But...why would Scintilla be writing to Little Sister?
Yes and no.
When casting against multiple adversaries, there's no problem IMO. It's the "pile on" on one character that's broken.
Of your 2 solutions, I would prefer the one where each instance of choosing multicast grants one more copy.
BUT it doesn't solve the dumb, dumb, dumb problem of PeIg "cold fatigue" spells being way more efficient when multicast than a higher level damage spell, which my idea solves:
- With the normal rules, you create more cold, and the target is more fatigued
- With mine, you create more cold, and the target is actually wounded, just like if submitted to a colder (higher base) spell.
Similarly, it still makes it worthwhile to take Mastery 1 (multicast), since you get twice the bag for a measly 05XP.
Sounds like there's support for the Might Soak rule. How does "All creatures with a Might Score have an effective Might Soak score equal to (Might Score/2) which only affects spells, powers, etc. which target their Might"?
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Quite fine IMO.
It means that the Dragon with Might 40 and soak 15 will still be felled slightly more easily by a might stripper than by a damage spell (the might stripper will first deprive him of his powers, then kill him, whereas the damage spell will have to inflict wounds), but the difference is slim.
Yes.
Advantages IMO:
- Less dice rolls
- Coherence with the non-linear nature of Ars damage: 100 times the size (+6) means +12 damage, not *100.
- It makes higher-levels spells at least as efficient against 1 opponent as spending 1 season to get Mastery 1 (multicast). The multicasting still has the advantage of flexibility
- It means that multicast low-levels PeIg "cold fatigue" spells are less efficient than multicast PeIg "cold damage" spells, not a lot more: 3 multicasts such spells will inflict +10 damage, not 3 fatigue levels, as he is cold enough that he is wounded.
- While it overall weakens multicasting on a single target, it nonetheless allows spells that have no chance to go through a given defense to still pierce it, thus prolonging the life of weaker spells without making them overwhelming*
- Before: Cast 3 lvl 10 DEO at a single target. With the soak, it's useless if it has might soak 10+, wherehas, before, if meant loss of 30 might.
Now: It does 20 damage, so it may hurt that MS 10 target, but the overall damage is lessened.
Read above for the advantages 
It is not as illogical as it may seem. And it solves a recurrent question of these boards
For exemple, say I invent a dagger of Ice (+5 damage) variant with Group target (+2 mag) and +1 size, but I descrive the spell to that all the shards are directed towards 1 people (you've certainly seem things like this in anime, if only with missile fire). How would you rule it?
- Some GM would say "no"
- Some would say yes, and allow anywhere between 2-100 attacks at +5 damage
- I'd say the relentess assault does +20 damage (+5 + 5/3 added magnitudes).
This works just like the third exemple.
If your target is in the middle of a fire, adding a second fire will elevate the temperature somewhat, but it won't double it, nor will it count as a separate, totally unrelated fire.
Feels better now?
Might strippers are frighteningly effective, as has been demonstrated times and times again on these boards. Ask the question if you doubt me, I'm sure some people will enjoy demonstrating to you their power, especially combined with multicasting. Xavi, for exemple, quadruples the creatures might for hermetics. At the demand of his players.
Take your might 40 demon. It is powerful, and has, say, soak 15. Nothing exceptional here. Polymathes, the dragon from RoP: M, has MM 41 and soak +24.
It is thus, on average, immune to sword strikes, and he laughs at the flambeau's PoF, despite his casting total of 60.
Now, his friend as a PeVi CT of just 50, and DEO 10, mastered only once (05XP).
Each round, while his friends struggle, he strips 20 might from your powerful demon.
In 2 rounds, the demon has no might pool, and can't use any power.
In 4 rounds, the demon is dead. Make that 3 rounds for multicast 2 (15XP) or CT 55 and DEO 15
How's that for formidable and frightening? The other PC could have dragged it down, light wound after light wound. With PeVi, he's toast in 4 rounds, period.
Now, with Might soak 20, the power of a DEO is roughly comparable to that of the flambeau: Without multicasting, you need at least DEO 25, CT65, whereas, to inflict a light wound, the flambeau need on average a lvl 25 voice spell, CT65 too.
Sure, the flambeau can hurt other things, but the DEO is more efficient (and gets more with multicast)
With Pe 10, Vim 05, Stamina 2, penetration 2, multicast 1 and a dice roll of 05, any newly-gauntleted magus can cast a lvl 05 DEO at a Might 20 critter (that's supposed to be reasonnably serious opponent) and strip it of 10 might per round.
