Seige Weapons - New Spells

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Inbetween manic times at work, I've stopped the insanity by considering 2 new spells for a particularly destructive Flambeau.

Summoning the Scorpio

Cr/He Lvl 25 T/D/G

This device will summon a 'scorpio' style bolt thrower. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpio_(weapon).

The weapon is built entirely from plant products such as wooden bracing and dowling as well as ropes made from hemp. The inventor is Marius of Flambeau's and his sigil manifests on this spell as it being entirely covered in thorns.

This weapon does damage (+12) as per heavy Arbalest in Lords of men. As this is also natural motion. Any mundane bolt fired from this device will not need to penetrate Magic resistance. However as all the components in this device are wood or plant, its not as strong as it could be and liable to break, and on ANY roll of a 0, the device breaks. On an actual botch it may well do it ins such a way it causes damage to its crew. The device will also need a 6 action reload time using the wooden crank

(Base 2, +1 touch, + 2 Sun, + 2 Complexity, + 2 Group)

Summon the Arbalest

Cr/He(Te) 30 T/S/G

This device like before creates an all wooden Mangonel however, thanks to the requisite, without the same capacity for critical failure as the Scorpio. This device is bigger, and requires appropriate skills to opperate.

This device does Damage as per the Lords of men Mangonel.

(Base 2 +1 Touch + 2 sun +2 complexity + 2 Group + 1 Terram requisite)

In both of these I have added the group requisite to represent the various individual components neccessart to construct the device, and the complexity to put them together in an order that works. I've added the critical failure aspect to counter the use of a requisite. In both cases I don't think the total amount of wood is more then 10 square paces. both of these use natural motion and therefore as long as the weapon doesn't use magically created projectiles, MR is not a worry

Distant Archer

Re/He 10 V/C/I

Allows the caster to remotely opperate a Ballista using his finesse score.

(Base 3, +2 voice, + 1 conc).

Crewing the Warwolf.

Re/He 15 V/C/I

As per Distant archer but + 1 size for the increased size of the overall construction.

Specific spells designed to allow the caster to completely control the seige engines the create at range. This is how I spend my free moments at work

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2

I don't feel that the target "group" is necessary. It's after all one single thing you're summoning. Rather make it +3 complexity. Silvery Scales of the Knight (Societates p 37) has a +2 complexity but no group, even if it contains different parts (helmet, gloves, padding etc)

//erik. my five cents

3

As the construction would use lots of different bits such as dowling, hemp rope, wodden beams and all of these would be different components, I would say group, as the silver scales of the knight are all repetitions of the same metal scales.

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4

End of the Mighty Castle is just PeTe25

5

I would also cast my vote for T: individual rather than T: group.
And I would add only 2 magnitudes for complexity -- an arbalest is not really more complex than a full suit of armour.

6

Having made or helped make several types of catapults as well as several types of armour I would say if anything armour is a bit more complicated to construct. Although I freely admit that that is probably just opinion based on which skills I happen to be most comfortable with.

7

No i will probably have to agree with you. The big difference is that with an arbalest or similar, you can SEE most of the parts, with an armour you only see the "shiny sparkly" outside which looks oh so uncomplicated.

It´s one of the contributing factors to why heavy fullbody armour died out, as weapons became ever better at penetrating, the armour needed to be stronger to resist, which meant more supports, straps and all underneath, which made armour take inconveniently long to put on except in situations where the side using armour could control the timing of any battles. A severe tactical liability if there ever was one.

A breastplate and helmet for example took only a tiny fraction of the time to put on while providing better than half the protection, and with less coverage, the breastplate could actually be made a lot stronger and still not need a lot of additional complex supports.

8

Only if you've got separate, mundane bolts to use with it. Which may be a problem.

9

I imagine a high finesse would be the order of the day for a user of this spell. So a simple spont spell (with a relatively high but doable finesse roll) would be able to turn mundane wood into mundane bolts.

I think you may be right and the silvery-scales of the knight may be a reasonable benchmark. However this means adding a terram requisite and essentially still dropping the level by 1 magnitude makes it a much more interresting effect.

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