This is how my troupe interprets the Parma as well, with this significant difference. (Remember, I'm only addressing the issue of the Pink Dot Loophole here) A mage's Parma protects him/her from magical effects (as stated), but does not in any way protect them from any mundane component. The best example here is an enchanted weapon, and let's say it's triggering effect is when it strikes someone (or thing). The sword (or whatever) strikes a magus and pierces his skin. My troupe would rule that the wizard takes whatever mundane damage the weapon did, but the magical effect is still resisted by his Parma, unless it is Penetrated, of course. Otherwise wizards would mass-produce magic weapons for their grogs and another Schism War (or twelve!) would soon break out.
It was just a thought. You are correct.
Too late, we've been playing this way for years.
No, unless the attacking mage's spell created and targeted the defender as part of a single spellcasting. We had a mage create a spell called Sudden Staff (I know, dorky name) that created a staff-sized hunk of lumber, which in an ensuing round could be used to cast Piercing Shaft of Wood. In this case it is not resisted. If the spell created and projected the staff in a single spell it would be resisted.
These are the questions that usually take up 1-3 hours of our weekly playing time. Ah, I love this game, but it can cause no end of headaches. One at a time: the turnip can hit a magus unresisted and stays a turnip. If the responsible wizard then cast Suppressing the Wizards' Handiwork while it was in the other mage's lap the fire would do it's damage, yes. (That gives my Flambeau mage an interesting idea....) Magically sharpened swords, again according to our house rules, are unresisted. Here's the crux: the sharpness is a quality of the blade itself, not some "spell-coating" that makes it do more damage.
I actually used the term "hybrid" as a synonym of "house rules", simply to imply a combination of different rules sets. I was unclear on that. Sorry for the confusion.
In that case, LOTS. Enough to completely hijack this thread. :mrgreen:
Guess ill have to make a thread of it sometime.
What always amazes me though is the fact that we´ve had a large group playing for some time, and yet there is oh so much to be found here that just never came up, or ever became a problem for us...
Including a few embarassing rulereading mistakes.
If REgoed to attack, yes. If created beyond natural perfection, yes.
Its an active spell so you get a turnip bounce. Why would it be dispelled? Parma protects against magic stuff, doesnt dispel.
Or at least, that would be my take on the above two matters.
But as already mentioned, the important part is what the SG decides, handwavium is a very good substance. :mrgreen:
Off the subject, but one guy I play with came up with the idea for what may be the most powerful spell ever invented, and for which he was threatened with much arm-waving if he ever tried to invent and use. A 10 or 15th Lvl CrHe that creates a Near amount of hay, at range of Near or Sight. Sounds silly, but think of the implications:
You can fill a room full of people with hay, and they are debilitated for many rounds trying to get out. Light it on fire and it's even better.
Being chased down any corridor? Summon hay to fill the hallway behind you. Ignite if that is your style.
Falling off a castle wall? Creo Hay beneath you. You will still take some damage but not nearly as much.
It works vs. magi because even though their parmae will cause it to form around them, they are still trapped for rounds and rounds.
It's virtually foolproof unless you have heavy countering firepower, but even so that gives you at least 1 round to make good your escape, or at least get out of Near range...and cast another one.
Needless to say he didn't actually do it, but this presents the ever-present problem of rule abuse, for which there are only two solutions: armwaveite, and what I call "The Hastur Response", AKA the Hand of God.
True from most people'stake on the rules in the book. but Bash was proposing an alternate parma where enchanted items (such as swords) could pass through parma while leaving their enchantments behind, if the sword leaves the enchantment behind why not the blazing inferno as well?
On a totally unrelated note I didn't find anything interesting in my mailbox today either
On a related note here's a thread I posted back in 2005 (I guess I've already placed all of these on our wiki Yair, so you'll find little new here)
I also have not found a duration fire spell that truly felt right. I dabbled with the idea of a MuIg(An) spell that turned a fire into a guard dog that would protect you as long as you kept feeding it wood to "eat".
Bargain spells don't actually have to be rituals, you can do plenty without sending your level over 50.
Until can be handled in a way that makes things very very cool. It can also be abused. It seems more like a rego vim spell than a duration and that "can not be dispelled" I suspect is a whole wasp's nest full of brokenness just waiting for the correct tactless player to kick it into swarming. But it is the same level as year and it's not that much harder to dispel. I'd allow an intellego vim spell to determine the condition to release the spell. Looking at the intellego vim guidelines on page 158 level 5 detects any active magic two magnitudes gives technique and form three magnitudes gives the casting magus's sigil (from HoH: True Lineages), I'd say that the condition for releasing a spell is about the same level of detail as the casting sigil. That means level 25 gets you a range touch spell that figures out how to lift the curse. That's probably a lower level than a perdo vim to dispell the effect.
Authors' copies tend to go out after copies to paying customers. I am virtually certain that the comp copies haven't gone out yet (because I normally get an email from John asking for address confirmation just before they do). Commercial copies should be out there, if everything went according to plan. Which might not have happened; the Nephews are very busy right now.
And, Erik, don't forget that your comp copy doesn't end the NDA. Only a copy in the shops does that...
Correction to my earlier post/s on this topic: after consulting my sodales I erred in my interpretation of the magic resistance we use slightly. In the above example the turnip would bounce off a parma, because the turnip is a magical effect even if the fire is normal. This still prevents the absurdity proposed by the Pink Dot Loophole: the parma protects the magus from magical effects and magically created media, but it does not protect against naturally existing objects. A sword with Blade of the Virulent Flame cast on it can still hit a magus and he gets no resistance vs. the sword itself; his parma does resist the BoVF, or the pink dot, or magical poison, what have you. The SG may (emphasis on may) allow an extra Damage bonus if the blade had a round or few to heat up: the fire is magical, but its secondary effects are not.
