Hi everyone!
I have a question: it's possible create a spell to change the "Cunning" characteristic in "Intelligence" having an animal, elemental or spirit as target?
I think it's possible using Muto Mentem, with specific form as requisite, but what level? If we follow the a similar effect from familiar, it starts with Intelligence -3 and each extra spell magnitude gives +1 Intelligence.
I think that would fall into the purview of Creo Mentem, with an appropriate requisite (such as Animal), rather than Muto Mentem. Animal minds fall into the Art of Animal. Increasing Intelligence is clearly CrMe.
Such a spell would need to either be a ritual (thus requiring raw vis), or accept higher magnitudes to have a temporary duration of any worth.
As for the level, I would base myself on the guidelines to increase Int. The lowest guideline is Level 30 (Increase one of a person’s mental Characteristics by one point, to no more than 0.)
Whether that would require Original Research (from HoH:TL) to invent that new guideline would be up to the troupe or SG.
So, if your Target is an animal with animal intelligence, it's Muto Animal, not Muto Mentem. (To quote the Mentem text from DE, "Intelligent minds are affected by Mentem spells, while the minds of beasts are affected only by Animal spells and those of elementals, in so far as they have them, by the appropriate elemental Form.")
For an animal, mundane beasts never have Intelligence (HOH:MC p.38, or Book of Mundane Beasts, p.1), while magical animals can. So you're giving the animal what is, for an animal, a magical ability. And the guideline for giving an animal a magical ability is MuAn 25, "Give an animal a 'magical' ability, such as the ability to breathe fire (requires a requisite for the ability)." Mentem is the obvious requisite in this case.
If it is possible, it is either CrMe or MuAn(Me). There is a big difference between two, in that Muto can violate essential nature, but with the caveat that it is never permanent.
Creo rituals can be permanent, but only if they do not violate the essential nature of the target. See Limit of Creation [ArM5:80]. For this same reason, the intelligence boost rituals can only raise intelligence to the natural maximum, which is +5 for human beings but nothing for a cunning animal.
In my opinion, cunning is part of the essential nature, and can only be upgraded to intelligence temporarily, or possibly by binding a spirit to possess the animal.
I think SEE has a good point, backed up well by loke. MuAn(Me) base 25 is ready for this. I would place the default Intelligence at -5, as that is still more intelligent than Cunning +10 even. To make it higher I would add a Creo requisite and probably 2 magnitudes per point due to the necessary strength of a CrMe effect. I'd probably cap how high it can go, too.
The real question (to me) is once you have given an animal intelligence with Mu, say for a year duration, or with a magic item that maintains the effect, can they undergo initiation to make it permanent? A pilgrimage?
In true, my real objective is create an "Artificial Intelligence" (an Enchanted Item) and put inside a Automata (I am using the step-by-step from "Hermetic Projects" in Living Corpse chapter: bind (maybe create) a mind, the item cast a spell to control/possess the automata and transfer the spell control to the mind using Passing the Reins of (Form).
I think the starting effect can be a Creo (Muto) Animal (Mentem) with Part target (only mind) effect to create an Intelligent mind with Int -3 (as a Familiar with Cunning) and each magnitude gives +1 Intelligence (by Creo Mentem guidelines). Using that in an Enchanted Item is a Cr(Mu)An(Me)39 (Base 10, +1 Touch, +2 Sun, +1 Muto requisite, +1 Mentem requisite; +4 levels for Constant effect).
Exist a more easy way to "create" a mind? I need help...
The Spell Stir the Slumbering Tree can be helpful to guide me to "create a mind"...
So, while I appreciate the logic behind base 25, the reality is we have this as base 15 in Cov 54. See Marvelous Hound
Good catch. And, yes, base 15 is also "unnatural." Just "major" v. "radical." So MuAn(Me) base 15 it is. (Though for the Covenants effect I would think it would be "radical" since it's both a Mentem and a Corpus thing). I'd still stick with what I said: this grog-level intelligence should probably be set at -5, requiring a Creo requisite and 2 magnitudes per point if going higher than -5.
You could just use a ghost who wants a body. Then it could already have intelligence.
Actually, the suggestion for such requisites is +2 apiece. First, the increase in those guidelines is for the cap, not for more +1s, so there is no such example. Second, the rules actually state for requisites this high
Most such requisites add only a single magnitude to the spell level, but if the additional effect is sixth magnitude or above, it is often appropriate to add two magnitudes.
