Personally I see the penalty from the Gift as being a sort of instinct that there is something potentially dangerous about the person- which is true, they can wield magic after all.
What's wrong with the spell? There are a lot of spells in the HoH books that I consider broken but this one looks alright. As mind control goes, it doesn't seem significantly more powerful than the Aura of Rightful Authority that it's compared to. I guess you could argue that "trust" is an unnatural emotion and use the guidelines one level higher but that seems a minor thing.
Granted, the bit about scrying feels off...but none of the books have defined the limits of the scrying rule very well anyway so sagas surely vary.
I see it as a general sense of "wrongness" or "offness". The Gifted person never quite fits in, other never feel like they know how he'll react and never quite trust him. A gifted person is never "one of us" no matter how dependably he acts in practice.
I dislike the bits in AM5 that indicate that the gift makes Gifted persons themselves quarrelsome. I prefer to think that most of the Gifted simply have poor social skills because of their outsider backgrounds.
Hi,
The scrying thing is very, very off. I also find it very off that a straightforward, low level spell can mostly obsolete a major hermetic virtue. You know, the kind that a magus only gets one of, sans initiation or other weirdness, the thing that defines a character concept.
This spell is broken because it breaks the setting, not because it is powerful.
I find this typical of the Bonisagus and Guernicus chapters. (Really, after reading the Bonisagus chapter that explains how the House manages to share nothing of any real value, publishing cruddy books and making it difficult to access their library of 'shared' knowledge, the real question isn't why the House is so small, but why other magi haven't Wizard Warred the lying, cheating, weaselly bastards out of existence.)
Anyway,
Ken
My reading is that the spell does not negate the Gift effect, it simply creates a feeling of trust in the target. Picture dealing with a mob boss who you're pretty certain will keep his word. You may trust him but it doesn't mean you like him or feel comfortable around him.
If that means mechanically that the -3 modifier is removed, that's not so special. There are other ways to get a +3 modifier that doesn't even involved targeted mind control, such as Aura of Enobled Presence.
The edition suffers from not having published a unified vision of life in the Order before going off on splats.
Hi,
If the text of the spell was just "It's like Aura of Rightful Authority, but for Trust," that would be fine. But the spell goes on to talk specifically about countering the effect of the Gift. Not so fine.
The issue whether the effect of the Gift more than just a -3 social modifier has come up previously in these forums.
In this case, the core rules do discuss that Bonisagi swear to share their knowledge: published enough. Having their splat essentially say that they have weaseled out of it (but not explicitly say so) isn't that great.
This edition has taken an interesting approach of making every Tribunal differ from the norm characterized in the core rule book. It takes getting used to, but isn't necessarily bad. (And if each Tribunal book presents a sufficiently different OoH (because let's face it; these Tribunals really don't belong together), that promotes different kinds of canonical sagas and promotes the sale of Tribunal books, which is important.)
Anyway,
Ken
The only thing the spell mentions about the gift is to say:
The Gift itself is not affected in any way, only the subject’s mind is
That doesn't sound so bad.
And, as I said, trusting someone doesn't necessarily mean you're comfortable around them. The basic "wrongness" effect of the Gift is unaffected, as the spell text states.
It still would benefit from a baseline approach to such things as scrying rather than to have basic Order organizational information scattered among pieces written by authors with different points of view.
Not exactly. It says the Gift isn't affected. It doesn't say the person notices any effect of the Gift. For example, my magus casts this spell on a person. The person's horse gets unusually agitated. The person isn't bothered, but notices the horse is. See, the Gift has not been affected but the person's mind has. And how does it say the person's mind is affected? The effects of the Gift are counterbalanced.
So it certainly seems as though the ReMe spell specifically offsets or checks the effects of the Gift on that person.
Have to agree with Ovarwa on this one.
I think the point of it not being scrying is that you have no more influence over the individual than does a magus with the Gentle Gift. So obtaining the Gentle Gift (such as a Criamon Mystery) and talking to any mundane servant of a magus might also be considered scrying if this were since in both cases you have used magic to offset the effects of the Gift. I would think this would come down to having appropriate allies in Tribunal, and house Guernicas could probably pull that off, especially if they would be forced to use more intrusive measure more often otherwise.
