Topic: Spells: Landmark and Locate Landmark - wth??

[ZuS]

If you check out The Codex page 62, there is a spell called Wizard's Mark. In the description of the spell (which is pasted in the bottom of this post), one other spell is mentioned: Locate Landmark. I can't find this spell in The Codex, main book or College of Magic. Does anyone know anything about this spell, because they seem to be the only way to track items magically.


WIZARD’S MARK
PP COST: 10
RANGE: Touch
DURATION: 24 Hours
SPELL TYPE: Utility
RR: —
SPHERES: Mage
DESCRIPTION: When cast, this spell imprints an item
with a unique mark or signature of the caster. Any
character attempting to attune to the item will immediately
know that the item is the possession of the caster
of this spell. This spell also doubles as a “Landmark” for
the spell Locate Landmark, but only the caster of this
spell may use it in this way. This spell has a number of
unique scaling options available to it. These scaling
options make this spell much more versatile overall.
Each is described below:
Impart Mark Information: Using this scaling
option, no attunement is required to know who the
item belongs to. Just touching the item will automatically
impart the name of the owner of the item
to the person touching it.
Visible Mark: This scaling option makes the
Wizard’s Mark into a visible design that is placed
somewhere upon the item.
Mark for Others: This scaling option allows the
caster to imprint an item with a Mark for somebody
other than himself.
Remove Mark: This scaling option allows a mage to
remove a permanent Wizard’s Mark from an item.
This is especially useful for when the mage is selling
a marked item.
SCALING OPTIONS:
Increase Duration (1 week) +7 PP
Increase Duration (1 month) +8 PP
Impart Mark Information +2 PP
Visible Mark +2 PP
Mark for Others +4 PP
Remove Mark +5 PP

[ArchonOfBattle]

Oh yeah and while we are discussing this spell, I have an additional question:

The Remove Mark scaling option allows a mage to remove "a permanent Wizard's Mark" from an item. But there is no corresponding scaling option to make the mark permanent. In fact base duration is a meager 24 hours!

Question is: should a scaling option for permanency be allowed or should it be made permanent via Thaumathurge rules for embedding constant spell effects - ie. should it be possible for Mages to mark their belongings permantly or should it only be possible for accomplished Thaumathurges expending a great deal of time, effort and money?

Best regards,
Søren

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Gremlins.... 

In case you have not seen the explanation before, sometimes MS Word gives us headaches by reverting to prior versions of edited text. That is what happened there.

Both the Wizard's Mark and the Locate Landmark spell were in a product called the HARP Grimoire, which ICE removed from sale due to a request from one of the authors after a misunderstanding (i.e. we published it due to misunderstanding, and then removed it from sale after things were figured out).

Some of the spells from the Grimoire made their way into the Codex. The "Locate Landmark" spell was not one of them (the spell essentially gave bearing and distance to the "landmark", which made it very useful in mapping).

The references to the spell were removed, but in pouring the text into pagemaker, it reverted and we missed the catch.

As for the Permanent thing -- IIRC, this was for those casters who added a wizard mark to magic items that they created (using spells from College of Magics) (the Landmark bit allowing them to find stolen items, and the Remove Mark for if they sold any Marked items).


If you wanted to add a Permanent scaling option, you could, but I would say it required at least +12 PP to do so.

[ZuS]

If I understand you correctly, Locate Landmark spell functions similar to Finding spell (Codex, page 38), only it deals with items rather than people?

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Locate Landmark was a Universal spell that cost 3 PP to cast. It had no range or duration. When cast, it gave both direction and distance to one known "landmark".
 
It had 2 scaling options, one which turned the spell into one that had a duration of concentration (i.e. Maintain Bearing), and one which caused the spell to put 2 glowing dots on a map (you and the landmark) in their respective positions (Symbolic Link).

Landmarks were normally made through the use of a "Create Landmark" spell (8 PP), which turned a non-mobile object (building, tree, large rock, etc.) into a magical landmark for one day (a scaling option could increase this to a week -- and the PP cost was "per week"). There was a second option that allowed the landmark to be mobile.

And then you had the Wizard Mark spell. A Mage who had an existing Wizard Mark, could treat a Marked item as if it were a magical landmark (so yes, it worked much like a Finding spell in this manner, but was slightly more powerful).

[ZuS]

Locate Landmark was a Universal spell that cost 3 PP to cast. It had no range or duration. When cast, it gave both direction and distance to one known "landmark".
 
It had 2 scaling options, one which turned the spell into one that had a duration of concentration (i.e. Maintain Bearing), and one which caused the spell to put 2 glowing dots on a map (you and the landmark) in their respective positions (Symbolic Link).

This sounds definitely like something we would want included in The Codex or College of Magic. What were the scaling PP prices of 1) Maintain Bearing 2) Symbolic Link?

Landmarks were normally made through the use of a "Create Landmark" spell (8 PP), which turned a non-mobile object (building, tree, large rock, etc.) into a magical landmark for one day (a scaling option could increase this to a week -- and the PP cost was "per week"). There was a second option that allowed the landmark to be mobile.

What was the PP price for scaling 1) from one day up to a week duration 2) per extra week duration 3) allowing landmark to be mobile?

And then you had the Wizard Mark spell. A Mage who had an existing Wizard Mark, could treat a Marked item as if it were a magical landmark (so yes, it worked much like a Finding spell in this manner, but was slightly more powerful).

I really missed something like this and had to implement a workaround in one of my games. Tnx a lot for help.

[ArchonOfBattle]

ZuS - we can probably just use College of Magic spell creation rules to figure out costs. That way we can also tweak it to our liking.

[ZuS]

ZuS - we can probably just use College of Magic spell creation rules to figure out costs. That way we can also tweak it to our liking.

BLASPHEMY!

[Witchking20k]

Buying an instruction book?  LOL

[ZuS]

Buying an instruction book?  LOL

No, but we try not to discuss and modify rules. Had enough of discussions and rule-changing to last our group a life time. It's not particularly fun and certainly does not contribute to the experience. In-house GM rules tend to be a crap-shoot too.

In case of ambiguities, having things clarified by the comunity & publishers is perfect.