I'm not sure that's necessary. I'm unclear what we're discussing, RAW or your HR. It also appears that you're lessening the penalty to spells cast later in the round after the first fast cast spell. Each spell after the first fast cast spell gets a -6, not a -3.
Sure, but maybe someone wants the vis. Maybe the PeVi specialist is off somewhere else killing other creatures or can't be bothered to be pulled out of his lab and come on this adventure. A well balanced group of 3-4 magi and their grogs can and should be able to employ strategies that effectively take down anything, because the magi should be covering the other's weaknesses. Sure, there might be exceptions to what can be handled...
My mistake i thought it was -3.
I still think fast cast is too powerful anyway
I am willing to discuss both ^^
There is always a way to overcome a rule weakness with stories, but you shouldn't include them in discussion about rules.
Each saga is different but we usually play 1-2 magi, 1-2 companions, and 1-2 grogs in an adventure.
And I completely disagree with the fact that "3-4 magi should be able to take down anything" for me it's a complete buzzkill and a huge flaw in game design, there should always be something more powerful than the players.
Lastly : you don't have to be a specialist for that problem to occur, any magus with descent score in Pe/Vi has no reason (except vis hunting) to use other spells than Pe/Vi while battling creatures.
I think this begin to be an issue with a magus who have Pe/Vi 30, the magus can manage items with a penetration of 30+ that destroys 10+ points of might at touch range, that mean that he can kill 80% of the creatures published easily. That also mean that he can kill most creatures in 2-3 rounds with only 4 spells.
I agree that there are story ways to overcome this, i just think that AOD guideline is a buzzkill because it's overpowered in comparison to other attack spells.
Well, fast cast is a response to an event or surprising action. My point of view on fastcasting is nearly immutable. It's never pre-emptive, and it should always mitigate the event in some way, or accept mutually assured destruction. Your magus is getting sliced by an opposing grog, after your shield grog was incapacitated, if you cast Wizard's Leap and succeed in the fast casting timing roll, you can cast the spell and evade a killing blow. If you fast cast Pilum of Fire, you're dead, and the grog might be dead depending on the damage/soak comparison. That's how fast casting should work. Doctorcomics also made a good HR for a saga that I'm in that also suggested that you can't cast any other spells in a round unless you've mastered them for fast casting. I like the HR because it gives one a reason for fast casting an offensive spell that I don't believe otherwise existed. I'm not sure it's weak when you limit as such. I think fast casting is over powered when you presume you can get an offensive spell off before the other guy gets his sword swing in. The fast casting success roll is either success (meet or exceed the initiative point) or failure, not the new initiative point at which the spell goes off.
My contention is that by including your Might soak, you've nerfed the might stripping guidelines to be much less powerful than other guidelines that do damage. Very few creatures are going to have a 40 soak to overcome if they aren't invulnerable.
And why is a PeVi specialist getting into touch range of a might 30 dragon (or whatever). Seems ill-advised...
Yes but by raw that's not true, you can fast cast at any surprising action, it's fast casting not fast defending.
And there is no in universe logic to reduce it to surprising actions, why if I am fast enough to fast cast as someone is attacking me can't i fast cast a "pilum of fire" right before attacking myself ? I know it's not possible by row but my magus in our saga is teleporting 5 paces before striking his enemies on the same round by beating his own initiative.
Well, I think I gave might 50 creatures the way to fight 100 years old magus has they should be able to.
And if i reduced a spell that deal damage (to might), destroy defense a criple the target at the same time to something a little less powerful than spells that just deal damage then I think it's fair enough.
Let's compare 2 thing, Killing a might 50 creature With Pe/Co and killing a creature with Pe/Vi at voice range.
Both ways have a similar scope : one affect only creatures from a specific realm, the other affect creatures with a "humanoid" type, corporeal and not too large.
Light wounds :
With Pe/Co if you want to kill a creature with light wounds at voice range it's 17 level 15 spells.
With Pe/Vi you kill a creature with 3 spells of the same level.
Medium wounds :
With Pe/Co if you want to kill a creature with medium wounds at voice range it's 12 level 20 spells.
With Pe/Vi you kill a creature with 3 spells of the same level.
Medium wounds :
With Pe/Co if you want to kill a creature with heavy wounds at voice range it's 7 level 25 spells.
With Pe/Vi you kill a creature with 2 spells of the same level.
incapacitating wounds :
With Pe/Co if you want to kill a creature with incapacitating wounds at voice range it's 2 level 30 spells.
With Pe/Vi you kill a creature with 2 spells of the same level.
Killing downright :
With Pe/Co if you want to kill a creature at voice range it's 1 level 40 spell.
With Pe/Vi you kill a creature with 2 spells of the same level.
