Web of life

[Newes]

This is just something that bugs me. Does anyone have any idea why Web of Life is a Knowing spell? Every other spell that involves detecting the basic items under an arcanum's purview (Detect Substance, Exorcist Eye, Speak to Dead, etc.) is Unveiling. It came up because I was trying to put an attainment together for a legacy, and the detection limits of it being a Knowing spell are stifling things. Just curious if anyone has any idea why this spell should work this way.

[totalgit]

Point taken, but as I recall they made quite a few rules corrections between the initial and final release, so I think mistakes are more likely to have been caught and corrected now than you assume. Not that anything is ever perfect.

The writing sometimes frustrates the hell out of me. Example

The mage conceals all physical evidence from casual observation. For the Duration of the spell, the subject leaves no fingerprints, footprints, traces of blood, or any other forensic type evidence of herself behind. Using Death Mage Sight to search for such signs provokes a Clash of Wills.

It should really say something like "For the duration of the spell, the subjects fingerprints, footprints, traces of blood, or any other forensic type evidence is hidden from mortal scrutiny". If the subject did really leave no fingerprints/blood etc behind how the hell would looking for something that doesnt exist provoke a clash of wills. Its only a veiling spell after all.

Word count might have been a cause but theres still alot of things that arnt explained that well too, if theres one thing ive come to accept is that house ruling awakening either with rules or interpretations just comes with the territory.

[Mrmdubois]

In the case of Detect Substance and Web of Life I would make them both Knowing as they are now, but I'd assume that you could make an Unveiling analogue. Knowing spells are basically good for receiving information remotely or for achieving information updates on a subject as they happen rather than when you're looking for them. Primarily this is achieved by casting the spell on a subject or an area, you can then walk away and even if you leave Sensory Range the Knowing effect will remain active and feeding you information. Unveiling spells work up to Sensory Range which can be greater than range granted by Scale which Knowing spells are limited by, but they don't provide that continuous data feed unless you are actually present and looking to get the information.

[Moinen]

Also OPP doesn't care about errata.

[Newes]

No offense to the writers and editors, but it's not that uncommon to find mistakes or things that don't add up in the books. I don't think OPP has the resources to thoroughly comb through their material the way that a huge company like WotC can do with a huge franchise like D&D. The only proper rules editing would've taken place between the closed playtesting and the advanced PDF, which really isn't enough to pick up on all stuff. The editing between the advanced and the final version is primarily typos and not actual rule corrections since any editing that removes or adds a line can fuck up the entire layout.
I'm not blaming them, though. That kind of editing takes resources, which I imagine OPP has a finite amount of, and time, which OPP might have even less of considering how small the team is compared to the fact that they have to develop books for ten (soon eleven) gamelines in the CofD franchise, and people are already on them about slow release schedules.

Point taken, but as I recall they made quite a few rules corrections between the initial and final release, so I think mistakes are more likely to have been caught and corrected now than you assume. Not that anything is ever perfect.

[Tessie]

It could be a mistake, but his book was twice baked and thrice checked, so I think mistakes are very rare at this point.

No offense to the writers and editors, but it's not that uncommon to find mistakes or things that don't add up in the books. I don't think OPP has the resources to thoroughly comb through their material the way that a huge company like WotC can do with a huge franchise like D&D. The only proper rules editing would've taken place between the closed playtesting and the advanced PDF, which really isn't enough to pick up on all stuff. The editing between the advanced and the final version is primarily typos and not actual rule corrections since any editing that removes or adds a line can fuck up the entire layout.
I'm not blaming them, though. That kind of editing takes resources, which I imagine OPP has a finite amount of, and time, which OPP might have even less of considering how small the team is compared to the fact that they have to develop books for ten (soon eleven) gamelines in the CofD franchise, and people are already on them about slow release schedules.

[Newes]

Check Detect Substance again, it doesn't append to sensory range. It specifically mentions area of effect.

You are correct, and upon rechecking, so does Speak with the Dead. That once prompted me to ask a similar question about Speak with the dead, at which point it was pointed out to me that the description to the Unveiling practice states that it opens the mages senses to the thing in question. Based on that and the discussion on this board, I took it as given that Unveiling spells let you detect everything pertinent in your sensory range, since it affects your senses. I would hope that casting Speak with the dead wasn't really meant to give you the ability to see a ghost as long as it was less than three feet away.

Knowing does not work that way, so I always took "area of affect" as the limit of its detection.

Possibly I'm more confused than ever about how this works. I hate declaring house rules without being clear on whether or not I am actually changing RAW, but I may just declare that for my purposes Web of Life and Detect Substance grant one the ability to detect whatever within the range of the subjects senses.

[Mrmdubois]

The Matter attainment would, per the rules, be unveiling and thus give the mage the ability to detect water within sensory range.

Check Detect Substance again, it doesn't append to sensory range. It specifically mentions area of effect.

[Newes]

It might be a simple mistake.
But I don't know what you mean by detection limits of Knowing spells. I'm curious. Could you explain?

I prefer my attainments to match up fairly well at each level - I don't like the main arcana attainment to have one range, and the optional to have another. 1st level attainment of this legacy would be a version of Detect Substance (water specfically) for Matter, and Web of Life for Life, The Matter attainment would, per the rules, be unveiling and thus give the mage the ability to detect water within sensory range. The Web of LIfe effect, being Knowing, would only give detection within an area of affect around the mage, which at the 1st level of Arcana, would only be about three feet. When the mage gets his life up to 3, it will still only be a range of about 10/20 feet around him, which is much shorter than sensory range. I want the two to sync up.
It could be a mistake, but his book was twice baked and thrice checked, so I think mistakes are very rare at this point.

[Mrmdubois]

This is just something that bugs me. Does anyone have any idea why Web of Life is a Knowing spell? Every other spell that involves detecting the basic items under an arcanum's purview (Detect Substance, Exorcist Eye, Speak to Dead, etc.) is Unveiling. It came up because I was trying to put an attainment together for a legacy, and the detection limits of it being a Knowing spell are stifling things. Just curious if anyone has any idea why this spell should work this way.

The obvious difference between Web of Life and Exorcist Eye or Speak to Dead is that Web of Life is cast on an area instead of on the Mage. However, Detect Substance is also cast on an area and for some reason is Unveiling. Inconsistency comes from the arcana being written by different authors, and there's nothing that stops you from using a spell that's almost exactly like Web of Life that's instead Unveiling. So, annoying, but I'm not sure there's actually a problem.

[Tessie]

It might be a simple mistake.
But I don't know what you mean by detection limits of Knowing spells. I'm curious. Could you explain?