Frequency of Warping

Another question which came up somewhere- if you cast a type II spell, say on a room, of high enough level to cause warping when cast, then say a bellhop makes 5 trips into the room over the next hour- how is the warping figured?

Until ArM5 p.168 Powerful Mystical Effects is errataed, the bellhop gets warped once!

Anyone subjected to a powerful mystical effect gains a Warping Point, ...

The effect caused by the type 2 spell is always the same. Makes sense, too.

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Except he is, arguably at least, subject to the power mystical effect each time he enters the room.

It is a Warping point per effect he gets. And by the important ArM5 p.8 Glossary:

Formulaic magic: Spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time.
They have one effect each, but magi can only use their full power through Formulaic magic.

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I understand that is how you read it, RAW is much less clear.

One warping point when he is subjected to a powerful mystical effect.

So, enter the circle - be subjected to a powerful mystical effect.
Leave circle - effect wears off.
Enter circle - be subjected to a powerful mystical effect once more.
Leave circle - effect wears off.
Rinse and repeat.

I don't like or use the word - not term - RAW. It tends to mean "what I am able to get out of a text now without crossreferencing and analyzing context." The relation of spell and effect is already defined in the Glossary - and when you need it, can be taken from there. That is the purpose of a Glossary.

EDIT: The same kind of terminology is used for enchanted items in ArM5 p.98ff Instilling Effects.

funny, my book doesn't have a glossary, so I'm not sure what you are reading.
As Erik noted above, this is the way the rules read.

Then you have a strange printing of the core rule book, because there should be a glossary in it at page 8.

Not that the glossary adds anything interesting to this discussion, but it does exist.

Okay, strange way to organize a book but nothing new there. The only thing I see that "spells out" the relationship between spell and effect states that formulaic spells have only one effect, which means nada in terms of this conversation. Even the discussions of effects on p.95 doesn't really add to the conversation, though yes it does use "effect; as its terminology.

Never mind what the rules currently say for a moment. (They are obviously unclear.)

What should the answer be, and why?

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I'm trying to understand your position here, rather than complain about it. Are you saying that if Antonia, Benedicta, and Cassia all cast, say, Incantation of the Body Made Whole on Decimus in the same season (he's a little clumsy), he is only Warped once because all three spells have the same effect?

I think the rules on this are pretty clear as they are, but even so - I think the poor sod should get extra warping each time he enters the circle, since the powerful effect is applied to him each time he enters.

If one thinks that would give far too much warping to be fun, one could add a rule that if a person is subjected to the same or similar powerful effects multiple times during one day, you only get warping from the first such event each day.
(Warping per year would remain the same as before in case of multiple long-lasting effects.)

I think limiting it to the initial exposure of a given casting would be best. Additional warping after the first time calculated out using the yearly rate. Repeated warping from a single casting at greater than the yearly rate is needlessly punishing, especially since the yearly rate already takes into account entering and leaving effects which are powerful enough to cause warping multiple times over the course of the year. A powerful effect only causes 5 warping in a year, but because you walked in and out of it five times in an hour it is worth 5 warping?

Why is it that every time warping comes up on the forums, the focus is always on humans while ignoring what would be the far more common and rampant warping of animals, objects, and locations. Any game in which I participated which was "high warping" but then the warping of objects was ignored would raise strong objections from me. The average Magus lab should be a warp-apalooza but this seems to be commonly ignored.

Warping also seems to be very inconsistently applied in most games. Understandable since it can cause a time distraction in a game. However unless you are consistently applying warping to everything and everyone, deciding to wild hair cause warping to someone and then declaring warping broken is very disingenuous.

I don't think so. See for this ArM5 p.95

Even when you learn a spell from a teacher, it is your Wizard’s Sigil that manifests in your version; you actually invent the spell yourself, but with constant guidance from the teacher.

The rules might have benefitted a lot from distinguishing spell (as invented) and spell instance (as cast). This distinction wasn't made - and now its by far too late for it.
But this is not the issue here. We are talking here of the effect of a cast spell, which also by ArM5 p.8 Glossary "have one effect each". Running several times into it doesn't make it several effects.

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I find it implausible that, say, weekly application of Leap of Homecoming causes more warping than a constant effect of the same magnitude.

With this, I object to a rule which is much less ambiguous in RAW than the one in question, but I really think that the two cases are analogous and should be treated as the same.

I don't see a simple and consistent solution here. And I have not decided if some situations warp too much or others too little. I lean a wee bit towards erring on the side of more warping.

The spell has one single effect, yes. But you can get subjected to that single effect multiple times, and it is being subjected to an effect that causes warping.

Not quite. To be more precise (ArM5 p.168):

Anyone subjected to a powerful mystical effect gains a warping point, ...

So, how often one is subjected to that effect is not even an issue in the rule. Just dipping one's nose into the effect and fleeing for good, staying put in it, or running into it and out several times does not matter.

If @David_Chart wishes to make ArM5 p.168 easier to read, though, there are many ways to do so.

If we define warping from high magnitude to occur once per casting or invocation than an enchanted item which casts every sunrise and sunset for a permanent effect, unless an exception is written, would cause warping twice a day.
I think the general consensus seems to be that leaving an area of effect and coming back to it should not involve warping past the first time, at least in general. though whether that no longer holds after a day, a moon, a season, etc. is less certain.
perhaps such constant effect zones need to be handled more like auras where the higher the level of effect the faster warping accumulates for exposure, though this would require a more radical redesign of warping than what I believe is currently under consideration.

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Surprisingly, I have no strong opinions on this one.
I'll just say that:

  • In our sagas, somehow warping on "central" characters tends to feel excessive, and it creates an atmosphere like Warhammer's Chaos: an insidious enemy always out to corrupt you, which I do not particularly like. Yes, it does somewhat ameliorate the issue of "excessively magic-ed up" characters, which was a problem in previous editions. But still, it's not a medicine without side effects.
  • It seems intuitively "wrong" to me that being constantly subjected to a powerful, D:Year mystical effect not designed for you, should award 5 warping points, while being subjected to the "same" effect, but only once every dawn for D:Diam, should award you 365 warping points over a year.
  • I'm not 100% sure what happens when someone is affected by multicast copies of a single, powerful mystical effect.
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