Selective quoting again? Come on. Sure, there it says "include" because it then notes afterward that you can also do these via Spell Mastery, which the writing was trying not to exclude. "Include" also does not at all imply there is anything more. How about what the Virtue gives you?
You are descended from the Mutantum lineage, and can thus invent formulaic spells and magic items that take advantage of Boosting, Harnessing and Tethering (see Mutantum Magic, under Magic, above). You may also take the Tamed Magic virtue, and half of your starting spells may be âtamedâ versions of common spells.
Yup. That's all the Virtue allows. There is nothing more it gives you.
Just that that `'all' is nowhere written - certainly not in the text you quote. So you are free to add a little in an erratum to a Mutantum spell, which nerfs that spell.
Seriously? That's how we're reading Virtues now? OK. I'll take Large. So now I can spontaneously cast with a +50, right? I doesn't say +1 Size is all you get.
That's not how anyone normally reads Virtues, and I'm pretty sure you know that. They give you what they say they give you, not all sorts of unstated extras. nowhere does it say Mutantum Magic gives you anything beyond Harnessing, Tethering, and Boosting. If Mutantum Magic is going to give some extra stuff, it needs to be stated. So you would need to add an erratum to this to explain whatever extras you're now adding to it.
But now look at - say - ArM5 p.93 Verditius Magic, and confirm, that there is no reference to any Verditius Inner Mysteries from HoH:MC in that text. Still, obviously Verditius Magic is a prerequisite to these.
In a similar way, Mutantum Magic can be a prerequisite to The Tireless Flight without requiring updates outside of the spell. Simple. Right? Even a special type of Concentration for that spell can be made to depend on Mutantum Magic.
If you don't understand this, just let David Chart judge it in the erratum for The Tireless Flight.
Well it shouldn't. But I suspect we added that because too many things that "felt wrong" were being blocked by Magic Resistance if we were fully consistent. (And a magically created grog is not quite the same as an animated skeleton, but I don't think I'll press that issue.)
Yeah, not enough.
OK, how about this?
Make the level 10 guideline explicitly finish when you hit Unconscious or Incapacitated, to support Endurance of the Berserkers.
Add a new guideline that does not finish when you hit Unconscious, and gives you a Light Wound for every Fatigue level after that, to serve as the base for The Tireless Flight. Then errata tTF to the new correct level. Incapacitation still takes you down, because that implies damage to the body that makes it physically impossible to continue. ("It's only a flesh wound!")
If the policy seems reasonable, what level should the new guideline be? My instinct is that 20 would be about right, but that's only a gut feeling.
That spell then still does allow loss of all Fatigue and oodles of - mostly Light - Wounds without any penalties, as long as Concentration is kept up, right? Is that really intended even if in battle?
What to do to keep it - and its T: Group and larger variants - from becoming the go-to spell of the ReCo magus?
Just for the record, I was assuming animals and animated corpses as grogs, and with R: Touch, D:Conc/Diam/Sun (so +2 to +3 magnitudes on top of Base). The simpler version is D:Sun recast every morning and evening just after your Parma, but D.Conc + perhaps a Maintain the Demanding spell (perhaps at D:Sun/Moon) also works.
Animating a corpse is Base 10. Changing an ant or locally available minor animal into a loyal, club-yielding ape is Base 5 + 1 magnitude for Rego, so also 10.That's where the numbers came from. But it's a tangential point.
Hmm. I'd be real wary of this, because it can be abused. Basically, being able to walk or run without rest for a long time is not unbalancing per se, but being able to just keep doing other stuff without rest for a long time can be quite unbalancing.
I'd rather have a specific guideline that keeps a character going at a single physical task. So running, swimming mining, riding - possibly even fighting! - would be ok. Casting spells, performing labwork etc. would not. Hmm. Maybe the guideline is already there:
ReCo Level 10 Control the target's motions.
I think this would also make a lot of sense: if you can animate a corpse to perform a task tirelessly for a century, you should be able to keep a living person at the same task until he turns into a corpse .... and for the rest of the century. And the two magical feats should be of comparable difficulty. In fact, they are both Base 10!
