Questions on handling poisons with magic

Supposing one was a magus who was a tad paranoid (or "careful" if he had to label it himself).

And one wanted a spell to avoid getting poisoned. Not just Touch of Pearls, sometimes knowing it's poison isn't enough. Sometimes you can freak the enemy out by just drinking it.
For this I'm thinking a MuAq spell, to change the poisonous aspect of the liquid harmless. But how long would this need to last?
How long before a poison is passed from the body?
Hours, days, weeks? Different from poison to poison (which I'd imagine it would be in modern scientific terms)?
Or is this even relevant in the medieval paradigm? Is poison, once ingested (harmful or not) simply absorbed by the body, and hence not treated as a seperate substance anymore? I can't recall if A&A states anything about this, it might be worth a look, but IDHMBWM.
Or would it be more proper to makt the spell MuAq(Co) since it's supposed to affect the liquid after it is ingested?
Would it be easier - or even possible - to Muto Corpus'e the body resistant to poison? I'd say it is too broad, or mus be really hard. Otherwise, everyone would do this!
Yes, yes - it's probably easier to just Perdo the poison, but supposing one sucks at Pe compared to Mu, so...

How about Perdo Aquam instead ?

From the guidelines : PeAq, Level 15 : destroy one property of a liquid. That should remove the poison's, well, poisonousness (is that even a word ? ).

And it's permanent, no need to worry about duration.

Of course, your player is assuming the poison is a liquid, or in a liquid, here. It won't help him if someone feeds him a deadly mushroom :smiling_imp:

ultraviolet did say that he understood PeAq was easier.

Aren't there guidelines for changing a liquid into another natural liquid?

As for the residence time f poison in the body I'd say (notice that this is just an opinion) that once the material is digested it has been sufficiently destroyed to no longer be the magically altered poison. perhaps a day or so.

I am thinking that within the paradigm, Sun should be sufficient. What you drink in gets peed out in about a half a day, or so one would think.

So long as it's not like eight minutes before sunset when you need to cast it.
I'd do Moon duration just to be sure.

The problem (if you are a magus) with casting a MuAq spell with a duration on the liquid is that the liquid then becomes "something affected by magic" for the duration of the spell. Which means that your Parma Magica will resist the liquid.

I think you can make the body resistant to particular poisons. I don't think it should be particularly difficult. I think that the same guideline as Eyes of the Cat would work. However, I think you would need a different spell for different sorts of poisons. So one spell might make you resistant to arsenic, another to snake venom, and so forth.

I don't think that you could have a generic "resistance to poison" effect. Which makes it a bit fiddly, as you need to know what the poison is (or have a lot of spells cast on you). Also, whether being "resistant" actually makes you immune or just gives a bonus to Soak is another issue.

Hmm, I was going to say that since you have the guidelines in Aquam to turn a normal liquid into a poison doing such or such wound, the reverse transformation would be the same base level, but Richard is right that that makes the liquid magical, so you would have to lower your parma to drink it, not something a paranoid mage is likely to do in front of his enemy...

You already said that PeAq is not the prefered option, even when all is required is a measly Touch/Mom effect, so I suppose that your player has plenty of Muto. Does he by chance have a decent Auram or Terram, I mean as good as his Aquam ? How about a variant of Lungs of the Fish, MuAq(Au), to turn that nasty poison into good wholesome air and just pretend to drink ? At the end of the duration the poison will just settle somewhere, probably unnoticed. Or turn it into a small stone that can be palmed and later safely disposed of ?

Thanks for the replies.
That player is actually myself, I was just deliberately being misguiding, although primarily just for fun, since any players from my sagas would know right away.

It is obvious that PeAq would be so much more easy, according to guidelines. But with a Deficiency in Perdo, and a Muto as secondarily favoured technique...

And it's true that a MuAq spell would get in trouble with the Parma Magica. Sigh! This is almost a pink friggin' dot!
I like the idea with a "lungs of the fish" kinda spell, turning any liquid, gas or solid poison into harmless air, which would then be expelled, and not have any significant effect once it turns back into poison. The Duration for Lungs of the Fish, that's for how long you have that ability, right? But for how long is the water turned into air? Apparently long enough to do the trick, so at least a few seconds.
Would there also be some need for an Intellego spell to determine if a substance passing your lips is poisonous? Lungs of the Fish doesn't need any detector to know water is coming in and not air. But this is perhaps a little more complex, because you don't need to sense the medium entering, you need to know if it has a certain aspect.
How about a spell to turn any liquid, solid or gaseous medium inhaled/ingested into air? You'd win the drinking competitions for sure.

