Hi,
I was working on some Terram spells and would like an opinion on them.
Influence the obedient stone
MuTe(Re) 20
R: Voice, D: Concentration, T: Part
Change stone to mud and allow you to shape it anyway you can imagine. When the duration end the mud change back to stone in the shape you gave it, staying in place with an appropriate Craft: Stonemason or Craft: Architecture, or falling shamefully to the ground and shattering there.
(Change stone to mud Base 3, +2 Voice, +1 Part (1cubic pace), +1 Concentration, +1 Requisite)
Carving the Earth paths
PeTe 25
R: Voice, D: Mom, T: Part
Create a portion of tunnel in the rock of 5' by 10' by 10'. If the area was not studied before there is a very possible risk of collapse. With Craft: Mining or Craft: Engineering it is possible to have the roof vaulted to better distribute the weight.
(Destroy dirt Base 3, +2 Affect Stone, +2 Voice, +1 Part (1 cubic pace), +1 size)
For this one i was thinking of adding "+1 Fancy effect" of something to allow the vaulted part or decoration.
N.B.: I hope my English is correct.
N.B.2: I always have trouble imagining what is a cubic pace (And is it a Roman pace or an modern one?) (Damn you imperial units And long live the metric system.)
Perhaps a just a note to consider, the degree of manipulation offered by the Rego part of the spell might need to be considered against the Rego guidelines. Spell looks good to me as long as complex designs or highly unnatural shapes are not required.
Adding the +1 mag affect would be enough to significantly reduce the chance of collapse.
Do you need to have this as voice, or could it be done as touch?
Influence the obedient stone
Ah yes of course, the Rego. Well, "Control dirt in a very unnatural fashion" is base 3. Should i add 3 magnitudes to the spell then? The base is the same level.
With which magnitude would i be able to raise stone from the ground to shape it?
Carving the Earth paths
I do not need the Voice range but in case of collapse i would not want to be at Touch range
But, "Add one magnitude for stone", although I would say it is "slightly unnatural fashion" which adds up to the same base, Rego isn't harder. You've already added a magnitude for requisites as ArM p 114-5 discusses, that's good.
Now it's the "anyway you can imagine" that might require extra magnitudes for intricacy, but unless you are trying to make a key or form written words out of that stone...
I think raising the stone in the air is easily within current +1 Mag you already added. I'd say that as long as the shaping is as if it were shaped by hand it should not attract an increase either. The magus is maintaining concentration to make this change, so the acti of shaping the material by hand is fine. Even basic markings and such are fine to imho.
I meant that there should be a mag increase for making a ornate shape (such as a shape with many carvings, inlays, or detailed scrollwork) for an additional +1 mag, and a totally unatural shape (such as a set of alchemical lab tools, or a beautiful chandelier) or exceeding complex shape should be +2 mags.
So:
+1 to use Rego in a basic manner which would include hand shaping.
+2 to make it detailed or nicely shaped. eg. a Sword shape with marked hilt and pommel.
+3 to make some lab tools suitable for use.
Influence the obedient stone
The idea of this spell is not to make tools or other transportable things but to mold the walls of the undermountain structure (possibly dug with Carving the Earth paths). Or to raise a basic (or not) house/structure from the ground.
"Basic" decorations are with this spell but i thought of another one to more precisely ornament stone walls.
For the Rego guideline of +2 for stone, as it was included already (albeit for the Muto +2 for stone) i thought it maybe was redundant, plus the stone is Muto'ed to mud prior to being Rego'ed. (Oh my, i making latin-english hybrids. I should go to sleep.)
The last spell of the series (for now, there is a Terram specialist in the Saga) is : Tools of Hephaestus
PeTe 20
R: Touch, D: Momentary, T: Part
With but a touch of your finger you can carve intricate designs and markings in stone. The quality and artistry of the carving is determined by a Craft: Stonemason.
(Base Destroy dirt 3, +2 Affect stone, +1 Touch, +1 Part, +1 Precision marking)
In Ars Magica, a pace is 3 feet. That gets asked a lot on these forums: while it never says anywhere "a pace is 3 feet", there are a handful of places where it lists figures in both paces and feet, from which the conversion can be deduced.
A pace is slightly over 0.9 meters. Thus, a cubic pace is about 3/4 of a cubic meter. In Ars Magica, at least
I think the basic idea of the authors was to simply rename a "yard" (a unit of measure familiar to them) to something that sounded appropriately medieval. On the other hand, you might try a slightly different tack on the term, and adopt the roman (double)pace, about 1.6 meters. This suits better the roman traditions of the Order, and makes it easier to use: 1 pace becomes the height of the average person, and it takes a nice, round 1000 paces to make a mile (which, after all, is where the name "mile" comes from -- literally "a thousand [paces]"). That's what we use in our games, and as long as you use it consistently, it causes very little trouble.
Well, to be honest, even if i am more familiar with them, yards and feet are almost as confusing.
To round up the toolkit: Eye of Aetnaeus
InTe 30
Placing your palms on the side of a mountain you feel it's every nooks and crannies. You know roughly the position and shape of every crevices, caves and fractures.
(Base 4, +1 Touch, +1 Concentration, +4 Size)
Of course this spell cannot divine an entire mountain (It is only poetic license for a more colorful description). I think no Hermetic Magi is powerful enough to do it anyway.
And long live the metric system.)
