The perfect Lab...

Games Discussion Ars Magica
20

Hardly true. Yes, you need a master craftsmen to make a gorgeous statue. You don't need a master craftsmen to make the rough outline of a human shape. Further, when considering the potential of hermetic magic, making the rough outline of a human shape may be more than magic actually requires. Let's look at comparative guidelines and magnitudes - because that's the only thing really relevant when comparing lab totals. To make a Tireless Servant, you're looking at Rego Corpus Base 10 - Animate a corpse. The end product can make movements but has limited autonomy: It "may be controlled quite precisely with a limited set of verbal commands. It can be instructed to hold or fetch objects, and perform simple operations, such
as lifting and stirring, independently."

Now let's compare Rego Corpus Base 10 - Animate a Corpse to the other arts:
*Rego Herbam Base 10 has "Make a plant or thing made of plant products move with purpose and intelligence, without requiring your constant control.". You would think a statue given motion, intelligence and purpose would make a more useful lab assistant than an unthinking human corpse, no? Now let's look at another lesser guideline in Rego Herbam Base 4: "Control an entire plant, moving it around as you direct, although it remains rooted if it is a rooted plant." This guideline is used to produce "Twist the living tree" which can be ordered to become, amongst other things, a cage, a wall, a shelter, etc. For Base 5, the tree is mobile. When you have this amount of control on a tree, you can probably use it as a lab assistant. If you can bend a trunk to produce a cage, you can probably bend a branch to be as flexible as a limb. But if you have a huge tree (say, your lab is in an outdoor idyllic environment), I'm betting if you place it at the center of the lab area, you actually don't need it to move because its branches might be able to reach far enough to cover the entire lab, which would make Herbam in that scenario 2 magnitude simpler than under Corpus, 1 magnitude if the tree needs to move, and equal if you care to enchant a wooden statue instead.
*Under Terram, you have effects such as Hands of the Grasping Earth for base 3 +1 stone: "Control or move dirt in a very unnatural fashion.". If you can form a hand from the literal floor, why couldn't you just take a 6 foot high x 2 foot x 2 foot large block of stone and animate it to become a nimble human-like golem, without bothering to pay a craftsmen to even carve the block into a statue? Incidentally, that's a 24 cubic foot bloc of stone, and the base individual under terram is 27 cubic foot (1 cubic pace), making animating a stone statue an entire magnitude easier than animating the skeleton under Corpus.

Assuming a skeleton is the only smart way to have a lab assistant is missing the point I think. I've just shown two arts that can make this as easily if not more easily than the Tireless Servant. Not that you'd want to actually make the enchantment easier at the end of the day, since per the rules in Covenant, it's the end lab total that determines the final bonus, not whether the enchantment is efficient, unless the enchantment somehow replicates an existing virtue instead of giving a bonus. In other words, go ahead and abstract it, and feel no shame in using the art you think makes more sense to you given your magi build.

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21

I just recommended the ReHe Base 10 because it is plug and play into the enchantment. It is the Base used for Bookstand of Hespera, which is a simpler version of the same effect (lacking Complexity 2 and Unlimited uses per day).

22

In spite of its limitation, this guideline is actually quite powerful, and more powerful than any RAW guideline for other forms. You issue a simple verbal command, and the corpse acts and it acts mechanically like a human being.

Yes, there are spells to make earth and plant material do impressive things, but each spell is limited to one single behaviour, and the behaviours are crude as well. The ReHe10 guideline is more flexible, but it is not obvious that the movement extends to any kind of digital dexterity.

You have a point though. Purely mechanically, we can just add magnitudes until we get the effect, and the lab bonus is just larger because the enchantment is harder. I must admit, I thought that rule was a guideline to be applied judgement and care, but the RAW statement is made absolute, alas.

23

I'm not sure why you conclude a dead skeleton magically animated, somehow has more more tactile dexterity than a branch whose bark may freely bend with more joints than a human body naturally has, or why Rego Terram and Rego Herbam would be unable to direct such an animated plant product / stone with the same verbal commands used for the Rego Corpus item.

Check Carved Assassin, Tales of Mythic Europe p.25 or Grimoire p. 109

24

Yes, a plant can do more things with a lower level effect- this is the problem, because according to the guidelines in covenants the bonuses to lab statistics are based entirely on the levels of effect, not on what the thing actually does, making the less efficient spell the most useful.

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25

A branch does not «freely bend», and certainly not with joints. Yes, a live or fresh branch is flexible, but it does not bend like I joint does.

