Craft Magic
Rego craft magic has one advantage over Creo rituals: it does not require vis. But as with Creo rituals used to create artificial items, the results of Rego craft magic are dependent on Perception + Finesse rolls against Ease Factors that increase with the complexity of the task. The creation of complex items that would normally take a season or more to create has a very high Ease Factor. Magi do have ways to help themselves though. Page 68 of Art & Academe details the creation and use of Ligatures, small single-use charms based on mundane Artes Liberales, Philosophiae, or Medicine. These provide a small bonus (up to +3) for a single roll, which effectively reduces the target Ease Factor. The Precise Casting spell mastery ability (Houses of Hermes: Societates, page 34) adds +1 to the caster's Finesse total, which provides a means to reach the high Ease Factors asHermetic Projects
sociated with Craft Magic.
It should be noted by eager followers of Verditius that a ship assembled through Rego Craft Magic does not benefit from a Verditius' craft ability for the purposes of reducing the pawns required to open it for enchantment. The mysteries of the Verditius art cannot be replicated with simple craft magic.
The Hands of Phereclus
ReHe(Te) 40
R: Touch, D: Momentary, T: Group
Given enough lumber and prepared iron nails and other fixtures, this craft magic spell constructs an entire ship from the assembled raw materials. The design of the ship can be decided as the magus works the spell, and enough lumber can be controlled by the spell to create a ship of up to size +8. The free Terram requisite allows control and manipulation of the nails, bricks, and other mineral elements, but it cannot prepare them from raw materials; they must be in the required state.
As with all craft magic, a Perception + Finesse roll is required and, given the difficulty of creating a full vessel in little more than an instant, the Ease Factor is relatively high. Small ships, up to size +5, can ordinarily be built in a single season, while larger ships take multiple seasons. The following table takes this into account and provides a guide to Craft Magic Ease Factors for creating vessels of different sizes:
| Ease Fac tor |
|---|
| 15 |
| 21 |
| 27 |
| 30 |
The Unseen Shipwright
ReHe(Te) 30
R: Touch, D: Momentary, T: Group
The magus selects a pile of wood and formed iron fixtures, and the spell cuts, carves, and joins the wood into the hull of a target ship, repairing splits and holes under the magus' direction. The worst damage is repaired first so that the vessel is always left seaworthy and the repairs are practically seamless.
A Perception + Finesse roll is required against an Ease Factor set by the storyguide. The table on Covenants, page 49, is a useful guide, but a rule of thumb is that repairing a small leak or a splintered rudder is a task of average difficulty taking no more than a day for an Ease Factor of 12, while refloating a wrecked ship is almost impossible, with an Ease Factor of at least 27 (plus any modifiers that the storyguide imposes based on how long it might take a mundane shipwright to refloat the vessel).
The magus must have appropriate materials to hand in order to make repairs.
(Base 5, +1 Touch, +2 Group, +1 size, +1 flexibility)
Required Lab Total: 1 season (60), 2 seasons (45), 3 seasons (40), 4 seasons (38)
No shape or material bonuses apply
but appropriate laboratory bonuses can be applied. Experiment side effects might include the repairs being obvious or weakened, or the Ease Factors for the Finesse rolls may be modified.
The Conscientious Carpenter
ReHe 30
Pen: +0, Unlimited Use
R: Touch, D: Momentary, T: Group
One advantage of Rego craft magic is that Finesse can be taught to anyone, Gifted or not. This means an enchanted device in the hands of a Finesse-trained mundane craftsman can be put to work as effectively as a magus casting the spell himself.
When touched to pile of wood, this wand cleans, cuts, and shapes the wood into the strakes that make up a ship's hull. The wand is limited to creating strakes and cannot be used to work other parts of the ship.
Use of this wand throughout the building of a ship adds +1 to the shipwrights Profession: Shipwright ability for the purposes of deciding how long the ship takes to complete (City & Guild, page 68).
(Base 5, +1 Touch, +2 Group; +10 unlimited use)
Required Lab Total: 1 season (60), 2 seasons (45), 3 seasons (40), 4 seasons (38)
Appropriate laboratory bonuses apply to this effect (+1 Rego) as does a further +4 bonus as the wand is made of wood.