Craft Magic

So, if someone were, for unspecified reasons, trying to rationalise the rules for craft magic without contradicting anything already written in the rules, they might, hypothetically, come up with something like the following. Is there anything wrong with this? "Asking for a friend…"

Hermetic magic can create a wide range of things. Natural objects, such as boulders, plants, or animals, can be created with Creo magic. Unless the caster botches the spell, the result is always a good example of that sort of thing. The caster may make an Intelligence + Finesse roll to add or control details, such as the shape of a tree’s branches or the color of an animal’s fur, within the normal range for such things. A failure on the Finesse roll just means that the caster does not get the desired details; the created thing is still a good example of the sort of thing it is. Even a botch on the Finesse roll does not make the creation a bad example of what it is, but it does create something as far from the caster’s desire as possible. If she was trying to create a tree to block a hole in a wall, for example, a botched Finesse roll might mean that the tree makes more of the wall collapse, making the hole even larger and easier to get through. The tree, however, is still a perfectly good tree.

Artificial items, such as tables, robes, and buildings, are a bit more complex. They can be created from nothing, using Creo magic, or from raw materials, using Rego magic. The advantage of working with natural raw materials is that a Momentary spell creates a lasting item: the changes are made in a moment, but the raw materials do not change back when the spell expires. An item made with Creo only lasts for the duration of the spell, unless the spell was a Momentary Ritual.

Rego magic is the most straightforward. The spell rearranges the target materials in the same way as a craftsman, making a new item. Nothing is created or destroyed (without appropriate requisites), and the final product must be stable by itself. A single spell has a single effect, such as turning iron ore into finished iron ingots and slag, and does not need any tools that are not incorporated into the final product. The target of the spell is the raw materials, which means that it normally has to be Group; there are exceptions, such as a spell to create a sculpture from a block of stone. The caster must adapt the spell to the materials on hand in every case, which requires a Perception + Finesse roll. The base Ease Factor for this roll is 3 greater than the Ease Factor for a mundane craftsman carrying out the same task. If the spell covers more than one mundane task, use the highest mundane Ease Factor to calculate the base. This is also modified by the length of time the task would normally take. The base Ease Factor covers up to one day’s work for one craftsman, but longer periods of work increase the Ease Factor. This can represent one craftsman working for longer, or many craftsmen working at the same time.

Rego Craft Magic Roll: Perception + Finesse

Base Ease Factor: Highest Ease Factor for a Mundane Craftsman + 3

One day’s work for one craftsman: +0

One month’s work for one craftsman: +3

One season’s work for one craftsman: +6

One year’s work for one craftsman: +9

One month’s work for one craftsman is equivalent to thirty craftsmen all working for a single day, or two working for about two weeks, and so on. It is possible to create a spell that turns iron ore that is still in the ground into finished swords, but that would be at least a season’s worth of work by various craftsmen, and thus would have a high Ease Factor.

If the Finesse roll fails, the materials are still rearranged, but not into anything useful. The remaining pieces may well be too small to repeat the spell, but that is up to the troupe to decide. On a botch, the result normally looks right, but has a hidden and fatal flaw.

Creo craft magic is a little more involved. A spell creates a functioning version of whatever is intended, just as for natural objects. This is equivalent to a work of craft with an Ease Factor of 6. However, if the caster relies on this and does not make a Finesse roll, they have no control over the details. A Spontaneous spell creates a random instance of the sort of thing, which means that clothes, for example, may well not fit the intended target. A Formulaic or Ritual spell creates exactly the same thing every time.

When casting a Spontaneous spell, the caster may choose to make an Intelligence + Finesse roll to define the details. The most basic details have an Ease Factor of 0, for example to fix the approximate size of clothes. Fixing two or three basic details, or making more specific changes, has an Ease Factor of 3. If the specification is quite elaborate, use the same Ease Factors as for Rego craft magic.

