I'm curious what you mean by 'function like Trackless Step? If you mean that the 'target' changes as the user moves, that happens with Lungs of the Fish too.
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We also ran into a bunch of spells in Auram that target 'the air around the caster' or 'the air in a room', which by the explicit statement of the Auram targeting, does not work.
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Let's all go back over Aquam, so we can either delete spells, change them to fit, or mark them as possibly needing too much work, so I can get Aquam out of the way.
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Finished Auram.
As an Errata note, Purification of the Festering Wounds should not provide a bonus to recover from Disease. That was split off as a separate Base in A&A. There are lots of spells in the document that provide a bonus to wounds and disease. All will need to be cleaned up to a single one of those two.
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Re: Aquam and sizes...
I prefer to try and get most large numbers into paces just so the size of the numbers is less ridiculous.
Posted it here because of how MANY spells it affects.
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Pace also have the advantage of giving you nice round numbers with only a single non-zero digit for the total volume.
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I would prefer to leave the choice with the spell designers - if they use paces, we use paces, if they use feet, we use feet. Globally not a fan of paces.
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More Errata: Eyes of the Cat does not have Target: Part, while all other partial MuCo shapeshifting spells do.
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Do we prefer A&As interpretation, or core rules? As any healing needs vis, a Creo Corpus specialist is generally a bit boring. Nerfing CrCo when it is already weak, seems undesirable.
I appreciate CrCo is needed for good longevity potions (LPs) however, if there's one good CrCo magi in the covenant, then that magi is probably making the LPs. Due to how important LPs are they have good trade value, however, in regards to story and adventuring, CrCo doesn't get used much.
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That is incorrect. Compare Eyes of the Cat to other spells that use this guideline:
Ears of the Hare (App p.46)
Eyes of the Hawk (HP p.87)
Track by Scent (MoH p.131)
Bushy Tail of the Branch-Dancer (MoH p.85)
Eyes of the Fish (LoH p.106)
Slime of the Muck-Dweller (MoH p.85)
Sure-Footedness of the Crag-Leaper (MoH p.85)
Webbed Toes of the Pond-Dweller (MoH p.85)
Why? Look at the guideline, where you change the person to give them an ability. It's when a guideline would affect more that Part is used to restrict it. Giving someone the ability to see like a cat doesn't change their arms, feet, etc. so no Part. Look at the guideline below that one now. Shrinking someone makes all of them smaller, so Arm of the Infant restricts this using Part. Changing a person to look like someone else would change everything, so Disguise of the New Visage restricts this by using Part.
The MuCo 5 guideline that Blessing of Starkad uses is a little confusing because it explicitly says to use Part with it instead of being MuCo 10 and leaving out that statement to be more similar to this core MuCo guideline. That's because the guideline isn't to change the person so they have more arms or whatever. It's written differently so it works differently; it's just a little confusing rather than incorrect.
Actually, the other spells in the core book use an interpretation parallel to A&A's, so it's not really fair to say A&A v. core rules. Look at The Chirurgeon's Healing Touch, Gentle Touch of the Purified Body, and Incantation of the Body Made Whole. Their guidelines aren't explicit that they are restricted to one type of Wound source, but the spells are. This is far more consistent with A&A than with Purification of the Festering Wounds. Simply issuing errata for Purification of the Festering Wounds and Bestow the Blessing of Apollon (MoH p.21) would bring all of these in line with each other as far as I'm aware. The core healing spells plus all other spells I've checked (direct healing or Recovery Rolls) either agree with A&A or are left vague. Circle of Recovery (TtA p.153), Enter the Domain of Eir (TtA p.153), Gentle Caress of Aesclepius ( HoH:S p.100), and The Rite of Healing (AtD p.99) aren't explicit either way. The Soothing Balm of Telesphorus (DI p.95) and Incantation of the Warriors Made Whole (MoH p.21) agree with A&A.
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However, a spell to heal wounds cannot cure diseases, no matter how high its level, and vice versa.
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The description of most of those describes a transformation of part of the body, rather than granting an ability. That needs to be cleaned up. Eyes of the Cat transforms the targets eyes into those of a cat, not give them the ability to see like a cat. These spells should be written similar to Track by Scent, which grants an ability without any transformation.
They are fairly simple changes. For example Eyes of the Cat should be something like "The target gains the vision of a cat...".
