove very useful.
-
Part of the Target leaving the Circle does not end the spell. If the target is Individual or Group, as long as one Individual is still within the Ring or Circle then the spell is unbroken. This applies to both A & B definitions.
-
Some Form Individuals do not play well with Ring/Circles. Though this is still very much dependent on the Technique used with it. A ReAu Ring/Circle effect which creates a spiraling vortex of air within the Circle would in general last until the Circle was physically broken.
One question I am always interested in is if groups consider Targets other than Circle valid for use with the Ring duration.
Tugdual, a Ward is a very different thing from an effect that destroys smoke. The effect to destroy smoke is Perdo, while all Wards are Rego.
Definitely, and there are canonical examples of this. The main times you'd want to is when you do a Creo spell to create something or when you want to use Part because you're not encircling the entirety of something. You cannot use Circle. Take a look at Book of Images (MoH p.124) for an example. Image of the Lady (same page) and Test of the Flames (HoH:S p.36) should have been written the same way and have been submitted for the errata. For a different style, look at A Window of Singular Direction (HoH:TL p.141), which has also been submitted as it should be Part rather than Individual.
I agree, I think the spell ending if the circle is broken is an important balancing factor to making circle not just a cheaper version of Group/Room and I think it should apply to both versions. That makes Group/Room the reliable and instant options, while Circles A) take time to draw, B) can be broken (ending the spell early), C) can only be Touch range and D) you might just fail to draw the circle anyway because of the Concentration roll you have to make every round. 6+ isn't super difficult for most Magi with their 3 int, but you can still botch it.
It looks as though people like having the two options.
I suspect part of the target leaving the circle should end the whole spell if the Duration is Ring, because I suspect it can be abused. For example, you can make a freezer with one casting of a PeIg Touch/Ring/Circle spell, because you can put meat in and take it out. (Use an Animal requisite so that the staff don't get frostbite.) Or consider one of the CrCo spells to improve healing modifiers, on a big circle in the infirmary. People go in, heal, come out, and the spell never needs to be recast. That should, in my opinion, need an enchanted device.
This will mean that there are some things that do not work well with Ring Duration, but that's good — it is a thematically appropriate indefinite duration, but it should have limits.
The three-dimensional shape of a circle is another tricky issue. I don't want to say a sphere, because you should be able to have a 1-pace circle affecting a human being. Thematically, it feels wrong to say that it only gets their legs. On the other hand, drawing a circle on the outer wall of your covenant to blast the army gathering a mile away seems even more wrong. (Plus, there is probably something on the other side of the world, and Hell may be inside it, as per Dante, so we don't want the effect stretching an indefinite distance.)
I am inclined to say that something is affected if it is, intuitively, inside the circle. A person standing in a one-pace circle is inside the circle. A person who happens to be directly under a circle drawn on the floor above, or below, is not. Similarly, a bird flying over a circle does not enter the circle, unless it is flying very low.
I know, I know. "What if a faerie with Might too low to affect the interior of a Ring/Circle ward fills the whole area with fire? What shape is the hole in the fire?" I think the answer to that should be "the shape that avoids burning anything inside the circle, and looks coolest". (If the faerie does a PeAu effect, the air within the ward leaves soon, so you are in trouble in any case…)
Bear in mind that this is how all the other Targets are defined — ArM5 tries to avoid precise measurements as far as possible.
Breaking the circle should, I think, work in the same sort of way. If the continuity of the circle is visibly broken, it has been broken. A single hair falling across the line will not normally break it, but a staff dropped across it typically will.
Comments?
3 Likes
That's why I like prolate spheroids, though it could be spherical or an oblate spheroid if the caster prefers. I have it prolate (or otherwise) enough to handle what should intuitively be inside of it. The spheroid avoids the whole infinitely tall cylinder thing while also avoiding the problems of just a sphere (or hemisphere).
Canonically you can make a Ring on a piece of parchment and cover that piece with another one without breaking the Ring duration, as you can make a book of Ring-duration images on its pages and flip through it.
I was always under the impression that breaking a circle required actually breaking the material that makes the circle. As Callen points out, this is supported by published material.
1 Like
I like the portal view of it not being possible to move an active ring. So you can't just have a ring/circle CrAu spell that permanently creates wind to power your ship etc
The circles/rings we're talking about are the traditional geometric figures of myth, no?
The ones from which the demon escapes when a blade of grass falls across the line, no?
2 Likes
Note that you can still make an ice box even with the more restrictive version: just make sure that the icebox is in the circle at casting time, and it will stay cold while cooling everything brought in contact with it.
There are two issues involved here.
The first is circles that are vertical or almost vertical. They exist both in printed spells and in folklore, but in both cases it seems to me that effects never "protrude horizontally" from vertical circles: vertical circles are thematically two-dimensional, so to speak.
The second is circles that are horizontal, or have a significant horizontal component (e.g. ones drawn on a hill, or rooftop). The main issue here is that small horizontal circles should extend their effects to a significant distance.
