Ice Armor?

I am sorry if this question is trivial, but please remind me, why/how would the Terram requisite address this?

To make ice hard.

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?

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Yes, probably.

But sometimes spells bring you to an escalade of requisites and I was kind of trying to avoid that.

But Cr(Mu, Re)Aq(Te) level 20 sounds quite complete.

I would rather tell the story about clunky ice warriors and modest magic proficiency.

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The cold part can be mitigated by Parma. With good enough Parma you can cover three shield grogs. :smile:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Thanks @loke and @callen!
Something like this?

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 ...

Idk. Rego is useful to make the ice move and to help distribute the weight without a need for padding or leather straps, but I don't see it doing a whole lot for complexity, and I'm not sure the extra magnitude to go from base 3 to base 4 (natural to unnatural shape) is enough. But well, that's a minor point.

For protection against cold, you are right, Rego is not enough. It's probably easier to just invent a ward against cold and have it ready if the need to cast this armor on a mundane arises.

Rego reduces the need for complexity. The Silvery Scales need to be designed to minute detail to avoid encumbrance, and it moves only because of the wearer's muscle power. The Ice Armour moves magically (by Rego) to reduce the load on the wearer, and even when it does it hampers the wearer a lot more than regular armour. That's the difference.

With two magnitudes of complexity, you could make Icy Scales with the same expert design as the Silvery Scales. Fitting perfectly, with the encumbrance of scale mail, but unfortunately the scales would break on first impact and not offer the same protection as Terram.

Hum... Serf's parma (and I seem to remember things not being very clear because of how counter-intuitive it is), but I believe that the "cold" part of ice is ignem.

That is, Ice created only with Aquam is at room temperature. If you want it to be cold, you need Ignem

Conversely, the Ice armor wouldn't be cold.

It is right that the cold/warm part is Ignem, but cold is the natural state of ice, and Creo is supposed to create things in their natural state. I tried searching quickly in the book without finding anything solid on the matter, though, so I suppose one could conceivably build a case either way.

Another matter which I considered was if the cold, as transferred from ice to body, would be natural and non-magical, and thus unresistable by parma. Without any confidence, I concluded that that would just be making things difficult with no narrative benefit, so I left it.

Loke is right. Creating warm ice would require Ignem, not be the default without Ignem. The core book says this explicitly:

A Creo Aquam spell with an Ignem requisite could create warm ice — still solid, but warm.

If you don't include Ignem, then the created ice is at a natural temperature for ice, which is cold.

Thanks, you two! I wasn't very sure, so it's good that you were able to check my mistake :slight_smile: