So when I was originally building Acutus, I had the idea to basically use his magic to improve himself (via MuCo and MuAn spells) while fighting with mundane or natural weapons. It seemed like a great idea, and followed the basic tenets of the Flambeau school (whose name I can't remember) that you can basically avoid magic resistance.
However, I soon realized that this tactic won't work when he is in his heartbeast, since any Muto magics he uses on himself means than any bite attack he makes will have to penetrate (using the lowest of the penetration totals of the currently active spells). Obviously this means my initial point distribution and low penetration (along with no mastered spells) is a bit of hindrance that I'm working through.
Now, at face value, it seems like this won't be an issue for him when he's fighting in his human form, since he can use a mundane javelin/spear and use whatever Muto spells he wants. However, I foresee multiple occasions in which he might travel somewhere in his heartbeast form, like say an island, switch back to his human form, and need to get a javelin. Hence creating his Conjure the Javelin spell; boom, I thought I was done. However, as I continue to learn the rules, I realized that even though this conjures a completely mundane javelin (in terms of stats), it is still considered magical because it was conjured and thus must overcome magic resistance. Damn!
And now to me question/conundrum...I figure at this point I might as well embrace the fact that I'm going to need to penetrate MR (even in human form) and just find the best way to go about doing so. For his heartbeast form, the plan is really just to work on his arts and his Penetration ability in order to improve his odds of ensuring a good penetration score. The good news is that his Minor Magical Focus will help him with all of his MuCo and MuAn spells that affect himself, so I have a good start there. I might also look at mastering the spells, but their are going to be a lot I plan on stacking, so I'd have to look at mastering all of them, or perhaps just the higher level ones.
For his human form, I see a couple of different options. The issue is really the javelin, so the Muto spells don't really matter in this case. The first, and probably easiest option would be to master his Conjure the Javelin spell, probably multiple times, to get the penetration way up there. It's a very low level spell, and I'll also be working on his Penetration ability, so that shouldn't be too hard to do.
The other option would be to go all out and make a javelin talisman with a ReHe teleportation effect built in. The question I have is how to deal with the penetration for a talisman. Would I have to build in penetration for every single magical effect in the talisman in order to use it as a melee weapon against MR (ie. it takes the lowest Penetration of all of the effects designed into it)? If that's the case, that seems to make talisman weapons pretty cost prohibitive if there are ever any plans to use it against a creature with magic resistance. Also, you would be bound to the penetration of effects put in since the creation of the talisman (where you arts were lower and couldn't put as much penetration into the effects) unless there is a way to "delete" effects from a talisman and/or replace them with a higher penetration version of the effect.
