More circle magic

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Okay, the campaign we are playing has a RAW only rule. 0 house rules.

What a circle spell can or can't do. Please correct where needed.

Circle is a target : The spell affects everything within a ring drawn by the magus at the time of casting.

I read that as whatever you intend to effect needs to be in the circle at the time of casting.
So healing spells and other spells that normally have a ind target can be rewritten to effect larger groups in exchange for the longer and obvious casting.

Ring is a duration : The spell lasts until the target of the spell moves outside a ring drawn at the time of casting, or until the ring is physically broken.

Now for the multitude of questions.

Does the circle/ring effect a dome or a pillar? If I make a 1 pace circle and use a CrTe to make a pillar of dirt would it make a pillar as high as 10 cubic paces dirt? if I do the same thing with CrAq does it use a ponds worth of water to make the pillar (base is higher to make a pillar of water that would remain a pillar, I assume) This is all based on the base size in core.

Can a circle be mobile? : can I use it on a hoop and make it float (with another spell) and use it as a mobile ward?
Can you effect the object the is hosting the circle?
Can I engrave it on or around the head of a hammer and use : TALONS OF THE WINDS
To make a sudo enchanted hammer that only activates when it is swung i.e when wind passes over the circle?

Transforms a wind into an abrasive medium that tears and claws at everything in its path. Soft materials like leaves and cloth are shredded, and people take +5 damage from innumerable bloody cuts and abrasions. This spell will deal damage a breeze of some sort blowing over the circle (by swinging the hammer)
(Base 4, 0 Circle, +2 Ring)

I shall add spells for comment and for learning.

UNIVERSAL LAMP FUEL MuAq lvl 10

Base 2 R: Touch +1 D: Ring +2 T: Circle +0 Effect +1

Cast on a circle scribed into the bottom on a lamp it changes water within into very fine lamp oil.

Useful on ships where there is plenty of water available and should the lamp fall over and the liquid

leave the circle it reverts back to it's previous state.

THE FLURISHING FLOWER POT CrHe lvl 10

Base 1 R: Touch +1 D: Ring +2 T: Circle +0 Size +2 or Group +2

A circle to inscribed on the rim of a flower pot to ensure a large plant or a group of 10 grows healthily.

WARD OFF WINTER'S CHILL CrIg

Base 2 R: Touch +1 D: Ring +2 T: Part +2

Heats the surface within the circle of the object that is inscribed so that it is warm to the touch. (Heated floor tiles)

THE EFFEMERAL SONGBIRD CrImAn lvl 10

Base 2 R: Touch +1 D: Ring +2 T: ind +0 Req An +1

Conjures a illusory song bird within the ring engraved in the bottom of a birdcage, it sounds and acts like and actual bird.

No upkeep required

I anyone has non warding circle spells that I can examine to better understand these parameters I would be grateful.

2

Tricky. RAW is ambiguous, so how do you do with zero house rules? Call them house interpretations instead? :stuck_out_tongue:

Correct, but remember that the circle target is special in that the effect ends if the circle is broken, as if the duration was ring, even if the duration is, say, Sun. I.e. a Circle target never has longer duration than ring.

This was discussed, I think, earlier this year, without conclusion. Maybe the main discussion was on boundary/Aegis, but similar arguments apply in both cases. I can think of at least four views,

  1. Dome. No, I do not think that if you draw a two-foot circle around yourself, that your head is outside.
  2. Cylindre extending to the lunar sphere. No, I do not think you can use a touch range circle spell to affect an eagle above your head, that is barely within sight range.
  3. Magic is erratic, and the precise shape varies with no apparent reason.
  4. The world is narrated in 2D, and the circle spell affects only subjects located in the same plane. Usually common use of language will make it clear what is inside and outside the circle. Geometry does not factor into it.

I do not see why not. An example which came up in our saga was enchanted lamps, with CrIg circle/ring spell sustaining a virtually eternal fuelless flame. That was accepted by the troupe in principle, but it was rejected for its intended purpose. We ruled that the circle is fragile, and easily broken by accident (like spilling something to cover it). Thus it is not permament enough, and (by canon) using it as a lab item causes warping or safety issues.

I don't think so, since that object would then not be inside the circle.

Certainly not, since the target crossing the circle breaks the spell.

