Specificity of Spell targets

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

My search-fu is too weak, so apologies.

Can I design a spell so that it only affects one thing? By that I mean “Spell What Only Kills Duke Tybol” would be PeCo deadly wound that can only be cast on Duke Tybol. Maybe it would need an Intellego requisite? You can bodge the effect with an item that does it, that can only be activated by Duke Tybol with a suitable activation condition that restricts it to what amounts to “when Duke Tybol grabs it” to prevent him from using it to PeCo other people. Maybe you’d do a linked InCo effect in the item?

Originally my example was Pilum of Fire, but in theory because that’s Creo Ignem that makes a fire that would be weird if it could only burn one person. Perhaps with Rego and Muto requisites? This could possibly lead to designing spells that cannot hurt a named individual, like “Zap Everyone But Dave the Grog” and that could be undesirable, or maybe its fine with enough additional magnitudes

Obviously designing a spell with such specificity, particularly one that kills the target, is much “weaker” than a spell that can do that to whoever you want, but sometimes you want to send a message.

2

Usually you can be more specific than necessary. For example, you might have a spell that increases the Size of an animal, or you might have a spell that increases the Size of a wolf. The latter is commonly chosen when a Magical Focus or Potent Magic is involved.

But, yes, Pilum of Fire wouldn’t really fit. The Target is the fire. Muto could make the fire different than normal fire being created.

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3

There are at least two rules that I think relevant:
AM5e p.99 Enchanting, Effect Use: Restrict an item to specific people, for a +3 level increase.
AM5e p.167 s. Warping: Powerful effects designed for a specific person do not cause warping.

Thus, we know that spells can be designed for specific people, and that identifying specific people is possible at +3 levels without an InCo effect. There’s no particular reason to assume the enchantment in the item should be able to do stuff a formulaic spell can’t.

I’d allow specifying a single person for free, and specifying any number of people for a magnitude.

Do note that following limits should still apply:

First, these effects have to be baked into the formulaic spell rather than being picked dynamically while casting - that would require some Intellego effect or a special target (as in the Aegis).

Second, this should be restricted to Individual targets or require an AC during spell design - otherwise you end up with a way around the Lesser Limit of Arcane Connections; given a strong enough blood-feud, just specify a spell to your foe at large AoE and blast away until you hit.

Finally, excluding specific targets should be more difficult. Broadly speaking, a Muto requisite for indirect spells (Cr(Mu)Ig ‘Pilum of Loyal Fire’) and an Intellego requisite for direct spells (Pe(In)Co ‘Crushing the Heart of the Uninvited’).

4

Here you are assuming 2 things:

  • detecting who holds the item is equivalent to detecting who is the target
  • “aligning” a spell so it doesn’t have side effect to a single person is the equivalent to blocking the main effect on that person, or on anyone but that person

If it was a potion charged item, then the Duke is activating the spell by drinking it. In all other cases, this equivalence does not hold. Trying to use a spell that can kill anyone and hoping that the trigger will only work for the Duke is not easy.

Moreover, enchantments are twice as efficient for penetration and free concentration requires a whole separate ReVi spell. These are some stuff formulaic spells can’t.

But yes, you could prolly make a spell that only targets dukes, or only Duke Tybol. But I believe casting at random masked targets would always fail because you do not know this target is a duke. You could InCo / InMe to unmask the targets though. OTOH, T:Room or T:Group where you can see someone trying to pass a a duke would work.

5

I wasn’t necessarily arguing that detecting the user and target are identical, but that encoding an identity into magic isn’t particularly difficult. I suppose you’ve got me beat there with the concentration effect, though.

However, I still disagree that the duke-targeted spell would work only given confirmed dukeness.

The limit of connections implies only that you have to sense your target, not actually know anything about the target let alone that the spell will impact the target - otherwise you couldn’t e.g. cast a PeVi Unravelling the Fabric of Imaginem on a potential illusion.

The custom effect would be what does the specifying - otherwise you can just skip the whole hassle and manually target a generic spell. The question is rather how to achieve such an effect?

In any case, a ‘Ward against this one obnoxious fellow’ and similar effects are appealing on a flavor level.

6

We could a voice range spell with a general restriction 'only affects targets that I have an arcane connection to' work?

7

I agree, much of the game breaks if you don’t let people cast spells that might not work on a target.

8

It turns into a question of how the spell determines targets, IMO. It’s definitely a saga-based call, I think.

Since this is a question of ‘how specific can I be in spell design’, let’s create a sliding scale of specificity. Perdo Corpus, killing a human.

