Is there an official ruling for increasing the TYPES of things created by a Creo spell? In my specific instance, I'd like to CrHe a bunch of different fruits and veggies. AMDE, in the CrHe section, simply states "spells generally only create one type of plant matter": OK, what if you want to create more?
Two thoughts:
This is fairly difficult, so +1 magnitude per different type, as though you are tacking a completely separate effect on top of the existing spell. -OR-
This is a fairly easy issue of just expanding the existing spell, so it falls under the "10 different types per +1 magnitude", as though it were expanding the size.
Personally, I prefer the "10x per +1", just because I don't think it should be 100 times as difficult to (say) make a 3-bean salad as a one-bean one. However, this sounds like something that might have already had a ruling that I'm unaware of.
Serf's Parma; but I think a formulaic spell has One Defined Thing It Does; a CrHe to create a wooden (made of Oak) stool will always produce the same (made of Oak) stool. A spell to create a different wooden (made of Birch) stool is no more challenging, but it is a different spell -- and that new spell will always produce the same (made of Birch) stool.
Similarly, filling a big bowl with three-bean salad is no more difficult than creating a similar (approximately stool sized) amount of a single wood, or the same volume of a five bean salad -- but a spell which produces three-bean salad will always make exactly the same three-bean salad.
If you are producing a wooden desk, which is made of different kinds of wood in different places, you might run into an additional magnitude (or a finesse requirement) for the complexity; particularly if some of the parts are meant to fit precisely or be especially beautiful or exacting.
I'd also go with +1 Mag for complexity, but unless its terribly important that result is 5 different types of stuff you could just do a Finesse roll or even nothing. You could litigate ratios of the products or do a Finesse roll to determine that.
I'm pretty sure someone in a book has a sigil that means when they make a bunch of feathers they are all from different birds instead of 100 cubic paces of eiderdown and that guy gets that effect for free!
Kinda... there's the below, but it depends on if you view something like "fruit" as the type, or say "apple" as the main type.
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.
I'm inclined to say the type is 'fruit' or 'vegtables' based off of TM, which allows using creating grass to target wheat.
This spell covers just under 1.25 acres of land with
thick grass about a pace high. Wheat is, of course, a
grass. Characters making an island 3 miles across have
just over 6000 acres of land. Player characters adding
4 magnitudes to this spell can cover just over 12,000
acres of land.
(Base 1, +1 Touch. +2 Group, +1 size)
Source: Transforming Mythic Europe, 62
That said most examples of fruits and veggies creation creates one specific fruit or veggie, so I'd put it at +2 or +3 complexity for each.
I think it's always a judgement call, but my default ruling is:
Default, it does one thing. ex; Create Lima Beans
You could increase variety with some extra work: Create Beans Matching This Example In My Hand.
You can increase variety with extra magnitudes: Create Beans Of Some Variety (+1 Magnitude Flexibility)
You can increase the deliciousness complexity of the beans with extra magnitudes: Create Three Bean Salad (+1 Magnitude complexity, always the same 3 beans)
Any other changes for me are based on these guidelines.
PS: This is for formulaic spells specifically, which I allow a bit of wiggle room and leeway in their design. I'm actually MORE strict for spontaneous.
Hey - thanks for the replies, all. Some additional context:
The original spell was conceived as a set of static foodstuffs - ie, "the 10 most common food items eaten by peasants that isn't grain" - that a brief search seems to be "peas, beans, onions, carrots, turnips, cabbage, leeks, parsnips, cauliflower, and spinach." (at least for English peasants, anyway.)
This would likely be paired with a standard lvl 20 ritual to create a million sq yds. of grain, likely wheat.
Of course, this begs the question as to "where will you put all of this?"
The PC in question managed to create a variation of the Watching Ward, where instead of delaying in time, the effect delays in space and volume - that is, it keeps a circle/ring full of the target material, until the spell fully runs out or the circle is broken.
Because it uses standard R/D/T, it's formulaic - which means you can set up "sacks of everfull grain", or similar spells; the PC in question uses large stone bowls.
