As an aside, we allow a fix of an AC in one month rather than a season. We have also allowed evidence of a mage's casting sigil to be an AC to the caster - in this case an enchanted bird. However although we tweak the rules that much, an AC to a whole city seems a bit much. Refreshing stones etc periodically is my preference.
I'm thinking aboout that too, because it seems a lot of work and time for fixing one AC. But I'd rather House Rule that it does take a full season, but that you can fix multiple ACs simultaneously. Some variable, perhaps based on Magic Theory, or a fraction hereof. Or some fraction of Vim?
So in essence, you can say the AC needs to 'cook' for a fulls eason, but several batches can cook at the same time, depending on skill.
Because I like the system of ACs, the way that the easily purloined ones wear off in a jiffy. So yoy need to either spend time fixing it, or do the work and risk of getting a decade-lasting one.
The less prepared magi might find a few strands of hair, but lack the spells needed to track the culprit. And it will wear off, if they spend a season inventing the spell. So they spend a season first to fix it. I like that.
I'm not proposing taking a single stone, from one building or road or square, and wanting it to affect any and all things in the city. I want a lot of different ACs, and I want to be able to affect all those places seperately. Think "Haunt of the Living Ghost" - suddenly I'm spying on the area from a window pane, a fire, a fountain. Or a more advanced version, where you don't need the medium to appear in, where the shape of the caster is projected as a life-like image, and can move about.
And what about the Ranges and Targets 'Road* for Neo-Mercurians? Having a shard of a cobblestone means I can affect the road.
Having ACs to certain important buildings, means a PeIg Range: AC Target: Structure can put out the fire. Or a Pe or Re Te can pull the house down!
Check out the Harry Dresden books... his "Little Chicago" is exactly what you describe. A scale model of the city with AC's gathered from every building, tree, and asphalt road. He uses it for exactly the same purpose (namely, scrying and tracking targets, as well as projecting his consciousness into the city, sort of like an astral travel thing.)
He even discusses Arcane Connections in one of the books, where an attempt to magically track a teenager using a lock of baby hair kept by her mother fails. He discusses the reasons for that, and discusses AC's...
Anyone who even likes the idea of playing an RPG devoted to wizards should read the Dresden Files (avoid the short-lived TV series, though... fails to do justice to the material)
:mrgreen:
I have also previously been of the opinion that it is too high a price to pay for a single fixed connection. I've been rethinking this because of the +4 penetration multiplier. A +4 multiplier to a magus or to a creature of might is quite simply going to allow you enough penetration to make that target into you own personal pet. No creature is going to be able to resist your spells, because you can clearly amass a bunch of sympathetic connections to power it up. A nativity horoscope, a daily horoscope and a picture will get your penetration multiplier to x10!!
Is one season a fair price to pay for the magical creature companion virtue? For having the ability to control another magus (even if not necessarily legally)? I think it's not too bad. It's just too much to pay for an AC that's used to teleport to and scry on your favorite sports bar.
I don't think that I'd want to deal with the increased rules complexity and setting complexity necessary to parse these two AC uses into separate things, I use the rules as written.
This seems to contradict the Law of Contagion: Once together, always together.
Well, take a spoon.
Once a bit of metal in a greater bit? Your spoon is an AC to this greater bit.
Once in a forge or something? AC to the forge.
Once together with Magus A food? AC to the food, and magus A
Same with Magus B
Once together with all the covenant's spoons? Always together with all the covenant's spoons.
And the air you exhale? 10 years later, a magus could use it to target you?
OK, I'm being a bit ridiculous there, but you get the idea. This, in fact, quickly get ridiculous. The phrase you quote, IMO, means that things that were one but are separated are still one. But it doesn't specify for how long 
It's OK, I enjoy ridiculous sometimes. But by my interpretation of the post-Aristotlean paradigm, a bit of a metal changes its essential nature when it becomes a spoon. My troupe's never interpreted AC's to mean that mere coexistence or proximity to something bestows AC status to it. 10 spoons in a box are 10 different spoons. Snip a bit off of a spoon and you have an AC to that spoon. And it does specify how long the connection lasts: always. But if you melt a spoon down and forge it into a belt buckle the connection is broken because it's no longer a spoon. This is Aristotle's view of the essential nature of things.
