Greetings to my fellow magi
If you are attempting to create a new guideline (one which does not existing in your saga) via research and experimentation (using the rules for original research), which does not violate any of the existing limits on magic, and your SG is willing to allow this research, would you say it was a major, minor or hermetic breakthrough, and if it is inspired by an existing guideline, but altering it, can that existing guideline be used as a source for it?
I say Minor, as long as no limits are broken or stretched.
And it may not be as much as 30 breakthrough points.
You're being very cagey about what this is, exactly. "Inspired by an existing guideline" really says nothing re how far from the known guidelines you're pushing things. Could be trivial, but otoh just because it's "allowed" doesn't mean you don't have a death-march in front of you.
Care to share the specifics?
Most hermetic wards are an all or nothing deal.
A ward against fire doing up to +10 damage will protect you from fire doing up to 10 damage, but if that fire happens to do 11 damage, it'll ignore the ward and burn you to death.
I'm wondering if it's possible to make an absorbative one (even if it's a magnitude or two higher in base) that means that when that 11 damage hits you, the ward acts as additional soak for that situation, reducing it to 1 damage that your regular soak and form bonuses can handle.
Wouldn't that potentially be a Muto effect, rather than Rego?
I tended to think that Wards were an all or nothing affair, so I can see where this guideline would be handy. Some interesting applications if applied widely, such as suppressing but not stopping a creature using a Vim ward?
That's a curious choice of example, since Ward Against Heat and Flame specifically provides a soak against fire-related damage it doesn't completely stop - much like what you're suggesting as far as I can tell.
Give it a read, it's a nice spell! ArM5, p. 143
Interesting, I hadn't seen that before. Nice catch.
Would it be possible to duplicate this across the forms, so as to have one giving +15 to soak against terram (stone tipped arrows, swords, etc)?
I presume a terram equivalent would be base 3, +2 for metals, +2 for up to 15 damage (I'm presuming this translates as +1 magnitude for each +5 damage), +1 touch, +2 sun.
Results in a level 30 spell?
Would it need a breakthrough to duplicate the guideline in this manner?
And could it be duplicated to Auram, Herbam, etc too?
There is a spell already on the Net Wizard's Grimoire
spellswiki.wikidot.com/rego-terram
Called
Wizard’s Ward versus Steel Weapons it's ReTe 25, but it says it uses Xavi's breakthrough.
Xavi: what was your breakthrough?
Bob
I suppose another example would be in the MuVi section, that says "Adding more than +2 magnitudes to spell is a CrVi effect" - but no such guideline exists in the CrVi section.
How many breakthrough points would that take? My thought is "not all that many" - however, such a guideline functionally allows a wizard to create one-way anti-magic wards, so there may be a game-balance issue.
(Although to be fair - the "add +2 magnitude" MuVi effect allows you to crate a functional lvl 10 one-way anti-magic ward anyway, so maybe it's not all that big a game-breaker as it sounds
I'm not following. Are you suggesting that you can defeat any spell cast at you with MuVi magic, a 10th level spell?
Ah, no. However, a lvl 30 MuVi Ring Circle effect can "Increase magnitude of any spell, up to lvl 10, by +2" (Base Effect lvl 15, 0 Circle, +2 Ring, +1 touch). Of course, the specific effect is "do nothing but raise the magnitude of the effect" - but I would rule that such an effect is really just making the spell more complex for the sake of complexity - and is, if anything, the result of a failed attempt at MuVi. It just so happens that there is an application for it, though: getting through antimagic wards.
A generalist antimagic ward (Base Effect 15, Ring +2, Touch +1, Circle ) cancels out anything at lvl 10 or below. (or is it "below lvl 10"? Serf's parma on the edge condition.)
Combine the two, and you've got the MuVi guaranteeing that anything that comes out of the circle is above lvl 10, so the Antimagic ward doesn't affect it. But anything coming INTO the ward will hit the antimagic ward first. Thus, functionally, you've got a one-way, lvl 10 antimagic ward.
You may need to add +1 or +2 for complexity on one or the other - there may be timing issues that need to be specifically designed into the effect - for example: does the anti-magic ward affect the magi's spell BEFORE the MuVi affect hits it, or after? I'm assuming you can design it so that the MuVi effect kicks in as the spell is cast, thereby ensuring that it's ALWAYS above a lvl 10, so that the PeVi effect is never able to touch it due to its level.
EDIT - the alternate is the CrVi version, wich would "wrap" the spell effect in a lvl 15 shell, thereby ensuring that it also isn't affected by the PeVi effect. However, such an ability doesn't technically exist, unless you generously interpret the "create a shell" abilities of Creo Vim.
No. MuVi doesn't work like that.
