... I think Rufus likes Morticia! And why should he feel guilt or remorse for giving her such a lovely gift?!? 
He must! My kitty never brought me any squirrels!
Birds and mice and once a frog - not all of them dead - sure, but never any squirrels.
A valuable gift indeed!
He's just trying to make her feel welcome.
After all, Petronius seems to be going out of his way to treat her well, so Rufus figured he'd do what he could to humour his pet human. But that may all change depending on how Morticia reacts to him. One thing you have to remember is that Rufus understands Latin, so any comment will be understood.
The magi, of course, do not know this.
Thinking about the forest ghosts has got me thinking about might and penetration, and I want to make sure I have the rules straight on this. (Switching back and forth between 4th (TTgame) and 5th ed has me feeling a little dazed.)
Scenarios: (Am I doing the calculations correctly and arriving at the correct conclusions?)
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The ghosts that I have outlined stats for have Might 3 or Might 5, and two powers: Frighten and Cause Fear. With a cost of 2, the Frighten power has penetration 3 - 5(2) = 0 (no negatives, right?) or 5 - 5(2) = 0. With a cost of 4, the cause fear power has penetration 3 - 5(4) or 5 - 5(4) = 0. Neither has the penetration to affect a magus with parma but can effect mundanes.
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Suppose a particular ghost has a higher might, say 20, and the same powers. The frighten power now has penetration 20 - 5(2) = 10. Aedituus with a PM(Me) of 2, has a magic resistance of 15 against this power, and is thus unaffected. Since the ghost's might is greater than the his PM, the ghost can actually touch Aedituus, but without effect. A ward against spirits would have to be at least level 20, with a penetration total of at least 20 in order for Aedituus to avoid being touched.
Ok, I'm going from the rules in ArM5 p.191 here, but there might be more rules around in other sourcebooks such as RoP:M.
Basically, it says that Creature Power Penetration = Might Score - (5 x Might Point cost) + Penetration Bonus.
For a Might 3 ghost with no Penetration ability, the Frighten power (cost 2) would have Penetration of 3 - (5 * 2) = -7. There is nothing preventing a negative Penetration total, it just means that anything with a Magis Resistance score would block it. Also note that Aura can further modify both Penetration and Magic Resistance totals, so keeping track of negative scores still make sense because the creature and its target can be from different Realms.
The Might 3 ghost would be unable to use the Cause Fear power, because it doesn't have enough Might Points to activate it so Penetration total is moot.
When the ghost has a Might of 5, then its penetration total for Frighten is -5, and -15 for the Cause Fear power.
This is correct as far as I understand it.
Sorry for posting delays. RL runneth over. I'll try to get back in within the next week.
Should we call it done? I am.
This hasn't started the way I envisioned it, so I just haven't been excited about playing here. Posting frequency from other participants is also low. Unless someone wants to take it over, I'm going to ask that this saga be archived.
Seeing as how it's been October since the last post, I'd pretty much written this project off, as well.
Sad but true. I tried keeping things alive for a while, but I lost my enthusiasm as well when things didn't pick up.
A question for all of you: What do you want to do with the wiki? I can leave it there, but I think that after some time without activity it may end up being archived.
So if there is information there that you'd like to keep, I suggest you retrive it at some point. I will probably try to retrieve everything, but I don't have a set timeline for doing it.
What about that book spreadsheet you worked on? Maybe ask Andrew Gronosky to host it on Project Redcap?
I'll do that, if/when I decide to take down the wiki.
But after thinking about this some more, I think I'll keep the wiki up and use it to document Petronius' story as the years pass. This may not be worth keeping the board active, but the wiki doesn't require much.