Design thread

Oups! :laughing:
But yes, no problem :slight_smile:

Oh, no, I'm gonna move my lazy ass and check it at once. Thanks :smiley:

Oh yes, slightly different, too. By the way, by the raw, it is slightly underpowered. However, as it has a "free" walkway...

Well, 2 solutions to this.

On the one hand, we wait 5 years for me to learn Conjuring the Mystic Tower, or 15 for me to create Conjuring the Obsidian Tower :laughing:

Or, well, we could, hopefully, build a better covenant through mundane means.

Obsidian Entrapment Cr(Re)Te 15
Range: voice, Duration: Diam, Target: Ind
This spell entraps the target's body in an obsidian block. He can break free if he succeeds a 12+ strength roll, which he can try each round.
Base 3, +2 voice, +1 duration, + 1 rego requisite

Design notes: As the base size creates 1 cubic pace of obsidian, this is enough volume to trap someone into.
While this has the potential to be an easy "death spell", it is somewhat lessened by the needed requisite (which shapes the obsidian around the target), and no more a death spell than a voice/diameter version of "rise of the feathery body" (lvl 15 also). I also lessened it by adding a possibility to break free, which is possible before running out of air (all you need is a 1 and a 6. about 50% chance in 10 rounds).

Perhaps there should be a finess test to see if you cover the target compleatly. Or perhaps an extra magnitude or two for the killy effect otherwise known as complexity.

Hum... I'd go with the finesse roll, as such a spell might be more difficult to do depending on the target's speed of movements: An immobile target will be encased more easily than a combatant. The result might determine relative entrapment, this is cool :smiley:

I do like these spell ideas and Katja can invent either of these terram spells in a season. The ramparts spell she has a 41 lab total for (thanks to similiar spell bonus) and for most terram spells, her lab total is 35-36.

I do need to come up with a muto Terram (Muto Imagonem?) to change my stone sled into a wooden cart for when entering towns.

Perhaps one of the following

Disguise the Stone Sled (MuIm 20)
R: touch, D: Sun, Target: Ind (+1 size)
Disguise the stone sled or similiar sized item as a wooden cart. Appearance changes and it emits sounds appropriate to the turning wheels.
(Base 2, +1 touch, +2 sun, +1 size, +2 moving as command for wheels)

Disguise the Stone Sled (MuTe 20, He Requisite)
R: touch, D: Sun, Target: Ind (+1 size)
Change a block of stone or stone sled into a wooden cart.
(Base 4, +1 touch, +2 sun, +1 size)

I had forgotten these, I can invent them now! :smiley:

For your spells, go for Imaginem, since this'll be usable on a lot more things. Also, the MuTe would really change it into wood, something that has its drawbacks.

Going back to Amul's sheet

I don't really get what you meant by this.
As I read it, you're better in latin when speaking to arrogant people.
This is not important at all, but I fail to see how this could be, or what you wanted to achieve.
Maybe something like Latin 4 (talking people down)?

Yes, with no might, since, once you've got might, this is not an human, just as a ReCo spell vs Faeries would affect a Corpus-based faerie, but not a human.

Globaly fine, but... as I told you before, the "stone" part poses the greatest problems:
The base individual for Stone is one cubic pace.
+1 size would thus let you affect up to 10 cubic paces of stone, which is far from what you wishes. You current spell is about lvl 30, in fact (up to 1000 cubic paces of stone).
There are 2 ways to deal with this: Change your spells, or make it an "Earth Only" spell with +2 size, letting you destroy up to 1000 cubic paces of earth.

I see nothing wrong into the spell per se, but you may have size problems.

  • 2 size vs Wizard's tower = a "tower" of 8 feet high and is 30 feet wide, with a foundation set 2 feet into the ground. Fine, but smaller than what you want.
    Nonetheless, IIRC, Wizard's tower is suboptimal.
    What about the hut being exactly the same, but adapted to Tyrion's size, thus comfortable for him, but too short for normal humans to stand up? Something like 1m50 per story?

Oula...

Split durations don't exist in 5th. Permanent duration neither.

