If someone has a wound on their arm and a Mu Co(He) spell turns their arm into a tree branch for a month, what is the state of the wound when the spell ends? Has it healed? Or is it "suspended" while under enchantment and so is exactly as it was before the Muto spell was cast? If the latter, that would suggest Muto effects also pause ageing, wouldn't it? And if the former, then is changing a wounded limb a good way to prevent infections and allow the individual to function while it heals?
If someone's changed into a living thing (like an animal or tree), I would say it heals over time, so when it turns back after a month, you make recovery rolls for the time spent. If they're turned into something inanimate (like rock, or water, which you could do with high levels of MuCo) then I'd probably say it was paused, as no normal life functions go on.
As such, maybe changing a wounded limb is a way to make things function better - but does it prevent infections? Does cutting a tree's bark increase it's risk of getting fungus in the bark?
Two practical reasons why everyone doesn't do it -
- It's a constant magical effect, therefore warping applies, so grogs and companions may be scared of the negative effects, and magi may not want to increase their warping too badly.
- Hit locations in Ars Magica are largely arbitrary and at Storyguide discretion - if you are using house rules for hit locations this may be great, but a Storyguide might deliberately give out more head and torso hits if you use this as a solution to every wound.
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YSMV, but I'd let the arm heal at the speed of the transformed substance. Trees heal slowly and with more "scar tissue". Inanimate objects don't heal at all. Dealing with a branch as an arm may also pose some challenges in everyday life. Arguably, the branch is no better in combat than the wound itself.
And then there's warping for the constant effect, as mentioned.
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I think it would heal as whatever it was transformed into would, since you still (for example) age while transformed into another kind of living creature.
This could be useful if you, for example, turned someone into a newt or something. I think Timothy Ferguson, on his blog, mentioned the theoretical possibility of turning a poisoned grog into a plant which is the natural cure for that poison as a way of treating the poison.
Ah, Here: link
Quote:
Nonetheless if a character you value has been poisoned there are worse ideas than transforming them into basil plants, then transforming them back. There are some plants that are immune to the poisons which would destroy human bodies, and they can purge the poison while in plant shape. It may be that the basil naturally has curative properties due to its essential nature, but the idea that, after your characters fight a basilisk, you may heal all of your grogs by transforming the turb into an orchard for a season, is an unusual one.
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