Muto Corpus to get stronger?

There is a level 2 muto Corpus guideline that allows you to gain a minor ability through changing their body, example for this is Eyes of the Cat spell.

Would it be possible with Hermetic Magic to gain a major ability, say the strength of a bear through Muto Corpus (Animal)?

Would it be so simple as to use a the guide for transforming you into a bear, but with Part target (the bear's strength)? Or do we need a whole new guideline?

Sure, I'd allow it, but, you get the arms of the bear, along with the strength. That's what appears to happen with the MuCo(An) spells.

Indeed. This would restrict the application of strength to the body parts transformed. So getting the arms of a bear would allow you to hit harder in combat, but would have little effect on encumbrance.

It might also have other drawbacks, such as giving a penalty to fine manipulations.

Is there a way to do this without Animal requisite through Muto Corpus?

After all you can give yourself a tougher skin, you should be able to temporary add strength...

https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/card-board-games-archive-links/116/1

We discussed increasing size to increase strength, with a corresponding decrease in quickness. Whether or not this applies to Hrermetic magic...?
But as far as a bonus to strength in Muto Corpus, my feeling is that this is the realm of Creo Corpus, only as a specific effect, whereas the Muto Corpus effect is indirect increases in strength and decreases in Quickness as a consequence of increasing size.

At face value one might think so, but by definition Muto covers "unnatural" changes - and I'm not sure how "being stronger" could be unnatural (at least up to a point - see below).

Creo covers "making better", and "being stronger" (again, up to a point) is part of that.

So if you want the Strength of something up to maybe...an ogre, Creo. If you want Strength of a Giant, then it may be Muto time.

[strike]The tougher skin spell has an animal requisite.

You might be able to get away with transforming yourself into something else particularly strong. For example, you could make yourself bigger, or maybe make your arms stony as stone is strong.

But you're probably going to need some form of requisite, for whatever type of thing you're changing yourself to be more like.[/strike]

The guidelines do not specify that, and the exemplary spell Gift of the Bear's Fortitude does not have a requisite.

Right you are. Clearly my memory is getting worse!

There's no reason that being stronger shouldn't be a straight up MuCo spell without requisites. Yes, CrCo has explicit guidelines for making people 'stronger' under the aegis of 'better', but it's really sub-optimal unless you want to be permanently stronger.

The soak increasing guidelines are a good place to start (using Soak as a stand-in for Stamina to compare). Soak is only part of Stamina, though, so the gaining Stamina, and by extension, Strength should probably be a touch harder. If +1 STR is base 10, then +1 STR = +1 Magnitude thereafter, it's probably reasonable. Mechanically it would be more efficient to just get bigger (Base3, +add magnitudes to get bigger and bigger), but getting bigger comes with its own set of advantages and hurdles (much as turning into a bear would).

HoH:MC p.36 has stat boost effects for Bjornaer magi, based upon calling of humors of the body. Effect level 20: Base 5, +1 complexity, +2 sun. Grants a +1 to a stat and also some side bonuses. So there is precedent for a +1 boost. I cannot think of a Muto effect for going beyond +1 in books however.

Adjusting the humors is a ReCo spell. But I do think that Muto should be used to increase strength over what a normal human could reach.

Nope. It is a MuAn spell in the book, and I agree that MuCo should be able to add Strength. Or any physical stat.

A non-Bjornaer would use ReCo to adjust humors. Base 15 ReCo is Direct the flow of the body's energies. As the movements of humors is natural it falls to Rego.

There is often more than one way to do things. It would depend on the method described (if the designers wanted those effects as Rego Animal, they would be). Muto also covers change from one state to another natural state, such as gender change, a face change, etc. These are all normal "end" states, but the process of altering the body is unnatural because of the speed of the change or the change in the "original form" of the body.

I agree Rego could do this easily as well, but Rego could also not allow a change in humor too far above what a body could normally produce. So Rego has a logical "soft cap". Creo can also artificially increase the humors present directly; and probably far further than any other art. Creo is probably the easiest in terms of magnitude too. It is not as simple as saying "I want +2 strength" the spell has a dependency on understanding how the Magi is doing this.

Further I'd argue that I could conjure an natural additional organ in the target's body which creates that humor, just like I could conjure a set of animal wings, or an additional arm.

From looking through A&A I think using humors would be a very bad way to do it. Black bile is associated with Strength. So to increase the bile you would cause the imbalance with blood and thus get sick. Using the humors for anything other than healing or making people sick just does not work with A&A. All of the other Arts that deal with humors like Solomonic Magic (C&C) or Elementalist (HM) all us it to heal or cause disease.

In going with the medieval thought process a MuCo spell would cause muscles to grow very large and thus the bones would have to grow large to support them. You would end up creating a giant. I do not know if making the muscles more dense like turning the person to stone or metal ( that could move of course) would do the job.

Are there examples in A&A which deal with this from a magical standpoint in the game? I ask as the HoH:MC ref is something that is usable by PCs in the book, and I wasn't able to find in A&A any more than ref to the flavour of how they are considered in the setting.
Perhaps your point is useful justification for their being a cap on the allowed increase.

The only example is the one spell from HoH:MC. All other spells that effect the humors are done for healing or making people sick. I would guess that +1 is the limit for any increase as more would cause sickness.