question on "Hunter's Sense" InAn

I have reread that insert and doubt your reading. Your reading would imply, that any Hermetic spell cast upon an area can be resisted by MR of beings in that area - which directly contradicts ArM5 p.85f The Functioning of Magic Resistance.

This is correct, but doesn`t imply MR either.

I have lost track of exactly what is being argued..
Partly due to a possible confusion as to what is exactly meant by each person when saying scrying and related terms.

As a rule of thumb, I use "scrying" to mean any magical means to surreptitiously determine information about a target.
Some of it can be resisted by MR some can't. Seems to depend on whether the magic directly targets the person with MR or not.

For example, say Magus Sneaky wants to find the secret stash of Magus Richie. I believe all the following counts as Scrying:

  1. Sneaky use InMe on Richie to learn the location of the secret stash.
  2. Sneaky uses InCo to track Richie's movements.
  3. Sneaky targets Richie with InIm to see the route Richie takes to secret stash.
  4. an invisible Sneaky follows Richie to the secret stash.
  5. Sneaky's dog Familiar follows Richie and reports back.
  6. Sneaky uses InTe to follow Richie's footsteps to the secret stash.
  7. using an enchantment on the Familiar Bond, Sneaky borrows the nose of his Familiar and follows the scent trail of Richie to the secret stash.

Some of the above methods are blocked by MR, some aren't.

First, sorry about the late reply.
End of year caught up with me, and I'm only writing now because I just need to relax.

Well, things are, IMO, weird, and not always consistent.

The guidelines speak about moving a sense. IMO, this should be Rego, Intellego being about something like, I don't know, "sensing" or "creating a a sense".

The core spells, however, alternate between, as you say, perceiving all specified species of the Target (be it Individual or Room), or, indeed, moving your sense (Haunt of the Living Ghost).

In that spirit, I do not find the various "Palm of" as particularly weird. In a way, they make more sense than , say, Prying Eyes, because they are more consistent with the guideline.

But I thought about this some more, trying to align with your point of view. IIRC, it goes like this:
a) These create magical senses, which act like mundane senses
b) If, say, you move your sight, you can have T:Hearing. This would create a "synesthesia" spell, in which visual species receives at the targeted point would be transformed to auditory species. Also, this would be limited in range to Hearing.

I don't agree with these (I prefer to be coherent with the guidelines), but I believe this makes sense, and would be coherent with your vision (would it?).
Both these points make "cross sense" spells mostly useless, so if creating a magical sense to perceive like a mundane sense, it is better to use a Target akin to the mundane sense you want, which is just what "Palm of" do.

As a final point, note that this doesn't change the fact that, barring target issues, these shouldn't be resisted.

I believe my other reply might have made clear my point of view to you, most notably in the disconnect between guidelines and spells, and spells themselves.
If it hasn't, please tell me, I shall try to answer (No promises, though T-T )

About this, this is what I was refering to in one my my previous posts (probably the third): In a word in which, in accord to how species are said to operate, perceiving them through magic is not resisted (Unless you fall into one of the special cases) make The Invisible Eye Revealed all the more important, where otherwise, it's mostly a laughing matter.
Ditto for the paranoia against scrying implied by the background, from the write up you describe up to the very Code itself: It makes much, much more sense.

As I see it, that's the point of T: Room spells.

Think about this.
If, as the guidelines say, you can just move one of your senses to a fixed point, you can easily scry with mundane senses.
Even without considering later spells, take something like Haunt of the Living Ghost, and use creo to create the image of a chair instead of your own.

Also, in a way, T: Room spells are not very effective. Limited in range, and, usually not cost effective, especially if you disregard "Palm of" to consider that T: Ind could work in the same way.

But they target everything within the chamber.

I would argue that such spells don't move a sense towards a fixed point.

IMO, an InIm T: Ind spell targets an Individual, to perceive their species, and nothing else. That's the difference between moving your senses through other spells (and it is very easy). If that individual is protected by MR, since they are the target, MR works.

A T: Room spell would work in a similar way: Not moving your sense to a point in the room, from you to perceive from there, but individually targeting everything in the room, and, thus, being subject to MR.

Which is why, despite being less effective, they are so common: They allow you to respect the code.

If you want to scry on your sodales, you just move your senses to, say, their shield grog, while they use the Invisible Eye revealed to counter you.

Does this make sense to you?
It does to me (That's how I've considered things since HOH:S), but, as this thread shows, YMMW :slight_smile:

For the sake of correctness, the actual guidelines say "use 1 sense at a distance", "use 2 senses at a distance", etc. All InIm spells to sense things at distance, AFAIR, conform to these guidelines. We can discuss if "use at distance" equals "move to specified distance" for hermetic purposes, but I don't think it does.

