PeCo to lose age and CrCo to fight that

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hello,

IMS, a BSG set up a trap with a PeCo spell which make lose 7years of lifetime.

After the adventure, the redcap who has been targeted (which is the ASG) claimed that he will go to a "CrCo specialist" to regain those 7 years.

I defended the point that PeCo was momentary and permanent (as "kill" is permanent with a single momentary spell!) but the others (ASG and BSG, and some other players who aren't as interested as me in the rules [that's not a bad thing, everyone has a certain amount of time to spend on games ^^, especially rulebooks ^^]) stated that they must be a CrCo of the same level which "reverse" the lost age..

For me, it's a terrible thing they have done, because that would mean the magi wouldn't need a LR when aging : they could just have to cast this spell to became younger...

They said: "no because this spell does "magical age", not "natural age"". But i disagreed a lot because for me there is NOT "magical age": there is only "AGE" which is done by magic...

I stated that when you are kill with a PeCo base 30 spell, you can't be revived with a CrCo 30 because death is death, and no matter that the death is magical...

Can you bring me your POV? I want to submit the topic at the next game session (tomorrow) and i need some arguments (or see what arguments they could bring) because IM conception of Ars Magica, what they did is a huge breach in the rules...

Thanks for help!

2

Serf's Parma (at work: I have one of my ArM5 rulebooks here but can't check it ATM) but doesn't hermetic magic SPECIFICALLY forbid you from affecting aging in a positive sense? This is why magi go around with rituals that SLOW DOWN aging, but do not go around reversing to a healthy 20 year old version of themselves every 20 years.

Maybe some hedgie can do that, but I think that the hermetics are quite at a loss to repair the damage done to the ASG's character.

BTW: I read BSG as battlestar galactica and was quite at a loss for a moment about what the hell you were talking about :laughing:

Cheers,
Xavi

3

The limit aging says "hermetic magic cannot halt or reverse natural aging, (...)"

4

Serf's parma too, but I believe both interpretations are valid. It's up to the ASG, and if he says Hermetic magic can repair unnatural aging that so be it. I'd personally rule against it, but would allow non-Hermetic magic, like a powerful Faerie God, to reverse such aging. That could get the characters out of their labs to seek out ways to reverse the "curse", but won't make repairing such curses a ho-hum deal that any magus can do with a little CrCo reading.

Yair

5

So there is a limit to reversing 'natural' aging. This makes the salient question: 'Is the effect of the spell on age natural'? As far as I can tell, the answer is yes because momentary Perdo effects persist naturally after the spell. This suggest that their persistence is natural.

6

It may be a daft thing to do (is that what you guys normally call serf's parma?), but I'd use the core rule spell CrCo25 Restoration of the defiled body that "removes the crippling or malignant after effects of any injury, disease, or of premature aging" (ArM5, p. 129)

edits: the spelling fairie was absent

7

And there you have the answer to your question i would say. Natural aging as opposed to magically enforced aging.

And i consider it a good thing because otherwise it really gets too easy to get rid of some kind of opponents.
Just have them age a few years several times and they´ll die "naturally" of old age while really still young, within the year.

Disagree. Its a magical effect that is the cause, not natural aging. If i blast a stone to dust with PeTe, was the blast a natural effect? The result persists so by your reasoning exploding stones is a natural occurence. :mrgreen:

8

Hi,

Hermetic Magic is not capable of reversing aging, regardless of the cause.

In the same way, Hermetic Magic cannot remove Warping Points.

In the same way, Hermetic Magic cannot raise the dead.

It doesn't matter how these things happened.

This is all very clear. It isn't even necessary to tell your player "No." It is enough to tell him "You can do this with CrCo if you can find the specific, published CrCo guideline that allows a spell to remove aging, and if you have developed the appropriate Ritual spell using this guideline." Naturally, there is no such guideline. After you explain all this to him, feel free to allow his character to attempt a Hermetic Breakthrough that you have warned the player will surely fail because it breaks a Hermetic Limit.

Some things get sucked up.

Anyway,

Ken

9

Note that this is not the same thing as the aging itself. For example, Hermetic Magic cannot remove Decrepitude. It can undo the loss of Characteristics, and so on. Thus, a character who loses a point of Sta to aging can use Hermetic Magic to get it back.... but has still aged. The effects of aging is not the same thing as aging.

Anyway,

Ken

10

True. And likewise, magical aging is not natural aging simply because the effects appear to be the same.

But there is no question as to whether one could "Creo" the pebbles back into a boulder, or use PeVi to dispel that effect.

A better analogy might be where PeCo (Or PeAn) causes a crippled/withered limb - see below...

I don't see these as parallel at all. Or, at least, not necessarily parallel, and certainly not convincing or directly relevant to this topic.

And Creo will put a shine on tarnished metal, and make an animal a better example of that animal - but so what? Not related.

Yes, it does matter.

The question is "Why can't Hermetic Magic reverse aging?" And the simple answer is that it goes against Essential Nature.

To continue my PeCo example, a spell is used to cripple a limb. Can that be healed/reversed with magic? Of course, a canon spell. However, we all also know that that same spell cannot heal a crippled limb if that is a natural part of the essential nature of the person/animal (read "came from a flaw").

And that is directly parallel - a magical effect that can be reversed, where the natural equivalent might not be.

And what limit is that? The Limit of Aging, which specifically says both "natural aging" and that it (probably) derives from Essential Nature. (Or possibly the Divine, same diff - it's Gods will that we age, so there.)

The point is, that a magical effect is not "natural", nor is it part of anyone's "essential nature". Nothing in Essential Nature about being hit with a Perdo Corpus spell.

