Totally agreed. And as noted, its not so hard to become invulnerable to MANY things, but to be invulnerable to ALL, thats ridiculously hard. Im yet to find a magi i couldnt kill if i really wanted to...
You, as SG, should not allow anything "overpowered", and that's 100% up to you. If you are not having fun, then the game is doomed. First talk to the Player, and/or the Troupe - if you can't agree, then find another group. Sometimes that's easier said than done, but imo it's better than working hard so only the players have fun, and not you.
That said, a simple ReFo ward can stop 100% of all (Form) attacks, so if you can't outthink something like really good armour, you're in the wrong game. Really. Lots of suggestions above, lots more where they came from.
I agree 100%.
Anael - In Ars Magica, spells don't always get better just because they're bigger. Doublet of Impenetrable Silk does not work because "a Base 4 MuAn spell adds +3 to Soak", it works because a Base 4 MuAn spell can "change something in a minor unnatural way". That might mean that Base 5 (major unnatural) is an improvement, but it does not mean that base 10 is better still.
You make silk like chain mail, then like plate mail, and then... well, that's about it. Ars spells do not work like another-game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned, where all higher and higher level spells just keep getting better and better. They work because they meet better guidelines - and unless those guidelines are open-ended, there is a limit.
The MuTe to turn steel armor to "adamantine" for +2 on top is, I would suggest, that limit, as far as magical "harder and harder" goes.
That's absurd.
At one point, the armor simply doesn't break or bend - and that's the limit. But because the armour doesn't cover 100% of the body, that is not 100% protection. So the difference between each single circle in a suit of steel chain of armor enchanted to +10 and enchanted to +1000 is not going to change an attack to the neck or hands, or a joint - which has to bend. And even if a knight is fully encased in a hard +1000 plate suit in 1400's style, a club from a giant is going to knock them flying and rattle them around like a beetle in a bottle - they'll be dead, but their armour will still be perfect. 
You don't have to "kill" the character, but a good SG needs to make the Player feel their character could be killed. Why? For one or more of several possible reasons: 1) Because "challenges" are what stories are about. b) Because "invulnerable" characters are boring for (almost) everyone concerned. iii) Because Players/Characters should always have a goal, and if that's their "neat schtick", as you put it, then actually letting them attain that 100% guaranteed is a disservice - keep them hungry, if only a little.
Further, if an SG is "trying to kill" the player/characters, their confused. It's not "SG vs. the Players", it's the story vs. the characters - making the BBEG bigger is dull - making them more evil is the way to keep them playing.
So - think ahead, think outside the box. Don't fight the same all the time. Don't fall for the "bigger numbers" trap, where only bigger is deadlier, or where every bigger spell creates bigger numbers. And allow the players/character to "win", but also keep them guessing and aware that there is no one solution to all their fears.
Good luck.
Of course.
No, that assumes realistic and NON-magical improvement.
Making a suit of armour as a magical item that includes an effect that makes the armour shape perfectly along with the body of the wearer isnt a problem at all. Regardless the amount of protection it has.
You might need a crazy high spell to get more protection from a piece of metal beyond a point, but that wont change anything unless you´re actually planning to WORK with the metal. Once part of an armour, not breaking or bending doesnt matter if its plate armour anyway. No individual piece of one is meant to.
Enchanting a chain mail would probably need a bit of extra addition to allow the "strings" to remain non-rigid though. A ring mail would be just fine though as its flexibility is provided from the links non-tightness.
You might suggest it, that doesnt mean others have to agree.
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I totally agree. Where things go wrong is when you make the necessary equation that "challenges" necessarily includes "must be able to die by physical violence". That's where you go wrong: there's no need for an SG to "make the Player feel their character could be killed". There's only a need for an SG to feel like the character can be challenged. To say that a character needs to feel like they could be killed (and it being Ars, they certainly can without over-emphasizing that point) undermines their concept simply to implement one (narrow) kind of challenge. Why bother? Is the SG limited in challenges to the point where they must have death-by-violence as a key element of their stories? Why must that avenue of story necessarily be left open despite a player/character's efforts to prepare specifically for that avenue?