As for HotLG, nothing there implies that it "moves" your sense (like in, you senses are now the same as the created image and you can't use them from your real position).

Palm of XXX don't really make sense as InIm hermetic spells. Maybe their intended effect could be achieved by InMe, using individual target and R:Touch.

Humm... I don't think it makes sense, and it isn't coherent with my understanding either.

T:Hearing targets someone's hearing using Intellego to give that person a specific sense based on the form used. InMe can make you hear thoughts. InVi can make you hear vis. It can also make you hear creatures of one realm (if you penetrate their MR).

The InIm guideline of "using senses at a distance" isn't really compatible with sense targets, in the same way that CrHe spells can't generally be used at range Personal (because in normal circumstances you aren't an eligible target). Synesthesia would be more akin to MuMe than InIm in my opinion (there are Synesthesic spells in A&A if I recall correctly, but I can't check the guidelines now).

That's actually what I was going with ^^

In this interpretation, it would target your hearing to give you a sense based on Imaginem, which covers sensory impressions, thus perceiving sounds.

That was my core proposal to you :slight_smile:

The rest was my brain going in freewheel mode from there: If, given this base, we do a T:Vision spell that gives hearing?

My first thought was that this would be a spell allowing you to hear up to the limit of your Vision, which, now that I'm writing it, may be exactly how some perception powers work (Sorry, the name escape me, but there are creatures with InIm powers allowing you to perceive everything at Vision range, IIRC).

But this doesn't work with the base proposal, which would target your Vision to give you a sense (hearing) based on Imaginem.
=> Just as a T: Vision InMe spell could let you see emotions as color, while a T: Hearing InMe variant could let you hear them as sounds, such a spell, working under that paradigm, would convey sounds using sight.

So that was my reasonning :smiley:
All theoretical, of course :slight_smile:

But yes, I believe there are some disconnects, and we are stuff with trying to find the best way to do things given our understanding and preferences.

I thought a little more about MuIm (so thanks! It was fun!)

IIRC, there's at least one example of such a spell: A visible demand for repair (or something like that. I believe it converts sounds into visible species). I also seem to remember a spell that transforms smell into visual species.

I would not really call this synesthesia, because it's not your perception that has changed, but the species themselves. But whatever :smile:

So far, though, these example just make perception easier, my making things that would be hard to perceive otherwise clearly visible.

But what it we were doing the reverse?
I see 2 fun uses for that:

  • A curse. Target someone to change their visual species into smell, their auditory species into taste. They'll see people, hear people, but the perception of those around them will be considerably altered, especially if the species aren't pleasant ("Curse of the Unwelcome Boss": The more you see them, the more foul the smell. The more you hear them, the worse it tastes like vomit). Due to the spells mentionned above, this is most probably possible in RAW.
  • A debilitating spell: Change the visual species that reach someone into smells, auditory species into touch... They'll essentially be blind and deaf. I suppose it could be done.

Note that, although the Target in both cases are species, the target is the person, and thus they may be resisted.

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I double checked. Synesthesia spells are presented in HoH:S (the Jerbiton chapter), not A&A. They are, indeed, MuIm.

I also double checked my premisses. It is harder for me to think about giving a sense to detect, say, iconic species, because we already detect iconic species. =P

Enchantments to give hearing and vision to objects use sense targets and InIm, so it makes sense to give someone the ability to see things using InIm T:Vision. Of course, this would be mostly useless.

Despite what I said earlier, I think there is nothing that stops you from giving someone the ability to hear smells or images... but I'd expect this to be deeply disturbing. =P

I still don't think you can use this at, say, range voice, to see things from an advantage point. I recall examples of magical creatures doing so, but they aren't exactly constrained by the limits of hermetic spells.

But this would affect the species generated by the person, no? Or are we still talking about giving said person magical senses?

(As a side note, I have officially also completely lost track of the original topic being discussed.)

In the first case, it would affect the species generated by the target, yes.

We have example of this, and yes! At least the visible demand for repair is from HoH. Thanks! But these are "utilitarian" spells, used on inanimated targets, while my proposal is to do exactly the same as a curse, on a person :smiling_imp:

Note that none of these spells give magical senses per se, although the results are similar:

  • If you change someone's smell into sounds, everyone will hear it. The target is the person.
  • If you give yourself the ability to hear smells, only you will hear them. The target is you.

Yet, from your point of view, both spells (I first wrote both smells) will have exactly the same effect, for that person at least.


In the second case, it would affect species received by the person. I can't remember anything like it, and am not sure it would be possible (although I have no real objection)


(And yes, me too :smiley: )

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