Item effects being triggered

I don't think in those kinds of spell you are necessarily talking, in a literal sense, with the object. Stone Tell of the Mind That Sits describes the way stones communicate as slow and ponderous, but somehow not taking any more time than normal speech which seems incompatible with it being a literal verbal language.

The only way that makes sense for me is if the communication is similar to that of spirits, where they seem to be perceived by one of the mundane senses but in fact produce no sensory species and it's just how the mind of the observer interprets their incomprehensible supernatural communication (Silent Speech, as it's called in RoP:M).

So there is no "language of stone" you are magically translating, or even a mind at all, you're using Intellego to interpret esoteric and complex magically acquired information from the rock in a way that is interpreted by the mind as speech. That's why the same spell can allow you to communicate with airy spirits of the same form with only a slight tweak (according to RoP:M).

My enchanted lab does not have any need of locating, follow and target "quickly moving things (such as people)". I actually listed what it was for in my lab, which you did not quote.

It's monitoring of lab activities is a "If told to do lab work, activate the lab tools effect. If told done doing lab work, tell tools to return to storage". Air quality/temp is "tell the breeze effect cool/normal/warm/more/less/off". Room light/temp is much the same. Spills is "turn on the loose liquid effect/turn off the loose liquid effect". Fire extinguish is one that needs the sensors, since it is "fire in room, activate extinguish".

That last line was said jokingly but is how it is used in play.

Did you skip over the whole argument or did you just jump in and make a post supporting me?

That was actually directly said in counter to OneShots post about awakening minds not being sentient and hermetic magic not being able to teach/give abilities.

I was arguing that those spells translate between you and the object. A little below your quote I even talked about adding the InMe part of the effect to change you touching the object and concentrating to communicated to having a more complex translation effect that takes words you are speaking and turns them into object speech. Though Silent Speech is just as good a word to describe it as object speech.

Note that there is no translation from the object to you, it is used to give commands.

I was replying to this part of one of your posts in particular:

I don't agree that:

  1. There is a translation component, or that those objects have an inherent capacity for language or even thought (including cunning).
  2. You are actually communicating with rocks/trees/fire and not just interpreting the results of a spell as if the object were speaking.

I view those spells as just being more complex versions of spells that learn specific things about an object, where the information becomes so complex your mind interprets the sifting of the information as a conversation. You aren't really having a conversation with an inanimate object. It's purely a one way passage of info which seems to be a two way conversation because the human mind has no faculty to directly interpret supernatural input and has to fudge it through the mundane senses.

I'm not saying that's definitively how these spells should be interpreted, I just wanted to point out that you're working off some base assumptions that other people might not agree on.

So you just skipped over the awakened part and focused on something that is used to communicate with the awakened thing while ignoring that it is awakened and the rest of the argument?

Ignored that it was awakened... which is where the cunning comes...

You just took something I said completely out of the context it was said in and jumped into a pretty big flame back and forth.

It ties in to the original thing about whether you can awaken the object. That relies on them having a mind to awaken, and I'm saying I don't agree that they necessarily do and that the spells that let you "speak" to those objects don't necessarily imply this.

I personally wouldn't apply the Herbam guideline for awakening plants to elemental forms for this reason.

If you want to have a private conversation about it with @OneShot without other people responding (which is fair enough) I would suggest moving to direct messages instead of a thread.

Nice back track and change, but you should have just said that from the start if it is what you meant.

I thought the implication was pretty clear based on the previous discussion (maybe I was wrong on that front) and didn't want to post a huge wall of text.

There's no need to snap at people, this is an interesting discussion and I just wanted to lend my thoughts.

My PTSD makes me rather strongly "fight or flight" when things trigger it even indirectly such as angering/upsetting me. I also went off my drugs this year because they made me a zombie and my wife did not like it.

So I tend to walk away from things when I find myself getting too riled up which the end of this thread was bringing me too. You just had the misfortune of "poking" me after I should have walked away.

A sure sign of it, which no one on this forum would know, is when I switch from long form post to shorter terse post.

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Thank you for sharing this information with us. Hopefully, we'll now be warned and remember.

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To help with that, what I mean by "long form post is my normal style".

