Wards the user against Terram and Herbam.
This is designed to activate very quickly, eg. while a sword is being swung or your experiment is going funny and but not quite exploding yet.
Ward Against Herbam would be base 15 so this should be base, except the Terram Ward is base 5 (+2 metal) whch comes to 15.
Doesn't the lack of penetration mean the magus using the item must drop his magic resistance before the ward can affect him? Dropping your resistance in emergency situations isn't usually a good idea.
The target of the effect is not the magus, so his magic resistance is irrelevant.
Now, if the object attacking the magus is driven by magic (such as a rock thrown by Weilding the Invisible Sling), then it might fail to protect the wearer, IMHO.
I think the target is the magus. The effect takes place and the magus is protected for duration diameter. If you were to cast a spell on a magus that changed the air in the vicinity of their mouth and nose to water and the effect stayed with the magus as he or she moved then don't you think that the spell would be resisted? This ward is similar. It is attached to the magus, it should need to penetrate.
You're partly right, in that as described, the anchor of the effect is the magus. But the actual targets of the magic are Terram or Herbam objects aimed at the wearer.
As written, the effect is not quite detailed enough and badly worded, but IMHO whould affect an area around him like Ward Against Heat and Flames and the anchor should be the enchanted item, not the wearer. The fact that it is the wearer who willingly triggers the effect may also account for the effect not having to penetrate.
Feel free to re-write it. I'm running a teperature right now, so odds are it is indeed badly written.
No, that would ward the item (which is also an individual) and could have been done with R: Personal perhaps?
Penetration is a relevant parameter.
Unfortunatly the alternative was to give the device D: Sun, which might well make for other problems with using it in the lab (inability to use Terram- or Herbam- based tools mainly).
As for the wearer triggering being enough to deal with Parma, remember that you have to penetrate yourself when you cast R: Touch spells on yourself (Though you can usually claim a nice fat multiplier from having yourself!)
Well, the first question then would be, what is the magus trying to achieve? What does he want to protect himself from?
If it's to mostly protect himself from mundane attacks from swords and axes and arrows (with some side benefit against accidents), completely deflecting the attack, then I'd go with something similar to Repel the Wooden Shafts. Duration would need to be Mom for each use, as each attack needs to be deflected individually based on the wearer targeting an attack he can see. If he wants to be able to deflect multiple attacks in the same round, then bump up to T:Group. The wearer would need to be aware of each attack (or group of attacks) to be able to deflect them.
That effect would be ReTe(He): Base 5, +2 Voice, +2 Group, +2 affects metal, +1 requisite = level 45. An item with unlimited uses would be level 55.
If it's a kind of force field effect (mostly against accident but also useful in combat) that can deflect anything for the duration of the effect, then I'd go with something similar to Ward Against Heat and Flames. Duration can be Diam for each use, and create a "bubble" (about 1 pace in radius) around the item which deflects objects coming from outside of the bubble. That is reflected by a bonus to Soak. Use the same general guidelines as shown in ReIg (the Base gives +5, with another +5 by each additional magnitude).
That effect would be ReTe(He): Base 5, +1 Touch, +1 Diam, +2 for up to +15 damage, +2 affects metal, +1 requisite = level 40. An item with unlimited uses would be level 50.
This is just MHO, of course, but absolute protection should not be possible. Either you need to percieve the threat and direct the effect to counteract it completely for a given round, or you gain an indiscriminate bonus to your Soak for a longer duration.
This is the difference between target and Target. Same for Aura of Ennobled Presence (ReIm? serf's parma), the Target is the magus but the targets are those affected.
You'd have to sense every target and cast for every Group. I don't think "all the arrows in a round" would qualify.
The Target (spell parameter) of a spell is not the same as the target (where you direct it) but I've not seen any good argument that the small t target doesn't get the benefit or penalty of MR if they don't also happen to be a big T target. After all wielding the invisible sling is rested and the big T target is clearly the thrown rock. (invisible sling of Vilano is of course different).
My response is only to show that the user must suppress or penetrate their parma in order to take advantage of the device. To suggest "The target of the effect is not the magus, so his magic resistance is irrelevant" is not correct.
If the context didn't make it clear, I didn't mean to imply that the protected person was terram or herbam.
Which is why I suggested sidestepping the issue by making the Target of the spell the item itself, instead of the wearer:
The effect still uses Touch range so that it deflects any item that come into contact of the bubble. I acknowledge that this may not be perfectly legal, though.
I'll trust you on the base levels , if so it looks mostly OK to me but fast activation gives me pause. Is there a level cost for that in a book somewhere. I realize that we have examples of items with linked triggers activating as a reaction but I'm not sure about a person who activates an enchanted device as a reaction.
I'm more fond of the original effect than your alternative. I don't share your concern with the target. You've actually defined a special target (a sphere around the item at a radius of one ~1 pace) which I'd put at the same level as part with a +1 adjustment for non standard target.
I do agree with your earlier point that personal wards are a mess. They're a mess because they're too powerful, they decrease the opportunities for stories rather than increase them. (Or so it seems from discussion, the issue has not come up in my games.) I've been using a house rule that adds 2 magnitudes to wards (or was it 4 magnitudes, I suppose it doesn't matter for discussion) if they move which makes things a little better (in truth no one in any of my games ever tried to develop one so "using" is perhaps a strong term). What might be a better alternative is to what you did in your example and create all wards as soak boosters, like the ignem wards, I've considered this before but I have a fear that there's going to be some sort of weirdness crop up in this way as well.