Where does it say you can set penetration for Spontaneous spells?
Forceless casting allows you to cast with a final Penetration of no more than 0. I don't see any way of reading the rule for Forceless casting as allowing you to choose a specific Penetration value.
Nor can I find any rule that allows you to pick a specific Penetration value when using spontaneous magic. Indirectly I suppose you can, since you can adjust the spell's parameters and level of effect to some extent, whichh would affect the calculation of Penetration total.
The exception would be if you have and use LLSM, in which case you need to decide effect and penetration before you roll any dice.
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Or, if you have Chaotic Magic, which also says you need to set those before you roll.
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It's a mix of rules interpretations; The fact you can choose forceless casting, and the quite from spontaneous magic in core:
She may also choose to cast the spell at a lower level than her casting total, to increase its penetration.
Sure, when using spontaneous magic you can indirectly increase your penetration by lowering the casting level, after rolling. This is based on the standard rule for calculating Penetration: Casting Total - Spell Level + Penetration Bonus.
However when using Forceless casting "the Penetration of a spell never exceeds ‘0’". So it really doesn't matter what your penetration would normally be, it still won't be higher than 0 when using Forceless Casting.
Oh, I suppose that based on a really twisted reading of the rules one could argue that Forceless Casting is applied first reducing Pen to 0, and then one can lower the level of a sponted spell to increase Penetration to some positive number afterwards.
This is a highly counter-intuitive reading though, and almost certainly not the intended one, especially since getting a positive Penetration would be completely contrary to the intention behind use of Forceless Casting.
Reading the rule for Forceless Casting it seems obvious it is intended to apply to the final Penetration Total, not to some intermediate step in calculating it.
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The mechanical effects of wards and the different functions between circle and personal wards.
Circle Wards:
Magical Wards section (114) states "Wards with a Circle target are of particular note. They prevent things warded against that are within the circle from leaving, and prevent things warded against that are outside from entering. Warded things cannot act across the circle, no matter which side they are on, nor can they damage the circle, directly or indirectly"
Confusion has resulted from this:
- Can a human being standing 10 paces away, shoot an arrow into a Circle Ward Against Mundane Humans?
- Can a demon, summoned into a demon circle ward, use an ability on an eligible target standing outside?
Personal Wards:
Some of the effects of personal wards need to be inferred from canon spell descriptions, rather than explicitly stated. The list below is a collection of ward guidelines and implementations I can remember, attempting to highlight how that implementation varies.
A general question - can wards be penetrated by spells with high penetration? For example, if my target has a 0 penetration Ward Against Wood on themselves, and I cast Dance of the Staves with +100 penetration, does it hit? The wood is mundane and should be effected by the spell, but there is another spell interaction present.
ReAn 2: Protect the target from animal attacks implies a user could still ride a horse but be defended from a bear attack at the same time. Is this correct?
ReAq 5: Ward Against Mundane Water spell "Break the Oncoming Wave" in ArM5 implies that only water approaching you is stopped, but a water skin on you isn't launched away to the barrier. Additionally, the spell description states it stops magical water, but the guideline is mundane water.
ReCo 15: Ward Against Human Beings has only one example I can remember - Repulse the Unwanted Attention (ReCo30) on MoH p.95. It states, "Warded individuals cannot act across a ward in any manner, therefore if she is attacked, her opponents’ blows always go wide, causing them to miss. She
is not protected from thrown weapons or missiles, though." - Is this the intention for all ReCo personal wards - that the user is immune to melee attacks with weapons from the warded person, but can be attacked at range? Does this carry over to circle, as addressed above?
ReHe 15: Ward Against Mundane Plant Products. The spell Ward Against Wood states, "The caster is protected from non-enchanted wood, so that none of it can actually contact his body. If he is walking on a wooden surface, he is actually suspended very slightly above it." Can a warded user hold a wooden hafted weapon?
