It seems I took a fairly different path when answering this. I thought about covenant spells: spells that are useful IN the covenant, not spells for doing stuff somewhere else.
Here is my list. I compuiled it when away from my books, so it is sketchy.
Aegis ReVi15-20
Lighting CrIg. We use Circle ring torches, but that is us and not everybody likes it in the forums
Heating ReIg15 I think
Water management (well, divert streams and prevent leakage) ReAq.
Turn stone to clay for dressing stone easily and build underground structures in hours. MuTe10 IIRC
Move stuff easily (to move logs and stones) ReTe10-15
7-8. 2 small mentem effects. Bless of childlike faith (PeMe) and Calm the emotion of the heart (ReMe?) have done more for our covenant than a thousand grogs.
Health of flock or ReAn. Or something to fall trees. Whatever that helps your source of income.
Quite usually an item, but stuff that improves recovery. Room or Circle version if no item available. Does wonders for your popularity. You can build a whole sick bay business around this if you do not have better business opportunities around.
Actually, as I said, I think the issue is that a lot of people assumed the question different from what it was.
The intent of the question was "which magical effects are so indispensable that someone at the covenant must be able to produce them somehow, whether by spontaneous magic, through a formulaic spell, with a casting tablet or with a magical item?" If a magical effect is truly indispensable, it's supposed to be on the list, even if it's a level 1 effect that you need only produce in a friendly aura with all the time in the world.
Many people instead assumed the question to be "what spells must be in the covenant's library" or "what spells must be either in the covenant's library or in some magus' formulaic or ritual repertoire"? Thus they left out effects that they did think indispensable, but that they judged could be produced spontaneously whenever needed.
As we say in the podcast, the spell was chosen but NOT ONE person who listed it wanted the spell as listed: we listed all requests for variants of spells by the rulebook version ( I think we say this in the podcast). So if you listen to number 13 again I think you will agree we did stress exactly this - no one would actually take Chirurgeon's Healing Touch as written, ever
Aegis of the Hearth
Aura of Rightful Authority
Fist of Shattering
Gather the Essence of the Beast
Lamp without Flame
Posing the Silent Question
Purification of the Festering Wounds
The Inexorable Search
Veil of Invisibility
Whispers through the Black Gate
Still, CJ and Darkwing made some good points about the various spells in their countdown. I really want to see the Top 30 now too!
Agreed. Fully. And I included as much in my answer to cj. Like all of us.
I put in Wizard's Communion as a conditional:
If the Aegis must penetrate, bring the Wizard's Communion. Especially because you will want penetration against everyone and everything, so ACs are not an option. If the Aegis does not need to penetrate, forget about the Wizard's Communion.
OK, here goes: saves folks having to listen to the podcast (unless they want to hear our discussion of the top twenty spells, which might interest some folks?). The top twenty contained only one tie, and that was easy to resolve because a similar spell of slightly lower level was mentioned by several people. The top forty led to three more ties, including a six way tie at 34-- I resolved it by putting spells voted for by authors for ArM5 ahead, and then by doing it by number of publications at current moment. A biased method, but as good as any. The one resulting tie I flipped a coin for! The resulting complete Top 40 Spells were as follows...
Aegis of the Hearth
Whispers Through the Black Gate
Demons Eternal Oblivion
Wizard's Communion
Purification of the Festering Wounds
Gather the Essence of the Beast
Posing the Silent Question
Bind Wounds
Aura of Rightful Authority
Veil of Invisibility
Piercing the Magical Veil
12.Piercing the Faerie Veil
13.Chirurgeon's Healing Touch (variant). No one likes the spell as written, too wasteful of vis.
I see what you're saying, but I'm not really sure that actually produces the desired results any better. For example, I could say something to detect Vis is far more important that identifying its amount/type. The latter ones only matter if you're aware of its presence, after all. And if you can do the former, you can probably handle the latter two spontaneously. So should all three make the top list or only the one to detect the Vis. If you do that with just a few things you may just end up with a list that says you need to work with Vis and have a little protection, or something like that. At what point does a top-ten list become useless because of necessitated redundancy within it is then my question.
Can someone point me to the page where I can find Gentle Caress of Asclepus ? Sadly somehow I'm not able to find it via Foxit Reader search in the PDF.
Another way would have been to just list all of them at 34, and list the next item at 40. That's how they do it in sport, apparently. If there's a tie for second, there's no third, it just goes first, tie for second, fourth.
This is brilliant work CJ. So much potential for a jumpstart kit for new players...
I should have noted no.40 was one of about 32 spells (I think) which received two votes. I gave it the number 40 slot because it was mentioned as an "eleventh choice" or alternative to Pilum of Fire by three more respondents, more than any of the other spells in that group.
I did not know that. When David noticed Wards should penetrate, a couple of years after Ars 5th came out I think, I thought the ruling was yes all Wards must penetrate, but Aegis was an exception because of it's not Hermetic roots: making it in essence like Columbae wards. Can anyone recall where the original discussion and ruling was? I suspect it was on the Berklist, but I could be wrong, I usually am. And things may have changed in the last few years?
Reminds me of a recommendation I got once while designing a superhero (for either GURPS or Champions, I think) - "Offense, Defense, Travel, Sense" - I'd add in "healing" to that, but that may fall under Defense.
Ah thanks! The last I recall seeing on it turned out to be David Chart on the Berklist on Thu Mar 16 16:45:37 2006: this is consistent with his thoughts there Project Redcap seems to give the current ruling
I agree that this is not neccessarially so important. But not just because there are better options. Rather because any healing spell is only really relevant to a spring covenant that engages in lots of armed conflict. This is not an essential feature of all spring covenants, IMO. Although, I will admit that it is something that player character covenants tend towards --- but not necessarially. I also didn't think that healing spells were that essential for the covenant, because if you have individual magi really interested in combat, then they will have such spells themselves.
Similarly, talking to animals is very handy --- but if you have individual magi interested in doing that, then they'll have the capability themselves.
I disagree with you here. Wizard's Communion is great when casting for Penetration against undefined targets for whom you cannot collect Arcane Connections (i.e. Aegis and Wards generally). Also for casting against targets whom it is difficult to collect Arcane Connections for (demons, for example), or merely for casting against horrible things that arrive unexpectedly.
Wizard's Communion is also great when you are trying to cast something that is either high magnitude or requires Penetration when you are standing within a Divine Aura (which heavily penalises your Casting Total). Although perhaps the need to do that is not universal, and this problem can be alternatively solved (at a great cost in terms of time) by creating items, but Spring Covenants are usually short on time.