So, simply physically changing something changes its essential nature and makes it cease to be an AC?
Take a big rock. You cut some. It is an AC to the bigger rock. Then, cut it into a block. Is it still an AC to the bigger rock? Then, take that block, and put it with a bunch of other blocks in order to make a road or wall.
By your definition, if taken away from the road/wall even centuries later, the block wouldn't be a connection to it because "mere coexistence or proximity to something (doesn't) bestows AC status to it"?
If no, this seems very wrong, and makes it impossible to take a block out of a roman road in order to spy on and affect that road.
If yes, take your block. It is an AC, everything is fine, but you find it too cumbersome. So you just cut out a bit, and, for fun, fashion it into a little circle. By the same reasoning that metal forged to spoon is no longer an AC to the greater block of metal, stone block cut and changed to a little stone circle shouldn't be an AC to the greater wall.
More so, If you take blood out of someone, but, for convenience sake, uses magic to change it into a little, easily transportable crystal, why would it still be an AC to that person?
You're also, IMO, forgeting the magical notion that everything is connected, and, more importantly, the law of contagion.
It's the Aristotlean concept of forms and their essential nature. Aristotle believed that somewhere (the ether?) existed a perfect representation of every form imaginable, and earthly examples followed these forms. So somewhere there was a perfect spoon. It was not also a lump of metal, and also a cup of molten alloy, and also a rock in the earth, even though the spoon was at one time all of those things. Man's work changed the ore's essential nature into molten metal, then a spoon. So the spoon is no longer an AC to the ore pit it came from, it is simply a spoon. Take a snip out of it and that sliver is an AC to the spoon, but nothing else. I am not making this up.
No, a chip from a paving stone is an AC to the road at that location as long as the paving stone remains there. If it is dug up and carved into a bust it is no longer a paving stone and the AC is lost. But a bunch of blocks made into a wall is a wall, so a stone from it is an AC to it. But sitting on a chair doesn't make the chair an AC to the person who sat on it. No one's essential nature changed, no whole was separated.
Correct. When you collect an AC leave it as is.
Hermetic magic can't change something's essential nature, unless you make it permanent with vis.
No, in fact it's my chief argument against the concept of AC fixing. Once together, always together. No batteries required.
So, simply using Muto on an object would make it cease to be an AC?
By your interpretation, I disagree. The block was put next to other blocks to form a wall, just as the spoon was put next to other spoons to form a bunch of spoons.
If a spoon stayed close to other spoons for centuries, becoming known as, say, the famous golden spoons of Emperor Trajan, I can't see why they wouldn't be an AC to each other (or to trajan, if he used them each day of his life for 50 years) while a block put aside others would suddenly be an AC to them because they are now called a wall.
So, if I "collect" a finger for someone, it is an AC to that person only so long as it is a finger, and not a bone?
???
If you take into account the law of contagion, then you have to admit that, just as, by being close to other blocks in order to form a wall, a given block may become an AC to the wall, by being used by someone regularly, a spoon may become an AC to him.
And no batteries? If your block is taken from the wall (AC to the wall), to be integrated to another wall (AC to the other wall), and then to a house (AC to the house) and then to a road (AC to the road), as occured frequently in middle ages (people took down previous constructions to use building blocks), what happens? This is why AC expire, also.
I don't know if 5th ed still makes this distinction but "historically" Hermetic magic cannot change something's (or someone's) essential nature unless the change is made permanent with use of vis. This was one of the fundamental limits of Hermetic magic. So if you take a chip from the floor of your council chamber and Muto it into a tiny stone figurine of a bird (duration less than Perm. or Instant) it is still a stone chip; only its present form is altered. Sight of the True Form will reveal the bird figurine to be, in fact, a chip. Make that change a Perm. spell (with vis) and it is no longer a chip from a floor, it is now a cute little knick-knack.
