how long is a pace?

IIRC, the limit is the range to which your voice can be heard. Thus, a dwarf could very well have the same range as you.

Note also that, with such an assumption, a naturally legless magus could not cast voice range spells, because his pace would be 0... While his voice may reach as far as yours.

Which runs counter to the principle behind mysteries that sacrifice is a possible road to power.

The law of correspondences: small steps = small range - Mr Ferguson has got something truly medieval in his idea. I think a medieval scholar would have found his concept logical - this is really medieval. In the Middle Ages, there was no reliable inter-ciy standard of measurement - the Hanse (re)invented that later.

As has been pointed out though, those spells which give ranges in paces are Voice spells where the ranges are, really, guidelines for play. Whilst I find the idea that not everyone's "individual" is the same for any given form, having the variation be linked to leg length seems flawed. Would a permanent limp hinder the size of rock you can summon? Is the new combat tactic to be to hack at someone's knees?

Voice range is tricky enough as is - what happens when a magus casts PoF standing next to a cliff which generates echos? (Other than an out of control firestorm and possibly some inspiration for research?) Does it increase the range?

Except BoXer that the motions of the magus are completely arbitrary, and thus insignificant to the underlying system of power.

I did try to argue against this, back in the day. I did try to say "Hey, magic in Latin should be a matter of Sacred Langauge and the hand gestures of magi should form a sign language that is entirely readable, with strong correspondence betwqeen the shapes formed and the effect." but I lost that one, and so now, you can cast spellls without any motion at all, and you can actually say anything you like during spellcasting in any gibberish language you like, and its all equally effective. Magic in Latin or Greek or Gaelic or Something I Made Up is all equally effective, and if you have the right kind of mind, you don't even need to say the words (you are a Silent Caster) or you can deliberately say pointlessly inappropriate words (Performance Magic) for the magical forces to respond to what you are doing.

And that means that no, in the current system, you're wrong, because there are no increments, or any other form of meaningfulness, contained in the movements of the teacher. Gestures are concentration aids and nothing else - they are not mystically semiotic.

Now, you may wonder if this is true how it is possible for a magus to read your gestures and make counterspells..I can't explain that, because the hand movements for my Pilum of Fire and the hand movements for your Pilum of Fire need have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. If you have Performance magic, your hand movements for Pilum of Fire may well be slaping your buttock with a tambourine, and it works perfectly well, and somehow I can read that with Magic Theory...I can't explain that without giving magi some sort of additional magic sense, because the hand movements and vocalisations are arbitrary (indeed, technically they are unnecessary) in Hermetic magic.

This conclusion does not follow from your premise.

The current system is whimsy. Bjornaer magi can make gestures for spells while in animal form in the current system and cast the same spells in human form regardless of the fact that they don't have the same body parts and they don't need to reinvent the spells. Fred the Raven can wither flap his wings, or move his hands, or suck up the penalty and cast without gestures, and it doesn't matter to the Great Forces of the Universe.

I'd like you to try and explain these flaws again, because I don't see them in Hermetic magic as it currently stands.

I agree with your point: perhaps a Hermetic pace, if we agree tha such a standard exists, is based on the physical measurements of Bonisagus? Similarly, the judgement of what constitutes "Loud" speech or "Extravagant" gestures, may be based on him, as a sort of mystical physical template, much as the foot was, mythically, based on the actual foot of a particular emperor or king?

I disagree strongly. As is, there must be clear correspondences because otherwise magi couldn't use each others lab texts - they'd be mutually unintelligable. What is clear is that magi use the words and gestures as mnemonics, and that the words themselves don't have special meaning. For special meanings, you need synthemata and True Names.

Having Latin be a mystical language utterly ruins the setting since it implies that there's something specia about Latin and by extension the Romans. Why then don't all magical creatures speak latin? Why is it a fairly new language when magic is as old as the world? Why can Arabs and Gaels and Nubians cast spells at all? Trianoma, Birna and Diedne couldn't have contributed a thing to Bonisagus' theory.

