Circle of Restored Eyesight requires a couple of extra magnitudes for duration Ring, but otherwise I think these should work. You probably want to learn Unravelling the Fabric of Imaginem as well so that you can stop seeing from that particular place (although actually, at the spell levels we're talking about you may be able to non-fatiguingly spont it).
This has a number of drawbacks.
Firstly, target Boundary means it's a ritual.
You also need a clearly defined standard sized boundary - "the reflection of your voice" doesn't work for that. For such a spell (and similarly and more practically a Target: Structure spell), I'd think there were two ways it could be designed. Either you can see everything in the Target (which is likely to be difficult to process for large areas), or you can see from a single point within the Target, and have to concentrate to move your perspective - with the associated problems with trying to do anything else at the same time. You could design it to let you do one other thing at the same time automatically - probably walking - but you'd still then have to make concentration rolls to move your perspective and talk or spellcast.
Thirdly, the wide area covered would mean in my eyes (if you caught another magus in it) it crossed the line from "yes, it's technically illegal but any sane Quaesitor is going to tell someone making a complaint to go away and stop wasting their time" to "actually prosecutable".
You'd be better off designing a formulaic with a non-standard target.
Are there any guidelines for that? Boundary was just the smallest target fitting the idea. Actually target and range should be a subset of what my voice can reach. Something that starts to fade a couple of paces away from me. Maybe different versions for different ranges.
Edit: Does it need a range greater personal at all? How would an effect look like that can grant a target other than the caster such capabilities?
It's on page 114 of the main book (bottom of the middle column). Essentially, you have to use the standard* ranges for spontaneous spells, but it's possible to design formulaic spells using different ranges. This is usually higher level than the closest equivalent "standard" range.
*Some virtues give you access to other non-standard ranges you can also use spontaneously.
But what is the closest target to what I want to achieve? Room for a rather small radius, structure for a large one? Or room and use size modifier for more range? Doesn't really seem to fit though as all those targets... Oh, wait. Just take the hearing target for magical senses... That would be equivalent to structure...
But it has its obvious limitations: you just "'hear' the boundaries of air", so no reading by it, and generally limited capabilities to analyze what lies beyond those boundaries.
Really? Why should finding a way from one regio level to the next be constrained by eyesight? You could just as easily follow a sound even by touch...
If it is for the required magnitude (so that not everybody just uses target taste) I'd say require the equivalent of Boundary/Vision but don't enforce the sense being used.
The ArM5 p.158 box Intellego Vim Guidelines level 3 guideline states Vision, because this magical sense provides enough information. It implies, that the other senses generally cannot do so.
In my experience, investigating unknown rooms and areas is very difficult for blind people. Walking with a blindman's stick is a quite indispensable art to be learned, but doesn't help you very much in a cave or wood without clear tracks, or even in an unknown part of a city.
A blind magus needs to get enough information by another magical means.
One simple way would be to provide a seeing person - a shield grog, familiar, apprentice, trusted companion or such - with the magical Vision by a R: Touch version of ArM5 p.158 Piercing the Faerie Veil or such. And if e. g. the familiar now has this new magical sense, by ArM5 p.105 Shared Senses the magus then might use it through its eyes. The base level 15 guideline mentioned there allows him to create spells to see through the eyes of other persons as well.
A lone, blind magus investigating an unknown area for regio entrances can still use InVi to derive the rough shape and position of a regio boundary with the ArM5 p.158 level 3 guideline, and rely on supernatural abilities like Magic Sensitivity (see ArM5 p.189) to pass through.
Or you can go to your troupe and suggest to define a new guideline, that your blind magus can then use.
I would favor a spell like In(Mu)Vi xx Literally Piercing the Faerie Veil (R:Touch, D:Conc, T:Special), which forces a regio by magically pushing your hand through a known regio boundary and feel what is beyond. Level, rolls and resistance of the regio are left to your troupe. Perhaps such a spell was known in the 900s, but exposed the seeker magus too much to the rage of beings on the other side of the boundary and hence is no longer taught? Perhaps there are still references to it in books on TMRE p.97ff Hermetic Architecture, which still uses Re(Mu)Vi enchantments to connect regio levels?
Blindness only affects the sense organs used for mundane vision, the eyes.
