Aaaand... It is easier to do with stone than with metal! And requires less size! Way easier!!!
So we have
Re(Mu)Te: Animate the Stone Horse 20
ReTe base 3 (control/move in a very unnatural fashion). This allows the horse to fly and, combined with Muto, the limbs to move, wings to flap and so on
1 to affect Stone
1 magnitudes for size, probably
1 touch (if enchanted into the statue, this drops to Pers, so lvl 15!!!)
2 Sun
So if invested for constant use into the statue, we're looking at a lvl 19 enchantment... Viscaria can do this with her arms tied
Great idea about the Animal Mind, but this also requires a Creo requisite, since you're giving it an animal mind. Hopefully, this won't stop you at all (viscaria is awesome)
Hum... We have a guideline problem. I mean, if giving it an animal mind, you must use that guideline if it is higher than the rego one. The most applicable one seems to be "Create a Mammal" (since we're creating a horse, and not just a bird), which is base 15. This risks pushing the level too high, and would make the effect a Creo one, thus dropping the benefit of the Rego Aura OTOH, there's no upped magnitude for stone, IIRC (may someone check, please? Serf's Parma)
So, say:
Cr(Re, Mu)An(Te): Enchant the Stone Pegasus 35
CrAn base 15
1 Rego. This allows the horse to fly and, combined with Muto, the limbs to move, wings to flap and so on
1 magnitude for size (debatable, since we're only creating a mind, but anyway, this warrants at least a + 1 for complexity given the shortcuts this makes)
0 Personnal
2 Sun
Add +4 for constant effect, and we're at 39
Note that, in a way, this is still very, very, very cheap: To create a magical animal (like a pegasus) is base 50!!!
Great idea about the Animal Mind, but this also requires a Creo requisite, since you're giving it an animal mind. Hopefully, this won't stop you at all (viscaria is awesome)
[/quote]
Not sure I buy into the Creo requisite. I'm not creating anything. If anything, it turns it into MuTe(An). Base 5: Change into an animal. But again, I'm not changing it into an animal. I'm investing it with animal intelligence so that it responds to the environment without guidance.
Note that this would be much easier to do if we were using ReHe, which actually has Base 10: Make a plant or thing made of plant products move with purpose and intelligence, without requiring your constant control.
To steal an example from NetGrimoire and our recent compatriot, Marko:
+1 Size, +4lvls for constant effect = 44.
That's much more accurate.
(The second effect I put on this bad boy is definitely going to be a Heal And Polish spell.)
You're creating an animal mind, out of nowhere. No. A pegasus mind.
If changing a stone into a wolf, would it have the mind of a wolf, or the mind of a stone?
I'd say that, just as a man changed into a wolf gets to keep his own mind, thus a stone changed into a wolf keeps a stone's mind, and would be quite bad at being a wolf.
But there's another possibility! Summon and bind a lowly spirit, which will command the enchantment!
Better! We create a weak elemental, muto it into a small gem, incrust it in the horse and give it command!
NOOOO!!! We are so stupid!!! We could have created an earth elemental in the shape of a pegasus and enchanted it!!! Aaargh!!
Oh. Although this rests on Fiona having brought Isen to the magical realm, which is still in limbo :-/
And if I may, the Net Grimoire is notorious for his creative proposals
Note, anyway, that this is actually higher than my proposal.
Not all the spells in Net Grimoire are legal. I would argue giving it intelligence, after a fashion does require some CrAn requisites. However, it doesn't need intelligence, IMO, it just needs to follow commands, come here, go straight, turn left, which can be accomplished with finesse of the rider. That's the limit of intelligence I would give it. Trying to figure out things on its own? Not needed at all. Again, you're trying to do much more than it needs to do. Also, keep in mind if you want it to Fly, eventually you're going to add an Auram enchantment. It can fly much like the Unseen Porter can glide along. The mount for the Joust doesn't have to be fast, it just has to support the rider.
This is more of a rubric than a hard and fast rule system for managing finesse....
So, I've been going through the motions of trying to apply finesse and Rego Craft magic. In part because of what's going on with Viscaria and in part of the character of Praxiteles... I'm going to propose the same thing over in Via Experimenta, but here, I have a bit more...discretion.
I'm imagining sculpting is a bit like fine woodworking. It takes some amount of artistic talent to see a coffee table in a pile of lumber. Which pieces are the legs, which pieces are the table top. Whereas woodworking is assembling multiple pieces into one form, sculpting is pulling the form from a single piece. So, I am putting my experience with woodworking to use and trying to apply it to the overall artistic process, which also affects Rego Craft magic.
