I was wondering that it seems to be to easy creating a functional Ice Armor. Am I missing something?
Thick Skin of Ice lvl15
Cr(Re)Aq
R:T, D:D, T:I
The caster creates a thick layer of ice around himself. The ice is 6 inches thick, crystalclear and moves as the casters body (Re req.). Creating it as a functional Armor requires Int+Finesse vs EF 6+. The armor is bulky, its Soak is 7 and its Load is 5. With EF 9+ the Load is only 4, EF 12+ made the Load 3 and an EF 15+ creates a masterpiece from ice: vision and hearing is almost unhindered, the Load of the armor is only 2.
(Base 4, +1 T, +1 D, +1 Re req.)
What are your thoughs?
Edit: Base and structure added
Edit2: Base changed from 3 to 4
I don't terribly mind this being possible. As a defensive buff it seems par with circling winds of protection.
However, there are two caveats
While ice is natural enough, jointed ice armour that only has a load of 5 is not, and I am not sure how hard it should be, level-wise or finesse-wise, to keep the load down. You pay for this both with the Rego requisite and the finesse roll, and this may or may not suffice; I am not sure.
The wearer is going to be freezing cold.
It is important to remember that ice is quite fragile. It has to be a lot thicker than metal armour to offer the same protection. For that reason, neither caveat should be trivialised.
Narratively, I want this to work, but I quite fancy the clunky giant feel on the armoured character; that calls for a heftier penalty than load 5. Can you still, say, cast spells; maybe only with subtle gestures, which is a minor penalty only.
Creating an armor with ReTe requires Per + Finesse Diff 21 (tales of power p120)
I'd tend to make it easier as the armor here seems to be bulky and use Re to move, though...
Ice already is hard, and to have it compete with metal armour, we would have to make it unnaturally hard. Would that not also require a Muto requisite?
Thinking about you N 1. point: I checked the HoH:S and on page 34. it states that you can create ice in natural shape with lvl3. So it is probably better to extrapolate and use Level 4: 'Create ice in unnatural shape' as Base for the Ice Armor.
Agreed. That sounds like the better guideline, even just to make the barely ice functional armour.
I said jointed previously, but maybe that's not necessary. Ice is essentially fluid, as it occurs naturally under the pressure 30 paces down in a glacier. The shape is still unnatural, and it still needs Rego to make it move with the wearer, but the rest may be natural.
I still do not like the ideas to keep soak down. A one-foot layer of ice is never going to allow comfort and agility, and a wafer-thin sheet of ice will not offer much protection. All the attempts to explain low load seem to be playing a numbers game, overruling any plausible and entertaining narrative about the ice-clad warrior.
For the same ease factor, that's way better than you can get by CrTe(An) a full suit of scale armor. The scale armor would give Protection (not Soak) 7 with a Load of 7. You're managing better than this with EF 6+. You can't do much better for Protection without top-of-the-line armor. Meanwhile, while you say the "armor is bulky," you've really made it not bulky armor. At worst it's less bulky than nearly all full suits, and certainly less bulky than any armor providing nearly that Protection; at best you're at the bulkiness of a weightless, tailored suit of armor. So where is the bulkiness of the "6 inches think" showing up? Finally, while I get that ice blocks vision less than steel, even the clearest of ice at 6" thick will mess with your vision some, and certainly with your hearing.
I agree, but let's fill in actual numbers. Core rules armour at standard cost has Load=Protection. For expensive armour, the load is 2/3 of the protection. For inexpensive armour it is 1½ times protection.
Thus Protection 7 Load 5 is simply matching expensive armour. Allowing this at EF 6 feels wrong for two reasons. Firstly, expensive armour seems to call for more finesse than 6+. Secondly, ice is not particularly suitable for making armour, and the narrative to explain its matching state of the art steel armour is simply missing.
In other words, that is @callen 's words, the narrative of bulkiness is lost in the numbers.
It is probably best not to address the lower loads at higher finesse at this point.
Thick Skin of Ice lvl15
Cr(Re)Aq
R:T, D:D, T:I
The caster creates a thick layer of ice around himself. The ice is 6 inches thick, crystalclear and moves as the casters body (Re req.).
The armor is bulky, its Protection is 9 and its Load is 10 - it is more about the bulkiness, not about how heavy it is. You can move with it but only walking speed. Casting is possible but only with subtle motion. All the Perception based rolls are penalized by -6 because you cannot really hear or see properly in the armor.
An Int+Finesse roll vs EF 9+ can mitigate the casting penalty by creating more loose part around the arms.
EF 12+ made the Percetion penalty to -3 and an EF 15+ creates a masterpiece from ice: vision and hearing is almost unhindered, the Load of the armor is only 9.
(Base 4, +1 T, +1 D, +1 Re req.)
That feels a lot more balanced with a lot more flavour.
We could quibble about the numbers for ever, and I am not going to make a firm opinion about them, except that I find it playable and balanced (that is a good balance between mechanics and narrative).
A random thought: I think that this armor is complex enough to require at least an extra magnitude for complexity/intricacy (Silvery Scales of the Knight, from HoH:S, has +2 due to "very elaborate shape").
Also, it's reasonable to mention that a unprotected target takes +1 damage due to the cold every 6 seconds (as per Heat and Corrosion Table), since you can theoretically cast it on a grog (between parma and form bonus to soak it's probably incapable of hurting a magus).
Would an additional Rego magnitude be enough to protect the wearer from the cold? Or would a Muto requisite be required to create warm(er) ice?
I forgot to repeat the exposure issue; I relied on the previous assumption that you just use Parma ...
No, Rego won't change anything, for you do not want to protect against the form of the spell, which is Aquam; you want to protect against the cold, which would be Ignem,
As to complexity, I think it is ok because the shape is deliberately clunky, and not that elaborate. Also the Rego requisite is suppose to do a lot of what the complexity magnitudes do for the Silvery Scales. One complexity magnitude is not unreasonable, but rather zero than two ...