Hmm, that is tricky. The more I read Lungs of the Fish, the more confused I get. By itself, it is a nice spell that makes a lot of sense, but you really don't want to look too closely at the workings. If it has Touch Range, then how do you breathe the magical air (good old pink dot problem) ? Does the fact that it happens inside your lungs means that it is treated as already inside your Parma Magica, or can be viewed as a Personal spell for that purpose ? And the Part target means that the water needs to come from the same Aquam individual for the duration of the spell, something that is not mentioned in the description at all. And it does not say what happens to the changed water once you breathe out.

Personally, I would say that the part about the water only being changed a bit at a time when entering the lungs is just how the spell was first invented; it is still basically a transmutation spell with Sun duration, so once the water is turned into air it stays air for the duration. Really, there is no reason that is all the transmutation has to happen all at once when the spell is cast.

You might want to do a Target Group however, because you character might want to drink more than one glass of possibly poisonous liquid.

It might be something like : The Lips that Do Not Drink, MuAq(Au) 35 : Base 10 (that's what you need to change to a poison causing a Fatal Wound, so you would need the same to change from such a poison), +1 Touch, +2 Sun, +2 Group, Requisite is free), and you change all liquids entering your mouth, including all poisons, into harmless air until the next sunset/sunrise (well, up to the equivalent of 10 basic individuals anyway, which is 10 small ponds of water, a few barrels of wine/beer or 10 doses or poison). Parma Magica is no problem.

Does it really need to be R:Touch? We had this discussion a few weeks ago with Lungs of the Fish. As SG I initially claimed that it was R: Touch because you changed the water you touched (with the lips), and hence could not cast it on others. But how would you affect others? Veil of Invisibility is R: Per for just you and R:Touch for others. Wouldn't Lungs of the Fish be this as well?
So The Lips that Do Not Drink should be R: Per for just usable on me, otherwise it would run into the same problems.
Perhaps this is just a Legacy Spell, a remnant of previous editions?
Any other spells with this problem?

No, you can take out a magnitude by making it R:personal. R: touch allows you to make your companions breath water as well.

Cheers,
Xavi

Regardless of how you cut Lungs of the Fish, it causes the Pink Dot Problem. The Touch range is because it affects the water as you breath it, and so it produces magical air, not because it affects water in your lungs (at which point you're already drowning). To be honest, I don't see this as a Pink Dot Problem so much as a valid situation.

The PDP exists because the pink dot does nothing about the swords ability to cut. In this case, air's ability to sustain you is as vital to it as fire's ability to burn you. Lungs of the Fish must be cast through your own Parma, but since it's not the sort of spell you'd expect to cast on a moment's notice, that's not really a problem, and really as a spell it's only attractive to Elementalists or people with Deficient Corpus or forbidden MuCo as a combination.

As for the poison issue, I'm afraid your interpretation of Parma will drasticly affect things. I use a Parma-stops-magical-properties Parma in my game, so a poison magically made to water becomes a drinkable liquid which fails to quench thirst (no longer a poison, watery properties are magical). If you use the core Parma, Perdo is the only way to do it, and you'll need seperate spells for snake venom, arsenic and hemlock.

I don't think that this "property destruction" would be any more permanent than invisibility or removing a target's weight.

I think it might depend on precisely why the liquid is poisonous. If the liquid is poisonous because of an additive (something added to a goblet of wine, for example), then I think that the PeAq effect should permanently destroy the poisonous property of the adulterated wine. If the liquid (the wine) can become poisonous, then it can become not poisonous. Being poisonous is not in the essential nature of wine.

If, on the other hand, the liquid is inherently poison (the wine goblet contains snake venom, say) then being poisonous should perhaps be part of the liquid's essential nature --- which would mean that the poisonous property would return upon expiry of the PeAq effect. If this is the case, then precisely how quickly the essential nature returns would be a matter for consideration; it might not be instantaneous.

MuCo to make the character resistant to poison (say a +3 bonus to Soak against poison) could be a good strategy I think.