Trebuchet Magic

Moving chatter out of the Grimoire (ReMe 20 ritual?).

Now, there's been a suggestion that Rego is a necessary requisite because a rock is being thrown. I answer that the throw is cosmetic because I can just create the rock over the target and let the stone's natural motion take its course. Thus, aimed, and cosmetic Rego.

The reason that the rock can't miss a wall or a group except on a botch is because there's a +30 to the aiming roll from Size. Theoretically I should apply that to human targets too, but I decided that a trebuchet missile should not be so easily targeted at a human. I could as easily use the normal aiming rules if I choose, and probably should.

Pretty sure creo attack spells, regardless of the Form, don't need Rego to hit their target. (See Lightning Bolt or Ball or Pilliam of Fire - both of which start in their caster's hands, I believe.)

EDIt - I mean, you can gimp your spell if you want to, but "create rock and throw it at someone" is basically the same as "create lightning bolt and throw it at someone" or "create fireball and throw it at someone" or "create water hose and spray it at someone". Fire does more damage, but all the other elements are capable of it.

While I agree on the no-Rego-requisite part, I'm quite sure that at Acre (or at any time in history) they never used such gigantic stone projectiles: a stone sphere with a diameter of 25 paces still only warrants a +4 magnitude size modifier. In fact, I think pretty much all stone projectiles used before modern times easily fall within a Terram Individual (1 cubic pace of stone): wikipedia under the Trebuchet entry reports projectiles up to 350 pounds, about 1/10th of what a Terram Individual can yield with materials such as granite, marble or sandstone.

And the level calculation also seems off to me: Base 3, +3 Sight yields level 10, which only goes up to level 35 even with the (unnecessary) 5 magnitudes for size.

When I say "cosmetic Rego," that means it's not actually Rego-requisited, because the Rego effect is cosmetic. (Spell's still gimped anyway, in the sense that there's much more efficient ways for a magus to bring down a castle.)

Hm. If I reduce the size multiplier I'll have to add a force multiplier. It's supposed to be an order of magnitude more powerful than a regular trebuchet shot (an admittedly badly-sourced claim suggests a 3,000 pound shot used at Ashyun, which is ten times as big as Warwolf's missile, and Warwolf was already a somewhat exceptional trebuchet).

That still fits (barely) within a base Terram Individual. And as you note, it's probably exaggerated by an order of magnitude.

That makes more sense, but the language in the spell description talks about throwing it. Dropping is better. The words "and propels it into a target for +30 damage" was what I questioned. If the force of the effect is adjusted due to Rego then while I can see you wouldn't add additional mags for the power, but the fact that Rego is used should be represented in the spell design.

If the spell is not using Rego then it is inertia that causes the damage; which is fine. Then you don't even need to mention cosmetic Rego. It's just the wording I find odd, not the intended effect now that it is explained.

It's not. "I could do it by dropping, but instead I'm throwing it because it looks cooler." The latter is why it doesn't require Rego any more than Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie requires Auram. Throwing the rock is a cosmetic effect.

Yes, I understand the desire for a cool effect. It can be problematic - you've invented a spell that creates and flings a stone without rego. Another spell just flings a stone and needs rego, which is normal. A third spell just creates the rock, and is probably the same end level as the effect that creates and flings if your spell breakdown and cosmetic effect is used.

You could invent a variant which flings smaller stones and expand the number to Group, so that you get a scatter gun style effect too. Perfect for antipersonnel and area of effect use.

That's odd, and that is also the nature of magic. Frosty Breath is also flavoursome, and it's just that FBotSL's cosmetic sub-effect isn't open to as much variance as what you've written here imo. I'm a fan of cool for the sake of flavor so go for it, I totally withdraw my feedback.

Yes, but incantation of lightning creates lighting in your hands, and then throws it. (AM5th, pg, 126). "Mighty Torrent of Water (pg. 121) "sprays from your outstretched arms towards the target". Pillum of flame "flies from your palm" - meaning it was created in one location, then moved to another (pg. 140).

All of these are Creo effects with no required Rego. In glancing through the Creo (form) sections, I'm seeing a LOT of spells that fall into this category: create an effect in one location, then move it to another as an attack.

As such, I'm not seeing any real strong support for your claim that you'd need Rego. If htat were the case, all of those spells would need it, as well.

At best, you could argue that a stone is a descrete object, compared to a fire/lightning bolt/water hose. Those three could (if you squint) could be considered just "created in a really big line" between the magi and the target. In contrast, a stone (unless you're creating a sort of pilliar of stone, shooting out of your fist), doesn't fit the model.

