And the question of “what if the spell designer is just misinformed” is already an extant problem.
Suppose for example that a Tytalus has, as a joke, spent his entire life telling his apprentice that that thing that’s grey and furry and lives in packs in the woods? That’s a “rabbit”. What happens if this apprentice then goes on to design a spell that summons, kills, or changes something into, a rabbit?
The trick is… any answer is fine here, IMO. It becomes the thing he was thinking of (aka a wolf), or the thing that’s called a rabbit and the apprentice’s confused? Or it does nothing? None of these are wrong outcomes imo.
I think the answer to the Tytali is either “all” because they are all him, or “none” because Duke Tybol doesn’t exist and then confusion and stories occur
I mostly agree with you, I just felt that this was a bit more relevant because it’s not just a mis-naming, but a fabricated identity, the ‘name’ doesn’t matter…
That’s fair, but the hypothetical doesn’t really change if the thing the Tytalus has done to their apprentice is make them believe that an entirely fake thing is real. I suppose in that case I’d personally lean a bit more towards the spell not working at all, but you could certainly imagine a mage inventing a spell to summon a Snipe and that spell simply doing nothing even if the mage in question is sure to their very soul that Snipes are very real.
Or, it actually does summon a snipe and their parens gets to be very confused! Story fodder to be sure…
The abuse aspect is not Duke Tybol. If you can say Duke Tybol, can a magi choose “French people”, “Christians {What is the devoutness threshold}”, “nobles”, “peasants”, “warriors”, “people with the gift”, “people without the gift”, etc?
Note that the Rego ‘protect the caster’ effect is not tied to the identity of the Magus in question but instead to who controls the spell, i.e. if you hand off control via tethered magic the Rego effect is handed off too. It’s a completely different mechanism, though a +1 Rego to ‘ignore one target of the casters choosing’ ought be possible.
That’s PRIME OPPORUNITY for a Faerie to disguise itself as what the apprentice thinks a Snipe out to look like. And now it’s been invited inside the Covenant!
We know from the Warping rules that an effect can be designed to not warp a person, so I would imagine that a spell could be designed to only affect a specific person. I think you would need either an AC that was live for the whole design period, or the person themselves, in your lab to make this work, though. I think you would need quite a bit of magical information about them…
So, I think you could do it, but that it would have to be a really strange edge case, and almost certainly not a spell to kill the person, to make it worthwhile.
Is it possible to create a general (for example) Structure / Touch / Instant PeCo spell "Kill a single specific person in this structure for whom I supply a Sympathetic or Arcane connection, at casting"? This is specifically not a Range: AC spell, and also not specifically designed for any particular person at time of development. Is this intended to be a troupe call, or is this intended to be clearly within the RAI?
Kills a specific person to whom the caster has an arcane connection. Note the range is Voice, so the caster must be able to see or otherwise sense the person, but the spell will affect a target that the caster does not actually know, as for example a person in a thick crowd.
Base 30: +2 Voice
(Vary specifics as needed.)
I think the original poster was looking to test a case (can you make a spell to affect one and only one target?), but I like calculated examples. My spell is not quite what he’s looking for.
I think that is troupe call, and I would definitely not allow a Sympathetic Connection to work — they are only useful if you already have an AC in most cases. I think TimOB's spell looks reasonable, but not something that the rules clearly allow, and I would be inclined to not allow Targets other than Individual for this.
I’d be pretty suspicious of a sympathetic connection even with a personal arcane connection. Not an SC alone, certainly, although a horoscope by itself invites tragedy*, as does a Target other than Individual.
*”Alas for Andrew, born the hour of Taurus on the third day of the month of Virgo, under a gibbous moon as Venus rose, just like his good friend, Guillame, fated to be the victim of a very suspicious circumstance.”