With Pe 13, Vim 10, Stamina 2, penetration 3, multicast 2 and a dice roll of 05, that's 15 per round at a Might 30 creature. And we certainly ain't talking of an archmage here. With some sympathetic connections, he could easily target a might 35-40 creature.
For the record, I had NOT noticed you had might stripper, it's more of a general issue
Totally agreed.
[rambling]Laetitia will be 20 years older than the older PC, but with 40XP/year post gauntlet, which amounts to another 10 years. That's quite a massive difference.
As a rule, I see nothing wrong with a character benefiting from special rules and exceptions IF every player agrees and IF every player can benefit from similar exceptions.
As it is, I'd have liked for the troupe to be consulted before: Negotiating special advantages and exceptions with the GM only brings back bad memories, both IRL and on the web: Andorra was literally plagued with conflicts over vortigern's character.
It's also a justice issue: I hate when some players play by the rules, fitting their concept into existing limits, only to discover afterwards that you could negotiate freedom from the rules, and that another player just did in a massive way. It just ain't fair.[/rambling]
As you wish, but, with all due respect, the only person here that finds that overpowered for the creatures is Arya and... Well, when she says a might 40 demon is dangerous and frightening... Aside from newly-gauntleted characters, she's just wrong.
My second example above shows a gauntlet-level character killing a might 30 demon in 4 rounds at worse. With a little preparation, he can probably target and kill a might 40 one in 6 rounds.
Note that, even if he doesn't kill them, they'll be greatly weakened (definitively!!!) once half of these rounds are gone: At round 3, the might 30 demon has no might pool, and his might SCORE is 15. At round 4, the might 40 demon has a might score of 25. From "Prince of Hell" to "Simple demon", just because he annoyed a fresh magus of the OOH...
Here is my problem with might strippering soak
Take your example of a Dragon with Might 40 and soak 15.
Give the dragon 1/2 might as soak against the might stripper. This means you need at least a level 25 might stripper to do maximum of 5 pts of might stripping. Your level 25 fire spell does more damage than soak as base and with exploding dice can do a lot more and will give the dragon -1 or more to all actions. In fact with a single lucky damage roll, the fire spell could kill the dragon in one blow. You can't get lucky with the might stripper.
The fact is that there are some terram spells (invisible sling of vilano varients) that can do +15 to +20 damage. You have to aim but they bypass magic resistance.
What might be better is might strippers do full effect against Might points (strip out the magic potential and ability to do magic) but do 1/2 (or 1/4) damage against actual Might score. So your dragon of might 40 can be might stripped down to 0 might points with your level 5 or 10 spell but it strips only 3(1) or 5(3) pts of actual might score afterwards.
So take your example before:
Take your might 40 demon. It is powerful, and has, say, soak 15. Nothing exceptional here. Polymathes, the dragon from RoP: M, has MM 41 and soak +24.
It is thus, on average, immune to sword strikes, and he laughs at the flambeau's PoF, despite his casting total of 60.
Now, his friend as a PeVi CT of just 50, and DEO 10, mastered only once (05XP).
Each round, while his friends struggle, he strips 20 might from your powerful demon.
In 2 rounds, the demon has no might pool, and can't use any power.
In 4 rounds, the demon is dead. Make that 3 rounds for multicast 2 (15XP) or CT 55 and DEO 15
My variant:
In 2 rounds, demon has no might pool
In 8 or 16 rounds, demon has no powers
Sure he still laughs at the Flambeau's pilum of fire but you know something, Demon's eternal oblivion is the proper spell for destroying demons.
Sure you can give certain opponents immunity to might stripping spells to balance challenge and your soak 24 might be nothing to a +20 aimed damage spell by a finesse specialized mage where damage is Attack-defense for attack advantage +20 vs soak of 24 and thus can cause lots of wounds. With that one multicast it can easily be a light or medium wound each round getting worse as defense drops for wounds
Round 1: -2 to -6 from aimed spell (say Avg -4)
Round 2: -4 to -12 from aimed spell (say Avg -8)
Round 3: (those light and mediums are now medium and heavy): -6 to -22 (Avg -16)
Round 4: with -16 to defense, you are likely incap or killing blow.
Direct damage frontal assault spells aren't necessarily the best way to go against certain types of spells and should not always be as good as might strippers while certain specific foes might be immune or protected against the might strippers.
