Consensus Building on Magically Created Food

The Pea Most Perilous

Level: 2
R: Touch, D: Diam, T: Ind

Creates a single pea that lasts about 2 minutes. Reguardless of the amount of other food digested the eater becomes extremely hungry when the duration expires (per Creo rules). This spell can be used to speed up interrogation, pad a patron's food bill, or just to be rude. In some areas of belief, the ingester dies.
(Base 1, +1 Diam)

How do you square that interpretation with "...magical food created [only] nourishes for as long as the duration lasts..." ? It seems clear to me that the Creo description states clearly and unambiguously that magically created food does nourish for as long as the food's duration lasts. Indeed I'd argue the following item could allow a magus to survive on created food at infinitum by the Raw:

Plate of Magical Meals
When placed on a horizontal surface (such as a table) and the command is given, fruits magically appear on the plate. The food is nourishing, until the plate is broken.
CrHe 14 effect as a lesser invested device.
Design: CrHe 1, +2 Group, +2 Sun, +1 Touch, +1 lvl 2 uses/day, +3 lvl environmental trigger.

Hey, contrary to some rumours in another thread, I won't unleash the Paradigm Police on you should we disagree :smiley:

Yes, well I'm having a hard time seeing that in action. Fruny's story of Gargantua (quoted above) was marvelous. How do you propose to change the story?

To be clear, I understand that in the "no nourishment" option Gargantua is sated by his first meal, but finds himself hungry again before he expected it. Eating again, he is again sated but very soon finds himself hungry again. He ends up eating all the magical food within two or three days, by the end of which he is sated by it for but a moment, eating frantically and starving between bites.

I am in favor of treating it just like Creo-created food. Most consistent, less of a headache, seems to work just fine.

While that's true, it would also be nice not to have magi Creo-ing Moon duration food in a crisis, and depending on the mundane's food (or precious vis) for their sustenance. I posit that the damage to the setting from having magi capable of sustaining people with artificial food, hunger-attacks once per month nonwithstanding, is greater than the benefit of having magi be able to provide nourishing feasts from thin air without raw vis or adventure a little more easily.

Having magically created food be not nourishing opens up new stories such as starving magi seeking out raw vis or conducting Rituals to provide sustenance in a crises, and it drives home the point of magi needing the mundane infrastructure to support them.

I do think your ideas are closer to the RAW. They are the RAW. But I think in this case an attitude leaning closer to the "non-sustaining" interpretation has more story potential and setting integrity.

I'd definitely accrue Warping. I think both Warping and aging are appropriate for food deprivation due to a diet of magical food (assuming the "nutritious while duration lasts" interpretation). For air deprivation, or lack of healing however I'd limit myself to Warping only.

Errg, I understand that's your position on the RAW. But house-rule-wise, you'd prefer

right?

Your argument regarding the dead horse on page 77 is convincing, I can certainly accept such an interpretation (combined with your reading of the Creo guidelines). I still maintain the RAW actually says "hungry" rather than "dead", but yours is definitely a reasonable position.

A magus trying to assassinate someone by non-permanent food is an interesting situation, but a magus feeding the countryside and his covenant with non-permanent food is a problematic situation.

I think Furion's "It isn't nourishing. It quells hunger but you become hungry again rather soon" works best. It preserves food scarcity just like the "No, it isn't nourishing. It can quell hunger, but won't provide sustenance." you advocated, is still pretty easy to adjudicate, and it prevents the abuses of assassination by feeding.

Oh, yes, good idea.

In our game, yes. :slight_smile:

It's a house rule. I don't think it's an unreasonable one, but YMMV.

Oh, it's not that bad. We actually constructed a large stone tank to hold the milk as well as devices that would preserve our food and ward it against pests. Combine that with an oven that Perdo's smoke and baking smells and a device that creates moon-duration firewood, and we have a nice little hidden covenant. Quite handy when all of Toulouse is falling to pieces.

Yes, it does. That's actually what's prompted us to start trying to escape from the covenant - our supplies of Animal began running low.

ROFL

Yes, perhaps I could have made that clearer. I think #4 is consistent with the RAW, but I like Furion's interpretation as a house rule because it's simple, consistent, and easy to explain to players. For what it's worth, the pink dot "problem" doesn't bother me either, because "parma blocks pink dot" is also simple and consistent, so you may want to take what I say with a grain of salt.

Yeah. I think that someone's position on this issue is going to depend a lot on which parts of the RAW you want to interpret away in light of the parts of the RAW you want to interpret strongly.

Just to be clear, though, I'm not advocating that anyone who eats one of angafea's Perilous Peas immediately keels over dead once the spell ends. The human body can go for over a month without food. I think the simplest way to explain my position is to say that, once the duration of the non-permanent food ends, it is as if the you had never eaten. What happens to you at that point depends entirely on how long you've been eating non-permanent food. A couple of days? You're hungry. A month? You're hungry and weak. Six months? You die of starvation.

LOL

ncl, your spells are good but as you said non-controversial. (I too am not clear on the +2 for assorted foods and whether milk is Animal...) How about the following:

Pile of Monthly Grains
CrHe 15 (day variant at level 10)
You create a pile of unprocessed grain, about 10 cubic paces in volume, enough to feed 20 people for one year once processed. The grains are magical, and will fade to nothingness after one moon.
(Base 1, +1 touch, +2 group, +3 moon. Amount fed based on old discussion, taking a somewhat lenient interpretation regarding the mass produced.)