He's got a proof-of-concept with a standard grain spell (which now contains 1 million cubic yards of grain), and the idea is that the covenant's village gives all of their grown wheat to the magi, who in turn give them magically-created wheat from the everfull bowl.
This allows the covenant to get around the rule of silver, as the grain they sell is created in a completely conventional fashion, while the magically-created grain is kept in-house and used to feed the population.
The 10x idea is the next step, as obviously peasants don't just live off of grain (or even one type of grain.) As the top 10 vegetables are (mostly) easily-storable, it can ALSO be used to swap out what is grown and sold.
Obviously this isn't as efficient as grain as a commodity, but it's only 2 pawns of herbam vis that will functionally create enough food to feed a village for 50 or so years, (100k cubic yards, +1 magnitude for different vegetables.)
The bowl itself would likely have 9 wooden spacers, and the plant matter would appear in each sub-section of the bowl. Or alternately just use a low-level ReHe effect to sort it out as it is poured out of the bowl.
My basic math is that the average peasant eats 1 c.y. of grain a year, and 1 c.y. of "other stuff". So 100k of miscellaneous veggies can feed a village of 1000 peasants for 100 years, assuming they have a source of grain as well. (Or at the least, it can mostly replace what they need to eat.)
Now obviously this has some serious implications for the campaign narrative, as this basically creates a 10x efficient farming villiage: instead of producing enough surplus to support 1/10 of its population, it now produces enough to support 100% of its size.
More generally, the ability to functionally use CrHe rituals to create enough food for entire populations to eat, and have somewhere to functionally store it so it can be distributed, is a massive economic game-changer. Which is of course part of the story.
(EDIT - ah, some of this math seems to be in TME; it's a bit off; looks like they use 24 bushels, and a cubic yard holds 22 bushels - but TME assumes that 24 bushels is all a peasant needs, if only because some of that is traded away for the other foodstuffs. So maybe having an additional c.y. of "other vegetables" is a bit overkill.)
I'm not sure permanent ritual Creo magic is allowed to have a Duration; it might be restricted to just 'Momentary'. Of course, if you have allowed a special research project / breakthrough which changes that, then seems like it is all good.
You can put Creo spells into watching wards just fine - that's how you get Fireball (CrIg) traps that go off if you open a door without a password. As such, there's no reason you can't put a ritual Creo effect in one either, although the utility of such an effect would (likely) be fairly limited, unless you were moving a bunch of stuff and didn't want to cast it at the location it would ultimately be. (A "castle in a box" sort of delayed effect, maybe?)
The insight the wizard had was "instead of delay by time, can we delay by volume?" The part of the Creo effect that actually goes off is momentary; it's just that not all of it goes off. The rest is delayed until there is room in the circle (in this case, a bowl) for the spell to continue.
In other words, it's not the Creo effect that has a Circle/Ring duration: it's the Watching Ward itself.
The implicit question is "does a creo effect have to have all of its matter appear at the same time?" which is different than a Minute or Day duration, which would create all of the matter all at once, for a specified duration. The normal answer is "yes, it normally does have to appear all at once" - but is it REQUIRED to do so, under hermetic theory, or can some portion of it be temporarily delayed from manifesting?
The answer the PC came up with is "yes, of course it can be temporarily delayed; that's just a Watching Ward - the trick is to delay only PART of it, based on existing R/D/T"
EDIT - just as an alternate example, it seems reasonable to me that a variation of a ReVi watching ward could trickle out a stored CrAq effect over the course of 1 minute, with 1/60 of the effect being released every second. How long the water would last once released, of course, is dependent on that CrAq effect.
EDIT II - just thought of something: it's pretty standard that ReVi magic can affect part of a spell: Parma, for example, resists only the part of an area-effect spell that targets the wizard. So it's not unreasonable to think that you can use ReVi to supresss only part of a Creo spell, based on a trigger.
Create a separate Muto Herbam effect, timed for the same time, that shrinks all the magically created food until it leaves the circle. You reach in, grab a handful, toss it into a wagon and watch it expand over the course of ~6 seconds.