This should be less tiring for the target than keeping at the task out of his own energy - it's the spell that sustains his movements after all - but it should be tiring, and eventually lethal: think Phidippides or a horse spent to death. In fact, being forced to dance until you die and forever after is a staple of faerie stories. I think the Deprivation rules, with a suitable time interval, would be perfectly suited for it. Ligher physical stuff like walking might be like going without food; strenous stuff like running or prancing might be like going without water.
fatigue as usual: after being awake for a full day, every eight hours of wakefulness causes the loss of a Fatigue level. Thus, after two days awake, they will be reduced to Unconscious (or earlier if they exert themselves) (A&A p.34)
And then there is the part about exerting themselves over this time:
Long-Term Fatigue levels are lost from extended tiring activities, such as hiking all day under a hot sun, or running to carry a message between cities. (ArM5 p.178)
AFAICS the problem with The Tireless Flight, that needs resolving, is:
A spell which by its name and position in HoH:TL (see HoH:TL p.98 box Milvini Spells) is meant to be used by the Milvini to flee danger and escape disasters can be read as a design pattern for a much improved and potentially gamebreaking Endurance of the Berserkers.
Just adding base levels to such an effect doesn't repair the damage The Tireless Flight can do to a saga.
What is needed is a structure for the Mutantum spell, which prevents that potential abuse, as the box Milvini Spells doesn't do that in the face of determined players.
What about changing the following in the description of The Tireless Flight:
However, this effect only masks the feeling, it doesnât actually replenish her energy, so she still must actually eat and drink to avoid starving to death, and if she pushes herself too hard she may cause herself serious injury (Fatigue levels past Unconscious become Light wounds).
=>
However, this effect only masks the feeling, it doesnât actually replenish her energy, so she still must actually eat and drink to avoid starving to death, and if she pushes herself too hard she may cause herself serious injury . She can turn every new Fatigue level past Unconscious into a Light Wound by concentrating for a combat round, thus making her body absorb it. This requires success with a stress roll from the Concentration Table (ArM5 Core Book page 82). This roll is modified by her accumulated Wound Penalties, which the spell does not mitigate for this purpose. A failed roll lets the caster fall unconscious and ends the spell.
This weakens the spell in combat and limits the Fatigue levels it allows to ignore - but keeps The Tireless Flight still an interesting specialty for the Milvini.
Whenever your Fatigue level is to reach Inconscious, you may cause yourself a Light Wound to resist it. If you succeed the roll, your Fatigue level stays below Inconscious.
(same Concentration Table + accumulated Wound Penalties as you stated)
I am not convinced that this is actually a problem. A magus who can cast level 30 to 35 spells reliably in combat, and who has chosen spells useful for combat, is typically going to guarantee victory against most opposition. A spell that allows the people playing grogs to still play a part in the victory is, if anything, a good thing that should be encouraged.
I don't think adding new rules to this particular guideline is a good way to solve the issue, which is why I suggested a guideline that explicitly supports the rules already given in tTF.
Under the proposed rules for tTF, which can apply to any activity, the character will get up to a suppressed Wound Penalty of â6 fairly quickly. That requires an immediate Recovery Roll of Sta + Stress Die with EF 4 to avoid one Light Wound becoming Medium. Casting fatiguing magic requires rolls for every spell.
EF 4 is easy, but you are probably looking at a 10% or higher chance. Actually, I am now concerned that you will get an Incapacitating Wound too quickly.
The problem with ezzelino's suggestion is that someone will come up with the spell that has you cast spells constantly, and then we have to try to write the guideline to only cover activities that can go on indefinitely. Running cross-country requires you to adapt to the environment, so you can't restrict to simple repeated activities and still cover the point of the original spell.
I may end up doing nothing because there is no clean solution⌠Given that people have not been going on about this for the last twenty years, it clearly is not a major problem in play, so there is a risk of the fix being worse than the issue.
