Yes, and it wasn't that difficult. Although: https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/bird-bones-may-be-hollow-they-are-also-heavy-says-umass-amherst-biologist
Anyway, in Corvus' design I'm allowing bludgeoning weapons to be used to smash a hole though the wall. Go ahead, enemies, he'll just make a new one before you're through.
Corvus' defensive spell is now like this:
I dropped the Muto requisite and the unnatural elements (well...the artificially sharp and tough components) since Wall of Thorns does not need it either.
And the way to turn it offensive (meaning both combat-capable as well as downright horrendous):
Ok people, I need some help here. If Corvus wants something more lasting than his spells boosted to last a month, I was looking into a permanent Creo ritual.
And this seems way too easy.
Creo Animal Guidelines for creating magical animals say:
But is this a case of required reqiusites, which don't add magnitudes, or of improving requisites which do?
IMHO the Vim req is required for the spell to work at all. But that makes it as easy to create a mundane animal as a magical one, apart from being limited as (caster/inventor) by Vim as well as Animal!
But requisites for 'special powers' should add magnitudes.
Using RAW, with no additional difficulty for purposes of balance, I get this
But with my intended balancing additions I would add +1 for making a magical creature (the Vim req) and +1 for the special power of intelligence (the Me req), making it a level 35 ritual.
But another gripe I have is with the Magic Might of the creature: The more powers I add, the larger and the more animals I want to crate at once (Target, Size), and the further away I want to create them - the higher Might they get. Oh, and also the longer time I want them to be there, for non-ritual versions. This also means then ritual animals will always be weaker than temporary ones.
IMHO the rule should instead be:
In Corvus' example spell each raven would have Might 10, which seems fair.
Comments, thoughts?
About this:
The base level for creating a magical beast is 50 (55 because you need at least Touch range):
About another thing:
Reading a question in Reddit, it has occurred to me that we don't have a stat block for a normal Raven (not a Raven of Virtue). Perhaps you could add one (or several if you have diferent subtypes) for Corvus's ravens to the character sheet.
Argh, brain fart!
Of course the basic guideline is a high one. I must simply have missed it so far down the list, among the characteristic boosting guidelines.
But that does not change the oddities of the need to add or not add magnitudes for special powers, or the Might the creature gets.
As for a stat block for a raven, one will follow shortly. I did do one for the SubRosa article "The Intangible Assasin"
Based on what I fudged back in the SubRosa article "Intangible Assassin"
[edit: added combat stats for beak, Soak was listed as too high]
Notes. Design of the raven uses Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults, page 38-43, except Cun has been raised from -1 (for normal birds). I think ravens are quite clever, and for comparison Clawed Beasts have a 0. Animals like foxes, owls, ravens I'd give higher Cun than their basic type suggests.
I need more help for another one of Corvus' offensive tricks:
and:
But how to handle these in combat?
I'm looking at 'swarms' from both GotF p122 "Demonic Mice of the Mäuseturm" as well as Thrice-Told Tales (page reference unknown, don't have the book here) in "The Traitor's Game" where there are spider swarms.
The demonic mice simply deal damage each round, based on the amount of protection on the victim, from Stress die+6 (loose clothes) to Stress die -9 (full armour, helmet, and gauntlets). Attacking them kills 10 mice per 5 points Brawling Attack Total, there are 1000 mice in the swarm and killing half disrupts the swarm.
Thrice-Told Tales instead stat the swarm and has it fight as normal, with some extra rules. This method seems more streamlined and in line with the rest of the mechanics. The spider swarms have Size +1 or more, and attack a number of targets per round per Size. Swarm needs to be completely destroyed, or it may disengage and return at full strength after a number of rounds equal to single highest Wound Penalty. Combat stats are: Bite: Init +8, Attack +9, Defense +3, Damage +3. Higher Size swarms have higher Str and therefore higher Dam.
But how big (in Size category) is a swarm of 1700 cadaver-crows?
