Magical Lighting in Labs

Agreed - I'm just nitpicking how light and species work for general reference. (And again - carries species, rather than is carried by species.)

Species make my head hurt.

Even if light or species can't leave the circle, if you can draw a big circle within the lab (this limits the working space, obviously, unless the room is itself a circle, or around the lab, things might work, though, if light's crossing the circle ends the spell, you might have to end up recasting the spell everty time someone opens the door, which, I guess, would in fact solve the problem.

I'm with Jonathan here: I don't think the Ring Duration was intended as a way to circumvent the need for enchanted items. I'm more or less OK with Ring as long as it's only used for wards, since this is both a very specialized application, and also a common trope in the (putative) practice of magic in the real world. However, I don't want to see this sort of permanent effect get much beyond that one use.

There are two issues for me. Number one, I don't like getting something for nothing. One important design concept in ArM is that permanent magic carries a steep cost, and permanent rings throw that pillar of the game design out the window (wow, bad metaphor). I'm pretty sure that the author of the "Laboratories" chapter didn't anticipate that every lab would have Magical Lighting and Magical Heating; indeed, using a temporary spell to provide Magical Lighting as the example on pg. 122 implies just the opposite. In this case, though, the bonuses are pretty minor.

That leaves me with my second concern, which is bookkeeping: it's simply absurd to have to record something that's going to be the same for nearly every character. If it's the norm, it should be part of the baseline mechanics (that is, no bonuses), and the exceptions to the general rule should be the subject of Virtues and Flaws.

Scott

Much like you, i don't think you should get something for free. But I do have a different take than you.

I think you're presuming that it's going to be the same for nearly every character, but it doesn't have to be so, and certainly shouldn't be so. The bonuses for Magical Lighting are : +1 Aesthetics, +1 Texts +1 Im. The bonuses for magical heating are +1 Health, +1 Aesthetics and +1 Ig. The bonuses provided aren't compelling to every character...

Those bonuses aren't for every character, but there's no downside, so they'd be availble to every character. Yes, you could make it so that there is, in effect, an inherent bonus for characters with those particular specialties, but it seems simpler, mechanically, simply to say that those bonuses have already been incorporated into the baseline for Hermetic labwork.

Scott

The downside is the time of making the devices. It's an opportunity cost of time and vis. I have a Corpus specialist who wouldn't bother with these bonuses until he's fully developed his lab... Something that would take probably a dozen or more seasons to do, depending on lab size, and refining. More if you add the time it will take to improve his Magic Theory score.

Personally, though, I'm leaning more towards simply saying that any effect that doesn't use vis causes Warping.

Scott

With Ring spells, there's no significant investment of time for the magus, no--even permanent rings can be created by mundane craftsmen.

Scott

Well, true. But then...

It's a rule of thumb, take it with a grain of salt. The choice is put a warping score on your lab if you want an effect (if you think light and heat will continually cross the ring without shoring out the spell) and you generate a (spontaneous) spell, or build a device that is reliable and consistent and works the same every time (this is why items are built, anyway, right?).

So, if you want to have magical light and heat in your lab and you use spells to do it, you get a Warping score for your lab, and your results are a little bit less reliable, because of all of the magic you personally generated on a daily basis.

It's a rule of thumb, take it with a grain of salt. The choice is put a warping score on your lab if you want an effect (if you think light and heat will continually cross the ring without shoring out the spell) and you generate a (spontaneous) spell, or build a device that is reliable and consistent and works the same every time (this is why items are built, anyway, right?).

So, if you want to have magical light and heat in your lab and you use spells to do it, you get a Warping score for your lab, and your results are a little bit less reliable, because of all of the magic you personally generated on a daily basis.
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As I mentioned earlier, that doesn't work with the RAW--there's no multiple casting, so no Warping or Safety penalty.

Scott

But by RAW, constant effects of low power do cause warping. The ring spells discussed here, assuming that they work are almost certainly constant. Now, what gets warped is the light and the heat, and it's not unreasonable to think that the warped heat and light would interfere with the lab, (thus a warping score for the lab). This warping from a low level, constant effect is reflected in the canonical spell, Gleam of the Freshly Polished Glass, that spell, despite only being cast once, and only of 25th level does impose a warping score on the lab, even if it is only cast once for the period involved.

OK, the argument is reasonable, but the RAW cover character warping, not lab warping. It's a sound basis for a house rule--the catch is that the reasoning would equally apply to an enchanted item, and I don't think that's what I or most other people would want.

Scott

Actually the RAW with regards to a warping score in a lab seems to implicitly exempt items. I know exempting items is not consistent; an effect is an effect. I touched on why items and spells might be different earlier.
But keep in mind that a lab's warping score is nothing near what warping of characters or things is.