If I understand correctly, You talk of the ReCo guideline you propose here.
Then your "new guideline that does not finish when you hit Unconscious, and gives you a Light Wound for every Fatigue level after that" still allows, that these Light Wounds immediately make the Character injured in the sense of ArM5 p.178f Activities while Injured, right? Their effects - but for the Wound Penalty - are not deferred to after new tTF expires, right?
I did not get that from reading you before and apologize.
I reckon, that consequences of Activities while Injured do still not apply in a combat the injuries are taken, right? So the "Recovery Roll of Sta + Stress Die with EF 4" is not immediate in this case: it only occurs with later actions.
Will not tTF thus become a preferred instrument for a big battle, instead of for a Tireless Flight? With such a big change in purpose, I would rather delete it completely.
Actually, I do not think it's so complicated. The effect would compel and sustain simple physical activities , of the type that a corpse animated by Awaken the Slumbering Corpse (ArM5 p.134) would be able to carry out. Prance, walk towards a certain destination, dig along a certain shaft, etc.
It's fairly obvious that spellcasting does not qualify. As for long trips requiring a bit of adaptability, that is what tethering is for (and why this is such a good spell for Milvii): the targeted redcap can adjust for a detour, or temporary pause exactly because the spell is under his control.
From a modern point of view, it's a little like being put into a "smart" (about as smart as a Slumbering Corpse) and comfortable exoskeleton, that follows the instructions of the caster - or of the target, if tethered. It can walk for days on end, and with a little adaptability, the target can sleep in it (the way some people learn to sleep while riding).
I'd add to Ezzelino's point, for what it's worth, that I can't see how a Rego Corpus could compel you to cast a spell.
You may go through the motions, even say the words, but these are different from using your gift.
So a spell that would sustain your motions would be of no use in spellcasting. IMO.
I would agree, but we are looking at errata to block an unreasonable interpretation of a guideline. We would really need to be explicit about what a new guideline could and could not do to avoid simply moving the problem around.
That is correct, I think. It provides a way to stretch tTF so that it can actually serve its intended purpose.
The only changes to the spell would be to (a) make it explicit that Incapacitation does affect the target and (b) raise the level. So, it would be nerfing it as a combat spell, relative to what is already published. I don't think that justifies deleting it.
I am tending back towards the position that common sense is sufficiently prevalent among ArM players that this does not desperately need errata, and that producing good errata may be too hard.
Well, stating that the "Suppress all Fatigue and Wound penalties" stops at Unconsciousness/Incapacitation (as you suggested!) does it for that guideline.
If you base the Tireless Flight on "control the target's motions" (perhaps rephrasing it as "sustain/compel the target's motions"), but you are afraid that someone might interpret that to sustain spellcasting ... well you should clarify it anyways, because that's what Strings of the Unwilling Marionette does (personally, I've never seen anyone, even the worst munchkin, assume that "control the target's motions" assumes you can compel or sustain spellcasting).
I would disagree here. Respectfully, but quite strongly! I mean, the Tireless Flight as written very clearly allows you to translate an unbounded number of fatigue levels into Light wounds (very easy to take care of). Most people (OneShot is an exception) would assume, from the way it's written, that this is nothing specific to a) Mutantes or b) travel. And this completely alters the fatigue economy that emerges from the corebook.
Look. I may be dumb, and so may every member of my troupe, but we definitely lack the "common sense" to "interpret" the Tireless Flight into harmlessness as written. Even though it's very fuzzily written and hard to make sense of in the scenario for which it's written (which is not the scenario in which most of my troupe would use it). For example ... if you accumulate "unfelt" wound penalties, how often do you roll for those wounds from worsening if you keep travelling? What does it mean that the spell does not provide you with energy, but only masks the feelings of hunger and thirst - do you fall Unconscious when Deprivation from food/drink would kick in? Do you keep going? And after that point do you suffer hunger-wounds as per the standard Deprivation rules, or as per the Fatigue-levels-for-Light-wounds ad-hoc rule, or both?