What would be a saga if the magi wouldn't be able to create everlasting things? As you know momentary Creo Rituals create natural things like stone towers, gold, precisious stones, animals, characteristic increase. Healings could be nonhermetic spells, useable with some rules or like the other spells.
There would be a permanent duration (+5) which lasts until dispelled.
Material wealth would be harder to get. It can be good or bad depending on the style of the saga.
But if magi take the risk they could create things from magic but it would cost far more in knowledge and vis.
What other advantages and disadvantages would be in this saga?
It would allow for more autarchic covenants. If you have a creo spell that creates permanent tools and one storey buildings (in case it gets dispelled you do not fall from 30 paces) you can pretty much deal with everyday needs using a few selected spells with casting tablets. Armor could also be acquired easily and would not need maintenance (just creo another one when it rusts or gets damaged). I suppose magi would still prefer mundane steel for the weapons of their grogs, just in case they wncounter creatures with MR.
Dispelling spells would be a must for the true combat magus.
In part, circle/ring spells might be somewhat substituted with these, but this would certainly come as a second option for the dedicated covenant builder.
Why have non-hermetic healing spells?
Use Creo for higher natural healing bonus and Rego Craft (Chirurgy).
Who would have the knowledge of these healing spells , captive hedge wizards?
Mythic Herbalism would be far more valuable as would Medical Theriacs and possibly Mythic Alchemy.
Companions with magical healing powers (using RoP: Magic) also gain prominence.
The permanent , until dispelled looks a lot like taking away your cake , but having it as well.
You really want people to think about no permanent Creo rituals , ditch this option , imho.
If all else is normal , the things you have made with the 'until dispelled' are inside the covenant aegis.
Not very likely they will be dispelled.
If this duration existed i would have specific items/wands with penetration boosted up the wazoo.
PeVi with 25 levels (minimum) for +50 penetration.
There would be Verditious specialists whose sole job was to make them.
Some healing would be Muto-based and have to be renewed regularly , unless a constant effect item.
This would be for limb replacement or other permanent disability.
(and subject to dipell)
Anything created with year duration , and sustained on non-magical nourishment for a year ,
becomes a natural (but dead) version of whatever it was.
Have your grass eaten by year duration animals , they become meat/hide/wool suppliers.
Rego Craft spells or even just regular craft folk to make use of.
This applies to plants as well.
Create useful fibre/fodder crops that are harvested after a years growth.
Full-size trees for logging/building , etc.
A lot more use of Rego to fast grow things.
Most of these options would be for a vis-poor saga.
Hmm... I did not know about the "1 year of mundane sustenance" thing. Makes for interesting applications indeed!!! Could I get a page reference, please? Thx
I knew I had read it, but I had never stopped to think about the economics of it. It can be quite a grizzly sight to see a whole herd of cows or sheep die ouyt of a sudden when the sun goes down at the winter solstice....
Creating a yearly sheep or cow at level 40 is still quite prohibitive, though
but you could Mu An a squirrel into a sheep or cow for an indefinite period of time using overlapping duration moon spells at a significantly lower level. You'd keep them long enough to harvest some wool and cheese, then during the winter months when it's expensive to keep them, you'd just let the spells expire. (My PC's did this in my lost Hibernia game a few years ago.)
A sheep is size -02 , base individual for Animal is size +01 , so you get more than one sheep.
Anyway , you would create cute little baa-lambs at size -03 (or whatever) and they would get a years growth.
Just have the Covenant sheep-o-matic wand to hand.
I don't see why they need to overcome the old casting, if they don't beat the old casting totals they simply won't take effect until the previous casting fails. If the critters don't have MR I can't see penetration mattering at all.
You could make an argument that the second spell changes your squirrel into a different cow but I wouldn't.
But, its not entirely clear that you can have effects pending, but inactive like this (without the use of Until or Watching Wards, etc).
I think that if an incoming spell is incompatiable with an existing effect active on the target, then the incoming effect simply replaces the old effect. If an incoming effect duplicates an existing active effect, then both are simply active until they each independently expire. You don't need to be comparing Casting Totals or Penetrations at all.
The Casting Total of the incoming spell just needs to be sufficient to allow the spell to be cast, and the Penetration must be sufficient to penetrate the Magic Resistance of the target (if any).
Just curious as to what the RAW position is , if there is one.