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Invulnerable characters usually aren't, and they're only boring if you think that every story has to revolve around stomping characters into the mud. The invulnerable character as a type is commonly found in superhero games, and that's a good place to start when judging how boring those characters are. Is the Thing not worth having around? Hulk? The Juggernaut? If the character is left alive and all others are dead, the story is just as dead as if all the characters had died - I don't see the point in singling out the one character's effort as needing to specifically be undermined in order for an SG to feel like they're in control of their game, even by leveraging violent death as necessary for that sense of control.
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Totally agree here, without reservation.
Hmm good idea. And yes, there are always ways around defences. One of the beauty of Ars Magica. Imaginem was one of the ideas I was toying with to keep things going.
Had the saga not died in its infancy, he'd certainly have been ridiculed and god bad rep. But I'm not a "killer DM" who wants to off him. I just wanted to run some interesting stories which could involve most if not all magi. But the power balance was very hard. Matters challenging to the rest were trivial to him. Threats appropriate for him would mean the others stayed home, with their heads under their pillows.
The saga in question had some pretty drastic and violent themes. There was a lot of infighting among magi, concerning differences of oppinion regarding meddling with the mundane. Also, some magi wholeheartedly believed to be from House Diedne returned to cause havoc. So the stories involved somme matter of life-threatening situations.
And it's not as if one character threatened me as a SG, he was just making things really, really difficult to balance stories for the others. You should certainly be allowed to pursue the concept you want, and enjoy your achievements. A magus focused on social interaction should be given this very responsibility by the covenant, just like the bookish Bonisagus should be given responsibility of the library.
Maybe he enjoyed breezing through the first challenge, causing the opposition to raise the stakes, and then leave his sodales high and dry at the first hint of danger. As mentioned before, the saga died in its infancy. Some if not all of these problems would eventually have been resolved had it continued. I just use this example as a warning, because it bugs me endlessly.
Well, i don´t want to kill mi players, and if i want to do that, its too easy, and as i say in mi second post im not worried about the increased soak, but about the fact that is a companion the charactar who can make that armor, not a magus, and i think is pretty difficult for a magus achieve that level of enchantment.
But now the problem is fixed, i found the break in my mats ^^
I have another question. One of my players wats to increase the basic stats with Muto Instead of Creo.
I´m inclined to think this is possible, but if someone want a permanent increase of stas via muto, he needs a magic enchanted device with constant effect (Enviromental trigger). Maybe is possible give a boost in one stat via muto with only temporary duration.
Y think a good base for a speel that do this is the Gift of the bears fortitude with one increased magnitude (Because soak is only one component of the total Stamina).
For this i think a base guideline: 10 Increase one of your fisical (Mental if the spell is Muto Mentem instead of muto corpus) and 1 point more for every extra magnitude witouth the usual +5 limit (This is because the change is clearly unnatural, if i can transform me in a dragon i can have more than strenght +5) could work well and equilibrated.
What do you think about this guideline ¿?
Such characteristic increasing spells are specifically stated in RAW in guidelines to be Creo spells. You are creating something from nothing. Sure. logically this isn't very different from the increase in Soak a MuCo spell can give. These can also give you certain physical abilities or to a greater degree turn you into an animal with said abilities.
Using Creo might be simply a balance thing, to limit the potential abuse by spreading out the arts needed to increase all stats and abilities. It migth be a technicality, because the CrCo guidelines are well defined regarding permanent spells via rituals (like the healing spells). Another argument could be that Muto covers unnatural changes, often meaning great changes. Becoming stronger isn't unnatural, since you can't really be as strong as an elephant with these spells, but simply as strong as the strongest human.
Looking at specific MuVi guidelines, this technique is limited to changing a spell a few magnitudes up or down, with the need for Creo or perdo for further changes. Using this as a reason, you could argue that these changes are so gerat for the body, that Creo must be used.
Personally, I like using Creo for this. If the magus prefers Muto, try and suggest using MuCo(An) to change into an animal with the features he desires, like the elephant.
If you do decide to use Muto, make sure you don't use lower base levels than the Creo guidelines suggest. I'm pretty sure these are fairly balanced. Especially with the limits like "increase a characteristic by +1 to no more than 0" etc.
Doing this as a spell or device causes Warping.
(Wasn't meaning to contradict or criticize, but to expand on your ideas. Totally on the same page.)
No, it assumes we're using the Ars system as it's presented.