This combined with multi-casting being only 1 copy per time you take multicast specialty fixes a lot.
It's actually been resolved – I'm working with her to get Laetitia down to 10 years post-gauntlet and still fitting within her character concept, and using the same build rules as everyone else. Should have the new version up within a day or so, I would think.
So if your guff is that it goes down too quickly, put the limitation on multicasting. Soak doesn't work the way you're assuming-- it's per attack, not per round. Your Might 40 demon with 15 soak vs PeVi is INVULNERABLE. It takes a minimum of PeVi lv 20 to bypass its soak, and that would need a CT of 60 to penetrate. So only someone highly, highly specialized can affect it AT ALL.
For that matter, your one guy with the CT 50 is already pretty highly specialized. Yes, he can take down a creature with Might. He's also likely incapable of making his own longevity ritual, can't buff his grogs, can't make any items that help improve his covenant's standing, probably can't write any books, AND, any creatures he hunts don't even yield any vis.
Ars Magica is a system where magi can achieve anything, given enough time to prepare spells. Your scenario assumes that you have one guy with one schtick. That doesn't mean one mechanic is broken-- it means that, as intended, magi who have the right build and the right spells prepared can do what they set out to do.
The balance against overuse of might strippers is that in destroying the magic, you sacrifice its vis.
In your scenario, your Flambeau knocks out his PeVi monkey buddy, apologizes to the dragon profusely, and comes back later with appropriate physically damaging spells so that he gets 8 pawns of vis when he kills the lizard.
I think multi-cast and penetration mastery skills have a problem that is fixed by one copy/+1 per level of mastery assigned to it.
you should not be able to take master 4 (penetration, Multi-cast, quick cast, subtle) and from that get +4 to penetration (that gets multiplied), 4 copies and able to fast cast it when you are held in a grapple by it.
I think that Might strippers do have problem but that could be fixed by a slight reduced effect against the actual might score (or bump base up so that you need level 10 spell to strip 10 might points, but level 20 to strip 10 might score)
I don't think we need to tweak things more than this.
also keep in mind, if you are fighting a might 40, +15 soak opponent with good defense, you might be better off with indirect spells in first place (drop it in big hole (peTe), have a big rock ready to drop down the hole for big aiming/damage bonuses when it flies or otherwise tries to get out. )
The level 15 pit spell is very effective since it does damage for the fall (falling rules put it at +9 or +18 for it). Bump it to level 20 and suddenly it is a much deeper hold and a lot more painful fall. A 50' fall is something like +100 damage. Good to kill almost anything and no magic resistance.
I usually from the school that unknown shape/material bonuses must be discovered to be used (otherwise, there's no point to the virtue that lets you do that), but an anvil is such a crucial and iconic component of a forge that it (IMO) stands to reason that it must have already been done.
And that being said, your idea is good, IMO 
Well, I understand the "writing" specialty (knowing more words when writing than speaking is...daft), but there are language specialties, like dialects, giving you an effective skill of 5 in that language.
The most common latin specialty is thus "hermetic usage", which mean you get skill 5 for discussing matters of hermetic magic (you have the most vocabulary there) and 4 for the rest (like asking where's the bathroom)
Actually, I suffer from this in daily life, since there are entire spans of non-RPG-related vocabulary I am totally lacking 
The exact level of soak is debatable, but, IMO, it is quite needed in order to have creatures of might be anything if not canon fodder for players.
Please, read my simple exemple above. Read the numerous threads on the forums. Ask the question. Do as many simulations as you like. But don't let them be as vulnerable as they currently are. It totally breaks my suspension of disbelief.
OTOH, I'm not fan of considering exploding dices as a factor, otherwise you could say that your lvl 50 CrIg spell is useless because some peasant will roll and exploding dice on his soak and take absolutely no wound. It could happen just as easily.
You could also say that, on round one, the demon will roll an exploding die and kill the might-stripper magus. Or that the magus will botch on his spell.
I could also argue that a creature may flee, heal his wounds, and strike later. A creature that had its might score drained is permanently weakened. The equivalent for a magus would be, for exemple, a permanent lowering of his art score. This is heinous, and a clear advantage of might-strippers over damage spells. Not that this is wrong, but just a reminder since you seem to say that, all other things being equal, damage spells are better than Might Strippers.
It's another possibility. Its problem is that emptying the might pool stops the creature from using most of its powers, which is quite weakening.
