Yeah, no reason to target only Jinn with a Mentem spell. And aside from Faerie, you can even have some interactions with mundane relationships also.
I still don't know what would happen with the greater malediction. Sure, you cannot magically force a Jinn to break his bargain, but what happens if that Jinn does not remember it? Not being conscious of the bargain but being forced to fulfil it don't think that it is reasonable.
I think that this forces Jinn out of the bargain and perhaps could have some consequences to them when they start breaking them.
True - I think with other minds it wouldn't necessarily need as high a baseline (it's currently down as a major memory), but that doesn't mean it can't be used on others too. Revised text:
Whilst I agree you could also have fun with the Bargain duration, I think that's outside Eleutherius' main interest (unless your Merinita is interested in exploring it, and wants his help?)
I find this feels contradictory. I can't use magic to make a Jinn break his bargain, but I can use magic to make the Jinn forget the bargain and to create impulses in the Jinn so the Jinn breaks the bargain?
Personally, I would go with something more along the lines of what you sometime see in sci-fi stuff: a robot/cyborg tries to kill someone but cannot because there is a fail-safe in its programming. I would think the Jinn might plan to do something that would break the bargain and would keep finding itself unable to follow through. Being intelligent, the Jinn should realize something is amiss.
However, this doesn't stop the spell from being very useful because even if a Jinn still cannot break the bargain, it's hard for the Jinn to work actively toward the bargain without knowing what it is.
I can sort of see that in the case where a jinn would break a bargain, it might find itself unable to actually do the thing because the Greater Malediction won't let it. What if it needs to positively do something, rather than not do something, though? Worse, what if there are multiple different ways it could fulfil the bargain (but doing nothing will leave it unfulfilled)?
In that case I would play it as agitated to act, just not knowing what to do. It would be a frustrating position to get stuck in. Eventually it would try something that would move it along a valid path.
For his first initiation, he'll probably just end up with the major flaw, as he doesn't know enough to avoid it.
For later initiations, he's going to want to avoid racking up 6 major flaws, because he wants to be able to actually function. This could easily take 20 - 40 pawns of vis, all of one form. Based on the standard advancement rules, he can use a maximum of Magic Theory x 5 pawns of vis a year, so using 40 pawns of vis would require a Magic Theory of 8.
That's actually very doable. It does however make very little sense that he has to pump his magic theory in order to be able to feed more vis into initiations. Do we just handwave it and go with the standard rules?
(Obviously there's also the question of how he explains to the Suhhar where he got the vis from, but I think that's a separate issue).
I don't think so - that would a) be extremely difficult (Solomonic Travel + Magic Lore lab total )/2 >= 2*(Arts: 2 + 5 + 1 + 4+ 5 + 7 + 7 + Second Sight 1 + Persona 2) + Gift already opened 10 = 78, so pretty close to impossible and b) hard to disguise.
I've considered at a later stage trying to find an apprentice (possibly for Aeric rather than him) who's opened to the Solomonic Arts first - that should be more practical, especially if the Hermetic opening is done immediately after the Solomonic one and given the focus in Exotic Magics Pralixians have.
Well, even with Initiation, don't forget you get the prior Ordeal bonus. That's not expected with these Initiations because they're usually for the unGifted, and they don't get a bonus from prior Ordeals.
Ish. To make proper use of that, the Sahir doing the initiation needs to know about it - which he won't if Eleutherius is undercover as a normal ungifted person as per his plan. So I'd expect us to end up in a situation where we're accidentally overstepping the mark (which hopefully won't be too obvious, given Eleutherius' unconscious body is going to be at their mercy for a season), rather than reducing the vis cost.
Congratulations! Who need CrCo to cure someone? Mentem works just fine!
After all, I can take someone who is blind, make him forget that he is blind, and suddenly he can see! Or, maybe your grog's legs have been amputated, but what if he doesn't remember that he cannot walk?
Who needs to fly across a chasm when you can just use PeMe and forget that it's there?
Bound by ropes? PeMe!
This isn't a normal bargain worth its weight in words, but a magically enforced contract. You can forget about it, but like any other aspect of objective reality, it will not forget about you.
That latter stage has a definite period of advancement? It would help to have increased InVi lab total previously. I have to check which is the number that I will have to get by them. Probably a good idea to have a familiar by then.
I think that if you want to make a valid argument, you have to stay in the realm of the mind. CrCo can be used to cure a blind or a crippled, thus removing the flaw. If a magus takes the flaw, it must be incurable in some way, otherwise the flaw does not make sense. But that is a balance thing, not a magic limitation.
This is the flaw:
If the Jinn agrees to kill somebody in the other part´s behalf, he is bound to try. That does not mean that he cannot be “magically restrained”, mind controlled, killed, paralyzed, stoped by a ward or another defect that the Jinn has, etc. A lot of things can stop it from fulfilling his part. If you drive that jinn insane (PeMe), is he still bound by the agreed terms? How so?
What makes “forget the agreed terms’ a different hazard?
I mean, I can imagine how can that creature be magical bound by the terms of the agreement like salutor says, when is something passive (if agreed not to do something, you cannot do it) but I cannot imagine how somebody that has forgotten the agreed terms could pursue something actively.
The only possibIlity that I can think of is that the Jinn can still feel that there is a bargain in effect, even if he cannot remember the terms. He can try to reach the the person he bargained with (but can he remember he/she?), perhaps. But what I mean is that time the terms of the deal may expire. Perhaps the thing that the Jinn has to do can not be longer done.