I think it could reasonably be argued that a "set" of spoons, all made together (same smith, same forge, same pool of molten metal) and formed as a set, are AC's to one another. But merely taking a number of spoons, all from different tinkers and smiths, and thrown together in a drawer doesn't make them AC's together. Even if they stay in the drawer for 100 yrs. I don't see how a bunch of random objects, with no other linking factor other than physical proximity, can develop a bond of this magnitude. Unless they have some other mystical connecting factor, such as...
The famous golden spoons of Trajan would, by our rule, be AC's to one another, and probably to Trajan himself if he did indeed treasure them so much. Emotional connection to an object does make something an AC to that person, even by old-school rules. So your favorite cloak, the one you wear no matter how patched and stained, that would make you sad or upset if you lost, is an AC to you. NOT some random cloak you grabbed off a peg and wore a few times.
No, the finger belonged to someone, was part of someone, and it's well within the paradigm that the bone is inside the flesh, so it's still an AC regardless of the state of decay (at least until the point it no longer even vaguely resembles a finger or finger bone--that's a SG determination when that happens).
It's not the simple fact of proximity that makes a stone block part of a wall, it is that a wall is a wall. It is the concept of a whole thing, of something's essential nature, that Aristotle meant. Two blocks set side by side and a third set atop the two is not, by most conventions, a wall. I have no idea at what point (how many blocks, how high?) a pile of blocks becomes a wall, that is a modernistic way of looking at things and contrary to the concept of the medieval paradigm, at least (I believe) as Aristotle saw it. At some undefined point a pile of stones ceases to just be blocks and start to become a wall. At that point (and in the paradigm it may not be a point, but a fuzzy area or segment) the blocks become AC's to this wall as their essential nature has changed from mere block to wall.
I fully agree with you in concept precisely because materials were recycled commonly in the Middle Ages (for practicality, not to "save the environment"), and I think we're both hunting around the same tree here. To take your example, a chip from one of these blocks is not simultaneously an AC to two walls, a house, and a road. Each time it is integrated into a new whole it loses its connection to its former structure/thing as it becomes a new thing.
Sitting on a chair does not make the chair an AC to a person because they were never part of a whole thing. In Aristotle's view there is a perfect chair, and all chairs are less-than-perfect representations of it, but there is not a person-on-chair in the ether (or Olympus, or wherever the goofball thought these things were). Likewise standing on a floor doesn't make the floor an AC connection to you; pooping in a chamberpot doesn't make it an AC to you (unless it was your prized chamberpot you've kept with you for years 
), etc., etc., ad nauseam....
No problem, just use rego or perdo to change its appearance, like taking your block of stone (AC to the wall) and Perdoing it, breaking it into little stones.
If "physically changing something changes its essential nature and makes it cease to be an AC", these stones will no longer be an AC to the wall... while another little stone taken directly from the wall would be an AC to it.
Hell, take a limb from a pig (AC to the pig), just process it into ham (either naturally or by using Rego magic to do mundane craft in an instant) and it will suddenly no longer be an AC because it looks more like ham than a limb?
To me, this has even less sense and is less magical than having ACs expire over time. By 5th Ed, your ham wouldn't be an AC to the pig, not because it has become ham, but because enough time has passed and the two are no longer associated.
Yet, you said above that taking a bunch of unrelated stone blocks and piling them on, one would become an AC to the rest of them (the wall).
Either you use the Law of Contagion for everything, or you don't.
IIRC, the law of contagion cares nothing for emotionnal significance. If you sit on the same chair in your lab year after year because it is the only chair, it will become an AC to you because of this association.
Do you care about a lock of hair? Does the wall care about a block? Of course not. It is an AC because of contagion (close association for a long time), not because of emotions.
If you cared so much about your beautiful cloak that you only wore it once a year to not dirty it, while at the same time wearing day in and day out the same old cloak you don't care about, which would be more closely associated to you? When people think about you, what cloak will they picture you with?
Ok, I feel like a jerk there, but... Then, appearance has nothing to do with being an AC. What is important is that it was an AC. So, to come back to the spoon, a lump of metal, part of a bigger block, that is shaped into a spoon belonged to it, was part of it. Mere appearance doesn't change what you are (metal), nor what you were (part of a bigger ore).
I'm sorry, I just can't agree with you there, nor can't I follow your reasonning, nor does it correlates with "known" laws of magic.
