Max producing vegetables

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Hi everyone,

I keep playing the Cretan game I did told you about. We discussed previously about ways of getting money os that players could buy things. And one of the recpmendations was to stop creating wealth and start crating needed suplies.

Players have steadily been doing this. So now the though about 2 magic items to do the following. They were using the CrHe spell base 20 to grow trees from in a day, but they though that the same spell could not be used to grow vegetables in the practice, due to the way vegetables mostly are planted and also grain. They realized that many times you sow many "seeds" or plant matter of something and some of them get to grow. The point was that using the spell manually to each grain would not be doable and i agreed with them.

Then they though about creating a container to use the spell in all the grain or plant matter of the containment and use that plant matter to grow massive fields. To speed up the available land worked they though about getting the sack in a cart and with some speed go trough the fields to "sow" or throw the seeds on it. Then some workers or carts behind them move the soil in wich they throw the veggie matter.

None of us have been a farmer in his whole life, so for us it does work the trick more or less, but if u were to point out any problem you saw i would gladly use it in the game. Lastly we realized that such a plantiful grow from the soil would left it barren very fast, so 1 player came with the idea of creating fertile soil with lunar duratión, so that you could have soil for the planting of 1 or even 2 planting times.

For this matter we created a spell and used base 2 instead of 1 to create it fertile, and well for planting, then group then size +1 and +5 for it to be prepared to be sown. Lastly i told them that to place the soil properly as it is a 500m^3 of soil i would require a finesse check.

What do you think about this. Appart from this we do grow trees for wood and the animal magus is going to proably develop a spell to be able to fasten the animal growth to one day too. For instance could you fasten the pregnancy of animals with magic. I do not think so, but what are your thoughts about that.

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For the seeds, the problem with casting it as acontainer spell is that while you're busy trying to plant them all, the seeds will be growing, so you might end up with seeds growing before they even get in the ground.

The way around it is the use of a Group spell. While a group means 10 individuals, it also means the equivalent of a mass of 10 individuals, which should be more than enough to cover part or all of the field, depending on it's size.

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It may also be worth considering that whilst Magi likely overlook such trivialities, farmers were well aware that soil could be "overworked". Whilst growing a field of crops with magic is certainly possible, doing so more than once or twice a year without significant added fertiliser could end up turning the soil into barren dust.

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Hi Itzhak many thanks for your answer. We used group to cast the spell in all those seeds. The problem of using group range when seeds or plant matter to grow the new plants is in the soil is that following the books definition of group i do not see it posible, but for each plant. I quote from AM5 CR page 113 the group target description reads as follow:

"Group/Room: Group: The spell can affect a group of people or things. The components of the group must be close together in space, and the group itself must be separated from any other things of the same type. Three grogs huddled together or a ring of standing stones are a group: six people out of a crowd are usually not."

This being said, when the seeds are scatered in the field i do not see how it could be posible because of this sentence:

"The components of the group must be close together in space"

So we thought it could not be used in the field, unless u use group target for each little group in wich a grog is indefinetly using the spell.

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That's why I said it could only cover part of a field. A target Boundary would be better, but would need to be a ritual
Another option would be to put enough walls that it would count as Room target.

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Group should work just fine, though YSMV so if your group does not want it to function then it won't. "Close together in space" is relative to what you are classifying as a group.

A large amount of seeds sowed in a plowed field if distinct, separate from other groups, and if properly sown are are only spread out enough to ensure proper distance that is actually required from them to grow. Actually the distances would be a shorter since the farmers are expecting not all the seeds to take. A reasonable restrictive reading would classify individual rows rather than the whole field as a Group. Not allowing Group at all is a very restrictive interpretation of RAW.

You will still run into the issue that Veritas mentioned with crops, since they will rapidly strip the soil if used repeatedly. Your grogs are ether going to have to do a whole lot of fertilizing or you are going to have to use some effect similar to The Bountiful Feast or a CrTe "healing" ritual.

In a thread discussing magical industry one of the areas I went pretty in depth on was automated farming in what is effectively green houses. I will try to find the thread but one of the things I remember was a spell/effect which improved composting which would be the most common form of fertilizer at the time. There was also effects to instantly complete the plowing, provide light (artificial and "teleported") if the grow area could not receive natural light, sow the crops, grow the crops by magic, harvest the crops, and a non-ritual version of The Bountiful Feast [Constant, Room or Structure].

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Found one part of it, where we were discussing growing groups with magic and I broke down all the steps that had to be done magically to make it as quick as possible.

Recommend checking out check TME, p.41. It goes into detail such as "grow to maturity" (CrHe), "blossom" (ReHe Base 15), and "fruit" (ReHe Base 15) are all different effects.

It also fairly clearly tells you that different crops blossom in different ways. So you need to design the blossom and fruit effect for the type of plant, i.e. trees, root vegetables, leafy crops, grains. Those are the ReHe effects, though for the CrHe bring to maturity effect it just says it brings a group of plants to full maturity without anything about it requiring a different version for different types of plants. RAW seems to be the CrHe works on all plants while the ReHe must be tailored.
[While not one of the mentioned options, you would also have bushes. There are ones that are basically small trees and so tree effects should work on them. Then you have ones like the blackberry and raspberry which might or might not be considered a tree which is for your group to decide.]

From the text it also strongly implies that orchards and fields are valid Group targets. All the Herbam spells use Group, as well as several mentioning "orchards or fields".

And there is also the write-up of example spells to do the same thing with animals.

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I can't see the benefits here over The Bountiful Feast.

  • Magic to keep the soil healthy (most likely CrHe Base 1) - All instant Creo rituals need Vis to make their effects permanent, and as this is soil then it's a Terram base not a Herbam base. If you're spending Vis anyway, why not just create the food directly?
  • Magic to insure enough water (ReAq) - This is much easier with Creo Aquam unless you're diverting an existing water source. Whilst this would cost Vis, it would produce a spring rather than a set amount of water, so it could be used for all future farming projects.
  • Magic to prepare the fields (ReTe) - Most of the other steps are far easier to accomplish with mundane workers.
  • Magic to grow the plants to maturity (CrHe Base 15+) Legitimate, it's a duration spell not a ritual so doesn't need Vis.

You could also just use Rego Herbam or Rego Terram to magically animate farming tools to move at your direction if you really didn't want to bother with human grogs.

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From your comment, you obviously did not go and read the thread that post is quoted from.

While you could choose to do any of those steps without magic or skip over some with a ritual, that post was related to setting up a magically automated enchanted food production 'Green House'. It was everything that you would have to create an enchanted effect for in a single invested item.

CrHe Base 1 is the The Bountiful Feast Base. It does not have to be a ritual, that spell is one because of Duration and Target. If you create a variation that is Constant and Structure/Room (depending on size), then it would work fine for a 'Green House'.

The ReAq effect to move water is most likely needed in such a magically operated 'Green House' even if how you get water is from a CrAq created spring. You are trying to irrigate the plants in a precisely controlled way at a very high rate, without flooding them. Just pumping a spring into your the Green House, if even possible depending on where it is located, would most likely be way to much water.

For preparing the fields, of course mundane workers are cheaper and easier. But they are not magically automated are they. If you need actual workers then the whole process is not magically automated.

Yes you could ReHe/ReTe to magically animate farming tools. But why do that rather than just doing it directly in the context of an Invested item which automates the Green House. Doing it that way you would have to have farming equipment stored in the Green House so it is in range, taking up area that could be more growing space.

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A common use of wood is heating. A creo spell to make fire wood is useful. Depending on SG interpretation, it even makes the hearth easier to clean as the ash disappears at spell end. Similar things that are expended such as cooking oil, lamp oil, the materials used for tanning, etc, can all be created by creo to save mundane resources.

Creating life, ie pregnancy, depending on SG interpretation, hits the limit of the Divine. Creating a cow with duration moon, which admittedly isn't low level, works. At the end of the duration you have a dead cow all ready for a feast, as over the month, the cow has metabolised the grass, etc in to a cow. As long as you have pastures, that works.

The nutrient leech from the soil also can be solved by duration moon soil boosting spells. The fast grown plants will use the temporary nutrients to grow which would leave the soil fine. A certain argument would be once the nutrient spell ends, the crops would not be as good, but considering the bountiful feast doesn't have a terram requisite for the trace elements such as iron, nor aurum requisite for nitrogen, I think it would work under Mythic Europe rules.

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As I told in the main post, we created a magic item with lunar duration that created fertile soil. The point is to use that soil for planting instead of the natural one. So that the natural one is preserved. Do you think this would not wark?

The base for xreating soil with CrTe is 1, but we pushed it to 2 to create it as fertile soil instead pf soil. We planed on using that soil to grow everything and instead of scater it as the above line, we planed to use a 0,03m width and the rest as lengh in each side, so that the plant take the nutrients fron the soil that is magicly created and as we can summon 500m^3 of soil per day for 28 days, we though about this soil to be the solution to the problem.

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Temporally created soil used to raise plants has the same issues as temporally created food and water have if consumed by people. Though most likely this would not be disruptive to quick farming operations if the plants were magically accelerated through to being harvested before the effect creating the soil expired.

In other words, once the effect that creates the magic soil expired then any plants grown in it would become starved and die fairly quickly.

However if you used magic to make the plants grow, bloom, and fruit then harvest the produce before the effect that created the magic soil expired then the resulting produce would in most cases be perfectly fine. Produce which might have issues are of the root and leaf type. Those would YSMV.

If you are going with magically created soil: Moon duration, enough capacity to create all the needed soil, and make sure you finish the crops before any of it expires.

Effects that are variations of The Bountiful Feast do not have the same issues as spells that create fertile soil even if they are temporary. Those spells Target the plants directly and magically ensure that they grow well rather than creating soil that the plants feed on and then lose their nutrition when the soil disappears.

You can grow plants in completely barren dirt if they are under the effect of The Bountiful Feast.

However the duration of The Bountiful Feast effect should still be long enough that the plants finish growing before it expires. Once it expires the plants are limited by the soil, ranging from no visible effect if the soil is rich to slowing growth if it is normal to actual sickness and death if it is poor or barren.

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The created soil is moon duration. Thats how we solved the issue. Probably they do nees to create spells to bloom the crops. For the trees production they did not create any blooming spell.

In trees however i forced them to use 2 spells, maybe i am a bad person. But they use one to grow from seed to minor tree. Then one from minor tree to tree.

The thing is for example the corn or wheat aren't full grown when they are harvestable?

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Corn?! What is this thing you speak of?
[Corn first reached Spain in 1493 and was first grown there in 1494. Didn't exist in ME.]

The three stages broken down

  • Grow to Maturity: This brings the plant to full adult size from seed. If the duration is less than required to reach 100% with the chosen speed, it only reaches a fraction of maturity. If it does reach 100% it is capable of blooming when conditions are right but has not done so yet.
  • Bloom: This forces a mature plant to create fully completed flowers. If conditions are correct then it will begin fruiting, else the flowers will die.
  • Fruit: This forces a mature plant with flowers to grow ready to harvest fruit.

Each stage depends on the one before it. And while not listed, the requirement for Grow to Maturity is viable seeds in soil capable of supporting the mature plant.

Annual crops (such as grains) are fully grown, bloomed, and fruited when they are ready to be destructive harvested. Until all three have happened there is nothing to get. Just growing to full size and cutting down gives you straw.

The grow to full size takes roughly 1/3 to 2/3 the time, with blooming and fruiting splitting the remaining time. Growing spring wheat for example takes about 4 months. Growing to full size is about 2 months, while blooming and fruiting are each about 1 month. Growing winter wheat takes about 8 months, though the times are more slanted towards growing to full size (about 5 months) compared to the blooming and fruiting (about 1.5 months each). Not all locations can grow winter wheat.

Also just because a plant is fully mature does not mean it will bloom and just because it bloomed does not mean it will fruit. The weather and conditions must be appropriate for it to go on to the next stage. If you make a fruit tree bloom in the middle of winter all that will happen is the blooms will die and fall off after a couple of days.

Without all three effects (maturity, bloom, and fruit) your wheat crop has a good chance not to be ready before your magically created soil disappears.
You would have to:

  • Create soil at the very beginning of the lunar cycle
  • Sow, mature, and bloom on the day the soil was created
  • weather conditions would have to be optimal for the wheat to fruit in a month

If all three of those are met, the soil would disappear right around the time the wheat was ready to harvest. If any were not optimal then the grains would not be fully grown resulting in a poor harvest at best.

So yes your players need at minimum to create a bloom spell and should create a fruit spell as well.

Things like fruit trees and other perennial crops produce multiple times over their lifetime. The grow to maturity part is often years. So using magic to accelerate that part saves a lot of time that has no production when you start or expand an orchard.

They have the advantage that you only have to bring them to maturity once, but then can bloom and fruit them several times. By RAW it is a single spell to bring them to maturity, so requiring your players to use 2 is a little harsh. RAW to get partial maturity you would pick a speed with a Duration that is less than what the speed would need to reach 100% or you cast at non-optimal times. For example the Base 15 (a day or a night) is roughly 12 hours. If you cast a spell using that Base with Sun duration, to reach maturity the spell would need to be cast at around sunrise or sun set. Casting it at noon or midnight would result in about 50% maturity.

The drawback of this type of plant is that they require more (often much more) space per unit of produce. Temporary soil is a waste, both because they root much deeper so require more soil per plant and when the soil disappears the plant will become very sick or die. So the soil is less efficient and you lose the advantage of this type of plant.

You can repeatedly bloom and fruit perennials. However they are going to go through a lot of water and strip the soil rapidly if you do.

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mutter mutter mutter americans...

Corn means wheat/rye/oat over here, what you call corn we call maize.....

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He said "wheat and corn", which is why I said what I did. If he had just said corn then I would have taken it as grains.

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Good day mate,

Many thanks for your full answer. With perenials we did not use "magic soil" but natural soil and we just accelerated the growth of the tree. And only with trees i forced them to use to spells to make them grow to maturity. With plants i only make them use one spell as RAW to be able to grow plants to full. Do you need to design a spell to bloom and to fruit por each plant really? You did mention a book in your past post, which book were you refering too? "TME, p.41" sorry but I could not find the book.

Don´t you think it is too much pain, although having huge gains, to create 2 spells for fruiting if you grow full grown trees and plants with 1 single spell. Although thinking into medieval ages, ¿wouldn´t it be logical that blooming and fruiting spellwise were one?

By the way, they are going to grow vegetables in the time of the year that the weather is appropiate to the vegetable that is growging so i didn´t have too many issues with plant blooming but not fruiting due to them being concius that the weather must be taken into account. That being said, if by any means there was a week during autum, that randomly was very hot, they could probably grow vegetables in that week, even though the usual weather of that season usually is not good for the plant don´t you think so?

Many thanks for your detail in your answer. I do appreciate it a lot, as it helps me build the campaign better and properly.

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TME is Transforming Mythic Europe. Starting on page 41 is the "Harvests and Livestock" section, which details how to magically improve those.

Grow to maturity, bloom, and fruit are three different things by RAW, clearly described in that section of TME. If you think it is to much of a pain then you can make a House Rule, but by the Rules as Written Blooming and Fruiting are two different things. If you want to do it by magic then you ether need three spells or a complex spell with that has several levels of Complex along with being both Creo and Rego.

You do not need to design spells for each individual plant for Bloom and Fruit, but rather each category of plant. There are four categories listed which I gave earlier: Trees, Root Vegetables, Leafy Crops, and Grains. The reason you need different spells for each category is because they bloom and fruit differently. A Bloom or Fruit spell designed for Trees works on all Trees. One designed for Grains works on all Grains.

Also of note is that a spell can be designed for a specific orchard or field, so that it will not Warp the plants if it is of a high level.

If you bloomed vegetables in a randomly very hot week during autumn that is one of the conditions where the vegetables could fruit naturally from that bloom.

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The topic has been answered, so I am coming too late.

My thought was regarding mushrooms. According to A&A p29, there are two kinds of plant. We know that mushrooms are in their own category, but I am sure from a Mythic Europe perspective they are in the plant family, thus under Herbam perview.

My question was, are mushrooms following the same rule as vermin and could be spontaneously generated from rotten wood and other decomposing matter with a ReHe spell ?

Follow up question (assuming the ReHe works), how would a mage generate different type of mushrooms, or even control the outcome of such spell ? First requirement: they must know the variety of mushroom they want to generate (Philosophae), second a Perdo requisit is probably required for deathcaps, maybe Creo for nice portobello, and without requisist just an average mushroom without specific quality ?

I would be grateful if somebody with a better knowledge of mushroom in the middle age could shed a light on this topic.

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That's not me, but I just wanted to say that I don't think that "Creo for nice portobello" would be necessary. Those are super generic mushrooms. Things like morels, truffles, death's trumpets, chanterelles etc are far more valuable mushrooms and I still don't see why Cr would be needed.

Or do you mean Cr for them to be exceptionally nice examples of portobellos?

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