I think you're reading too much into the word counterbalance. I don't see anything specific to effects on the Gift in the spell text.
The keys here are the title TRUST ME and the Base 5 for the spell. This corresponds to the "Control a Natural Emotion" guideline for ReMe, just as the similar Base 5 works for Aura of Rightful Authority. Arguably both should be Base 10, "Control an Unnatural Emotion", but is one is set to 5 that sounds right for the other too.
The natural emotion is "Trust". The spell doesn't fully counterbalance the negative effect of the Gift, it simply creates trust where there wasn't before. See my earlier example of dealing with the scary mob boss who can nevertheless be trusted to keep his word.
Makes sense. I wouldn't agree with the interpretation - mind control is still mind control, even if it mimics something else. But there's no consensus on the boundaries of the scrying rule anyway.
Look at both underlined parts. "Counterbalance" was used once explicitly and another time implicitly by stating what "counterbalance" means with "level the subject's attitude. So it's not just the one word. Rather, two sentences are devoted to stating exactly this.
The bold part shows what I'm talking about with reference to affecting the Gift. Specifically, it is noted that the target's mind is what is affected, not the caster's Gift. This sentence doesn't say how the target's mind is affected. It just specifies what (effectively who) the spell affects.
Here's a question that may help make the point. The core book doesn't specify mistrust. It makes people uneasy, which can manifest as distrust, fear, suspicion, etc. So let's say you have someone who totally trusts your magus but still is quite uneasy around the magus. Perhaps your magus has saved a grog's life half a dozen times, putting his own life at risk, in the first year they've known each other. Your magus now casts this spell on the grog so that they can teach each other. Does the spell have an effect? Do you throw out all the statements about the effects of the spell because the word "trust" is in the name? Do you grow wings when you case Wings of the Soaring Wind? You say I'm reading so much into counter-balancing, but your reading is based on one word in the name of the spell. I would far rather interpret a spell based on a statement made twice in its description than off of one word in its name.
As for a natural emotion, is being ill at ease not something natural?
You could be right as to the author's intent. Read that way, as an explicit cancellation of the Gift's effect, I agree the spell is broken. I read it as simply creating trust that counterbalances the distrust (and not other emotions) caused by the Gift. Plenty of other spells provide this sort of limited counterbalance, such as Aura of Enobled Presence, which isn't even mind control (MuIm) and provides +3 to influence, lead, or control others, thereby neatly counterbalancing the Gift's -3.
The stated context is, after all:
I don't see anything in the description about teaching people. I wouldn't allow this effect to negate the teaching bonus, no. It would help with questioning strangers, as the description states, probably with commercial negotiations, probably a few other cases. I know we're in a Magical Schools thread but I thought we had slipped into discussing the Gift in general, as we often have in the past.
Actually I would say it probably creates the same level of trust in a stranger as the grog in your example has developed naturally. He realizes he can count on his magus but still doesn't really feel comfortable when they're together.
I made that statement on the basis of the second line to the guideline, "The target must feel the emotion before you can control it". Does the target feel either trusting or in awe of rightful authority? I dunno. Maybe they're both based on "Incline a person to a particular sort of response". Either way the two spells make sense at the same level.
Put it this way. If a teacher who is a magus cast "Trust Me" on a student, the student might be willing to trust the teacher, and get a counterbalancing +3 reaction for that purpose, but there would still be a -3 SQ due to unease...
That seems to pretty strongly disagree with the spell's own statement that it doesn't make them unnaturally well-disposed toward the magus. This is why it's different than making them act as though your their superior or similar, which is considered scrying.
I'm pretty sure that is the guideline. I had always thought it was, and it fits what they're doing fairly precisely.
This still has to do with putting all the focus on the word "trust" in the name of the spell. If it counterbalances the unease, do you get -3 SQ due to unease? If it doesn't counterbalance the unease, then it's not doing what the spell description says it does.
It says it produces a counter-balancing force, not that it negates all penalties of the gift, and implies that the counter-balancing force is specific to the needs of someone conducting an interrogation, not to all situations. I can create a counterbalance, for example, to help lift an elevator which will ease the strain on the motor but will do nothing to reduce the tension in the cable. in the same way "Trust Me" helps to counter the inherent distrust people have of magi, and removes the penalty to question or interrogate someone, but does not negate all effects of the Gift.