Variants of all the CrMe/Co spells Gift of Reason, Strength of the Heroes with circle target is a popular proposal. I find it abusive, but I have not seen any argument to fault it under RAW. The point is that you can boost the characteristics of all your friends with a single die roll and with one serving of vis.

Circle of Undisturbed Rest [MoH:30]

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3

Due to ambiguities in the rule set, there will be group discussions on how to handle certain things. Even if your group is a "No House Rules, everything RAW!" set of fanatics, you will have to make decisions on these. I would strongly recommend codifying them in a document so that you are consistent during play. How fragile a ring/circle for example is something which will vary by group, directly related to your post.

As for the original subject, I am partial to a Ring/Circle version of Maintain the Demanding Spell.

While I would never use them within the lab to provide light and heating (there are some nasty side effects), they are very useful for the rest of your sanctum and the covenant. Using one to just create fire, heat or light is far easier than trying to use one to change water to lamp oil. To be as close to RAW as possible, you would use D: Ring and T: Individual (Creo creation spells must be Individual or Group). I would recommend using a mix of the three, since fire can be dangerous. Depending on power level you might be able to create them with a Spont. Ring/Individual would add 2 to the Mag of the spell, meaning if you can Spont a 10 CrIg (using fatigue) then you could create any of these effects at Base 4 or lower using Spont.

For any spell that normally effects a single target and does not have to be cast quickly (so non-combat), designing a version with the Target: Circle is the most efficient way to allow it to affect large targets and groups.

4

I do not think I have ever played any RPG by strict RAW. As the old adage goes, the only wrong way to play is by the rules as written.

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5

I think I'd go with "Magic is shaped by the intent of the caster, and the precise shape varies in accordance with what is needed to achieve what the caster wants to achieve--limited, of course, by common sense and the general consensus of the troupe."

6

Would that imply that the caster could sometimes decide on a cylinder, thus affecting the people on the floor above, and sometimes decide on a dome which does not?

To me, that would give the caster more flexibility than what formulaic magic is supposed to have, but it does not contradict canon in any way that I can see.

7

Thanks for all the input, I have more to add.
Can you use a circle/ring on the equator of a sphere to affect the object AND keep the spell active for the duration?
Also, does the circle need to be visible ie if a flagstone is inscribed with a circle and you flip it over after you place a ward on it, would the effect still work, assuming that you intend for it to be flipped after the casting.
Can you take a straight sword with round/oval hand guard and use it as the base for a circle to keep the blade sharp or on fire or both or would the be a part target?

Also I agree with Troy on the Maintain the Demanding Spell addition. You could turn a bonfire into a crystal and keep it in a container with that circle and give it to grogs for actual fire support. :smiley:

8

In our saga, no. The caster couldn't decide on shapes that penetrate to floors above and below the ring.

We're not as worried about paradigm purity as some folks and we have the luxury of deciding things only for ourselves. So, we don't have hard and fast rules about what can and can't be done with ring spells. Rather, we go with what seems right for the spell at hand, and we keep in mind that ring is the equivalent of diameter, which generally keeps the cheesy rules lawyering to a minimum. If a ring is supposed to trap a person inside the ring, then that's what it does. If a ring placed inside a hidden space inside a city's wall is supposed to act as a cylindrical barrier that bars passage to humans and spans indefinitely across the countryside in either direction, we say no with no more justification than, "That's ridiculous and we don't want it in our game."

As far as a rule set goes, Marko's point that no RPG has ever been played entirely as RAW is absolutely correct. I'd add RAI to that as well. Reading any game's rules is always an act of interpretation, and I think it's entirely reasonable for a rule set to say, "Here are the things to think about on this one and here are our suggestions; solve it however works best with your group." Caster intent moderated with some guidelines seems a reasonable rule for ring, considering how complicated trying to really nail all of the possibilities down gets.

Edit to add: For "caster intent", I should probably have said "spell inventor's intent".

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9

The critical phrase in the rules is that the spell affects what is inside the circle. I would never say that the blade is inside a circle inscribed on the hand guard, and barring the devil's personal advocate, I don't think anybody else would either, so if we can trust the language, the answer is no.

In my opinion, this questions can only originate from a group trying to apply the rules of formal, logical language on a text which was written in fluent, natural language. If we can think of game rules as something other than mathematical rules, the problem disappears. But for some of us, that is unreasonably hard. It has taken me decades.

