We're just about to start a new Ars Magica 5th ed. campaign, but some rules are a little confusing to me, and I'm looking for some clarification. I'm looking at the rules from my character's point of view, who is a Veriditius magi, and whose main interest is architecture. I've read the "limits of essential nature" and the "limit of creation" multiple times, but I'm not sure how this affects my imagined magi.
I understand the two endpoints of using magic:
I can create buildings (or useful items, like chairs) from out of the thin air, with CrTe/CrHe spells, and I have to design these spells as rituals if I want my creations to be mandatory
and If I have bricks or/and staves I can move them with ReTe spells to create a wall or a chair , and they will remain that space, where I put them.
However, can I do (for example) the following ideas somehow with magic, and with mandatory effect?
create bricks from clay?
create processed wood items from living/chopped down wood?
cut out (mine) stone cubes from the mountain?
bend trees to form a static structure for a house?
Yes, a magus can do all this with Hermetic magic. There is (Covenants p.49 box, and HoH:S [Houses of Hermes: Societates] p.60f) Rego Craft Magic to magically process available materials into intended mundane products, and there is ritual Creo magic to create mundane materials or products by magic. The prodults of both types of magic last just as normal mundane items do.
Bending "trees to form a static structure for a house" Thonet-style would kill the trees. Keeping them alive might require either Muto magic - which does not result in mundane products - or very complex Rego Craft magic Bonsai style.
Update1: I assume my main problem is, as I understand, I can easily destroy things with Perdo magic. And the destroyed thing won't be a whole again after the spells duration.
But I can not create mundane things from mundane resources with the same low effort.