Been thinking of more items for labs/covenants and have come up with a concept, but I'm uncertin how to make it within the rules, so I'm looking for any advice or tips (or links if this has already been done before)....
The Concept....(cheaply stolen from an episode of Angel....)
A blank book that is linked to the covenants library, that on command, displays the contents of a book on its pages - allowing magi to summon pages and books to their lab...i figure it would increase the general quality of a lab (being able to quickly cross reference different sources...).
The book has an accompanying arcane connection that is put within the covenant library. On command, the book reads a book from the room with the AC, then displays that book on its pages.
How are those mechanics?
(I'm also not sure how this would work with the Code, but I'm just trying to figure out the item atm...)
I think you'd need an arcane connection to each book rather than a connection that's in the library. So what if you had a page from each book, and fixed it as an arcane connection to the original book. You could bind that into an enchanted book, held by your magus. This enchanted book would use an Intellego Animal(Herbem, Terram) effect to gain all knowledge of the target book. Use of that effect could trigger a Muto Imaginem effect on the enchanted book to make it look, feel, smell, sound, and taste exactly like the target book. Your magus would then use it exactly as he would the original, though of course any glossing would be pretty pointless.
I'm not sure whether any of the above has been debunked in previous discussions. I suspect it has.
Ah, a very useful spell for a baseline, thanks Bitter. Think I will attempt to use it as the basic power of the item.
Mark, the only difficulty with your idea i that it would be difficult to access any new books after the enchanted book had been created....plus I dont think other magi of the covenant would appreicate me taking pages out of our library collection??? Your suggestion of using the InAn(He,Te) probably makes more sense than my original idea, however, the spell from covenants is actually a CrIm (35) spell....so, hm, not sure....
On command, up to 6 times a day, this empty tome displays the text of a book listed with which it has a an Arcane Connection to, which is usually the covenant’s Library Catalogue. The book accepts commands to vocal commands, such as next page, pervious page etc.
When enchanting this device, one additional pawn of Vim vis is required, to fix the Arcane Connection to the book.
That is pretty much a direct application of the spell Endless Repetition in a Bottomless Pool from Covenants, with the added concept of using the Library's catalogue as the link, which another spell within covenants A Simple Charm for the Recovery of Mislfiled Books does.
With this version, I cant see any problems with the code and scrying. Also, I was planning on having this item give a bonus to General Quality of my Lab, how much of a bonus do you think it should give, especially since a lvl 38 effect is difficult to enchant in one session for a lesser device and a greater device would require even more vis and time to enchant it gradually??
Well, the guideline from Covenants is 20 levels to gain +1 in a characteristic or 10 for a specialisation, and thats a fairly decent guideline to start from, settling the items level as ~40...
By that, you could use this to add +2 to GQ.
Not personally sure if i prefer it as a lesser enchanted device though as it really is a very nice idea and could both deserve giving a higher bonus as well as not being easy to come by...
Cheers for the info Direwolf - could you give me a page reference for those guidelines, as I've missed them but they are useful for what im planning for my game.
I agree that the concept should probably give a higher bonus and be a little more difficult to do, but the spell from covenants seems to forefill the requirements, and as its only a single effect, I dont see the need to craft it into a Greater Device - tho any suggestions are more than weclomed still.
As a random aside, this item could have major effects on the order - remote readnig of books could allow travelling magi to continue to read, you could centralise books into a few great libraries which can be linked to any number of these items - imagine one library per Art say, or one per Tirbunal, with each magus having several of these books linking to the different libraries? Interesting, no?
You can find the guidelines that Direwolf described on page 121 of Covenants.
If I'm not mistaken, the idea of your Tome of Bonisagus is to have the pages of the Tome display the text (and images) of another book, one page per one page. In other words, the magus will turn the pages as if it were the actual book - as opposed to the images changing once they're displayed. If this is right, and you want the pages of the book to turn according to vocal commands (not that useful if the magus already knows the right page, but very useful to search with commands like "important tips when warding against demons"), then you might need a Rego requisite and an Animal (for parchment, otherwise Herbam) requisite to have the effect move the physical pages.
I've written up a short descriprtion of the item - all but the 2 central pages are inscribed with 'arcane' symbols written with Ink of Hermes - the 2 central pages magically display pages, just the base spell that im using, with voice commands making new pages appear on the 2 central pages (the Ink of Hermes is there to give a bonus on the enchantment total).