It doesn't impact magical senses. Second sight is not a boost to normal vision from the eyes. As noted in a previous post it detects things which have no species, which is how the eyes see. If it did, then one could presumably create Muto Corpus spells to gain Second Sight.
Blindness doesn't limit the mind's Common Sense, which integrates input from all sense organs and magical senses.
An Intellego [form] or Muto Mentem [Intellego req] spells that use +3 Vision create a magical sense that sends input to the common sense. Arm core book specifically says it creates a magical sense when explaining the increased magnitudes for senses. The limitations of the sense specified have to do with the sense created and not the mundane organs.
Other Intellego spells communicate the truth of the world differently. (I am without the books and without the Aquinas discussions on the topic)
Art and Academe has a description of the mind and how it works. Also, one could argue divine aligned Second Sight and Sense Holy and Unholy circumvents the Common Sense altogether and instead allow the mind to know truth in a lesser capacity but similar way that angels know truth. (Aquinas is a great resource on how angels see truth)
I don't think that's correct - the wording on the subject on page 114 of the main book is:
"Each magical sense grants the recipient information through one of his senses. The information is easily distinguished from mundane information coming through the same sense, but is subject to the same limitations as the mundane sense."
Therefore if your mundane sense organ (i.e. eyes) don't work for whatever reason, they also can't gather the magical sense information.
The limitation of the sense of Smell or Vision is how that new magical sense works, not of an organ. The eyes are a vision source, the organ one has. One has other senses, vision senses, if one has multiple Intellego spells cast on ones self. Not also that casing senses for groups of others is Muto Mentem, not Corpus, to give a group magical Vision is Muto Mentem[intellego].
Vision requires line of sight for instance, that is the same limitation as the mundane sense. The organ only creates the input for the Common Sense. The sense the organ creates has limitations, the limitations the magical sense has are the same. The Common Sense is what creates the mental picture which is Vision. Intellego creates a new sense, vision or smell etc. Second Sight, as it’s name implies is a Second Sight, not the extension of first sight. It is another source of Sight, though not always Vision.
The arch type of a Blind Seer is a common trope in myth. So how one incorporates that trope and the philosophy the game is based upon should coincide. Not only the meta philosophy of creating a game which can represent these myths, but also the mythic representation of the metaphysical paradigm that is the game setting. One should error on the side which supports either, if not both.
So any reading of Raw should keep in mind it’s intention and the setting.
“The common sense or vis compositiva receives all forms and images perceived by the external senses and combines them into one common mental picture. These composite images can then be compared with those stored in the memory or held in the imagination. It also judges the operation of a sense, so that when we see, we know what we are seeing. Anesthesia separates out the common sense, providing sentience without full consciousness.”
That mental picture is created by the Common Sense with the inputs, from organs, magical senses, direct contact with the divine, spells which manipulate he mind, etc.
Vision is created by a combination of inputs, one of which is the eyes. In modern terms the mental schema is created from these inputs.
When Second Sight detects a ghost and describes the ghosts appearance, what was perceived by the eyes? Nothing. Zero. The mind, from another source overlays the information in a way that the perceiver would mentally picture it as Vision. Would describe to others visiually. As seeing the ghost. But they never “see” the ghost with their eyes. If eyes are the only source of vision, then second Sight does not work on ghosts, period, blind or not. Or if it does then Muto Corpus will allow detection of ghosts and Regios, not Intellego or Mentem.
Since both are the way the game works... this is the only conclusion.
Some of this I agree with, some I'm not sure. While I do see the interpretation (having reviewed the text) that the magically created senses circumvent the blind flaw, I don't think that it's as flat-out obvious as you're making it. The book does not actually say you do not need vision to use T:Vision. You could easily argue that vision as a sense is limited to directional input - things coming to your eyes, not just visual species. If your eyes are damaged so they cannot perceive, then the input from the magical sense won't be able to reach you. if your blind represents a damage to the brain hindering your ability to interpret and perceive through the eyes, the magical sense might come into your mind and be impossible to determine. The book does not actually say 'you do not need the organ to perceive', it just describes the medium through which senses travel (no vision in the dark, no smell when upwind).
I do agree the Blind Seer is a strong myth, and we do need to make allowances for its existence - however, if they have magic, they can give themselves the ability to see with it, we do not need them to be able to see magic without seeing. There are more than enough tools without adding T:Vision as an inherent bonus.
That is not quite how the eyes work. Things don't come to your eyes, species are detected by rays that shoot from the eye and reflect back into it.