ReIG 4: Control a Fire in a Slightly Unnatural Fashion (not stated as a ward) - Ward Against Heat and Flames (ArM5 143) is the only stated ward that has a damage threshold that can overcome it. Is Ignem unique in this aspect? Can other wards be overcome by higher magnitude effects?
ReTe 5: Ward a Target Against Dirt - Similar to the ReHe guidelines, can a target warded against metal use a metal weapon? Can they choose to interact with a metal doorknob?
Thank you for reading this long post. I am new to Ars Magica, but trying to figure out clearly how wards worked was (and is) challenging for me, so I just wanted to help collect points for discussion in the future.
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More in the "could do with being clearer", but how does a spell having a requisite interact with various other things that depend on the Arts used in a spell:
- Can you use vis of the Requisite art with the spell / enchantment?
- When inventing something in a lab, can you create both a TeFo_1 spell and a TeFo_1(Fo_2) spell in one season, and if so, how is your lab total calculated? What about a TeFo_2(Fo_1) spell?
- Can you cast a spell with a Requisite as your free spell after winning certamen so long as the primary Arts are those used in the certamen?
- Does it make any difference as to whether the requisite is required for the spell to function at all, verses giving it a boost in functionality?
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HoH: Societates pg. 114 has all the ward guidelines (presented as Touch/Ring/Circle, so you can reverse engineer them) and Ignem is the only one that deals with damage thresholds. Corpus, Metal, Herbam and Ignem are relatively difficult to ward against. I suspect because they are the most common combat ones and mages aren't supposed to get killed by mundane goats so animal is easy.
As someone who is playing a ward specialist I'd love clarification on all your questions!
Based on interpretation and reading - and not even stretching IMO - Rego Auram has 'Ward against minor weather phenomenon' all the way up to 'ward against very severe weather phenomenon', so that easily represents 'ward against Breeze' is less strong than 'ward against hurricane'.
Similar, the terram wards for dirt-stone-metal could be interpreted as an increasing magnitude, but realistically I think they don't count.
Not sure if it belongs here but ... I've never been able to find (and there were lots of discussions about it) if Cautious with Ability applies to all rolls in which the Ability is part of the total, even rolls that are not ability rolls.
An oft-brought-up example: does Cautious with Artes Liberales / Philosophiae reduce botch dice from Rituals, being part of the casting score?
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Allowing something like that is dangerous, since it allows the character to double dip with the Cautious Sorcerer Virtue.
Another general principle:
When rounding does one by default round up or down?
Specific cases are fine, but it would be nice to have a general statement as a norm.
Bob
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I think the general rule is don’t round and any rounding is a specific case.
Spontaneous magic for instance, if you were trying for a 5 and you ended up with a total of 4.5 that is not enough.
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The worry is inventing new rules where the authors don't realize that rounding could be a thing. I general statment could help with that.
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I agree that this is probably what is intended.
But it would be good to have an explicit statement to that effect somewhere in the rules.
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As is showing up in another thread:
How much of Aegis of the Hearth's effects need to penetrate? Considering it was decided that reminding people that it isn't an exception to penetration was worth writing into Through the Aegis, this is something that gets questioned a lot.
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Prior to Lords of Men, trying to figure out how far one could move tactically in a round was a pain. I had to figure it out from footsteps of slippery oil [121, left column], which indicated you took 10 steps as part of casting the spell. That was a strange place to derive it, but...
putting each step at about 20-30 inches, we made it about 25 feet. But this isn't addressed in the ArM5 core because (IMO) combat is a bit more abstracted-- but charging up to join combat, to catch an enemy, etc, knowing the movement rate is important, even if it's an option. Lords of Men formalized it [120, center column].
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Oh, it's quite hard to find the rule that tells you with an aimed spell whether you generate an Attack Advantage or not. I believe the choice to not use Attack Advantage was made here on the forums, with the unfortunate result of requiring a third die roll for one spell attack (cast spell, aim, damage).
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In a thread that I can't find again due to poor search fu, David Chart stated that using Attack Advantage for spells was not rules as intended.
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