So, continuing with the coffee table piece above, the first thing I do is select pieces which will come together and form an aesthetically pleasing table top. There may be times where I have a piece of wood that is large enough to serve as the table top, but this is rare, and also problematic due to the internal stresses in the wood being released over time causing the top to warp, cup and/or twist. So sometimes I'll select a piece that is half the size, especially one that has nice figured in the wood grain and rip it on a bandsaw dividing the thickness of the board in two, and creating a beautiful bookmatched pattern. I'll then bring the pieces down to close to final thickness, but not all the way, and let them rest and acclimate to their new shape while I work on the rest of the table, legs, and what not. All the while, I'm paying attention and selecting pieces that fit the final shape I want. I think it is reasonable that an artist approaches the task and breaks it into sub tasks. I think it is also equally reasonable that a Rego Crafter can break it into subtasks, to bring the difficulty down. The trick is identifying those tasks, and then designing spells to accomplish them. All along the way the crafter must have a good idea of what the end product looks like, and it forms his guide, but he's still breaking down the project into tasks which can be accomplished. This process is the same whether doing it with a mundane skill or using Arts to mimic the skill.
So, we have the first task in sculpting, Roughing the Form. It breaks away all the unnecessary pieces of stone from the base rock. Then the next step, is Release the Hidden Form which is T:Part, because it focuses on the shapes of the major subassemblies (extremeties and torso, but not the points where they intersect). For a statue of a man, it will do the arms, but not the fine details of the hands/fingers, or how it attaches to the torso, same applies to the legs and feet. Reveal the Stoneās Motion this spell carefully sculpts all the intersecting joints, finalizing the sculpture to the point where it can be polished. Like Release the Hidden Form it must be cast repeatedly on the points where the subassemblies connect to the body of the piece. Realize the Resplendent Form polishes the sculpture to the final shine/desired patina.
Iām not altogether happy with whatās above, but what I do like is that it breaks it down in to manageable pieces, and allows a magus to do what an artist can do, which is the point of magic. And it allows it to happen in much the same process. So, then I think about failureā¦ Consider that someone fails at Release the Hidden Form on one of the arms, the finesse roll is just shy of success, that just bumps up the difficulty at the next level, Reveal the Stoneās Motion. Iām also inclined to treat all finesse rolls as not stressed, unless it is fixing a mistake from the previous spell. This does two things, it makes sure that the final result is within the finesse capabilities of the caster, which still needs to be rather high, but it allows a caster to come up with a process to break the project down into manageable pieces.
So, that leads to the next problem, how do we keep the element of failure? Failure is just as important in art as it is anywhere else. A failure of a finesse roll should always be a possibility, for it makes the next step harder, and it yields the chance for an outstanding success, the arm of a statue is misplaced relative to the body, for example, but at Reveal the Stoneās Motion, an outstanding success occurs which makes the statue appear more alive. Perhaps the human statue is in mid run, or swinging a sword, and a metal sword could be added to enhance the effect. Something is revealed that wasnāt possible before. So, at high levels of finesse, Release the Hidden Form begins to do more work, perhaps a bit more work than it should. At low levels of finesse, the sculptor might need to work on the fingers individually, then the hand, and then the arm. At high levels of finesse, the sculptor does the entire arm. The caster canāt dictate the level of control he has over the piece to assure success. Due to the nature of the spell, it always attempts to reach the ideal of the Realm of Forms in as few steps as possible. It is possible for masters in the ability of Finesse to skip Reveal the Stoneās Motion. These masters of Finesse approach the Realm of Forms ideals in their artwork.
This example focuses on stone, but similar spells can be applied to other materials. Further, the limits of what can be done in a day need to be...controlled. I dislike the idea of a Rego Crafter to do in a day what an artist could do in a year or three. I do not want to see a magus making a copy of David every day. So, these spells don't work if they do more than a month's worth of work, unless it is the only spell cast that day. Further, if it does many months of work, it requires the magus to rest and meditate and reconnect to the piece of Art he is working on. So if an magus-artist completed a year's worth of work in one day, he would have to wait 12 days before he could begin work on the piece again, contemplating the piece and spending time with it. Note, this will, in many instances do serious damage to his lab work/study schedule if it is an especially large piece of art he is creating.
By the same token, I could say that the MRB has an errata. That doesn't mean that every page is wrong. Argue the specific example, don't dismiss it entirely because of the source.
MuTe Base 5: Turn earth into an animal. With an Animal requisite.
That's in the book. The NetGrimoire example was just an example of how I was intending to apply it. The implication of Base 5 is that the earth turns completely into an animal. Are you arguing that the book is wrong? That there is a Creo requisite that is neither in the MRB nor in the errata? Or are you arguing that the MuTe Base 5 will let you turn earth into an animal, but it will still have the mind of dirt without a Creo requisite, even though the book doesn't say so? If I were using MuTe(Ig) to turn stone into fire, would you tell me that I need an Imaginem prerequisite to change the color to yellow as well?
