Here's an interesting question.
Would an Arcane Connection help you in breaching an enemy covenant's Aegis? It doesn't feel right, but I can't find any reason why it wouldn't.
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
Breaching... How?
It would help you to target a magus inside, yes.
As per dispelling the aegis, well, I'd say that one of the token would count as an AC to the aegis itself
Good quetion. At first, I thought you were talking about the AC to the Aegis specifically. Here what were my thoughts about that:
As for an AC to a magus that happen to be inside a friendly Aegis, I do think the AC should boost penetration. This feel right to me ?! 
I think the protection given by the Aegis is similar to the parmae when someone try to affect you from outside the Aegis.
Notice that if the "attacker" is inside the Aegis, the rules already make it so that the AC will help with penetration.
I think penetration is "built-in" the spell when lauch toward it's target. AC helps boost that penetration when the AC linked to that target. It's as if it goes faster and stronger, feeble things are less likely to stop it.
So, an AC helps breaching any barrier that the spell need to go through to hit his target.
That's my own conclusion, hope it helps =)
That's more or less what I thought. Where I was having real trouble was with a mage targeting the covenant itself, either with a direct attack or by teleporting across the Aegis.
Would having an Arcane Connection to the covenant itself help with any of this?
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
You can have Arcane Connections to individual bits of the covenant, whether those bits are people inside the covenant, or things like buildings. And you can use these Arcane Connections to boost Penetration against these things just like normal.
So, for example, if you want to cast some kind of Pe Te effect on one of the buildings in the Covenant, then yes an Arcane Connection to that building (say a piece of stone from it) will help you Penetrate the Aegis.
Likewise, if you are trying to teleport to a particular location in the Covenant (say a Lab), then having an Arcane Connection to that location should help you Penetrate the Aegis --- afterall if it is Leap of Homecoming that you are using you need an Arcane Connection anyway to target the spell.
However, I don't think you should be able to get a generic Arcane Connection to the entire covenant, which can be used to boost the Penetration against anything in the Covenant. You need separate Arcane Connections for the separate things inside the covenant.
That's pretty much what I was leaning toward (Arcane Connections to specific parts of the covenant working). I just wanted to make sure that this sort of thing seems reasonable.
If other people have a different take on this, I'd still like to hear them.
Also, the Aegis always seemed like something that should be the exception to the rule. I thought it possible that some people might feel that it needs to be penetrated by itself without reference to the target on the other side. I wanted to hear a variety of interpretations...
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
Yep it sounds reasonable to me...of course that's just my opinion though.
I don't think there is anything wrong with this approach either. As long as the troupe is clear. It does make an Aegis quite a bit more powerful than the other interpretation, which might be good or bad.
I guess a related question would be: if a magus shares his Parma Magica with a grog, do Arcane Connections to the grog aid to Penetrate the Magic Resistance donated to him by the magus?
OK, now that I have to think about...
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
One answer could be:
No, since the Parma is still made by the magus, only an AC to him will help penetration.
Ah, but the AC allows you to punch through protections to the target, regardless of the nature of the protection. Thus, an AC to the magus would aid in targeting the magus by bypassing magical shields around him.
You might argue that an AC to the magus can be used to help dispel a spell or effect he's created, but the dispelling rules are rather woolly anyway so ...
Yes, this is another answer, and a perfectly valid one.
So, an AC to the creator of the Parma, to the magus, would provide bonus to penetration vs. anyone his Parma protects.
But if an AC to anyone else his parma protects also provides a bonus, do these stack?
And would it not change the frequency of magi protecting their grogs then? Because the magus might take care not to leave too easy ACs behind, but the grog...
And, does any magi ever protect their grogs? So does it matter?
With the 5th ed's more precise definitions about magi only teaching their apprentices the final secrets of Parma after they swear the code, protecting others would be more common. We didn't read this out of the 4th ed, so in our sagas, apprentices were taught Parma right after Latin (and after Magic Theory for those who just wanted a Lab Slave!).
I'm drifting off topic, and perhaps this should be in a different thread. But magi with apprentices are way, way more vulrenable then those without. I mean, they have to extend Parma over their apprentice, otherwise they're toast, plus their Gift bothers the master (while his own is shielded by his parma) right?
Plus, the added vulrenability of the risks of the apprentice leaving behind ACs.[/b]
Actually, I was arguing that an AC to the magus only helps you target the magus, not anyone he protects. The AC helps you get the target, not the creator of the protection unless you're targetting the protection. As such, no the arcane connections don't stack.
On the other hand, if you do decide that an AC to the magus helps you penetrate resistance he grants then ... it still doesn't really make a huge difference since once you've got such a connection, the magus is unlikely (assuming warning, of course) to waste it protecting grogs when his own protection just became much higher priority and the grogs just became lower priority targets,
Fhtagn:
Ah my bad, then I totally misunderstood you. We were really in agreement.
But! I still see a pickle regarding any ACs dropped by any people protected by another's Parma. The easiest rule would be that an AC helps Penetrate the MR from any source on a given person, regardless of type/source/creator etc.