Further, on a meta-level, the magical "you are turned into an old man" effect is a classic, and a great plot device, and it should not (always) have to be "permanent", which can be a real crippling blow to character and a saga, and the players' enjoyment of both.

Lastly, it's possible that this "aging effect" does not fit Hermetic Guidelines - perhaps it's like a fae curse, that has a duration of "Until", but can also be countered.

On any level, I'd think it works better if it can be.

11

What he said.

But that's one interpretation. The other is to bring up quotes about how Decrepitude can't be reversed by magic, and so on. Really, it's not crystal clear and is up to the troupe's interpretation. Which means - that the ASG is certainly within his "rights" to interpret things this way, as regards to the OP.

12

If this is the way you want to go, I think this is a new interpretation of momentary Perdo effects. If you're saying that the source of the current state of things matters, then now we are classifying two different states of natural being - one where the current natural state comes from a previous non-natural effect and one where it comes from a natural effect. If we're going there, what happens when you 'heal' the effects of a longevity potion - instant aging (would you use a Creo effect to 'heal' it?).

My reading is that your age is your age. Its natural and progressing naturally as long as you aren't under an active magical effect that alters it's progression. The guidelines for Perdo specifically point out that the after the effect ends, the new state of affairs progresses naturally. And, in any state of affairs where age is natural (not the result of an active magical effect), there is a hermetic limit problem.

That's how I see it. And yes, it is nasty. But there are plenty of nasty things to do to people with Magic anyways. This is no different.

13

The two classifications (if you want to go there, with credit to Yair's emphasis on diff interpretations) are not according to their cause, not merely because one has a natural cause and one a magical, but because one falls directly under Essential Nature and one does not.

Magic can amputate an arm, and Creo magic can grow it back. An axe can amputate an arm, and, likewise, Creo magic can put it back. But a person who naturally is born without an arm can find no help in Creo magic.

The first two are both are "unnatural" in the sense that they do not reflect the "Essential Nature" of the victim. The fact that one example of the effect has a "magical" cause is irrelevant - the key consideration is whether it's a "natural" fact of the person involved or not. An axe, a spell are not natural. "Aging" caused by a spell is not "natural", not in the way that Aging caused by the passage of time is.

(And when you get down to it, that's why that Limit is there - to prevent cheesy CrCo immortality, not to say "magical aging cannot be undone".)

14

For my way of thinking, your indication of the relationship of essential nature to natural states of being is telling for my working of the question: the essential nature of anything existing in time is that they only age one way. Going backward is against essential nature, whether you were 'naturally' or 'artificially pushed' forward. Not to say this is impossible, just impossible hermetically. It's the same for me as the persistence naturally from your new location after LoH. It's essential nature for things to have a location and the effects momentary spells on location persist after the effect is over. The alternate way of thinking is that people have a 'natural current age' that is 'fixed' to the relation of 'now' to the moment of their birth and that this is part of their essential nature. This would make your distinction of the arms salient. I don't personally buy it because it's implication is that the essential nature of your age is more about the date than you. By that way of thinking you should be able to 'creo heal' from the effects of time dilation from spending time within regios.

15

Not necessarily. Look at the very language you chose to describe that - it's "spending time", which is the definition of natural aging. Spending a year of your life in "this" realm or a faerie realm is still spending a year of your life. That is the part of the Essential Nature that cannot be reversed, not some magical mimicry of it.

16

But getting decrepitude while magically aged isnt the same thing as not being able to reverse the aging itself. Again the difference between aging and the effect of it.

I actually think its totally clear, due to the previously cited statements that specifies natural aging. Otherwise there is zero reason to write it so and it would just say "aging".

Totally!

Cant dispel a PeTe after it happened either...
But the basic still holds, you dont expect to see alot of stones spontaneously and naturally exploding as you go for a walk... :mrgreen:

Yes the "NEW state of affairs" progresses naturally. That does NOT however say that the new state was reached naturally. Again, as i said above, if you incur decrepitude while magically aged, you´re stuck with it but the extra age itself was not natural and as such is reversible. Unless person dies of old age in the meantime of course.

17

People keep arguing that you can't CrCo decrepitude - but I don't accept the premise. There's nothing to say that you gain decrepitude from "magical" aging in the first place. Nothing at all says those rolls have to be made because you're hit by some spell.

The effect we're talking about says "You age", not "...and you gained arthritis at age 40, and a gammy leg at age 45, and more flaws at age 48...". This isn't "damage" where a wound is expected to happen - your body, your Corpus, has merely changed to the state where it appears X years "older" - and decrepitude is not a mandatory part of that change, not without years passing.

The next winter, you'd make your aging roll at your new age, which is when it gets truly scary.

18

Oh certainly. no intention in that direction from me

Oh yes... :smiling_imp:

19

Haven't rewad all the posts in detail, but IMS this could be reversed with hermetic magic. What hermetic magic cannot do IMS is reverse the effects of natural aging, because those are part of your essential nature. It can slow down the effects of aging (longevity potions) but cannot reverse it.

Now, unnatural aging (not tied to our essential nature) can be reversed. I would make it a really high base, so as to make recovering tfrom that a story, but it can be done.

Cheers,
Xavi

20

I'm going to stick my oar in and add another view:
Creo is used to heal things, yes, but requires a momentary ritual to do so. Creo heals things because being injured is an imperfect state. Aging is not a result of imperfection (philosophy aside), but a natural state of affairs. Aging, via Perdo, is much like rotting under Perdo - once it has happened, it has happened. Creo Herbam cannot unrot a plant, though it can create a new healthy plant, or heal a plant of a disease. As such, IMS, aging someone to death is perfectly possible and not reversible.

Of course, there are always problems. Accellerating a natural process is Rego, except when it's Perdo or Creo. It's a hell of a can of worms.