It tends to include rather verbose parts (me thinking in text), lots of examples based both on books and actual play (this plus this from that book; something my magus/covenant made), and will include a few random sidebars (which I try to stick in bubbles).

I also reread my post several times after making them because I always seem to find errors I made on things like misspelling one word. So they will often have an edit or two which fixes a spelling or adds a point at the bottom I wanted to include but missed. I add them to the bottom with "Edit:" rather than making a new post.

This example is of course exaggerated and if it is a very simple answer needed I will restrain myself (mostly). However if you compare this to my post towards the end of the thread leading up to me getting very snappy the change is clearer.

Edit: I actually wrote witch instead of which. I didn't actually mean to make such an error and have to fix it with an edit.

Now calm, let me see if I can have a go at coming up with something. Let us try doing away with awakening an object and communicating with it, or rather change it to interacting with a spell/enchanted effect.

Say the MuFo(Me) effect does not actually awaken a mind, but instead changes the object so as to allow easier and more comprehensive information to be gained from things that happened to/around said object. You could even be able to include some sort of memory, though not of the human kind. Something more in line with writing, done through minor changes that InFo spells can get information from. This would make the object just the subject the effect works on, along with being the receptacle of any "Writing".

In effect a book, though of a completely different type from what most consider a book. That might actually make an interesting effect of InFo spells to get information from the object, since then you would have the things that spell could normally read or a mental book you could read that would only have things like the varies versions of the commands, how many times different commands were given and roughly when, the activators for Linked Triggers, etc. Access to each might or might not require different spells.

You could then design an InFo effect to get information from it. A Mu Requisite would be required for the ability to add data to it, though if it is +0 or +1 Mags would depend on how well objects pick up information that can be read by InFo effects. Similarly to RAW spells/effects that read books aloud for blind Magi or animate a pen to write down spoken words. A Me requisite might or might not be required to convert spoken words into data, since we already have several RAW effects that obey commands without it such as the Tireless Servant. I would think you would want to add it to increase the range of commands understood.

Combing all of that into one effect would be a Mu(In)Fo(Me) or In(Mu)Fo(Me) effect so far.

Having it serve as the activator of Linked Triggers for other Effects enchanted into the object should then be possible. How it would have to be used varies in how effective the part that converts speech to data/commands was. Is it completely without any range of inputs to a single output or not? In other words, when tweaking the Effect that provides light would the command always have to be "Google Lights at" and the brightness (off, dim, candle, torch, sunlight) or would some degree of variation be allowed since it is a speech to data effect rather than just a command word? I would think without the Me Requisite it would be the former, while with it than it would be to some degree the later. Would adding +1 Mag of complexity allow for even greater range of commands to get the same result, in effect by making multiple possible commands/variations of commands that serve as an activator?

You still run into the issue of needing "senses" to activate an effect like the "Fire Purge", which needs someway to know there is a fire to activate. Could you merge this into the overall control effect by adding an Ig Requisite or would you need to setup a completely separate InIg effect to activate its Linked Trigger? If you would have to create a completely separate effect, why?

If we could work through all that, the effect would end up with lots of Requisites (and possibly some Complexity). It would serve to activate/tweak the other effects enchanted into the object based on spoken commands at a higher level then the simple commands found in things like ReCo Tireless Servant. It might (hopefully) have the rudimentary sensory capability required to do things like activate the Fire Purge if there is a fire. And data that you could normally get from an InFo spell would be more organized and accessible.

Hi guys,
I'm sorry I missed all the messages yesterday.

So, there was some debate about my linked trigger - I didn't specify it properly. As Troy mentioned, it would be a type of InIg or InIm which looks at light in the room.
All of the other effects in the Greater Enchanted Device have the +3 for linked trigger.

I remember that there was one of the supplements that had something similar for detecting lab intruders, but the affected items were all independent.

Honestly, for me, numbers 2 and 3 are almost the same thing. If "light hitting the device" isn't a correct environmental trigger you use the linked trigger instead. But the consensus seems to be that the effects would go off in order of enchantment or at random.
No-one seems to feel that they can all trigger at once.