Magic is clearly a function of the user though channelled by understanding and learning. Your form bonus, for example, shows your attunement to a Form (Ignem, for instance) but it's your understanding of Hermetic Magc that allows you to actually cast Pilum of Fire.

You're all very concerned about the dwarf. But what about my lame magus?!?!?
My boundary has an area of ... no real area
My aquam spells affect cubic paces, which is about, ..., nothing
My bold voice carries about, ..., personal range?

I like the idea that Bonisagus described the range of certain magic effects in relation to the units he often used. (so his paces and how strong he usually spoke for bold voice etc.)

Seconded. After all, the order and hermetic magic are there to, well standardise magic. It's what Bonisagus' theory does. Having no guides for describing spells, even arbitrary ones, makes telling someone else about your research and spells impossible in any meaningful way. Likewise, how about things not described in paces? Touch of Midas uses a volume derived from a pace to work out how much gold is formed. Are the 4 pawns of terram vis less useful to a dwarf than a giant?

Lab texts don't need to give somantic or verbal keys, though: a lab text for a spell can be as simple as a diagram.

Whenever someone says "Utterly ruins the setting" I lose respect for their argument. 8)

There is something special about the Romans. They were selected by God to be the close personal servants of his chief agent on Earth, and to be guided by the Holy Spirit to select that agent by election. Their language is, according to period folklore in the west, Simply Better. This is why Castillian is redesigned to be more "like Roman", and why its morally wrong to perform the sacraments in some non-Roman language (well, Greek and Hebrew might be exceptions, but even then, likely not.) 8)

Would you prefer, "...dramatically and needlessly changes, in a way which I find unpalatable, ..."? To me, ruination; to others significant change.

No, because its a web posture that overdramatises the change.

  • Just because Latin might be better for magic, doesn't mean no-one else has magic.
  • It helps to explain why some weird cave dwelling Latin speaker was a better magician than the centuries of Greek-speaking magicians before him.
  • It removes the idea that magi can just make up languages, or can set common words as the somantic components of spells (with Performance magic, you can effectively choose your spoken components for every spell, they needn't be the same between castings. ) which is just weirdly new age and, in my case, affects my enjoyment of the game when I allow myself to consider it to any deep degree while in play.

It is a dramatic change - it changes magic from a function of the mage to a function of some external thing to which a mage has access. There's already a game on the market with an urCivilisation and an urLanguage which helps call down magic, and where all other magica things are inferior - I don't feel that Ars needs to follow suit.

Given the objective nature of magic in the setting, can you explain why? The Order is descended from the Cult of Mercury, not the Roman church, and can hardly be thought to have Divine sanction.

I don't recall Bonisagus being particularly well known for his power, just his understanding. He brought together a lot of disparate ideas. Given the religious nature of magic users before him, and the secretive nature f cults, it's not surprising that few had done that before and really, the only surprising thing is that he succeeded. The man was brilliant.

To my mind, that merely emphasises the rote nature of formulaic spells and the mystical nature of magic, in that mnemonics are used to understand and guide things, with synthemata, shape-and-form modifiers and true names filling the places left for truly magical things. Oh, and runes, but just because I have a soft spot for them. This though, it really a matter of personal taste.

Out of interest, what's your view on the Adamic language from Ancient Magic?

I think the language choice is a matter of taste for the troupe to decide. Both Timothy and Fhtagn have sounding arguments IMHO.

It's up to the flavour of the game how you play it. Latin is the language of God (and therefore all greater power in the universe) for many medieval folk. But on the other hand, perhaps casting is just a ritual to get your mind to attune with your gift. Or any other reason you can think of.

It is a nice topic to discuss with your troupe if if ever comes up though.

In the same way that it is unnecessary to say anything while doing long division, yet if the calculating person does speak his thoughts aloud as an aid to concentration it'll be clear what they're about.

In other words, a lack of mystical importance, in no way implies the hand movements and vocalisations are arbitrary. There are practical rather than mystical reasons for the words and gestures.

