Just reading through Covenants now and I've found the Casting Tablets. We make occasional use of casting from text in our saga so it's good to get the official line on it.
But, there was a mention of Penetration:
Spells cast from tablets don't have a penetration bonus unless built into the spell's level by the author.
Does this mean that spells cast from a tablet have a penetration of 0, irrespective of by how much the magus' casting total exceeds the spell level?
That's my take. It's akin to using an enchanted device, penetration doesn't figure into it unless specified by the creator.
So, Inexorable Search (InCo 20) could be cast with no penetration from a tablet with just the spell. It would have no penetration (or penetration 0).
But if the author put down the spell to have a penetration total of 20 (which is 10 extra levels to the spell effect - according to the core lab rules) then the caster needs to cast a level 30 effect from the tablet.
If this is the case, it starts to look like quite an efficient (though dangerous) way of casting some powerful spells. If the caster wanted to reach penetration 20 with Inexorable search under his own steam, he'd need to reach a casting total of 40 (excluding penetration score etc).
I guess any penetration added into the tablet could be a maximum penetration score and the caster, based on his casting total, might not reach this level.
I'd be interested to know what the intent was. Either of the two usage possibilities mentioned above sound good andflavoursome to me.
I think that I'd adapt the penetration rules for spell casting rather than use the rules for enchnated devices. I'd have +20 penetration be +20 levels not +10.
After some experience with what authors really meant in ArM5, I read Covenants p. 90: "Spells cast from tablets do not have Penetration bonuses unless they are built into the spell's level by the author." as very sloppy writing intended to mean: "Spells cast from tablets do not have Penetration bonuses unless they are built into the casting tablet by the author." After all, 'building bonuses into a spell's level' just makes no sense literally. As I read it, the phrase would then refer to the Penetration Bonus of ArM5 p. 84, and not to the ArM5 p. 99 enchantment rules for Penetration to an effect.
With this reading, you could have a positive Penetration Total when casting from a tablet. But you could not use Vis, your Penetration skill, arcane connections, sympathetic connections, Penetration Mastery or such to augment it's Penetration Total, unless the casting tablet was explicitly written to be used only with that specific kind of augmentation.
Kind regards,
Berengar