A block is still a block, as you can see it you look at it closely. It just doesn't suddenly becomes a wall, nor do your single block suddenly becomes an AC to a bunch of other unrelated blocks, while, still by your thought, I could spend 10 years wearing the same trousers because they're the only ones I have without them becoming an AC to me (while everyone knows me as "the man with the dirty old trousers"). There's a problem with this.
Also, to follow with your reasoning: Give a random roman slave a spear. Send him into battle as front troop. There, he dies instantly, killed by an arrow. Centuries later, a magus finds the spear in the battlefield, but these aren't an AC to the man? What of the sword a roman soldier has used for 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? By your reasonning, it would never be an AC, which (then again) goes against the law of contagion and feels wrong.
So, aside from a changing appearance, integrating an AC into something else make it cease to be an AC?
So, if I take a block from the wall of lamentations or the great pyramid and integrate it into my poor peasant's house, all these centuries of close association just dissapear at once and it just becomes an AC to the crude and poorly build wall of my house? This seems utterly wrong to me.
But... Then, what of your "once a part, ALWAYS a part? You found the notion of AC expiry to be illogical, yet you have an AC to the great pyramid of Gizeh just stop at once because some poor old dude piled it with other rocks to form a wall on which to build his house.
Either you MUST be part of something, or you don't. Thus, either one of Solomon's ring can be an AC to him, or it can't.
Note also that you yourself introduce the notion of duration with the chamberpot. So, if, say, a loved one offers me a pendant which really really pleases me, it wont become an AC afters years of wearing it? Sounds furiously like the law of contagion there 
But you have 2 pendant worn 10 years, one an AC because I loved it, the other not an AC because I didn't care about it... IMO, this is illogical, and also creates a lot of problems: "Does the king care about his throne, making it an AC, or doesn't he, and it isn't, despite him having seated on it for 15 years?"
BTW, maybe this should recall you something. After all, this is from this law that comes the whole notion of AC, and is why Ars has AC working by association. Note also that you make the whole "integrate a scrap of clothing into a voodoo doll" useless.
I would think in this case you would transform a single AC to the hypothetical block into a number of AC's to it, as well as to each other. If you scatter all but 1 of these stones all over France and stand in Paris and cast an appropriate InTe using your single pebble whiere would your spell point? To the original block? To each of the other stones? If I was SG I would say, perhaps, all of the above. Your spell points you in a 360-degree arc (or so), and now you can track each one down and retrieve it until you get to the source. Or the closest pulls you the strongest. Dunno. No one's ever done such a thing in any of my sagas.
No no no no no. You didn't change their essential nature with the PeTe spell, you still have a bunch of stone pieces. Changing your stone chip into a flower with a MuTe/He spell (Dur: permanent) does change its essential nature--it is NOT a stone chip any longer, it is a flower.
Ahhhh, yes, we agree. 
No, I don't quite think so. The ham is still meat, which is what animals are made of (yum! I want ham now), it is still a part of a pig. But the maggots that eventually eat it aren't AC's to the original pig, any more than you are an AC to the pig because you ate it.
But it's not a function of their physical proximity. Set a basket next to the wall, or on top of it, and by my interpretation the basket never becomes an AC to the wall because they were never together as part of a whole. The distinction is that once a bunch of blocks become a wall that is what they are: a wall. They are made or formed of individual blocks but together they forma whole, distinct, unique thing: this wall. The basket left atop it never becomes a part of it, it's just sitting there.
The ArM rules we play by didn't state this either. Items that are intimate to the person (and 3rd ed does use the example of your clothing) are also AC's to the person, but it is not the law of contagion that makes it so. Also, items that a person considers emotionally important or significant form a stronger connection than ones he merely owns or uses. So the comb your mother gave you in childhood may never lose its connection, while the cloak you've worn for years (but have no love for) will.
