Well, they never talk about Magic Resistance.
So, if you assume that one can get warped by any sufficiently powerful mystical effect affecting him, no matter how indirectly, then a big Ritual to toss all water in a lake up will warp anyone who gets wet when the water falls down.
That's why I read "affected" to mean "directly affected", as in, the magic is directly operating on him. In other words, the Target, not a target or "incidental" target.
If you cast a circular ward, the Target is the circle, not the person inside of it. The person inside it, enjoying its protection is the target of the circle. Here the target gets Warped, even though the person is only the target and not the Target.
Technically, the Target of a T:Circle spell is not the circle, it's everything (that the spell can affect) within the Circle.
I guess that a Circular Ward vs. Stuff makes everything inside the Circle untouchable by Stuff, so Stuff simply can't enter the Circle (and the Ward warps everything within the Circle)? I may be wrong, and Circular Wards work according to their own rules, but then they should not be used to prove how things work in general.
Not quite "no matter how indirectly", but if a big ritual throws all the water in the lake at you, and the water is still under magical control such that it would need to penetrate your MR, then you have been affected by a powerful mystical effect.
If, on the other hand, the ritual just throws the water up in the air, and when the water falls down it is just ordinary non-magical water with no magic involved any longer, then it would not warp anyone since there is no longer any mystical effect going on.
Being hit by a Ball of Abysmal Flame is certainly being affected by a powerful mystical effect. Directly affected by it even, despite the Ball itself being the Target.
We are moving to a different discussion. One that was several times discussed in the past, if I'm reading right. It might or it might not have relation to the main subject at hand.
"Affected by a powerful magical effect" is a dubious proposition, so I do not thing it fully contributes to what we are trying to discuss here. If there is claims that it does, well, then maybe we need to clarify what that actually means first. But I will point that:
If we go with that, the distinction between direct and indirect targets (or targets and colateral, as you prefer) cannot be made through if you would be warped by the effect or not, because both need to penetrate. And then, in theory, I should be able to use ACs in both cases (again, wards being their own case).
EDIT: target and colateral may be a better wording indeed. The concept of indirect target seems to be used in the corebook in regards to aiming, which does not need to penetrate. Using it here for "things that I need to penetrate to affect but arguibly are not targets of the effect" will bring unnecessary confusion.
Agreed. Though it's definitely worth clarifying, perhaps even more so than ACs. So I suggest we stop discussing warping here, and do so in a separate thread.
That was kind of my point - the warping rules are more general and don't really care if you count as "Target", "target" or neither.
Intent. The arrow is directed at an individual. The wall of thorns is a barrier "to whom it may concern" and including an AC is at most a safeguard of "oh yeah and if this guy shows up then..."
What about a wall of thorns with intention towards a single individual I happen to see at the time of casting and have an AC to, but hey, the spell is sun duration, so it could affect other people even if I am actually casting it with all of my intent towards a single and well defined target?
Design intent, not casting intent. a wall of thorns is designed to defend a certain position, regardless of what the caster is thinking when they cast it- it is the position that is the small t target.
Now if you design a variation on a wall of thorns that will only stop a certain person or group of people from passing but will allow anyone else to pass unscathed i would say an AC would be appropriate.
That's the kind of situation I tried to handle with my earlier proposal that a target (against whom you can boost the penetration with an AC) must be someone who is affected by the spell when it is cast.
So a Wall of Thorns typically won't target anyone, and thus wouldn't be able to have its penetration boosted with an AC.
A magically created bonfire with D:Sun could be created right on top of someone who would then be a target, and thus could have Penetration boosted against that person, but anyone stumbling into it later would not count as a target and thus you would not be able to boost Penetration against them.
While this would be a workable way of figuring out who is a target and who is not and who you can use an AC to boot penetration against, I don't know for sure if it is consistent with the existing rules.
This is my problem with all of this. And while @David_Chart says he can come with a plausible in-game justification, I don't buy it. A spell needs to penetrate targets with MR; I have an AC to a target. It really shouldn't be more complex than that, and I see no clear, unambiguous reason for it to be.
This whole thing hinges on defining colateral targets, but the definition is so far completely arbitrary. From what I get a Pilum of Fire and a Crystal Dart have targets, but Blade of Virulent Flame and Edge of the Razor for example have colaterals (with the swords being the targets). If I create a sword to hit someone, is the person a target or a colateral? What if I create an animal to bite the person? If I Rego an arrow to stab it's target, but if I animate it to stab several times, possibly even changing targets, it's now colateral? With a Pilum the person is a target, but if I create a Bonfire (with all the Pilum parameters) in the ground under the person, she is, by what this discussion seems to imply, colateral, not a target?
