In my AM5 campaign 50yo magi are creating a new alliance. They have vis, but they do not have any income to their alliance. The thing is that at least to start a income way going, they do not mind using vis. They though on the creation of silver pounds, like is proposed in Covenants, but I advised them it may have serious consecuences. They already used this spell once or twice, but now would use it every 3/5 years. Or until they adquire a good Income source. So we thought of creating animals, for a way to start an income source.
The question is when you create a spell to create magic animals would you create 1 kind of animals? 1 spell for sheeps. 1 spell for chickens. 1 spell for 1 animal. Or could you use 1 spell to create more than 1 animal, without increasing its level?
If you had to increase its level would you increase 1 aditional animal for magnitude?
"These rituals are creature-spe-
cific, in that a Creo Animal spell with an
Ignem requisite designed to create a sala-
mander will not create another magical
beast that may also be aligned with Ig-
nem. Besides creating a specific creature,
the ritual also creates a pre-designed gen-
der for the created beast, meaning that
one ritual will not create both a male and
a female." Hermetic Projects p126
That's for creating magical creatures, but it should work the same when creating mundane animals.
If you use T:Group instead of T:Individual I don't see any reason you couldn't create multiple animals of the same sort with one spell. I.e. instead of creating 1 wolf with a T:Ind spell you could create 10 wolves with T:Group
Instead of looking for a generic currency, or a way to generate currency through sales, magic can greatly help avoiding costs by providing free "stuff".
What are the main expenses ?
Food: Food can be circumvent or enhance with Fertility spell (ensuring abundant harvest), or quick growth spell (not requiring virtus), various wards preventing food spoilage/keeping pest away.
Heat (in any part of Europe except the Southern part): Non-permanent woods can be used to burn/cook, so a single morning/evening spell can take care of that.
Turb wages: no way around that one, silver is needed
Cloths (to some extend): low level CrAn (with virtus) can generate large amount of wool/leather/linen all ready processed. ReAn requires base material, so unless you have a craft mage, don't go that way.
Lab equipment: this one is more tricky because it requires various material - glass is only one of them, but brass & other more less common metal are also needed.
Library - paper/parchment: here again, CrAn (base 5) can create a large pile of virgin parchment, which can be preserved from rot by the same ward protecting food from spoilage.
Obviously, having a crafting mage and/or a Mercurian specialist that can cut on ritual cost can save a lot of silver.
If you have Covenants, there are plenty of suggestions. To simplify: each magnitude of ritual cut 5 pounds (so 1 pawn = 5 pounds of silver, or 10 with mercurian magic), each magical item can cut 1 pound of expense per 5 level of effect.
So if the concern is to avoid flooding the local area with abundant silver, try to reduce the covenant needs to purchase items to make the created silver last longer.
Now, as players, you might want to discuss with your ST if financial struggle is part of the story on the long term, and building resources, finding mines, making trade deals will the core of the Saga, or if you just want to establish the covenant during 3-5 years, then glaze over it. No right or wrong answer, just making sure that expectations are understood.
If financial struggle is one of the main theme, then having a Craft magic specialist with high Finesse (the trifecta Puissant/Affinity/Cautious) is worth developing, or a TP specialists that can facilitate long distance trade, bypassing all kind of taxes and securing rare resources is also an option, with a Face (companion or Gentle Gifted mage negotiator).
I always preferred Rego to fast grow crops, timber, etc, when looking for magically boosted mundane income.
To the question.
Looking at Core Rules P117, Curse of the Ravenous swarm states "Calls a swarm of locusts or other
destructive insects upon an area, which destroys wild plant life and fields."
That spell gives a choice at the point of casting, though somewhat restricted.
Core Rules P118 Growth of the Creeping Things states "Causes an insect, mouse, toad, or other
small (Size –9) creature to grow to four times its normal size".
The only limitation is the size of the animal at this point.
I could keep skimming some more Core Rules spells, however I think those 2 examples means there is some flexibility.
Nope. ReHe. Core rule Page 138 level 15 base effect. Blossom is interesting though. Grapes, Apple orchards, all obvious. Lumber not so much. That looks Creo.
