[ArM5] Spell Help - Blade of manslaughter

[matt ryan]

At 07:00 PM 4/7/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Haakon Thunestvedt wrote:
>
>>A former player character (who's about to be played again) has a spell
>>that's we have a problem to convert to 5th ed.
>>(4th ed)Blade of Manslaughter: PeCo/Te 25 R: Touch D: Sun T: Ind
>>Whenever this weapon draws blood (does damage), it does an additional
>>3 bodylevels in damage.
>>
>
>But here is an interesting thought - why not make it a charged enchanted 
>item instead?  The effect would be, inflict a Medium wound (PeCo, R: 
>Touch, D: Mom, T: Ind; base 10 + 1 Touch = base level 15).  The triggering 
>action would be to strike a human with the edge of the blade - you would 
>not necessarily even have to get through the opponent's Soak.  You could 
>add a command word to be spoken as you strike, so you can control when the 
>item uses its charges.  The effect would take a whole season to invest, 
>but charged items don't require any vis.
>Charged items may be used as many times per day as you like until they run 
>out of charges.
>
>-Andrew Gronosky


But it's a cool idea, and if it's a charged item it will eventually expend 
all its charges and stop working. I'd make it a lesser enchanted item. A 
sword can hold up to 15 pawns worth of enchanted effects, and this spell 
would be way under. You'd also get the Shape and Material bonus "+ 4 to 
harm human and animals" to add to your Lab Total. Using the base spell as 
Andrew designed it (level 15), I'd up the frequency of the effect to 
"unlimited" (+10), and keep the trigger a simple physical action - striking 
- so that I don't have to install some additional Intellego effect to 
determine if the effect goes off. Sure, I'll miss sometimes and the sword 
will perform its magic, but I've got unlimited daily uses in it so I don't 
care. The total installed effect level is 25, meaning I need a Lab Total of 
Perdo Corpus 50 to create it in a single season. That's not really that 
bad. With the form bonus (+4), a standard Aura (+3), and a decent Magic 
Theory score (5),  your Perdo and Corpus scores would need to be 19 each. 
While that sounds imposing, a starting magus could do it, with the Virtues 
Puissant Corpus and Perdo, an affinity or two perhaps, and a skilled 
parens. It takes 3 pawns of form specific vis to make it, which should be 
well under the number of pawns you can use in a season (Magic Theory x 2). 
And once you've created the first one, you and your chums could churn them 
out using the Lab Text that you wrote while making it.

Hell, I'm going to arm the entire "evil neighboring covenant" with these!

Matt (who hopes someone will correct his math if it is in error)