Lungs of the Fish

I have just realized that the "touch" part of this spell is the caster touching the water, not herself. How would I adjust it to allow other people to breath water? I fear it must be a MuCo spell rather than a MuAq.

I have ruled pro-tem that it is impossible, but if there is something I hhaven't seen advice would be gratefully received.

bob

Lungs of the Fish certainly isn't constructed in a standard way, and there has been discussions about it before (primarily with regard to which bit of water it is changing and that style of constant effect on a human target and something else concurrently).

If you want to keep it simple, just HR that you just pay a little +1 mag for the special range/target combo, and leave the rest of the spell as is. A basic +1 mag bump and off you go, as that is akin to altering T:Per to T:Touch. That would also mean accepting that the basic LotF using this method is really written up as T:Per. I've not got my book to re-check how wobbly that is.

Or go the MuCo/An route for a minor ability, but folks might also argue that it is more than minor power too. I think it's no more powerful than many other "minor" powers, as it certainly does not allow the caster to cast spells unhindered. YSMV.

Or use a head air sphere effect using CrReAu (or perhaps ReAq/CrAu) so the target can breathe and speak too.

I may well do that.

This was prompted by the players wishing to explore underwater at depth and at length, so one of them (who already knew Lungs of the Fish) was planning on casting it on the others (when we thought the range touch meant you could do that).

To cope with the pressure she created:

[b]Freedom from the Shackles of the Deeps[/b] 
Muto Aquam 20
Base 4 (change liquid into a very unnatural liquid), +1 Touch, + 2 Sun, +1 Part.
The water touching the magus (hence Target: Part) does not transmit water pressure.  

by analogy with Lungs. I m fine with this (although I have said that it only applies to the casting Maga, and would need to be invested in an item to affect another), but are there pandora's boxes I am opening with this line of thought?

Bob

You could also say LotF is R: Touch too and allow your players to cast it. Just rule that particular version of LotF in RAW is a spooky quasi-non-hermetic hangover published by some half-baked fish-magus; and any attempt to vary it without making the new spell a stricter hermetic version won't work. That keeps it simple and lets the players move on to the rest of your story.

The less complexity in the house rules the better imho, because it is hard to factor in all the future ramifications of a choice; and your players will want to make those choices with confidence. Heck, it's only water breathing.

Freedom from the Shackles of the Deeps - If its just pressure I think the spell is ok, but yep, you're moving into stranger areas. Not a bad thing and if the overall impact to the story in 3 months from now will be moot then don't worry about it and get on with the interesting story.
(edit: or add the +1 mag for the odd-effect-complexity and let it pass anyway too)

Technically, it's the "water entering a person's mouth". Remember that some Aquam targets, like Auram ones, can affect a "phenomenon" (e.g. a current) rather than a given mass of element. Still, Lungs of the Fish is very iffy, in my opinion, a somewhat clumsy conversion of a legacy spell.

Personally, I think that giving a person the ability to breath water is not any more unbalancing than giving him the ability to see in the dark (in fact, it's useful in a far narrower set of circumstances). So, in my games, Lungs of the Fish is just a variant of Eyes of the Cat.

I understand the limits over the spell.
Agian, you can have one Muto Corpus spell that makes the same, but this spell is based upon the air and water (Auram and Aquam), to me is fine with bot spells, but I et the touch range because you are affecting water that is not one part of you, part because only affects that touch your mouth, and nose and so on. In fact, you could with this 20 spell make others capable of that instead of you, or making you too.
On Against the dark (on page 108, inside the Dragon Born Insert) gives the example of power to do that too: it uses the MuCo guidline 4 of course, and it's one Personal Power costing Fatigue.

Some additional spells can be found in Legend of Hermes (p104-105), but most of the spells are level 40 and are about transforming people into fish; and also in Magi of Hermes (p75-78), including a discussion about underwater casting.

You can also use a MuCo(An) spell. After all, Eyes of the cat gives literaly cat's eyes, so it should be possible to grant real Fish's lungs and gills. I would say though that Eyes of the Cat seems a bit buggy since T:Ind, which should be Part in my mind (so +1). Legend of Hermes has Eye's of the Fish, with the same characteristics, but an InAq can lead to the same result (clear vision under water).

If the magus has a good level in Philosophae(Animal), he might know that some animals can breath equally well under and above water and select a more suitable animal.
MuCo Base 2 guideline gives a minor ability, so I would probably bump that to base 4 as it looks more like a major ability; +1 Touch; +1 Part; +2 Sun, free requisit: So MuCo(An) 20: Lung's of the Fish. The drawback of this spell is that as long as it is in effect, the target will suffocate if above water.

To protect from pressure effect (and humidity as well), I would start with ReAq base 5 (ward against Mundane water), +1 Touch; +1 Ind; +2 Sun, so ReAq25, then depending on the depth the level will need to be increased. The Base level should be good up to 10 meters. Note that the target cannot drink water when under the spell's effect (but other liquids can be absorbed as they are not water - it is not designed as a ward against liquids, water/liquid follow rules similar than dirt/stone/metal, with magnitude's increase).

For deep diving, I would not bother with nitrogen intoxication as it does not fit the Mythic Medieval paradigm, so as long as the PCs can breathe air, no need to talk about nitrox, hydrox or héliox mixture. But very likely, if you deep-dive you will enter an Aquatic faerie regio.

I would say than this is the Muto Animal, about the differences between minor ability (Eyes of the cat) and to give other greaters abilities, adding 1 or more magnituds and requisites, to balance. To me the difference between Breath water and see on the obscurity is clear, since the former can kill you and the second not.