A Minor Breakthrough doesn't break a hermetic limit. The canonical example of a minor breakthrough research is a new usable RDT.
Yes but you said:
Some RDTs break hermetic limits and those might be possible in this case but not if merely using non-standard RDTs. A minor breakthrough might creat a new RDT but it does not break hermetic limits.
Perhaps I was unclear, I was more or less quoting this portion of the "Integration process" sidebar in Ancient Magic
"3. Invent a spell or magical device incorporating the Insight. A magus must experiment while doing this. If she succeeds in inventing the spell, she gains a number of breakthrough points equal to the magnitude of the spell or device. The spell may break Hermetic limits, but if it does, it cannot be invented by another character without access to the inventor’s Lab Text, and cannot be varied in any way."
Right, so that section is not relevant at all to special RDTs that don’t break hermetic limits.
It's part of the breakthrough process for ancient magic. As such, yes, it's very relevant because it applies to all RDTs research in the Ancient Magic book of which there are many, not all of which break hermetic limits. Stabilising a new spell or item using T: Unborn Child is one of the ways you gain breakthrough points towards Fertility Magic, as can other RDTs found in the book, but there's usually a caveat about GM approval, replicating an effect the gamemaster introduced through story mechanics without variation, and possibly a watered down RDT at a higher magnitude cost. In other words, the gamemaster holds your hand along the way, and you're not quite free to use the new RDT as you wish until you finish the breakthroughs.
1 Like
Right, but you can always design a spell to affect an unborn child with target part. Which is the same level as designing the more costly unborn child target. And, no, unborn child does not break hermetic limits because it can be done via standard hermetic magic using target part.
Also, another spell effect that might help with integrating fertility magic, if you choose to do some original research in addition to using sources of insight, could be things like an even more complex InCo spell than Revealed Flaws of the Mortal Flesh to study the mother and child which might be Individual (adding mags for more detailed information) or group target (the very beginning of treating the two as separate entities but also possibly requiring greater detail/complexity magnitudes). I’m sure there are other examples but I only need to show one to show that your claim that developing new RDTs can only be done with breakthrough points from effects that utilize the RDT in question is false.
sigh
You seem intent on making me say things I haven't said.
- I did not claim T: Unborn Child was breaking an hermetic limit. I explicitly said not all RDTs in that book break a hermetic limit.
- I did not say that developping new RDTs could only be done by creating an effect that uses that RDT, I'm saying there are examples in that book where you can do so with a few caveats. I'm fully aware that Revealed Flaws of the Mortal Flesh is an example in the fertility magic chapter.
This is what you said that I was responding to.
Well, let's way I want to research the often quoted missing Target Pair, for example. I would think the logical insight would come from developping a spell with that target at +1 because it's not that much of a stretch idea. Experimenting on a group target spell to only affect two targets would be highly unintuitive to me, because you end up researching spells that will often end up becoming irrelevant once the breakthrough is completed. Yay! I discovered another spell I'll have to research again once I've succeeded in making it irrelevant, because my research aims to demonstrate how group target is inefficient for that spell. Great, I needed a Discovery to convince myself Group target was an inefficient use of an effect for master and familiar. I knew that. It's why I started the research in the first place. I'm looking for a solution... not to replicate the problem.
For that example, besides trying to create useful target pair spells, I can think of a spell to analyse the relationship between two targets perhaps... but that's it. If I couldn't experiment on trying to stabilise a spell using target pair as a target to develop that target and incorporate it into hermetic theory... yeah. I fail to see how I would get enough progress to eventually achieve a breakthrough, and would probably not even attempt to start the research.
Experimenting with a group target that is limited to affecting a pair seems very intuitive as a option for researching a target pair but not the only option. As you work through the research process you will have poorly designed, inefficient spells that you designed along the way, not perfect examples of the thing you are trying to invent and may desire to invent a similar spell with the refined pair target when you are done. Those inefficient spells (even if you use your model of “Pair at +2 mags” (instead of the +1 I assume you think Pair will be when you get your breakthrough) will need to be reinvented if you want the real benefit of Pair, they don’t just automatically become the efficient Pair once Pair is perfected. Since this is the case, I don’t see the functional difference between using Pair +1 additional Mag or Group according to your reasoning that you don’t want to reinvent the spell.
One might also create spells to help suss out some mystical significance of pairs as different than groups. Many of these spells are likely to be relatively useless outside of your research, many could be Intellego sense effects which definitely don’t fall into group, let alone act anything like Pair.
Yes. The gap between the crowd who wants to design a spell with a custom RDT now with minimal time investment, those who think it's a breakthrough but that you can partly benefit from while doing your research, and those who think your research needs to be horribly inefficient along the way, that gap is huge. It is, as the original poster said, quite a can of worm, where a little clarity would be welcome along the way.
I see it as:
Option 1: you can design a spell that only works on a Pair at the Group level. It’s one spell, it’s inefficient but it works. No original research was done and no breakthrough points were earned but you didn’t have to experiment.
Option 2: same as option 1 but you were doing Original Research while designing the spell and all that that entails and do this enough and you get to the point of a new Target Pair. But the spells you designed along the way are inefficient, many are terribly misshapen by experimentation, etc.
EDIT: I like that both of these are options.
1 Like
I think it is too much for errata. I will have to see whether there is some way to address it, but it is less important than, say, Aegis, and so will be looked at later.
2 Likes