I like the idea of LR and Familiar bonds causing a Maga to Flee a hostile Aegis.
It provides a reason for (youngish, so no LR yet) redcaps to wander the covenants, but not Magi. Only those redcaps who have established a long relationship will be regularly granted tokens. (This slightly fixes the "why do we need redcaps at all if you can just go Leaping from covenant to covenant?")
It establishes why you can have a semi-cooperative order. You trust your covenant mates, but not necessarily the wider order. Stories are generated when your enemy has to lure you out of your Aegis on a seemly unrelated topic. Collection of arcane connections becomes much more story led than if you can just wander in. Using mundane agents to penetrate another covenant encourgaes the use of compainions/grogs/
It feels mythic, that your Aegis is your fortress and place of power, and so that only the mightest of archmagi should be able to overcome this.
as for changing how people are already playing and not wanting to cause to much ructions with the existing players. That ship sailed with the change to Failed Apprentice which I still don't understand why it was made.
I believe David has some reservations of using that version due to knock-on effects. That is the whole reason from trying to figure out how to carve out an exception for things like LR.
"side effects" on published material. I doubt these will be significant - since the Aegis as written is such a jumbled mess that nobody seems to agree on what it does, nevermind what it should do.
"side effects" on gameplay for people who play the Aegis in a certain way. These are at the same time inevitable if we want to have an unambiguous text (because current interpretations already differ), and (I think) irrelevant: people who like "their" Aegis will not be fazed by the fact it differs from the "official" one.
But people who are lost, often without even knowing it, including (I suspect) the vast majority of casual players, will have something solid and shared they can rely upon.
I think the idea was to a) increase game consistency (only the Gifted, and Familiars, can help in the lab) and b) decrease potential abuse: you can, in principle, make grogs who are Failed Apprentices, and are ultimately far better than "normal" apprentices as help in the Lab.
But yes, a number of things were changed that might impact some sagas (though admittedly few) far more than any rewriting of the AotH. Larta magi have been erased out of existence. Good riddance, some people (including me) will say. But I wish David Chart would be just half as bold with the Aegis. Really, anything, as long as it's crystal clear (simple would be better, but comes a distant second).
In that version, he believes it will cause LR to be dispelled. That is not something I have seen even hinted at by any reading through the books or by someone on this forum before.
Such a drastic rewrite will have changes in how published material has to be interpreted. While there is some variation in how the Aegis was interpreted when they were written, it was not this super strong protection which would be twice as strong internally, bounce Magi who attempt to enter, and dispel things like LR.
For example there is a Covenant Seed which uses a teleport/move really fast entry to bring people in from outside, controlled from within the Aegis. Magi brought in under the current version of the Aegis would have a penalty to their casting until they receive a token but would otherwise be unharmed. Magi brought in under the new version would have things like their LR dispelled and could level a charge against the whole Covenant for depriving them of magical power.
There is published material which would not work or would work strangely with this rewrite of Aegis.
Mea maxima culpa, I hadn't noticed that, and hadn't imagined that @David_Chart would suggest something that blocks the classic:
"There's a faerie/demon/something that snuck into the covenant before you cast the Aegis - and is now making trouble" spring plot.
Except, I must've at some point.
Actually, that's how my troupe and I always assumed it worked as written in ArM5 ... except that being R:Per we assumed the Aegis would have to penetrate.
With all respect, I think you may have misread it.
It does not dispel a LR. It keeps out magi with a LR active (or any other insufficiently penetrating effect "on them"). In this sense it works like Parma. It keeps out stuff with insufficiently penetrating magical effects on them (the "existence" of a Might-y creature is considered a magical effect).
This is much safer on visitors, because it just keeps the visitors out, instead of potentially allowing them in and stripping them of some or most of their magic. It also avoids the same things that Parma avoids, e.g. someone bombarding a Covenant with huge boulders turned into sling stones.
Finally, could you list the Hooks you believe would be easily resolved by Aegis-as-Parma?
Then I am afraid we have understood his answer differently.
I really cannot find a post where that "Parma-like" Aegis is suggested to dispel the LR.
And it seems to me it goes against its very simple "core idea".
Yes, to emphasise that some of the problems you see with the proposed changes actually apply to the ArM5 version of ParmaAegis, if you take what the rules actually say literally and interpret them simply. Of course, no-one thinks that it should be interpreted that way, which is why we have the problem we are struggling with in this thread.
Monster (Major): Force it to leave the Covenant by casting Aegis.