There's no clear logic behind it, as far as I can tell. Except for "if it can potentially affect several different targets over the course of the spells duration (even if the spell is momentary), then they are actually colaterals instead of targets".
After thinking a bit, to not say we can't find a workable framework. As I see we can classify targets into 3 categories: Targets, 1st degree targets and 2nd degree targets. I can even make it match my personal understanding of what is warped and what isn't.
Targets: Individuals, Rooms, Groups, Boundaries, etc. Eg. A Pilum of Fire, a person targeted by Wound that Weeps, a sword upon which Edge of the Razor is cast, things protected by an Individual ward, the actual boundary of a boundary spell.
1st degree targets: targets directly derived from Targets and affected by the spell, or things on which the Target relies for it's existence. Eg. People in a group, the individual to which a Part belongs, a sword upon which Blade of Virulent Flame is cast, things inside a Circle.
Targets and 1st degree targets suffer warping.
2nd degree targets: things wich are only tangencially affected by the spell. Eg. A person targeted by a Pilum, people attacked by swords enchanted with Edge of the Razor or Blade of Virulent Flame, things moving through a Hermes Portal, a thing bitten by a person transformed into a wolf, something gazed upon by someone with an Intellego Vision spell, things against which wards ward, things hit by an animated tree.
2nd degree targets do not suffer warping.
2nd degree targets are what I would understand as "colateral targets". Things that are only incidentally affected.
My definitons do not match the cases proposed by David on his first post, of course.
I would not defend that penetration to 2nd degree targets does not benefit from the use of ACs either. Again, to me this distinction (some things you benefit from an AC, other things you don't) makes no sense at all.
I will also point something else. Whatever definition we find. Let's assume we find one all-encompassing definition for colateral targets that matches David's first post. This would still require huge errata, in terms of how big of a change this brings to the rules (not how much text, but how this actually impacts the game' framework). It would be needed to fully define colateral targets (we don't even have a formal definition to what constitutes a target in the books). And then another to make penetration different for targets and colaterals. Then we'd need to check for corner cases inside hermetic magic (magical items, sense spells, wards, etc). And then, probably, it would be wise to comb the books and check if this brings unforeseen changes to things outside of hermetic magic (powers, methods, supernatural abilities, hedge traditions, rival traditions, etc).
Even if we can settle for a workable definition, I do not thing there is any actual benefit to that besides pedantic discussions on the inner workings of magic. Unless we are talking about an hypotetical 6th Ed.
The majority opinion seems to be that this distinction is implicit, but unclear, and that clarifying it would not be changing the rules. You disagree, which actually strengthens the case for clarification — at least one person misunderstood the intent.
The benefit of clarifying is that it allows an answer to a specific, game-relevant question. Can I boost the Penetration of the spell I cast to turn into a wolf so that I can bite that dragon? At the moment, you think the answer is yes, and most people seem to think that the answer is no. That's not an absolutely central case, but it's not some weird edge case that hardly ever comes up.
On the other hand, it is something that affects a huge range of spells.
The simplest option is your interpretation, but that requires extensive errata to the Columbae, whose special trick is the ability to do something that would become standard Hermetic magic. This is not straightforward.
I think the current guideline that if a Re spell needs finesse to target the spell then it does not need to penetrate is fairly straightforward. I think the idea of AC's can follow in a similar suit- if a roll is needed to hit the target (even if it does need to penetrate because it is a transformed wolf or has a pink dot on it) then you cannot use an AC or similar effects to enhance penetration.
On the other hand a guideline to increase the level of a spell to enhance its effective penetration against others ( so your transformed wolf can bite more magical creatures) could be a good idea, or perhaps a MuVi effect that enhances the penetration of a spell that is already cast in this way.
Yes, it was designed to be. One advantage of doing it at the beginning of the edition's life.
I don't think that's general enough. There are many possible interactions between creatures with MR and effects with Penetration that do not involve a roll, but are definitely collateral.
It can be rule one n a list, in that it defines when an AC cannot be used rather than when it can. Multiple exclusionary rules may be more useful than a singular rule to try and cover every instance where it can be used.
Just a quick thought: it might certainly run against how some people play it but ... is there anything written that breaks if we only allow ACs to work on Targets, and not on targets? In other words, if an AC can increase the Penetration of Clenching Grasp of the Crushed Heart, but not that of Ball of Abysmal Fire?
This would make things much simpler. And it would improve game balance, in that attacking through a damaging medium is already significantly more versatile than attacking the Target directly - an Incantation of Lightning is effective against humans, beasts, plants, and (most) faeries.
I have to say, I won't be against such house rule.
You know, before this thread opened, it didn't even occur to me that you couldn't necessarily use an arcane connection to boost the penetration total of any spell that is required to penetrate (well, wards notwithstanding).