This does have some noticeable effects for other greater devices - if you have multiple constant effects in a device there will be a hard "limit" of how many can be maintained.
I know that sunrise and sunset last a diameter, which is 20 combat rounds. So realistically you could only have 20 constant effects in a single device for genuine continuous operation.
But due to the levels of devices involved, opening such a device would be a massive project anyway. Much better to have several smaller devices than one powerful one.

As for the awakened devices idea, I need to consider it more carefully. Although the idea of a magus with a companion ring is a little amusing.

I would question about the mind of an item - even an animal mind. A stone, a tree and many more things can be considered "alive". But if I smelt some gold into a ring shape, is it still alive? How about putting a diamond in it - are the diamond and the gold two separate things? Or one? What about when I pull them apart again?

I can see that opening an item as a composite enchanted item magically binds all the parts together. So I can see how the different parts could form a new whole which can then be talked to using InFo magic.

I was looking for something else on the forum and discovered this old thread:

Intelligent Items

Reading a language is an Ability, which items cannot have, unless crafted as HoH:MC p.128f Automata or awakened with AM p.80 Major Hermetic Virtue: Awaken Device.
I doubt that such an effect exists RAW as standard Hermetic magic.

See for this also TME p..99f Magic Can Neither Read Nor Understand, in particular:

<...> the mind that uttered a word can be interrogated for its meaning with Mentem magic, but written words are just artifices of ink and parchment that have no intrinsic thoughts behind them."

Perhaps you can do your programmable item without having it read words as such? Use some levers to control lighting and heating?

I can't find this spell or effect for 5th edition. But if a 5th edition magus has cast a spell, he might control its effect during its Duration, while he remains within its Range. This then allows a ReTe spell working as a "step and fetch it" or third hand around the magus by bringing, moving, holding and setting down items while the magus concentrates on it. This would also allow him to manipulate levers, sliders and cranks in his lab, of course.

Covenants, page 121. The Tireless Servant, ReCo 40

"This is an automaton of sorts, a skeleton which has been animated and may be controlled quite precisely with a limited set of verbal commands. It can be instructed to hold or fetch objects, and perform simple operations, such
as lifting and stirring, independently."

The reading item does not seem to read out loud after looking at it again, but instead senses the Iconic Species and transmits them directly to the mind.

However your suggestion of using some levers was actually far closer to what I was trying to imply when I said "Writing". I was trying to imply making some small change (like flipping a lever) that is a clearer optimized form of the information you can read from an object with any of the varies InFo spells.

The "Book" part would be an artifact of how the mind of the Magus would interact with the information he pulled from it rather than seeming to have a long slow conversation. It is not actually a "Book" and the Magus is not actually reading, it is just a flavor way of his mind interpreting the optimized part of the data he could pull from the object. Since Magi spend so much time reading books, it seemed an apt model for the "levers" as compared to having a weird conversation in his head.

Does that help explain what I was trying to suggest?

It's definitely an edge case (as you say enchanting an item with 21+ constant effects is a massive undertaking in itself) but for the sake of argument - what if the previous effect "lingers" a little while after sunrise/sunset, so that all the effects remain constant? That's essentially making constant effects a minor exception for gameplay reasons but it makes sense from a certain angle I think.

I see. I did look for a spell or effect with this name: so I didn't find the enchanted device.

You can model your lab then after The Tireless Servant. Whether the "limited set of verbal commands" is levers or specific command words does not matter much indeed.

Make it the operating manual for the lab?

Yes I guess you could call it that. If you actually read it with InFo rather than using voice commands, it would have entries like this on the first "Page".

  • Light - On, Brightness - Torch
  • Climate - On, Temperature - Cool
  • Breeze - On, Pattern - Swirling, Heat - Cool
  • Animate Lab Equipment - Off
  • Collect Spills - Off
  • Fire Protection - On

Later pages might have things like a breakdown of the varies spoken commands that flip those effects. Of course it is all in your head, but the Me Requisite (plus possible level or two of Complexity) would mean how your mind interacts with it would have to be something better than "Sssssssooooooo Rooocccccckkkk... hhhaassss ssooommee ooonneee bbbeeeeenn hhheerrreee??"

Edit: Oh, and don't know why but I know that book and page number for The Tireless Servant off the top of my head. It seems to come up a lot on these boards.