A Formulaic or Ritual spell can be designed to allow the caster to make certain changes to the product, although this normally adds magnitudes to the spell level to account for the complexity. For example, Conjuring the Mystic Tower allows the caster to determine the layout of chambers within the tower. Simple decisions have an Ease Factor of 0, while more complex ones have higher Ease Factors. Splitting each floor of the mystic tower in two would have an Ease Factor of 0, but creating elaborate mazes would have a much higher Ease Factor, possibly 12. The caster can only change the elements that the spell design allows for; the caster cannot change the height or diameter of the mystic tower, for example.

A Finesse roll also allows the caster to create higher quality items, using the same Ease Factors as for Rego craft magic. A Formulaic or Ritual spell may be designed to allow for this, but this should add at least three magnitudes to the base level, as it creates a lot of flexibility.

Creo Craft Magic Roll: Intelligence + Finesse

Fix a Single Property: Ease Factor 0

Fix Two or Three Properties, or Fix One Precisely: Ease Factor 3

Elaborate Modifications: Same Ease Factor as Rego Craft Magic

Botching the Finesse roll for Creo craft magic creates something that hinders the caster, and it might be so badly designed that most people would have trouble saying what it was supposed to be.

No matter how much flexibility is added to a Formulaic or Ritual spell, it can still only create one type of thing, such as a sword or a stone tower.

Note that Rego craft magic uses Perception + Finesse, while Creo craft magic uses Intelligence + Finesse. This is because Rego craft magic must work with existing materials, which means that the caster must be sensitive to their properties. Creo craft magic, in contrast, creates its own materials, which means that the caster must understand how the materials need to be to achieve the desired result.

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Tell your Friend that this seems quite reasonable.

Bob

Here are the two oddities I picked up on. I hesitate to call them contradictions, but places where the rules deviate from what you've written above.

The first is Intelligence/Perception + Finesse. That matches the published rules for casting a spell oneself. But if you're using an item to do it, you might use Communication + Finesse or Dexterity + Finesse or similar, depending on what the effect is.

The other is that you're still working with ease factors for a mundane craftsman, but they don't have ease factors outside of some vague mention in the core book that never gets used. Instead they have their own equivalent of lab totals to reach: Craft Level. Happily, the numbers match up quite well if you swap in "Craft Level" for "Highest Ease Factor."

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This is incorrect
It would rearrange the materials into something of shoddy quality, but still potentially useful, the same as a failed roll for craftsmanship.

Covenants p.49, 3rd sentence of the 2nd paragraph in the box insert, about the Finesse roll:

Failure means that the spell produces a mess rather than a useful item; a botch means that the failure is overlooked (that is, the object is seemingly normal) but will let the user down treacherously, usually when he least expects it.

That is one of the things which could have used a real clarification in the rules, but I suppose this friend of @David_Chart 's might not have that power :stuck_out_tongue: I am often confused in the choice of characteristic with finesse.

A suggestion for your friend. It could be nice if the impact / requirements in terms of number of magnitudes was also expanded on (e.g. mystic tower).

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I am amused (and grateful) about your friend providing an explanation of Conjuring the Mystic Tower.

There are some familiarity bonuses / penalties on page 62 of HoH:S which I think might be worth including.

One point that's possibly more into "House Rule" territory than "explanation of the core book", but which I think's worth mentioning - I've often seen people try to avoid the longer period ease factors by breaking the task down into multiple spells (e.g. rather than cast one spell to create a house, they cast a number of spells to build the house in stages at lower finesse ease factors). The usual response that I've seen is "you can do that, but you need an actual skill in the relevant craft ability to know what the various stages are and how they fit together", but I don't think any of that is actually canonical.

I personally don't see a problem with people breaking it into multiple spells. It means they have to either cast multiple spontaneous spells, and risk botches, or they need to spend multiple seasons designing each part of the process for house-building. Then, at the end, they're going to end up with a house that looks like it was built with shoddy windows compared to the good solid chimney, and hopefully the foundation roll was not a bad one.... but for some reason the doors on that house look really nice.