MuAn Base 10 specifically states that although you've changed the animal into a human, it retains its animal mentality. The Muto Corpus guidelines provide extended rules for what happens to the Mentem mind. The MuTe guideline for changing things into animals does not include that guideline.
If you're going to argue with me, argue with the context of what I said. That Intelligence is not necessary to create a mount and make it "fly" and allow the rider to change directions. This discussion has morphed all over the place, and I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the base guidelines. My comment about the Net Grimoire is that not all are legal, and not necessarily canonical. I wasn't making any specifc comment on that spell, because you guys are still hashing out the details. I was counseling caution in making sure that you dot all the i's and cross all the t's. There are multiple ways of getting from A to B. And what is Fiona's objective? To compete in the Joust. To do that, does the mount really need to have intelligence or can it be done, later on?
I'm not going to argue specifics until it's presented to me to approve or inspect, but I do reserve the right to add my comments at any point throughout the process.
Oh, and if you change Earth into an Animal, it does just that. That lump of stone becomes a Pegasus, with all the positives and negatives that it implies. Also, being a mythical creature, might need a Vim Requisite, too. I dunno. But if you turned a statue of a horse into a horse, it's a horse, not some living stone horse-like-thing-a-ma-bob.
This has all the hallmarks of being designed by committee...and then you end up with a platypus.
Oh yes, totally. Intelligence didn't even appear until Amul brought it.
Where it might be useful, though, is that, without intelligence, the magus needs to concentrate to give new commands and maneuver, whereas an animal can react on his own or just follow orders while the magus does something else.
However, this kind of things seldom come into play anyway (and the pegasaurus just needs to chaaaaaaarge! anyway ).
???
Why would he need to do that? If anything, the Auram flight spell is a clever workaround to fly without Rego Corpus (consider the ReCo guidelines and the spells that use them), using very strong winds to lift you. Generally speaking, flight/telekinesis is rego form.
But where I agree entirely with you (and I had missed it, my bad ) is that the initial speed of my proposed enchantment above would be dreadfully slow, so he'll need extra magnitudes to give it some speed, or it should fly at about the same speed as The Unseen Porter, and possibly one to allow it to go higher that 5 paces above the ground. Thanks for the remark.
So, say:
+1 magnitude to allow it to go higher
+1 to 2 magnitude to allow it to go as fast as a horse.
So that brings the level from 19 to either 29 or 34
Also, yes
No much time at all, so I will try to be quick (or be dead)
I like the subdivision you do. It makes sense, IMO.
The element of failure/success is, as I see it, there by using the craft rules. You already have ease factors for shoddy, average, good items. You just need to add the extra difficulty from Rego Craft.
For exemple, when Isen summons his Ice Sword, he needs to do a finesse roll (Yes, a Creo spell, but these also need finesse). On a 5 or less, he might just as well throw it down the gutter. On a 6, it is shoddy. On a 9, it is average. On a 12, it is good. The same thing applies there.
The "A year in a day" is already covered in the base rules by the increasing difficulty. IMO, this works fine, and shouldn't be changed.
But all this? This comes from a desire to lower that difficulty by doing it in different stages. Which breaks that safeguard. Magi won't do "a year in a day" because it's so damned hard as just one roll. But if it can be broken down into 4 or more lower ones, we have a problem, sure. So we need a solution.
Note that, by the RAW, normal Rego craft can botch, and produce an flawed item that looks normal. By also suppressing the chance of Finesse botch, you're only encouraging people to use the multiple spells approach. Are you sure you want to do this?
The problem is that, when you think about it, Rego Craft Magic don't add that much to the EF.
AT LEAST (this is always forgotten, me included) + 3 for using Rego instead of a mundane craft.
An additionnal +3 to +9 for doing a lot of work very quickly
Yet another +3 if the mundane craft would use temporary substances you're not using (like wook for constructing a tower, I suppose).
But an impressive work? That's already EF 18.
So what I'd do?
Use the normal rules for success and quality
Don't change the +3 for Rego craft. It is, IMO, quite appropriate, and, background wise, helps explain the need for mundane craftsmen.
Keep the +3 for dispensing with mundane substances. This encourage magi to use them, which favors those who know what they do (like Viscaria, with her Craft skills): An easy int + craft roll allows to know what is needed, you just needs to procure the materials
Allow to drop the time needed (this assumes that the magi does many rolls, succeeds at some, fails at others, that roll being the average).
That is:
+9 EF: Doing a Year's work in an instant
+6 EF: Doing a season's work in an instant. Doing a year's work in a month
+3 EF: Doing a season's work in a month. Doing a year's work in a season
+0 EF: Doing a season's work in a season, a year's work in a year, a month's work in a month.
