No.
A Bjornaer in animal form cannot make the "gestures of his animal form".
A Bjornaer in animal form cannot make any gestures necessary for spellcasting.
So, it's as AericExMiscellanea wrote: a magus shapechanged into an animal cannot fast-cast at all, because bold gestures are necessary for fast-casting. However, a lenient interpretation of the rules could be that that Subtle Magic and 2xQuiet magic would remove "all penalties" from not being able to cast with firm voice and bold gestures, including the "penalty" of not being able to fast cast without them. I think it's not the correct interpretation under the RAW, but I think it correctly captures the spirit of Subtle and Quiet Magic, and I'd probably allow it in my game (it has never come up). If you do allow this, of course, you should also allow any magus with Subtle and 2xQuiet Magic (or the appropriate masteries, or Deft Form) to fast cast without voice or gestures.
I agree that this must be the spirit of Quiet and Subtle magic. The new rules for fast cast and voice range in ArM5 have introduced several ambiguities which should have been explicitly disambiguated.
However, looking into the spirit of fast casting, it seems that there are two or three interpretations
Fast casting requires firm voice and bold gestures, because of some mystic relation, and if you can't voice and gesture, you can't cast.
Fast cast does not leave time to consider what to do, so you do whatever you normally do. If you are used to cast spells in animal form, then you can fast cast with the normal voice and gestures for that form (i.e. nothing).
Fast cast does not leave time to consider what to do, so you do the best you can. If your hands are tied, you try to gesture but take a -5 penalty because the gestures are no good.
Personally, I like (3) best, both in terms of game balance and consistency, and because it feels most logical, but I agree that it is not what RAW actually says.
I have more to check before having a great answer to more of this, but I can clarify one thing quickly. Yes, Quiet Magic does reduce the penalty if you're making improper noises. Not speaking at all is considered differently from loudness, which carries voice-ranged spells. This can quickly be seen when looking at Mute on page 56. A magus with Mute can make noises to carry the sound and still receive the -10 penalty, which can simultaneously be offset by Quiet Magic. Meanwhile, according to RoP:M, animals have the equivalent of the Mute Flaw. So an animal roaring is considered the same as a person with Mute making similar sounds: voice range can be used, and there is a -10 penalty that Quiet Magic can offset. So Quiet Magic does apply if you groan, babble, roar, etc.
There is no "simultaneously" in the ArM5 text. Taking Quiet Magic once or twice offsets some or all of the -10 penalty, if you apply it as described in the ArM5 text.
See for that
This Virtue allows to cast with softer or without voice without incurring casting penalties, but not with inadequate words or sounds, even if they are only used to establish the limits of a R: Voice.
Take a closer look. You get the -10 penalty regardless of making noises or not. You get that -10 penalty, period, noise or not. As the book points out, this is the penalty for the lack of words, not the lack of sounds. This penalty may be offset by Quiet Magic, period. You're inserting conditions that the Flaw does not state in order to make your point.
Multiple times the book establishes that the -10 for no words is not for no sounds. The -10 penalty is not for lack of sound, but for lack of words. Sound is not the same as speech. That penalty reduces the lack of speech, which the book has established as different from the lack of sound. Conflating the speech and sound confuses things.
I am just stating the obvious, which the Flaw's text doesn't have to repeat from Quiet Magic: you do not offset the Flaw in all its effects by just taking a Virtue, but can use the Virtue you took to offset effects of the Flaw.
Indeed - provided that you speak here of -10 penalty for spellcasting from ArM5 p.83 Words&Gestures.
I don't understand you here. Which penalty would reduce the lack of speech, and to what
it does indeed so in the text I quoted for Quiet Magic, by correlating the expressions "using only a soft voice" and "if you do not speak at all". I addressed that already here. The only way to safely distinguish speech of a caster from other sounds of her voice is mindreading. So Quiet Magic does not even try to maintain that distinction in the wording of its effects.
If you surreptitiously cast a spell, while loudly singing hymns to Mary or roaring as a lion to cover it, your Quiet Magic can't be used to offset the (ArM5 p.83 box) penalties for not casting with the right words.