Since you have used a guideline for 10 base individuals, I would say +4 size (individual +1 and +3 because of the 10 factor).
Size is tricky; Creo handles it per base sizes for each form, but elsewhere I’d apply that rule which multiplies weight by 10 each 3 size ranks.
So if a crow is size -4
10 crows would be size -1
100 crows would be size +2
...
So given N creatures of size B, their total size S would be...
S = 3 * log(N) - B
So 1700 crows would have Size = 3 * log(1700) - 4 = 5.7.
So I vote size +6.
But then the count of how many crows can you create is not correctly done. Applying you calculation, size +1 of crows should be something between 10 (-1) and 100 (+2). Lets say 46. The spell should create ten times that, 460 or so (250-1000 Kg of crows depending on the individual weight between 0,5 and 2kg).
We should apply always the same procedure.
Edit: Adjsted the numbers because I did the logarithm.
But the number of individuals in a Group is (up to) the mass of 10 individuals of maximum size
Base Individual for Animal is a Size +1 creature. T:Ind creates 1 creature, up to this size. T:Group for animals smaller than Size +1 yields many more individuals than if creating at maximum size.
So I'm still certain of the number of ravens created, as the mass of 10 ponies divided by the mass of 1 raven.
For comparison the suggested Sizes for a swarm of birds is +4 (elephant) to +6 (just below what is referred to as "small dragon")
A common raven is (according to a quick wikipedia lookup) 63 cm long, I assume that is beak to tail and that wingspan is larger that that. In any way i envision each raven taking up about 1 m3 if flying around. So the 1700 ravens have a volume of 1700 m3. A swarm designed to attack normal people would be no more than 2 m in height, and covers just under 30x30 m by these calculations. Even figuring in that most by far of the ravens are not actually attacking, but on stand by to take empty spaces, and this massive over capacity is why they can retreat and reform to 'shrug off' wound penalties. This area will still easily hold 6 people, which is how many targets a Size +6 swarm may attack.
30x30 m? My flat is smaller 
. And it can hold a lot more people than 6, so yes.
The thing is that if you jump from mass calculation to size-based calculation some weird interactions exist. And it seemed more elegant to use size but it is true that somewhere was stated to use the guidelines to create animals taking into account the mass (which is a bit strange because the guideline talks about a size +1 animal like a donkey, and donkeys could weight between 80 and 480 kg.). So, I don't say anymore.
Anyway, 500 ravens would cover 500 m3 of ravens, which is still 15x15m of ravens with 2 m of height, which can hold 4 or 6 or probably much more people inside. I think that the "coverage" with this kind of animals won't ever be an issue.
Cometo think of it 900 m2 is about the size of my entire property, with house, garden and all. That is a huge swarm!
When calculating I assume a pony of 200 kg, so I'm not even pushing the upper limit.
Nope. But the Size stats matters, since it scales some of the stats.
Below is what I think is the correct set of stats for a swarm. Using what 'The Traitors Game' writes about swarms, I've taken the stats for a single raven (Size -4) and modified them to Size +6. So that's +2 Str and -1 Qik per Size change - so 10 steps! Since they are animated cadavers I excluded any mental Characteristics and dropped all Abilities save Athletics and Brawl. Taking a cue from the Revenats stats in RoP:M I added No fatigue and Improved Soak. However the Revenants are statted with Soak +11, with +3 from Sta and +2 from Improved Soak I can't say where the remaining 6 points are from. Perhaps Improved Soak is applied repeatedly? Also, RoP:M lists Brawl of 3 as apporpriate, so I increased the raven's basic score of 2 to this. THat can be attributed to reckless disregard for own (un-)life, perhaps?
The ravens end up with a really poor Init, and the Dfn is also not impressive. However applying 10x +2 to Str means the Dam is fairly impressive. And with a good Soak and a huge wound range the swarm is dangerous! And I listed "Swarm" as a Quality, and it is defined below.
