Spells of Brunnaburgh

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hi all,

I'm transforming a 4th ed saga into a 4th ed/5th ed saga. I'd like some feed back on the 5th ed viability of a few spells created by my sodales and I in the saga.

All of these spells were created under 4th ed rules originally.

Brunnaburgh by the way is the name of the Covenant.

Tenebrous' Inquisitive Eye - ReCo 20
This spell requires an eyeball, currently not attached to its original owner. The spell allows the magus to control the motion of the eyeball, levitating it and allowing it to drift silently anywhere within the magus' sight. It moves as fast as a striding man.
Tenebrous Occultus developed this spell as a way to snoop around castles and villages while still remaining hidden, a scouting spell if you will. It is almost always used in conjunction with Tenebrous' Optical leap. He also enjoyed the reaction of his sodales when he hooked the eyeball out of its brine vial.
(base 5, R sight +2, D diameter +1, T ind +0)

Tenebrous' Optical Leal - InIm 3
This spell is cast upon an eyeball and for as long as the caster concentrates, he sees through the eyeball, not his own eyes. Note that this leads to a loss of depth perception and a general goldfish bowl look to the world.
This spell is almost always cast with Tenebrous' Inquisitive eye to all Tenebrous to scout ahead of his sodales in relative safety. While the spell is in effect, the eye is an arcane connection to Tenebrous.
(base 1, R touch +1, D conc +1, T ind +0)

NB: these two spells were designed to work together, level 3 seems too low for the second spell and in 4th ed i had it designed as level 10.

Ryces Angry Bear - MuAn15
This spell turns a magus into a bear until sundown (or sun up). Interestingly this spell was invented by a magus capable of speaking while in his hearthbeast form. Hence it requires only animal, not corpus. The spell is thus totally useless to anyone but a Bjornaer. This suits Ryce fine.
(Base 5, R personal +0, D Sun +2, T individual +0)

Santiagos Mediterrainean Orchard - CrIg 30
Santiago uses this spell to ensure a warm tropical heat for the covenants orange orchard. Since the covenant is based on the border between Northumbria and Mercia in the north of England, growing such plants would otherwise be impossible.
(base 2, R touch +1, D moon +3, T boundary +4)

There are a few more i'd like to post but i need my players notes first. Any feedback would be most welcome.

2

One quick comment:
The spell turns a human (Corpus) into a bear (Animal). Per all the other spells of that type, the spell would be MuCo(An).
I can't remark on the level, as I am currently without my book.

Ed

3

No it doesn't, it turns an animal (a Bjornaer) into a bear. This is a clever way to shave a requisite and a magnitude or more off of the spell. We discussed it a few months ago on the Berk list but apparently the idea has been around for longer than that.

4

The spell guideline for level 5 rego corpus says move slowly in any direction. The speed of a striding man is questionable.

I think the spell would be more fun as duration concentration but there's nothing wrong with duration diameter.

If you had some way of seeing the eye you could move it anyplace you wish because the movement spell is range sight. I susspect re-inventing "inquisitive eyeballl" at range AC would be an easier choice than enchanting a small mirror to follow the eyeball (but it wouldn't be as weird).

Sight hopping spells are absurdly easy in fifth edition

Any target boundry spell necessetates a ritual. I susspect (by your use of duration moon) that you were hopping to avoid this. I might make the spell target group with a +1 size modifier and only heat the trees rather than the entire orchard. The spell would be level 25 and it wouldn't be a ritual. Either way you go the trees will get warped over time.

A method that would not cause warping would be repeated applications of something like this spell.

Standard of the Borrowed sun
Creo Ignem 30
R Touch, D Moon, T Individual
Creates a fire that is hot and bright enough enough to to rival the sun to anyone who stands within 5 paces of it. Anyone touching the fire will take + 15 damage. The Magi of Brunnaburg cast this spell on large metal spikes that they shove into the ground of their orchard in order to make the climate tollerable for their warm climate trees.
base 15 +1 touch, +3 moon

5

Sorry, I did not catch that from the description. Perhaps better wording is necessary to make that more obvious. (Or I need more sleep so that I can better understand...)