How I see it, created as a spell:
Rego Terram Base 3, +1 touch, +1 size, + 3 Moon duration = lvl 20
This makes the statue follow your orders for the duration. It is devoid of intelligence, though, and can only perform simple actions (like "grasp this", "move there") to their letter. Problem is, unless you take the appropriate mastery (tethered mastery, IIRC), you can't transfer its control to someone.
Making it more intelligent would require CrMe or CrAn (like a watchdog) requisites but would make it too hard to cast.
It also ain't a ritual, unless the SG says otherwise.

This has the surprising advantage of saving you 15 levels. You could up your stone burrowfingers by 2 magnitudes, up to lvl 30, in order to blast up to 1000 cubic feet of stone, and have 5 lvls left for a simple trick.

No, although this is not clear.
As I see it, you may have a watching ward triggered by a simple gesture or word, thus maybe making it efficient as a fast-cast defence (I'd allow this, based on a normal quickness roll).
This becomes trickier if this is determined by your state (like a Leap of Homecoming that teleports you if wounded). Unless I'm wrong, by legacy, this works, while, logically, this could require an InCo spell. In order to allow both, I'd say any simple condition based on you doesn't need requisites (words, gestures, being wounded or asleep), but anything exterior does.

As discussed before, fine! :smiley:

On further reflection, I think this specialty may properly be more under Guile or Charm than Language. The idea was that she knows how to sound servile, knows how to soothe egos. At any rate, nevermind, I'll be changing it to something else.

Okay, as I understand it, we need 4 separate spells of each form to deal with creatures of each of the four realms: faerie, divine, infernal and magic. So, my question gets quite a bit larger then: are humans considered part of the Magic realm? What about humans with supernatural virtues or flaws? How much might do magi have (especially important if I run into any Terram elementals or spirits)? Does this spell count as a Similar Spell for creating other wards, or just wards against Magic Realm?

Really, this is one of the things that I hate most about the ArM system. Too many chunks of the system want to be their own pretty, pretty princess, with a special set of spells and rules just for them.

I really don't understand where you're getting these numbers from. Can you give me a page reference so I can sort it out on my own?

If the spell affects different volumes of various materials, then I'd be fine with that. I'm pretty sure Tyrion doesn't have a lab total high enough to learn a PeTe 30 spell, the other option would have to be to learn the basic Pit of Gaping Earth, and then make the other version later, if ever.

Since the spell allows you to determine the layout, could we say that it either creates a single-story human sized building OR a 2-story dwarf-sized building? The primary intent of learning this spell (from the meta-game perspective) was to pair off with Imbued With Spirit Of Terram, so that Tyrion could reward mundanes with a well-built home for substantially less vis. Possibly to also build a defensible entrance to his underground burrow, which he'd carve out with additional spells.

For the effect you're suggesting, Tyrion would rather have a Sun-duration spell with a Mentem or Animal pre-req to increase intelligence, although that req takes a mighty big hit to his lab total for learning it. What would it be to make these statues as items?

Can these trigger by lack of gesture? Ie, goes off if you DON'T make the simple gesture?

Thanks for the input, Ardath! These are all questions I've had about the system for a long while now.

Hum... What about Latin (Soothing words) then? Or servile ones?

As I see it:
Normal Humans aren't part of any realm. This is a default: Is a human a demon/faerie/angel/magical creature? Since these all, in the broader sense, have might, I say no. They have no realm, since the realm you belong to defines your might.
This is not to say they can't be aligned, but, just like one can belong to a noble lord's retinue instead of being a free man, but without being noble himself, humans can be aligned on one (or more!!!) realms without belonging to it (which is what allows them to have v/f from multiple realms).

Magi, especiallyj, have no might. They have MR through parma, but that's all.

Wards... are complicated. By RAW, it seems mostly as if:

  • You can have ReVi wards against creatures of one entire realm
  • You can have Re(Form) wards against creature of one realm and might type, like Ward Against Faeries of the Waters (ReAq faerie ward), Ward Against Faeries of the Woods (ReAq faerie ward) or Ward Against the Beasts of Legend (ReAn magical ward)

This spell would count as a similar spell if it followed the rules on Arm p 101, namely: Same effect, at a similar R/D and/or T, OR Closely related effect, at the same R/D/T. I would probably allow it to count as similar spell to create other wards with the same R/D/T.

Of course.