When using Creo Animal Momentary rituals to create animals, there are a few things to pay attention to:
if you use Target Group, you can create more than one animal, but they are all identical.
If you want to make an herd, you'd need at least two spells, one to create males, and one to create females.
You could get around it a bit, buy adding +1 flexibility in gender, if your troupe agrees.
So a CrAn spell could look like this:
Form the Basis for an Herd
CrAn40
R: Touch, D: Mom, T: Group
This spell allows you to create up to 10 cows, 8 of them females, and two males
(Base 15, +1 Touch, +2 Group, +1 Size, +1 Flexibility in Gender)
This will still take time to actually create a large herd that can provide a reasonable income source, and it costs you 8 pawns.
I am the GM of this actual playthrough. I do usually prefer to follow the game rules. Thanks Erik i knew you could make It group and even increase the group size to create a bunch of animals if you are able to cast the spell or to actually create It in the lab.
But no more than 1 specific animal and 1 specific gender can be created with 1 spell.
Ezechiel and Lee there is no good rego nor herbam magus in the covenant. And It is not clear yet if they will be allowed to stay, so meanwhile they do not want to give any impresión of the land being any better than local rulers spect.
They thought that as animals are used as a savings to many medieval people. And also as they have a animal specialist with animal vis source they could give It good use. Food, and clothes cost could easily be reduced if you create a good bunch of animals. In a very short term with low magus interaction but for the actual creation and usage of the spell. This magus also planed yo create some animals for his private affairs, so was not hesitant of inventing a spell to help him on his task. But he sido not wanted yo create a bunch of spells that are no particularly easy yo be created and are a bit "useless" once the convenant gets finally stablished.
The cost reduction could help, but they actually wanted something to avoid casting many rituales. At out head It was better even if at the beggining could be more expensive to create animals, than animal products and/or food. The first one is sustainable and with the initial casting (1 or more than 1times) the later could be achieved and maintained without casting It constantly to replenish the stocks each time.
Ezechiel you say that CrAn 5 created a bunch of paper. How can you do that for example. As far as I do understand with 5 you would create 1 parchment. With 15 for a group target you would create 10. You could make It room and maybe then i could see you would create 100 units of parchment or you could fill the room. But its not quite clear how It works. As CrAn states that for individual you create justo 1 item. They could use that option. They have many animal crafts they could exploit, but i do not see how you can make a good amount with a cast or less than 5 cast of a spell. How dows It work?
I do not understand why you added +1 size to the spell. Cosa aren't +1 size what IS the base level of the animal guidelines, and 10 is the basic group? With that spell wouldn't you create 100 cows? Moreover you could create chicken hens and roosters that would be easier and add another size modifier so you could create a whole bunch?
Note that T:Group does not necessarily means 10 individuals. If you are create animals smaller than Size 0 (such as chicken), then T:Group creates 10 times the mass of a base individual for that Form.
So if a Size 0 animal weights about 150 pounds (see the table in HoH:MC p.39), then a group of chicken weighting about 5 pounds (Size -4 but birds weight less) would be composed of about 300 individual chicken.
Edit: And if you want to create larger individual animals, you create 10 individuals. If each individual is larger than Size +1, then you need to add one magnitude (1 for Size +2 and +3, 2 for Size +4 and +5, etc.) but you still get a group of 10 individuals.
Mmm. Can you give a reference for this? Note that HP, p.126 does not apply here, since it's about creating a single animal -- and it says that species and gender must be defined when the spell is invented. So, in principle, you could create a T:Group spell that created, uhm, one rooster and nine hens; it's just that you would not be able to cast it so as to make it 9 roosters and 1 hen, or 1 ram and 9 ewes, etc.
The base Indvidual for Animal is a creature the size of a pony (Size +1). Say about 300 pounds.
So T:Group can create up to 3000 pounds of creatures even without further size adjustments.
Cows are Size +2, or +3 animals, so you need an extra magnitude to create larger than base animals. Though i guess you could potentially create more than 10 cows with the spell, but definitely not 100, since they're bigger than Size +1 ind.