With the Ars system, magical improvement for armour does not result in abstract "bonus armour" - that is, it's not better just because it has a large spell attached. It's better because the spell has improved it somehow by the Guidelines - by making it less vulnerable, harder to break, more protective - for a realistic reason. Not just "because".
The Ars Magica system doesn't do "stuff" - the Guidelines are there specifically to avoid that, to some degree.
But the OP was not talking about Rego magic. So let's not go off topic just to state the obvious.
You seem to think that the Ars magic system works like some cartoony ones, where magic does "stuff", and it all works out. "Spell of Super-Heroism" or "Invulnerability" are not Ars effects, or not very easily.
We're talking about Muto, used to "change" armour into better armour. And higher and higher does not equal infinitely better and better.
In the Ars system, Muto magic changes one substance to another substance, one material to another, or gives a substance/material an unnatural property. It does not change it to some undefined/abstract "magical bonus armour", not like can happen in some games, where +X Armour can always be bettered by +X+1 Armour with a higher spell level. Once the material (here, steel) is "as hard as can be" (which is the definition of adamantium in most game worlds), you have hit that limit.
At some point, using Muto, the armour simply isn't being penetrated - for whatever reasons. The rest of the target, where there is no armour, is still as vulnerable as always. Making the armour "even stronger" is no longer in the equation. And that is the limit.
And you might call it Ars Magica, but that doesn't mean anyone else would recognize it as such.
Not that Ars isn't a great place to start to create your own homebrew system, changing or abandoning central concepts, which is what you clearly have done and successfully, and good for you, but you predictably fail to make that clear.
I tend to agree,
The magic is not about "I want a spell of +3 AC" or whatever,
It is about "I want a spell that makes my armour thicker/denser/whatever, and as a consequence of that has +3 AC",
The guidelines sometimes break down into that sort of talk (+1 for this, +2 for that or the other) but those are just guidelines, the spells themselves should be written to do specific things which then provide a bonus. That bonus can then be looked at in light of the spell guidelines to determine the level,
Abstracting the armor to "even stronger" is shorthand, though - under Muto guidelines you could turn a suit of armor into not only something supremely hard, but also have it as a jelly-like (Muto to retain basic shape around wearer but still moveable, +1 complexity) reactive armor (Intellego prereq, base 2, learn a visible property of a solid object) to intercept incoming blows... giving more +Soak.
I agree that there's a limit on "making it stronger" just for it's own sake: there should be an upper bound on the +Soak gained from rigidity of metal. However, to extend that conclusion to cover all possible +Soak benefits from Muto isn't appropriate. Even if the example above has issues, there will be other additional ways of making the armor "better", and most of them have to do with ingenuity that a character with working knowledge of armor and Muto would have which a player would not - meaning that +magnitude should be given some leeway insofar as it translates to +Soak.
Warped armor:
- can talk, of course
- walks around
- steel gauntlet: the middle-finger rises at inopportune moments
- is vain ("Another scratch")
- always shines
- goes on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (poor magus...)
Sure - harder and harder is only one aspect. Making it bend and contour perfectly with movement could provide another aspect. And have no weight or bulk or encumbrance. And so on.
But once you've made it so hard that nothing can penetrate it, and it fits perfectly, and moves perfectly, and so on... at that point, making each of those effects another +10 Levels bigger doesn't improve anything.
Hence, the limit (of those, at least).
Hrmmm, well, again, up to a point. As I expressed above, I'm not comfortable with AM magic that does "stuff" - the Platonic Form of Better and Even Better Armour loses its persuasiveness for me once you enter Muto, which is unnatural territory.
And where did i say something that contradicts that? I said there is nothing automatic about how getting a higher bonus makes the armour more "this" or less "that"...
Im not talking about Rego either so what are you babbling about?
Lol, you even say it yourself, "not very easily". And im sorry but Ars IS very much a matter of "magic doing stuff".
Or do you claim to be able to explain exactly how each guideline works in detail?
Because you say so? And who said anything about infinetly? I even specifically said that i expect each progressive bonus to be harder to come by.
And again you give the answer yourself. "or gives a substance/material an unnatural property"
Now you´re just being silly. You already contradict the above with "or gives a substance/material an unnatural property".
As hard as can be is completely irrelevant here because as you already said, Muto can give the material UNNATURAL PROPERTIES.