I believe Transforming Mythic Europe discusses warping things. The RAW in the core book says anything subject to an effect is warped. It does not specifically say that warping only applies to people. So, being subject to the constant effect of light and heat from an effect in ones lab should apply warping points on the magus in the lab.

Tracking warping on things is difficult, a huge bookkeeping chore. Think of putting a warping score on a lab as a means of saying some of the items in this lab are warped and sometimes behave strangely which sometimes produces unpredictable results.

So the trade off, presuming you can accept thr implication that items don't inflict warping on the lab, is if investing time and Vis to create an item an acceptable trade-off to avoid a warping score in the lab. If not, any magically supplied virtue should put a warping score on the lab. There is contradiction here, so, a HR for clarity would be reasonable.

They will affect the magus only if you consider light and heat to be magical, in which case we encounter the problem of Parma blocking them and the magus being a freezing dark blob in the middle of the lab. This kind of path is one I prefer not to tread since your head spins even faster than with species alone! :mrgreen:

Having a wand that creates a Ring flame spell when you draw a circle with it and casting that same spell spontaneously is not very different in my book. Both end-result magical effects should be the same warp-wise. I would accept that common use of fairly permanent magic effects warps the lab, but I would dpo that regardless of the source, be it common use magic items or a spell that is constantly (more than half the year) active.

Xavi

Magi who aren't strong in Creo and/or Ignem are going to have to fatigue themselves for spontaneous spells producing light and hear, no? If they are doing it repeatedly over the course of a season, they are almost certainly going to botch during the season. So there is a difference between using a wand (enchanted item) and spontaneously casting a spell.

It's fair to ask if Magical Heating and Magical Lighting should give the lab a warping score.

Warping needs work. I'd certainly like to see the next edition tackle it and try and develop a rigorous and consistent framework that doesn't require a lot of bookkeeping...

I can spend a week creating the fires in my lab (I probably can do that in several hours at most, so no big deal), and have them going on forever, so no biggie on the course of lab activities.

No botch dice if you are relaxed.

Considering that warping is one of the least used things in 5th edition (I have never seen warping affecting anything but human beings and the odd cow for story reasons IMS) that can be a thing to tackle. Or to ignore since we used to live fairly OK without it in the past. Along with the other thousands of new rules introduced in each new supplement being released.

Xavi

You always use a stress die, and arguably can't be relaxed when fatiguing yourself for a spontaneous spell.
Again, if you're doing this, as MTKnife has said, you're essentially just saying all labs should have magical light and magical heat, and might as well just give all labs those bonuses anyway, instead of dealing of the rigmarole of creating rings of light and heat in the lab.

If this is possible, I'd go so far as to argue that all labs should have magical light and heat, so it is part of the presumed default.
No bonus.

Such a presumption also effectively destroys two other virtues. Magical Light and Magical Heating are derived from Superior Light and Superior Heating. So, if that's the default, you're wiping out 4 virtues in one fell swoop.

The choice comes down to whether you think a magus, any magus, but specifically a non creo/ignem specialist can light and heat his lab sufficiently well to enjoy the bonuses of Superior Lighting and Superior Heating with his Arts alone (or convince another magus to come into his sanctum and do it on his behalf). If you do, then this becomes a getting something for nothing proposition. No risk of warping, no risk of botching a spontaneous spell, and everything's awesome (when you're part of a team!). I'm pretty confident in saying that I don't think that something for nothing was the intent of the author(s). It's a fair exchange of a season of work (by someone) and a few pawns of vis to create an item that does provide Magical Heating or Magical Lighting and "install" the item into the lab taking no time, since it doesn't occupy space in the lab, and the bonuses are useful enough that someone might desire them...

I believe that spontaneous magic is always stress. Also, spontaneous magic is explicitly rolled in to the value that your art scores contribute to the lab total. So yes you might assume that your lab already has it but you're not getting any additional bonuses for it unless you create a device or formulaic spell to free you from the task of doing it yourself.

the issue in question (if I'm reading correctly) isn't the warping of inanimate objects, it is the addition of a warping quality(?, perhaps quality isn't the correct term) to your lab. A warping quality gives a not inconsiderable chance (10% per point of warping "quality") for anything that you produce in the laboratory to be altered to reflect the qualities of the laboratory. Having 20 or 30% of what you produce not be what you intended to produce is utterly brutal and not something that any sane magus would be content with.

I don't think that this is a fair characterization at all. The fifth edition line has been very sparing with the alteration of rules. We've had more stuff described but very little new rules to change how things are played as opposed to optional rules to describe something new. (Covenants and the Lords of Men optional combat rewrite stick out, and I suppose that the depiction of creatures of might from the realm books and mysteries differ in a substantial way from what we saw in core but these were only sparsely detailed in the core so to describe them at all is to describe them differently)