As a newbie to the boards, and an inveterate tinkerer, tweaker and general system destroyer, welcome to another new thread from me!
Just a quickie. Possibly. I don't like requisites as they stand. Yes, they're clean and simple, but they also stiff specialist magi something rotten. And it just doesn't feel right to me. So as usual, I'm considering adding an additional layer of complication to make things better for me and me alone. Muhahahaha!
Here's the suggestion. Instead of requisites being stated purely as one or more Arts, they are rated as Tech & Form & Level. If the total of the Magi's applicable Tech & Form are greater than the requisite level, they ignore the requisite and cast the spell using their normal art scores. Otherwise, the usual requisite rules apply.
This is predominantly intended to tackle what I perceive as oddities in the system whereby a mage with Muto 20, Corpus 20, Animal 20 and Herbam 1 struggles to cast a spell which turns himself and all his clothes into a cute little bunny rabbit.
It would mean I'd need to go through and rate every requisite at a level equivalent to the effect it's creating in that spell, but once done it shouldn't slow down game play at all, and would help make all those poor underpowered suffering weedy magi that bit more capable
If you want to simplify it, you could simply disregard requisites completely. Add +1 or +2 magnitudes to a pure Te+Fo spell for every requisite listed in the canonical spell.
Transform into wolf (MuCo(An) 25) for example becomes a MuCo 30, but does not require you to have an animal score. It is level 35 if you also want to transform your clothes (He requisite). Thenhigher level of transforming yourself to eagles and the like (Au requisites...) can be justified by the usual ArM setting justification that "transforming to mammals is easier, then come birds, then lizzards... etc etc. each "level" of beast adds a magnitude, but it is still a pure MuCo spell without Animal, auram or other requisites.
Simple and (quite) neat. Solves your problem in one swing.
As a side note I have always considered the shapeshifting spells to be overrated (too high magnitudes) when it comes to the perceived power level that they generate, but that is me.
Just a couple of comments that might nuance the requisites.
First of all the difference between a Requisite and a Casting Requisite is important, especially since it remedies some of what bugs you about them. Recalling that a magus only needs to get his Casting Total within 10 levels of the spell total to succeed and recalling that inventing a spell is not influenced by the Casting Requisite. The clothes you wear when transforming yourself is a Casting Requisite, not a Requisite - thus the Mu20 An20 Co20 magus could easily invent the spell, and once knowing it he would still be able to cast it even if wearing Herbam-clothes makes his Casting Score less.
With this in mind the question about Requisites is not so much about whether you succeed in casting the spells you have taken time to invent, but more about you excess Casting Total aka your Penetration... To me that is unbalancing.
When we make characters the chioce between being a generalist or a specialist is an important choice because it is what makes the character who he is. That choice and the game balance will be undermined by tossing the Requisites.
Finally you might add that if said magi is not competent at Herbam, well then he would probably be wearing clothes of a different fabric - thus it leads the theory of magic to influence people's lives and choices, such curiosities colours the setting. I would prefer a colourfull setting any day over power.
The reference to power were really facetious - my real concern was a more straightforward one. It feels against the spirit of Hermetic spell casting that an individual who is perfectly capable of achieving two independent effects because of a high Art becomes disproportionately penalised by the requisite rules when those two effects are combined into a single spell.
Well see they are are not two seperate effects otherwise they would not be one spell. Requisite only plays a part when they play a part, otherwise they are not needed. Thus they are either important in a spell or not at all. The magus is only limited in the kind of magic where he is not as potent -the ones he purposefully neglected to specialise in something else- but he is still a tremendous force to be reckoned with when it comes to the long range of effects he can do with his specialities alone.
It is about power! - removing requisites will define a magus by his highest Arts alone, having them defines him by all his Arts. A range of Virtues and Flaws would also loose meaning or become incredible powerfull if foregoing the requisites.
I disagree that it is against the spirit of Hermetic magic, on the contrary Hermetic magic's strenght in being something that very different magical traditions can and could use to communicate rests on the categeories and the assumption that the Art of Corpus can never affect material of the form of Herbam. The requisites exists as an important game balance feature but they also exists to enforce setting integrity.
How can the characters genuinely discuss magic theory ingame if that theory has loopholes big enough to sail the Venetian Fleets through it?
That being said, as I started earlier if it suits you go ahead!
I think you miss my point. My proposed change to Requisites doesn't remove them. It simply means that a mage can ignore requisites when he already has sufficient power to accomplish the requisite effect.
Let me give an example. Curse of the Ravenous Swarm is CrAn 45, with a rego requisite. The rego requisite is to ensure the swarm only devastates the desired area. This is hard to define, but I'd hazard a guess at a ReAn 20 ward (Base 1, +1 Touch, +3 Moon, +1 Group, +2 Size)? Now if the magi who can cast the former has an Animal Art of 20, he could create the latter effect formulaicly no problem, regardless of his Rego score. Yet, a poor Rego score has a huge impact on his ability to create a magical effect that his Animal score alone should allow him to accomplish.
It's not about limitations - after all, magi are powerful enough without giving them more freebies. To my mind it's more about consistent application of levels of effect.
What I meant by this was simply that if Maga A can create effect B effortlessly, and Maga A can create effect C effortlessly, it doesn't make sense that when effects B&C are combined that now the combined effect may not be achievable at all, even though technically the combination of the effects will probably only have added one level of magnitude.
However, I do suspect that I shall have to look at more requisite spells in order to truly gauge how much of an issue this is!