It provides enough boost to cancel out the -3 penalty. A +3 bonus is used in other spells of influence too. With the right array of spells it's easy to counterbalance the numerical effects of the Gift in specific appropriate circumstances - Trust Me for detective stuff and negotiations, Aura of Rightful Authority for, well, exerting authority, Aura of Enobled Presense for generally influencing, leading, or convincing. None of these cancel the Gift's effects and in fact are more effective when used to assist someone without the Gift.
I think the logic of considering this to be outside the scrying rule is off, but social rules like this are decided at Tribunal. There's nothing to stop the Quaesitors from persuading their colleagues that this is the most useful place to draw the line.
To be clear, I don't think Trust Me should help teaching quality or cancel the effects of the Gift in this circumstance. AM5 is properly conservative about allowing magics to boost seasonal activities and particularly learning activities. I think this is appropriate.
A spell like this could be useful for reducing conflict and promoting harmony in a school. That could be important in itself. Generally though I find long-term use of mind control to be highly problematic. When the spells wear off - whether intentionally or by accident - you can expect the targets to be resentful. Turning your hirelings and students into mind-controlled slaves is also likely to lead to a bad Reputation. Warping is going to be a problem at some point too.
The problem I was pointing out with what you quoted from me is that I keep hearing arguments that this spell, Trust Me, gives some sort of positive disposition toward the magus that is exactly enough to cancel the -3. But the spell is quite explicit that this is not at all what is happening. That is why, unlike what you mention with other spells, this spell is of absolutely no use to someone without the Gift or with a Gentle Gift.
That could well be. And I would be happy to accept that if I saw an argument about how Trust Me works that wasn't based on contradicting what the spell description itself says about not giving any positive disposition, just canceling the negatives.
It doesn't just say it produces a counterbalancing force. It also says "level the subject’s attitude to the caster." If the attitude engendered by the Gift is what causes the penalty to Source Quality, then it does seem to be saying this penalty to Source Quality would be removed. And somewhere the is an explicit statement that teaching is a social interaction and thus the social problems result in the reduction of Source Quality.
It's imprecise language to be sure. To me it reads best as -3 Gift modified by +3
"trust" modifier = "level" attitude of +-0. I also take it contextually, and the only context mentioned is detective-style investigations. I wouldn't broaden it to seasonal activities any more than I would allow the leadership and authority spells to turn a Gifted outsider into a popular wizard-king. The effects of the Gift are too complex and subtle for a simple nudge of an emotion to have this sort of influence.
You could certainly read the spell description more expansively and maybe that's what the author intended. There's no shortage of "broken" spells in the OOH books. There's no reason not to keep this one as a useful, legal and limited spell.
So, let's go back to my earlier post. We make an effect using the same guideline as Trust Me placed into the item. But this effect is called "Don't Mess with My Teaching." It provides a counterbalancing effect on the teacher's mind so that the teacher isn't inhibited by the effects of the Gift vis-a-vis teaching. Is that acceptable? It'd much more specific and contextual. It won't make you a great teacher, just prevent you from being a bad teacher. Seems like it addresses the concerns and is basically the same 2-pawn invested device.
What emotion, natural or unnatural, would such a spell control? I suspect that the reason Hermetic Magic can't directly affect the "Gift effect" is that nobody can (yet) quite understand and target the feelings generated. It's certainly more complicated than a simple feeling like trust.
If Hermetic Magic could simulate some other trait that gave +3 to Teaching then a spell could effectively, albeit not in a strictly literal sense, counterbalance the Gift's -3. Fortunately though for game balance, there's no way I know of to simulate Good Teacher with a spell. The closest is to improve COM. I suppose a +3 Com booster could be said to counterbalance the Gift.
Whatever the precise effect, a Mentem spell would have to be in place on each student for the entire season, which I suspect would lead to problems.
In any case, the best way to do a magic school without house rules is to give a copy of a Summa to each student and use the book rules. This will lead to faster advancement if the quality guidelines from Covenants are followed. I remember we had a discussion of the topic on here some time ago.