Magical Disaster (Major): Force the supernatural forces to leave the Covenant. While they could still harass from outside, the Hook should be dropped to Minor.
Regio (Major): Can be cleared out by a casting of Aegis. This would make it only slightly worse than the Minor version, certainly not a Major.
Haunted (Minor): The ghost would be expelled or dormant by casting the Aegis.
Resident Nuisance (Minor): Expelled or dormant by casting the Aegis.
Uncontrolled Portal (Minor): Anything supernatural entering through the portal into the Aegis must flee the Aegis.
There are other Site Hooks where it would change how effective they are. I stopped looking after just Site Hooks.
EDIT: Here the problem is specifically ejecting or forced domanting things within the Aegis.
I get that. The bigger point was how I reduced things down to a single mechanic for counter magic. (There is also the excluding beings with Might aspect, of course.) A single mechanic is much easier to manage than several different mechanics. How many are there right now? There are inside v. outside-in combo'd with spells v. powers v. items v. various Abilities.
It's a lot easier to say someone under the influence of a Longevity Ritual is considered its source, a mage and Familiar are both considered the source for powers in the bond, and the like in one clarifying paragraph. Meanwhile you'd have a clarifying paragraph about recognized sources. Since it looks like you're likely to have to do all this anyway in some fashion, why not make the mechanic as simple and consistent as possible?
Thanks for listing the hook examples!
I think that in many cases described by the Hooks, yes, an Aegis could work ... but there are many situations too for each Hook where the Aegis would not be a solution. It seems to me you just should not take the Hook in the first case, just as you should not take and easily remedied Flaw.
I read: "Monster: A powerful mystical creature lives inside the covenant. The creature can be aligned with any realm, and should be too powerful for the player characters to defeat at the beginning of the saga.". It seems to me that such a monster can be simply too Might-y to be affected by the AotH (it "only" needs to beat the AotH level with its Might+Penetration).
Well, if the forces are as powerful as the Monster above, they might not be easily forced out. And if the "forces" are several powerful neighboring Covenants (maybe the entire neighbouring Tribunal, I think this would still count as a Major Hook
Do you mean casting an Aegis on the regio? But maybe you can't enter the regio. And the inhabitants might be mightless. And they might harass your covenfolk every time they need to leave the Covenant, e.g. to maintain your source of Income. In other words, I fail to see again why the Aegis would preclude this Hook. It might certanly preclude some versions of it, I grant that.
The text specifically says ghosts perhaps of former magi, and those can be powerful. Or maybe you just have to include them in the Aegis for some mystical reason.
This is a good point. I guess one would have to find a reason why such pests can keep causing mischief. However, if they are mystically weak, they could probably be kept at bay via other magic anyways, so some explanation should probably be concocted regardless of the Aegis version played.
For our games, where the Aegis is specifically to keep out pests, this would probably be a result of ... having no Aegis to start with!
I think many of the considerations above would also apply here .. I'm just being lazy really
Allowing the points for a Hook because the Covenant starts with no Aegis, unless there is a reason they can never gain an Aegis, is just free points. And if they can never gain an Aegis that is a really big drawback.
Why would you ever found a Covenant, rather than just a chapter house, in a location where you can never have an Aegis? I am sure someone could come up with a reason, though the residents would give up a great deal of their magical protection and be much more vulnerable.
EDIT: And you are not the only one being lazy. I only looked at Site Hooks, I did not feel like going through every single Hook possible.
there are people (e.g. Tellus) who have explicitly stated they want complicated mechanics for the sake of it. I cannot fathom why, but they have.
everyone else agrees that a mechanic like the one proposed by you, David Chart, and others would be fine: every vulnerable supernatural effect has to penetrate the Aegis Level or bad stuff happens to it. The crux is:
a) what effects are vulnerable? All? All except those at R:Per? All except those at R:Per, save possibly those on creatures that magically resist the Aegis? All save a number of exceptions, including ... ? On this, there seems to be no agreement. I'm for all, for example, including LR and Familiar bonds, which by my reading are affected by the ArM5 AotH too. Others are obviously against it. But I think there's no question that "all" is as simple and consistent as possible.
b) what bad stuff does happen? Are the supernatural effects kept out of the Aegis? Are they dispelled? I'm for "kept out", because it keeps the Aegis closer to Parma and avoids "disassembling" magical ensembles (e.g. an Aegis keeps a magus with a LR out, rather than allowing him entrance and destroying his LR). Others are for dispelling. Again, since creatures are kept out, and Parma keeps out supernatural effects, having AotH keep out supernatural effects, too, is as simple and consistent as possible.