See maybe this is were we disagree. I in fact think it is less consistent (for the reasons given in my former post) - which is also what leads me to the other conclusion; that it becomes a question of power and limitations.
This makes absolutely no sense -and yet it does but I'll return to that( )- because if maga has the Arts to do B and C effortless then the same Arts are sufficient to do E (B&C), Unless E is more than just B and C. For example if another requisite F is added - but then E is no longer (B&C) but (B&C&F) and it is thus no longer the same making the argumet false.
But why did I then state that is does make sense? It makes sense because it is not the requisites that differ it is the level guidelines. The level guidelines for creating vermin and controling vermin might be very different but as a consequence of the merging of the two spells they are both compared to one guideline - namely the one of the spells main Technique (or Form). This is what makes the maga troubled. She is not just controling vermin - she is in fact creating vermin with a built in control effect not to run off pesting the areas outside the target area. There is however one obvious solution to her if she mourns her limits - namely refraining from managing all in one spell but instead cast two spells in succesion. In fact you might say these guidelines is balance on doing it all in one spell.
Actually even if my aurgements were of a more generel nature I did get your point. But tossing Requisites all in all or only introducing a 'minimum' level requirement is to me the same. It is less consistent and it has one primary output - higher penetration totals.
One more notion - I'd claim that a range of spells with requisites doesn't have it's main Arts because those Arts are significantly more important in the spell than the requisites. They have them because in the nature of the rules every spell must have a main Technique and a main Form. This is because several aspects of the rules are dependent on the main Arts. But how then can we judge with every spell whether the requisite are passing neccesities or integral to the very core of the spell....?
This being a forum we luckily do not have to agree, nor cast votes or anything, as all that matters is to do what we prefer and what stories we enjoy with our troupe. On the other hand if we imagined that we were in the same troupe and thus had to agree, this is the compromise I'd propose: To rule that there is nothing but Casting Requisites. Certainly some spells would always need a certain requisite to work, but the main point being that all spell invention would only depend on the main lab total. This would allow the magus when spending time in the lab and merging theory and spells to achieve better spells. I would think it less inconsistent that such is posible than it being possible when casting. A season in the lab should offer more insight then 6 seconds of spell casting. Thus the maga could excell herself - and since formulaic spells are easier than spontaneous she could probably still succeed in casting most of them even if casting requisites are needed. And even if the maga could accomplish more this would keep the Casting Total and thus the penetration duely limited by her effeciency in other arts. Game balance and setting integrity are as good as they can be considering this a compromise (just don't start wondering what this would imply for magic items...).
You may want to consider looking at Methods & Powers in both RoP : The Divine and RoP : The Infernal.
This might help you clarify some of the issues you have with using Techniques and Forms.
My post was directed at Phildack.
But as it is after 5:30am locally , i probably need to sleep on it.
My point probably is , that you choose a Method and Power and try to generate a Total so that you can achieve an effect.
As far as i can tell there are no combinations where a secondary Method or Power is required.
You do have limitations on Method & Power combinations though , so all effects are not usable by knowing only one of each.
[quote="phildackI think you miss my point. My proposed change to Requisites doesn't remove them. It simply means that a mage can ignore requisites when he already has sufficient power to accomplish the requisite effect.
Let me give an example.
Curse of the Ravenous Swarm is CrAn 45, with a rego requisite. The rego requisite is to ensure the swarm only devastates the desired area. This is hard to define, but I'd hazard a guess at a ReAn 20 ward (Base 1, +1 Touch, +3 Moon, +1 Group, +2 Size)? Now if the magi who can cast the former has an Animal Art of 20, he could create the latter effect formulaicly no problem, regardless of his Rego score. Yet, a poor Rego score has a huge impact on his ability to create a magical effect that his Animal score alone should allow him to accomplish.
[/quote]
A caveot that I'm providing you with my gut reaction. Like mny other people have said (and none of us probably needed to). You should do what works for your game. [size=59](I still remeber Robbie's mantra )[/size]
This appears, to me, to be a way that makes the game both more comlex and more bland at the same time. If you have a character who has a pumped up creo score and a solid Animal but only the most pathetic understanding of rego, he shouldn't squander his time learning curse of the ravenous swarm. He should instead develop and creo animal swarm creation spell (at a lower level because there isn't a requisit) then develop a second creo animal spell to instill the bugs with an overwhelming desire to eat a target selected by him, (or create a spell that creates bugs with such a mono-mania in their hearts already).
If he wants to turn into a bunny but has a flaw preventing him from using herbam then he should wear wool and leather clothing.
Doing this allows us to keep the un-house ruled system and simultainiously it brings the character's magic in line with the character's personality, virtues and flaws. It's a win-win.
Ah well, it appears that something that has bugged me since ArM3 is my own personal bugbear only! Thanks for the comments - clearly no-one but me feels that the current all-or-nothing requisite system is an incredibly blunt tool!
I shall simply move down my list of 5th edition tweaks and post another minority opinion in due course
hehe, you do that, only by discussion alternatives will be found.
And to drop in my 2 cents, I like the requisite system, you can look ahead and plan which spell's you want to learn and they add more flavour to the game, in my opinion.
I second that.
Anyway, if you want to " fix" the requisite thingie, why don't you take the average between the requisites to determine your casting total? It would mellow the harsh penalties somewhat.
)- because if maga has the Arts to do B and C effortless then the same Arts are sufficient to do E (B&C), 
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