Incorporating Hedge Magic

If a magus wanted to do research with a learned magician to incorporate fortunam (used to manipulate luck/fortune for those without hedge magic) as a new form in hermetic magic what do you think the requirements for that would be? It doesn't involve breaking any of the limits as I understand them so I was leaning towards it being a major breakthrough but I'm really not at all sure. Thoughts?

Personally I would say that it's a Hermetic breakthrough as an entirely new form does marginally undermine the basis upon which magic theory was based. Magic theory is meant to be all encompassing (even though it's not) and therefore saying that some part of it is wrong or even in this case competely absent, requires redefining the basis upon which Hermetic Theory is based.

Especially since Luck seems to be at least tangental to any of the 10 existing forms.

A

Hmm, I'm not sure I follow how you're differentiating between this case and others which are major breakthroughs. For example, adding chartae (spelling? I don't have hedge magic with me) to hermetic theory is specified to be only a major breakthrough even though the idea of making a simple one off object with a charged spell is foreign to hermetic theory in RAW. I'm not sure how that's is different (except on a matter of scale) from adding a new art. That's why I was leaning towards it being a Major breakthrough (although probably a more difficult one than others) but this might simply be because I'm missing some info on Hermetic Breakthroughs that's in RAW. Unless I've totally missed the point and you're referring to a lesser limit that hasn't occurred to me / that I've forgotten.

As a side point, since fortunam is a difficult art and thus advances as an ability in the learned magician tradition I'm curious if people think that it would automatically transform into a full art once incorporated or if it would be a separate breakthrough (minor or major?) to make it advance as an art.

Fortunam could be Incorportaed in two differents ways:
Like an Art, a new form, and that should be a Hermetic Breakthrough. Some guidelines from anothers Form could be borrowed or be a Mutual Requisite, etc.
Like that the Guidelines could pass to differents Arts, normaly like general spells. That should be a Major breaktroguh incorporating a Mayor Virtue: "Fotunesmith" or something like that, just like the Dream Magic or similar things. The creation or hermetic Mystery of anothers secrets from Learned and similars magicians could work in that way.

Hmm, it actually hadn't occurred to me to incorporate the guidelines into different arts. I know in True Lineages in the Guernicus section there are some semi Hermetic vim rituals which look like they have effects based on luck. Maybe fortune would be incorporated into vim? I don't know, it really does seem to be orthogonal to the existing arts so I'm not sure how to cleanly incorporate it.

I'm not sure Fortunam works as a discrete form, i.e. interacting with all the standard techniques, but then there's nothing to say that it must.

So I'd be relaxed about allowing this as a Major Breakthrough. After all, your player wants to do this, and the troupe obviously don't mind the implications of a magus having some control over "luck", so I wouldn't put too many obstacles in the way.

As a Major Breakthrough, you have quite a number of effects you need to create/replicate so this is going to take some time to do anyway. I don't think it warrants anything making it arbitrarily harder.

I think that if you're making it a new Form, it's a major breakthrough. If you're adding spell guidelines to Vim, I'd put it half way between a minor and major breakthrough. This is the way that I would go. There are other things written, the Magic Realms book for instance, that say that Bonisagus was right and there are only ten Forms as confirmed by the structure of the Magic Realm. This doesn't have to be true in your saga, and I rather think it shouldn't be true. Ten is not a magic number and neither is 15. Twelve is a magic number, there should be twelve Forms. Fortunam and Tempus would be the two that I would nominate to add.

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I think i would lean towards a Major breakthrough to make it accessible as a Virtue(that any magi can learn as a mystery i mean) and a second to make it standard.

Aether is the one we have played around with a bit as an additional Form (its basics is governing that which is energy without a source or energy that cant be seen(ie ~etheral energy), ie the warmth of light, lightning not from weather, magnetism etc).

I think I'd go with Hermetic level. Even if you develop it as a major virtue, rather than as a new Form itself, it doesn't bear any resemblance to existing hermetic magic. Dream Magic is, imo, a poor analogy. Dreams are clearly related to Mentem and the usual question is why a virtue is needed rather than simple ME magic. Fortunum is the opposite.