And
It's not another magus's - it's your own. (You're standing inside your own circular ward) - unless your argument is that it's impossible to create a MuVi circular ward. (Which may very well be the case.) Or if it's impossible to have any a MuVi effect other than a D:Mom that affects multiple spells cast by the magi.
It's not: Magi is standing inside a MuVi ward, which is inside a PeVi ward. As the Magi casts a lvl (say) 5 spell, the MuVi ward mutates it up to a level 15. The PeVi ward affects only lvl 10 spells and below. Therefore, the PeVi ward doesn't affect it.
Or, if you don't care for the ring version:
Have the MuVi effect be Touch, but with a duration longer than momentary (such as Diameter or Sun). In theory, that should affect ALL spells you cast, assuming the MuVi effect could target it.
Unless you're saying that can't be done - which I would argue requires a rather odd reading of the MuVi rules. (But, again - Serf's Parma - don't have the books in front of me.)
EDIT - actually, now that I think about it - that may not work. (target is the spell, not the magi.) Which is probably why I had it set up as a ward in the first place.
Ok, yeah, I didn't understand that you were doing a PeVi effect, too. But, generally, MuVi can't work like that, IMO. It affects a specific spell, and once that spell has been affected by the Muto Vim meta-magic spell, the MuVi effect also expires.
Yeah, it's a bit iffy. That's why I like the Creo Vim "wrap your spell in a shell that can get through the Perdo Vim ward, like a sabot round" guideline. Which may or may not exist, as it's only implied in the MuVi section.
I could argue its existence in the existing CrVi guidelines, which I don't think are restricted in the same way the MuVi ones are. One could use the "shell" guidelines to argue that such a shell can shield a lower-magnitude spell from the PeVi effect. But that's a pretty out-there interpretation. Hence my desire to explicitly create the guideline as described in the MuVi section.
EDIT - however, that does imply that a Great Talisman can do the MuVi effect...thereby making it an even MORE useful thing to have. 
EDIT II - although in that case, you're paying...a major virtue? for the ability to have anti-magic defense. Which...actually may be worth it, if that's your thing.
Seems like a lot of effort. And you're also standing in a circle, which makes you a great target for the other side's archers, or ankle biters...
The main implementation I was thinking about was waging Wizard's War: as a way of cancelling out any low-level Intangible Tunnel or similar effects cast on you, while being able to cast out of it.
Which would actually imply that the counter to this would be non-Tunnel effects with arcane range, or else someone doing their OWN version of this spell on their Tunnel spells that they're casting at you. (so a lvl 10 Intangible Tunnel is actually a lvl 20 tunnel, with the same penetration - thus avoiding low-level anti-magic effects.)
Which really just adds a level of complexity to wizard's war - in addition to having a ReVi tunnel, you also need PeVi antimagic and MuVi Enhancement effects. Which starts to suggest that the "Teleport in and stab the wizard" technique is a viable counter to the whole issue. But it does add a level of sophistication for Vim wizards to do their thing.
But the circle version of the AntiMagic effect could probably be collapsed down into a Hermetic Ward (Ind/Sun) - which normally would be an attack, but if you did it on yourself, then you could carry your antimagic ward around with you. (Because your talisman lets you cast out of it.)
I am, of course, assuming that antimagic effects work both ways when they have a non-momentary duration, even when they're not specifically designed as wards. Because if they CAN be cast as only affecting the target (and not affecting anyone casting on the target), then we've already got one-way antimagic.
An alternate take on the layered Anti-magic would be the following:
Magi, standing inside a
PeVi "Cancel out Hermetic PeVi magic" circle, which is itself inside a
PeVi "General antimagic" circle.
Which means that the magi is standing inside a clear circle, which is itself bordered by a ring of generalist antimagic. (EDIT - ok, he's actually inside a "no PeVi magic circle, which is inside a generalist antimagic circle.)
However, I'm not quite sure how this works. The magi is technically not covered by the generalist antimagic - but any spell would have to travel THROUGH a ring of antimagic to get to him.
So what happens when a target isn't covered, but the spell must travel through a zone that is? I honestly could see it going either way.
On one hand, PeVi circle/target effects are suppression effects, not permanent destruction. So it could be that the spell travels through the shell (not affecting anything that is covered within the shell itself), and then comes out the other side, and hits the magi. But that implies that a suppressed spell still "exists", and is in motion, even when suppressed - thus allowing it to continue. Or it hits the shell, and is completely cancelled out.
EDIT - alternate: or this works, but only because the targets are different. In contrast, if it were on the same target (such as T: individual for both), then one would cancel out the other. Similarly, you couldn't cast both on the same Structure or Circle or Room, as the "No Hermetic PeVi Magic" effect would cancel out the generalist one. But because they're on different targets, it works. Which means you can set it up defensively, but you can't switch the entire thing over to a personal Hermetic ward.