The only case where Pe/Co is advantageous is when you kill the creature downright, and I did it with might 50 because it's in favour of Pe/Co.
So you can't tell me that the Pe/Vi guideline is in par with the Pe/Co guideline...
it's about the same with Cr/Ig (but a little less).
And on top of that you add that you weaken the creature, destroy her magic resistance and that those damages are not healable.
I'm not saying it's fast defending. I'm just saying that timing of the POF you fast cast is going to happen at the exact same moment the sword slices your belly open. You can only mitigate the action. I'm not saying you can't fast cast an offensive spell in my sagas, I'm just saying it won't prevent whatever is being done unto you before you do unto your opponent.
I hate beat my initiative attempts with a holy passion.
I'm just going to agree to disagree regarding our differences on PeVi might strippers. Our experiences are vastly different, and I've not played with many players who purposely design PeVi might stripping specialists. And 100 year old magi have better things to do than go down and hunt someone who isn't bothering them. Such a move is like exposing one's queen for a really bad chess gambit. The magus is unassailable in his place of power, as is the King of the Black Firs, and they use pawns, such as the Black Fir in Durenmar to implement their strategy.
Never ever would I allow this, even with Concentration. Even maintaining it for one additional round makes the spell twice as effective for the addition of one magnitude (which in turn keeps the level low for penetration).
This might have been the way in Fourth Edition, but in Fifth demons are actually quite frail when it comes to their existence. Even if just their physical manifestation is killed/destroyed, demons are gone forever. See RoP:I for reference.
Yes on might strippers we should agree to disagree.
P.Niger has a Pe/Vi lab total of 80 (not so impressive), he could reach 90 by gathering bonuses and assuming he has a good lab (even 100).
So he can make items that deal 5 might points damage has often has you want (lvl15) with a penetration of 90 (so level 60) in 2 seasons, then in one with the lab text.
He needs about 10 of them to arm grogs and kill the mighty king and all his subjects, that's only 3 years.
(And I could optmize that we both know it)
And in the entire history of Durenmar he was the most powerful in that area ?
With his personality traits and power why didn't he do it ?
It is a problem for me when the system destroy the credibility of the universe...
Obviously might 50+ creatures were not supposed to be that easily killed when the core rulebook when out.
After all you only need a lab total of 60 and 5 seasons to kill a creature with might 50 in two strikes.
That's only Aura 5, Magic Theory 5, Lab 5, various 5, Focus and Pe/Vi : 13+13, hardly an incredible set up.
And might 50 was supposed to be the high end of things with the core rulebook.
And the grogs get pinched before they get close to the forest. They get swarmed with dozens of faerie, a few get taken out, but so do the grogs. Oh, and now the King has an arcane connection to Phillipus Niger.
No, philipus is not stupid, 1 he has spells to dispatch group of faeries, so let's assume he can have filli making Pe/Vi grenades for that.
Or cast a big boundary ritual with is archmagus friends to destroy all might 1-25 faeries in the forest before the attack.
Second he would destroy the Arcane connection beforehand or wait for it to end
The truth is that gudeline make the magi of the order ruler of the world nothing short of god can resist the order
But let's stop the nonsense about archmagus, and talk about stuff that do happen ingame : you did not answer to my Pe/Co vs Pe/Vi balance argument but that is a real game balance issue.
Every magus should have different strengths. I don't measure my corpus specialists against a vim specialist to see how powerful they are. They both have entirely different goals. It's the story arc for the character and covenant that I'm most interested in, at every stage the decisions I make as far as the house rules are focused on telling stories. I hate beat the initiative, you want to be a fast caster, take the virtue and the quickness that grants that. I find beat the initiative utterly uninteresting and it slows down combat. Your fast cast spells should be primarily defensive, or you should be prepared for mutually assured destruction when you fast cast that Pilum of Fire at the grog who is going to disembowel you. Fair cop, the player of the magus already knows he's either dead or at least incapacitated, he decides whether he lives or gets the spell off...
So, if a PeCo specialist is more or less powerful than a PeVi specialist doesn't really matter, the stories that they are involved in are very different. When they're together, well, that's another thing, altogether, but it doesn't happen often when I'm the SG. When I'm the player it happens a bit more, but again, I don't have a tricked out PeVi specialist as a player in any of my games.
Kind of touching further on my point of comparing specialists...
I do have a saga I'm in where I'm kind of playing a Mentem specialist[1], and there's another Mentem specialist (with a focus in ghosts) who totally owns me in that field, but I give him a run for his money with dealing with people. Who's more powerful?
[1]He has an affinity with Mentem, but he also has a Magic Addiction and his concentration isn't super high. His average Int+Concentration roll to control his addiction is going to be 13, which effectively caps the level of his spells at 25. He's very likely to be a generalist, a magus for all seasons, or someone I hope he can grow into, anyway.