Exempli Gratia:
Viscaria wants to do an average work (base EF 09) that takes a year to a team of mundane craftsmen.
If she just takes a lump of stone and assembles it, EF is 09 + 3 for Rego Craft, + 3 for dispensing with mundane materials, +9 for doing a year's work in an instant = 24.
She thinks that this might be a little too high.
So first, she contemplates what she needs, succeeding at her Prof (architecture) roll of EF 6. Water, wood, hooks, whatever, she knows what a mundane architect would use, and easily procures it. EF drops down to 21.
Then she wonders. Can she do it in a month? That would put the EF at 12 + 3 + 6 = 18. She is confident, but not that confident. And since a month would waste her season anyway, she decides to do it in a season. EF drops down to 09+3+3 = 15.
If she had done it step by step all by herself, taking the whole year, the EF would have been 9+3 = 12.
When I wrote auram, I was going off the cuff, not from any specific rules/guidelines. I was thinking Auram as the Form that governs animals that fly.
I suppose that will work. Trouble is, the guidelines don't have anything for speed, so we must extrapolate a bit.
That's exactly correct, this is designed to solve the problem I perceive: Rego Craft makes a lot of crafting impossible for magic. For Magic, in Ars Magica. Just who exactly is going to get a finesse roll of 27, on average? Break it down into logical subassemblies and allow it to be finished faster, but don't remove the risk of botch/failure. That's the problem I'm trying to solve here. The year in a day finesse specialist has a Finesse score of...12, pussiant +2, Perception +3, and masters his spell for precise casting 6 times for precise casting. Without Affinities or Flawless Magic that's : 495 (390+105) experience points. With Affinity it's 369 (264+105). With Flaless Magic it's 440 (390+50). With both an affinity and Flawless magic it's 314 (264+50). No matter which way you slice it, it's a lot of experience points, and while I don't disagree that it shouldn't be a lot of experience points, in my opinion, 314 is too much, let alone 495. The specialist above has a finesse total for a specific crafting spell of 23. he still has a high chance of failure and can do it in a day. Also, please note, under my system, if his skill is that high and completing the task in one casting is the only option that puts the finished product out of reach, then he has to cast it at that level. His knowledge of finesse (and hubris, perhaps) is sufficiently high that he can't break the project down into more manageable pieces.
I haven't suppressed the chance of a finesse botch. I've suppressed the chance of a finesse failure. Botch is still possible. Indeed a botch becomes even more likely because I introduce more rolling to the process. If a project takes 10 rolls to complete, there's a pretty high likelihood that one of those rolls will be a 0...
I don't understand how this is all that much different than what I propose. You suggest many rolls, but don't try and quantify how to determine the number of rolls, like I do. You lower the ease factor, again like I do. So your objective seems to be the same as mine, or at least the end result of what you're proposing produces nearly the same thing. And I don't understand your terminology. Dispensing with mundane materials? What does that mean? My proposal does not alter any of the components of the roll.
Oh, and keep in mind that in your example, you're adding a +3 for Rego Craft when it is already included in the listed Ease Factor for the desired difficulty of the artistic task. The Insert on Page 61 of Houses of Hermes:Societas says, "The Ease Factors in the table below include the +3 adjustment for magic use).
Edit: keep in mind, under my proposal, that even if a finesse roll fails, what really failed is the quality of the work for that part. It's possible to "fix" that at a later roll by an outstanding success. If it's a botch, it's not going to be possible to fix, and probably won't be perceived until some point after it is finished. If the subsequent finesse roll fails to fix the problem, then the overall piece of work will be of inferior quality, regardless of the quality of the rest of the piece.
Necessary? No. What I am currently trying to do is figure out if it would be easier to, and if there are any established guidelines that come closer to what we are trying to do. I don't have all the guidelines memorized either, which is why I keep throwing out new ones. "Is this one more relevant to what we're trying to do?"
True. And there is a whole subset of rules in Animal Guidelines for making one animal into a mythic animal that can get applied. I thought there were some rules for partially changing one animal into another (referred to in our discussion about Theraphosa's Pendant, when we briefly tried to figure out how to give her multiple arms in human form), but I haven't found them yet.
While this is all an interesting exploration of the theoretical considerations for what we want the mechanics to look like, I don't see any actual mechanical suggestions here -- which is puzzling to me, because you seem to imply that Fixer's mechanics are similar to yours.
I agree that the process we're still looking for is a useful mechanic for breaking down a single large ease factor into a number of smaller ones.
I would argue that an artisan would have an earlier step, Seeing The Final Form, wherein they make drafts and determine how they want the final product to look.
