It may not have been intended, but the core book states that they are many levels of a singular spell. You can only use the singular spell at the levels you've trained for it, but the rules do specifically separate those as multiple levels of a single spell. Meanwhile, the rules also state that there is only one Mastery Ability for a singular spell.
If you want the rules not to say this, the wording about General Spells on p.115 should be addressed in the errata. General spells should be changed from being a single spell known at many levels to being a single formula that conveniently displays many different spells.
(p.100) * You can use one effect from one item each round, using the appropriate trigger action for each. You must make any Targeting rolls that are necessary, but do not roll for Fatigue. You use an enchanted device at an Initiative point equal to Qik + Stress Die.
I would be very careful about making any changes to this. I'm not suggesting not to edit it. Just be careful. You might change "you can use one" to "you can normally directly activate only one" or something like that. Here are some situations that should all be possible, or at least I would think so, but can be problematic depending on wording:
One item is used to increase a grog's Soak for Sun. Another item is used to disguise the grog for Sun. In the same round that the grog is disguised, can the grog use the bonus for Soak? Is this using two effects from two items in one round?
One item is used to increase a grog's Soak for Sun. The grog uses a wand to launch a fireball. In the same round the grog launches the fireball, can the grog use the bonus for Soak? Is this using two effects from two items in one round?
A grog fights with a shield enchanted with constant Aegis of Unbreakable Wood on itself and a sword enchanted with constant Edge of the Razor on itself. Can the grog use both items in the same round? Is this using two effects from two items in one round?
A grog had a wand that shot fireballs. A MuVi effect was added to the item to increase the penetration of the fireballs, using a linked trigger to it fires off when the fireball is used. Can the grog fire off a fireball each round, now with increased penetration. Is this using two effects from one item in one round?
A grog carries an item that detects his thoughts to fire off an effect via a linked trigger. Can the grog fire off the effect? Is this using two effects from one item in one round?
A grog wears armor that constantly detects his health to fire off a wound-mitigation effect via a linked trigger. The grog also wears a ring that constantly detects if the wearer is in an aura, indicating this by glowing. Does one of them not function? Is this using three effects from two items or two effects from one item in one round?
Oh, wow!!! I need to give you like a dozen or more things for the errata then. The core book repeatedly shows that Ritual spells are necessarily not Formulaic spells. In fact, the only thing in the core rules people have uses to suggest otherwise is the glossary. It will probably take me several days to track down the many spots that need to be fixed if this is the intent.
I'll give a few ones I know I can find quickly right now:
p.114: "Formulaic and spontaneous spells may not have Year duration." - If Ritual spells are Formulaic spells, Ritual spells may not have Year duration. So this will need to be edited.
p.114: "Formulaic and spontaneous spells may not have Boundary target." - If Ritual spells are Formulaic spells, Ritual spells may not have Boundary target. So this will need to be edited.
p.114: "Formulaic and spontaneous spells may not have a level greater than 50." - If Ritual spells are Formulaic spells, Ritual spells may not have a level greater than 50. So this will need to be edited.
There are many more. I just knew right where to find those three off the top of my head. Are you sure you don't mean "no"? The core book has been so consistent on the "no" end, with only a little vagueness in the glossary.
The glossary does more than merely suggest Ritual spells are Formulaic. The glossary defines Formulaic spells in a way that includes Ritual spells in the defintion.
But if one assumes Ritual spells are a proper subset of Formulaic spells, then the rules are indeed inconsistent in how they use "Formulaic spells".
Sometimes it seems to be used to mean "non-spontaneous spells" and sometimes to mean "non-spontaneous, non-Ritual spells"
Not really. Defining Formulaic spells this way is "if (Formulaic magic), then (Spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time...)" It doesn't actually guarantee that all spells that have been worked out ahead of time are Formulaic, though lacking a separate entry for Ritual magic does suggest that is the case. It's not too hard to cite a great many examples of this in other areas. Now, would it have been better to specify that there are limits or to have a separate entry for Ritual magic? Sure. But then you get into huge amounts of detail that should be avoided in a glossary. That is commonly the case, because glossaries aren't generally meant to be collections of massive explanations of a subject.
Right. The book goes to great lengths to show that Ritual spells are not a subset of Formulaic spells. I gave three examples above. There are many more. Finding them may take a while.
So would you then agree that item creation is Formulaic magic since a magus with Verditius Magic and Unstructured Caster has their strongest power in item creation? Or are we cherry-picking to make this work?
No,no, by that definition a magus with Verditius Magic and Unstructured Caster cannot exist, since their full power can't be used through Formulaic Magic.
But see now you're using the if-then statement as I said, not as you said. If it goes the other direction, then this full power defines Formulaic magic, not the other way around. So the magus should have no problem existing, right?
Hopefully you see there is a huge problem trying to say that everything the description end covers must be Formulaic magic.
It would all be much better if the glossary were to say a little less while including both Formulaic magic and Ritual magic, keeping them distinct. Then the rest of the rules would work very well and this one issue would be resolved.
Again, it would be much better so say less and make it agree with your earlier statement:
"Indeed. Giving short, precise and correct definitions is the typical purpose of a glossary." Sticking to that would be great.
Unfortunately, to say this includes Ritual spells means you're all accepting that this entry is not a "precise and correct definition" while insisting it must be. Your statement above is specifying that the second sentence isn't part of the definition, while it most clearly is part of the glossary and you're claiming the glossary entry is the definition. Either the whole is the definition or people are just cherry-picking to make it work how they want.
I would fix the glossary something like this:
Formulaic magic: Spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time and are relatively simple to cast.