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I think having a level in a craft ability should at least allow for finer detail in the breakdown on tasks. For example a task to prepare the pigments would be fine for someone who has no ability in painting, while someone who does would know how to prepare each ingredient before mixing them into inks and might further divide that task into 3 or four separate tasks. Of course simply using the lab notes of someone who had craft ability in painting would allow for the same tsk division in the spells you are reinventing... such knowledge would be much more useful for something laborious like dressing stone than for painting, I would think.

This is good!

A missing mechanic that I think is highly relevant are the bonuses to finesse roll from knowing the target / having examples of the target

A rule that I thought? was canon but might be a figment of my imagination is allowing a caster to add their Craft ability (or some portion of it) (if applicable) to the Finesse roll; it makes a ton of sense that a highly skilled blacksmith would be more effective at making items out of magic - they can picture in their mind how it all should work in much greater detail.

If that isn't something canon, it I something I highly recommend to make complex Finesse spells more accessible to magi who happen to also be mundane specialists in the craft.

Additionally, the thing that would make this go above and beyond is a table with example EFs of common rolls. Even with these clarified rules, a table of examples would make this so much more useful for players and SGs!

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I agree with others that if the Magi has a relevant Craft, then the Ease factor should be decreased. Maybe have it decreased by your ranks in the Craft, or maybe a flat 3, but only if you have 3+ ranks in the Craft.

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It is canon, See p62 of HoH:S, Finesse Bonuses and Penalties for Familiarity inset. That text may be too much for a quick summary though.

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Maybe, as a quick guideline to throw out as a starting suggestion, you can break up the creation of an object into a number of steps equal to 3x your craft level that you can cast as separate spells.
Which of course divides up the mundane time equivalency.

That comes close to Finesse + Craft, which might be ok if you boost the "time reduction" penalty.

I consider the relevant Craft Ability to apply for familiarity with items, per HoH:S.

I also maintain the cap to Excellent bonuses based on Craft, even if the item is being made with craft magic. Without that things get messy in a whole bunch of ways.

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Yes, that's a good point (after remembering you playing around with making superb armour by spending a season repeatedly rolling a finesse stress die until you got Excellent+27, arguing reasonably plausibly that the ingredients should be reusable in this case, then suggesting capping it at +4 instead). That or stopping it being stress - I can't remember what you'd done to it to make it be so now. Was it just mastering the spell, and then extrapolating that "with a stress die but no botch dice if relaxed" applied to the finesse roll as well as the spell casting roll?

So the cap would be that the Total Bonus couldn't be more than Finesse/3, for consistency with the limit of Craft/3 usually?

That's OK. These rules are about spells.

Er. Hypothetically. According to my friend.

That might be a bit too much to include.

I… suggested that being specific might open up too many potential problems. (Like, how could we justify getting the mystic tower up to three when it only allows you to rearrange the rooms?)

It may. Hypothetically.

Thanks for the comments. I will, er, tell my friend that he is not too far off.

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With Craft Magic, my group uses Finesse/3 rather than Craft/3 for the limit of quality. This puts a reasonable cap on the maximum quality while avoiding limiting most Magi to only being able to create Superior quality items. Most Magi will completely lack the craft skill, with a few having a point or two to give the familiarity bonus.

Overall craft magic is such a difficult and painful mess that most people I have played with have not wanted to use it without HRs. For example using the "Desired Craft Level" (C&G, p 67) with modifiers for Time, Familiarity, and "Done with Magic" (the +3 by RAW) as the target for the Finesse roll.

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You could justify that a tower covered with elaborate carving is more complex than a plain tower. Perhaps having hollow spaces (floors) linked by staircase, with windows and door openings is harder than creating a monolith of stone. Perhaps the foundations, that have to be created through existing materials (the ground) make the spell more complex. Of course, I agree with you that creating guidelines that fit with spells retroactively published is harder than creating spells after the guidelines. Fortunately, there's a limited number of creo rituals creating permanent structures to work with.

Of course, if you think it's a bad idea, don't pass it on to your friend.