Intangible Tunnel to an illusion for remote attack

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Would this sequence of spells work? The basic idea is to connect an Intangible Tunnel to an image that you can move (remotely, through walls). Then you use one of several tricks to have the effect "jump" to the actual target.

I probably don't want it to work, so happy to hear justifications for why this won't work (that don't break something else), but note that not all of the spells need to work for this to feel potentially game-breaky.

The technical questions implied by the sequence of spells below:

  • Can you cast Intangible Tunnel with an image as the target?
  • How does Rego Imaginem work when the image is not that of a real object? (Same with Muto Imaginem)
  • How fast can an image move?
  • Why shouldn't you be able to create something at a target with creo and how should you handle indirect damage from that?
  • Can you target a group of images and (indirectly) affect the underlying objects?
  • Does touching an image which is touching something in a room count as touching the room for target room spells?

1) The Devious Dustmote

CrIm 4
R: Touch D: Sun T: Ind
Create the image of a barely visible speck of dust.
Base 1 (Create an image that affects a single sense.)
+1 Touch +2 Sun

2) Tiny Tangible Tunnel

ReVi 5
R: Touch D: Sun T: Ind
Tangible tunnel for spells up to lvl 15.
Base effect
+1 Touch +2 Sun

3) Direct the Dustmote

ReIm ??
R: Touch D: Sun T: Ind
Move an image not associated with any physical object. There is no guideline for that, but it seems like it should be possible?
Base ?
+1 Touch +2 Sun

Alternatively, we could do The Devious Dustmote with +2 move at your command. (Lvl 10)
(or lvl 5 when used at D: Conc with Maintaining the Demanding Spell)

Now we'll add some sensory information to know where we're going. I guess 4) & 5) are optional, 6) could often work just as well on its own.

4) The Hands have Eyes

InIm 15
R: Touch D: Sun T: Special
The caster can see his surroundings as though he was in a place he can touch.
Base 1
+1 Touch +2 Sun +3 Special Target based on Room +1 (From MoH, To See as Though a Plethron Distant)

5) The Hands have Ears

InIm 15
R: Touch D: Sun T: Special
The caster can hear his surroundings as though he was in a place he can touch.
+1 Touch +2 Sun +3 Special Target based on Room +1 (From MoH, To See as Though a Plethron Distant)

6) Sense of the Illusory Lodestone

InIm 10
R: Touch D: Sun T: Ind
Locate an image you can touch.
Base 2 or 3? (Herbam guideline vs. Corpus guideline)
+1 Touch +2 Diameter

Off we go! But what is the maximum speed an image can move at? As fast as an eagle? A dustmote caught in a storm? Instantaneous?

In any case, we should have plenty of time to get e.g. to the enemy covenant and bring our Devious Dustmote into position next to the target magus or his sanctum. With the low levels we have used so far, we should have some decent penetration, but this might of course be useful in all kinds of situations.

Now the question is how can we have our magic targeting the image "jump" to the actual target?

7a) Searing Touch (w/ image touching target)

CrIg 5
Touch range damage with ignem, see Hermetic Projects.

Cleary, the target is not actually whatever we want to damage, it's the image to which our tunnel connects. But why wouldn't the creo'ed fire do damage to the target we are touching with the image of the dustmote? Touch range damage spells being dangerous for the caster is mentioned at least twice in the books IIRC (w/ searing touch and in a guideline about acids).
(If you want to be extra annoying you could argue that creating fire inside someone's head should cause even more damage...)

The strange thing about creo damage spells is that many take the target to be the thing / person that is taking the damage, while it should actually be the thing created. In this case a +5 damage ignem individual. So if you don't want to get into trouble in this regard you have to grant that creating something at / around a target is possible, right … ?

7b) Searing Touches (w/ changing the image to look like the target)

CrIg 15
+2 for group

This is more of a proof of concept idea than a great attack strategy. You change the image to look like the target (e.g. like a person) and then target the group of two images and thereby also the target (presumably?).

You can do that either by having the image carrying the tunnel be that of a dustmote morphing into another thing and back (at your command) or by Muto Imaginem magic. Though just as with Rego Imaginem, affecting images not associated with an object with muto is a bit of a grey area.

7c) Some effect with target room

Strangling Scriptorium
ReHe 30
R: Touch D: Diam T: Room
Animate everything wooden in a room and make it attack everyone present.
Base 10 Plant product moving with intelligence and purpose

Pyrogenic Parchment
CrIg 10
R: Touch D: Mom T: Room
Base 3 Ignite something very flammable

Collapsing Columns
MuTe 10
R: Touch D: Mom T: Room
Base 3 Change dirt to stone, or vice versa.

Touching something in a room counts as touching the room, see Fingers For Eyes for example.

2

There's a lot going on here, but this:

I don't believe. You can create a Group of images and cast a spell on them, but they are images, not people. So you can only affect the image of your target. Make them look ugly? Sure. Do damage? No.

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3

and I don't believe images are valid targets for Creo Ignem spells.

