Hello,
I may have confused myself regarding Aegis of the Hearth operations. Could somebody help?
Say a level 25 Aegis has been raised, but its Penetration is only 15.
Along come an assortment of Might 20 creatures, say a fire breathing dragon, a beguiling faerie, a spell-casting giant wife, and a devilish troublemaker.
The Aegis can't keep any of them out. But how are their spells and supernatural abilities affected once they are in the Aegis?
It would not be able to keep them out, but their supernatural abilities and powers are still affected as normal.
Perhaps I shouldn't have included a spell-casting giant-wife in my list of examples. Spell-casting is easy to understand.
It is supernatural abilities and powers that I am unclear on. I keep trying to map them to enchanted devices carried into an Aegis. There was a thread a while back that was,.. inconclusive if I recall correctly.
People debate about the penalty for being inside the Aegis needing to penetrate or not.
Based on HoH: MC p. 22. and HMRE you can conclude that Supernatural Abilities are penalized by the same as the Hearthbeast ability of the Bjornaer AKA: -1/magnitude of the Aegis.
In case of items there is no Spellcasting roll, so it is reasonable to lower the Penetration of the item instead of the non-existing Casting Total. So you can lower the Penetration by Aegis lvl / 2.
So anyone without magic resistance is at the mercy of supernatural powers, even under the protection of the Aegis.
That seems wrong somehow.
I would simply apply the full penalty the Aegis would usually confer unto the spells. A hermetic guideline with the most similar effect, a general penalty of all supernatural powers, (implicitly realm specific; see Paralysis of the Gift [HP, p. 86] and Bind the Devil's Hands [RoP:I, p. 122] ) applies the same penalty to all Magic-aligned spells and Supernatural Abilities while increasing the Might Cost of Powers in a similar manner to what you propose.
A mediocre lvl 40 Aegis will impose -8 penalty. Most of Supernatural powers generate a total based on Characteristics + Ability + Aura. A rather good Char of +3, a quite strong 6+ ability and a Magic Aura of 3 means you have 3+6+3+d10 penalized by the Aegis with -8, so 4+d10.
Let's see a specific example: Entrancement.
You will have 4+D10 for your Entrancement Total vs your opponent's Stamina (+2) + 6 (for Questionable command) + d10.
So 4 + d10 VS. 8 + d10. It is highly improbable that your hedgey could do anything serious inside the Aegis.
8 pawns of vis a year, and you'd want a casting total of at least 60, and closer to 80, as an Aegis without penetration generally is bad.
I'm thinking 40 is not mediocre.
A, A minimal Aegis is lvl20, so that is the 'zero' on the scale.
B, A rather strong Aegis in Durenmar is lvl60 with 60+ Penetration at least bc it is capable of keeping outside a Might 60 creature (King Fir).
C, It is highly probable that most of the covenants use Wizard's Vigil to generate the required Casting Total/Penetration.
We can assume that the Aegis of Durenmar is cast by mercurians in communion/vigil. So a really powerful Aegis costs 6 Vim Vis, and somebody with a RegoVim Casting Total of 60+d10. It is like Stamina 2 + Phil 4+1 + ArtesLib 4+1 + Rego 20 + Vim 20 + some Virtue for +3 (like Method Caster, Cyclic Magic, etc) + Aura 6 + d10. That is 61+d10, plus bonus from Penetration Ability 5+1(Rego/Vim).
That means you can generate a 67+d10 vs lvl10 if you cast it in communion with 5 other mercurian mage. That means you can generate 57+d10 Penetration. You need 1 extra pawn of Vis for 59+d10, which is 60+ Penetration in most of the cases.
So 7 Vim Vis for a really powerful Aegis.
On a scale of 20-60+ a level 40 Aegis is a medium strenght protection.
(Yeah, you need 3 magi with Wizard's Vigil lvl40 or 4 magi with lvl 30 Vigil, but that's how mature covenants work AKA cooperation.)
A level 40 Aegis is not mediocre at all. It is a fairly strong Aegis, well above the Average Aegis strength.
It is about what you would expect an established Autumn covenenat with several powerful magi to have. Only a few covenants (like Durenmar or Magvillus, both of which are known to have exceptionally strong Aegis) can be expected to have a more powerful Aegis.
The average strength of the Aegis averaged over all covenants is probably around level 25-30.
Unlikely to be higher, considering that many covenants won't have any ReVi specialist, and thus won't have anybody that can even learn the higher level versions.
While this thread is about a hypothetical level 25 Aegis with a Penetration of 15, and asking if it inhibits in any way a creature with Might 20 and assorted powers.
(including any mundanes sheltering in the Aegis)
Maybe.
With Penetration 15 it won't be able to stop a Might 20 creature from entering.
It is unclear if the effects the Aegis has on foreign spellcasting inside the Aegis needs to penetrate or not. If it needs to penetrate it won't be able to penetrate the MR of a Might 20 creature, and thus have no effect.
If the Aegis does not need to penetrate for those effects, it would have the regular effects on their spells/powers - subtract half the level of the Aegis from the Casting Total/Penetration of all foreign spells/supernatural abilities/powers. This won't help anyone without Magic Resistance that is targeted by some creature power, since it doesn't matter how low the Penetration is if the target has no MR.
So I can probably assume that if the creature's Powers need to reach a certain target number to have the desired effect (eg Second Sight, Cursing, spellcasting, etc), then the Aegis will have an effect.
But mundanes get no effective benefit sheltering within an Aegis with insufficient Penetration.
I've always read Aegis as affecting all spells and magic effects cast within the Aegis. While the magi casting a spell, or the being using a magical effect may have magical resistance, the effects and spells do not have magic resistance. I think most people in this thread have the same thought.
The penetration of the Aegis is irrelevant about weakening spells and effects cast within the Aegis, as things without magical resistance, the Aegis does not need to penetrate.
The Core rulebook says very little about supernatural effects unfortunately. I do like Toronus's interpretation. Using the same effects on spells, - half the Aegis level, for Supernatural effects seems harsh.
Casting totals of 40 in a magi's area of expertise are not too hard to achieve, A supernatural effects of 20 is incredibly challenging. Reducing effects by the aegis magnitude means an Aegis is meaningful (even a weak Aegis is causing -4), but not absolute proof against the supernatural.
Quite. There is only the exception, that a magus' Parma or creature's MR protects spells they cast on themselves.