Arcana OOC and Q&A

[Dimnersti]

Well I tend to beleive transience should be a level down, but not realy strongly enough to press it.

Pass on the other hand bothers me to no end.

Pass
(Druidism, Archmage)

By touching any tree or plant, the Archmage can instantly teleport to another tree or plant of the same floral family, anywhere within the same forest or body of continuous natural elements. The ability to travel weakens the further the distance, and is interrupted over bodies of water.

I hadn't actualy noticed the new limiters in the definition. How is this archmage? transience is more usefull and powerfull a spell. Basic teleportation blows it out of the water, you can only move within the given forest, to a tree of the same species.

Great concept, entirely useless implementation. To be honest, as its defined I cant see how pass is even more than a second level spell.

and for the no glades outside the empire, I wouldn't necisarly say that since none have eben rp'd in use they just dont exist. Just no ones asked the question yet, and as other nations were generaly restricted rp for a very long time, it was unable to be rp'd.

[Amber Brightwing]

Transience only works between six fixed locations and as such is much more limiting then Pass. That said, Pass does seem to be a bit pointless when you can transform into a variety of birds.

And if there are some other Glades then mages should have noticed their presence long time ago, even if they didn't know where they led.

[Marwin Luminarias]

Speaking of which:

If a fae casts a level 1 'attack' spell (say Force Bolt) would it be smaller than a giant who cast the same spell?

I was wondering this while I took a nap this afternoon. Maybe this is one reason giants dislike Arcana? Cuz the spells are so 'tiny'? Or would the spell be 'proportional' to the user's size?

[Dimnersti]

well for transience again, I find it far more practical to come up with reasoning why we'r limited to the six given glades. as I see no real reason why one would assume their a singular acheivment within the empire. and it leaves that window open for further devlopment should at any point further locations be opened to play.

and a breif explanation of why I view transience as a lower ranked spell. The mage is carying very little of the burden of functionality. Their simply accesing the function of an existing entity. The fact that your unable to generate artificial glades in any manner supports that the mage more activating an existing system, then actualy performing anything of any great dificulty themselves.

heh and marwin, I beleive asthetic values of a spell unless conciously altered are determined by ones subconcious, so I imagine the size of the bolt would depend on wether the indivual was focused outward or inward. Inward its proportiona to your size, outward its proportional to targets size. Heh, but thats just a guess based its apearance being an almost entirely asthetic value

[Arthus Orion]

You know any sphere capable of summoning a creature should be capable of teleportation by contriving a way to leave the plane and pop back in another locale. Elementalists I know have no standard spells for the feat, but I know this has been circumvented along such lines. Druids can summon last I check, so unless there is some extra reason why Druidism is limited..... even then begs why it should merit space on the standard spell list.

But then so should Banish Summon since hypothetically this could be done by Dispel (or am I wrong and Dispel doesn't effect summons?)

[Z'kron]

Reasoning for why transience works the way it does should be coming in my enchanted glades article, which will be up in a few days. It was something that got discussed a few years back, but I don't think ever made it to compendium; I think it knits in fairly nicely with the ways staffs work/unique properties of enchanted wood.

[Amber Brightwing]

If a fae casts a level 1 'attack' spell (say Force Bolt) would it be smaller than a giant who cast the same spell?

I was wondering this while I took a nap this afternoon. Maybe this is one reason giants dislike Arcana? Cuz the spells are so 'tiny'? Or would the spell be 'proportional' to the user's size?

For attack spells like bolts or spheres: yeah, I always thought of them to be human sized. That does make them tiny for giants though. Makes sense since Fae are the arcana inclined ones and giants are not IMHO For shields or boosting spells & directly evoked damage the like I like to think of them as size independent. Shields for example I think more of as 'can hold back x amount of force'. Giants could punch through them more easily, but they can use them to envelop their whole body. Of course, all that is IMHO.

Summoning: summoning is more creating a shell in this plane and attaching a spirit from another plane to it. Not really like teleportation at all (though it does leave you to wonder what happens to the bodies at their own plane). Dispelling should work just fine on them.

[Marwin Luminarias]

All right Arcana Lovers --

while I was going down the list of spellsongs (you know, explaining them by ways of shaping techniques, rhythm, melody type, etc) I got stuck with two:

Aqua Aria -- the one that lets peeps breathe water.

and Lytreia's Locomotion -- which provides a 'short teleportation for the party of the bard'.

BOTH are APPRENTICE level spells.

I have a headache. So, should teleportation and water breathing be part of the spell list for Bards? Or is there some way they can do it using the principles I introduced in my last draft?