do familiars create aura tethers?

the title says it all really.

According to RoP:M magical creatures create a preternatural tether for auras in the place where they live. Does this apply to familiars too? or in other words, can a familiar with a sufficiently high might raise the aura in the covenant of the magus it is bound to?

It seems like it could go either way for me. On the one hand it is a pretty clear rule that magical creatures create aura tethers, but on the other hand familiars often dont behave like normal magical creatures once they have bound themselves to a magus.

RAW is not as universal as you quote it.
[RoP:M:10]: Other
kinds of magical beings do not generate an
aura, but are often instead dependent on
some other Magic aura (such as that arising
at a monument) for their abode.

I don't know what the rule is, but I'd suggest to allow it based on the Rule of Cool. :slight_smile: Having the dragon nestled around the wizard's tower increase its aura make a lot of sense IMHO.

I tend to agree, dragons are (at least often) tethers. If the power level is such that dragon familiars are on, then fine.

The more rank and file animals of virtue make another kettle of fish.

If a might:60 dragon makes its den under your lab does it boost the aura by +6 or only +5?

You are right @loke that I was being overeager in stating that "magical creatures create aura tethers" it should have been "some magical creatures" which is a quite ambiguous statement.

I do have some reservations.

  1. Magical creatures often draw sustenance from the aura that they live in and it feels kind of weird to have, say a magical horse of might 10 live in a level 3 aura, where it stays to avoid acclimatization, actually increase the aura score of that aura. If this hypothetical horse avoided acclimatization by consuming vis I would feel differently because it no longer sustains itself via that aura.
  2. Some magical beings feel too inconsequential to create an aura. you could in principle argue that 5 magical horses each with a might score of 10 should create a preternatural tether score of +5, resulting in an aura that slowly climbs to +5. However that is obviously not how the rules are meant to work. Most magical creatures that feel too inconsequential to create auras will have might scores less than 10 and so really are mechanically too inconsquential.
  3. Even if a might 10 creature can create a preternatural tether and cause a +1 increase in the aura where it resides, that increase is most likely highly localized to where the creature lives.

I would rule that to create a tether score a creature needs to be either: somehow independent of the aura, central to the aura or more powerful than the aura.

A creature that can sustain itself without the aura it is to empower, can empower aura but one that is dependent on the aura cannot.

A creature that somehow embodies the aura can empower(become a tether) the same aura over time. Say an aura has formed over an isolated valley with an impressive forest in it and the center of the aura is the oldest and most awake tree. This tree becomes a magical being and over time grows quite powerful (high might score), this causes a localized strengthening of the greater aura around the central tree.

A much stronger creature could be a might 60 dragon that moves into a level 1 aura. It can empower the aura because the dragon is so much stronger than the aura it moved into. But this dragon would in turn need to forage magical power somewhere else and bring it into the aura or the dragon would suffer.

I totally agree with the rule of cool and straight out ArM logic that a powerful familiar residing for what is effectively full time (does not spend a large portion of time rowing about the countryside) should create an aura tether.

IMO a might 60 dragon can only increase the aura by +5 because it creates a preternatural tether, which caps out at +5. Even then it will probably take forever to do so. Also keep in mind that actually increasing the aura by +5 will take forever.

Because most familiars are less than might 10 and/or spend a lot of time adventuring with their magus they will not create tethers. Additionally because most familiars are less than might 20 they do not create permanent tethers so any increase in the aura that they may have created during their lives slowly vanish after they die.
If (certain) familiars can increase the aura it provides a good (part of the) explanation for how the aura of older covenants has often increased. It also provides an incentive for magi to feed their familiars vis to increase their might. Assuming that familiars can grow stronger by consuming vis.

Good luck making rules for this. I think the one RAW paragraph and troupe judgment will do just fine.

If you need a more precise and unambiguous rule, I'd go for this: «creatures create tethers when it is cool, and not when they are being power gamed».

2 Likes

That is also the rule that I am going to apply in my own saga.

I am going to keep the considerations above in mind. But I am not going to create a complex flowchart of rules and formulas to simulate it. The rule is judgement based on what seems reasonable.

Magic Might may be like gravity. Every atom has mass and attracts every other mass object, but you need quite a large mass to generate a substantial gravity well.

So too, a magical being must have a critical magical might, and probably be in the right circumstances, to create an aura.

A magical being must have gravitas.

... and if you have enough of them, they implode into a black hole ...

Is that a regio or the magic realm?

1 Like