Magic Items

That's a neat item. I don't think I've ever seen a device or spell actually used for temporary healing before. But I'm sure it has its uses.

It lets you finish the battle without the wound penalties, then you can get your healing magic together before the wounds come back, have your healing bonuses in place or a doctor on hand. Being able to schedule your wounds for when you have support and aren't in a crisis can be invaluable.

I have 35 Build Points I haven't spent yet. At the time I couldn't think of anything I really needed, and now I have.

I really like Items of Quality - they give nice additions to skills and can save a year or more of development time. So I was thinking of something that improved my Teaching ability.

The best thing I came up with is a crown. It has the feature of 'Authority' at +5. Could I use that to add to Teaching, or do I use 'Wisdom' ? There's other S&M bonuses to 'knowledge'.

I don't see anything wrong with a Teaching item of quality. Knowledge or Wisdom seem better bets than Authority, but that's jut a quibble. The description of IoQ gives examples of a scepter for a king or refined clothing for a courtier. So a crown or a book or whatever for a teacher seems perfectly reasonable.

The trick, I think is that items of quality give a bonus to die rolls (simple or stress), and there are very rare circumstances that you have to make a Teaching roll. I don't think that they add to totals like SQ or lab totals, just die rolls.

I looked into this when I had thought that an Alembic of Quality (+5 to create or transform within) might be great for helping with extracting vis. Unfortunately, it's only die rolls that IoQs help with.

Again, I find that you have a stronger grip on the rules than I do. Even better than some supplement writers: there's a Verditius in Tales of Power who has made his Armor into an Item of Quality, so that it adds +7 to protection.

I was looking for a way to speed up copying of books, and a +7 increase in Profession:Scribe is much different than +7 to Profession:Scribe rolls. I think I need to reconsider what I've done.

Yeah, that shouldn't be right, as I understand IoQs.

one more thing the editor missed.

So here are three more items I'd like review:

  1. Item of Quality: mallet. (Precision +2). Can this be used to give a +2 on Finesse?

  2. Grog's Grog Barrel. When this barrel is filled with water, and the stopper closed, it turns the water to wine. The best part is that the wine turns back into water at sunrise, so no hangovers! MuAq 10(Base 2, +1 Touch, +2 Sun +5 lvls 24 uses/day) The better the water put in, the better the wine. With a +5 lab bonus for a 'container' this item can easily be made by apprentices.

  3. The successful dowsing rod: A wand with a piece of crystal at the end, creates a spring. Generally used to irrigate crops if rains do not come. CrAq 30 (Base 4, +1 Touch, +3 Moon, +10 lvls Unlimited use)

I believe that would act as you suggest. (I was looking at one of those myself, as it happens,)

I believe that your device is essentially correct. One interesting addition that was made in Apprentices was that changing water into a processed liquid reduces its size, such that it takes a barrelful of water to produce a cup-sized amount of wine. (See Mimic the Christ's Miracle, Apprentices, p. 47.) So, according to apprentices, you'd have to fill the barrel fourteen times with water just to get fourteen cups of wine - not very appealing. As a side note, the spell doesn't state what happens once you've drunk the cup of wine and it turns back into a barrelful of water. That sounds unpleasant.

As for it negating a hangover ... I guess it depends on whether the medieval people thought a hangover was caused directly by the wine or by the mistreatment of your body in drinking. If the former, yes, getting rid of the wine should get rid of the hangover. If the latter, then you've already punished your body and it has to suffer.

I think that would work essentially as you describe. The low rate of flow of the created spring might mean you have a cast the spell a lot to irrigate a field. But it's unlimited per day, so you can.

There is some question as to whether the water remains when you create a spring. For example the mighty torrent spell uses a geyser to knock people over, not as a source of drinking water, so the crops might well wither and die from lack of water when the spell expires.

To be fair, the Mighty Torrent spell only has a duration of Momentary, not Moon.

I tend to think that while you might run into some trouble at the margins, right at the edge of the spell's duration, for the most part the water will have done its good long before the duration expires. So if you cast the spell twice a month, you should be okay.

But I'm fine with whatever the troupe decides about such spells.

It's a lot worse than that: water has an 'individual' one hundred times the size of wine or beer. I think that reducing the volume of the liquid is an incorrect interpretation, but would adding a magnitude to the effect level fix that?

You're probably right that reducing the volume of water is a funny way of doing things. If I were interpreting things, I'd say that if you wanted to transmute water to wine, you'd use the lesser of the two allowable volumes for the spell, in this case the allowable volume for wine. The other alternative probably leads to an exploding bladder round about sunrise.