That's were we disagree, i think that it is a flaw in a game system when a way of doing things is hugely better than an other.
Would the story you tell be any different if the Pe/Vi specialist and the Pe/Co specialist had as powerful combat spell as each other ?
Do you really think that being the best fighter is what a Vim specialist should be ?
And I didn't compare magus in that argument i compared Arts and Guidelines that do very similar thing : killing, so you didn't answer my argument you sidestepped it on purpose .
I am not comparing power between magi that does completely different things, i am comparing the power of killing of two (three) guidelines.
And saying : hey that one is overpowered.
By going into the specifics and into pure game example you are getting out of the subject at hand "Spells That Reduce Might" and my position on that is :
They are too powerful compared to other ways of killing stuff, I showed it to you by comparing it to another guideline that kill stuff and could do it wit other guidelines.
Pe/Co is by essence the art of killing stuff it should be the best art to kill stuff ^^
Should you be able to fly with Rego Corpus? Presuming the Base 15 guideline of moving quickly in any direction, what's quickly? Before you answer, let's move on to Cr(Re)Auram, here's it's unequivocally clear you can fly, but it requires concentration to do so, and it's a very high level spell already with Concentration duration, and you fly at 40 mph. So, going back to quickly, is it 40 mph? Is that quick for the form of corpus, for the form of corpus it's unbelievably fast, since the fastest runner in the world is in the 20s. Why shouldn't one form do something better than another form, sub-optimally designed spells have a history in the Order and are totally "mythic."
It's arguable as to whether the Vim specialist is the best fighter. He could also be super effective at taking magi out of combat by throwing some warping at them, too. A dangerous magus is going to use any tool at his disposal to fight with. Not all creatures are corpus, not all creatures are magical, and certainly not all creatures are magical creatures of the form of corpus. The Vim specialist is utterly out of his field when dealing with killing mundane humans. The corpus specialist when dealing with magical creatures that aren't related to Corpus. When the two collide the Vim guy has the edge, but the corpus guy wants the vis. Now what? Not all stuff is magical, not all stuff is mundane... How these things are killed is a big determination. If you don't care about the vis, blast it away, by all means, if you wan to preserve the vis, then you have to work a bit harder at it. I don't see a problem with making someone work harder for "treasure."
Cr(Re)Au lvl 30 vs ReCo lvl 25 (+1 magnitude for higher speed so let's say 30) is nearly the same, and on top of that you choose something that arrange you.
And of course it is normal that the ReCo combo is better as moving a human body than Cr(Re)Au, it's made for it.
And I could add that to be equal you have to at least add an Animal Req to the ReCo because you can make animals fly with the other one.
I am comparing very very similar things not using the Art made for moving Air and the Art made for moving the body on which one is the better at moving... a body.
Of course some arts are better at doing things than others but it's a matter of degree...
There is no reason to use anything else than PeVi to destroy a creature with might (except vis hunting).
By my understanding of the Rules, most of the Perdo Corpus examples don't work - if you cast 17 inflict light wounds spells at a creature, the result is that it has 17 light wounds (and a wound penalty of -17), not that it's dead.
Cr(Re)Au level 30 requires three arts to get within striking distance of the casting score for reliability. ReCo has two. And then you sidestepped my question how quick is quickly for ReCo, is that as fast as the wind, 40 mph? Within the mythic paradigm, that's a bit more than quick, it's amazingly fast (for that reason I choose 15 mph, which is faster than most people can even run). And if one were to drop it down to a personal spell, just to make oneself, fly you now have a 20th level spell versus a 30th level spell with requisites. Shouldn't one be better than the other here? Yes, you could make a pig fly with Wings of the Soaring Wind, but you really can't follow him along, can you? The spell is clearly designed to let the caster fly, other use is limited to quick hops to where the caster can see and safely let the recipient of the flying spell land gently.
Well, there are all the things the beasts of virtue can do in the RoP:Magic book...
Once it picks up enough penalties its crippled. Walk away, let the creature collapse and slit its throat.
No, demons are sent to Hell when might goes to 0 or their physical form is destroyed. Forever. Very clearly stated on page 29.
The guy has 90 might. He really needs better powers. I do note that Multiple Casting requires each spell to be rolled for individually. And the fast casting penalties don't exclude casting Multiple spells with Multiple casting. Second you have an arcane connection. If the Faerie can't reach out and kill you indirectly you should NOT go face to face. Just go:
Trolling Faeries for Fun and Profit-PeVi-5
R: Arcane T: Ind D: Mom
The target loses three points of Faerie Might
Base 1 + 4 Arcane.
