“A magus may also protect one other person for each point in Parma Magica, with their consent.
He must touch each person to start the protection, and it lasts as long as at least one character can see the other.”
Does this mean you are within sight or actually looking at the character?
My interpretation has always been could see, not they must see.Even small sight disruptions do not break it. It’s just impractical otherwise.
A horse and cart get between the protected person. No problem. The horse and cart stop and nothing is done to recommence sight, then it would break, is my opinion.
I imagine this is a bit opinion based and others may disagree.
This seems to be a troupe-decides thing; but I agree that it is entirely reasonable. My question is with 'A Mage may protect a number of additional individuals with their Parma, equal to the Mage's levels in the Parma Ability' and 'Every person so protected decreases the Mage's Parma Ability by three'.
Indeed. Magi still blink as far as I know.
We know Parma Magica takes about 2 minutes to cast, and drops next sunrise/sunset.
But I don’t recall if it immediately fails at the beginning or end of sunset/sunrise, or if the Parma Magica merely begins to weaken during the ~2 minutes from beginning to end of sunrise/sunset, failing at the end.
At any rate I would House Rule that a shared Parma does not fail until 2 minutes of blocked line of sight.
I haven’t had to deal with pitch darkness and shared Parma yet. And there are weird questions of how much of the apprentice is seen during Parma sharing, and whether you need to see the same bits to maintain shared Parma.
This is not what it says.
”While a magus is protecting others, his effective Parma Magica score is reduced by 3 points, both for himself and for the other people he is protecting.”
It doesn’t matter how many additional people are being protected, the ability is only reduced by 3.
EDIT: With a score of 3 or lower, everyone protected has Magic Resistance 0.
My interpretation is you just have to be roughly within line of sight. It means that a magus with an apprentice has to make sure they’re in the same room as the apprentice to keep them covered, so the magus will need to be reading a book while the apprentice sweeps the covenant floors or is working with the scribe, whereas in the lab (where no mundanes are around) the magus doesn’t have to care so much if the apprentice is hiding behind a door or not.
My interpretation has been similar.
There has to be line of sight, and a level of awareness. Short breaks don’t break it, so the mage can blink, pour a glass of water, gesture and look at a model on the wall. But the magus has to be able to target the extra Parma easily - if they hide in a closet, it’ll wear off after a few moments, if they are in a giant crowd, they won’t be picked out despite being ‘in line of sight’.
Basically, I kind of ruled that it wears off after a minute of being unseen.
You are correct; my reading was mistaken. Thanks! That makes Parma far more useful.