Fun with Targets

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I don't expect that this will lead to errata, but I want to see what the range of opinion is like.

The goal is to use MuAn to turn all of the woolen clothes that a person (or people) is wearing into silk. (No requisites required. Note that linen would require a Herbam requisite.) Range is Touch. The question is whether it can be done with a single spell, and if so how. More than one option may be possible.

One Person

A) Individual, and you only need to touch the person.

B) Individual, but you have to touch at least one of the clothes.

C) Individual, and you only need to touch the person, but only if they aren't wearing linen underwear.

D) Individual, but you have to touch at least one of the clothes, and only if they aren't wearing linen underwear.

E) Group, and you only need to touch the person.

F) Group, but you have to touch at least one of the clothes.

H) E, but only if they aren't wearing linen underwear.

I) F, and only if they aren't wearing linen underwear.

J) It can't be done. The clothes worn by a person do not constitute a Group of clothes.

Six people in a Group. (Assume the caster is a magic item, and ignore the question of whether it is part of the group.)

K) Group, and you only need to touch one of the people.

L) Group, but you need to touch one of the clothes.

M) K, but only without linen underwear.

N) L, but only without linen underwear.

O) It cannot be done, because the clothes worn by a Group of people do not count as a Group of clothes, although the clothes worn by one individual do.

P) It cannot be done, because the clothes worn by a person do not constitute a Group of clothes.

A number of people in a room.

Q) Room, and you only need to touch the wall of the room.

R) Room, and you only need to touch the wall of the room, but it will change all wool in the room to silk, not just the clothes.

S) It can't be done. There are non-Animal targets in the Room, so a spell with that Target fails, and no other single Target covers everyone.

2

Man, leaving nothing unturned, eh?

One Person: F

Six People in a Group: L and O are both possible depending on the exact spatial configuration of the group of people. Generally I'd say L.

A Number of People in a Room: Q and R are both possible, depending on how exactly the spell was invented at the lab.

2 Likes
3

This one is an easy one for my decisions.

I'm pretty solidly on L, but I also don't like it because one person's worth of clothes is the same.

Though on this one, I think you could design a spell for R instead.

4

This one.

This one.

This one.

5

FLQ, linen is ignored.

Room is safe, but FL would not sense wool underwears, right?

6

One Person: A.

Six People in a group.

Can I say none of the above? I've always considered a group, the range must be consistent. For touch range, while the magi doesn't need to touch every target, the targets must be touching each other. Assuming they were holding hands, or it was voice range, my answer is K.

A number of people in a room: Q initially, but switched to R after some thought.

I remember a thread before regarding selective group targeting, and it having scary consequences, so being able to target only the wool clothes in the room is a problem.

7

First one: F
I might house rule E, but to avoid any confusion and misinterpretation down the line, F.

Second one: O, to be consistent with F
There is the strange issue with Group of a Group.

Q. Not R because the spell is described as turning woolen clothes, not any wool-made items.

8

Actually, I forgot all the Part Target options for one person's clothes… Four more options, same pattern.

1 Like
9

One person: A
Group: K (but i prefer being consistent with Range when you try to affect a group, so unless people are touching between them i would use Voice)
Room: R

10

AKR!

One Person: Individual, and you only need to touch the person.

Six people in a Group: Group, and you only need to touch one of the people, since the range of a spell is the distance to the nearest part of the target of the spell (ArM, p.111, first sentence of "Ranges") and elements of a Group must be close but not necessarily touching each other.

A number of people in a room: Room, and you only need to touch the wall of the room, but it will change all wool in the room to silk, not just the clothes.

1 Like
11

F

O, unless the clothes are very obviously linked in some way (like livery for an army) in which case L.

R

Bob

12

F, L,
Q or R depending on just how the spell is designed.

Woolen underwear will be changed together with the rest, while linen underwear will be unaffected unless you do include a Herbam requisite.

13

F
L (though potentially O, I'll have to think about that one)
R, but could be designed for Q.

T: Part...
Do you want to make a silk sleeve on a woolen tunic, or...?

14

F
O (This is potentially L, but all the people would need to be wearing the same style such as a uniform)
Q (Spell says 'woolen clothes', though it could be designed to be R)

All the 'woolen clothes' worn by a single person are a valid Group. However when you get to all of the 'woolen clothes' worn by a group of people, most of the time it is no longer a valid Group since they are no longer closely related. However if you have a group of people all wearing a uniform (mostly matching except for differences required for fit) in close proximity then you have a valid Group that can affect multiple people.

Since the spell states 'woolen clothes' then it can not be R. You could change it to just 'wool' and then it would be R, but that is a different spell from what was asked.

All the bits about linen underwear do not matter. It is not something affected by the spell and its presence does not inhibit the spell in any way.

For Part, it really does not play a role in the spell described. If you tweak the spell effect you might need it, but even then unless you were trying to only affect a single piece of clothing you would end up with a spell that has multiple targets (Group & Part) and thus pay the higher cost of Group. In such a case a +1 Complexity might be required depending on what you are attempting to do.

4 Likes
15

A&B (you can touch the person or their clothes)
K&L (same caveat)
R

2 Likes
16

Thank you, everyone. I see we have even more diversity.

I am not going to errata anything as a result of this. All the responses look reasonable to me, and I don't think any useful purpose would be served by trying to be precise.

This does mean that people are likely to find published spells that they think are illegal or inefficient, because the author was working with a different concept of how Targets work, and I allowed it as reasonable.

2 Likes
17

To be honest, I tend to view any published spells that don't work in my own view of Hermetic Magic to be caused by experimentation. There are definitely a few spells that my players can easily find Lab Texts for that they would never be able to recreate on their own.

3 Likes