And Mastery: Trolling Faeries for Fun and Profit. 1 (Multiple Casting)
Combat: Sit self in Magic Aura 7. Use Loud gestures and Motions.
Rounds 1-10000: Using Multiple Casting average you get one (1) quadruple explosion that ends on a 6 or higher which ends with a penetration of 96+10-5=101. The guys magic resistance is a mere 100 (90+10 Faerie Aura.) Which means with one good solid day of casting you can score 1 hit. After six (6) penetrations however, only 83 will be needed. Which conveniently happens on a triple explosion followed by a 0. This means penetration is happening thrice per day now. Next day is 72 resistance, for five hits. 57 resistance means 7 hits average. 36 resistance and he's dead at the end of day 10. Which isn't even enough to distract our just out of apprenticeship magus from his lab work. Oh, and since this spell can be learned by a 0 art magus, and the mastery takes a season to learn, this could be done in an apprentices third year (one year opening, one teaching the spell and one teaching the mastery) or the first year if the magus is nice to the apprentice.
An arcane connection in the hands of an enemy magus means you are dead if they have the spells and time to exploit it. Not, dead if they have a high penetration. Not dead if you leave the Aegis. Just dead.
For my games, I simply house-ruled Perdo Vim effects to match Perdo Corpus effects, with the actual might reduction being the 'wound penalty', more or less. The guidelines I used:
PeVi 5: Inflict 1 damage to Might of a single Realm (same level as PeCo to inflict a light wound.)
PeVi 10: Inflict 3 damage to Might of a single Realm (same level as PeCo to inflict a medium wound.)
PeVi 15: Inflict 5 damage to Might of a single Realm (same level as PeCo to inflict a heavy wound)
PeVi 20: Inflict 10 damage to Might of a single Realm (same level as PeCo to inflict an incapacitating wound)
PeVi 30: Destroy a creature of a particular Realm's Might, killing it or rendering it mundane (same level as PeCo to instantly kill.)
It doesn't fix the problem, but it patches it to be comparable to Perdo Corpus and Perdo Animal.
o_O, I checked, and checked again... And that's true... We started playing Ars Magica 5 years ago and as there are 5 boxes to mark off light/medium/heavy wounds assumed that at the sixth one you checked the next level one.
Thank you
But that is even worth in regard to balancing because you can't chip off at a big creature (that is good IMHO) with PeCo but you can with PeVi...
True but lot less heroic
I told you I have no problem with the Arts combo made for moving a human body (ReCo) to be better than the Arts made for moving air (ReAu) at moving a human body.
And I told you it's a matter of degree, The difference between damaging a creature with PeVi and with other Arts (all of them) is too great :
You kill easier and faster
You destroy MR
You destroy their offensive powers and penetration
Damage done is permanent
That's too much of a difference in my book for Arts that are supposed to be able to do something similar (killing stuff).
I don't say that there should be no differencies but when you begin to see people all taking the same virtue (Focus) or the same attack spells (Dragon/Faery/Demon/Angel Eternal Oblivion) it means that there is a flaw in the game.
I never said you couldn't compensate with stories, i just feel that it makes for better stories when the game is balanced right (and balanced doesn't mean that everything is the same).
You are looking at this from a Narrativist perspective and refusing to leave that perspective, I am looking at this from a Gamist perspective and telling you that there is a problem and that it is not a narration problem but a game balance problem.
Tell me, is there a story you couldn't tell if the game was properly balanced in that regard ? no, there isn't so having this unbalanced does not add to the story it takes from it (you said yourself that some story the PeVi specialist must be excluded from).
I stand corrected, that changes everything
When you do that you do exactly the reverse of what I think should be done : you make lower level creatures harder to kill and higher level creatures easier to kill.
The Might Soak i introduced earlier has both the advantages of not changing anything in the published material and allowing the PC's to have fun fighting low level creatures.
With your system it's a level 25 spell to one shot a might 5 pixie, with the normal system it's a level 5 spell, with my system it's a level 5 spell
With your system it's a level 50 spell to one shot a might 25 ghost, with the normal system it's a level 25 spell, with my system it's a level 35 spell
With your system it's a level 50 spell to one shot the King, with the normal system it's a level 90 spell, with my system it's a level 130 spell
More, your way of doing things doesn't prevent the biggest issue of PeVi, the fact that you can chip at big creatures too fast. We tried something similar before settling for the Might Soak, we said that the DEO guideline was without the voice parameter, that is almost the same as your HR, but it was not so good.
We killed Beogart a might 30 demon in one round just 5 years out of apprenticeship, and thought that this was not doing it for us.
Faerybane would just have to cast it 30 times so that's 6 rounds and there is no botch dices when you master a spell to level 5
