One of mi players want´s to enchant one full chain mail armor because he likes more soak from the armor.
¿What base level do you think i need to use for this?, and, ¿It´s soo much 1+ soak per magnitude above the base level?
Im a little worried because i think one effect of this kind can render some character absolutely overpowered.
I was going to recommend using "Doublet of Impenetrable Silk" as a boiler-plate, to create your own Terram-based equivalent, buy your suggestion might, in fact, work better, though I'd be somewhat wary of allowing the sort of unlimited advances premitted by a General guideline...
Fortify the Knightly Attire
(Muto Terram 15)
R: Personal. D: Sun. T: Individual.
Makes a suit of armour as hard as... something really hard! Increasing its Soak by +3.
(Base 3, +2 Sun, +2 Affect Metal, +4 levels for Constant effect)
Constant is 4th, it should be MuTe16
(Base 3, +2 Sun, +2 Affect Metal, +1 2/day)
Don't forget the +7 SM bonus for armor, if your MT is high enough.
I was including +3 for an Environmental Trigger, but now realize that such a strategy isn't really practical for an item such as armour that isn't worn 'round the clock (too uncomfortable)...
Thanks for the repplies, i think this kind of guideline coul work well, mi problem is not with the hermetic magic, but with a companion that has a Workshop, it´s an armorer with the "touched by magic" virtue (Pg 71 city and guilds).
He has a total for Workshop of 36 anda can exert him in the workshop for a bigger total, (The workshop exertion result in pg 74 is very kind for, not like the experiments chart) for a more impressive total.
He Makes an armor natural +8, and then he enchants the armor for another +18 to soak, Total, he can give another characters an armor with a total soak of 35, too much, but im not very worried about the soak, im worried because with those guidelines i can´t imagine hermetic magus doing this kind os stuff, and i suppose hermetic magic could be better than this, but maybe im wrong.
The total for the workshop, maybe i forget something is 36 because:
+5 (Strenght)+11 (9+2 Puissant ability) craf armor ability,+3 (One assistant),+3 (magic aura),+8 (Excelent quality item), +7(Bonus from shape and form from armor to protect the wearer).
I would suggest looking in HoH:S under the Flambeau section at their spell, something like "Hardness of Adamantine." I'm trying to do this from memory, so I hope I'm not leading you astray.
Chris
I think the failure here is allowing anything above +3. Even if you can do a 10th magnitude spell it doesn't mean such a spell exists. There are natural limits on how much you can reinforce. If the troupe wants to play at this level of power, by all mean allow it. It only means your player will be attacked when he's not wearing his armor or his adversary will rip through the other grogs to get to him.
I agree, making a boost sell like this open-ended only spells disaster. If one magus safeguards himself to the extreme, all encounters will either be ok for his sodales and trivial to him or challenging to him and spell death for the rest. Or lead to silly things like the powerful creatures going straight for this one magus every time.
I played once - if only shortly - with a player obsessed with safeguarding his magis for every concievable threat. It was boring and annoying.
There is a reason why MuCo or MuTe spells are limited to just a little extra Soak. And even stacking these small boosts will lead towards extreme situations mentioned above. And apart from the game-balance perspective, there really is a physical limit to the efficiency of an armour, no matter how magical it might be, because Mythic physics applies.
Thanks for the repplies again, i found the problem in the mats, the crafter can only make Excelent quality items with a bonus equal to their craft level /3, effectively this makes their armors with only a +3 bonus and indirectly affects the magic craft reducing their workshop total by 5.
A magus who really doesn't want to get hurt and dedicates some significant time to the problem is going to achieve some pretty impressive results. A soak of 20 is possible for a 0-stamina, no-soak-virtue magus using only material printed in the core rulebook. While 35 is definitely up there, it's not outside the realms of feasible.
I'd say the biggest problem with enchanted armor is it is an obvious source of the nigh-invulnerability of the wearer. Magi - and by inference anything else with a might score - have so many nasty things they can do to a person who wraps themselves in metal, and many don't even need high spell levels - which means high penetration totals.
If the enchantment effect on the armor was caused by a sun-duration spell cast on it, destroying the armor wouldn't even count as depriving the magus of his magical power. Some magi may even do it as a prank, or as a strange Tytalean sign of affection.
That assumes that a suit of armour protects equally against all kinds of damage.
The Fried Knight, level 15:
Base 5 CrIg, heat an object enough to make it glow red-hot.
+2 Voice
The Drowned Knight, level 5(!!!):
Base 2 CrAq, fill a container(the armour) with water
Voice +2, Diameter +1
:mrgreen:
Not that a good old Pilum of Fire wouldnt be just fine and dandy, though you would probably need several more before you get the armour hot enough to injure the wearer all by itself.
Well i would actually say that BECAUSE "mythin physics" applies, there isnt any limit.
And it IS MUTO spells anyway, they´re supposed to go beyond whats possible within reality.
And as Kid Gloves says, even with just the main book RAW, you can get soak up considerably without too much difficulty. But doing it without getting warping points and in a way that doesnt invite one or another sort of roundabout attacks(like the drowned knight above), thats pretty hard.