Ritual magic: Spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time and are relatively difficult to cast.
Those would both agree with all the rest of the book as well as avoiding all this mess.
I generally trust what you say because I've seen you reason well and do good research. So last time this came up I did exactly this. I went and studied a whole bunch of glossaries to see how they are written. While by far the majority of entries work fine either way, as a general rule the glossaries I looked at did NOT agree with you. If you read these glossaries in technical subjects as you insist, you will have misunderstandings of some things in mathematics, physics, etc. Sure, for the most part there won't be an issue. But if you insist on me studying other glossaries to assess this, then you're instructing me to disagree with your stance here.
Meanwhile, do you all really agree with yourselves? A Hermetic magus is suspicious of a Hermetic crime, investigates it, and presents evidence of the crime at Tribunal. Do you all insist this magus is a Quaesitor regardless of standing with House Guernicas? A grog with Skinchanger (eagle) flies back and forth between two covenants as they coordinate against an immediate threat. Do you all insist this grog is a Redcap?
I think itās pretty apparent that in some places in the rules āformulaicā is used by the glossary definition and some places āformulaicā is used solely for non-ritual invented spells and in some places it could work either way and we donāt know except for David Chartās comment above. This could definitely be clearer but I am unsure if the sheer number of references makes it easily possible to fix this via an errata. One possible fix would be to refer to āformulaic castingā or āformulaically cast spellsā where the spell is not a ritually cast spell. Another possible fix is using the term āinvented spellsā where the inclusive definition is meant and change the glossary to reflect this, changing the āformulaic spellsā definition and adding an āinvented spellsā definition.
One errata that keeps bugging me although it never effects play- in ROP:I it is stated that demons no longer have the ability to chose to side with the divine because they made their choice a long time ago. It then states that most demons are in fact children of demons and not actually fallen from heaven. So when were these children of demons given an opportunity to side with the divine? They did not rebel against heaven, they were simply born to those who rebelled.
Fortunately, in a very large number of cases both "Formulaic" and "Ritual" are stated, whether to include both or to include one and exclude the other. The only spot anyone has ever pointed out to me where Ritual spells not being a subset of Formulaic spells is the glossary. There are a few (very few) instances (e.g. Life Boost) that would still function fine and so not need errata if the glossary part is edited to make it clear Ritual spells are not a subset of Formulaic spells, though maybe we might want to reexamine a few. If Ritual spells are made to specifically be a subset of Formulaic spells, however, there are many contradictions that necessarily will need errata and all those things that might need to be reexamined in the other case would still potentially need to be reexamined.
ArM5 p.40. Affinity with Art explicitly mentions to round all fractions up. Affinity with Ability does not.
Which leads me to wonder if my troupe has unwittngly played with a house rule all these years: should Affinity with Ability round down?
In general, ArM5 tends to specify in all cases whether one should round up or down, but maybe it would be nice to have a default clearly spelled up early on, e g. on p.6.
My reading of situations where they say Formulaic Spells and explicitly remove ritual spells is that they are using the glossary definition of Formulaic Spells. Iām not sure how you can read it otherwise.
Life Boost works fine as a virtue either way but I find it surprising that one with that virtue could not expend extra effort (fatigue) to boost their ritual casting totals and definitely believe the intent there is that it can be applied to both styles of casting.
Hence my two suggestions for how this might be ameliorated by slihtly more distinct verbiage.
If that's the case... how about removing from Diedne Magic (ArM5 p.41) the last paragraph:
"You must keep your lineage hidden from the Order, giving you the Major Story Flaw Dark Secret. This is in addition to your normal allowance of Flaws, and does not grant you any points with which to buy Virtues"? This removal would achieve two things.
First, it would rebalance the Virtue (without the Flaw I'd say it's on par with Life Linked Spontaneous Magic; and in fact most people I've seen discussing the Virtue say that with the Flaw it's unpalatable).
Second, it would allow more Story versatility for the magus. Perhaps his lineage recovered, or preserved the magic of the Diedne (maybe to better confront it in the future) and this is known but disliked, yielding Enemies. Perhaps he was taught the magic by a Diedne ghost that wants revenge, making him Plagued by a Supernatural Entity. Or maybe the idea is that the secret will not appear prominently in stories, that will instead focus on the character's True Love.
Finally, if the paragraph is not removed, I think it should be clarified whether the magus can freely take another Story Flaw (since the Dark Secret "is in addition to [the] normal allowance of Flaws") or should not ("to avoid having a single character unduly dominate the saga" ArM5 p.37). As it stands, it's not really clear to me.
TME p.103, Binding the Mundane Codex: the description claims that a base Individual of Animal is a "quaternion", which I take to mean 8 sheets (given that the spell's limit is 800 sheets at Group +1 size)..
It seems rather small to me, given that a base Individual of Animal is a pony.
I think the description should have no practical limit to the size of the book it binds (I mean, which book is larger than 10 ponies?) and still have that +1 size modifier knocked off from the Level calculation.
A "quarternion" (TME p.103) is an olden term from bookmaking. It means 16 pages from 4 sheets folded in half. See: The Life and Typography of William Caxton, England's First Printer:
Occasionally, but rarely it is called now quaternion, which today tends to mean a concept from algebra - a non-commutative extension of the field of complex numbers - used mainly in computer graphics.
EDIT: It looks as if Covenants p.50f New Guidelines provides the guideline for TME p.103 and suggests adding one or two magnitudes for greater complexity - which in a newer book like TME might have led to reduction of the size of the Individuals instead.