  1. Kill a Corpus
  2. Kill a Human
  3. Kill a male human
  4. kill a male human with red hair
  5. kill a male human with red hair over 40
  6. kill a male human with red hair, brown eyes, over 40, mole on his chin and left arm, etc…
  7. kill a male human with red hair, brown eyes, over 40, mole on his chin…. Named Duke Tybol.

So how far down this list can you design a spell for? Can Corpus magic determine a ‘Duke Tybol-ness’ and succeed or fail? Personally, for my game, I usually lean towards a 3 on this scale. If I did let someone go all the way up to 6, it would succeed for someone shapeshifted to Dyke Tybol. My personal preference/interpretation for metaphysics would be that Corpus can only really ‘determine’ corpus. I would probably allow ‘Kill the human who matches this Arcane Connection’.

Another scale:

  1. Kill a corpus
  2. kill a human
  3. kill a male human
  4. kill a male human with a nobility title
  5. Kill a male human who is a duke
  6. kill Duke Tybol

On this scale, I’d stop it at 3 because I don’t think Corpus can determine someone’s nobility.

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9

The logic of Hermetic magic in Ars Magica often uses essential nature as a hand-waive to explain things. It would probably be helpful to apply that here.

“Wolf” is an essential nature. “Duke” would not be, nor would “Tybol”. You can probably create a spell that will turn wolves (only) into parrots. You probably can’t create a spell that turns dukes (only) into parrots because someone’s job isn’t their essential nature and Hermetic magic doesn’t intereact with that sort of thing. (The Bloodline target might help there, but that’s not in the core Hermetic theory.)

Even that has some edge cases. “Red hair” is probably part of someone’s essential nature… if you create a spell to turn red-heads into parrots, does it affect someone who’s dyed their hair? If you decide that it does, then that pushes the underlying hand-wave about Hermetic magic toward something other than essential natures. Maybe take a look at Aristotle’s Categories in that case.

edit: while typing that out @raccoonmask posted about targeting red-hair too… weird.

10

Strong disagree. Neither ‘Duke’ nor ‘Tybol’ are essential but individual identity is obviously essential. The spell in question would not be designed to ‘kill a duke who is named tybol’ but ‘kill the specific individual we refer to as duke tybol’. The former would need to recognize two undefined groups, the latter one exact essential trait.

In the same vane, I broadly agree with the scales of specificity but would like to note that individuals are not merely the sum of the intersection of their group memberships. At the very least, we know that individual identity exists in a magically meaningful way due to the warping rule.

Thus, determining ‘duke tybol’-ness is not a matter of determining all characteristics that duke tybol has, but a matter of determining a single characteristic.

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11

That’s, more or less, what arcane connections are. If you dig through the same vein you’ll also hit True Names. I think you are giving too much power to a simple name.

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12

You could design a spell to kill the person you have an arcane connection to. It wouldn’t have to be AC range. Beware tragic mix-ups.

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13

I’d say yes, with certain caveats. It should always be a single target. Casting a kill Duke Tybol target structure or group is too open to abuse.

14

The only canonical spell allowing specific targeting is the Ring/Circle minor hermetic virtue of the Columbae. They can allow exception or target only specific individual for their ward.

Based on that, I would be tempted to say that specific targeting (beside AC range spell) should require to develop a minor virtue, which is a Major breakthrough.

I believe it is a worthy research project: Flambeau could fire Arc of Fiery Ribbons excluding their grogs, Spell to put to sleep a whole room or structure except a few selected targets (or only specific targets that you cannot see).

Considering how useful it could be, I won’t give it for free to my players, I would require a Breakthrough. Maybe be the lower end of a Major Breakthrough, but a bit more than a minor one since it should be worth a virtue.

Minor hermetic virtue: Selective targeting
Spell affecting area (Group, Structure or large effect area) can have a list of excluded targets or favored targets, as long as the caster has at least a sympathetic AC to them (no need for a full AC).

Another possible solution would be the research of a new type of mastery, with the same effect as the above mentioned virtue. To be discussed with your troupe. But in both case, some research is required, as it cannot be done by raw.

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15

I would have thought this could be a new Spell Mastery ability:
Spell affecting area (Group, Structure or large effect area) can have a list of excluded targets up to your Mastery level, as long as the caster can identify them at the time of casting (eg see them)

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16

To be clear, because people are running in different directions, the spell would be something like

An End to the Great Nemesis
PeCo 35
R: Touch, D: Mom, T:Ind

This spell kills Duke Tybol, and only Duke Tybol.