Exempli Gratia:
Hoplite Friga Glacialis Maga Ex Flambeau has taken her two apprentices out on a field trip. Her Parma protects them all, albeit at a greatly reduced level, due to covering all 3 of them!
Nefarius Ex Diedne leaps from the bushes and attacks, foolhardy - had ne not done his homework! He's in fact got a handful of hair and cloth bits, coming from some or all of the aforementioned group. So, what happens and who does he have ACs to? He blasts away with an area effect fire spell.
He generates a single Casting total, and thus a Penetration, but he might multiply his Penetration ability by different amounts, whether he has the relevant ACs. Effectively generating a different Penetration Total vs. each target. Because he could also easily have had further boni (knowing the true name etc.)
*vs. Apprentice One, Nefarius has no working AC, he multiplies Penetration Ability by only 1.
*vs. Apprentice Two, Nefarius has managed to find the right AC, his Penetration Ability is multiplies by more than 1.
*vs. Friga herself, his AC is good, plus he knows her name (or something), his Penetration Ability is multiplies by more than 2. Luckily Friga also gets her Art scores for MR.
And a new question arises (actually more than one):
- What happens, when covering others with own Parma, and the Magus has Spell Mastery: Resistance with the offending spell? Should it not only double the magus' MR? And not the MR of the other people covered, thay only get the Parma-share, right?
- What if one Magus covers another (full) magus with Parma? And the non-Parma Magus has the Resistance Mastery with the offending spell? Will his - and only his - MR total be doubled? Or will it have no effect, because it's the Mastery of the Parma-creator that counts?
- How is the use of ACs defined? Can a maus grab a handfull of hair while casting, hoping one (or more) are ACs to help penetrate the target(s) of his spell? IMHO he should need to have identified, that a certain object is an AC and to what. Because he needs to include this "order" when casting the spell.
PS Friga Glacialis in the example is in fact my character in my newly started saga. She does in fact have 2 apprentices! She was created and playes for 27 game years in an ond 4th saga, and converted and exported to a new spin off saga. Back then, it wasn't a rule for us, that apprentices only learn Parma by themselves after swearing the code. So now the danger-seeking Hoplite suffers from lower effective Parma, becsue she needs to protect the apprentices.
That seems best to me. The AC allows you to tailor your spell to a single target. Thus it applies whether the resistance is innate (Forms or Might) or artificial (Parma or granted by an artefact of some sort).
As far as the spell mastery issues, I'd again make it apply only to the magus with that mastery (since mastery is a personal thing), and only if they raised the parma themselves. Certainly, a magus with the relevent mastery but someone else's parma shouldn't get it because their knowledge and understanding aren't incorporated into the parma.
I think it should be perfectly possible to use an AC if you don't know if it's the right one. You'll soon discover that when you scry the wrong location or the victim strides through the flames and smacks you in the jaw with an entirely mundane but heavy axe. The one question I'd ask is how many ACs can you work into a single spell. More than 1 per round seems obscene, frankly.
Fhtagn
Again, we seem in agreement.
Spell Mastery is personal. I'd only give this bonus to the Parma-creator and only to himself. After all, his Art scores don't affect any protected comrades either.
But think about this: If the person protected by another's Parma is a magus, his Art scores helps in his MR. So knowing Ignem proects from fire, but why doesn't Protection Mastery of "Rain of Abysmal Flame" help?
I don't think it should, but one could argue this!
Perhaps one should add the Spell Mastery: Arcane Connection. This lest the caster use a number of Extra different ACs in a single casting, equal to Mastery Level. Since they don't stack, it's of no use having several ACs vs. the same target. But This Mastery lets you have better Penetration against a whole group of tagrgets, who're all affected by the same, single spell. Either an Area spell, or something multicast at several targets.
This is a parallel to "Multicasting" and can't be used to boost against a single target. I don't like it if it instead gave a higher bonus then the AC type/quality otherwise dictates. Use the Mastery "Penetration" for this.
That would be my take, I think. With the note, that an AC to thing A, is never of any help Penetrating thing B, even if thing B has somehow inherited his Magic Resistance from A.
I think that tells us both what happens when things are cast through an Aegis at people and when characters are sharing a Parma.
You need to be able to at least cast intellego spells using Arcane Connections without knowing who/what the target is. That's often what the effect of many intellego spells is --- to tell you what an Arcane Connection belongs to.
If you are trying to cast an effect on multiple targets with a random handful of ACs then I think you just calculate the Penetration separately for each target. Which just means that you have a separate Penetration Bonus.
On the other hand, what if you are trying to cast an effect on a target with a handful of ACs in the hope that at least one of the ACs really belong to the target? Or if you are casting an effect on a multiple targets and some of the AC don't belong to any of the possible targets? In that case, I think that I would just add a number of botch dice equal to the number of extraneous ACs. So, it's not a problem if the effect is cast OK, but it increases the chance of a botch.
Finally, I don't think that I'd allow you to use sympathetic connections unless you know which AC they belong with.