Magical Constructs done differently

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hey there people

I am in the process of making a Magus who is going to be 30 years or so out of apprenticehood. He is going to be the rival of my verditius Magus. They are both locked in a vendetta.

Finding a magical theme/focus for him was rather hard (bit of creative block), but in the end I have settled on him creating, selling and using magical constructs - specifically statues made of Caen stone. The Saga takes place in the Normandy tribunal.

I looked at the Automaton in the Mystery Cults book and was frankly disappointed. It is insanely expensive, very slow and ineffective. I find it hard to believe this was a great secret the Verditius were sorry to see go... WIth a 10th level Rego Herbam effect it is possible to create a wooden servant that matches these automata in almost every way. Sigh.. I shouldn't get started on this virtue. Suffice to say that we are not going to be using it in the campaign and any players in my other game will have an easier time.

What the Virtue does give is the ability to create a servant with magical might, which is a powerful ability. It also has the "tie the threads that bind" spell, which is useful, but not necessary required (nothing in hermetic theory says you cannot make one spell follow the commands of another). Those are useful and fairly cool. My rival will have to do without them, or perhaps acquire them through a minor virtue... I dunno.

So, to finally arrive at my point: I am creating a handful of spells and enchantments that he will be using to animate statues, either through formulaic / ritual spells or through permanent enchantments. This should justify him having a small army of animated minions, as well as a thriving business of selling Statues and Gargoyles to other Magi. I will attempt to do it with existing spell guidelines, or at least by sticking very close to them.

2

Rego Terram Spell guidelines
level 10: Control an entire statue (or other construct of dirt, stone, metal or gems), moving it around as you direct.
level 15: Make a statue or thing made of stone, metal, dirt or gems move with purpose and intelligence, without requiring your constant control.

These guidelines are based on the Rego Herbam guidelines. I made the effects one magnitude higher because objects of the terram form are more dormant than herbam. Plants are alive, so moving about is not as far away for them. Something like that anyway.

This then gives me the first formulaic spell:
Awaken the Unyielding Servant (Rego Terram 25)
Range: Touch, Duration: Concentration, Target: Individual (+1 size)
This spell animates a statue of stone and makes it move and, possibly, fight on the caster behalf. The form of the statue must have legs, which it can then use to walk around. It it is to use a weapon, it must have arms. The statue must vaguely resemble something that could move around ordinaryly - such as a horse or a man. Something like a gargoyle could also be animated.
The statue can have a volume of up to 10 cubic paces of stone, which at the high end would be about a size +3 statue.
(base 10, +1 touch, +1 concentration, +1 size)

Bringing forth the Canny Servant of Stone (Rego Terram 35)
Range: Touch, Duration: Sun, Target: Individual (+1 size)
As "Awaken the Unyielding Servant" above, though the statue can now follow orders independently. It is not capable of creative thought, so one must be careful with the commands one gives it.
(base 15, +1 touch, +2 sun, +1 size)

Commanding the Restless Gargoyle (Rego Terram 40)
Range: Touch, Duration: Sun, Target: Individual (+1 size)
As "Bringing forth the Canny Servant of Stone" above, but now the statue can fly. About as fast as an eagle.
(base 15, +1 touch, +2 sun, +1 size, +1 for additional ReTe effect)

Actual stat block for the statue coming later, will be drawing heavily on the stat block for animate trees in the Realms of Power: The Magic Realm book.

EDIT: Corrected spell levels.

3

In Tales of Mythic Europe (TOME) there is a magus (Severin) that basically uses wooden statues as minions. It ios a level 20 spell with Sun duration to animate the wooden statue, so that it follows your commands as a fairly brutish and stupid minion. You can build up from there :slight_smile: granting might to these things would be extremely cool

In the ezine Hermes Portal 14 or 15 (14, I think) you can find the spell to animate stone statues. Free download online.

Cheersm
Xavi

4

Thanks, I found the article. Interesting, the did it with base level 3, added a muto requisite... ended up with a lower level. Food for thought.

For the stats I am working with the idea that the caster can substitute his finesse for relevant skills (like brawl), as is suggested for the animated tree.