I would probably put the Intelligence at -3. That is the lowest "normal" level of intelligence, with -5 being exceptionally stupid (though not unnaturally so).
More importantly, -3 is the level of intelligence a familiar get if you bind an animal with cunning as your familiar, so it seems to be the baseline when changing cunning to intelligence.
I agree with Erik T for the same reason he put it, setting Intelligence to -5 is unnecessary and punitive while there is an argument that points to -3. I would even say that it could be set to -1 or +0, since the effect in Covenants sets intelligence at the level of a grog, since I can see an average of -1 among grogs, unless you consider that grogs on average have -5, which in my opinion doesn't make sense.
I still thinking +1 magnitude per +1 Intelligence a good value, because you don't adding an extra effect, but increasing a existing one.
I don't like that it would be easier to move Cunning -5 to Int -3 than it would be to move Int -4 to Int -3, which is a significantly smaller increase.
Familiars have their own rules with Intelligence and learning. That doesn't mean a Hermetic spell can do the same, just like we can't just cast a spell for PM or to do a Longevity Ritual.
There are rules for Awakening Animals in the appendix to the Broken Covenant of Calebais. It's a Creo Mentem lab activity, requriing a level of [Might] + 25 + [Size ×5]. Needs a Breakthrough, of course.
In "Mundane Beasts", the lowest I found was Cun -2. I think going to Int -3 is reasonable. The Calebais appendix just says that "Cun becomes Int" (in the section "Awakened Behavior"), so it's more lenient. (It's a bit surprising since the rest follows the rules for binding familiars quite closely.) You could rule that Cun -5/-4 gives you Int -5/-4, but you'd have to try hard to find an animal with Cun below -3.
I wouldn't allow modifying the Base effect to get higher Int. That can be done via a separate ritual, one casting per +1, which costs a nice amount of vis each time.
This is a good option too!
I get that you can do it. And I really don't like Calebais's method, either. It should have just been -3.
I'm saying, as it's a much lower level, this is saying it is way easier to take an animal from any negative Cunning score to Int -3 than it is to take someone from Int -4 to Int -3. Note that Cunning +3 is less intelligent than Intelligence -5. Where is in the guidelines is it significantly easier to make a much bigger change than it is to make a smaller change?
Meanwhile, CrAn base 30 will raise that Cunning negative cunning by just 1 point. Why, if Animal has so much trouble improving Cunning, can Animal do a much, much larger change so much easier?
Yep. While the distinction between An and Me is pretty clear in Hermetic magic, I think it's very much an open question what exactly the in-game relationships are between animals, magic, Cunning, and Intelligence. They may or may not happen to match the Hermetic distinctions.
I'd like to add that while distilling intelligence down to a single number is useful mechanically, that doesn't necessarily mean we should treat intelligence as something simple and fully captured by assigning a number between -5 and 5.
In other words, the map is not the territory.
Personally, I'd go CrMe(An) ritual, and allow it to make the animal into a magical animal. I'd even have it be less difficult than most spells raising Int. That fits the way I imagine the Ars universe working.
I would probably argue that, within paradigm, the primary difference between intelligence and cunning is the possession of a soul, which provides the faculty of reason, as stated in a&a. from this perspective, a hermetic spell that converts cun to int must at least be muto, but probably impossible altogether as a straightforward violation of a lesser limit. The main problems with this argument is the existence of magical entities with intelligence scores (faeries are not a problem because they are simply emulating/simulating intelligence either way), and the hermetic familiar binding. I think the former can probably be written off by weight of experience, most magical entities do not age and can be assumed to have direct experience in many/most situations, which might appear to be reason to an outside observer. Dealing with the familiar binding is somewhat more complicated, I would point out that it more interesting from a metagame perspective for familiar to be actual playable charecters as opposed to unusually sophisticated signature items, and also that it doesn't follow many of the other rules of standard hermetic magic very well either, so we could just chalk it up to pre-hermetic weirdness if we wanted to, though that is unsatisfying. alternatively we could decide that the familiar binding follows the rules but doesn't work the way we expect, for example what if rather than creating a soul for the target animal, it binds the soul (but not spirit, see hermetic projects for clarification) of a dead person to the target animal? that appears to be broadly kosher
Reading up on the territory can start with A&A p.31ff The Human Mind. You see from this that the intelligence you would give by any Hermetic magic to an Animal would be very different from human intelligence: the Animal subjected to it would not get an immortal soul because of The Limit of the Soul (ArMDE 07-Hermetic Magic).