There is a difference between a live tree and a wooden statue here. A wooden statue is dead wood, and any flexibility is lost. To animate it, it is not sufficient to control (Rego) it, it must also be made pliable (Muto). The Carved Assassin does not seem to animate the wood to bend; it looks as if it is intended to control a club to knock a target out, or something like that.

If the tree is live, I can see your point, with two caveats. A live tree is not going to be, after some years, a free (zero size) virtue. Also, I am not sure I want a growing tree with all those twigs and leaves moving near my glassware. Those leaves and twigs will be in the way when it tries to pick up a decanter to pour.

For this reason, my thought is a masterly crafted figure with joints. That would work.

26

Vines have greater flexibility than trees, and can be animated using the above guideline. Also, if the spells based on the guideline say that it can turn a tree into a cage, trust me, that's very flexible, way more than most trees can do.

27

I guess all that talk means that the Co/He/Te lab assistant is a very common addition to a lab :slight_smile:

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28

Labs in my games almost always end up with magical lighting and magical heating. I think this often happens because ignem specialists are often popular character choices but struggle to find much to help develop a covenant with their magic other than heat and light so they do that, everywhere.

Also Magical lighting and heating are both good to have.

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29

I thought so to when we started the saga, but after twenty years I have still not bothered.

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30

I have remembered where I hid my best lab ideas!

A lab a day - November 2017

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31

I posted a full write-up of my lab a while back. That includes all of its enchantments.

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32

Muto isn't needed unless you're changing the plant's nature, making it temporarily larger, etc. If you are merely reshaping and moving the plant, it falls under Rego alone. If muto was required to make plant matter pliable, few if any, of the existing ReHe spells would work:

  • Tangle of Wood and Thorns seems to have no trouble taking a fallen straight branch (or whatever wood is available, it could be a plank) and wrapping it arround a target without breaking it in the process;
  • Lord of the Trees can bend a trunk in any shape you want;
  • Twist the living tree acts like Lord of the Trees, specifying you can even bend that tree to turn into a cage for a humanoid;

None of those base book spells seem to require Muto, yet I don't recall an century old oak's trunk or a wooden plank being an especially pliable thing. And I'm not sure how you uproot a large tree to let it walk without pliable roots either... Rego is used to reshape matter on a regular basis accross forms. Rego Terram regularly reshapes the landscape and can make a chair from the ground for you to sit on (Nature's Kindest Seat). Hands of the Grasping Earth does require Muto, but my guess is Muto is there mostly because the hand are much more solid than you would expect something made out of earth to be. If you were merely shaping the hand, it wouldn't require Muto... but it might not be very solid unless you change the spell to affect stone instead.

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33

I globally agree that a large tree at the center of your lab would occupy size just as a feature would, lesser or greater, depending on the size of the tree. The item to animate it might not, and probably would be hanged on the tree (unless the living tree itself is enchanted - and if it was, it wouldn't make the size requirement of the initial virtue go away).

34

Actually, Tangle of Wood and Thorns calculates a magnitude extra for a Muto requisite, even if this requisite is not listed where it should have been. This must be a typo.
The other two concern living tree, which is naturally more pliable than dead tree.

35

Interesting.

36

As someone with hands-on woodworking experience, both living tree and dead tree aren't usually very pliable, but both of them continue to 'work', which is why solid wood furniture can warp 'on it's own' even with a coat of lacquer. There are ways to minimize it, but it still happens.

And it depends greatly on the wood in question. pine and birch are more pliable than oak, beech, or any nut tree.

37

True. There is probably some Mythic ideas behind the Lord of the Trees and similar spells, possibly fuelled by images of how trees move in the wind. There seems to be a clear difference in how canon treats live and dead wood. I may have missed something, but then there are inconsistencies and misprints too to confuse the matter.

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38

Generally we try to increase the covenant's income so that we can have Priceless Ingredients. I'm also a big fan of the Greater Feature/Greater Focus item.

I mentioned this on the Atlas Discord, but I plan to create The Mutable Tapestry MuAn 20 (Base 1, +1 Conc, +3 Complexity, +5 levels Item Maintains Concentration, +10 levels Unlimited Uses). This is a 1 square pace tapestry, that changes the colors of its fibers upon command, so that it depicts a new scene. To create a clear image is an Perception+Finesse roll EF 15. This provides an additional +2 Teaching bonus. (Making a tapestry of this size is generally a month's work).

39

Such a Tapestry could also provide a +2 Imaginem bonus