Familiars and Leap of Homecoming

The saga is getting 7 years in. Familiars are being bound, and I'm quite excited.

However... the Guernicus mage has bound a small drake (Igack, from Calebais, who became friends with the mage after some surprised fire-flinging back and forth to no effect in the depths of the fallen covenant.) but also makes heavy use of Leap of Homecoming.

Now, if the mage uses that spell, the familiar is left high and dry, correct?

Unless he adds an appropriate requisite, yes. His clothes, too, based on the description of the Wizard's Leap spell in HoH: Societates.

That's my understanding, unless the familiar were small enough to be carried.

Yes, that is RAW, but I hand wave that all the time. WL is of a low enough of a level that it doesn't matter. And mainly, having players announce that their characters are stripping naked so they can cast LoHC is very un mythic. I mean, where in what story of magic and magi do wizards teleport around naked? I told my player to have his maga keep her clothes on (and of course it is males playing female characters that are in such a hurry to get naked).

page number please :question:

True. I handwave it too. I figure the spell is whisking the magus away, and anything clinging to him (within reason) goes with him. I do require that Giant Blooded characters add a magnitude for size, though.

Sounds fair enough. I was thinking that somehow the bond/arcane connection could "fool" the spell into carrying them off, but the RAW don't support that. However, handwaving for familiars that are dog sized or smaller follows my own inclination, as long as they're touching.

My thought on all teleportation spells is to analogize them with flying spells. Essentialy in my Mythic Europe, teleportation is a lot like flying really, really fast with the added bonus that you can teleport into closed rooms, etc.

The point of this is no one (that I know) suggests that a ReCo flying spell would require requisites for the magus's clothings. Instead the wizard flys and the clothing goes with him because it follows the body. He can pick up a dagger from the table and he can carry it. But can't use the spell to lift huge boulder, because he couldn't lift a huge boulder naturally. If he tried to fly under a falling boulder and hold it up with his flying body he finds that he gets squashed underneath a falling boulder. Or rather, his sodales do, as he's not finding much of anything except the back of the line at a certain precious metal gate.

So I view teleportation the same way, things the body could naturally move go with teleporter, things the body could not move get left behind. The effect is without harm to the maga because of the nature of the spell.

For example, a fully dressed caster is tethered or chained by his ankle: why does his clothing 'port with him, but not the manacles? I treat it like a physcal tug of war (although there is no actual "force" or "tension" on the wizard's body). Since there is nothing holding his clothes back, his body can freely move them and they go with him. The chain however, is being held by the heavy iron loop set in the dungeon wall. Since the magus cannot naturally exert enough force to break the chain (i.e. the wizard's leg would break first), the spell stops trying to bring the mancle with it, and the wizard "slips free". From the magus's perspective, he disappears and reappears free from the chain with no ill sensation (or for story purposes, he may feel a slight tug on his leg, but no harm will befall him). From the prison guard's view the manacle tries to go with the magus, instantly and violently snapping out to its full length, before dropping empty to the ground. I imagine it looking not unlike movie "Jumper" when the jumpers would have a tether or something attaching them to a solid point. If pressed I would rule that although the chain flings out violently, it doesn't have any real "force" and if it struck a person it would feel rather like a flying art stopped by a parma. The chain touches the guard, and meeting his metaphyscial and physical resistance, falls inert.

Similarly, a ReTe spell will summon (or teleport, or cause to fly, or move in other ways) most daggers, even if the hilt is wooden, because the hilt naturally moves with the blade.

In the example of a familier, the maga would probably have little trouble lifting him. But if your familiar is an elephant, then your going to have to leave it at home.
PS I apologize for spelling, grammer, and general lack of clarity- I'm running on way to little sleep today.

This is also supported by RAW. Definitions of Target: Individual notes a single individual up to size +1, IIRC. So a Giant Blooded magus (Size +2) needs a magnitude boost. This came up in a previous, and short-lived, saga, where the Giant Blooded Flambeau noted this. So naturally he felt he was immune to normal T:Ind Corpus spells, since he had to have boosted versions to affect himself.

And to adress the OP: I feel that clothes, and small things carried or held, will be dragged along with your body when it's ReCo'ed somewhere. In my group we ruled that a familiar small enough to fit into a pocket or folds of robe would go along. Hence my maga had her fox imbued with a size changing spell, in order to come along on her teleports (or flying for that matter).
But lugging along a heavy pack of treasure, or a large familiar in your arms, would IMHO need an appropriate req.

Hm, I'll probably stop it at 'size below that of the caster', to include dog/cat sized familiars like this little drake.

Having to invent spells to get things to work like you imagine they would in myth feels like the system is gaming the mage.

For a horse or pony sized familiar, I can see the need.

Yes, this is true.

I have a Giant Blooded magus in the game I am playing in. It is good to be immune to many vanilla Corpus effects, but on the other hand it has been a real pain. I need to invent my own version of Leap of Homecoming, because the standard versions in circulation for trade as lab texts don't work, and standard healing spells don't work either. The most sensible work-around seems to be to invent a spell that shrinks you to a smaller size, so that if you do want to be affected by a normal Individual target Corpus spell you can be. However, doing this seems Wrong for my character, so I haven't actually done this in game.

We even had some additional fun back then, with this Giant Blooded guy being one of the two Flambeau in the saga. Even if he wanted to, and was accepted by way of his abilities and attitude, the Giant could not very well become a Miles! Because the teleportation spell used to call the members to HQ in case of emergencies could not affect a size +2 man...

If it's a "group" teleport spell (like the horn of the champions in HOH S for defending castra solis) yes, it can : group is 10 equivalent mass individual.
With 2 in size you are +- 166% of a normal mass man (+3 size = x2 mass) :slight_smile:. So, 1/6 of the "group" spell on your own... let 8 other normal magus.

Really? It was concerned with this very spell. But we just assumed, that a standard spell Target: Group covers only a group of standard Individual sized...individuals, not anybody larger. Sure, if the Group of the spell is large enough, i.e. has extra capacity, it ought to be able to cope with one magus "filling" up more than one individual of the group. But the question is: Is this covered by spell parameter definitions?

Group is = 10 x mass for individuals.

I think it's described in the "size" grid.

Nope. ArM5 is very clear:

Since Corpus covers Size +1 humans, strictly speaking with Target: Group you can affect:
1 Size +4 human
2 Size +3 humans
5 Size +2 humans
10 Size +1 humans
20 Size 0 humans
50 Size -1 humans
etc.

Mark