This would likely work better under existing hermetic theory; it would, however, cause the food to warp over time. However, depending on what the warping effect WAS, it may simply be easily ignorable or easily dealt with. (Personally, I'd say that the warp causes a percentage of the remaining grain to shrink so small as to be functionally destroyed, even after being removed; once you hit Warp 10, it's all gone. So basically it's just a variation of rot, only it occurs over 275 years.)
It would likely also need a CrHe effect to keep the shrunken vegetation fresh, as over time such a pile would inevitably rot.
A +1 Complexity added is enough. A maga I play has researched two ritual spells. One creates 100 adult trees, of the same type. The other, a later ritual, creates 1,000 adult tress, of a variety of species. the second ritual is 10 levels higher, +1 for Complexity, and +1 for Size of Group.
it would, however, cause the food to warp over time.
Oh I was imagining like, a week max in which people are moving the food out - not enough time to Warp. (or at least I was, then I ran the math about it)
Assuming you're creating your 100,000 cubic yards of material, and assuming a cart holds about 3.33 Yards of material (based on some back-of-napkin-googling), you'd want about 100 carts, daily, to move the whole thing out in under a year, to make sure you're only at 1 Warping Point on the food. That would mean a staggering operation of carters, traffic directors, and animals to pull the wagons - though you could include animal feed among the yards of created plants.
Knocking the amount created down to only 1000 cubic yards means you'd only need 10 carts a day, over about a month, which is way more feasible, and the spell to shrink it all could be a lower magnitude while being a more manageable circle size (and avoid botching!). Sure, that's only 1 year of food instead of 100, but in all fairness, most static foodstuffs suggested would spoil within a year (or sooner) anyway. The spell on the circle could include a Cr requisite to factor in a "Vitalizer of Provisions" type effect, or that could be a second spell cast on the area.
If you're moving it all out within a month, the warping is basically a non-issue, even with several spells (shrink, preserve, ward animals). It might shake out that you're wasting a bit of Vis by under-creating, but wasting like, 1 or 2 Vis a year seems like not a huge issue, especially since there's consequently many many acres of land that can be rewilded since it's not being used for agriculture, and will likely produce a Vis Source or two after a while.
Why is the food being hauled away in carts? It seems simpler to just cast the spell in-place, where the food will be used. Cast the spell in the root cellar / granary / whatever, and don't worry unduly about shrinking it in the first place.
Also, doesn't moving some of the affected target outside the circle/ring 'break' the circle? On the other hand, a ReAn or PeAn 'Keep Vermin Out' effect would not be broken by people hauling veggies out.
Breaking a Circle/Ring spell comes in two different varieties IIRC:
Someone physically breaks the circle, intentionally or not.
The target of the spell somehow leaves.
For the second one, if the spell creates veggies and fruits inside the circle, then if the veggies and fruits leave the circle, it breaks.
For the ward against pests, it would break if someone breaks the circle, or if a vermin actually gets in.
I believe in the general case, the CrHe was a ritual momentary spell; rather, the circle/ring was on either the watching ward (that was dripping out the grain as the circle was emptied), or else some variation of a "shrink all plant matter within" - so in that scenario, once the grain was removed it would revert to regular size. But yes, it is the target of the circle/ring spell leaving.
Yeah, the 1k cubic yard one is discussed in TME, and the solution they have in there is "that's enough grain for a large silo, so just leave it in place."
That is certianly an option. However, that may very well run into the Rule of Silver - you can't sell the grain to mundanes, as that would likely be more than 2 pounds of silver per magi (in your covenent) per tribunal.
Of course, if you were giving it to every covenant in all of Europe that might work, although the economic impact of THAT would certainly be felt immediately, and would likely be brought up in Tribunal. Hence my "let's just have this in one location, and sell all of our non-magically-grown foodstuffs instead".
Of course, due to how long such a supply would last, this is pretty much guaranteeing that every covenant will cast this (probably), except for those that don't need the money....which means that it'll probably be brought up at Tribunal anyway.
Why is the food being hauled away in carts? It seems simpler to just cast the spell in-place, where the food will be used.