But, the base size for Aquam is huge for water. Dropping it by a factor of 100 for processed liquids still leaves a pretty darn big base size. According to the rules, processed liquids, such as wine or beer, have a base Individual one hundredth the size, a pool about one pace across and half a pace deep. That sounds to me like about a small barrel (3 feet tall and a foot-and-a-half diameter). So, if you were using a Creo-Aquam spell, you could just make a barrel of wine. Why couldn't you transform a barrel of water into wine using Muto Aquam?

So I'll revise my thoughts. I think the device, as written, should work just fine. (Though I'll quibble about whether it gets rid of a hangover. :wink: )

As an aside, I'd imagine the quality of the wine would depend (at least partly) on a Finesse check. That seems to be the way of such spells. Though perhaps quality of water would matter too. Still, unless the grogs had some Finesse, it might be pretty mediocre wine. Better to have a magus make the wine for you.

Also, consider the following as an alternative:

Grog's Grog Barrel
CrAq 10
Penetration: 0
Uses/day: 24
R: Touch, D: Sun, T: Ind
When the stopper of this barrel is closed and a trigger word spoken, the barrel is filled with wine. The wine disappears at sunrise (or sunset if you're an early drinker)!
(Base 2, +1M Touch, +2M Sun +5 lvls 24 uses/day)

FWIW, I'm assuming that wine is a "natural liquid" being made of grapes. The spells Footsteps of Slippery Oil and Creeping Oil both treat oil as a natural liquid. I figure if oil is natural, so is wine. (That was clearly the assumption that Apprentices made with Mimic the Christ's Miracle. I welcome thoughts on that interpretation.

So, I'm willing to say that the Grog's Grog Barrel (whether MuAq 10 or CrAq 10) is fine. What do other's think?

Also, for the water divining rod (summon spring item), I would interpret the spring as providing the benefit of water for the duration of the effect. Once that duration was over, the water would disappear, but any benefits from the water would remain. For example, if I was thirsty and drank from the spring right before it expired, my thirst would remain quenched despite the fact that the spring was gone. So too, crops watered by a month-long spring would remain healthy once the spring expired, though they would begin to suffer the effects of no water just as any other plant would once the spring was gone.

That's my interpretation at least.

I just wanted to get those last 10 pts of magic items settled.

Muto is fine although the Barrel probably have to be submerged into water to work and need a finesse roll for a good wine. Also the people need to consume is soon after sun set or sun rise to give the body enough time to get the liquid out again.
But with creo I have my problems because The Apprentice`s Delight (App 45) say clearly the apple provide no nourishment. Same should go for Water / Wine created with any other duration then momentary.
Anyway if just for "entertainment" and not to fill the thirst creo also works, actual work better then muto in my opinion. But why that many uses if it is useless for nourishment?

Edit: not sure if it would work but glasses with some level in Sense Holiness and Unholiness would be a great addition to our covenant items. 10 pts would be a items of Virtue with level 2 in Sense Holiness and Unholiness if I understand and remember our rules right.
Over all I think this glasses would be more useful then this barrel as it cover one of our biggest weakness as hermetic mages that want to walk more on the divine side.

A Helmet with +5 Sense Holiness/Unholiness would be 10 Build Points, and round it out. Why don't we use that, and I'll take the Grog's Grog Barrel as a personal item - It just fits into my Build Points.

A Helmet with +5 Sense Holiness/Unholiness would be 10 Build Points, and round it out. Why don't we use that, and I'll take the Grog's Grog Barrel as a personal item - It just fits into my Build Points.

The idea is that it would be alcoholic for Sun duration, and fully capable of affecting drinkers. However, when the duration expires, the alcohol goes away, leaving water. That's why I wanted it to be Muto, not Creo. Water needs to fill the barrel, since the +5 container bonus affects liquid within. It was made with so many charges because you can't spend less than 1 pawn of vis, so the creator would maximize the capabilities of his single pawn of vis.

How do you make a device with a Supernatural Ability in it? Can you do this with other Supernatural Abilities? I wasn't aware that was something you could do.

Can someone direct me to what part of the rules allow this? I'd like to review them. There are so many rules in ArM in so many places that it's hard to know them all.

It can be done by Rustica mages, of ex miscellanea. House of Hermes p. 137, not a part of standard hermetic magic.

Huh, I saw this as an ability which Items of Quality would allow, and I typed without connecting that it's a Supernatural Ability. No, an Item of Quality isn't appropriate for Sense Holiness/Unholiness. Silveroak is right that a Rustic mage could make such an item, although it's a one-use item.