This is not as clear cut as the one above IMHO. I cannot argue strongly against it, but my gut aches when I allow it. You can just as well toss a coin to decide, and move on.

It sounds as if your interpretation is going to be equivalent to my option 4 (2D narrative) for all practical purposes. But of course we would not know for sure without actually playing together for some time ...

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10

One quick thought, you couldn't use a circle to conjure an amount of dirt or water anyway, since creo spells that create stuff have to have individual or group targets.

We've used circle extensively for healing spells to affect more than one person, stat improvement spells including on one notable occassion (in a non mythic europe game) using a ring version of the stamina increasing spell to permanently raise the stamina of every member of a town to +5 over the course of a week long festival. Required a lot of organisation but the townsfolk were delighted about their sudden incredible health.

We also use ind/circles to create permanent lights carved into covenant ceilings by our local mason.

We've used teleportation circles to move around large numbers of people.

I've had a covenant who used glass spheres with a ring carved around the circumferance as the circle for two spells to both levitate and light the sphere, providing mobile hovering lamps.

We also used a lot of circle/rings for summoning and containing ghosts and spirits, but that falls under the warding rules.

11

Okay, I'm not sure if I should make a new thread or to continue as is. Please let me know if I should move this.

I have recently been looking into storage and concealment as lugging equipment around can be a pain. So I cam up with the following.

Take a hollow spherical object about 2 inches on the inner diameter and draw paint engrave a circle along one of it equators.
Now place a shrinking spell MuTe Base 4 with target circle and 2 for ring duration and 1 for size to bring things down to 80 times there normal size/volume, this would in theory and for convenience bring the inner diameter of the sphere to about 4 paces giving you and effective volume of 33.5 cubic paces.
Now to get things in and out of this space we use the ReTe base 4 Guidelines in TME p107 to "Transport a non-living object instantly up to 5 paces." one spell to transport and object in voice range 5 paces, to move things in and out of the space ands a Prying Eyes spell to take inventory.

Does this break any laws of magic or am I missing something here?

I am aware that there is a debate on expanding spaces so I skipped it and went for a shrinking effect instead of expanding the space.

12

It doesn't quite work as you've set it up. If you'r using T: Circle with the hollow sphere's diameter as the circle, then the object must be within the circle to be targeted by the spell. But how do you get the big object inside the sphere before shrinking it? ReTe isn't sufficient.

Now, this doesn't mean the basic approach won't work. You could shrink an object first with a short-Duration shrinking spell, perhaps Diameter. Now you place it inside however you want, such as the ReTe method. Then you can use the T: Circle shrinking spell on it so that when the short-Duration shrinking spell ends, this one won't and it will stay small.

Separately, your math is off in a couple spots. If the little sphere is originally 2 inches in diameter. The base for shrinking lets you reduce the volume by a factor of 100, so 1/80 the volume wouldn't need an extra magnitude. However, if you want a sphere 4 paces across to fit inside a sphere 2 inches across, you need to shrink much more than a factor of 80. 4 paces across is 144 inches across. So you're shrinking the volume by a factor of 72x72x72=373248. That would fall into the region requiring 2 extra magnitudes since it's beyond 100x100=10000 and within 100x100x100=1000000.

Personally, I skip the complexity. I use MuTe to shrink things for D: Concentration and then I maintain that spell with the same Moon-Duration ReVi effect I use for other stuff. This allows for them to be stored anywhere. It does require renewing once every two weeks on average, but that can be done in relatively short order so it doesn't eat up any significant time. So there is a trade-off.

13

Hi

Thanks for the feedback and the points I have missed.
I'll see about creating a teleportation spell with a shrinking effect especially for this task.

As for the space/volume calculation MuTe base 4 has the effect of changing the size of and object by a factor of 8 and adding the size mod will up it to 80. (Also, not sure I'm using the work factor correctly.) So the math is solid in this case. as a pace is close to a yard or meter.
5cm or 2 inches x 80 = 400cm or 160inches or 4 paces calc volume of a sphere with this diameter is 33.51032 cubic paces.

Also I love the complexity :stuck_out_tongue: one sphere one circle and on teleport spell and all the pocket space you can want or need.
I did try to write out the sphere calc and, woof it doesn't work on text.

Thanks again!

14

There are two problems here. The first is that shrinking goes by a factor of 100 v. 10 for growth. This was inconsistent before but has now been clarified in the errata:

"When changing the size of a non-living target, the base guideline is for a spell that enlarges a target of the base size by a factor of up to ten, or shrinks it by a factor of up to 100. Adding a magnitude to the guideline allows the spell to enlarge the target by a further factor of ten (for a total of 100 times larger), or shrink it by a further factor of 100 (for a total of 10,000 times smaller). Modifications for the size of the original target are in addition to these modifiers, so that a spell to shrink an individual ten times larger than a base Individual by a factor of 10,000 would be two magnitudes higher than the guideline given for changing the size of the target. Forms dealing with living targets have their own guidelines."

Second, the volume changes by a factor up to 100. That is different than changing the diameter by a factor of 100. Look at the spell you're referring to for the x8.

The object doubles in each dimension and increases its weight eight times.

See how doubling each dimension gives 8 times the volume or weight? That's because volume goes as the cube of the linear dimension. So 2x2x2=8. You're switching this from multiplying the volume to multiplying each dimension. I'll write it out another way for clarity:

Volume of 2-inch diameter sphere = 4/3 pi * (1 inch)^3 = 4/3 pi in^3
Volume of 4-pace diameter sphere = 4/3 pi * (72 inches)^3 = 373248 * 4/3 pi in^3
Volume ratio = (373248 * 4/3 pi in^3)/(4/3 pi in^3) = 373248

If you would rather work with a single dimension, the base can shrink by a linear factor of the cube root of 100, or about 4.64. Each extra magnitude can shrink by that linear factor of 4.64 again. For growth the linear factor is the cube root of 10, or about 2.15, which is why they rounded down to 2 for that spell.

(Sorry about the typos. Early morning brain. Should all be fixed now.)

15

Well, that's awesome.
For the teleportation aspect of this theory MuTe base 4 for changing size factor (100 shrinking) and ReTe Base 4 for the teleportation effect. So ReTe with Mu req with voice range will be lvl15 to bring things within 5 paces in and out?

I'm going to have like 3 more cups of coffee before I keep thinking on this, also now with those numbers you can make a ring or something with smaller space and use higher compression ratios.
Again, thanks for taking the time.

16

Sounds good. Just watch out for some special cases where you may need more magnitudes for adjusting stone/glass or metal/gemstone. So you might want to toss in another magnitude or two to keep it more versatile.

And make sure you follow it up right away with the T: Circle effect so it doesn't burst out of the spherical container about a round later since you're putting it inside with a Momentary-Duration shrinking (and teleportation) effect.

17

That would be wise, many thanks for the input.

Well, the "item" is prepped and the circle is cast before hand. So the spell would shrink and move and item within 5 paces of the caster to another location within 5 paces of the caster.

18

I know there was debate on this. You may want to read the thread on it. I believe the majority interpretation is that the target must be in the circle when the spell is cast based on this:

The spell affects everything within a ring drawn by the magus at the time of casting,

There is the alternative reading that the circle needs to be drawn at the time of casting and then anything entering it is affected. Your method would not work in many sagas, so at very least you'll want to run this by the troupe. You'd also want to double-check the exiting if you use this interpretation, as

The spell lasts until the target of the spell moves outside a ring drawn at the time of casting

could mean that extracting a single item ends the one spell for all items rather than just the effect of the spell on the single item. This could really mess up your effect. This one's shakier because the book explicitly says "the spell lasts" rather than "the effect lasts." Your method only works if your troupe chooses to use just the right interpretations for each of these. So definitely check with them.

19

It may need to be a item that triggers every time something is moved into or removed from the space.

20

Okay so back to what can and can't be done with a circle/ring spell.
I'm looking at the The Stone Watchman in Hermetic Projects p44 and thinking to myself that should be a circle/ring spell or you can't update it.
InIm 20
Base 1, +2 Ring, +4 Vision, +1 circle
This effect gives an circle the power of sight.
and if The Stone Watchman can be done in the same way, you'll have a magic security camera and I think there was a conversation on this in another thread.
CrIm 20
Base 1, +4 Arcane connection, +2 Ring
You'll need to have the arcane connection inside the ring.
The images detected through the power of sight granted by the previous effect are projected onto the mirror associated with the arcane connection

Thoughts and correction appreciated