Spell durations across regonies and time zones

I have a question about spell durations across regio boundaries and to a lesser extent time zones.

  1. First if a day duration spell is cast at dawn in Novgorod then that person Leaps back to Ireland does the spell expire at dawn in Ireland or dusk in Novgorod?
  2. how does spell durations work crossing regios : if someone casts a day spell in mythic Europe then lands in a regio where there is no dusk or dawn is the spell infinite while in that regio? if it follows mythic Europe, would the reverse be true?
  3. how does spell duration happen across regios with time dilation? if time is quicker in the new regio do spells expire slower or faster?

I guess what it comes down to is where is the frame of reference for spell durations:
If it is always relative to the Magus what happens when there is no day /night or moon cycles or season cycles to indicate year.

My interpretation is that a Sun spell ends when the sun passes the horizon where the spell is.

So, if a magus casts a Sun spell on himself at sunrise and then Leaps to a place where the sun is setting, the spell ends when the sun passes below the horizon in his new location. If a Sun spell in a regio where the sun never moves, the spell lasts indefinately as long as it remains in that regio. If the magus casts a Sun spell in a regio where the sun moves faster or slower within the regio, then spell lasts until that sun passes the horizen. However, if the sun in the regio moves at the same spell within the regio, but time moves at a different rate outside the regio, the spell lasts until the sun passes the horizon.

If a magus casts a Sun (or Moon or Year) spell in a regio where the sun, moon and stars don't move, then the spell lasts indefinately... thought I would tend to rule that in a such a strange regio there might be other strange and powerful forces that could act upon the spell to cause it to end at a dramatically appropriate moment. Places outside of time deserve to be kinda weird.

so what your saying, just to be clear, is you think spell duration is relative to the casting magus's current location.
Day/night, moon and season cycles of the current magus's location are what affect spell duration.

OK, now what happens when said magus casts ageis of the hearth or similar bounry or ring type spell in a regio where there is no change then leaves to go back to another regio or mythic europe? is the spell still active in that location indefinitely if there are no cycles?

Not the magus's location. The spells location. So, if a magus casts a Sun spell on a duck in Novgorod and then the magus Leaps to Ireland, the spell on the duck continues until the sun passes the horizon where the duck is.

Think of it this way...

Sun spells are fueled by the energy of the sun. The energy of the sun during the day and at night is different (but similar enough that the same ritual can be used to tap those energys, perhaps with only minor variations in the incantantion). When the sun passes the horizen, the energy the spell is tapping to fuel itself is cut off and the spell ends.

Afaik , Hermetic Spells are tied in with Astrological Time.
Spells do not have any reasoning power.
If you go to the Land of the Midnight Sun , a Sun duration spell could last 24 hours.
(if im reading the wiki entry correctly)
If you ReCo to somewhere the sun has set , it ends.
There are no rules in RAW for what happens in a regio ,
unless RoP:Magic has something to say , Parma and all that.
Constant Sun = continuous duration , with warping if enough time passes.
Constant Dark also continuous , if between sunset and dawn.
No day or night cycle or lunar cycle (even in abeyance) , then these durations are not possible ,
except Momentary and Year , if time actually passes at whatever rate.

You could rule that all spells have an arcane connection to the place they were cast ,
outside a regio , so durations run as normal for the spell.
Obvious spell duration abuse if time dilation regio available to cast spells in.

Just my sixpence on the matter.

I would say dusk in Novgorod. Otherwise you open up for the potential ability to just keep jumping to a new place and extend the spell forever.

  1. Hmm good question.

I would run them according to local time. Although if you cast a longterm spell in a slow time Regio and then move out, you get extended time due to my answer on 1. But i greatly prefer this to the alternatives.

Thats how i prefer to handle it to avoid too much abuse.

Ok hypothetical situations:

  1. Someone finds an exit from a Fae regio of eternal dawn into the magus's current covenant. The exit is in a room within the regio... because of it being constant dawn and constantly spring you could cast either faerie ward room or aegis of the hearth and have it last indefinitely until something happens to make the solar cycle kick in or the seasons to advance. Thus the aegis would only have to be cast once. On the fae side.
  2. Someone opens an intangible tunnel to cast a day duration effect does the tunnel duration follow the caster's time frame or the target? Does subsequent spells follow the casters time frame or targets?

I'm not sure I understand this one correctly... you have a room inside a regio where it is always dawn and always spring. You cast a Sun duration spell in the room. My ruling, as long as the spell is contained within the room the spell lasts forever (or until some powerful faerie get's annoyed and dispels it). If the spell leaves the room, and thus the regio, the spell acts normally. (pretty standard folklore fare actually... the faerie's spell ends once you leave the faerie world).

Now, if you tried to cast Aegis of the Hearth around your whole covenant from within the room, it would last a year... because the area of the Aegis is outside of the regio. In fact, I would rule that you couldn't cast Aegis from within the regio on an area outside of the regio.

Location/time frame of the target.