If at round 2 your demon is forced to rely on physical attacks because his might pool is 0, it won't do him any good if he's the "magic, not sword" type.
Correction:
Round 2: No powers, save those rare powers that cost 0 might
Round 10/18: Dead (you forgot to count the 2 rounds spent draining the might pool)
IMO, the "dead" time in 8 or 16 rounds is right for an "on the fly" weak spell (lvl 10!) cast without any preparation at such a (supposedly dangerous) opponent. It's the "deplete might pool in 2 rounds" bit that cause me problems. This totally cripples all but the most physical adversaries.
I'm also bothered by the fact that you'll need powerful physical spells, which mean you'll require planning, searching for arcane connections... but that the weaker might strippers will always be 100% efficient, even against an Elder Dragon, which means you don't need planning and all
Now that I think of it, I'm not fan of divisions by 4 or 8, this is hard enough to slow down things.
=> We could combine both, with a soak of, say, 2*(Might/5), with score being diminished by 1/2 points.
For that demon, this still means immunity to your lvl 10 DEO.
A lvl 20, like the Pilum, cast twice per round, will drain 08 might, meaning:
Round 5: Bye bye powers (assuming he uses nothing)
Round 15: Hello death.
Wrong.
Attack advantage doesn't add to aimed spells damage, the roll is just for hitting. This was confirmed by David Chart:
Errr??? My exemple was a pure RAW exemple, with a might 40 demon being targeted by 2 lvl 10 DEO per turn, thus losing all might pool in 2 turns, being destroyed in 4.
My Might 40 demon with Soak 15 vs PeVi is invulnerable... to low-level might-strippers, just like he's invulnerable to low-level damage spells.
Note also that my option for multicasting alleviates this.
It would take a CT of 60 with a lvl 20 PeVi to hurt a Might Soak 15/Might 40 demons?
Well, on average, it would take a CT of 65 with a lvl 25 CrIg spell to hurt a Soak 15/Might 40 demon.
You talked about dangerous opponents. Might 40 ARE supposed to be that. Look at RoP: tI. The most powerful demons there are about Might 30. Look at RoP: M. Might 40 are the planetary spirits. The magical spirits of the Moon, the Sun, Mars...
So if only specialized characters can fight them instead of newly-gauntleted magi (Have you read my example???), that's actually a pretty fine thing. To me, only prepared Archmagi should have a chance to fight a Planetary Spirit or Baal, Lord of Filth.
Read me carefully: My not-particularly optimised young magi character from above (Pe 13, Vim 10, Stamina 2, penetration 3, multicast 2, DEO 5 and a dice roll of 05) can, by the RAW, stop Baal from using all his powers save the sex-change in at worst 2 turns. 2 turns later, he's killed him.
With a Might Soak of 15, for a non-prepared magus to do the same thing, it requires DEO 20 and a CT of 50. Say Perdo 22, Vim 16, Stamina 2, Penetration 5, Mastery 2 (he should have upped this, but I'll let it at the same level), and a roll of 5. This is a powerful magus butchering a lord of hell without being prepared. You may disagree, but to me, this seems waaaay more right.
Arya, please, read me. This is not 1 guy, with one schtick.
My Novus Mane character, Wirth, is an Apromor Magus with Perdo 13, Vim 2, 5 years out of gauntlet.
Give him 2 seasons. He learns DEO 5, masters it for multicasting once.
This gives him, on average, penetration 21, stripping 10 might per turn.
For reference, faced by a mundane opponent, he inflicts 3 medium wounds per turn at touch range (meaning he have to risk a sword strike). This is is schtick and area of specialty.
Give him an arcane or sympathetic connection to his target for a Pen multiplier of *4 => He can affect (with a roll of 2+) creatures up to might 30. That's it, Baal, Lord of Filth. Or Bael, Destroyer of Nations, for what it's worth. And by the RAW, he empties their might pool in 6 rounds, and afterwards, weakens them permanently, killing them in 6 more rounds.
This is not a guy with one schtick, nor a specialized character, nor an archmagus facing a lord of hell.
This is an average magus 5 year out of gauntlet that took 2 seasons of his time.
Give him 1 more year instead and he gets about the same penetration with 2 DEO 10. That's enough to render Baal mostly inoffensive in 3 turns, kill him in 6.
IMO, this is just wrong. IMO, striking down baal should be something for elder magi.