Now, what I think would be fair, is for the swarm to eventually shrink in Size if repeatedly hacked away at and retreating to reform. But I don't know how to quantify that. Also, if inflicted with an Incapacitating wound, there is no would penalty per se...
May I'll add that:
I love the idea of conjuring these 1700 dead crows and animate them to attack, and I guess the swarm rules can be useful trying to get a broad picture of how that might work, but I think we are not considering three facts: the level of the spell, the fact that these crows are already dead, and the fact that there are 1700 of them.
The animating spell is level 30. At that level any attack spell may do +15 damage per round. Viewing the spell from that perspective what you are making is a bombastic spell that isn't particularly effective: a grog (alive or via doing the same trick with a single human corpse) would be more efficient.
But then there are over a thousand crows there. I think other swarms get their size quickly reduced because they are made of extremely small alive creatures: many can be targeted and hit with a single blow. I don't think that's the case with your crows: any ordinary attack will destroy (or just harrm) one of them. So I would say that any ordinary attack is ignored (ok, a grog with a sword destroyed one crow: 1699 crows left!), and damage can be delivered only by large area damaging spells, like big CrIg spells, a giant using a tree as a club, a net... Otherwise just ignore defense and damage.
Maybe another way of considering how the dead crows swarm applies could take a similar approach to these of Auram spells; you can make them fly around you as a ‘crowy’ version of Circling Winds of Protection, make them charge against something as a Charge of the Angry Winds...
And I would replace their Brawl with your Finesse, anyway.
According to the swarm rules from The Traitors Game all animals of size -3 or less packed in clouds of size +1 can be treated as swarms rather than individual creatures. There are so many creatures in the swarm that whether it’s beetles or crows, the amount a person can kill in one round is negligible compared to how many more creatures are “on stand by” because the swarm is so much bigger than the person they’re attacking.
As for using caster’s Finesse in lieu of a creature’s basic Brawl, I think Finesse is only appropriate if you constantly control them. And that’s not what I envisioned. I want the swarm to act by itself, and keep attacking until actively directed to another target.
Perhaps you can use your finesse while concentrating, defaulting to brawl if an object or spell is doing the concentration.
That seems reasonable.
But since Corvus has a Finesse of 0 I’d rather not
I'm almost done spending all of Corvus' 60 seasons for year 16-30, I think I have room for a single lab season yet..
Would it be reasonable to use MuAn to change an animal part like the beak and/or talon of a raven into a fang from a poisonous snake, and assume an attack with said part actually delivers the poison?
And in this case, what poison would it be reasonable to use? Base 3 seems appropriate for the basic effect; to change one animal product into another one. But only Creo Aquam has clear rules for poisons, which size wound they cause, and what the EF to avoid is.
If I decided that measly Base 3 changes raven talon into poisonous asp fangs, it's an Incapacitating wound EF 9 to avoid. Why would I ever want to change them into adder fangs (Light wound, EF 6)?
Using CrAq this is Base 30 (20 for the Incapacitating wound at EF 3, 02 mags to raise it to 9). I seems like a really easy shortcut to use the MuAn method. But all things aren't created equal - the same Base for CrAn will create a cuddly hamster or a wolf, or ad adder as easily as an asp.
To stick to Animal, you would need to create the poison gland as well as the delivery mechanism, or you would need to create the poison with Aquam.
I think that the limits are:
Ideally, you'd need to find a Mythic Europe animal that delivers poison through claws, and use that animal's poison.
Additional magnitudes might allow you to upgrade to some other animal's poison, scaling based on virulence
Sure, it probably takes more than just changing the inanimate objects of beaks and talons from Corvus' spell "Wall of Ripping Talons and Beaks".
But Muto affects unnatural changes, and Base 15 is "Change an animal in a major, unnatural way". Its' not a magical ability, like fire-breathing but something other animals have, only in fangs rather than beaks. So using that guideline Corvus could change ravens to have a poison gland, delivering poison with their beaks.