And that is perfectly fine. As fine as being magically paralyzed for the time in which that Jinn should have fulfilled his bargain.
It's not simply about game balance, but about Essential Nature. If you have a flaw, say Blind, that could ordinarily be cured, for you it cannot be cured, because your blindness is Essential Nature. If you have a Malediction that keeps you bound to a bargain, you're bound and no one can magic it away.
Someone can try to stop you with magic, or restrain you, but cannot unbind you.
Some can make you forget about the bargain, with or without magic, but you are still bound by it, just as compelled to give it your all as if you remembered there was a bargain. Someone magically restrain you? Ok, but you will strive with every resource possible to break that restraint. Mind control you? You'll get rolls with bonuses to break free, every bit as good as what you'd get from your True Love. Someone make you forget about your True Love or bargain? We know how that works.
Not only does all of the above apply, but "forget the above terms" is a very weak restraint. If a jinn makes a bargain to walk around the city three times before sunset, and then its legs are chopped off, it physically cannot walk around the city. Though it can try walking on stumps, and maybe call in some favors. But if the jinn forgets the terms of the bargain, it remains bound and impelled to fulfil those terms, the same way someone who does not know what sex is might still feel an urge to go for it (a category which includes nearly all of the plant and animal kingdoms.) So the jinn who forgets about his bargain to walk around the city three times before sunset is still bound by his Malediction, and that will impel him to try to do that, even though he doesn't remember the real reason why.
The same way someone who has forgotten that he has not eaten in three days will nevertheless feel hungry.
The Malediction isn't just in the jinn's mind (and as a faerie, it's debatable if it really has one). It is written into the faerie's grammar, and being bound by the Malediction is every bit as real as being bound by any other law. This would still apply for any aspect of Essential Nature for anyone, but supernatural beings have it worse. For jinn, being bound by a bargain is what they are.
As outlined above, that's not the only possibility.
I am not questioning if the flaw is essential. It is. You cannot cure a Jinn from its malediction the same way you cannot cure an essentially blind person.
But you can temporarily give sight to a blind person using magic. That is not prohibited by essential nature limit, it simply states that those magics must be temporary. And in the same way, you can make a creature with that malediction break the bargain’s terms. You can trick her into thinking that she is fulfilling her part of the bargain, you can restrain her mentally to stop her from acting, and you can erase the knowledge of the bargain...
And now that I am thinking about it... perhaps you need spell with durations to affect the essential nature of Jinn.
Does having the Jinn's 'unbinding' or 'forgetting' only last for the duration of the spell fix this? Just as water flows into a hole, PeAq on a section of the ocean can create a water-pit, but as soon as the duration is over (whether it be a year or but a moment) the water comes crashing back in?
And I would guess the Jinn still feels like performing its tasks if necessary, in the same way that I sometimes feel like going for a stroll and getting a cup of coffee some mornings.
Every morning, really.
One thought is that if the answer if "it works, but only for the duration of the spell", that's going to be hard to distinguish from "it doesn't work", given the original spell has a Momentary duration. That's an IC rather than OOC problem though (and possibly food for a clever player character to pick up on - after all, Eleutherius is only Int +2).
I've been working on the first 15 years progression, and have ended up with the following thoughts:
15 years seems like a long time, but actually it doesn't let him do anywhere near as much as I'd like. My plan is for him to learn Solomonic Sihr and Solomonic Astrology over this period, but he also needs to learn a "profession" skill to explain his upkeep (I'm planning to take Profession: Scribe, because copying books is a good job to have). That doesn't leave him with much time for all the other things we needs to do (boost hermetic arts, boost infiltration skills, boost supplementary sahiric skills...)
He's pretty much going to have to pose as a Wealthy sahir (with 30 xp per year), otherwise the problem gets even worse.
Are people okay for him to learn "standard" naranjs from lab texts? What about summoning naranjs? What about True Names (which let him treat any summoning naranj as a level 5 spell for the purpose of inventing it, assuming that he puts 5xp into it)?
He needs to feed the information he's learned back into the Order of Hermes. My current plan is for him to write a couple of tractatus on Magic Theory, one specialising on Sihr and the other on Astrology, plus another tractatus on Order of Solomon Lore. Would these tractatus be enough for magi who've read them to start creating spells (Creo / Intellego(?) / Perdo / Rego) that interact with the Solomonic Arts? E.g. an Unravelling the Fabric of the Summons spell, or a Creo Vim spell to create a false answer to an Astrological divination? Muto is probably not possible (as the Muto Vim guidelines are explicit that they only work on Hermetic spells) - what would it take to be able to do that? Can Eleutherius do it by default (as he has a "good" understanding now of the relevant Solomonic Arts), or would it need experimentation?
I haven't firmed it down too much (as this stage, it's just one of a number of ideas), but I doubt it'll be in the first couple of periods.
If you open his Hermetic Arts right after his Solomonic Arts are opened the total required should be doable, though - I think it's 2 x 30 = 60 (page 8 of Hedge Magic), assuming the apprentice has no other supernatural abilities. So requires a bit of work, but far from out of reach for a Vim specialist with an appropriate focus.
Note that given where I've got to in my initial drafts at advancing Eleutherius for 15 years, I think you should go ahead and draft Aeric's first 15 years ignoring Eleutherius - he'll have something for you, but only right at the end of the period (so it makes sense for you to only start to work on it in the second period).