5

Awaken the Unyielding Servant (Rego Terram 20)
Range: Touch, Duration: Concentration, Target: Individual (+1 size)
This spell animates a statue of stone and makes it move and, possibly, fight on the caster behalf. The form of the statue must have legs, which it can then use to walk around. It it is to use a weapon, it must have arms. The statue must vaguely resemble something that could move around ordinaryly - such as a horse or a man. Something like a gargoyle could also be animated.
The statue can have a volume of up to 10 cubic paces of stone, which at the high end would be about a size +3 statue.
(base 3, +1 touch, +1 concentration, +1 size, +1 stone, +1 precision)

Is how it would using those guidelines, without making new ones up. I disagree with the Muto prerequisite they put in though. The others would be:
Bringing forth the Canny Servant of Stone (Rego Terram 35)
Range: Touch, Duration: Sun, Target: Individual (+1 size)
(base 3, +1 touch, +2 sun, +1 size, +1 stone, +1 precision, +2(?) independence)

Commanding the Restless Gargoyle (Rego Terram 40)
Range: Touch, Duration: Sun, Target: Individual (+1 size)
As "Bringing forth the Canny Servant of Stone" above, but now the statue can fly. About as fast as an eagle.
(base 3, +1 touch, +2 sun, +1 size, +1 for additional ReTe effect, +1 stone, +1 precision, +2 indepence)

And now I know why my original spell levels were so high. Miscalculations abound. They are all 10 levels too high :stuck_out_tongue:

6

I think taht there are others guidelines examples in "Covenants".
I thought creat a Initiation that includes create clay stones animates, requiring time and after survive against they and destroy them in a fight. The finish of that should be Initiated to Craft Automaton.
Like you say is the Magic Resistance and the average capacities for a servant that don't suffer warping in any mode. And that is loyal.

7

I've a magus in my saga who wants to achieve the Hermetic Breakthrough of creating intelligent stone servants. He has a plethora of ReTe spells for animating various statues, and I just use the basic level 3 guideline since "very unnatural fashion" would seem to cover movement. I do require that any stone animated must be carved into a reasonable humanoid or animal shape (different spell for each) first, however, since animate motion is a property of the shape - you can make a human statue walk, but not a stone block.

I allow the animated forms to follow basic commands, as with Awaken the Slumbering Corpse, and they have no will or intelligence. As such they're useful tools and points of research, but fall short of his eventual goal - creating artificial lab assistants.

8

Severin's Carved Assassin is a miscalculation: It's rNange touch, so it must be lvl25.

9

I would point out that Automatons are the only "things" in game that can have skills. If you sell animated statues, the buyer will have to supervise and make a finesses roll, assuming they have the skill, and the skill they are trying to avoid using.....

10

Well, the canon is not clear on this. Animated trees have skills, either Brawl 3 or the skill that is imbued by the caster's finesse, a skill that remains with them if the character casts a version of the spell that doesn't require concentrations (RoP:M).

Anyway, it is not against the limits to imbue constructs with skills. As long as it isn't something that can help with lab work or learn skills that the Magus doesn't already have, I can't really justify a major mystery virtue :stuck_out_tongue:

11

It isn't actually a Major Virtue. Any magus can learn the skill as an ability with no penalty. It is just that Verdi find this offesnive and so, because of pride, do it using the old fashioned mystery method.

12

Depending upon the skill things like animated trees and different sorts of animals might have it and you could devise a spell to get the appropriate intellect into your construct.

13

Thanks for the responses so far, such interests really makes it more fun to play the game :slight_smile:

I think I would like to keep this Magus working within ordinary hermetic theory.

Being able to imbue creations with skills and the like could end up abusive. I think it makes sense to say that the Magus can only imbue his creations with purely physical skills, using ordinary hermetic magic. I would further say that it is reasonable for any spell effect that grants intellect of some kind - basically the ability to interpret and carry out orders - to have an intelligo or mentem requisite.

Then, using primarily the arts of Rego, Terram and Intelligo, it shouldn't be too hard to animate statues to do one's bidding, nor to create lasting enchantments on statues that enable them to function as servants.

The above three spells provide the template. However, when creating greater items a cool feature is also that one can split the effect up. One effect to make the statue able to interpret orders, one to make it walk, etc. The advantage of this is that the abilities that might have to penetrate, can be designed at a lower level and take advantage of higher penetration.

Who do you think would be interested in these things? I can imagine a few noblemen would like the ideas of having statues as servants, but one would have to shy away from creating statue warriors for them, lest one create enemies for the order. I can also imagine that some covenants might be interested in a gargoyle guardian to bolster it's defences... or maybe just to brag with it's resources.

A few years down the line, he will definitely start getting interested in actually creating awakened statues, eg. to serve as a lab assistant or to have their own magic might... That's for later though. I am still more interested in cobbling something together from the Awakened items in the Ancient Magic book, rather than using the Verditius mystery. It's just too... complicated and weak.

14

Looking at a few of the effects one might want to instill into an enchanted statue, I came up with the following:
Mind of the Beast (CrAn 29)
Grants the statue the cunning and basic abilities of a mammal. Hounds are often used, as watchdogs. Lions can also be used, to create warrior guardians. For this to work, the statue must resemble a dog and be given the senses of one. After this the animal must be trained, in order to serve.
(base 15, +14 always on)

Mind of the Servant (CrMe 39+)
Grants a statue something resembling a basic human intellect. It is the equivalent of int -5, which makes it slow and stupid, but able to carry out basic orders. It cannot learn new abilities and it only has one ability at the basic level: Brawl at a level equal to the creator's finesse skill. Adding +5 levels enables the enchanter to add addional skills, but it must be from the following list: Athletics, Awareness, Great Weapon, Single Weapon, Thrown Weapon, Bows. The enchanter must have at least one in the ability to imbue it, but he can imbue it at the same level as his own ability or his finesse ability, whichever is higher. This enchantment does not allow the statue to use those abilites, the enchanments to move or sense things must be distilled seperately.
(base 25, +14 always on, +5 for each ability other than brawl).

Mind of the Servant is very funky. It does not break any of the hermetic limits, but the stuff above is not in the ordinary spell limits. The skill list allows one to make an excellent warrior or guardian statue, but nothing more. Once I get around to it, this will need to be rolled into a minor mystery virtue of some kind... To bring the level of effect down a little.

Anyway, now for the easy ones:
The Statue that Walks (ReTe 19+)
This allows the statue to walk and use any abilities it may be imbued with. Below is the basic statblock. Only quickness, dexterity and strength scores are given, as the statue should never roll it's stamina. It does not tire, it does not heal, it does not get sick and poisons do nothing.
Basic statblock: Str +6, Dex -1, Qik -5.
(base 3, +1 stone, +1 precision, +14 always on)

Not as easy as I thought. Does anyone have an idea for a good way to figure out the stats of the statue? I looked at the stats for the animated tree and put it in line with that. It should probably also be possible to increase the stats by increasing the level of the enchantment.

Last important ones:
The Stone that Listens (InIm 19)
Makes the statue able to hear as well as a human.
(base 1, +4 for hearing, +14 always on)

The Stone that Sees (inIm 24)
Makes the statue able to see as well as a human.
(base 1, +5 for sight, +14 always on)

The Stone Senses (InIm 29)
Makes the statue able to see, smell and hear as well as a human.
(base 2, +5 for sight, +14 always on, no modification for additional effect)

Tricky to work the effect levels out for those. I took it as InIm 1 (use one sense at a distance) with a taget of hearing and sight, respectively). They can be rolled together into one enchantment, I think. Whew, this takes some time to lay out.

15

These parameters are a little weird IMHO, I was expecting as most (base 3, +4 Vision and +1 Conc +5 maintain conc +1 2/day) = 26

16

What is "always on"? where did you get that one from?

17

He's speaking in pure Levels, not Magnitudes...

(And, iirc, also using a term from Champions, altho' that was a looooong time ago...)

The term is "constant" in Ars. :wink:

SK: the standard notation is done in magnitudes except where Levels are specifically mentioned. Your notation is clear to anyone who thinks about it, but still open to interpretation as presented. So...

(Base 15, +1 Concentration, +1 Item Maintains Concentration, +3 Levels Environmental Trigger, +1 Level 2x/day)

...or...

(Base 15, +2 Sun, +3 Levels Environmental Trigger, +1 Level 2x/day)

Either one could work in theory. I'm not going to comment at length, but in this case I believe you want the former, for changing/controlling, and also Range:Voice or :Sight unless it's a "fire and forget" type.