Hi,
Edit: well i found this thread: Final Check on Current Errata - #32 by ezzelino after posting and it seems that the issue is known but no solution was decided because it would become too complex. Well my solution will be simple, keep that spell as written and avoid the issue for my players by saying it’s a result of experimentation, for mutantes only.
The most used spell I remember in our saga is a sun version of endurance of the berserker. It negates most of the wound modifiers, which is good, and the only drawback is that you may fall unconscious when you reach that level. Obviously it’s bad if you fall unconscious while, for example, flying. Because you are falling, and probably killing yourself if flying too high due to the fall damage rules.
But then I read the HOHTL chapter about mercere and notice that “the tireless flight” essentialy does the same, but you take light wounds when you would take fatigue level above unconscious.
At first I tought it meant “if you have only one level (uncounscious) available and should take 2 or more fatigue levels in one time (like for a ritual casting, or a botch result decided by the SG), you fall uncounscious AND take the damage. Which is something I could also apply to endurance of the berserker because it’s quite coherent with the idea that exerting oneself above normal limit ("fatigue level = unconscious”) gives injuries. And to be clear I know that one is personal, and the other is touch (and can be tethered, but the mutantum part of the spell is really not useful in this discussion because the issue would be the same without it) but in the end, both affect one corpus (human sized or less) individual which is subject to the rules for wounds and fatigue.
But it’s not so clear because that spell is described as allowing "to “pushes herself too hard she may cause herself serious injury” and nothing limit this to the situation where all of those levels are gained in one time, and then you would fall unconscious.
So how come that spell, with the same guideline, accomplishes something which is different from the other spell using the same guideline, which just say “eliminate the penalties of fatigue and wounds”.
I read “eliminate the penalties” meaning “do not suffer the various mathematical modifiers (from -1 to -5). I didn’t read it as “prevent you to being unconscious/incapacited/death” because those three states do not feel like “penalties” but states of the fact : unconscious: you cannot act, incapacited : you cannot act and risk dying; dead, you cannot act and the soul or whatever is taken into the next phase by whatever religion you pray/are subject to.
I checked the errata’s, nothing.
I even tried to check what I currently have from the definitive edition, in case it was more clear in it, but nothing that jumped to my eyes.
So what is it: the guideline is more lax than I always thought (and could it prevent, temporarily for its duration, incapacitating state too? even death state?), or “tireless flight” do not respect” the guideline and should be considered "a result of experimentation not copiable unless identical” like so many spells in the books which give special properties to guidelines they do not specify?
What is your opinion on this matter?
Thanks for your inputs.