I thought we agreed that the rules are ambiguous on this point, and as you pointed out, carefully phrasing rules to remove every ambiguity makes them unreadable. I agree with you that Quiet Magic can be read this way, but you seem to be the only one here who think that this is the only valid way to read it.
If the rules text for Quiet Magic doesn't even try to maintain a distinction, what does that tell us? For sure, that the author of Quiet Magic didn't care.
So I can conclude, that the rule for Quiet Magic - not ArM5 p.83 box - doesn't distinguish sound and speech, which leads to my conclusion above:
At times you can conclude from obvious ambiguities indeed.
Cheers
EDIT: Here's a nice example for necessary ambiguities in communication, which do not affect educated conclusions.
So, One Shot, let's make this simpler with the OP's scenario: a Bjornaer. Let's say the magus has a bear Heartbeast and is in Heartbeast form, and the magus has Quiet Magic x2. The bear roars while casting a spell. Quiet Magic reduces the penalty for not speaking to 0. You're saying Quiet Magic does not apply because the magus in Heartbeast form is speaking, right? I say this in reference to
I feel a little bit sorry for initiating such a discussion. Especially because I was just trying to mutchkinize a bit. I was thinking... what is the fastest a counterspeller could get? And I thought: magus shapechanged into a bird (like a falcon) could have perhaps +6 (or even +7 if you accept one of the smaller varieties that are mentioned in the mundane beast listing). With inner beast you could get perhaps up to +10 in quickness
Checking the rules, I found that perhaps you cannot fast cast at all while in animal forms, which seems rather bad for Bjornaer buddies. And I asked in this forum, because it seemed weird.
After reading all this, I would say that this is definitely a grey area. But I am inclined to say, after hearing all arguments, that by RAW you cannot fast cast if you cannot make bold gestures and loud words. I won't consider creature ones to be gestures or words in my games. I would allow a monkey-heartbeast bjornaer with the Voice of Bjornaer to do it, but all other beast are out of questions
Bad news for Bjornaer but probably my players will take that piece of news gladly, since they feel a little bit intimidated by their bear-heartbeast Bjornaer colleage.
I think I see where this thread is getting all mixed up.
The virtues Quiet Magic and Subtle Magic are not the spell casting options causing the problem.
A little earlier in ArM5 p.83, under "Words and Gestures", it basically says that using a Firm Voice to speak the Hermetic phrases and Bold Gestures to make the Hermetic hand-signals is the default method of spell-casting.
Any other level of Hermetic Words and/or Gestures each counts as a Spellcasting option. Something the RAW says can not be applied to Fast Casting.
Bonisagus created Hermetic Magic to be cast in a Firm Voice to speak the Hermetic phrases and Bold Gestures to make the Hermetic hand-signals.
There doesn't seem to be anything that says one way or the other that the variant words and gesture options were a part of the original Hermetic Magic. They could be later add-ons by various researchers making minor breakthroughs. Apparently the Theban Tribunal use a minor breakthrough in that the Hermetic phrases are in Greek, rather than in Latin. Not certain if that counts as a spelcasting option, but I suspect so. The virtue Performance Magic is another such spellcasting option. At any rate, it doesn't change the default level of Firm Voice.
The variant words and gestures (each of which is a spellcasting option) are popular enough that some magi developed the virtues Quiet Magic and Subtle Magic to alleviate the modifiers to the spell casting total, when using these spellcasting options. This would be stacking multiple spellcasting options to avoid casting total penalties.
I would imagine, that in order to Fast Cast using a variant level of Words and Gestures, you would need to rewrite Hermetic Magic so that your preferred level of Words and Gestures is now the base level. This would surely be a major breakthrough, as it affects pretty much the entirety of Hermetic Magic.
No, they are just one out of many sources of relevant ambiguity.
This is interesting. Does the voice and gesture consist of formal statement in the language Bonisagus invented, or a Greek equivalent, where every magus has to use exactly the same phrase to create the same effect? Or, does every individual magus inventing the spell create his own unique symbols and phrases? In the former case, I agree that changing the language involved breakthroughs, while in the latter not. Both interpretations seem valid to me, unless there is something I have missed from RAW.