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Yup. Exactly. Does A&A disagree with this? I believe it agrees several times. And A&A points out this applies to healing through Recovery Rolls as well, as opposed to those being a bypass. This is why I wrote "an interpretation parallel to A&A's." The only exceptions are two spells designed to heal wounds through recovery rolls: Purification of the Festering Wounds and Bestow the Blessing of Apollon.
That's because you're being given those through MuCo, not through things like InIm. If you want to see far without changing yourself, use InIm like Eyes of the Eagle. If you use the MuCo base 2 you must change the person in some way. That's what we see in all those spells. Now, this could also be done for Eyes of the Cat another way: use base 10 to turn a person into a cat, and use Part. But this base-2 guideline is specifically there to allow this without doing a full transformation without Part. Now, if you want to turn yourself into a harpy, then that's a nearly complete transformation and base 20 with Part makes total sense.
Ultimately, " Eyes of the Cat does not have Target: Part, while all other partial MuCo shapeshifting spells do." is incorrect. No canonical spells using that guideline use Part, and the language of the guideline shows you why. I could see in a redesign (ArM6 people talk about) dropping this guideline to base 1 and requiring Part (and possibly placing Part with size rather than where it is). But that's not the choice that was made here. Since that wasn't the choice and all the canonical spells are consistent here, I don't see any need for an erratum on Eyes of the Cat.
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I pointed out that block of text to show that Core and A&A both agree that healing wounds and disease are to different things.
For MuCo Base 2, I will concede that it does not need Part. The thing that worries me the most is that some people will read the description, not notice Base 2, and give the spell more than just granting an ability. The spell that really bugged me changes the casters feet to those of a polar bear so that they can walk on snow like they had snowshoes. While that is fine with Base 2, what happens if they decide to use the "claws" they should now have for attacking?
Though I am fairly sure that polar bears are not native to Europe (outside of being transit in a tiny area of Greenland and the Svalbard Archipelago off Norway.
They haven't given themselves the ability to make claw attacks, so they just do a normal brawling kick. As for misreading a description that doesn't say they get any bonuses to combat and skipping reading the base it uses, to me that's like combinations of not reading and misreading other stuff: at some point the reader must take on some responsibility.
Yes, awareness of polar bears is pretty questionable. But the arctic fox is native to Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Siberia, ...
Yes, I believe the exact same thing came up for an earlier Animal spell by the same writer and we used the arctic fox as the fix.
Edit: Another minor issue. MuCo size change spells in MoH seem to require Mags of Size for all changes, while the spells in Core only require it beyond the first Size +/-3.
Core book doesn't let you get beyond Size +1 without extra magnitudes due to exceeding a Base Individual. Meanwhile there is nothing suggesting you could even add +3 to a Dwarf with just the base. The only suggestion is that the base allows +1/-2 (both the MuAn and MuCo spells stop there). Separately, shrinking usually can get twice as far as growth. Where do you find that ±3 limit noted?
The issue of Base Individuals is important. That's why you see MoH requiring extra magnitudes. Assume the Stature of the Giants of Eld and Turb of Giants generally take someone beyond Size +1, so they've got an extra magnitude. High Tree or Small Boulder doesn't really change Size, and it doesn't include any extra magnitudes for the amount of size. A Source of Tremendous Pride needs the extra magnitude because a lion is bigger than the Base Individual for Animal/Corpus. Am I missing one?
I was also looking at the MuAn spells. So Muto size change would be +1/-2 even if that takes it larger than a base individual? EDIT: I hate growing/shrinking spells and have made a note in previous ones in the document since for some reason my brain doesn't work right with them.
MuAn in MoH. Let's see... Pests of Colossal Size says very little about their actual size; but they're surely below 10 Base Individuals. Is there something I'm missing? In the core book Growth of Creeping Things does allow for between +1 and +2 Size, leaning toward +2. It doesn't break the Base Individual rule, though. Beast of Outlandish Size increases by +1. Beast of Minuscule Proportions changes Size by -2. In TtA Lion of Outlandish Size gains +1 Size even though it could gain +2 and fit within the Base Individual with +1 magnitude for size.
I would not think +1 could take something beyond a Base Individual unless you build the spell to handle more than a Base Individual, though I could be wrong on that +1. But extra magnitudes for growth are consistently lumped together with handling the extra size needed so that you don't have to double up to get the same effect.