In our last session, our troupe encountered a problem we'd never seen before. One of our magae was in a ruined covenant which, for convoluted story reasons, was protected by an Aegis of the Hearth, within a weak infernal aura. While there, she revived an important NPC magus ex Verditius who had been placed into a magical sleep. Once awake, the Verditius summoned his casting tools to himself (via Enchanted Casting Tools, HoH:MC pp. 123 - 124).
At this point, one of us raised the question of how the Aegis and aura ought to affect the NPC's attempt to teleport his casting tools to his hands. After roughly 10 minutes of poking around the books, we were stumped and just hand-waved the question, as it wasn't crucial to the story at that point. We are, however, still quite interested in the answer, as one of our magi is a Verditius, so it may come up again with more importance.
I have no solid answer. I would suggest rolling for the spell and checking what penetration you get. If it's enough, the tool arrives. If not, it doesn't get summoned. No fatigue loss for low rolls since you aren't really casting the spell. At least that way it's related to the spell the tool inherently connects to and how well that effect can penetrate the Aegis.
Well, the question centered around whether there was even a spell at all. After all, an Aegis doesn't interfere with my Bjornaer turning into an animal, so the powers that mysteries grant aren't necessarily treated like spells. Now, I have to admit that I find the section on enchanting tools to be highly vague and rather confusing. It mentions adding spell mastery powers to the tools, and the sidebar seems to say that those masteries are spell-specific. However, summoning the casting tools seems to be just a power that's added to the tools, adding 10 to the effect level of the enchantment but not affecting any spell as far as I can tell.
There's no mention that some ReTe spell is required, and no reason that any of us can see for an extra +10 to the enchantment level if one is required, since the magus and tools are arcane connections to each other. There's no need to place a level 10 enchantment on one's sanctum in order to Leap of Homecoming to it, so why would one need an extra 10 levels of enchantment on a steel wand that one had an arcane connection to for a similar spell that brought it to hand? It's for that reason that we're puzzled by this.
Does the sidebar's example of a tool for Crystal Dart (HoH:MC p. 124)--assuming Hephaestion added an extra 10 to the enchantment's level for the purpose--suddenly blink into his hand when he wishes to cast that spell? Or does he have to cast something like Leap to My Hand first? Or does the tool need an effect for knowing when it's needed, linked with Leap to the Master's Hand? Half a dozen other questions spring to mind as well. How, exactly, does this mystery actually work?
One question: Was this NPC part of casting the Aegis that he was inside?
If yes, then don't worry about it, the Aegis doesn't block him.
If no, did the NPC verditius have a casting token for that Aegis?
if yes, again, no problem.
if no, back to the rest of this thread.
I apologize for misunderstanding your question. It makes much more sense now.
The specific examples say in the sanctum.
If it is an effect generated by the casting tools (and it looks like one to me) then the Aegis can not keep it out, since it's inside already. (This leads us to the question of dismissing casting tools which seems more difficult)
Well, the tools themselves were far away in his own covenant, and therefore outside of the Aegis. So, the implication seems to be that we have to create a casting total for the tools' teleportation effect and compare that to the strength of the Aegis. Is it just a no-penetration, ReTe version of Leap of Homecoming, or would it be based off of something else? The enchanter's lab total seems a bit generous. Could he add penetration to the effect, as well as to the spell the tools are enchanted with?
It is not 100% clear, but these enchantments are much like enchanted devices. And enchanted devices do not have any penetration, unless this is explicitly enchanted into them (ArM5 p.99 Effect Modifications).
So you can reasonably safely apply to HoH:MC p.124 Summon casting tool
I don't see, how anybody could prove you wrong here.
So the tools are inside one aegis and the magus who wants to summon them is inside of another Aegis, one where he's not a caster and or token holder?
In previous answer I had thought that the tool's were in the Magus's home aegis. That way they could activate and not be hampered. I didn't realize that the summoning magus was in a different aegis as well.
The Aegis has two effects that I see as being able to mess with the casting tools:
"Magi who were not involved in the ritual and who cast spells within the Aegis must subtract half the level of the Aegis from all their
Casting Totals...Effects from enchanted devices are resisted by the Aegis unless the item was within the Aegis at the time of casting, or was created within the Aegis by someone who was part of the ritual or in possession of a token."
and
"spells that bring objects into the Aegis, including teleportation spells such as The Seven-League Stride, are also resisted unless
the caster was involved in the ritual. "
I'm thinking that we answer the question of where is the magic coming from (the tools or the magus, my take is the tools) and then ask if that target has penalties from an aegis. If the magus is a caster/has a token for his home covenant and that's where the tools are he's good
Next we ask if the traveling tools cross into a "hostile" aegis from the outside. If I understand the situation correctly this is true and I don't see a justification for the summoning having penetration. I think that the magus would need to at least do something like stick their hands out of the space protected by the aegis
As rule of thumb for such powers I just see if it utilizes arts.
Example: A Bjornaer don't uses muto, animál or corpus it's a "internal" power and since it don't uses arts I don't apply the Aegis.
Also if a magi has the power to see ghosts or to divination or most virtues it's not affected also.
Of course that is a special rule for magi. Any non-hermetic creature are mostly affected but not for effects with "self" range and target.
Example: A pooka can still morph at will inside an Aegis same for a Gruagach but illusions, curses and trying to affect the covenfolk can meet with resistance from the Aegis.
That's fine for a house rule, but if that's what your interpretation does, your interpretation distinctly disagrees with the canon functioning of Aegis of the Hearth. Heartbeast is explicitly resisted in canon, as I quoted above.
