Trogdor and Arthur brought up concerns about my daughter and apprentice. I'm forced to agree that incorporating a major Supernatural Virtue requires an InVi lab total of 30 to open arts, and a 60 to preserve the virtue, and Strong Faerie Blood (SFB) states that if you can't preserve it, you can't be trained. Ars Magica isn't about things being easy. Although I do note there are several characters printed in game books with SFB, I didn't realize that there were so many magi with an InVi lab total of 60+.
Edit - figured out how to resolve this. Maria doesn't have SFB, just Faerie Blood. Perhaps Calpurnia's Faerie nature has been weakened by extensive working with iron, or in the Magic Realm? Maria just has a Minor Virtue, no other Supernatural Abilities, the InVi total to preserve the trait falls to 20. Done.
This is a minor issue, but isn't one of the points of fleeing to Finland that we want to keep a low profile? Having a large flying ship at the covenant hardly seems inconspicuous. Won't that draw a lot of attention to us, attention we don't particularly want?
If it simply floats in the water when at harbour, and wait until nightfall to fly off, that would avoid drawing attention to it.
If you want to fly it near the ground during the day, a T:Structure invisibility effect could do the job. I've designed a similar effect in the past for a different saga:
At the time I proposed a D:Conc effect because I wanted the option to make the boat visible at will. That has the drawback that the power needs to be reactivated at sunset/sunrise, which can spark stories. But the alternative (a constant use power) requires everyone to know a spell (or own an item) that allows them to see invisible objetcs.
True, but wouldn't a metal ship draw a lot of attention in 1260?
Don't you need Touch to make it work as well? That brings it up to level 30 and causes Warping on the people in the ship every time the spell is cast. I, too, tried this in another saga and I ran face-first into the problem of concealment causing Warping. Though if you have a solution to that, I'm eager to hear it.
I suppose if you enchanted the ship itself, it could be personal. But then you get into that odd argument I've seen on the forum about having to fit the ship into your lab to properly enchant it. Is that really a limitation? I'd love to enchant the ship in this other saga, but others are claiming that I'd have to fit it into a lab to make the enchantment.
It might. Perhaps an effect to change its appearance to something more traditional would be useful there.
At that time I was indeed enchanting the ship itself, so I didn't need a range greater than Pers. It was a boat (about 20 feet in length) rather than a full-sized, so I could fit it inside a Size +2 lab without additional problems.
The question of whether a high-level (30+) effect would warp all the people and things on/in the ship when activated is saga dependent. Some would say that it warps the structure rather than everything inside it. And the way you describe the effect is really important there. In my case, I was defining the effect as destroying the species of the structure about 1 yard away from it. So the effect target the species rather than the structure itself. One can argue that it is the species that gets warped, but since it is also getting destroyed it hardly matters. New species gets created by the structure all the time. The effect essentially created a shell around the boat.
This is answered in Hermetic Projects, p.60, the Lab has the Flaw Exposed, from Covenants, p 115. You move your lab to near your ship, and accept some penalties.
Indeed, a laboratory that is partially or completely outside (Exposed minor and Outdoors major structure flaw) solves the problem of enchanting huge items nicely. Outdoors specifically mentions that Size of the lab can be increased to any desired number.
The water is present only while within the spell duration, and yes - magic is magic. The idea was a thing which poured water until the caster wanted it to stop.
I could switch it to a water skin and have the skin trigger action be "when empty" it refills, and give unlimited uses. That'll do the same same thing and probably at a lower guideline.
I might do that anyway for efficiency.
Do you get your Inventive Genius bonus when binding your familiar or instilling powers into the familiar bond? I had through no, since the virtue is described as giving a bonus "when you invent new spells, craft magic items, and make potions."
Am I incorrect? I'll be happy to find out if I am.
Still thinking about Enchantment recipes. Since recipes for an enchantment specify a shape or material bonus and only one bonus, as long as that bonus is satisfied, one can get the full benefits of the lab text. That's what I'm thinking. If it can't be satisfied, for some reason, then you can only get a similar enchantment bonus equal to the magnitude of the effect, less any penetration bonus.
There are enough constraints on making items, chiefly being time, secondary one being vis that really minimizes the overall impact of this ruling.
From a rules lawyer perspective, the rules for binding a familiar are surprisingly specific, note that lab total for binding is explicitly specified on page 104. It makes no mention of other bonuses (excepting foci, or Puissant Arts/Magic Theory), or even having assistance in the lab.
IMO, Inventive Genius doesn't make sense, certainly makes a subsequent strengthening harder, as I'm not going to allow continually adding +3 to the lab total. As the text states, foci may apply. Probably the only extra bonus that makes sense to apply is bonuses used in improving one's lab, such as bonuses to Arts used in binding.
Updated my familiar binding lab total. Removing Inventige Genius had no impact for me, since I was over by a fair amount for the Cords I could purchase with it.
Sorry if I'm annoying. I understand that you're still thinking about it, but I'm having some problems parsing through your second statement.
Your second statement hints that lab texts for enchantments should only specify a single S&M bonus? What about items that were enchanted using multiple bonuses, would those additional bonuses simply be ignored by the lab text? What about enchantments that were done without using any S&M bonus?
I think my previous proposal was a bit stricter and clearer. Shamelessly reposting it.
This may show my ignorance, but I thought that you can add up whatever bonuses applied, up to the limit of your Magic Theory. The rules note:
The reference to tying all the correspondences into the enchantment seems to imply that multiple S&M bonuses could apply. If it were limited to only one, wouldn't it simply say "tie the correspondence into the enchantment" in the singular?
Further, the example given on page 97 seems to imply that multiple bonuses would apply if your MT was high enough:
This seems to imply that if Mari's MT was higher than 4, she could have used bone for the wand to get an additional bonus (up to the limit of her MT). If she was limited to one bonus, why talk about an "additional bonus?"
I'm perfectly willing to be told that the accepted wisdom on the subject says that I'm wrong. But it always seemed to me that the limit on enchantment bonus was the size of your MT, not the application of a single bonus.