However, the Target:Ind elements of all those attacking spells don't require that you have enough "stuff" created to fill the distance between you and the target. As such, it seems more consistent just to write off the cosmetic Rego effect as a built-in overlap that Creo seems to have.

As I said, I withdraw that feedback.
If I had to guide a spell going forward I'd suggest that the material created can be conjured in a state chosen by the spell design,. e.g. it is not just creating a lot of water, but also creating that water already in motion. It certainly adds some omph into the general applications of effects for Creo.

Ah - missed the last line there. Gotcha.

Motion is a quality of an object, is it not? Thus, an object created with a quality like that is no mean thing.

I'd been thinking of something like the scatter gun effect you mentioned, which does appeal to me rather strongly. The only problem is that, by virtue of creating a group of objects instead of creating an effect on a group of targets, it allows for more effective anti-army effects than Creo Ignem, because you can't drop a Group effect on an army unless you either have some units separated from the others or you have enough Size to include the entire army, but throwing a Group of grapeshot stones at an army is perfectly legit.

But I'm overthinking it. Destroying an army is not a typical job for magi (and if magi make it a typical job, they're going to run afoul of the Code), and it's rather binary anyway (either you have the power to erase a mundane army in a single spell or you don't; there's not a lot of maybe there).

For a scatter gun I don't think you need to worry about an effect being "too powerful". The Rego based "sling" effects were discussed a while ago and there are variations of that spell around that could devastate a small unit, or even a large force. And any effect like that is going to need to be cast many times to mow through the targets, as you'll miss a few in the first burst.

Agree totally too on the perspective on killing an army. Tricky to get away with legally, but not hard for a dedicated magus. I like the idea of making the ground swallow them using MuTe/Aq momentarily, but it make looting the bodies a lot of work.

The difference in using "cosmetic Rego" is that the CrTe trebuchet effect will be resisted by the Parma or other magical resistance.

Those knights with a relic or enjoying the MR of a crusading blessing? Or the faerie knights joining them? Or the demon hiding in the ranks of their camp followers? Yeah, totally unaffected by your CrTe projectile unless you penetrate.

The ReTe effect requiring you to target with finesse allows for no MR because you're only initiating the stone's motion magically, not guiding it the whole way, as with the CrTe effect. (Also, don't confuse "create and fling at target" as two effects. It's a single effect, as KevinSchultz stated, kind of like conjuring a tower isn't "create rock. build tower," it's "create a tower that grows out of the ground.")

-Ben.

I actually think it isn't a cosmetic effect.

BoAF creates a fire on top of the target, and cosmetically makes it look like you throw the fire. If you wish to create a rock on top of the target and cosmetically make it appear that you're throwing the stone, fine - but I'd say that creating a stone on top of the target doesn't actually do that much damage, not as much damage as throwing it at them at high velocity.

So I'm inclined to read the effect as a standard ReTe effect, with Creo used to create the rock in this case.

I realize that things like Mighty Torrent of Water won't fit into this model. But still, I personally see this spell as a ReTe one and don't agree it can be a straight Creo spell.

Nah, it's totally cosmetic. With the R:Sight he could theoretically create the stone at a high enough altitude and have it do the same amount of damage. The falling guidelines provide some guidance, since a person falling takes +1 damage per two feet they've fallen, is it too unreasonable to reverse the process and presume that a rock falling from an altitude does the same amount of damage (ignoring size and mass issues that probably don't belong in the Mythic Pardagim).

That creates a somewhat different effect, e.g. in terms of Magic Resistance.

You can either throw a rock, or create it in the air and make it fall, or create it on the target. You can't do one and get the effect of the other; that's not a cosmetic difference, it's a significant one. Saying that the fire that engulfs the man is actually thrown at him - that's cosmetic; saying that the boulder that hits the man with great force is actually created on top of him - that's not cosmetic.

IMO. YMMV. Have fun now. :slight_smile:

It deals no differently with Magic Resistance since the rock itself is magically created, right? If it were a normal boulder, levitated then dropped, it would ignore MR, but...

OK, granted. I'm still sticking to my guns. Errg, rock. Errg, position on the rock thing. Yeah, that's it. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

The issue seems to be that while Fire and Lightning do damage to a target just by being near them (and as such, the movement doesn't cause damage) - Earth and Water don't. Thus, from our perspective, we need to add motion in order to impart kinetic energy.

However, I think we may be falling into a modern physics paradigm with this. A river moves, as does an avalanche. Thus, it doesn't seem unreasonable to "create a small avalanche" to do damage and cover a distance.