Sure, but note that with erasure vulnerable type I circles you require neither vis, nor any significant time expenditure. That is a rather crucial difference.
Also, a Watching ward would have a distinctly more mythic feeling than this "just as the bishop's wagon is in transit, the grog erases the magic circle to detonate the bomb he had placed earlier on the bridge". There are games for which this would have the right feel, but not Ars Magica. Again this is a matter of aesthetics, so partially subjective, bla bla bla. But stil.
At some level you have to have an intuitive understanding or you wind up discussing what the definition of "is" is. (No your honor, Ms Lewinsky is not performing a sex act on me at the time of my testimony).
What about wards (circular or otherwise)? They can affect targets outside of the container, by preventing them from entering it. It might be worth mentionning them.
Also, a mention of the fact that the beings or things affected by such wards cannot directly cause the container to cease to exist, nor us powers that cross the boundary of the container.
These use the normal targets, but the target is the thing protected, rather than the thing warded against, ...
Yep, one trips about it every few years, but this specification is needed and quite proof to errata and clarifications, because verrry deeply built into the system
It’s more an issue of type 1 circles are how the circle guideline is currently written, the target(s) must be in the circle at the time of casting. There have been some changes with the proposed errata that split out type 2 as there are spells that go against that. The decision whether type 1 circle spells won’t end when the circle is broken is new. That said, there have always been instances of container type 2 spells which seem to gain legal targets when they enter the container but that is not how the guidelines, except boundary, are defined.
Which, incidentally, is ... not terribly effective if the circle is vulnerable to erasure, in that the caster and his grogs, that the spell tranforms into bats as a way to escape e.g. from superior foes, will simply transform back and plop to the ground as soon as said foes erase the circle.
Well, they can't leave the circle and stay transformed anyway (T: Circle, remember).
MoH had a lot of problematic stuff.
@cj.23: Currently, Type I Circles don't actually work. But if we make generalised Type I & II containers, they would come into existence, despite being - to steal a phrase and abuse it - about as unmythic as it comes. To my mind anyway.
I may not have been clear: it's indeed a "variant" of Watching Ward that applies the ReVi guideline "create a container etc.". But it has a "standard" Hermetic Duration, rather than having a Special Duration "until triggered by predefined action".
It's that "special" duration that makes Watching Ward a Ritual, so every "bomb" would have a vis cost.
I have seen the non-Ritual variant printed somewhere, but I can't remember where (I think with D:Conc). With type I circles vulnerable to erasure, bombs have no need for the Ritual (which, let me stress, must also be able to hold an Intellego spell if you want to activate them at a distance).
Not by my reading, you just don’t get the benefit of the targets being able to leave the circle/ring and staying affected if you use the ring duration but then with type 2 they can’t leave either or the spell ends.
Yeah I guess you could use Ring on Type 1 containers, though there's not much advantage to doing so vs. Type 2. At least with Type 2 you could put the item back in the Ring and get the spell effect again?