Hermetic magc is taught, learned, described and thought in Latin. Bob's pillum of fire may be subtilly different from Jim's but the words and gestures they use (if they're useing them as an aid to concentration) will be sufficeintly similar to give the same clues to an observer.

Anything wacky enough to give the wrong clues is probably strange enought to require a spell mastery ability or a virtue.

The 'Exotic Casting' minor virtue in the House Misc. writeup is intended to reflect exactly that I think. So the clear default for hermetics is latin and certain repertoire of gestures/symbology etc... though with a wide range of personal flexibility. i.e. the language is the same, but somehow... we all sound different.

Now this is sort of broken in some instances by performance magic. But shouldn't performance magic be rather strongly themed? I'd require it to be so in my game. The theme of the virtue becomes the new metric of the magic IMO. Sure you can take 'Performance Magic: Guile' and cast a wide array of social mentem spells while trying to con or dupe people, without the usual verbal components. Since you already can do this by negating the words to begin with, I think this isn't so much of a stretch, it just lets you avoid the penalty for negating the words when using that one skill. It is also much more limited than say 'quiet magic', which functions all the time. The performance: guile for example would be hard to use in a fight IMO.

The Order as a whole is not descended from the Cult of Mercury. Parts of it are, certainly, but large other parts are descended from the Aita cult, the Diana cult, and other weirder things.

Latin's just a more magical language than other languages in the folkore of Western Europe at the time.

I like it, except it partially answers the question of which religion is right. Arab people believe that Adam spoke a particular language before the Fall, and it wasn't "Adamic" it was Syriatic. The traces of Syriatic in Arabic help fuel the magic of the practitioners in that language, in their own Sacred Language myths, and like Egyptian in Herodotus and Gaelic in Scots folklore, bits of Syriatic turn up in the speech of children before they are taught formal language.

This is one of the few times the line has said that one a belief of one of the religions of the book is verifably false, and I think too many moves in that direction would be a mistake.

Ok, what happens to someone with a wooden leg?
Someone without legs?
Someone with artificial legs?

And of course, then we will quickly see the nerf coming, that it only goes one way, but isnt valid for people with larger than average size. And really, a size +2 then suddenly means that any base unit of a form becomes alot bigger. But only if "pace" was used as a reference measure. That just ends up stupid.

:unamused:
So you equate the way a spell is transferred and/or targeted with how to measure how much it affects or at what distance?

That would seem to be the case, wouldn't it? :slight_smile:

Basically I think that the true nature of a magus must influence his magic strongly. I can easily see a 7 league stride cast by a giant moving him a longer distance than that of a normal sized maguis, anmd a dwarf having a rather short-ranged gift of frost's legs. It works well with the ambience we create IMS; it might be mechanicallty unsound if you want to number crunch the sysem, but it adds a cartload of color and "medieval feeling" to the setting IMO.

YMMV, as usual. I like thwe n otion. You are perfectly OK disliking it with a passion if tyhat is what rocks your world :slight_smile: IMS we go for color, and handwave a load of stuff that woulñd cause a fit of epilepsya (sp?) to a lot of people. Other people prefer other approaches to the mechanics. For us, roleplaying is more amber-style, I guess. The story comes first. Sometimes we have handwaved a roll and assumed a roll of around 30+ if it did fit the dramatic situation. And we have killed players that rolled a 80 for defence because the drama markesd that they had to die in that situation (including a 80 year old magus of mine). So far no complains from the players.

That might ilustrate some of my point sof view :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Xavi

I agree, but in this case I don't feel that it really applies because it's using the game's description of dimensions from the point of view of it being a game, rather than anything in setting. The true nature affecting spells crops up in the magus' ability to see, or shout, and also the sigil. That said, I can see that there's the potential for a great virtue/flaw pair here.

Copiuous/Reduced [Form] - Minor Hermetic Virtue, Major Hermetic Flaw For a specific form, you are so well or poorly attuned to it that for the purposes of spell casting, your"individual" target is either increased or descreased by one size increment. This may mean that you need to invent spells with additional magnitudes for size in the case of the flaw if, for example, you want your spells to affect normal humans.