Carrying on from this idea, a bilingual magus, say Greek/Latin to make it most plausible, with a Greek lab text for a spell. Can he choose to invent the spell in Latin, and thus subsequently produce a Latin lab text for his Latin colleagues? Or can the lab text simply be translated by a bilngual magus, without necessarily having learnt the spell.
Is it possible to invent a silent spell, which has no defined words, so that every magus learning it has to have Quiet Magic or take the full -10 penalty?
Is it an invention, or is it just an exceptional Gift which does not depend on language and gestures to form fluid vis? Personally, I have always assumed the latter.
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I would imagine, that in order to Fast Cast using a variant level of Words and Gestures, you would need to rewrite Hermetic Magic so that your preferred level of Words and Gestures is now the base level. This would surely be a major breakthrough, as it affects pretty much the entirety of Hermetic Magic.
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This interpretation I struggle a bit with. If the Words and Gestures is really such a fundamental part, and baseline, of casting the spell, I would have thought the requirement to be absolute. Casting with voice or gestures should be impossible, not just more difficult. When we work with penalties the base line is arbitrary, and exist purely in game mechanics. The power of the mind is sufficient to move fluid vis, but voice and gestures give additional power, making it simpler. I don't object to requiring a breakthrough to allow silent fast cast, but I would view it as inventing an alternative method of fast casting, not as changing the meaning and application of words in spell casting.
Ambiguity is what makes ArM fun, but unexpected ambiguity can be rather annoying
I don't think RAW covers this.
One point is - if all casters using the same language always cast using identical gestures and verbal expression then it would be pretty easy to know what spell was being cast, especially so if you also knew the spell. Identifying the spell being cast by another Magus isn't easy, so I think that might be some evidence that Magi cast difefrently from each other.
A word of warning. I think my understanding of how Hermetic Magic works is significantly biased by my experience as a computer programmer.
Almost as an analogy, I use a series of phrases of arcane meaning that make computers perform amazing computational feats of 'magic'.
While the wording of Quiet Magic and Subtle Magic are maybe slightly ambiguous, I always treated them as being implied to use the less ambiguous wording of Deft Form.
In ArM5, on p95, column 1 "Even when you learn a spell from a teacher, it is you Wizard's Sigil that manifests in your version; you actually invent the spell yourself , but with constant guidance from the Teacher."
Every Mage's version of the same spell is unique, but very similar to each other. So I would expect them to use very similar phrases and gestures.
By analogy, every C++ programmer uses the same programming language to create programs. Any two programmers trying to create programs to create the same effect (eg take a set of inputs to produce a set of outputs acording to a particular algorithm) are unlikely to create exactly the same program. But they will be very similar programs, even if the user interface to accept the inputs is arranged slightly differently, it is the same inputs that eventually go into each program.
I think the details for casting in Greek is in the Thebal Tribunal book, best check that.
Back to my analogy, the same C++ program that is designed to run on a Windows O/S computer, can be re-compiled to run on a Linux box, so long as you have the right compiler and the proper libraries.
Is there any example anywhere in the ArM5 canon of anything like that?
What about in the Bjornaer chapter of the HoH:MC book?
The virtue Potent Magic states it affects spell design. The virtues Deft Form, Quiet Magic, and Subtle Magic all refer to casting spells, and mitigating penalties when using variant words and gestures.
As far as I have seen, every spell created in Hermetic Magic is designed to be cast in the default setting of Firm Voice and Bold Gestures.
Let me try a different analogy. I am working on a system where messages from RFID chips propagate through several systems (RFID chip -> to several different receiver units, from a reciever unit to a desktop application, then to...) to eventually be stored and analysed in a backend system.
At all stages of the process, the messages contain an identifying header, followed by a packet of data. The identifying header always has the same information, so I can visualise this as the Voices and Gestures of the spell, with the following packet of data as the spell payload.
At the RFID chip stage, we only squirt out data over a couple of milliseconds every few seconds. The entire message (identifying header and packet of data) is only 22 bytes, with every single bit being used. This is effectively the Fast Casting stage.