Which is exactly the same as giving every creature a might soak of 10
Glad to know we finally agree
The variable might soak actually means that weaker creatures (under 20 might) are more vulnerable than this, and that the more powerful ones (princes of hell, planetary spirits...) are stronger. YMMV, but, IMO, this is good. Clear the canon fodder, struggle against the bosses.
It would take a CT of 60 with a lvl 20 PeVi to hurt a Might Soak 15/Might 40 demons?
Well, on average, it would take a CT of 65 with a lvl 25 CrIg spell to hurt a Soak 15/Might 40 demon.
Technically that is not true. On average (treat an exploding die as 11): it takes a base casting total 60. When you add penetration (if you have casting total of 50-60, your penetration is probably 5) and that you can use 1 or more confidence points, then you need casting total of about 49-52. This is a severe specialist.
admittedly your PeVi only needs a 34-40 by this math but this is true specialization and very old mages.
I have a mage in a game (play by post) who is 96 years out of apprenticeship. She has one Technique+form that is CT 49(68 in her focus)+aura . Her second best combination is 40+aura. At teh same time her PArma is 6 so that means 30+form bonus (35 for weakest, 57 strongest, most about 40-42) which means the demon's powers with their penetration of 40 max can't touch her with its powers.
My character for this saga is starting at a best casting total of 22 before 10 years are up. It will likely be about 27 with some penetration. To get where I can affect a demon with might 40 will take decades and well into archmage status where it really doesn't matter.
On the other hand, a fresh out of gauntlet mage wtih the right indirect spells, totally bypasses magic resistance and drops a 10'x10'x10' boulder on the demon for huge damage and only a good aiming roll. Dead. Of course, demons do have might 0 spells including going incorporeal as soon as might points are gone and no hermetic art can detect it.
I am more worried about mastery 4 with specialties of penetration, multi-cast, fast cast, quick spell popping off 5 copies of Might stripper 5 with a 15-20 casting total taking out might 20-25 foes in one round and destroying all the vis. Mastery needs to be fixed.
Fixer does have a point. I play a character in another pbp, a Pralician, at gauntlet. She is good at Perdo and Vim (9 each) and has got life boost, self-confidence. Her real strength is Premonitions and Comprehend magic, by the way - so she is not optimized for this.
She's got flawless magic, a few mastered spells and the three might strippers (not the divine one). Mastery 2 for each of them (penetration and multicasting, of course).
Pe 9 + Vi 9 + 2 sta + 2 mastery bonus + 2 penetration mastery + 1 penetration ability + 1 vim specilaty + 6 two confidence points (if the roll goes badly) + life boost as needed + roll
= usually enough to drain 30 might in one round.
A shame you don't get the creature's vis when might strippers are used.
My favorite solution is decreasing the efficiency of might strippers by making the spell guidelines tougher (+2 magnitudes might do the trick).
In addition to that, multicasting could be nerfed, by granting mastery/2 additional copies of the spell (round up) --> 2 spells at mastery 1, 3 at mastery 3, 4 at mastery 5, 5 at mastery 7
In addition, dividing item peenetration by 2 might not hurt.
Still still gives players the possiblities to kill anything they want if they prepare well enough - if they have the time to prepare undisturbed.
The very best idea is avoiding Perdo Vim altogether: If none of our characters uses might strippers as our primary defense, we can expect the storyguide not to plague us with high might incorporeal beings.
Yeah, but I seeded Duncan, a diabolist.
shudder
Faileas had a single minded determination to gauntlet the young boy before he passed into Wizard's Twilight. I'm not sure how much Peregrine advanced/developed Duncan, but when I introduced him in Bibracte, he was extremely powerful, especially with Rego Vim, Faileas' specialty, as I understood it. I can imagine all the demons he can unleash...
Yeah, you guys are taking a saga where the whole premise is a backstory of hey, we're going to end up facing a lit of really powerful demons and saying, Hey! Let's house rule things so we necessitate having a super specialized PeVi monkey! Which would make sense if GIJoo's character from Andorra were in the game, but as no one is currently even considering a character build which would preemptively PB's antagonists, I really don't get why folks are pushing so hard to house rule nerfing something no one is doing, to make "working as intended" mechanics completely ineffectual.
Titus (that was his name, right?) can steamroll any Might 50 creature by multicasting might strippers with huge penetration. He shouldn't be able to do that, we all agree. But Fixer's proposed solution to that is to beef up all beings with Might, such that the only way creatures with Might can be overcome is if someone builds Titus. That 1) doesn't address the problem you pose, and 2) creates a host of other problems in making more work for PB as he tries to balance encounters appropriately.