It does, but the proposition was enough food for 1000 peasants for 100 years. Even without shrinking, you'd need something to keep that from rotting (spinach was in there, that is a fragile vegetable. Have you ever smelled several cubic yards of rotting spinach? That's how you get a temporary Infernal Aura) meaning a simple ongoing preservation spell. At 1 Warping Point/Year you're getting some VERY Warped Food at a certain point, which might not be a big deal until it gets a really unfortunate flaw that you don't notice the population acquiring from eating it all the time.
Hence, move it away in carts (or bags or some other method) before that can happen. You could easily supply neighboring villages and/or a city with a daily/weekly cart of food. It would certainly change in size once removed from a shrinking ring - my mental image is of someone reaching in, grabbing a handful, or a ladle full, and tossing it into the cart, whereupon the vegetables resumes their rightwise size and fill the whole thing. That said, you could invent a sort of spigot system if the granary was elevated. Also, moving it in carts means that no one is seeing your massive granary, with all that food, and getting ideas.
This is why I suggest scaling the amount of food produced way down. It's less cumbersome, and has less impact on the local economy, and doesn't require a granary ~300 yards wide, long, and tall (or deep I suppose).
Apologies if I'm overthinking all of this but I work with bulk food storage & transport so I'm honed in on the logistical particulars and the little nightmares that pop-up therein.
Oh but also CrAq The Creeping Oil creates a dot of oil that "slowly spreads over the target" is Sun Duration but doesn't seem to have any kind of additional magnitudes for a delayed creation (even if it maybe should?), so there's some precedent for delayed creation effects. I don't see anywhere it's written that Ritual Creo spells MUST be momentary - it's just that they usually are, since they don't need to be more than momentary.
Yeah, that solution is the one the writers came up with, in TME, pg. 120. "Fill the Capricious silo" - a CrHe effect that only creates 1,000 c.y., as any more becomes unmanageable; my thoughts on this subject were "how do we make this more efficient/larger?" - hence the original question.
(Although one simple solution is "have 10 silos", which gets you the next magnitude; add in the freshness effect and a vermin/water ward, and it should stay fresh for quite a while.)
...although they seem to use +2 group, +2 Size, whereas I usually just go straight into +4 size; might need to update my own spell if that's the case. (So a lvl 20 effect creates only 100k, rather than a million, cubic yards.)
I was thinking about that as well - however, is there any RAW that says "if you consume warped material, you become warped yourself?" I don't think Warp necessarily works that way - as otherwise (to use a weird example) killing and eating an ancient wizard would cause you to take 200+ Warp points. Which...doesn't seem quite right.
Of course, consuming VIS would certainly cause warp, but that's "exposing yourself directly to magic", and the like. Rather, my understanding of warp is that it, well, warps the target, and if you take enough long-term the target fully becomes an entity of magic, and fades into the Magic Realm.
So the example I gave above is that in the shrinking example, for every Warp point gained it permanently shrinks a (small) percentage; 1/225, to be precise (as 225 warp points gets you to lvl 10, and thus final Twilight.) In this scenario, every year a bit more of the grain is lost to the Realm of Magic, but it's a significantly smaller amount than they'd normally loose to rot or rats.
EDIT - or alternately, for every point of warp, the (unshrunk) grain gets permanently smaller, by 1/225 - in the first couple of years it's not a big deal, but by the time its been in there 50 years or so the size difference is noticeable when the grain is reconstituted. Leave it in there for 225 years and it completely disappears, although it's functionally useless by year 220 or so.
Ah, good catch. Yeah, it's mainly flavor text, as I wouldn't penalize anyone who cast it by forcing them to wait a few minutes before setting the target on fire. But it does indicate that partially delayed creation is part of current Hermetic theory.
That right there is part of the problem; Rings/Circles do not (I believe) work that way. If someone reaches into the circle (which is okay, it is a 'Herbam' circle, so 'Corpus' or 'Animal' crossing it does not matter) and brings some of the affected food out, that food crossing the circle breaks it. The whole spell stops, for all the food. Your granary needs to be large enough for all the non-shrunk food, or it will explode -- and then you need to recast the circle.