Penetration in this case makes perfect sense to me, since the ward sits around doing noting until something tries to cross it. In which case it needs to be powerful enough to affect the invader.
Same as a magical fire created to block a doorway. Penetration of this only matters once a magus or supernatural being tries to walk through, to see if they get burnt.
Or you just treat it as an indirect effect that doesn't require penetration. The fire I cast in the doorway, it is there, it does exist, the same as a mundane fire. If the creature can cross it without getting burned, it can cross it without getting burned, it doesn't cause the spell to fail. If I use a spell to throw a rock the spell is cast on the rock, not what the rock is hitting. That is the primary benefit of indirect spells.
If Wards do not need to penetrate, then a Rego Corpus Ward against people can keep any magus outside of it.
Treat ithe fire s as indirect? No, you can't really. A fire created is magical (unless a momentary ritual), that is the point. And there is no talk about the spell failing, where did that come from? How is your example different from a Ball of Abysmal Flame, except maybe by being non-Momentary? Who does the BoAF need to Penetrate while the D:Diam fire blocking the doorway doesn't?
A rock manipulated is stil natural, although moved a certain distance by magic. Totally different things. The first is a magical creation and needs to Penetrate. The other is indirect and does not - but it needs to be Targeted. Call it a question of power balance, but it works for me. You're changing the basic premises of how magic works. If you want to house rule it all, do so. But that does not change how the magic system was written to work in a (fairly) cohesive way.
I personally like the house rule of that being the difference between Aegis and Wards. Aegisi (plural?) don't need to penetrate, being related to Parma as they are.
Aigedes
Although Arya doesn't mention the plural of Aegis in the post, she wrote this post that has some Latin notes.
Rather 'Aegides'.
Cheers
So, now, there are 2 types of supplements?
Say, "Rules books", which are RAW and informative
And "Adventure books" which are... Well, not as serious or informative? Maybe they don't get the same degree of scrutiny from the line editor, authors and playtest teams?
And what books are adventure books or not? What is Ancient Magic? Magi of Hermes? Legends of Hermes? Hermetic Projects?
We've seen it even as recently as TME: Books, whatever their type, are sometimes used to clarify the rules. When something debatable is mentionned but the line takes no official stance, it is stated as such, like with casting requisites for Teleportation, or the new rule about vis residue.
In this specific exemple, we could have had 3 stances:
You're perfectly fine to do as you want in your saga, there's no problem at all with it, but implying that this book may be less authoritative or more casually written, or arguing that "sufficient" may mean anything other than "greater than the might", just to preserve the sense that you may not be house ruling escapes me completely.
You are building an obvious, ignoble strawman with 'adventure books' here. The text above is from an adventure: not from a chapter or box of rules additions and clarifications, and not from a rules book either. It is meant to be read only by the SG in charge of that adventure (see Antagonists p.6). Hence "sufficient" is referring to existing rules of ArM5: just that for the Aegis, in contrast to HoH:S p.113 about wards, the clarification is still missing.
Cheers
As someone who's been through some of the playtesting, I can assure you, my team at least gives ALL the attention to each book. Often running down implications that the original author never even foresaw.
Then why do I keep getting people telling me that "well those rules aren't meant to be used together" on certain topics? Did these implications just get overlooked in playtesting? How do I get on the list of playtesters?
Seconded.
It's even better! It's usually (at least with the Aegis) "We can't be completely certain just how those rules are meant to be used together.
Probably. Despite having 4 or more troupes playtesting just about everything in each playtest round, we still miss a few things here and there.
Ask David, though I'm not sure he's expanding the playtest base at the moment.
Well, I'm not sure it was ever stated as you've quoted, since I'm pretty sure I'm the one who said it to you. Don't appreciate the possible misquotation, especially since there is a quote function, which I use liberally and try to use accurately and descriptively, too.
The evidence for Aegis of the Hearth requiring penetration is pretty strong as it would now be the only single spell in Hermetic Theory that doesn't need to penetrate to have an effect. The spell has three strong effects already: it cancels spells lower than its level, it subtracts its level from magi who were not part of the ritual and who do not have a token, and like a ward, it prevents creatures with might less than the level of the Aegis from entering into it.
So, if, as RAW has been clarified with respect to wards, wards need to penetrate, then why not Aegis of the Hearth? If Aegis does not need to penetrate, and that's RAW, you now have a single spell that doesn't need to penetrate[1]. That inconsistency is a powerful argument, to me that it the Aegis should penetrate. That being said, it's fine to decide that wards and Aegides of the Hearth do not need to penetrate, but it's a House Rule. It's also a good idea to House Rule that Wards and Aegides need to penetrate, just to clarify it. RAW is murky with respect to Aegis of the Hearth, since there's still so much discussion about it, so a HR is necessary to clarify it for any saga.
There are some really good reasons for choosing how penetration with respect to Wards and Aegides works, I happen to think that requiring penetration makes for a more tightly knit covenant, since almost any Aegis or Ward past 4th magnitude[2] will need involvement of the covenant through Wizard's Communion. Specialists are still important to research really high level Wards, and then they need the support of the magi to actually cast them. Same with the Aegis.
[1]There are some Intellego spells which say explicitly whether or not they need to penetrate, the reason usually has to do with a discussion of species.
[2]Specialists may exist who can handle high level (30+) ReVi effects and the necessary with ease, but these aren't always common in PC groups.
actually this has been said multiple times by multiple people whenever I try to use the craft rules from city & guild in conjunction with just about anybody. Also when I pointed out some math flaws in city and guild and when I asked questions about why journeyman social status would give someone some kind of independent income that would typify owning a workshop... pretty much anything I bring up from city and guild seems to eventually engender that response from somebody.
Well, I think City and Guild is a problematic book. It doesn't mesh well into a covenant and I find it requires a lot of crunch that people may not be interested in. I get enough crunch from other seasonal advancement issues that adding Workshop rules hasn't been a high priority for me. It's intriguing, but the effort/reward ratio is a bit off for me.
Although, I've been doing more related to City and Guild, because of something I'm working on. It still has some rough edges for me.
I agree that it is problematic in a number of areas, I wish there were some impetus to smooth these problems out instead of sweeping them under the rug and engendering hostility whenever someone wants to use city and guild in conjunction with anything else.
Saying I'm never going to agree with you is not hostility. Vigorous debate and strong opinions are not hostility. Invective and questioning the intelligence of the other party is hostility.
I was not referring to you, and hostility can be couched within vigorous debate in a number of ways, primarily when the attitude becomes one of claims of authority or superiority in an attempt to conclude the debate without addressing the other person's perspective. Again, not referring to you.
So just for clarification (and I do agree that the Aegis needs to Penetrate to be effective) then what happens when it fails to Penetrate?
-This is the capper-
If I use CrTe to create a stone tower with duration moon, and it fails to penetrate a magical creature, can they walk through the stone walls? Because that is what this discussion feels like to me...