So your group makes a distinction between a transformed object (the turnip) and items that have magic cast upon them.
Is a change in weight a transformation? in other words if magus A has an 80 lb cannon ball and alters it to weigh as much as a softball then whips it at magus B is magus B hit with an object that weighs 0.5 lbs or 80lbs or does it bounce ?
I believe that's a good way of looking at it, but I'll have to check in this Sunday to be sure. I'll put it this way: Magic Resistance protects against magical effects but not necessarily the entire affected item itself. Blade of Virulent Flame doesn't magically alter the entire weapon itself, it merely covers the sword with fire--it's still a sword, and so can penetrate the parma unresisted. The fire is magical and so it is resisted if the sword strikes the magus. The fire-into-turnip changes the entire fire, its whole form is magically altered, not just some exterior component or part. So the fire turnip will be resisted.
Good question. I...am not sure. My gut says it would bounce f resisted, and if it penetrated would only weigh 0.5 lbs. I think.
Avoiding this was one of the main aims of the ArM5 Magic Resistance rules. In ArM4 and earlier, there were endless debates on the mailing lists over what the rules were: is this resisted? Is this? In ArM5, there are hardly any, and when there are consensus seems to be reached quickly.
For a published rule, it's very important that people can work out what it is. If you don't like it (and Pink Dot is odd), you can House Rule it. Of course, the ideal would be something clear, easy to apply, and universally liked. So far, however, no-one has managed to come up with that for Magic Resistance. If we do ArM6, we'll have another go. Wish us luck...
For House Rules, of course, relying on troupe consensus over the sort of thing that is resisted is fine.
The object is under an active spell, and so should bounce.
Oh ill wish you any and all luck indeed, but i most certainly doubt you can create something that is logical(in context that is) and works WELL all or at least most of the time. Too many ways to create loopholes.
You know, the easy way out is to simply abolish the unresisted category entirely. End of debate. Storyguides can go gray at a more leisurely pace. Imagine the extra hours of roleplaying we'd all get!
blink I like this. Finesse to throw a stone? Resisted. Magically tampered sword? Resisted. Falling damage onto a magically created bridge? Resisted. InIm? Not resisted--the spell isn't targetting you.
Entirely? So if I want to cast Wings of the Soaring Wind on myself, I have to penetrate the Magic Resistance of every creature in Mythic Europe?
I think this would just change the debate to "what counts as targeting someone?". Should Ball of Abysmal Flame be resisted? The spell is CrIg; it creates fire. The target isn't the person who gets burned by the fire, it's the fire. Should Blade of the Virulent Flame be resisted? The sword is the target, not the magus.
Spell-list games, like D&D, can just state for each spell whether or not it is resisted. (3e did, 4e handles things a bit differently and, AFAIR, doesn't really have magic resistance at all.) ArM needs a general rule, and this turns out to be a really, really hard problem.
I wasn't serious. But keeping with the folly, every spell would be resisted by a critter with MR. So the Wings example wouldn't come up unless the air you're using somehow has MR. Same with the sword. It would be easy to end silly debates by saying: "Does X have Magic Resistance? Yes? OK, it's resisted. No? OK, the effect occurs."
But a sword under Edge of the Razor would be resisted, right?
Incoming: massive headache
Well, this is mostly the case in 5th: if there's magic on a thing (be it a rego spell, a muto spell, or something created by magic), it is resisted.
But this brings up the pink dot: even a low level muto spell on your opponent's sword makes it into a "magical" object (see edge of the razor above: Even by your rule, it is transformed, and thus resisted.
And here's a plug for my deliciously deviant MR rules from way back, in which magical acts are resisted but not magical effects. It's somewhere online here.
Not in our house rules. BTW, as I said in another post, I recently looked at the house rules our SG posted on our covenant website (flagrant plug alert!: http://www.orderofhermes.com ) and noticed our main SG (aka "God") has changed some of them from previous rulings, and has since contradicted himself as I've brought this very discussion up at our last couple sessions. So Ray has some 'splaining to do or our headache will get worse.
We've never let Edge of the Razor be resisted for obvious reasons (it's a cheat), and also since it's a Ritual with Perm. duration the blade in question is not enchanted, it has had its essential nature changed. It has no active magic on it, will not glow or smell or tinkle under an InVi spell, it is now a VERY sharp blade, but not magical. If it was temporary and the sharpness an effect of an active magic the best a mage could hope for would be to resist the spell and thus not suffer the +1 damage. Successful resistance would NOT stop the blade from striking.
In our long history of playing several players have created spells for things like Creo Sword, or Creo Staff (for use with Piercing Shaft..) and these are NOT resisted either. If you make a CrTe (Req: Re) that "creates a javelin of steel that then flies to a target doing +X damage" it is resisted; like BoAF and PoF these are magically created media that target a magus in the same casting (the same spell does both). Piercing Shaft (MuHe, Req: Re) is NOT resisted because it doesn't create AND fling an object, it merely alters a natural object and flings it.
I realize this seems contradictory to what I have said earlier, but like I said I'm going to have a good long talk with our SG about this and get it straightened out.
It is a vat of worms indeed. I'm starting to think that parmae should not resist a Mu-transformed object at all, only Mu spells that target the maga. I would rather be vulnerable to Blade of Virulent Flame (or whatever), which is at least a legitimate combat spell, than allow some ninnies to get around their combat deficiencies by casting little cantrips on all my grogs' swords.