As each message goes through the various stages on it way to the backend, each piece of equipment changes the message to a more convenient format, but always contains a version of the identifying header and the packet of data.
By the time the message has reached the backend server, it has been unpacked into an XML format, that is more than 50 times larger than the data squirted from the RFID chip. It still contains everything from the same header and data packet, though in a different format. I could consider this as being cast in in a variant Words and Gestures.
I supect that the RFID chip could have the capacity to be programmed to generate the same message in the XML format rather than the bit-packed format. But such an immense message size could never be successfully sent in tiny window of the Fast Casting environment.
This is not a perfect analogy I realise. But it is strongly influencing how I percieve this issue.
From context, I suspect I can guess what you mean by "fluid Vis".
The Gift allows you to potentially use magic, ie direct 'fluid Vis'. Hermetic Theory gives you a framework that directs the Gift to invent and cast magic spells in a certain manner ie shape Fluid Vis into a useful shape. Runic Magic gives you a different framework, as does each magic Tradition.
Not all frameworks use Words and Gestures, thinking of how the Founder Verditus only knew how to enchant, not cast spells.
It is my opinion that the spellcasting options came first. They are part of Hermetic Magic, you don't need any virtues to use them. Then the virtues came afterwards to mitigate some of the penalties.
«Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.»
It is a well-known insight.
A fellow student of mine (in CS) had it in his sig 20 years ago.
We can work with that analogy. If you explain to me how you created the program in C++, it is fairly easy for me to reinvent it in Python or Java or whatever. If the analogy is relevant, we should expect bilingual magi to reinvent the spell in their primary language and not the language taught.
OTOH, teaching in C++ is not such a good help if I want to invent the program in Haskell, so maybe an Arab magus being taught in Latin would be constrained to reinventing the spell in Latin too.
As far as I have seen, every spell created in Hermetic Magic is designed to be cast in the default setting of Firm Voice and Bold Gestures.
Does it? To me, the analogy suggests that fast casting should be impossible with firm voice. There is not time to firmly state all the words needed. Fast casting silently should be easier, not harder.
I am sure Verditius used a lot of words when he did his enchantments. Just a pity that he did it all in his own workshop, so nobody heard.
Rune magic uses words, but they are uttered in writing rather than spoken. Words is a very powerful vehicle of magic in all sorts of folklore, and it seems to be part (explicitly or plausibly) of almost every magic tradition in Ars Magica, possibly with the exception of some divination mysteries.
But anyway, this kind of decisions I think should be left for each saga to decide, to preserve the mystery of magic in the story. Personally, I think magic becomes too predictable if these virtues be teachable, and if the magi/players actually know that they are teachable, and Hermetically inventable, then it is a complete spoiler. I'd rather have the two magi debate in play whether they ought to be inventable or not.
How about "Kiss of Death" in the main rulebook, which adds extra magnitudes because its nonstandard gestures (embracing someone to kiss them) replace normal hermetic words and gestures? (I know, it's a legacy spell, but it's a canon corebook example that plays around with what's possible to vary spell design).
Would you allow someone with Quiet Magic x2 to learn and cast it as if it was 10 levels lower?
I think a definite yes, because anyone can invent any spell according to guidelines, and the guidelines allow PeCo35 to kill a person at touch range. You do not need Quiet Magic; you can just do lower level and -10 penalty. To me, the existing PeCo45 speaks of experimental spell invention with some bad die rolls. You'd much rather do PeCo40 at voice range than learn the canon spell, although, obviously, the PeCo45 is obviously well known throughout the order, and it should be easy to get a lab text.
But that wasn't the question. The question is if you would let the character with Quiet Magic learn exactly this spell but cast it as though it's 10 levels lower. No one doubts that a normal spell doing the same thing could be invented 10 levels lower and that a magus with Quiet Magic could cast it without speaking without penalty. But based on the prior statements and questions quoted, I can see why darkwing asked this question.
Sorry, I did not understand the question. I thought it was obvious that then it would not be the exact same spell ...
It would not be off maybe to let the quiet magus learn it as PeCo35 from a text, even if the text is PeCo45.
