Once the Bond has been made, a magus and his familiar are ACs to each other.
If a familiar is in another place, can the magus teleport to it? I'm assuming the magus anf familiar are on mental contact, so there is no question about whether the magus knows where the familiar is, or that the familiar knows the magus is coming.
Leap of Homecoming does say "teleport to a place you have an AC to"...currently the magus has an AC to the familiar, which is in a place - but is that good enough? Or does the AC for teleportation need to be to a fixed place, and not a mobile thing like a person or animal?
I wouldn't worry about the wording "place" in "teleport to a place you have an AC to": it is the "place" of your familiar you teleport to, after all. Few places have ACs specifically to them: these ACs are typically to a rock, a piece of furniture, a floor or such anyway.
Teleporting oneself to one's famliar in our game is hence easy and frequent. Teleporting the familiar back to oneself is only a little more complex, but about as useful. AtD's Monica Ierne knew, and enchanted Ever-present Familiar (p.32) into the bond to her wolf Silexa.
But if you read the text of "Ever present Familiar" it says Monica uses Silexa to recover ACs, in order to allow Monica to use Leap of Homecoming.
Why would she need that, if she could just teleport to Silexa? Of course, it allows her to teleport to that place afterwards, regardless of where Silexa is.
Anyway, I asked the question because I believe it should work. If you can conjure up fire at the familiar's location, or scry, using an Intangible Tunnel, why not teleport to it? Why should this magical activity be different?
I just had a look at ArM5 p.84 Arcane Connection again. I found an easy, direct argument there: "Air from a specific place" is an AC to that place. So should a familiar breathing that air or flapping its wings in it: it is about as much tied to that place as the air.
But if you want to go there now!?!
Maybe you can, using Leap of HJomecoming to the Familiar, or maybe you can't. That's what I want to know.
Otherwise I need something like The Ever-present Familiar to instantly bring me back a pebble. But I'd rather not have to enchant that, unless I really have to
I have yet to use the spell in game, so this is just an opinion.
But as I interpret it, the familiar is not a location so the teleport would put the magi in the same exact same spot as the familiar which would look like a botch as the two try to use the same space and go full body horror. Whereas carrying a stone from the magi's tower would teleport the magi within the tower (unless botch which would lead the magi to appear partly within the wall).
This is just my reading, so long as everyone in the group are on the same page, that is the most important...
My reading of the rules are a bit stricter and wouldn't allow it. The familiar is not a place, and having an AC to a familiar would not allow you to Leap of Homecoming to it. I would definitely allow an enchantment in the familiar bond that is Teleport to AC at AC range, that lets the familiar summon you to where it is (being there would effectively count as an AC to that location)
I'm currently envisioning a Leap of Homecoming to familiar horror story where you teleport into your familiar, very messy results.
Even if you had an AC to a place, like a shard of an old standing stone - it doesn’t mean you will teleport to a place inside it.
If you have an AC to an animal and you scry you don’t see the inside of the animal.
With this interpretation very few ACs would work.
The use of ACs need some flexibility in the interpretation.
Where do you put the limits in your game? Note that air, water, wood shards or rock shards all are ACs to a place. but neither the air, the water, the wood or the rock are that place.
You can have the same story with a tree in the place to teleport to, and a shard of that tree used as AC. By ArM5 p.84 box Arcane Connections that shard is an AC to the place the tree stands in. Still, by your reasoning the magus would teleport into that tree in a way far more messy for the magus, right?
OK. I already did provide a messy landing for somebody, who got teleported to a bird sitting in a tree: I had him roll to grab the tree firmly or fall. But that's something different.
Hello there, i would like to give a duplicate answer here,
as i see it, the spell leap of homecoming do not directly use the arcane connection as a range, but as a target location for the spell.
The spell is built to use an AC to identify the location where the wizard should be teleported.
This won't works when using the familiar which is not a location or AC to this location (the familiar would be more an AC to his own lair) not because this is not possible, but simply because this is not what "leap of Homecoming" Hermetic spell do
If you wanted to make a teleport to familiar spell, probably designing more precisely in which situation beside the familiar you would be teleported (seated on a familiar horse...) it could works, but this would require a new specific spell designed to carry this task.
Hermetic spell are very specific, designed in a specific way, and using a spell using an effect to fulfill any usage of this same effect would be a bit easy.
Definitively allowed and used in my sagas. You teleport to the familiar's location. The familiar marks the point. Nothing broken about it, really. If you use very strict restrictions on this it can open a lot of cans of worms regarding R/D/T, so I wouldn't go there. Ars Magica is not a game of semantics lawyering. Or shouldn't be.
That line of reasoning does not make sense to me. It doesn’t matter if a spell used the Range parameter of AC or whether it is a definition used for range to endpoint of the teleport.
What if I have the teleport spell at Range AC, to teleport someone I have an AC to, to another place I have an AC to?
Also, what about other spells than teleport? Scrying?
The Hoplite finds a hair or drop of blood from the Marched magus, but scrying does not track the magus, but gives a vision of his Sanctum?
ACs should not work different from thing to thing.
I pick up a rock, I have an AC to where it is from, okay.
I snip a lock of hair from a person, I gave an AC to where that person is at any given time.
I chisel a sliver of wood off a wagon, I have an AC to that wagon wherever it goes.
My initial question was about a magus’ connection to his familiar, not about definitions of ACs. I have few doubts there.
Long Answer: Why in the world would you want to nerf on this? It in no way enhances the game or play. Let them teleport. Let them keep their clothes on when they do (long story). There is no good reason to not allow this.
Well, not that long a story. Naked teleporting magi have been a feature of a lot of sagas for decades My troupe even developed a meme gresture about this.
My troupe even developed a meme gresture about this.