I think we're saying the same thing here, but with different basis of rationalization (funny, rationalizing magic). I can buy the chair as an intimate item if it's the same one you've sat in for years, in which case the connection forms over time. I was under the impression you were saying just sitting on a chair made it an AC to you, but if it's your chair, then sure. But say you move that chair to a guest room and have another one brought down from the attic and now you have a new chair. Old chair: no AC anymore (unless your character really loved it, and misses it, thinks fondly of how it felt under his bottom...snicker) Again, it's not the mere fact of geographic proximity that makes it a connection (it's not radiation!) it is the bond that forms between a person and her things.
Not in my interpretation. It's not the "close association" IMO, but the lock of hair was a part of a whole, as was the stone block.
Both are AC's to you. The cloak you wear (and have no significant attachment to other than it keeps you warm) will lose its connection to you if you stop wearing it. Also, the way we play giving it away will also do the trick, because the act of freely giving something away severs the intimacy that had been established. The one you treasure in your heart will remain connected to you so long as it is yours and you still treasure it. And no, if it's stolen it remains an AC to you (so long as you still treasure it, as in "sighI really miss that cloak, I'd give anything to have it back")
Don't forget the Law of Sympathy: That which looks alike is alike. Is that still in the 5th ed?
Changing a lump of iron ore into a horseshoe changes not only what it looks like but what it is. Now as a SG I might let a player use a horseshoe to find the mine where it was dug, but probably not. If he had a lump of raw iron ore from the pit then definitely.
According to Aristotle the block (when stacked with other blocks) does become a wall. Just like the tree becomes a chair. And the ore becomes a horseshoe. But I think I already answered the dirty trousers question: yes, they are an AC to you, until you cast them off and get some new ones (or give up pants altogether!).
No, in this case I believe it would. There's always room for certain powerful events to form the AC bond without disrupting the internal logic of the game. A knife you've never touched can become an instant AC to you if it's the knife that killed you. But not always in every circumstance. Otherwise you have a situation like this: take a sword. It is owned by a knight, in fact his father made it and gave it to him, so it's very special to him. This knight goes on Crusade and kills 100 people, which is a pretty significant event to them. Are you saying this one sword is simultaneously an AC to the iron mine where it came from, the forge it was made in, the smith who made it, the owner, the scabbard its rested in for 20 years, the 100 people it killed, and the squire that sharpens it every night? By this reasoning it follows that every time a mage uses an AC she will have scores, if not hundreds, of connections to sort through like some cosmic spiderweb?
Sometimes but not necessarily. Case by case. Throwing a random spoon in a drawer full of spoons does not make a "set" of spoons necessarily. Taking a random block of stone and adding it to a wall makes the block a part of something new. Gluing a leaf to a wall doesn't make the leaf a wall.
Me too. It's entirely within the paradigm, IMO, for that block to retain a mystical connection to something like the Great Pyramid. Maybe forever (or as long as there's still a Great Pyramid). But if a peasant digs up a rock and integrates it into his house, then 50 yrs. later someone pulls it down and some other peasant uses that same stone to build his house I don't see why that stone still has a connection to all the others, which are now not a wall, but a pile of rubble...or part of 50 other peasant houses!
OMG, look! It's from the OP! Probably thought we'd forgotten, after so rudely hijacking your thread to go off on a tangent of absurd proportions, or worse--that I just didn't care. Not so.
I am truly sorry, ultraviolet (if you even check this thread anymore... 
), but in fact I have not stopped thinking about your city model and your particular problem. I have a couple of suggestions.
First, there's the possibility of allowing you to fix a number of AC's equal to your Magic Theory. I like better the idea of tying it to your Intellego score, so you could in one season fix 10 AC's with an In 10.
Alternatively, and this is a bit more radical, you could change AC fixing from a lab activity to a spell. Something like this:
Again, sorry about stomping around in your thread. I hope this helps.
I drift in and out of this thread, not really taking the time to read all the comments in enough detail to really appreaciate them. Somewhat derailed, but still sort of relevant and interesting.
The magus in question still hasn't started this project, we don't play that often, and recently time goes slowly (read: more story than lab projects, so that's not all bad).
I think I came to the conclusion, to not alter the AX fixin' rules. Simply live with the fact that the magus himself, or more likely an agent, needs to constantly refresh the ACs. But if I keep mostly to those with duration in years or decades, this is a small matter. Even though it takes a full season for each and every AC, it's still cool enough for those situations, where you have that lock of hair from your arch enemy...