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4

Ruling that images are not valid targets for (most) non-imaginem magic seems like a promising approach. While that would imply that spells targeted at an illusion that you think is real automatically fail, which would make it trivially easy to test for illusions by casting some low level non-imaginem spont at them, wouldn’t it?

A variant of the whole approach would be using a (physical) grain of fine sand.

That would still raise the question of how to handle creating damaging ignem or auram individuals at a target and indirect damage from that, as well as the target room question.

But the speed of rego terram movement is roughly clear (I think there are examples of flying boat spells) and it’s slightly harder to enter places as a flying grain of sand compared to an insubstantial image. Though that raises the question of whether it is possible to turn the grain of sand (or anything really, including yourself) into an image. Turning yourself into auram is a classic spell after all.

5

Yes, I think that works, though interpreting the result isn't trivial:

“I cast Physician's Eye at him!”

“You get no information at all!”

“Oh…. Is it an illusion, someone with magic resistance, or an animated statue?”

This isn't limited to Imaginem either. If I cast a Rego Herbam spell on something and it fails, that suggests it's not wood. But Imaginem is where deception and confusion are most likely to happen.

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6

There is no reason why anything should be an invalid target for indirect spells. If i can throw a rock at it, i can Cr(Re)Ig at it. Direct spells such as physician’s eye are a different matter.

7

Well, in a very real sense you can't throw a rock at an image either. I mean, you can, but nothing will happen.

And anyway, this was a reply to Illopoly’s follow up question, which I think was about direct spells.

8

Fair enough, these are good examples. I’ll probably be happy with that ruling then.

I don’t think you can cast indirect spells through a tunnel though. At least not as in “create fire here, rego it over there”.

The key issue I see here is that creo damage spells have weird targets and ranges that seem to violate the rule that the target of creo is the thing being created. Instead there seems to be ample evidence that you can create something at a target, and that opens the door to indirect shenanigans with the mobile end of a tunnel (grain of sand, auram individual, lice, or images if you don’t rule that out).

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9

You can create something at a target, but the Target is the thing being created. These sorts of spells cannot be cast through an Intangible Tunnel, although a, for example, Creo Ignem spell to directly heat the Target could be. The difference being that an Intangible Tunnel doesn’t really form a tunnel through which you can access the Target, but instead forms a sort of sympathetic representation that shifts the effects of spells from it to its target. Kind of like a voodoo doll, rather than a tiny portal.

10

Right, this is what I’d expect. And it’s not a wormhole for sure.

But there a multitude of creo spells that indicate the target is not the thing created:

  • Creeping Oil - A dot of oil appears on the target
  • Mighty Torrent of Water - A 3-foot-diameter jet of water sprays from your outstretched arms towards your target.
  • Broom of the Winds - Whips up violent, swirling winds around the target.
  • Pull of the Skybound Winds - Makes winds rise upward, pulling one object, creature, or person up to 50 feet into the sky before letting that target drop.
  • Coat of Flame - The target is swathed in fire, and takes +5 damage every round while the spell is in effect.
  • Ball of Abysmal Flame - A ball of flame shoots from your hand to strike a single target, doing +30 damage.
11

The target of a fireball spell is the thing you intend to hit with it, but the Target, the hermetic parameter, is the fire itself. This is the case for all Creo spells that actually create something. The Target is always the thing being created, but you might target something with what you create to affect them in some way, such as creating a fire where they stand to burn them, a gust of wind to move them, or a boulder to crush them. The same word, but different terms, distinguished by the use, or lack thereof, of a capital T.

12

As Oskar says, there is a difference between Target (big T, the Parameter) and target (small t, the thing you’re trying to affect with the spell).

Creo Thing spells, the Target (big T) is always the thing created, whether fire, wind, water, wolf, human corpse, or dirt, but you can create it directly at a target (small t) within range.

The Target in Blade of Virulent Flame is the fire, the target is a metal blade.

The Target of Ball of Abysmal Flame is the fire, the target is the thing you are burning, and so on.

I think you can Ball of Abysmal Flame via intangible tunnel because you’re just setting the target (lower t) on fire, nothing is travelling anywhere, but the same is not true of the Crystal Dart spell, which does physically move a thing through space. If you can BoAF, then you can increase the Creo Ignem Size with extra magnitudes so it can get big enough to burn things around the target (small t), which I think means you can make, for example, 100 cubic paces of fire on your theoretical grain of sand or image you have an intangible tunnel to.

I vaguely remember there being a lot of discussion on this for errata and clarification for Definitive Edition.

13

I am very confident you cannot use Ball of Abyssal Flame through an Intangible Tunnel, for the exact same reason you can’t use Crystal Dart, the effect of the spell isn’t igniting a Target, but creating an Individual of fire at Voice range hot enough to deal +30 damage. This is distinct from the level 10 guideline to ignite a barely flammable target, such as the human body. Creo spells are generally very unsuitable to harm a target through an Intangible Tunnel.

To get back to the original question however, you could use an Intangible Tunnel to directly affect a Target in ways that will cause effects on their environment, for example Muto spells to transform them into something damaging, a Creo Ignem spell on an object to heat it to the melting point of lead, Rego to move them around, etc. I’d recommend using a real object rather than an illusion, however.