And "definition of adamantium in most game worlds" would be relevant at all here because?
As i already agreed, again, of course. Which again contradicts your above claim that there is a material limit.
Pft, no it most certainly is NOT. This is where its no longer useful or practical. That has nothing at all to do with limits.
Thats complete nonsense. If you´re incapable of fully exploiting a rules system or in this case the almost completely openended guideline system, thats not my problem.
So, you will rather prefer to restrict what players can use as spells based on what they can explain the physics of?
So lets say i come up with the justification of using superfacehardened material based on hypersized molecules layered with flexible ceramics and crystalised carbon string polymer. Mutoed to 1/10 of its normal width and weight... This is something that could be worn by a person but still stop the most powerful modern 152mm Sabot round ever tested at point blank range. Medieval style, you could throw a mountain at the armour and the mountain would be the thing that breaks. Soak bonus somewhere up around a few thousand perhaps? Hard to tell as it goes so far outside the scale its not even funny.
Meanwhile, someone else who has never for example read about Exote Oy, cant get the same insane soak because they cant explain exactly what they´re doing... GUESS WHY most games will accept simplifications?
Because otherwise the player must know what the character needs to know. And vice versa, which becomes even worse.
I understand completely what you said and i even basically agree with it as well. But its simply not possible to take to its logical conclusion. Which is why it shouldnt be too severely implemented at all. Or else someone with knowledge of what is possible can exploit it mercilessly.
:mrgreen:
Exactly. Noone can say specifically where there IS an absolute limit on any individual way of improving a material.
I can think up several ways to strengthen a steel plate that most likely would make you go "-huh, say what?".
Someone else playing might not have a clue but still wants to have a Muto spell that improves an armour with an extra +5 soak, well then they can have it, but the spell base level might shoot up damned high. But the effect will still be described as "making the metal stronger". I wont say that by aligning the molecules coherently but non crystalline the steel can be made 50% stronger...
Muto IS unnatural.
And the "Platonic Form" is the best there could be without unnatural changes.
LOL
I can see it wanting to dance as well. "Wait, did someone cast Dancing Knights here???"
Thanks for the replies again.
Ithink this is really an open point in the AM sistem, everyone can apply its perspective, but i don´t think one of these its absolutely right over the others.
I need to disagree with the idea that "is bad a Magic that does stuff", especially in this edition, i think all the spells and guidelines have been delicatly designed to don´t do too much or too few. For example, CrIg spell does damage equal to the spell level.
And, if in fact i take the perspective of "the Magic does´t do stuff" i need efectively to translate that affirmation to the game sistem making the idea void. If my player says "I Wan´t make an enchated armor +5" i need to give he an answer, and this answer can´t be "Sorry, thats impossible", because none of the limits of magic applies in this situation. Maybe i can give he a guideline more or less difficult, but i can´t say that´s impossible.
Maybe someones can disagree with the idea of a player making directly a question about the game sistem instead of describing wath changes he want´s to make to the armor, but one more time, that changes depends on wath the player want´s to obtain. I assume that the PC already knows how he need to change the armor for make it +1 +3 or +10 because i need the player knows how works the sistem based in mats, after that, whe describe together how the enchantment changes the armor, but that is the result, not the premise.
Talking about the Mu Co spell for increase characteristics, it´s not a new idea in AM, in the 4 ed grimorie exist a spell that makes you stronger, thats because i think it´s possible. I think the Cr Co guidelines effectively approach you to the platonic idea of "Man" (Well, i really think this is a flagrant violation of the limit of the essential nature, but is Ok for me), and for this, the change is permanent witouth magic.
But if instead of that you use Mu Co to give you a capacity that you don´t have or improve it the change can´t be permanent but you can improve your capabilities in any imaginable way, for example, i can became very bigger with Mu Co spell (Witout Cr requisites), and the same logic is applicable to other caracteristics of the humans without the need to use Cr magic.
Of course this is only mi opinion, but i think doesn´t exist a limit in the hermetic magic that prevent this.
P.D: i love the warped armor, it´s soo cute, but i think that non living things can´t be warped.
Wasn't there something about increasing the armor's strength also gives a quickness penalty and / or burden penalty? i might be thinking about muto-ing your own skin