I took me some time to wrap my head around. Base level 5, CrAn create a single item, like a single hair, skin, etc. But when the T change to Group, spell "a Base group contains as much mass as ten Individuals standard of the Form", so if the average weight of your Ind animal is around 150 pounds, it means 1'500 pounds of parchment (my initial reading was you get 10 copies, so 10 parchments, but other users show me the error of my way and I had to repent)... I let you figure out the number of pages but roughly between a bazillions and two and half gazillions (precisely). As long as there is a proper storage, I would not bother with the mathematics of that. Let's assume that you are good for the coming 20 years or so.
Since a ritual cannot be lower level than 20, Base 5, R: Touch (+1), T: Group (+2), D: Mom, ritual = CrAn 20, and the librarian is set.
As others have said ArM5 is set up so that if you find the money-side of running a covenant uninteresting, you do not need to play it out: you can just declare that your covenant has whatever it needs, and it won't be unrealistic. But if you do want to play it out, let me point out two crucial and often overlooked issues.
The first is that, in general, a covenant has very varied material needs. You can address most of them through magic without any interaction with the outside world, but you will need very varied magics. You'll need to create foodstuff (in fact, a variety of foodstuffs), clothing, tools etc. etc. Alternatively, you can come up with a "wealth-making" scheme that produces one specific type of good or service: silver, cows, salt, saffron, whatever. But in this case you have to trade, exchanging the stuff you created for other stuff you need. The trading part is by far the most difficult of the two, as it requires interaction with the outside world and can't be solved by magic alone; in fact, if you are sufficiently good at trading that you can keep a decently-sized covenant provisioned, starting with some magically-created commodity is more a bonus than a necessity.
The second is that you do not need Ritual magics for Animal-related wealth creation. Basically, a magically-created animal processes natural foodstuff to create natural foodstuff. So, if you make magical sheep with a formulaic (or spontaneous!) D:Ring spell, and the ring encompasses a large enough pasture (or you bring them food from the outside), within relatively little time their milk will be non-magical, after a little longer their wool will be non-magical, and eventually even their meat will be (see ArM5, p.77). Also, many animals are foragers, and if created in the wilderness for as little as D:Sun, they can bring back stuff to you.
Yea the point is to manage the income at least a bit. I won´t become crazy about it. But in the foundation of a new covenant I feel is a good source of gameplay and also rewarding to think on it. Or magi try to fix it with magic or they trade or whatelse. They are not isolated at all. They established in Crete, more precisely in Knossos. So they can easily trade mundane stuff and could potentially trade magic stuff, but they have no labs yet.
The second is that you do not need Ritual magics for Animal-related wealth creation. Basically, a magically-created animal processes natural foodstuff to create natural foodstuff. So, if you make magical sheep with a formulaic (or spontaneous!) D:Ring spell, and the ring encompasses a large enough pasture (or you bring them food from the outside), within relatively little time their milk will be non-magical, after a little longer their wool will be non-magical, and eventually even their meat will be (see ArM5, p.77). Also, many animals are foragers, and if created in the wilderness for as little as D:Sun, they can bring back stuff to you.>
Yeap you are right but Magus time is scarcier than Vis. With your method they should not only create the spell, but also give it duration, while a ritual has a momentary duration and you add size instead, but also you have to cast it several times each day or lunar cycle. While the other way you create the spell you cast it once twice at the beggining, and let your worker force do their job.
When time is scarce and Vis is abundant wich is the case, each of them has probably 20+ vis pawns to use, much more in the animal specialist who has a personal animal vis source, that has been gathered for more than 6 years and rarely used.
So much paper not a bad "tempory income source" with lets say +1 or +2 extra size you could probably sunk crete with parchment. I was wondering, cause they could use magical spider silk wich they have access to, and create some with this same spell but for the spider or normal silk, or for any other goodie they might think of.
but roughly between a bazillions and two and half gazillions (precisely). As long as there is a proper storage, I would not bother with the mathematics of that. Let's assume that you are good for the coming 20 years or so.