ArsM p 152, the entry paragraph for Terram: "The base Individual for Terram depends on the material involved. For sand, dirt, mud, clay, or similar substances, it is about ten cubic paces of stuff. For stone, it is a single cubic pace. For base metals, it is a cubic foot, while for precious metals it is a tenth of that. For gem stones, the base individual is one cubic inch in size."

Most spells are listed as affecting only "earth", "stone" or "metal", not "that and lesser materials", but I see no problem in having a "destroy stone" spell destroy also earth, so long as it can't destroy more earth that it can't destroy stone (this is a lot simpler). This is supported by Fist of Shattering and Obliteration of the Metallic Barrier, while there's one spell (Stone to Falling Dust) which affects different volumes depending on type.

BtW, it ain't complicated to cast this spell more than one, while being relaxed (no stress roll, and thus no botch risk).

Yes, of course. This is great! :smiley:

This is an excellent question.
I thought about this before, but this was too complicated, so I let go, especially as I had no real incentive.

An item could have the advantage of true permanence. I seem to recall LadyP posted one, but I may be wrong.
As an item, drop range to Personnal, Duration to sun, add +4 levels for environmental trigger, final level 14.
It might be better to create an item that anymates statues for Sun Duration: lvl 15 + uses/day.

This might seem awfully low, but this is because this is simple ReTe: You control it, in fact, but this is just dumb stone, and deprived of your commands, it does nothing.

Adding Intelligence (Mentem, I dunno if this is possible) or Cunning (Animal. Let's say, intelligent as a dog) would sure help a lot, but this would probably shift the base to an higher Mentem or Animal one, + Terram, which is why I didn't suggest it.
Hey!!!! I've got an idea!!!!
Ardath can summon spirits. If, later, we develop a spell to bind them, we can bind spirits to statues that you've enchanted, thus giving them intelligence at low cost!!!! :smiley:

I can't see why not, but you do realize that, if, at any moment, you don't make it, the spell will go off? Sleep, use your hands for anything else, and hop, spell time!
I'm not sure this is such a good thing. What's your idea?

My pleasure if I can help you.

It may be better to build an item with an intellego effect which detects the circumstance you want , for instance if you want an item to cast a spell when youa re incapaictated an InCo trigger would be much better than an spell which goes off when you stop moving as that can happen under many circumstances

Perfect!

I was asking if it would count as a similar spell for all the different realms, with the same R/D/T.

I thought of this as well, and it is probably the better option to go with, but feels thematically incorrect for Tyrion. On the other hand, if I make the item invested rather than a lesser enchantment, I could add greater intelligence later.

That's definitely a cool idea. Long term plans for Tyrion include learning to summon elementals, thinking that he could craft a statue of suitable quality material and then summon the elemental within the statue. This is just as interesting an idea.

He's got the watching ward because he is a paranoid bugger, who wants to keep his sanctum safe. Hence, his interest in ring/circle wards, doors with Watching Wards on them, etc. In general, Tyrion is meant to be an exploration of all the bits I traditionally ignore and handwave -- the logisitics of covenant development, the protection of spaces in a world with magic, that sort of stuff.

Just saw this, Andrew. I'm looking at Watching Wards as security measures to be placed around the sanctum. Until you guys started talking about such things, it hadn't occurred to me that I could cast it on myself.

This begs the question, does the intellego effect embedded in the Watching Ward have to be a known spell, or can it be a "spontaneous" spell?

Note: New version of character sheet on Char Sheet thread, with changes highlighted.

Yup, good one. An item with 2 linked effects (InCo and the linked effect) is probably the better way to have this.

And my personnal answer to that was yes :smiley:

BTW, for the statue, I'm sorry, I must have been drunk, I realized I have forgotten something while watching for LadyP's enchantment: The basic guideline would probably allow you to move it around like a big lump of stone, like with "The Unseen Porter", but she's right in that you'd need additionnal magnitudes for precise control, and her 2 are about right, which puts your final level at 30.

If you can summon an elemental, you can bypass the statue IMO, unless you want it to have some mesure of protection from PeVi spells (people would target the statue, not the spirit within), or just to be the controlling intelligence (since more powerful elementals are harder to summon/control, due to penetration).

As I see it, the way to have this into a statue is through 3 enchantments:

  • One to allow the statue to move at the command of the spirit, permanent
  • One to link the spirit to the statue, permanent
  • One to control the spirit, permanent too.