OTOH I really, really like the ritual spell. Imagine a situation where you are miiiiiiiiiles from your lab (and no cheating with flight or teleport!), and you've found the perfect AC to the enemy magus/demon/dragon. But it expires before you can get to a lab! Bam! with a little preparation, this spell solves the conundrum. Or maybe you could get home, but doing this - along with the full season needed for fixing - sets you waaaay back on your chase. This is an anticlimax. Spell solves this.
By having it be a Ritual, it takes time, and vis to do. Personally I think I'd make the guideline '2 magnitudes per AC'. Effectively making it twice as expensive in vis as spending the full season. But then why ever have the spell at higher than level 10? No reason really, no vis is saved, nor time to cast, by doing 2 level 10 spells for fixing to ACs one after the other, compared with a single level 20 for both at the same time. Time for Rituals is based on magnitude, 15 minutes per, right?
Drawback of the spell-option is that people with weak Re and/or Vi (or even Deficiencies) gets penalized unintentionally. Before, no matter how much you sucked, you could fix an AC. Even an apprentice could do that. You just need a lab, no matter how suckingly bad. But using the spell option, some people might get problems with a 2nd magnitude spell, if odds are against them in these arts/activities.
Thinking about even more options, consider making a non-ritual ReVi (or another Tech? Cr? Mu?) spell to extend the duration of an AC. I mean for this to be the way to solve it, when you have a long way back to the lab, or need to postpone the fixing procedure for a season.
And if you're mean, let the Ac be non-functional while in this 'stasis', or at least let if be less efficient.
For further mean behavoir, perhaps rule that this spell can be made as a semi-ritual (following all normal rules for rituals) except duration is only Season. Good for putting off the fixing proces for short while. And perhaps this can only be done once? Or make it Year, like Aegis.
Gulp well I've got news for you that may cause some consternation:
The perdo vim guidelines for making an AC decay can be flipped to make creo vim guidelines to slow the decay of an AC (it's in Magi of Hermes).
Yay! Someone liked one of my suggestions!
The beauty of Creation lies in the myriad possibilities inherent in ever situation. There are just so many ways to skin the same cat, and the elastic nature of human thought can eventually encompass them all. In such a vast playground everyone can play the games they want and everyone gets to have fun!
Why not (gasp) do BOTH?! I wouldn't worry about penalizing someone with low arts or deficiencies (they knew what they were getting into when they took a Deficiency, right?), but by having it still a Lab option that anyone can do doesn't leave anyone in the cold. On a sidenote, although none of the RAW that my troupe has read or uses states it, we allow magi without Sense the Nature of Vis and Scales of the Magical Weight to determine the types and amounts of vis they have in their Labs. Not an entire Season, just a slice of your downtime, but since none of us have these spells, and our spell library lacks them, it solves the problem of identifying vis. We just can't do it in the field...yet.
All excellent ideas. In fact, per Erik T's post it seems there's some precedent for this. But I'm all for new and creative spells and activities that enhance the game and everyone's enjoyment of it.
I've considered the ritual fixing spell in the past as well. I think that base 15 should do well, then range touch gives you a level 20 ritual. I'd make the pawn to fix the connection an additional cost to the ritual vis. So for five pawns you could fix a connection without spending a season (of course you have to spend at least a season to lean the spell first, casting tablets are an exception).
But then I think well why not make it group for level 30? you can fix up to ten connections with one ritual at a cost of 6 + n pawns where n is the number of connections to be fixed. I'm less comfortable with this option.
Let the amount of additional Vis used be twice or even triple that of the number of connections fixed then.
It really IS a very good option, either do an occasional AC in the lab at minimal cost except time, or spend LOTS of Vis to get one or many done ASAP.
At n*2, fixing 10 ACs then means spending 26 Vis. For someone in a hurry(or a panic!) it can certainly be worth it, but those kind of amounts of Vis isnt something most characters will have at hand or get at the drop of a hat(unless of course they´ve been saving up, but that means they havent spent it elsewhere already...).
Im already writing it down for future inclusion in HRs.