Note that if you are making spontaneous Rego Craft spells, then this makes sense. However, for memorized spells, RAW suggests a spell with +1 to flexibility allows you to do all the things a craftsman could do, as a single spell (eg, everything a blacksmith could do). It also suggests that you can add up to +2 flexibility -- presumably a +2 flexibility would let you do anything that anyone could do with that material, or would let you work with a variety of materials. Different spells would still be needed for Ind, Part, Group and size adjustments.
TANGENT: Given the relative low magnitude of craft spells that work on the Individual scale, perhaps you could make some kind magnitude increase which adds to the precision of the spell? +1 magnitude for +1 to the roll? Phantom Blacksmith (Cov 51) is target Group, and does whatever a blacksmith could do to iron, for ReTe 20. Add three magnitudes, and the spell becomes ReTe 35, with +3 to the Finesse roll, and it goes up to ReTe 50 for +6 to the Finesse roll.
I don't understand why you feel like we've lost the element of failure. Perhaps you're worried that the nigh-impossible EF 24 task gets broken down into a series of easily-beaten EF6 tasks? Do we want to place some kind of limit on EF reduction using this system?
My frustration with the system that Fixer proposes is that the ReCrafter knows how long each step will take along the way. I would rather see a RegoCraft system that comes closer to the Original Research rules, with the accumulation of points towards a goal.
I would argue that a Rego Craft spells alone are incapable of making a David-like quality statue at all. Truly amazing acts of creativity and art-making are beyond the scope of magic. Creativity is a divine force. I order to create an artistic masterpiece, one must spend time using the art skill. I say this for two reasons:
It would explain why the Jerbiton aren't all Rego Crafters.
An essential part of the art-making process is the time it takes to make items. Returning to the work, putting it down for a bit and then coming back to it with new eyes. You can't make art any other way. You can churn out crafts like this, though. A potter who makes 100 pots a day will be making better pots than the potter who makes 100 pots/month.
I think we're talking about different goals for these spells:
On the one hand, we have Viscaria, who wants to make buildings, castles, and fortifications out of the raw materials at hand.
On the other hand, we have Praxelites, who wants to engage in artisan work that achieves a supernatural level of perfection.
Does that sound right?
At any rate, while a useful discussion, none of this is mechanical. Fixer proposes a mechanical system that would suite Viscaria's needs, but not the ones I assume Praxelites has.
What about a system based on the Original Research system? Each roll adds to a total which needs to beat the target number. There's a cumulative penalty for casting the same spell on the same project repeatedly (The project has fatigue levels?), without intermission. Perhaps the target goal can ALSO be approached by spending time using the actual craftsmanship skill?
It's a rubric. It's not meant to create a hard and fast guideline to replace what already exists. The idea is to break up the craft/artistic/artisinal tasks into component pieces to be tackled individually.
There isn't a hard and fast break down, except to get it to the point it becomes reasonably possible to do for the crafting magus. There may be some SG fiat, if a crafter has a extraordinarily low finesse score.
I thought about a spell to determine the finished product. Can still do it. Chances are this is where some artistic ability would come in and the Rego Crafter might complete a model, first.
Precision is handled with finesse skill, or precision mastery, only. If you want a spell to create a final product, all the time, we can back in some complexity and have it of fixed design. If you want to vary the components, you need to finesse it, or bend your magic to what your mind sees.
That's precisely what I don't want to prevent, breaking it into automatic (except for botch) checks. As your finesse grows, you are drawn to do more.
That's clearly not in RAW. Not all Jerbiton are interested in art, or making art. Some just appreciate it, no matter how it's created, but they are more inspired by those who make it without magic. And for your second part, I'm trying to bake some of that into the process, you can't get to David in a day, unless you're finesse is just so darn good that you could make the finesse roll, which is unlikely. The process is slowed down.
I think this could be applied to Viscaria's buildings. It takes time to build a building, just like it does to make art.
I'm not interested in using a Craft skill to make the process easier.
Yup, I ran into the same problem. Serf's Parma doesn't help either.
I'd say:
Base speed = man walking (this is mostly the Unseen Porter)
1 mag = man running
2 mag = horse running.
I read that bit "Iām also inclined to treat all finesse rolls as not stressed" as such. It they aren't stressed, they are normal rolls, and thus can't botch? Or am I wrong?
And how can you have botches, but not failure?
Yeah, sorry, I did one thing, then another, and it all got confused.
I initially went with multiple rolls. But not only is that difficult to quantify, that in itself is an abstraction. If you make 5 rolls to do a statue that'd take a month to sculp, would you only do 5 for a bridge that would occupy entire teams for a year?
So I figured "what the hell", and went the "abstract all to a single roll" route.
Iām absolutely not trying to suggest something that different from you. Your initial text was a fine draft, IMO. So, just following along, doing some number on how it could work and why, which lacked in your initial proposal.