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14

I see, that makes sense. So my interpretation that these spells create something at a “official capital T Target” was wrong, it’s more like these spells have two targets, with the second one being the somewhat less “official” target perhaps. (Though now I’m wondering what kind of restrictions apply to the “second” target if it’s hit automatically, but that’s another topic.)

Creo being much less useful with tunnels does reduce the power of this approach quite a bit, even if images are valid targets. I’ve grown less satisfied with just ruling images are not valid targets, feels a bit arbitrary. But then again you probably need something physical there to cause most indirect effects, and in MoH:S p63 they say

Hermetic magi have not yet found a way to make solid objects from species using Muto magic.

which isn’t exactly the same as saying it doesn’t work for images, but close enough for my taste.

The lack of guidelines for muto imaginem and rego imaginem cast at illusions (images without associated objects) also suggests this is not possible, though the strategy of targeting a group of identical images doesn’t work without “creo at the target” anyway.

Regarding the target room strategy, I might argue that touching an image of a room that is not actually where the room is wouldn’t work to target the room. So being in touch range of the dustmote image touching the image of the room doesn’t work either.

With a physical thing at the end of a tunnel you can still touch the room, but at least these spells are +2. Trading the “grain of sand infiltration” troubles for +4 Arc range seems reasonable (assuming the alternative is Arc and Ind, not Arc and Room).

Okay, I’m happy enough with the limits on this kind of approach, if one of my players were to try it, I’d allow it.

15

I believe the most canonical form would be to use Trapping the Fire for the object with concentration maintained by a magical item (or Harnessed). I’d call it ‘The arcane loitering munition’. Tethered magic could also have amusing effects, as would a charged magical item.

Anyways, while the description on ArM5e p162 is kind of lackluster, the effect of the intangible tunnel as specified in hermetic projects (p 79-80) seems to effectively be that the Target of the tunnel is considered to be at Touch range for spellcasting purposes.

Since TCD Targets a piece of dirt, it cannot be used through the tunnel (unless the tunnel-Target is a piece of dirt, which could be TCD-launched…). However, BoAF or any ‘Create a Big Fire’ variant can be cast through a tunnel - the Target of BoAF shares space with its target which is the tunnel-Target and is thus also at touch range. In short, indirect spells work iff their target and Target match.

The CrIg spell can’t be cast at anything else, but it can hit others for collateral damage if large enough - see e.g. Last Flight of the Phoenix.

16

I'll be honest, I can find nothing in the text of the spell or Hermetic Projects that prevents Creo Fire (or anything else) via intangible tunnel, but I'd love to be wrong.

The Searing spell that does +5 damage could be using the “hot enough to boil water” guideline, but Lungs of Drowning is definitely creating something at the target (and was only errata’d to remove Part, rather than deleted like Ariadne's Thread from MoH), so we have an example canon spell of Creo Thing working via tunnel. Though Aq(Co) is a bit special and that could be the difference maker.

I'm fine with it having been decided later that some spells create too many problems, like Creo Animal a horse under them or next to them, and Crystal Darts from Novgorod to Normandy are silly, but the text, recommended spells, and errata we have seem to allow Creo Thing, but, again, I'd love to have missed something.

17

Under my new understanding, it shouldn’t work, at least not with newly created water. It could be water from the body, which can at least theoretically fill the lungs with fluid if the immune system overreacts I think, but that’s hardly mythic and should be rego I guess. Maybe if Creo Aquam can “heal” water, it could be removing the contaminants of corpus from the blood, leaving behind clear water.

But tbh, it’s probably just flavorful text for an effect that’s reasonable, it just so happens the text implies breaking creo rules.

18

That’s the thing though, I don’t think it is breaking any Creo rules. It is making water at a target’s location, which is allowed in general, and is not prohibited specifically by anything written in any of the books.

I checked the thread which I remembered having this pop up for Definitive Edition and David Chart’s final choice was “leave it up to troupe decision” as to whether you could do these things because it would require a lot of clarifying and didn’t seem to be a problem.

19

That's precisely the issue I had. thanks for providing the link. I think the restrictive version causes fewer problems and is more internally consistent. David Chart said intangible tunnel is rare, but it and its variants are so useful they'll crop up in all my games constantly. With the image tunnel I described initially it would become too useful IMO, hence this thread.

20

That seems to me by far the most sensible interpretation, for several reasons.
First, conceptually, the image of something, once divorced from it, is not longer part of it.
Second, I'd want Wizard Sidestep to be effective against magical R:Touch attacks.
Third, and most crucially, assuming someone's species are still part of that someone, and thus touching them constitutes touching him, wreaks havoc on Hermetic magic: anything that you can target at R:Voice you could target at R:Touch (as your voice has to "touch" the Target) and anything that you can target at R:Sight you could target at R:Touch, too (as your eyes are touching the Target's visual species). And let's not even look at how you'd be able to extend your Parma far and wide...

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