I like this.
As I see it:

  • The wards need to penetrate, so you can have them be "always on", but be unnafected thanks to your Parma. If they penetrate it, you can use ReVI spells and
    Suppressing the Wizard's Handiwork of equal or superior level
  • Watching Wards on doors, I'd say Intellego requisites :-/ Either with a bound AC to recognise you, or a InCo spell to recognise your special gestures (Like knocking 3 times on the door). Another way: Have it go on anyone that touches the door (a simple enough condition IMO), and Supress the Wizard's Handiwork.

IMO, yes, it can be spontaneous, of course.

Late for work, see you.... way later!!!

A friend of mine pointed out that I'm unlikely to find a good supply of raw materials for glassblowing in the middle of the Pomeranian forests, and that their fragility doesn't fit Tyrion's theme very well (ie, fortifications and defensive magics). What do you think? He's already entered play, but the glass stuff hasn't come up yet. What's more, I'm not sure what a better craft might be.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Also, the latest covenant info is from Nov, 2009. Is there more recent information anywhere?

Further tangents: Just read through RoP:Magic and saw the section on Taming Magic Animals, which includes fire elementals, at least by example. Taming them requires a basic lab total, but doing anything with them once tamed requires Animal Handling. That feels incredibly broken for elementals, although I'm happy they didn't create yet another skill for us to learn.

Can’t think of any more recent but then again I have not read through everything written since then… How about magic lore as the skill to use for elemental training? We can assume that the red caps can provide with strange items even into the Pomeranian or that some covenant makes a healthy profit by supplying remote covenants with good lab materials. It is after all quite small quantities.

My original character for this chronicle was to be a glassblower. She was going to use magic and travel to import in the supplies. Costly but then again, not as costly as buying and transporting the finished goods.

Magic Lore makes sense to me. Non-Gifted Magic Animal Trainers get to use it for their taming totals. o.O Tyrion doesn't have either skill, so it make little difference right now, but it is good to have an answer.

My other thought about getting the supplies for making glass is to import it from my father/Faerie Friend Flaw, while also possibly trading for Faerie Laboratory Ingredients. I'm not sure if that is kosher for this game, though, which is really the question I'm asking, I guess. Will that fly? I'm guessing from MadMax's answer that it is viable.

It was LadyP's old character that inspired me to choose glassworking in the first place, by the way.

Yeah, but her family had been from venice a few generations back that they had contacts for glass supplies (and lived in a fairly large city). She had close family ties and would have bought supplies from them. She had her special ReTe stone sled to transport them.

Plus, we may be packing everything up and moving to some other city or tribunal real soon so you will be closer. A covenant of young mages can not beat three armies of hundreds.

IMO, this is because you focus on the "Animal" part, while these are really Taming and Handling skills.
How to put it? Suppose you know a lot of taming and handling methods with animals and are presented with, say, a giant lizard. These methods would need to be adapted, ok, but would they work? Of course yes. Now, let's say that lizard breathes fire and flies. Would you suddenly become incompetent? Of course not.

Let's suppose you put an horse's mind into a human body. Would you be unable to tame/handle it because it's in a human body?

Taming/Handling a creature may be affected by his form (realistically speaking. The rules tend to ignore this, making handling of a falcon as easy as that of an horse), requiring some adaptation from you, but what matters the most is the creature's mind and your methods.

So no, it doesn't feel broken at all, at least to me :wink:

The more I look at the rules, the more I think it would just make more sense to swap out the Stone Guardian of Triamore spell with a simple Rarefy Earth Elemental ritual, especially given Tyrion's Imbued With Spirit of Terram. Possibly, a version of the Rarefy Earth spell that has an experimental side effect of creating more statue-like elementals?

I also double-checked my math and realized that I lost about 20xp of post-gauntlet spell levels during all the spell shuffling.

Would anyone mind if I tweaked my character sheet, now that I've spent some time actually playing the gorram game? I could just shift around his post-gauntlet XP around to pick up the Earth Elemental stuff, but I'd actually prefer to redo the entire sheet in order to effect a few changes:

  • the Create, Control and Ward-Circle spells for Earth Elementals
  • pick up ranks in Animal Handling to train elementals
  • reduce social skills, increase enchanter/Verditus skills
  • Swap Puissant (Skill) virtues with Free Expression and Inventive Genius