Mountain of Daily Food
CrHe 15 (moon variant at level 20)
You create a huge stock of nourishing but somewhat unvaried vegetarian meal composed of only a single vegetable of your choice. There is enough food to fill 10 cubic paces.
(Base 1, +1 treated products, +1 touch, +2 group, +2 sun)

The Almost Nourishing Corpse
CrAn 25 (moon variant at level 30)
You create a body of a large wild boar (size +1). It can be cooked as normal, but will fade away to nothingness when the spell's duration ends.
(Base 10, +1 touch, +2 sun)

Perseverance Through Hunger
CrCo 30
You maintain your body, refusing to succumb to hunger.
(Base 20 "heal the debilitating after-effects of a disease, poison, or injury", +2 sun)

Compare these to the ritual versions:

Pile of Nourishing Grains
CrHe 20 Ritual
You create a pile of unprocessed grain, about 100 000 cubic paces in volume, enough to feed 200 000 people for one year once processed. The grains are natural.
(Base 1, +1 touch, +2 group, +4 size. Amount fed based on old discussion, taking a somewhat lenient interpretation regarding the mass produced.)

Mountain of Food
CrHe 20 Ritual
You create a huge stock of a nourishing but somewhat unvaried vegetarian meal composed of only a single vegetable of your choice. There is enough food to fill 1 000 cubic paces.
(Base 1, +1 treated products, +1 touch, +2 group, +3 size)

The Nourishing Corpse
CrAn 20 Ritual
You create a body of a stag (size +2). It can be cooked as normal.
(Base 10, +1 touch, +1 size. Not sure of the size here.)

Filling the Pit of Gluttony
CrCo 20 Ritual
You heal your body from the ravages of hunger.
(Base 20 "heal the debilitating after-effects of a disease, poison, or injury")

Oh, and
[color=red]
Fear Me, For I Hold Phenomenal Cosmic Powers! The Gates of Grandmastery Have Opened, And I Have Passed Onto Glory!

It should come as no suprise to anyone that I'm missing something.

Why do the instant ritual food stuffs disappear?

They don't. I forgot to edit the spell's descriptions.

The potentially shady "+2 varied foods" was an attempt to deal with the fact that feeding on nothing but, say, boiled turnips for a year would probably lead to serious malnutrition. I also take it that making bread would require an Animal requisite for the eggs and milk.

While trapped underground, this one was a Christmas present for our grogs' children:

Honey Cake for the Long-Suffering Child CrHe(An) 5
R: Touch D: Diameter T: Ind

Creates a small pastry liberally coated in honey.
(Base 1, +1 Touch, +1 Diam, +1 treated, +1 An requisite)

You can (and I frequently do) make bread without eggs and milk.

Congratulations on attaining grandmastery on such an egregious error.

You shall know be formally known as Grand Master YR "I forgot to edit the spell's descriptions" 7.

applauds :smiley:

Anyway, welcome to the club. Your pointy hat is in the mail.

Agreed on all points. (Except the An req for bread. Unless there are wolf teeth scattered in it or something I ain't gonna demand Animal.) Nice spell too.

D'oh. Cleary, I should looked harder when googling "vegan bread recipes." The first three or four I found listed soy milk as an ingredient, and I stopped looking.

:smiley: Every publicity is good publicity. At least that's what I'll tell myself at night. :smiley:

Bow, scrape, cower, worship.

Hey, now that there are three of us, we can actually conspire to stab each other. Anyway, you know, that Erik Tyrrell, I really never trusted him... :smiling_imp:

LOL

Edit:
You know, I took the occasion to look at the memberlist. And I discovered something frightening:
Erik Tyrell
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Total posts: 715
[6.22% of total / 1.88 posts per day]
Fruny
Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Total posts: 631
[5.49% of total / 1.66 posts per day]
YR7 posts
Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Total posts: 506
[4.40% of total / 1.33 posts per day]
Tuura
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Total posts: 487
[4.24% of total / 1.27 posts per day]
Furion Transsanus
Joined: 21 Jun 2006
Total posts: 455
[3.96% of total / 2.97 posts per day]

Notice how the top posters joined in Nov 2005? And how they got 1.x posts per day? Furion, now - Furion joined in 2006 and has 2.97 posts per day. He makes 2.2 posts per one of mine's. :confused: Grandmasters, I think it is not against each other that we need to conspire...

Clearly Fruny is preachng distrust so as to keep us distracted while he uses his grandmaster powers for evil. :astonished:

Welcome to the club.

[size=150][color=red]Muhahahaha! The Trans Sanus will get you soon :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp:

With my load of posting it is at least an advantage that I ever never post very looooong boring posts![/size]

(in all honesty I was on the old forum, but I only now got internet at home this summer - prior to that I had to chop runestones and logg them off to the nearest village with a longship to sail it some werewith a connection. Took me decades.)

What if the magi in question just kept casting new spells at the end of the first spell? Or just before the end of the duration? This could potentially go on for years, and might potentially be used on several people. As Ravenscroft suggested it would be an easy task making an invested item creating food. At such you could very easily feed many people.

I see that ncl has already voiced a similar question of this and in line with his eloquent, "I think that's a reasonable interpretation, but I disagree", I would like to continue on that track. In short: wounds get better over time; the need for food worse. I know this a broad generalisation, but it is nontheless how the rule mechanics works. Non-ritual CrCo spells to heal arrest your healing; non-ritual CrCo spells to feed you arrest your death.

I agree with the general idea of letting such things influence the aging roll, though I still woundn't let people survive on non-ritual food alone.