Answering, also, the lingering questions in your initial proposal, and what I perceive as flaws: You consider that, instead of doing it all in an instant, the magus will do it āin a dayā, adding a āone day limitā to things to limit abuse. You also stop the magus from breaking a year-long project, without any special reason. To take back the ME bridge process, under your initial proposal, Viscaria couldnāt say āI take a season to Rego Craft itā, for exemple, which is something that can happen in play, and should, if you allow breaking down Rego Craft.
=> I abstract things up further, considering that the magus will cast a lot of spells, doing it as a multiple of a mundane craftsman spell: At worst, heāll cast a bazillion non-stressed spells to do all the minutes details. At best, heāll cast one single spell. The roll I make him do is just an abstraction for his āaverageā workā
If you want to keep multiple rolls, hereās what Iād do:
Roll x number of dices. Maybe more rolls the more you lower the EF: 3 rolls for lowering it by 1 step, 6 rolls for lowering it by 2 stepsā¦
If succeeding by 3+, each block of 3 lowers the next EF: If base EF is 15, rolling 18-20 would lower the next EF to 15. Rolling 21-23 would lower the next EF to 12.
If doing a shoddy work, the next EF goes up by 3.
If failing, go back one step to fix it.
If botching, keep the base rules: The item appears fine, but is instead flawed.
Am I clearer now?
Iām not trying to detail specific spells and such, just abstracting the whole process so that it comes down to this:
āBase EF for doing it in X time with all required materials is A. How many time do you want to take, with what materials?ā
I also introduce the mundane skill a little, which encourages all the viscaria of the world.
Oh. I thought I had explained that. Ah, I have, but it isnāt clear to you.
In covenants, the finesse EF is listed as being 3 higher if you dispense with the items a mundane craftsman would use.
I was working from notes taken from covenants, which list the base EF of a mundane artisan, and add the further +3. This comes back to the same thing, since, IMO, this +3 shouldnāt be taken away.
IIRC, in MOH.
My problem with this is that this should also apply to any mundane craftsman.
Also, if you use craft magic to separately craft each finger of a statue in order to lower the total EF, doing extremely well on one finger wonāt speed up the overall process. Itāll just mean that finger is particularly beautiful.
It also tends to break down things: āI do it in little details, taking a lot of time to lower EF, which means I can succeed a lot, thus doing it fasterā.
Also, speeding up is limited by the Ars system. Sure, you do it in 2 months instead of 3. Your season is still wasted.
This, IMO, means 2 things:
High success, so that the item is excellent or more
Using materials a mundane craftsman wouldnāt work, or or not like this. For exemple, using muto to fuse cristal and silver with wood.
Yup.
Going by the proposal above, that could translate in any spell between:
Rego craft a house in an instant
A lot of different spells (probably low level) to do all the minute tasks required, which would occupy me for a month of continual casting.
Botch doesn't equate to failure, it equates to spectacular failure. Say I set the minimum success to be 70%, that means a roll of a 1, 2 or 3 will fail, which will make the next subsequent finesse roll a stressed roll (at a higher ease factor, probably) and is a stress roll. Go back and read what I said after "I'm also not inclined..." A botch is a catastrophic failure, I only want the chance for that to happen when the artist/builder/crafter attempts to fix a previous mistake. I didn't quantify the percentage of failure, but I am/was thinking ~30%. Good rolls throughout the process will produce a generally good result. A failed roll has a chance to be corrected at the following step, with a stressed finesse roll. This walks the fine line between having enough time to redo something (non botch failure) and success. It makes a meaningful, IMO, distinction. Also, keep in mind, when it becomes stressed it's an opportunity for outstanding success. A high enough roll might finish the project ahead of schedule as the crafter is filled with inspiration from his previous failure and insight into the work.
I think we're saying the same thing, basically. Or something really close to the same.
Well, where the mundane skill comes into play is being able to adequately design the magical process to brake it up into a reasonable number of component steps. The mundane skill might also satisfy the intimate knowledge of the item being created part (which adds +3 to the roll). I can see that.
Or if you do it in 2 months instead of a year, you've saved 3 seasons. Yes, low finesse scores will take a lot of time to do stuff. However, I'd probably be generous with experience in this instance. Don't know haven't come to that point.
Even the spell that makes the house in an instant isn't particularly high level.
Exactly, which is what I donāt understand.
You state that you have suppressed the chance of failure, but not of botch. How can you have a spectacular failure it you canāt even have a normal failure?
Further, how can you botch if the rolls arenāt stressed?
You say Say I set the minimum success to be 70%, that means a roll of a 1, 2 or 3 will fail, which will make the next subsequent finesse roll a stressed roll (at a higher ease factor, probably) and is a stress roll
So youād introduce yet another mechanism?