A new Form (which means a new vis type, spell guidelines, etc) sounds like a Hermetic Breakthrough to me.

However, just because it is a Hermetic Breakthrough doesn't mean that it necessarily requires a lot of Breakthrough Points. Pick the number of Breakthrough Points depending on how long the troupe wants the character to spend doing this research. If the troupe wants the character to spend ages doing research pick a large number of required Breakthrough Points. If the troupe wants the character to develop this quite quickly, so that you can rapidly tell stories about the Breakthrough in play (for example), then assign a small number of required Breakthrough Points.

Salvete, Sodales!

Personally, I would assume that a difficult hedge art would be turned into a difficult hermetic art, turning it into a normal art would be a second breakthrough, just as it would be for the hedgie (cf. HMRE, page 9). But then Fortunam isn't a difficult art, as in learned magic only the technics are difficult (ibid., p. 82-83).

Vale,
Alexios ex Miscellanea

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My personal take was always that the concept of forms was itself a limitation of magic theory. Consider that people can have a magical focus and be good at magic that crosses form boundaries. To me that suggests that with a hermetic breakthrough you should be able to make it so that magi can learn whatever 'form' they want. So, for example, if someone wanted to be a necromancer rather than taking major magical focus necromancy they would just get a book on necromancy and earn xp in the necromancy 'form'.

In terms of game systems it would be more complicated to figure out how you could cast a spell. It would probably involve adding up the xp in all of the forms you had that applied to the spell for your form score, and similarly for techniques. So if you had xp in animal, necromancy, and birds of prey, then you would add all of that up. You would probably also need to apply some sort of multiplier to smaller forms like those equivalent to minor magical focuses.

Obviously this would have huge effects on magis' abilities to improve their magic, since they could focus on studying from high quality low level books in a wide variety of forms. It might be too complicated to be fun to play as well.

I guess this is mostly just an illustration of the sorts of things that I always think of as stuff that you could achieve with a hermetic breakthrough.

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Another way of thinking about this is that the ten Hermetic Forms might match the basic building blocks of the world (as revealed in the Magic Realm), but that does not limit other Hermetic Forms existing. Aether, for example (the fifth element, and the only superlunar one) could well exist; but the Limit of the Lunar Sphere prevents us from knowing this. Likewise Time and Luck could be seen as forces more than things, but that doesn't mean that there can't be a Hermetic Form that covers them. In other words, the Hermetic Forms don't have to match the Magic Realm.

[As an aside, I see Time as a Technique rather than a Form. Rather than creating, destroying, controlling etc. time, you Time Air, Time Water, Time Minds; where the verb 'Time' means 'change the temporal differentia of' (we don't have a nice neat verb for it, in English at least). Different guidelines move the Form into different states of its existence. This was briefly discussed in A&A. A broken vase coul be fixed by using 'Time' Terram to move it to a point in its former existence where it was unbroken. Guidelines would vary as to how much time has passed. Ritual effects might move an object forward, so you could see its likely future - at least while the spell's duration existed. All sorts of fun could ensue...]

Mark
Mark

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I like it. Six Techniques and Twelve Forms would be better anyway. Seven Techniques would be best, but six and twelve would have more magical significance than the current division. Five and ten are significant in the metric system, but that's about it.

You must have killed Inigo Montoya's father to find no significance to 5 and 10. :mrgreen:

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On the fingers of one hand, you can count to 12.

Really? How? The only non-decimal handcounting I know goes to 31 on one hand.

You have four fingers. Each finger has three parts. Using your thumb as a pointer, you can point at each, counting up to twelve.

Cunning, simple and easy to store values. I like this.

Um ... but it probably already is integrated into Hermetic Theory. This wasn't a tangent, honest.

Insofar as it demonstrates that mystical numbers like 3 and 12 are just as based on the human form and simple ways of counting as base 10 numbering is, I'd say it quite on topic. :smiley: