Always creates the natural item in question. Artificial items have to match the Rego crafting guidelines.
Those finesse rules Are a mess, honestly and they directly contradict the finesse rules suggested or described by several of the spells on page 37 in the Flambeau section.
So does conjuring the mystic tower require a finesse roll? Under the core guidelines for creo in the basic book it should, under the craft rules from societies it should require a massive finesse roll, but under the spell description it does not, except to add "flourishes" and has added levels to the spell for complexity instead...
I am not sure that this actually stands up to RAW. Under raw there is nothing to stop someone from inventing a magic item that creates a really complex thing out of nothing with an environmental trigger, yet under your ruling that would most likely be prohibited.
But then again such an item raises many questions, like who makes the finesse roll when the environment trigger the effect?
conjuring the mystic tower is an interesting one. You could argue that you are conjuring a tower and as a manufactured object it would require a finesse roll. But that then raises the question about what your roll determines. I would argue that building a tower is more time consuming than it is difficult. There is definitely some specialist knowledge involved depending on the type of tower you want. Personally I would not let a failed roll ruin the tower completely. It might cause the tower to have a wonky internal layout, a ugly design or it might even constrain the designs available to the player or even have the tower start leaning over time (similar to a certain famous tower in italy). I would not let the spell conjure a tower that collapsed or was otherwise useless upon coming into existence. My main reason for this however is metagame, If a player goes through the effort to learn a level 35 CrTe spell and spends 7 vis (or pays a specialist for the same) I dont want to have that effort be wasted by an unlucky roll of the dice.
IMO there is also an argument to be made that the tower conjured by "conjuring the mystic tower" is more of an unusually useful natural structure than an artificial one. After all the tower is made from one continuous piece of rock rather than being made from a mixture of bricks, mortar and wood as would be the case for all man-made towers. From this perspective you could argue that it is more akin to a giant boulder with some incredibly convenient caves inside.
On a more general note, regarding Finesse. It seems like the Finesse rules as presented across various books are an unholy mess that will allow us to present arguments against any reasonable position based in one set of rules by referring to another.
This is a seperate post from my above post because it concerns the topic of the thread more generally.
All of this talk about conjuring towers caused me to remember another aspect of covenant industry where magic can be very useful: Stonework.
Stonework is generally backbreaking but low-skill labor. Actually cutting masonry blocks out of a cliff is bothersome, transporting the blocks is bothersome (and expensive), putting blocks in place is bothersome and dangerous. the list goes on and on and on. Conveniently magic can help pretty much everywhere. Not only can magic, mostly ReTe help with the entire supply chain of stone block manufacturing, it can dramatically change it.
Construction with stone blocks is generally limited in the size of the blocks used by the ability to quarry and move blocks based on their size. However construction with larger sized blocks would in many cases be a definite advantage. Walls made from enormous blocks are harder to tip over, there are less holes for vermin to hide in, and drafts or humidity to get in, etc etc. With magic you can quarry and especially transport enormous blocks of stone. Not only that but with magic you can also much more easily shape the blocks later on. I can only imagine that this has the potential to drastically alter the way buildings would be built. You can even imagine mortarless construction where the blocks are shaped to fit each other perfectly and held together by their massive weight. (this style of construction was historically used extensively in the Angkor Wat temple complex and by the Incas in the Andes.) And even if you dont care to revolutionize stone-construction ReTe effects in magic items can certainly reduce the price for building in stone a lot and speed up the process too.
The need for Finesse in creating stuff is already outlined in ArM5 p.77 Creo (Cr) "I create". Given the limited space in the already 240 or so pages of ArM5, no detailed rules about using Finesse for specific effects are given there. Instead spells from the core book have often magnitudes added for complexity, "elaborate effect" or "elaborate design". There is tmk no further elaboration on these magnitudes added for complexity in later books with more space - so they really look like a stopgap to cut down core book size to me.
Covenants p.49ff Magical Alternatives to Covenfolk (including the box Rego Craft Magic), HoH:S 60f The Creation of Beautiful Things and A&A p.70 box Replicating Formulae with Hermetic Magic expand on the use of Finesse for Hermetic Magic creating stuff with Rego Craft Magic or Creo - and there are many examples of it over the books as well.
I wouldn't call this situation "an unholy mess", but the logical consequence of a system designed to grow out of a single core book with restricted space.
Craft Magic, "Magical Industry" or such best work in a saga, if at least Covenants, HoH:S and A&A are present and studied by the troupe.
I remember reading that the Egypt book mentioned that the priests of ancient egypt were supported by Charm Magicians who used magic to mass produce talismans and the such. This is mentioned in page 55 of the Egypt book and are mentioned to function as learned magicians with higher totals and expanded RDT.
Hence, the finesse rules are a mess. As I stated above, the finesse rules for Creo are stated in the description of that technique. They are also used in the Flambeau chapter of HoH:Societates. Then they are completely revamped in the Jerbiton chapter.
I would generally allow your interpretation, but your interpretation is not RAW. RAW is at best contradictory, if not outright parsimonious in setting everything created with Creo to the standard of Rego finesse standards.
I think it makes some sense that a Creo spell that is executed correctly, without botch should reliably produce the same thing at the same quality, especially for a formulaic or ritual spell. Conjuring the Mystic Tower, IMO should set the design at the time of the creation, and should not be varied.
It just struck me that it could be very interesting to have a game where a schism occurs in the order, not of a military nature or along political fault lines, but where different versions of magic theory have occurred through different lineages of magi each of which follows different house rules...
Yes. This and forestry.
With a few enchanted items you could have a finesse based labor guild amongst covenfolk. Apprentices carve rocks from a mountain, progress to cutting lumber, some woodwork, and eventually to high level craftwork.
Yes that is a very reasonable way for a covenant to develop. I imagine that it would be coupled with real craft skills, because it gives the +3 bonus for familiarity and it preserves the professional pride that the original craftsmen to start the Finessing guild probably had. It also allows the craftsmen to make the few high-quality goods by hand that are hard to make with Craft magic.
I also imagine that covenfolk with ranks in Finesse are prized specialists among covenants, because they tend to require a large bank of magic items and a culture steeped in magic in order to train them.
Conjuring the Mystic Tower uses the other guideline for complex/detailed Creo rituals - adding magnitude. One per 3 Ease Factor is the conversion I come up with.
I think it is covered in Transforming Mythic Europe and Hermetic Projects.
Where?
Tmk, there is no "other guideline for complex/detailed Creo rituals - adding magnitude". There are just a few examples.
You might be referring to the houserule that was suggested by The Iron-Bound Tome.
I believe tanning is another area with great potential.
Tanning is nasty, it smells and uses lots of urine and feces and toxic lime. However fortunately for a craft-magus to be, all of those are intermediary products and the process of using them is mostly just leaving the unprocessed hide to soak, which I would argue is not very high skill, i.e. not high craft(tanning) DC.
The byproducts of tanning are also a major source of pollution, it destroys local waterways and presumably pisses of whatever magical being might inhabit said bodies of water. It also ruins the waterside view for whoever lives near to the water. It is also bad for peoples health as it causes bad smells.
All in all this seems like an area where magic can be used to preserve nature and to get rid of some very unpleasant work.
Tanning is certainly a classic use of Craft Magic in our troupe.
In my saga, it evolved quite differently. Finesse-specialized covenfolk are mostly disdainful of mundane craftmanship and crafters ("muggles!"). They put all their professional effort into Finesse, and they tend to get their +3 familiarity bonus from other sources. This has created one serious issue for them: basically, they are great at creating stuff, but they are terrible at evaluating it.
In truth I think that Ars Magica has more than enough room for both of our visions to be true simultaneously. Given that there is unlikely to be an international "Finesse crafters guild" and it IMO is more likely that some old covenants eventually develop a culture of craft-magic specialized covenfolk independently, a lot of what happens will be determined by random factors such as the personality of the magi and the covenfolk. Thus there is space enough for significant diversity in how Finesse craftsfolk view themselves.
keep in mind that for rego craft magic simply having a copy of something gives +3 to finesse. Keeping mundane craftspeople around to produce originals might simply be cost effective if you are far enough from trade routes that buying originals is too inconvenient.
I use the whole rule idea of Complexity Magnitudes rather then making people roll for Finesse. This can be a +1 to a +3 and such. A good side bar about this is page 56, Maximum Magnitudes Due to Complexity, in Transforming Mythic Europe.
I just don't really feel the need for random finesse rolls to make everything supremely difficult and I think annoying.