A solution that covers both issues is to rule as the Romans ruled about how high or deep a man's ownership of his land would go: usque ad sidera, usque ad infera. A cone all the way down to the centre of the earth (or to the underworld), and all the way up to the heavens (I guess, the lunar sphere) -- note that this always includes the actual flat disc of the Circle, even if it's perfectly vertical.
I think anything less "tall" is aesthetically more problematic, in that .. what happens if I throw a big stone high, high up, so that it should fall almost vertically at the center of an area warded against stone? Does it bounce against an invisible roof? And if I ward against trespassers ... a deep well in my garden, those trespassers shouldn't be able to peek into the well by flying high enough above it (so, my sense of aesthetics disagrees that an eagle should be warded out only if it's flying very low). Finally, if I am sleeping in a Circular Ward against demons, a demon should not be able to fly up, and drop stuff on me.
Personally, I dislike this kind of solution. There is a tradeoff between freeform "just do what seems right" and hard-coded rules: the former allow a troupe to better fine tune stuff to their sense of aesthetics, the latter encourage tactical thinking and reduce arguments. With spell guidelines, target sizes etc. the later editions of Ars Magica embraced the second paradigm. They should do so consistently, in my opinion. In ArM3 it might have been ok to go with "whatever feels right". In ArM5 Ring/Circle should be defined as carefully as possible.
That is misleading, I think. The level of uncertainty of "circles work to whatever height feels right" is far, far greater than "the spell reaches as far as the caster's voice carries". It's about on par with "the spell reaches as far as it feels it shoud".
An object is affected by a Circle if it is in contact with or bisected by the Plane of the Circle.
(I brushed up on Euclid's axioms lately. I'd love to see Hermetic magic expressed axiomatically.)
Intent: A man standing in a Circle is affected by it. The fly that buzzes through the air around his knees is not. Even if the spell in question is Ward Against Pestering Insects; the fly does not land on the man, but can still cross the sphere of the Circle.
Similarly, a man is protected by a Circle Warding Against Demons. The Demons cannot affect anything inside the Circle and cannot cross it, but they can swipe through the air to menace the man; they simply cannot touch him or affect him supernaturally.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your method would allow a demon inside a Circular Ward Against Demons to jump out of the circle, right? I say that because the demon is no longer in contact nor bisected by the place of the circle, so the demon would now qualify for being affected like the fly.
1 Like
Like ezzelino says, I think the PeIg thing can be still be made permanent even with the "any target leaves it ends" thing by making either the floor or a slab cold. It doesn't instantly freeze the meat, but people had larders, so the new ruling doesn't change the infinite chilled meat thing.
If you allow it to be only once the target of the spell leaves instead of when part of the target leaves, for the CrCo spell to be permanent it would require a person from the original casting to never leave the ring ever and if they die it ends. That still feels like chicanery though even if it does require making someone a permanent prisoner of an infirmary.
Just saying "don't do chicanery" doesn't feel like a good rule so I think "if any target leaves" is fine with the definition of "target" depending on context. For example: a CrHe ring/circle to make an entire orchard of apple trees healthy and immune to disease. The apples can be harvested and removed from the circle because they aren't the target of the spell, the apple trees themselves are the target, but if someone chops down one of the trees and removes it from the ring/circle then the spell would end. The opportunity to yell "you fools, your greed has cost you!" is a bonus and I think any rule that lets you do that is a good one for Ars Magica.
I am pretty sure this isn't true and if it is wards become "they protect you from the thing, except when the thing gets clever about it".
The faerie can't affect what's inside the ring/circle. I believe that if you turn air to poison gas with MuAu that if you don't beat a mage's Parma he isn't affected by either the gas or suffocation because the mage just has a little Parma shaped area of breathable air around him (that he then breathes normally for as long as he likes, someone else can't try and use the Parma shaped area of air as a scuba tank, that's definitely chicanery). In this case the ward would work in a similar way.
Yeah, TimOB's method only really works in that one direction of protecting a thing inside the circle protected from something that is outside. If you can only trap something in a ward if its touching the ground at the time you draw the ward around it the that makes a lot of wards useless. You shouldn't be able to fly up and out of a ward that has trapped you.
Circular Ward Against Demons specifically prevents demons (IM =< level) from entering the circle or harm (probably meaning affect) those within it.
The demon is outside the Circle and cannot affect anything within.
I note that wards specifically do not allow warded things (in this case, the demon) from acting across the circle (ArM5 p114). I could read this that the demon A cannot reach across the diameter of the circle to affect victim B, who is outside the Circle, or Magus C, who is inside it; demon A must go around.
Or, it may mean that demon A cannot reach across the circumference line of the Circle, so magus C is fine, but grog B is in trouble; the demon can affect him in a straight line.
To address your point a bit more closely, a demon in a Circle Trap for Demons is trapped since it must have been patiently sitting there to be trapped and was most definitely in the circle at the time of casting, so it is affected. (I'm sure there are ways to trap a demon in a circle, but as I am not Infernally corrupted, I don't know what they are.)