This days I'm on question frenzy, so my new question today is: Can Magic Resistance act like a wall?
To explain this better: Imagine a Flambeu cast a Pillum of Fire against a Mundane. By rules, the mundane is pretty hopeless, the spell will hit him directly and do damage against his Soak, even the best fighter on the world can't escape from the Hermetic Auto-Aim.
Can a humble magus put on the way and so stop the Pillum of Fire with his Parma? Or because the spell isn't casted against him, the magus, the spell simply round him and hit the intended target?
Another other two examples for thought:
A Dragon Breath, similar principle but in this case the "Spell"/Power has a direct line, can the mundane be protected putting himself on the back of the magus?
A Perdo Corpus spell, that has no "magic travelling", can the Magus still put himself between the attacker and the victim to stop the spell with his Parma?
ArM5 covers the magus' attempts with the rule for Fast-Cast defenses: ArM5 p.83.
His Parma does not play a role there, unless he shared it before the magical attack with its target.
I think the "stand in the way" defence for someone else would work (or at least be helpful) for any targeted attack. A resisted attack would not be hindered. Hence it won't help against PoF or PeCo affects. If the Dragon Breath has a targeting element, then maybe your Parma could help. (E.g. Stellatus's breath in the main book can be resisted, but also provides a dodge roll. Making that dodge roll easier because of a heroic mage providing cover seems reasonable to me.)
Pilum of FIre is a bit misleading, because by the description you might expect it to be targeted, but it isn't: it's resisted. To take another scenario, if someone opens a peephole and you see their eye looking at you, you can PoF them, no problem, from up to 50 yards away.
On a related question, then you wouldn't let, for example, a mundane with a Talisman on their hands use the Magic Resistance of the Talisman against Resisted attacks?
This question was born thinking on things like a Automata Prosthetic, so the Prosthetic has Magic Resistance.
Check ArM5 p.85f The Functioning of Magic Resistance: you need to be "very close" to the talisman to benefit from its - likely just Form - MR.
An adult human can't be covered by it - unless that talisman is huge (and perhaps able to encompass it). Can a 4kg neonate? A bug likely can - but it still is a SG call what precisely is "very close" enough.
EDIT: If a magus makes his head-to-toe robe into his Talisman and his apprentice dons that robe - then it becomes an SG call whether that apprentice gets the Form bonuses of his master for MR.
Bad OneShot, giving me ideas about boat talisman and wagon talisman that can protect mundane within its walls and making me wonder at whether I need to pull out Aegis of the Hearth rules when the attacking magi is also within the walls of the Talisman...
You can do it from up to 30 paces away, since the spell is voice range, and the maximum range for voice is 30 paces if you shout.
50 yards might be equal to 30 paces. I have no idea.
By the way it is kind of interesting that POF is Voice range since you could conceivably create the same spell at touch range, since the Target of the spell is the plume of fire, not the person that you are trying to hit. You might even be able to hit something beyond Voice range, though you would have to aim then.
A pace is a yard, and according to my book Loud Voice is up to 50 of them (unless I've missed a correction).
You could certainly use CrIg to create a fire at close range, and then ReIg to throw it at someone (targeted), or create a Cr(Re)Ig spell. Or put it in a catapult and chuck it a very long distance. (It still needs penetration, though, as the fire is magic even though it's moved non-magically.)
But the point I was trying to make about POF is that it's actually a spell to inflict flames on someone at a distance. The fact that you appear to throw the pilum from your hands is just "special effect". I agree this is weird, but it explains why it's a spell with Penetration, not Targeting.
I wouldn't allow hiding inside/behind a Talisman to help if it were my game, as I think the potential for being overpowered is very high. (E.g. my talisman is a very large blanket which I can make invisible, so everyone gets MR from it.) I think the strict intention of the rules is that it doesn't work either. I also think the rules about Talismanic MR only there are to make the Talisman less vulnerable.
I wouldn't be bothered if someone else ruled more generously.
You are right it is 50 paces. I remembered wrong. Whether or not it is equivalent to a yard I will not speculate on. I have found through googling and trawling the books that it can be either 75 cm, 150cms or a deliberately vague measurement that is equal to "whatever feels appropriate for the story".
My take is that the spell is resisted by magic resistance because the caster uses their magic to guide the spell to its target such that it always hits. This means that the otherwise mundane fire is under a magical effect because it is being guided by magic while it hits its target. That also explains why it cannot go further than Voice range, since the guiding part of the spell can reach no further than Voice range.
This interpretation is consistent with the guidelines for Targeted vs. Resisted in the core book. I.e. spells that always hit are resisted because their projectiles need to be guided by magic all the way to the target.
If I enchant a blanket as my talisman and then hide a mundane under it, then mundane is only affected by an attack spell that is able to penetrate (or Penetrate) its way through the blanket.
IMO the real cost to doing this is that you then have to deal with having a blanket, or wagon or cape as your talisman. i.e. do you really want a big ass blanket for a talisman? dont you want some of the better S&M bonuses you can for a better shape?
Also the talisman will have rather meagre magic resistance anyway and is likely to get destroyed quite quickly. Sure a blanket might have a resistance of 0-5 versus Ignem, but if the person underneath it gets hit by a POF with a higher Penetration then it will penetrate (i.e.) burn through the blanket and the talisman is likely to be destroyed.
At one point, I was writing up a character who had a tower for a Talisman.
Was planning to live in it, build my lab inside my Talisman.
Should be good for a few lab bonii eventually, neh?
I will speculate that, while there are several types of paces that existed historically speaking that google may find, the base book is actually consistent on how long a pace is, even if finding the answer requires a good ammount of using Ctrl+F:
AM5 112: The magus may not move more quickly than ten paces per round (five feet per second) while doing this
AM5 172: A single combat round, consisting of one attack from every party to the combat, takes
about six seconds.
AM5 113: A base Boundary is the same for all Forms, and is one hundred paces (three hundred feet) in diameter.
AM5 121: A base Individual for Aquam is a pool of water about five paces (fifteen feet) across
I'd only want a blanket as a talisman if I was trying to play Charlie Brown's linus, which I think is unlikely to be one of my characters. A wagon - not so bad, If you have an enclosed one, you might be able to argue for the Room S&M bonus, and you can easily decorate with different types of wood. Cloak is actually pretty good for S&M.
How would this work for Mentem spells? Clearly the Talisman can't be affected by them (as it's mindless, though I'm prepared to believe there are Mysteries to break that rule). Would it still protect?
It occurs to me that for many spells, a perfectly ordinary blanket should be a useful defence against spells, because "Hermetic magic cannot affect an unsensed target without an Arcane Connection" (p.80).
And just because your talisman is a blanket sometimes, doesn't mean it's always a blanket. Muto spells are available...
"Why is your talisman a big ball of wool?"
"Wrong question. Ask why is it a big ball of wool right now."
I'm not sure if this matters to your argument, but it isn't "otherwise mundane fire". There's no fire till the spell is cast => it's magically created fire, that can be resisted. A mundane or magical fire could also be resisted if sent magically towards the target, as well. (But to take another example on p.85 "A magical rock thrown at the target bounces off her resistance" - I think here the rules mean "thrown" as in "hurled by muscles".)
Here is when the use of Automata become important, Automata have their own Magic Resistance and this can be a big one. Can I create a armour automata and put someone inside?
My answers are: yes, you can put them inside an automaton. No, they don't get magic resistance. It's still a pretty good idea: they get extra Soak, and with careful design many magi can't actually sense them to cast spells at. You can also enchant it to give protective spells to someone inside. (But as you've seen, Euphemism disagrees with me about what will work.)