I wanted a "Thoughts within Babble"(TWB) spell but on a larger scale so that two (or more) groups of people could freely converse without sharing a language. This is actually more difficult than one would expect. Granting magical senses (which is what TWB is) to multiple targets at once is said to need a muto mentem spell with an intellego req (page 114 second paragraph).
Your base would obviously be 5 (same as TWB), your range we can assume as touch or voice (not really that important, I'm assuming that all the conversationalists are present and willing) but the target gets tricky. Effectively you want to grant hearing target to either group or more likely room/Circle or boundary (i am happy with it being a ritual).
Has anyone got an idea how to do this? Also, it would be nice to have the magic working in an area rather than on the people directly, so that you could understand the speech of others while in the area but would lose the ability when you step outside. As far as i know you can't really do this within the rules.
TWB is a mentem spell. Why grant senses if it is direct telephatic transmission? You would need group x2 target. Or have everybody close together as a single group for it to work on everybody else. or cast the spell twice, once per group. I see no biggie in that, really. It should work well.
Xavi - I thought about giving the spell two targets, hearing and group, there is precedent in some of the merinitae targets and durations but I'd rather avoid it if I can (precedents can be dangerous things to set).
TWB does grant a sense in that it uses the target hearing which is listed under magical senses. Not sure if you'd need the target hearing to use that base though "understand the meaning behind spoken words". Giving it a touch range instead would allow you to understand the spoken words of someone you are touching but how would you then pick a range to grant it to someone else?
Assume that I want to use a boundary for this. That means that without making a special case I can't make it a hearing based spell. How would I resolve this?
You take the original spell (TWB - InMe 25), you add one magnitude (to 30), you add magnitudes for the new target (group, to 40) and you change the spell arts to Mu(originaltechnique)Me(originalform), which in this case would be Mu(In)Me(Me) - for a final spell of Mu(In)Me 40. You will likely also need to boost the range to touch, for a final spell of level 45.
You could drop it to 35 by making it a ring/hearing target - though that obviously requires drawing the ring - and if you're being obvious, the 'direct mental telepathy' approach with a combination of CrMe and InMe might be sufficient for your needs.
You only need to do the MuMe thing if you intend for your magical sense spell to affect more than one person with said magical sense. If you're only granting one person the magical sense, just change the range to be the range between you and the person you're granting the sense to.
As an alternative, you could also...
Invent a diameter duration, eye range (or touch or voice) version of TWB, but leaving it as affecting only one individiaul with magical senses (InMe 30)
Master aforementioned spell for multicasting
Cast repeatedly until everyone has a TWB effect on them
You would need group x2 target. Or have everybody close together as a single group for it to work on everybody else. or cast the spell twice, once per group. I see no biggie in that, really. It should work well.