Fun with Circles and Rings

Hi everyone! Testing out some ideas using T: Circle and D: Ring.

  1.  The first is a T: Circle and D: Ring to create light within the circle. Would that cause the circle to cast light out from itself (like a hermetic desklamp) or to have a circle where light is present but, step outside, and you are reimersed in darkness? Which would it be? (Happy with either.)
    
  2.   The second involves Harmless Magic. What happens if a magus creates a circle which "kills" anyone who steps inside it, but then drags the body out, if he has harmless magic? Is the body reborn? Or was it never really dead? What if the spell also removes the body from existence (obliviates it)?
    
  3.   Using Harmless Magic, can a magus create a circle that obliviates, say, a dog within, not only killing but removing from existence, and then break the cirle to make the dog pop back into existence? (I know this can be put to fun use as a storage scheme: A circle "destroys" a meat put inside it until broken, then out it pops fresh as new. I want to know if this can work with a living thing.) 
    
  4.   Can you make a Circle/Ring version of "Conjuring the Mystic Tower" so long as the tower was completely circular, as bounded by the drawn circle? 
    
  5.   Can you create a circle/ring version of intellego spells, where you may speak, for example, with any animal or rock within the circle?
    

Just wondering what people think!

  1. Circle casts light around unless you put a rego requisite to prevent it. We use this a lot in our covenant.

2 & 3. No idea about harmless magic (I don0t know what the virtue/flaw says in its text), but it sounds it might be possible. I would make the dog go to a regio in the magic realm in the meantime. For extra fun, the regio might be a kind of Memory palace of yours, so secrets can be stolen from you by a crafty duyde.

  1. Yep. Careful about the circle being broken, though.

  2. Yep. Remember that trees and stones can lie. :stuck_out_tongue:

CHeers,
Xavi

  1. like Xavi.
  2. "harmless" magic. You only provoke an incapacitating wound for the duration. IMO, the most you can do is the incapacitating guideline (or equivalent in other forms), and only for the duration. But for the duration, consequences as normal. Unless you make a ritual version, since your ritual magic is not affected.
  3. Since you cannot kill, you cannot obliviate (because it needs to be dead to be "dust to dust"'ed).
  4. Circle version of Creo is not possible when creating things. Ring duration is totally possible. But break the circle (which surround the tower and is the duration ring) and the tower disappear. Byebye labs and welcome botches for labworking.
  5. Why not. Personnally, I do not like circle spells allowing to affect multiple individuals in the circle (notably for boost characteristics spell), but for Intellego, frankly speaking, why not.

The description of the flaw says that you can destroy objects completely and then they reform when the duration expires. Just like it never happened. Think of it like muto, you can change an object so it doesn't exist but you don't change it's essential nature so it snaps back when it's done.

Except that I can't see a human who would die and finally not. If he is dead, he is dead. Otherwise, he is just not. Death is not something as trivial as disappearance of dirt, because where would your soul go.
Do you die but your soul remain? Would God accept it, that some kind of flaw allow it? Do you die and your soul depart, then, finally come back from purgatory because "sorry God, but it was harmless spell".

Oooh, interesting. In a lab rat or divine heavy saga I would rule that temporary obliviation does happen just to see how the players go about answering those questions. I would play fair and decide on an answer in advance.

OMG! Your player characters go to PURGATORY!?!?!?!? :open_mouth: What a bunch of good guys!

Xavi

another interesting question: does a "dead" human age while dead from such a perdo effect?

Either answer has its uses.

Basically I see harmless magic as incomplete Perdo that funtions like Muto or visless Creo. We know that an object created with Creo magic is incomplete without vis. In those cases there is SOMETHING missing that magic cannot create with out vis. I would say that normal Perdo is perfectly capable of destroying this SOMETHING but harmless magic is not.(at least without vis) Unable to completely destroy things in this manner the resulting effects are never "natural" so Perdo functions just like Muto or visless Creo. Things snap back when the magic ends. So the question really becomes where does the soul go when you Muto a living person into something unliving.

Or to put it another way harmless magic only MOSTLY destroys things and as the wise man said...

So when someone is killed/disintegrated with harmless magic they're still slightly alive so their soul doesn't have to pass. Just like you soul probably doesn't pass when your transformed into a statue. Does it go to limbo or just some sort of stasis. Is it aware or has it's paused button been pushed. These questions are not answered in the RAW, I could defiantly see the explanation being essentially the same for both effects.

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I wouldn't say so but I would say you gain warping if your "dead" long enough. Again more or less the same way I would treat being turned to stone.

EDIT: This way Montgomery Scoticus of Verditius could guest star on Ars Magica: The Next Generation for sweeps week.

The Circle and Ring parameters combination can't creat eanytihing inside, then if the bright is a CrIg spell didn't work? Right? More probable should work with two ring and circle spell, one to maintain ashes inside hot and another to make them bright how spells, one combination of Cr(Mu)Ig or a CrIg to light candles.

Where does it say that you can't create with Circle/Ring?

Certainly, you cannot use it to create discrete groups or individuals (for example, a yak within a circle).

But I believe you CAN use it to create things which are indeterminate by nature, such as light or fire or a breeze (CrAu to create a circle of constant, circular wind).

In fact, in the Flambeau section of HoH: Societas there's actually a spell, using Circle/Ring, that creates a circle of fire which tests the endurance of members at tournaments. (Don't have the book with me, but its there.)

If Circle/Ring can be used to create fire, why not light?

AM5, p.113, Targets and Creo. "The target of a Creo spell that actually creates something is the thing created. The target is thus always Individual or Group."

This is indeed contradictory with the spell Test of the Flames, p.36, which uses a Circle CrIg spell to make a Circle of flames, where according to AM5 it should be an Individual target with extra magnitudes for the shape.

I like the HoH:S way better. More fun and versatile.

Besides, circle targets and magic something that became more important with HoH:S and, and are all a little wierd in their own way. Ars Magica's writers have never been particularily up on the consistency thing, so I just pick the version that's more fun.

And if you're a Columba, this way certainly is.

With the Circle/Ring Magic virtue, you can ring any defined space as though it were a circle (clearing, room, castle etc.)

This makes for all kinds of fun. For example, Circle/Ring versions of spells that cause leprosy, Test of Flames like stuff (can also use acid, poison gas etc.) or ReMe effects can be all kinds of fun. (Though you do have to physically touch and walk around the boundary.... and people don't take too kindly to wierd graffitti artists muttering Latin and making arcane symbols on one's castle gates. :confused: )

Cast without voice or gestures then :mrgreen: "Just taking a walk after lunch, soldier, take it easy"

Using ReMe of course , as that suspicious person is acting in the same manner a spy checking out the defenses would be.

Wouldn't work: except for wards, the target of a circle spell has to be present inside the circle at the time of the casting. It's also why test of flame as written don't work, as many HOHS spells.

If you cast a Circle Ring Mystic tower that is actually MuTe instead of CrTe, I think the result is perfectly OK. Your underground area will be larger, but apart from that, I see no problems here.

Cheers,
Xavi

Seem perfectly RAW. But careful when the circle is broken :smiley:

Maybe hard to maintaine concentration if you talk to the soldier in parallel :slight_smile: