Minor Magical Focus - Teleportation?

I agree.
But note that we saw it as physical transportation. So no rules gymnastics with "transporting" an emotion.

Nor Summoning.

And because there are more important things in our games than killing things, teleporting hearts out of chests didn't feature heavily either as I recall.

Sure, but the invisible character must be detected by an opposed roll of Per+Awareness vs Dex+Stealth. What would you say a reasonable opposed roll would be for detecting an "invisible" heart?

The guide line is move a person up to 50 paces. The Target is Part. The heart is not made a worse version of itself in the process. Making it PeCo is superfluous. By your own example, Words, you couldn't split the torso from the legs, as you described above, because severing a body part is explicitly covered by PeCo. If you are going to disallow moving the heart so, then you can't move any part of the body. Apply it consistently.

Snipped too much, but I'm on a tablet, so not going to undo it. It's, at best a cosmetic effect of PeCo, if the guideline kills, then giving the heart isn't a big deal.

This spell probably isn't one to use against magi, and I'm not going to get into a contest about what a magus can do in response to this spell. The effect can be countered by magi, no argument there.

Check out page 181, the Impact chart. +75 is actually the middle amount of damage possible. Yeah, a fall from that height is survivable, a fall from any height is survivable, because one can botch the damage roll or the soak can explode. or both.

Only if you want to hit them with an aimed spell. For an AoE, you can just blast the general area.

Now, later on, it does say "In order to target an invisible character with spells or missile weapons, an opponent must be able to locate her to within a half-pace or so." However, in context it's pretty obvious to me it's talking about targeted spells, in the same way you would target a missile weapon. And, as above, we see that Aimed spells are treated like missile attacks, while Area-affecting spells are not. Therefore, we can conclude that yes, you need to aim targeted spells at a target (like a missile weapon), but area-effecting spells are in a different category.

So - targeted spells target a target, while area-affecting spells target an area.

And as near as I can tell from reading through the ReCo effects - it doesn't use Part. If you want to affect part of the body, you use the guideline that allows you to affect it. None of the examples listed in the book, even if they affect only the tongue or the hand, require target:part. Therefore - to affect part of a body with Rego Corpus, you don't use Part - you just use the guideline. Because, again: the result would be tearing apart someone's body, which is covered by that exact guideline in Perdo Corpus.

So in that sense, I'm arguing by definition, here: I am DEFINING Perdo Corpus as "that which directly damages a body". If something directly damages a body, it's stops being Rego Corpus. In your example, my response is therefore "Yes. By shifting the target to Part, you are directly doing damage to the thing the Part is a part of. To do so, you will need to use Perdo. There is a guideline in Perdo Corpus that explicitly allows you to do that. So use that."

EDIT - or, if you want to be consently pedantic, you could say "sure. Target: Part. But because ReCo doesn't do direct damage, the rest of the body comes with it as well. Congrats. You just made a teleportation spell more difficult for no good reason."

The guideline for removing a boy part is explicitly Perdo Corpus. There is no mention of such a guideline in Rego Corpus.

More generally: a heart cannot naturally be re-positioned by itself without detaching it from the rest of the body (thereby directly doing damage and making it worse.) In contrast, an entire body can be repositioned without doing harm - which is basically teleportation, or any of the "take control of a body" guidelines.

So - we have an entire set of guidelines which describe only commanding/controlling the body and doing no direct damage. And over in another category we have a guideline that does exactly what you want, but it's in a different category. My claim is that we go with the explicit RAW.

I think you're mis-attributing something to me. the example I gave was PeCo, with a Rego requisite. Here's the quote:

So...I agree. Moving on.

Well, at this point we're arguing if it's a PeCo effect, or a PeCo with a +1 Re effect. So...OK. YSMV.

Huh. Well, in researching this even more, it looks like we're both right and wrong on a few things.

In particular: A&A, pg. 60.

  1. Doing damage with Rego Corpus - yes, you can...by way of Craft Magic. Specifically, by doing surgery on people. So it looks like you can consciously do up to a Medium wound on someone (lvl 15) - no more. Although you CAN prevent an incapacitating wound from worsening (lvl 25). Note that you can't actually kill someone with this. (although I suppose if you specifically choose to botch the associated finesse roll, you could? It doesn't say.)

  2. However, you don't need an arcane connection to get inside someone - rather, to do surgery on a part of the body you can't see, you simply use Part (+1). This type of surgery doesn't actually open up the target to peer inside (it explicitly says that it doesn't), so it looks like that's our answer: if you can't see the inside of something, but you can see the whole thing, you can target an internal Part of it.

It's probably done with Revealed Flaws of Mortal Flesh to diagnose and identify the cause of the disease, so while an AC wouldn't be necessary, sensing the ailment's cause is addressed by the InCo spell.

I'm aware that those are the rules. I just don't think those rules are good. Falling isn't THAT deadly.

Well, it's not the fall, it's the impact that's deadly.

But seriously, falling about 30 feet yields +15 damage, which on average soak and damage rolls is 15 damage, a Heavy Wound. Most people are going to be seriously injured from a 30' fall.

I'm not so sure about that. Consider these few cases:

  • The elderly tend to get seriously injured by falls of about 2 to 3 ft onto hard surfaces. That's +2 or +3 damage (doubled for hard surface) commonly causing -3 to -5 level Wounds to someone with presumably reduced Stamina and do not infrequently cause death. The damage seems reasonable.
  • A bridge near where I grew up is 140 to 160 ft above the water. That's +35 to +40 damage. Of roughly 30 jumpers (some for suicide, but a few mistakenly for fun), only 4 survived. One would presume some of the deaths were from drowning, but survivors come away with things like broken backs and severe internal injuries. So we're talking about being lucky to end up with only -5 level Wounds, most being at least Incapacitating. So maybe the damage should be half that.
  • Somewhere around 35% to 40% of emergency room visits for accidents in the US are from falls. (Apparently quite alcohol related.)
  • Probably most important, falls off of somewhere around 45 ft are supposed to be around the 50% survivability rate. That matches pretty well with +22.5 damage, though +19.5 would be better.

So it looks pretty good except for softer landings. Perhaps dividing by 2 is not always sufficient. It seems like dividing by 4 might be better for water landings (especially considering how diving works). Of course, that example is also looking at a longer fall...

There is, of course, the issue of terminal velocity. Past a certain height, it just doesn't matter much. That's a little tricky to figure out specifics due to air resistance. About 1500 ft (about 12 s) will give you terminal velocity according to Wikipedia. But that's already significantly reduced (damage by height) compared to lower heights. Switching to things I can calculate better... A steel ball reaches 95% of its terminal velocity (my personal estimate for "close enough") in about 24.7 s instead of the 12.8 s free-fall acceleration would predict. We could reasonably (less than 1% error) use free-fall acceleration for the first 80 ft or so, but that's less than 3 s. So, noting this rough doubling of time and assuming the patterns are similar enough, that would give a terminal velocity of (9.8 m/s2)*(6 s)=59 m/s, which is close to the stated 56 m/s and thus probably confirmed as similar enough (especially considering it was just under doubling for the ball). So our damage formula should work pretty well for the first 60 ft or so. Beyond that we should see problems emerging. 1500 ft should give us the equivalent of 600 ft of free-fall, or a cap of +300 damage. So from 60 ft and +30 damage we want to get to 1500 ft and +300 damage, the maximum.

As for its level, it really seems like a Minor Magical Focus to me. All these arguments about all these ways to abuse it are just arguments about how to abuse something. We might as well say all Minor Magical Foci should be Major Magical Foci. Healing? Oh, I could heal the spirit in something by fixing it, or heal a demon in an area by making people sick, etc. Self-Transformation? That applies to nearly all Intellego since I gain information and am thus transformed into a more educated individual, right? Maybe "breath" for Auram (comparable to wind) and now I can affect all spirits because of the association between breath and spirit?

In that case you would probably have to self-define what the MMF meant. For "healing", the non-abusive version would be CreCo and CreAn healing, with maybe CrHe (if it applied to plants). That's the "by definition" way to resolve the issue: ie, establish what the game mechanics are, rather than taking a general concept and seeing how it applies.

So if you want a MMF in teleportation, you'll need to define what the MMF is, and then not step outside of that - and then afterwards, use the "teleportation" label for convenience. So if you're defining your MMF as Instantaneous ReCo/ReAn effects, then sure. It's just a minor. Adding in the additional stuff we're talking about here probably makes it major.

I'd agree that instantaneous movement ReCo/ReAn effects would probably qualify as a Minor Focus. Where I'm fuzzy is on casting requisites. Does such a focus still apply when you add Herbam or Terram or whatever to bring along extra stuff like equipment?

Portals seem to be ReTe, so would that need to be added in too, since they handle people and animals?

Generally speaking, when you affect an individual you affect all parts of an individual - gear included - without additional casting requisites. The in-book example is casting on a stone, and having the spell also affect the moss growing on it without a herbam requisite; i.e. keep spells simple and sane.

Saying that, whether or not something assumes you need a casting requisite appears to be pretty unevenly applied across the game line. So it' might become a YSMV issue.

By strict intepretation of the rule (but I don't have my rulebook with me), you would need casting requisit according to people equipment, otherwise, you are transporting a naked guys.

There is a difference between TP and moving an objet/person, with items carried by it/him following . Using a ReCo to levitate a person will have all the gear (within weight limit of the spell) moving with him. When teleporting, you can argue that with the exception of his talisman (which is really an extension of his person), nothing else travel with him, unless made of element affected by corpus.

I personnally house ruled that up to 20kg gear (more or less a backpack) can be TP without requisit, and nobody abuses the rule.
But having casting requisit looks also perfectly reasonable to me (and I believe is in accordance with RAW).

There is a summary on what rules say and don't say about requisites for instant transportation on TME p.107 box.

Cheers

By the strictest RAW~

A base individual for Corpus is an adult human being, up to Size +1 (pg. 129). Under Target, the description for the Individual target (pg. 112):

So any teleportation spell targeting an individual at the very least takes their clothes. No need to find a new pair of robes after you use Leap of Homecoming.

But that's all the rules say on the matter. And teleportation isn't addressed specifically, as One Shot points out.

That's not the strictest RAW, that's the loosest RAW. :wink:
They may be part of the person for many spells, but they aren't of the same Form, even if the spell might consider them part of the person. It is not possible for the Form of Corpus to affect other Forms. So when a ReCo spell affects a person it's more than reasonable for just the person to teleport, and his clothes remain behind. I'll note that this is the interpretation within canon that was used for Wizard's Leap in Houes of Hermes:Societates. That ruling might exist for situations, such as Lifting the Dangling Puppet, or other places where something is moved, while carrying something else. The item being moved is affected, and whatever else is on it is affected indirectly, not by the spell.

Alternatively one can look at it from a different direction, clothes are other Forms, The Leap of Homecoming can only be cast if the casting requisites can be satisfied, or it just doesn't work. So, to cast the spell, the caster must get naked, first. This recognizes the idea that clothes on a person are part of a thing and addresses the concern that a spell for a certain form can't affect items composed of different forms directly.

Like many things that have had camps take up sides, there is a fair amount of evidence in the rules for each position.

No, no - that's definitely strictest RAW. Taking the text as written and applying it literally. That may not be the rules as intended, or the rules as implemented elsewhere. But when you target a person, you are also targeting their clothes - they're part of the person. That's explicitly called out in the text (as quoted).

There wouldn't be a need to specify that the clothes someone is wearing are part of the person in the case of spells like Lifting the Dangling Puppet. Their lifting with the person would be completely incidental to the spell being cast. - lift person, and because his clothes aren't going to magically slide off (as the spell is only affecting the person), the clothes would come too. There would be no confusion in this case.

Instead, we have a line about how the clothes are part of the person for the purposes of the individual target.

It's possible this is to avoid, e.g., problems with targeting someone in a full suit of armour: without it you, quite literally, couldn't use any Perdo Corpus effects on a crusader in full harness because you wouldn't be able to perceive the person themselves unless their clothes (armour in this case) counted as being part of them. Thankfully, they do count so you can zap people in full armour with your PeCo spells.

If that was intended to be the case, the rules text we have isn't clear enough to make that the only application. As it stands, you can apply the text we have (without twisting it in any way) to teleportation spells letting you keep your knickers without adding a heap of requisites.

The actual intention of the rules, putting arguments about RAW aside, is apparently so confusing that not even the books really know what is actually supposed to be the case; as One Shot pointed out just above, TME just throws its hands up in the air and tells you to ask your group. But I'm definitely in favour of keeping spells simple more than not, and making wizardly displays of magic actually workable. Adding three requisites to every teleportation spell to make sure you arrive with your hat, shoes and belt in one piece not only massively over-complicates the spells themselves, but also makes them very hard to actually learn and do.

Which is fine if you don't want a lot of teleportation in your saga. But~...I like wizards to be wizardly. Teleporting is definitely apart of that.

Which doesn't say anything about the Forms needed by a spell affecting that person - only, that you need not target a person and his clothes as a group of distinct Individuals.

Cheers

The difficulty of learning a ReCo Teleport spell isn't made more difficult by casting requisites. Casting requisites only apply at the time of casting.
Note, your interpretations pretty much invalidates another rule, that of casting requisites. If you only consider the primary Form for a spell's Target, then the game doesn't have need for casting requisites.

We can say a clothed person is a discrete individual composed of multiple Forms, to affect all of those Forms with a single spell, some spells may need to be cast with casting requisites.

It also becomes impossible, with this interpretation to teleport the person out of their suit of armor, because the armor is part of the person. Period.

The definition of what is wizardly is pretty subjective. I think flinging fire and lightning at opponents is wizardly. Teleporting, even without clothes is wizardly, if embarrassing. With casting requisites required for ReCo teleporting spells, teleporting with all of one's clothes and equipment is the mark of a very powerful (wide breadth of Form knowledge, or Rego specialist, or both, at least) wizard, indeed.