Ed C.

6

Sorry, yes, Erik is right about the shapeshifting spell. It can ONLY be cast from heartbeast form and as such doesn't need corpus. Considering my player is new to Ars Magica i was quite impressed with his cunning spell invention.

The reason it is diameter is because the spell to be used in conjunction is concentration. I didn't want the magus to be concentrating to maintain two spells at once.

I wondered about that, my thinking was that i could move the eye around since i can see through it. I.e i don't need to see the eye itself as i am seeing THROUGH the eye. Hence setting the range as sight. Basically i can see where i am going.

I like Standard of the borrowed sun, i shall show it to our resident elementalist. Thank you.

7

That makes sense, I wasn't thinking clearly before. You need to see where the eye is moving, not the eye itself.

So can a magus who encounters the eye cast range eye spells through it or does this not work because it's not really the caster's eye? (I'd say it doesn't work but I'd be happy to hear counter arguments)

8

Pardon the slow reply

Do you know, i honestly hadn't thought about it. My munchkin powers must be waning. I think that it would be possible to cast a sight range spell on the eye to affect the magus. After all, its not a direct biological connection thats required, its eye contact. And with this spell eye contact can certainly be made.

9

Tenebrous' Inquisitive Eye
This only requires range: touch, as it is the range upon casting that matters, not where the eye goes...

Tenebrous' Optical Leal
This could be used for range eye spells, but in if you plan to use them for this, I suggest you reinvent it with a duration that doesn't require an insane consentraction skill to use... (say duration sun, where the spell is broke if the caster blinks.)

10

Why is the target individual? Does a body part, once separated from the body of which it is a part, then qualify as an individual? I seem to recall so, but I don't want to try to find that rule right now.

I'm not sure why Erik gave up on his argument that there's a problem with this spell combination. You can only maintain the range: sight spell on the floating eyeball as long as you can see it. But no eyeball ever sees itself. Hence if you're looking through the eyeball, you can't maintain the spell. Why would seeing stuff in front of an object put it in sight of you? Erik says:

Why is that true? Are there other spells that can be cast, by range sight, on objects not actually in view? Let's say that I know that someone is about to come out from behind a wall. I look at the spot (to) where he's moving, and I cast a spell on him, range sight. That seems wrong.

Or is the idea that the eye is in view when the spell is cast, and it doesn't need to remain continually in view for the spell to be maintained? I guess the question is: what happens when you cast a rego spell, range sight, on an object, and it leaves your sight before the duration is up? It seems to me that it would depend on the nature of the spell. If you rego something to, say, just keep rising until it hits something or else night falls, then you don't have to keep seeing it. But if you rego it to remain constantly under your control, then you would have to keep seeing it to keep controlling it.

This isn't that hard to fix, though. Why see through the floating eye instead of your own eyes? Why not just see through all of them? Granted, this would be very confusing until you got the hang of it, but there's no law of nature limiting or fixing the number of sensors that can take in visible species. What you would be doing would be sort of teleporting the visible species from the floating eye to your mind. You would rego corpus the eye to float, and then rego imaginem the visible species from the eye into your own mind. The eye would naturally take in the visual species, so nothing else needs to be done. Sadly, you would have to stay in sight of the floating eyeball, but you can still double the range at which you can see things, you can see around corners, and so forth. For real fun, chain them together, so that you can see floating eyeball number one, which sees floating eyeball number two....

11

[quote="Bryan Register"]

Target part only applies when you're targeting something that is part of something else. A severed hand is seperated from the body, and has it's own indiviual existance.

range is for targeting, not maintaining - you could easily cast lamp without flame in a room and leave the room without the spell collapsing...

12

Quite right, thanks. Erik's argument was a little confusing to me: he did focus on the fact that you could see through the floating eye into the space that it was about to enter, which turns out to be irrelevant.