I think taht "The Drowned knight" need one higher magnitde to rego requisite and effect to make that tthe water don't run away, but is tre tath all the duration the water'll fill thehe armor, but the armor have open parts anyway... But it could be tath did'nt need it.
Because the actual amount of water needed to fill out the space between body and armour is so minimal, my assumption is that since its an ongoing spell, it should simply keep creating as much water as is needed to keep the armour a fishtank for the duration. My take on individual Aquam individual size is roughly 10 cbm and to fill up an armour will require less than half a percent of that total at any given time.
Still, adding a Rego requisite would give it a bit more finesse while still keeping the spell at just level 10, so its not a problem.
Making the water look like blood would make for an interesting show. Up the pressure of the fluid created and the amount by raising the spell level to around 15 and you´ve got yourself a tinman spray painter. :mrgreen:
Of corse, you could change it from water to oil and then throw a small PoF on the target. The chimney effect will cause the oil to do far more damage than normal. AND heat up the armour, making sure that if the target is still alive when the oil is gone(unlikely), probably isnt alive for long. If +1 size and the Rego requisite is added the spell could doublewhammy the target by causing BOTH drowning AND fire/heat damage. Very evil version of the spell.
Hardness of adamantine from Socitates makes the metal supernaturally strong and gives +2 soak. As a range "personal" duration sun enchantment on the armor it would be level 20 ( you don't want to have constant duration, it would take more vis, more levels, and an anal retentive storyguide could make your armor warp itself)
On the other hand the fourth edition parma fablua had rules that said muto terram or Herbam enchantments could give a bonus of +1 soak per magnitude.
An option would be to get a really thick suit of armor with a high soak due to the shear quantity of metal and then enchant it to be weightless.
Well, magi taken to the extreme trying to protect themselves would quite concievably also have Ward Against Heat & Flames running
An armour isn't a container, and it certainly isn't waterproof. A chainmail hauberk and coif (which typically has the face uncovered) will by no means cause drowning if filled with water. But sure, there are many other ways to challenge a magus. But I've seen one magus built to try and take into account every threat possible. Apart from the beefed up armour and natural toughness, wards against fire as well as mundane metal and wooden objects he is also Giant Blooded so no normal T:Ind Corpus spells affects him, without an extra magnitude of power. And his Parma is also high. He will surely have Shirek of the Empending Shafts as well, along with a Terram version. Also, he teleports away whenver he is threatened even slightly. Tell me if that's fun? (It's not! I can tell you that as a frustrated SG!)
Well, Muto does cover the unnatural. But many MuCo spells allows the human to adapt an animal trait - like Gift of the Bear's Fortitude - but these spells are listed with drawbacks (clumsy hands IIRC?) and a limit to how much Soak bonus. The MuTe spells to improve Armour Protection are also listed with a limit IIRC.
Waterproof, not even close no. A container, it most certainly is(well depending on type of armour at least).
Try PeIm on everything he carries so that he cant feel them. Try walking without feeling your shoes/boots, not impossible, but extremely hard(and wobbly and slow to get anywhere). Fighting without feeling your weapon, totally impossible. Its a pretty lowlevel spell so you should be able to get quite a good penetration.
Create an illusion in front or around him, or make the ground look more or less flat or level than it is, he´s going to start falling alot quite soon most likely.
There are always ways around defenses.
Presteris of Flambeau, one of our mages has a similar spell. It gets the target "container" filled with mud. As described, it tends to be used to fill the helmet of the target, but boots and other implements have been used as well. However, the target does not keep reprenishing itself. Once it is removed from the contaner it does not disappear until the duration ends, but the container remains empty if emptied. Otherwise it would require a Rego requisite in order to prevent removing.
Xavi
I see him getting ridiculed by Flambeau at tribunal for the teleports. "The Invincible Coward Giant".
Attack his base. Trap the teleport destination. Melt his lab.
Fast-cast Mirror of Opposition (Corpus) on the teleport spell. Then you only need to beat his penetration, not his parma. And the results ought to be amusing, though I'm not quite sure what they would be. (Um, probably not possible on a Leap of Homecoming - too high level. Ah well.)
It's common to hear "it's the stories that matter". It's equally common to hear complaints about character power... as if the only stories of worth that can ever be told directly deal with killing someone or being killed.
Someone willing to go to the ends of the earth should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labor. If the character has spent their Arts, their XP, and their player's ingenuity towards being invulnerable, that sounds like they've got a neat schtick carved out for themselves. Why bother trying to kill that character? Let the saga go where you want it to without shoe-horning in a specific and crafty way to undermine their effort.
Would you bother to go out of your way to humiliate a character with tons of Etiquette and social interaction spells? What's the point of playing if the GM feels threatened by a character and responds with contrived threats? It's not Ars Magica at that point, it's Mother May I.
Eventually he will piss someone off who will create a PeVi (in) device. Whenever a ReCo spell is cast around it, it goes off casting a unraveling form of corpus spell to counter the corpus spell cast.
Then you just need a corpus spell to hold him still (designed for his size).
These would be created before whomever declares the wizard war.