What i am saying for the aegis is - to cast the aegis (a second aegis in the location of the Fae room in addition to to the aegis in the covenant) hopefully blocking a back door into the covenant. with minimal vis cost other wise you would be casting 2 AOTH every year. right now the covenant side is ringed with a fea ward but that doesn't stop other aligned critters from crossing through the fae regio to get into the covenant.

My take in this and similar situations is: when in doubt, make the spell expire :slight_smile:

In the Novgorod - Hibernia example, I would make the spell expire as soon as the jump is made, since you are moving the spell from day to night.

In the Tunnel example, as well as any example where an enchantment is "tethered" to two or more places, I would make it expire as soon as the expiration conditions are met in either one of the two locations.

It is based on where the spell is. The question is, "does the spell experience its Duration expiry trigger condition?"

The trigger for expiry is dusk or dawn. So, dawn in Ireland, if the spell travels with the person Leaping to Ireland. Dusk in Novgorod if the spell remains in Novgorod.

If there is no dawn or dusk in the regio then a Sun Duration spell cast in Mythic Europe and subsequently brought into the regio before it expires will not expire (until it leaves the regio), because it never experiences the Duration expiry trigger. Same thing with a Sun Duration spell cast within the regio. When the spells leave the regio they expire at the next dawn or dusk they experience.

In a related note, if, say, the Sun doesn't move in the regio, then Diameter Duration spells are indefinite within the regio too.

The spells still expire when their Duration expiry trigger is encountered. If a Sun Duration spell is brought into a regio where time passes quickly (but dusk and dawn still happen) then the spell will expire at the next dawn or dusk it experiences.

It is relative to the spell. If the expiry triggers for a Duration don't happen in a regio (or conceivably in Mythic Europe itself, say, during a peculiar eclipse or a Curse that Freezes the Seasons), then the effects don't expire.

It could be possible to have a particularly mad regio where seasons occured every, say, half second, but the sun doesn't move. So Diameter and Sun Duration effects would be indefinite, but Year Duration effects only last for a brief moment.

A Duration Sun spell cast inside a Regio, where the time passes differently than outside ("Natural time"), it shouldn't end when the sun sets/rises outside. Otherwise this would be an indicator to the magus inside as to how time passes. IMHO this weakens the threat of spending too much time inside regions with different time than normal. I like it when magi come out of a regio after an adventure and say: "What the deuce - winter already?"

And as for keep jumping ahead of the setting sun: At some point you run out of westward land to jump to.

Not exactly, but it was more of a theoretical example anyway.

Yup, another reason why to run it as i prefer. :wink:

Eh?
Thats completely wrong i think. The spell havent, as RL says it experience the next dusk/dawn at its current location, nor by my preference, in its cast location... By whatever reason should it expire when it has not met its expiry condition ANYWHERE?

The problem with "what happens at the cast location" being the determining factor is that you (the players) then need to know the cast location of spells --- it seems to be much easier if you just need to know the current location of the spell.

Also, it's not very clear how a spell is meant to be aware of what happens at the cast location, when it is not at that location? (Of course as it's magic! anything is possible, I guess). It sort of implies that a spell is an Arcane Connection to its casting location --- which I don't think is a good idea.

The problems that might occur (low magnitude indefinite duration spells) require the characters to have access to regios that have weird sun/moon/season passages or they have to be jumping all around Mythic Europe with Leaps of Homecoming (or Portals) sorts of effects, trying to dodge dawn/dusk. I would be content to let characters do this if they can manage to arrange the correct circumstances. It is a lot of in-character bother to save you from having to remember to cast your Sun Duration spell every dawn/dusk --- and it's a mad plan with lots of wheels that can fall off in a story generating way.

Never occurred to us. I would say that the spell is affected by his own location, not the casting location. So in a perpetual day regio your parma does not wears off, even if you cast it in normal mythic europe.

Cheers,
Xavi

If one were defending the paradigm that spells expire when the expiry condition happens at the site of casting, the description would surely be that the casting of the spell also starts a "timer" within the spell, so that the spell just ends at the right time. It wouldn't involve the spell being aware of anything after the moment it's cast; certainly it wouldn't require the spell to be connected to the initial site somehow. Still, while this might fit with some of our (OOC) notions of things expiring, I agree that it's not very Hermetic-sounding.

I don't think that works, the Durations are not described as absolute lengths of time, they are described as lengths of time that expire when particular events happen (like the sun setting or whatever). "Lasts until" is the phrasing. If the until condition doesn't happen, the spell doesn't expire. A timer paradigm wouldn't seem to allow, say, Durations to be extended by the Sun freezing in position at the site of casting.

The only one of these sorts of Durations that doesn't use the "lasts until" phrasing is Diameter. But I'm inclined to read it in the same way.

Yep.

The "expire when critical things happen" paradigm does work OK with our OOC notions too, though. We are all used to concepts like, say, our train ticket lasting until we have made 10 trips. The ticket expires when a number of trips have been taken rather than at an absolute time (I know not all ticketing systems work like this).

Because a Sun spell cast by Day lasts until it sees the Night, and viceversa. I find it has a Mythic feeling to it :slight_smile:

Sun rise/set is the trigger for expiry --- not the mere absence or presence of sun.