(Base 30, kill a person, +1Touch)

I can definitely see weirdness with “Pilum of Fire, but it can only hit Duke Tybol” and indeed, any CrIg spell because of the way it makes it safe to use (though I do wonder about a spell with a Rego requisite and magnitude to ignore Davros the Grog, because we can already do so to protect the caster) so it feels like immediately we can exclude any effect that creates something.

At Hell's Hearth I Stab at Thee
PeCo 50

This spell kills Duke Tybol, and only Duke Tybol, if he is inside the targeted building.

(Base 30, +1 Touch, +3 Structure)

This one feels ruder, but I'm not sure I agree that it's rife for abuse in this specific scenario. Once Duke Tybol is dead, the spell no longer does anything, even if his son were to become Duke Tybol in name, he is not the Duke Tybol specified during the creation of the spell. It does mean our Hater can cast it on every building (that isn't too big) and kill Duke Tybol without hurting anyone else, but it isn't allowing you to affect targets you're not aware of in a new way, because Structure, Room, and Boundary target already do that. But we could keep it at Target: Ind where the target is the person named because excluding targets is very strong for a wide variety of effects. “Ward against rain, but only castable on Duke Tybol” would be legal. Ward against Duke Tybol only if you're Columbae I guess, but if you don't have them in your saga I think it's fine as a tool in the Hater's arsenal.

I think you would have to be familiar with Duke Tybol, same as an a Imaginem spell to make you look like a specific person would require that. A random Criamon in Thebes couldn't be commissioned to create a spell that can only kill someone he has no idea about in Normandy. I think I would require an Arcane Connection to be present during the invention of the spell, used in a similar manner to giving a bloodhound someone's handkerchief to get their scent.

Interesting ideas all around!

(Sorry for any typos, I am phone posting and I hate it)

17

I would say you are doing nothing wrong with your interpretation there, but it also is not an interpretation that would work in the Mythic Europe of my saga. Your logic isn’t bad. The reason I’m not allowing such things in my saga is to limit weird edge cases that I don’t want to try and figure out the answer to :smiley:

ex:

  1. Inside the building, there are seventeen people who appear to be Duke Tybol. Some used mundane disguises. Some have Muto disguises, some illusions, but your mage has no way to see through any of them. One of them even used an AC to Duke Tybol to turn into him accurately.
  2. Duke Tybol is in this keep, being replicated by a face-stealing demon.
  3. Duke Tybol is in the keep - and a face-stealing demon who looks like him. The true Tybol recently escaped from a dungeon where he was imprisoned, and was being mimicked by a face-stealing demon. Your magus knew him before and after, and did not notice the change, but all of his spell design was done after the demon took over. Who dies?
18

Hmm, under the proposed theory for the fun of it:

For 3, if an AC is required during the design, then the demon, if such a thing is possible. If the demon had tricked the mage into using one of Real Duke Tybol's hairs, then it would be the Real Duke Tybol. Of course, under the paradigm that demons are awful to interact with, magically speaking, the demon may well pretend to die, but as an imposter which then casts doubt on the spell design, causing many stories as the mage tries to find out what went wrong and trying to fix this apparent hole, before finding out it was a demon and that perhaps the man he hated was a demon all along, and the Real Duke Tybol might be a very nice man indeed.

1, nothing happens to the disguised, same as nothing would happen if they weren't disguised. The mage with the structure spell doesn't need to even know anyone is there, so details beyond “is Duke Tybol” which none of those are, don't matter.

19

This is a fun theory discussion.

I agree, if the spell was designed with an AC and is ‘kill Duke Tybol confirmed with this AC’, then all the examples would work as intended with the AC.

The reason I’m kind of bringing the ‘disguise’ questions are because of how magic treats Form and perceptions - a human turned into a wolf is affected by Corpus spells and Animal spells (and Animal spells specifically targeting wolves, but not Animal targeting cows… I wonder if Animal specifically targeting Humans would work, hah…)

How much of ‘Targeting Duke Tybol’ is actually Duke Tybol. If demons, or to take the demons-are-cheaters away, a group of five Tytalus who all take turns impersonating Duke Tybol with Persona. When you cast your ‘Kill Duke Tybol’ (without AC requirement), who dies when they’re all in the structure?

20

It seems like the disguise question is sort of the same as “can I cast a Corpus spell on a transformed bjornaer if I think he is merely transformed using a MuCo effect” - which I would say you definitely can, and the spell would simply fail to work. Because of examples such as this, I would say that the caster does not ever actually have to know who their spell will affect, the spell will simply work or not work depending on its design. Which would mean that our Tybol-killing magics will fail to kill anybody who is not actually duke Tybol, even if the caster is under a different impression

(The question of “how can you really know who a person is, when designing the spell” is also a real question but a bit different from what I’m addressing here)