Can you just layer spells on someone or something with only one in effect at any one time
such that when it expires the next spell simply kicks in?
If several overlapping spells are cast in this way (on the same subject) , do they act in order of time/date cast
or does the one with the highest casting total take effect first?
If something is transformed by one spell and the next transformation spell does not beat its casting total ,
then doesnt it just have no effect?
I would say , same spell by same caster , then same cow , individual sigils and all that.
I actually think a new spell needs to "penetrate" the old spell if it is contrary to it. Thus if you change a man into a pig with a Curse of Circe, you can't just cast a Turn Pig to Human spell to undo the curse. To overcome the curse you need greater power than the curse - a greater Casting Total, or a greater Penetration Total, I'm not sure. Ruling otherwise would trivialize curses and undesired effects and make a mockery out of the PeVi guidelines of dispelling.
I'm not sure this is RAW, but it seems the better ruling IMHO.
And I do think that changing a sheep into a sheep is "contrary"; it's still changing the creature, which is a transformation against the current shape. I therefore don't think you can cast such MuAn spells repeatedly without concern for Casting Total or Penetration. That said, if you used forceless casting it might work.
Furthremore, I believe there is generally a "twilight" period between durations, so that you can for example cast a Sun duration spell (or erect the Parma) which takes effect even as the old one is still in effect, thus obtaining continuous effect (without blinking) through repeated castings. The same would be true of Moon duration MuAn sheep - you would cast the effect just as the Moon duration ends and is renewed, at the "twilight" of the duration; this would allow you to continuously have sheep out of squirrels.
Isn't he affected by both Corpus and Animal now? If I run into a wild boar that is actually a transformed human, does my circle of beast warding fail to work against him/it?
After a quick scan of the RAW , i cant find anything definite to say yea or nay about this.
Afaik , you still need InCo spells to find out information , as they are still human.
If i'm assuming correctly , a Corpus spell needs to penetrate , to have any effect on the 'boar'.
And if an Animal spell has high enough penetration , it wont work.
This would lead to the forceless casting choice , so animal spells affect transformed humans.
In which case your circle of beast warding wont work if it penetrates.
(i know people dont like that wards must penetrate , but it is still RAW to my knowledge)
I'm in agreement with Richard that spells take effect when cast and they don't care about what spells were on the target previously. (My initial response was not fully thought out in this regard).
If Magus a turns his grog into a lion to attack magus B and Magus B then uses transformation of the ravenous beast to the torpid toad on the former grog, I don't want to worry about keeping track of casting totals.
You're not strictly undoing the previous spell, the previous spell is still there.
Here's a case that's more clear- a magus cast arm of the infant on Hugh of Flambeau, Hugh then counters by casting the blessing of starkad on himself and growing two more arms. That counters the curse's intent.
Having to judge weather a spell undoes another is a tricky thing and a complication that I think would drag down a game session.
Magicians countering one another's magics is not necessarily the same as trivializing curses and undesired affects. It is in general the same level to use a perdo vim dispel as it is to cast a spell (adjusting for the different ranges and targets for putting a spell on verses taking one off) it is also typically the same level to transform something as to transform something (with adjustments as before and also perhaps a magnitude lower base level if you're transforming between forms to a form that the target already has). Yet the perdo vim will work on all spells of a form and the retransformation has to match the cursing spell exactly and it has the disadvantage of leaving the original spell intact, and it may cause warping.
I think that your interpretation is way too complicated, and not supported by RAW.
It seems, to me, that it is much simpler (and RAW) to say that:
a) Curse of Circe turns the man into a pig.
b) Turn Pig to Human turns the pig (man) back into a man.
c) If the Turn Pig to Human spell expires (or is dispelled) and the Curse of Circe spell has not yet expired, then the man turns back into a pig, until the duration of the Curse of Circe spell expires.
So, the Turn Pig to Human doesn't really dispell the Curse of Circe spell. However it can act effectively, like a dispell if the Turn Pig to Human spell outlasts or equals the duration of the Curse of Circe. Which means that usually to be an effective "dispell" the Turn Pig to Human will be of a similar or greater magnitude to the Curse of Circe (or the Curse of Circe must have been due to expire soon, naturally).
Now, there might be some special cases whereby a spell effect can be effectively "reversed" by a much lower magnitude spell. But that's OK, it just means that the first spell is not a very effective strategy if the target happens to have access to the effective counter-strategy.