Isnāt it easier to just keep the regular rules anyway? I mean, having a high ease factor is very similar to this, yet, IMO, is better, in that thereās no āautofailā, so a talented magus will fail less, while a novice one will fail more.
And this contradicts your previous statement: If you fail on a 1-3, then there is a chance of failure.
So when I read you, it seems that what you want in fact is rather to supress the chance of a botch, but keep the chance for failure, to reintroduce botch if one fails a previous roll? This seems overly complicated IMO.
Really? I think youāre complicating your life needlessly. Youāre trying to think about it in detail, whereas, sooner or later, it gets down to an abstraction.
Imagine building a house.
Standard Rego craft magic will have one spell to do this. High EF.
You can have a few specific spells, to craft the walls, to the craft the roof, to put them together. Lower EF. Itāll mean, maybe, 10 castings. I can conceive one rolling them all, although it gets boggy.
What if this is still too high, and the magus wants a spell to craft the bricks, another to assemble them one by one, another to craft the tiles, and another to put the tiles one by one, ensuring that no failure is too problematic, and that each EF will be low enough? This is the āalmost mundaneā craft magus, but, without being too hard to imagine, this means a lot of spellcasting rolls. It makes no sense to have him roll all of them, just as you wouldnāt make the mundane craftsman roll more than one, for the general quality of the house.
=> Donāt try to determine how many rolls are needed. Say that you roll x times, with each roll determining the average value of your work, and youāre good!
Yes, totally.
You have a good idea, I agree with it, I'm just trying to propose a workable set of rules for it.
I would very much advise against such a time reduction.
Take my house exemple above. A magus is using the ābrick by brickā approach to have a very low EF, which allows him to do a thing he couldnāt do normally. Fine. This is the goal weāre seeking here.
Assuming, as you did, that 30% rolls are failed on average, but he succeeds at them all (which is statistically quite improbable, since weāre talking about hundreds of rolls being abstracted here). Would it cut down the time that much?
Heās emulating a mundane craftsman as much as possible. Unless a mundane craftsman can do it in 2 months instead of a year, thereās absolutely no reason why he would do it that much faster. If he wants to be faster, he needs to do things faster, by taking shortcuts, such as method 2 or 1. However good his results, thereāll still be a minimum number of spellcasting rolls he has to do, and this time can't be compressed indefinitely. It shouldnāt, either.
The magus is trading time for a lower EF / better result (which, btw, is quite medieval in approach). To allow him to use that lowered EF to actually take less time is both circular and self-defeating. This is a player getting a lower EF at the cost of nothing.
IMO. At best, one should not allow a good roll to permit both an excellent result and a faster process, but even then, this feels like a cheat.
If there's a failure if a finesse roll a stressed roll is necessary at the next botch. That premise has been there from the start. You and I are operating from different premises. I'm trying to make possible the do a year's work by an artist in some amount of time less than a year. That is impossible for almost anyone and the chance of failure on that is in excess of 90% for almost everyone. Finesse score of 12 with affinity +2 for Puissant and Per +5 gets you to 19.
To do the finest work by the grandmasters of an art is an EF of 24, to do what they do in a year adds another 9, for a total of 33. 19 + die roll< 33 more than 90% of the time.
You come up with a system then, instead of picking holes in mine. Keep in mind, this influences what Viscaria is going to do, too. My goal is to empower players to do the things that they need to do/want to do. Amul/Viscaria has taken on the bulk of the work for the Tribunal. What I've presented is for him, primarily. I never stated I didn't want there to be no risk of failure, indeed, I wanted failure to be a part of this from the beginning, so I really want you to go back and read what I said (and what you quoted) because I never said anything about not wanting there to be no chance of failure.
Again, you figure something else out and submit it to Viscaria for her approval. If you want to modify what I've presented, it might be easier to take what I've written and make changes to it, and note those in colors, and strike through parts of mine that I don't like, so I can respond to your suggestions in total. Again, keep in mind that this is for Viscaria, so she can complete her tasks necessary to have a grand showcase for the Tribunal.
I have no doubt that I'm complicating things in the game, I don't think I'm complicating my life[1]. Of course, I'm changing it from a spell cast with one chance of failure to multiple chances of failure, and also chances to correct that failure at a following opportunity. So, yeah, it's complicated. This is Ars Magica. I could instead make Viscaria invent all the spells (as in multiple spells) necessary to do whatever it is she wants to do, and then she casts them and I rely on one finesse roll to see what the finished project is ignoring the rego craft rules altogether. Make that final roll a stress roll and call it done. I did think about that, but it seemed too abstract/arbitrary.