Magical senses don't circumvent the blind flaw, the person's eyes still do not function and thus does not perceive species. A person would still not perceive the species of the objects around them unless a specific spell effect were to mimic it. The would, however, still "See" whatever senses allowed them to visualize their surroundings with the sense of Vision.
You are stuck on needing eyes to have any Vision what so ever. The book says "create a magic sense". It doesn't say "augment" or "enhance" existing senses. They are limited by the rules of that sense, the input can only relay so much information for the Common Sense to interpret.
The Intellego Ignem spell which allows "seeing heat" as blobs. This functions in the dark and allows one to "see" things without species. The modern mind may say "well of course infrared spectrum of light...". No. This isn't a thing. Heat isn't light. By the arguments presented this spell would not work in the dark.
By the arguments presented against this interpretation, a Muto Corpus spell creating a third eye would be blind as well?
Also how does one explain Muto Corpus not creating eyes that have Second Sight? That Second Sight detects things with no species? That creating senses in this fashion for multiple targets requires Muto Mentem?
"The book does actually say you do not need the organ to perceive"... it also doesn't say you do need the organ to perceive.
It says perception is created in the Common Sense from the sense inputs.
I think that Intellego magical senses and Second Sight are separate cases with different mechanisms and limitations.
I agree that Second Sight wouldn't necessarily be prevented by blindness, although depending on how long the blindness has lasted (and therefore how the magus is used to perceiving the world), the information granted might be interpreted as coming from a different sense. I covered this in a bit more detail earlier in the thread:
Intellego magical senses, on the otherhand, I still think are restricted by blindness. The book does say explicitly that the magical sense is subject to the same limitations as the mundane sense, so I don't see a reason to exclude some limitations from that - I take the list that follows as exemplary rather than exhaustive. I do agree that the matter isn't 100% clear (not least because there are a lot of people who don't realise the implication originally), but I think the natural reading is that blindness is a limitation of a sense. If the information never gets to the common sense, the question of how the common sense would then process it isn't relevant.
Vision of Heat's Light is potentially problematic, but it appears to flat out contradict the statement that "a magical sense that works with vision is no good in the dark". I'm therefore inclined to consider that it's an oversight (as the wording earlier has almost certainly had more thought put into it), and that it only works in near darkness, not in total darkness.
I generally associate the Blind Seer concept with prophecy rather than literally seeing invisible things - the thing they See is the future in visions.
T Riffix Rex: I haven't gone into the depths of A&A, so cannot support or refute your discussions using it. I think interpretively saying you don't need eyes to use Magical Sense: Vision is a bit weird, doesn't jive well with me. The core rules don't mention eye-lasers, but I have the instinctive urge to support any argument using them. The core book does say that species travel to your eyes via light, did they update that in another location?
I do love it when people reference earlier discussions as an aide. Thanks!
Arm pg 62 mentions Euclid’s Optica, Euclid being the authority on Optics.
His theory of vision is explained somewhere, Societies I think. As it pertains to tricks one can do with creative use of Imaginem.
My interpretation of Intellego is that it’s a way to detect truth of the world, in that we get into Middle Ages theory of mind and truth, which is easy to get bogged down by.
But from Arm
“Intellego is the Art of perception. It allows a maga to gather information directly from the forms of things. This information does not deal with the appearances of things*, unless Intellego Imaginem magic is used. Rather, it provides information about the actual nature of a thing. Thus, Intellego magic is not deceived by mundane disguises.“
*Apperance of things being species and being an inherently flawed way of detecting truth of the world (this is from the philosophy of the time). Note while Intellego is better than the senses it is deceived by Infernal and other magics because it is still not perfect like the divine’s (Angels) ability to know truth of things.
The information from the spell enters the mind, from there the mind can interpret it. The way I interpret the Vision Target is that the information enters the mind as Vision input to the Common Sense, to be integrated with other senses. The sense then is limited by that category of sense.
At least that’s my logic in sorting out some of the inconsistencies. Sometimes magical senses are described as creating a new sense, other times it seems as though the information comes in through existing senses. Vision is described as not working in the dark, yet Intellego Ignem can see heat in the dark.
I think my interpretation, while more difficult to sort out when describing scenes, is consistent with the material and setting. I offer it as another interpretation and not as a definitive “right” way to interpret things.
