Breaking wards

Yes it does. Why wouldn't it? What book is that from?

p139 Main Rule book:

Ward Against Wood (ReHe25) The caster is protected from non-enchanted wood......

I am not giving more than that. As you can see, enchanted items present a whole different matter to your standard personal ward.

I gained an experience point in my Ars Magica ability today :smiley:

I never knew that was there. That is a very important consideration.

Thank you Lady P

I suspect that if you increase magnitude by one for part, then anything that has any part of it as wood would be warded. Or maybe you just need a Vi requisite for magic weapons.

Your magic wood weapon is only part wood, it is also part spell/magic so that there is Vi component as well as he component. This is just my speculation though why the magic weapons are not repelled. It would be interesting to hear what others say about it.

So, the typical debate of polka dotted swords means that they make your ward against metal useless?

Xavi

I've been going through the guidelines on wards (here meaning both circle Wards Against Form and defensive effects) and, frankly, they're a total mess. They're riddled with legacy effects and internally inconsistent.

There are effects for redirecting single attacks, effects for warding against things you can or cannot see, things which grant soak bonuses and things which grant absolute immunity. ReHe3 lets you make wood dance. ReHe4, however, is required if said wood is being used with hostile intent. ReHe15 is required to grant total immunity to wood, despite the ReHe3 being the equivalent guidelines to the ReIg 4 guideline used to grant soak.

So ... protective spells are weird and silly. After all, take Tytalus Prison from Covenants which can hold a person in a circle, but is not a ward against humans. Presumably a Ward with a capital W is one which prevents the target (whatever that might be, rules-wise or otherwise) which affecting things on the other side or the ward itself, but the rules don't mention it.

The "mundane" requirement occurs only in the Herbam guidelines, and to my mind looks as if it is meant to mean "inanimate wood" rather than "living trees" - thus protecting you from arrows and staves but not an Ent. Either way, it's yet another inconsistency and should probably be regarded as "ward against wooden weapons but not wooden people with Might".

Frankly, wards and Wards are still the single biggest piece of work required on the game, but easily house-ruled. Applying Rule 7 neatly gets rid of the pink dot effect and makes things work until an official rewrite happens.

Keep in mind that putting a spell on a weapon does not make the weapon innately and intrisically magical. It just makes it a normal weapon with a spell on it. It takes labwork to actually enchant it and make it a magical weapon.

A sword with a spell on it is an enchanted weapon (a weapon that has been enchanted).

A sword with inbuilt magical effects is a magic weapon.

Xavi

I don't think this is right.

See the section in the Laboratory Chapter of ArM5 about Magic Enchantments.

An enchanted weapon is either an invested item, a lesser enchantment, or a charged item. All of which are examples of enchanted devices.

A sword with a spell on it, is just a sword with a spell on it. Although it is now contaminated with magic and so can be resisted with magic resistance.

Corrected. It is in page 96.

The wording could have been clearer in any case.

I think I am giving all my grogs a sword enchanted with an effect to make it appear as non magical to level 6 or below spells. That will be a PeVi 1 (pers, mom, ind) effect. Invest a few levels in penetration and there we go with a sword that ignores wards. Easy to do in a single season.

Cheers,

Xavi

But hits MR...

Hence the investment in penetration. I can easily build one or 2 of those in a season as minor items with a +30 to +40 penetration or so.

Xavi

30 or 40 wouldn't be sufficient to bypass some magi MR.

No. I agree with that. It would be enough to deal with the other creatures that I worry about, like imps et al. For the big dudes the grogs are simply meat shields: bring the magi to deal with those. Still, a MR of 40 is quite massive, on the archmage range for most of the order. The magi of the order are not necessarily player minmaxers, you know :slight_smile:

Also, other mages will have grogs as well, and they might be protected by a touch range ward against weapons themselves. As such I need a way to deal with them as well, even if the grogs cannot hit the enemy mage.

Besides, do you try to imply that I want my grogs to kill magi instead of supernatural creatures? How do you dare!! :laughing: I will not submit to frosty breath, thank you 8)

Cheers,

Xavi