[1]In the interests in not complicating my life needlessly, I'm done with this discussion. Present your alternative in full to Amul, if it's based on mine, copy mine, strikethrough what you didn't like and put your clarifications in a color to differentiate between what I'm proposing and you're proposing. He can pick the one he likes best. As it is now, I really don't understand how what you're presenting is all that different from what I am. I think you're picking mine apart and suggesting alternatives and not thinking about the whole process, but I could be wrong. Amul was correct in pointing out that my goals here are for Praxiteles and being an artist (he used artisan, I think incorrectly). Viscaria is intending to build things from multiple subcomponents, but even still I think what I've done can still be a rubric for Amul to follow in figuring out how to build the spells necessary and get Viscaria's finesse score up to the necessary level. If you can present a coherent method that Amul and I can follow, and Amul likes it better, and it preserves elements of failure, sure, go for it. I'll even offload the SG duties for this to you. See how I can uncomplicate my life?
But... That is the thing, as Amul noticed, you don't really have a system!
You have ideas written as fluff text, and some bits of mechanics here and there, such as "I want failure to be about xx%", but absolutely nothing workable. This is why I've had trouble with your text and understanding what you meant exactly
What I did was take your basic idea and fluff idea, and implement a mechanics on it. Let me state it again.
(Reference: Covenants)
This assumes he does one roll, which is the average of all the rolls he would have made.
This also assume he has spells suitable to enough subdivisions: If he wants to build a castle brick by brick, he needs a spell to craft a brick.
If you want him to do more rolls, this can be adjusted. I'd suggest 4 rolls.
Exemply Gratia:
[i]Say, Viscaria had Int +3, Dex -1, Finesse (Rego*) 4, Prof: Architect 3
She wants to craft an tower for the covenant. This would take a year to a craftsman and his team of workers.
She does a simple, crude design, nothing fancy, so base EF is 6, +3 for Rego = 9.
She plans things carefully, acquiring all the support materials needed (such as contruction beams), draws plans, and easily succeed an Int + Architect roll on EF 6. She suffers no additional penalty
Since she has the spells for this (Group creation of bricks, Group moving and placement of bricks), she can try to do it in a season. She would have liked to do it in a year, but lacks the minute spells needed. This adds +3 to the EF.
Her final EF is this 9 + 3 = 12. If she rolls a 9+, she succeeds. On a 6+, she does, but her tower is Shoddy. Lower, and it is just a mess**
On another hand, a magus not knowledgeable in architecture and doing it in an instant would have a base EF of 6 + Rego 3 + No mundane support 3 + Year-in-an-instant 9 = 21. Almost twice her EF.
[/i]
*BTW, this is a much larger specialty than the usual ones for finesse, but, meh.
** I can do rules for salvaging a mess, if need be. It's easy.
That's been my understanding from the start of this discussion. That you two have been violently agreeing with each other about the mechanics. I make the same comments about this system that I have had for a while:
It seems perfectly functional to me, even if it is abusing the Dur: Instant thing a bit.
As your system stands, it's a simple Craft roll to know what additional materials would help (supports, etc). I'd prefer a higher Craft roll to allow you to achieve levels of competence that mere magic alone can't do. See example below.
I think that this system mirrors Viscaria's desire to engage in craftmanship very well, but doesn't handle Praelities' (sp?) desire to engage in art-making as much, in that the magi knows ahead of time how long his creative process will take. On the other hand, since we've abused the Dur:Instant thing so much already, we could just hand-wave this issue by saying that the CHARACTER doesn't know how long he'll take, but the player does.
So, here the Architect roll is negating a possible penalty. What I'd prefer is is for her Craft:Stone to negate the penalty (familiarity with the raw material) while the Profession: Architect allows her to achieve greater complexity. Referring to Covenants 49, in this example the EF 6/9 represents an "Easy" task. Her Int+Architect roll would determine whether her design was actually Simple, Easy or Average, etc -- the target number remains 6/9, but now her professional competence has come into play.
In the case of my example, the design of the tower and the quality of manufacture are two different things. If an "easy tower" was a basic round 3-story archer's tower for example, then perhaps the Architecture roll means the entry level is designed defensively. The actual construction of the doors and stairs might be a wonky if I rolled a Shoddy on the finesse roll.
It would just be a +3 EF, judging by your system. Possibly, negated by spending some significant amount of time relative to the project using the craft/profession skill to figure out how to make your mistakes work.
And the Finesse speciality was originally just shorthand for "finesse for that one spell that I have which requires finesse." The specialty will get updated on the sheet when the skill does. But thanks for reminding me.
And requires less size! Way easier!!!
OTOH, there's no upped magnitude for stone, IIRC (may someone check, please? Serf's Parma)
) is that the initial speed of my proposed enchantment above would be dreadfully slow, so he'll need extra magnitudes to give it some speed, or it should fly at about the same speed as The Unseen Porter, and possibly one to allow it to go higher that 5 paces above the ground. Thanks for the remark.