Regarding Laetitia, the character has history with the back story of the saga, and PB suggested I port the character to his game (knowing beforehand that my work schedule is pants, and I get very little time at home with my books). Since everyone has a problem with it, he tries to re-work the character young enough to be the same age group as other starting characters, but it can't be done and still be recognizable as the same character (given the spells she used at the time and her back story). So everyone can stop the handwaving freakoutery-- Laetitia is out, and I will have to join the game after I've had time to come up with a character concept and then build it.
Lack of MC for Mac and limited time at home with my books aside, the big roadblock there is coming up with a concept. I've played Ars long enough that I've already "been there done that" with every semi-interesting character idea I've ever had. The well is dry 
I'd still poke around and help build the covenant and whatnot, but I don't foresee having a character any time in the next couple months. Actually, Diablo III comes out May 15th (OMGOMGOMG), so I don't foresee having a character until after my Monk hits Lv80 or so.
They've given a date for it? How unlike Blizzard!
Since I would like to get disgusting about multicasting: remember and think on the following:
I will be getting in my 10 years a spell that will put 10 or 100 people to sleep (that is only level 20 or 25). I master it for multicasting and fast cast and I will be able to put 30 or 300 people to sleep in one turn of action. If I master it to a third level for quick cast: it becomes 40 or 400. At 400, I can literally put an entire army to sleep company by company in under a minute.
Master Peering into the mortal mind and I ask 2-4 questions in space of one glance in the eyes.
On the nastier side, 2-4 weights of 1000 hells at once on four people.
do you see why I am talking about limiting multicasting a bit.
Fast casting doesn't guarantee you can cast more than once per round. And as it is a function of combat you could still be subject to some serious results as the rounds action resolved. Since action happens more or less simultaneously a sleep spell on the archers won't keep arrows from hitting you that first round. You might be able to knock out the squad, but your still a pin cushion at the end of the round. Fast-casting is a response to an attack, mitigating it. Some SGs might limit actions to self defense or some kind of mutually assured destruction situation. Your pc received a killing or incapacitating blow and you choose to do the same to your attacker.
Moves and countermoves.
Meh...I'm for leaving RAW unless it will truly change the game in a bad way. Natural consequences for one's actions can often take care of these things. So let's say you put an army to sleep, you'll likely have to answer for that even if you covered your tracks. Certainly any magus that knew about it and disapproved (or simply wanted to cause problems) could charge such a magus with interfering with mundanes. If any mortals lived and realized who did it, they might attempt drastic action to take out a person who can so easily stop an army. A dagger in the night is not as easy to stop as one might think...mortals can be very clever and persistent (just ask Verditius himself!). So while you might develop a spell that can sleep an army...you might decide not to use it.
I think Range would limit this, to some extent. I don't have my books, but to affect this many this quickly via multicast, it would have to be at least Voice range. So the spell level would be... (don't have my books), assuming base 3, voice is +4? and I guess you'd want Sun duration (since there's not much you can do to a sleeping army in two minutes)... Isn't this a high enough level spell that it would be really difficult to pull off more than two castings in a round? Granted, I don't have my books and I'm really not sure what the spell level would have to be, but my expectation is that the end effect you're describing is much harder than you're expecting it to be.
i don't really see anything wrong with that. An elegant solution to the Warping threshold problem (something about 5th ed I have never been happy with... Because taking a fireball to the face isn't bad enough, we gotta add insult to injury and push you a little closer to Twilight too).
Still don't see a problem. But then, I am a roleplayer, not a roll-player. Big numbers and dice rolls are all well and good, but the challenge of any good roleplaying system should come from the situations that you can't just throw magic/the Force/swords/spell reagents at.
@Arya: I see two ways of overcoming creation blocks. You could ask someone completely uninvolved about an idea and use it for a first draft. Or you open a random book on a random page 3 times (or roll dice to randomize) and read one sentence. Create your character from that sentence.
@ rules:
Maybe we should relax about trying to find house rules a little. We all know to build munchkins (and we are all responsible enough to avoid super-munchkinism that might ruin somebody else's enjoyment of the game)
Question: Is there 1 CrCo spell for wounds and diseases recovery boni (ArM5 core) or are there 2 - one for wounds and another one for diseases (A&A)?