I know it's the red-headed step child of forms, so I'm attempting to bolster the available herbam literature. Here are a couple of spells I've come up with for my saga. I'm pretty new to this, so any feedback will be much appreciated. I'll also post any new spells I design here for your feedback.
Voice of the Forest 15
Rego Herbam
R: Sight D: Concentration T: Individual
The caster chooses any tree within his line of sight and whispers a message. The words are conveyed through the rustling of the tree's leaves and can be heard by any individual within 50 paces or so. Although the words are clear, they cannot be made out over noise levels above normal conversation.
(+3 control wood, +3 sight, +1 Concentration)
Herb of Virtue 15
Muto Herbam
R: Touch D: Year T: Individual
Greatly increases the efficacy of one property of a plant, ie: a medicinal herb becomes twice as effective at healing the body, a poisonous herb twice as deadly, or a plant with a strong odor becomes much more pungent. Obviously, the caster must have a firm understanding of the plant's properties.
I agree with spynx that what you're controling in this spell is not the plsnt but rather the sounds ergo imagonem
Any spell with a duration of year is (in fifth edition) automatically a ritual. Another thought that you might consider is that if you are increasing the natural properties of the plant to their natural limit the spell should be creo and if you are increasing them beyond their natural limit then the spell should be muto.
I don't share your opinion that herbam is the red headed stepchild of the forms. There's lots of good stuff to be had in herbam. I think just as strog a case can be made for Aquam for redheaded stepchildness and possibly for Auram as well (at least in the last ten years of published material)
Imaginem makes sense. I would think a +3 sight would be more appropriate, right? And then concentration for another +1, bringing it up to 20?
Hmm... So it would make more sense for the muto version to perhaps have only a moon duration, bringing it's level down to 10.
Now, if I went with a creo ritual, then the effects could actually be permanent, right?
Herb of Virtue MkII 2 (ritual)
Creo Herbam
R: touch D:Momentary T: Circle
(+1 Create a plant, +1 touch)
This spell could create a "perfect" example of the type, right? Hemlock's poison would be at it's natural limit, etc?
I just read some trash talk in the berklist archives, that's all.
One more question that is undoubtedly the depth of n00bishness: Will magically created, non-ritual food actually sustain the eater until the spell's duration wears off? In other words, if my mage creates a bunch of food with a duration of moon, can people eat it all month and survive? Or are they going to eat it and think it tastes pretty good, but in fact be starving to death?
The last option makes more sense , even if it is not Canon.
Unless created using Vis , the Food has no nutritional value.
Having people fully functional for a month ,
then instantly dying of starvation , sounds open to abuse.
Yeah, +3 for Sight is better, agreed. I wouldn't do concentration though, unless you just want it to keep echoing. Even then I'd do diameter instead, so you don't have to concentrate on it. Momentary would be good if you only wanted to use the spell for 3 to 5 words I think.
Don't forget, a Creo Ritual is only permanent if you do the Duration as 'Momentary'.
Herb of Virtue MkII (ritual) looks correct.
If you create food with a duration of a month, it should be a Ritual, so it would sustain, at the end of the month, nobody would suddenly be starving to death from the spell. If you create it with a Momentary (and also keep it a Ritual), the food will last the normal lifetime of whatever sort of food it is in the same environment. (Ie: still prone to rotting, but not rotting any faster than mundane food).
Ah, Edited. Thanks Eric. And thanks, all, for your help.
Here's a spell that's been giving me considerable trouble in design. Specifically, is this an appropriate use of target: part?:
Eyes of the Path
Intellego Imaginem 4
R: Touch D: Concentration Target: Part
Allows the caster to see what lies along a forest path, from crossroad to crossroad. This takes time, as the caster's vision must move along the path from the point he is currently standing at a pace no faster than a man can run. Also, he can only see what lies on the path itself, not what lies to either side.
(+1 use one sense at a distance, +1 touch, +1 concentration, +1 part)
Do you? Because I'm basing the spell in part on "Prying Eyes" (pp. 144) which allows you to see into a room without increasing magnitude due to the use of vision. My understanding is that the vision magnitude increase only applies if the sense itself is sharpened or enhanced, not simply projected. For instance, Eyes of the Eagle (145),greatly enhances sight no matter where you look, whereas "Prying Eyes" projects normal sight into target:room.
I see you're using the path as the target rather than the senses of the caster.
I've been knocking this spell atound in my head for a few days now (since I came up with something very similar on the faerie spell parameters thread)
What I see as the difficulty is that the spell has more than one candidate for target and more than one candidate for range. The target can be the caster's senses, the target could also be the road. The range could be personal (distance to the caster's senses), touch (distance to the road), or road (distance that the senses are transported to).
My study of the rules for vision targets leads me to believe that this does not need a vision target (basically for the same reasons as bohemian, you can look at some of the posts on te end of the Faerie parameters thread).
I'd love to see people's reasons for assigning one target or range to the spell rather than another.
I think that if you change the target to the caster's senses, this neccesitates a change in range to personal. If you do this, you wind up with a very different sort of spell. Essentially you'll have Eyes of the Eagle -2 magnitudes for concentration instead of Sun, a spell that will allow you to see anything that's in front of you no matter the distance, but not, for instance, see what lies on the other side of that stand of trees over there. By making this a spell wherein your normal vision follows a path, you can see anything on it no matter if it is obscured from your current location or not, but you see it with your normal quality of vision.
As far as range:road is concerned, I presume that the faerie magic version would not neccesitate a roving POV, but would rather grant instanteneous knowledge of who or what lay on the road ahead.