The Old Parma Magica Problem - What is wrong with this solution?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
21

True, but that's just describing how things are in the standard 5th ed. rules, and ignoring the fact that players have expressed dissatisfaction with the pink dot for over 20 years. The aim of this thread is to find a PM that is logical, thematic, and avoids the boulder problem, poison-into-wine problem, and the pink dot problem. The aim isn't to find excuses for why those problems don't matter for one reason or another - I'm already familiar with all of those.

And I guess my main thematic problem could be expressed as:
Mum (reading fantasy story to child): "And then the knight took out his enchanted sword, so he could fight the evil sorcerer."
Child: "But mummy, why is he using the enchanted sword when surely that will harm the wizard less than a normal sword?"
In other words, unlike the rest of ArM, it goes directly against my, and I think most people's, intuitions about how magic should work. I mention this only as an aside, because the point of this thread is not to debate whether the pink dot, boulder or any PM problem should or should not be part of the ArM world. I started this thread with the intention of getting people to critically take apart my proposed PM system that avoids those problems, and to find any loopholes in it.

EDIT: And that proposed PM ruleset is currently:

  • Anything propelled by magic slows/stops, such that it doesn't reach the magus and cause any harm (this is standard rules in 5th ed.)
  • Any spells or spell effects which target the magus, or something of which the magus is a part (e.g., a group or room) have no effect on the magus (again, standard rules).
  • Any damage or damage bonus caused by a magical effect is reduced to zero. (non-standard, but this is the part that seems to solve many problems)
  • If something with an active magical effect comes within an inch of the magus and fails to penetrate, the magus will become aware that the entity is under an active magical effect (e.g., poison made to look like water, or a deadly snake turned into a scarf).
22

And I've pointed out how it's really not a big deal and more of a waste of a magus' time and effort. Fast casting a falling boulder into a magical falling boulder is a clever exploit but you'd better pray you don't get too much Penetration or you're still getting squished, and a fast-cast mastered teleport would have 100% saved your bacon.

Mum: "It's a really strongly enchanted sword. Strong enough to overcome the wizard's magic. Not like those wussy swords Melvin the Weak Enchanter makes."

Note that penetration on enchanted devices can get VERY high. It only takes one sword specialist with a lab total of 100 to enchant a sword and then pass around the lab text and suddenly everyone with a MuTe lab total of 50 is cranking out Edge of the Razor (1/day) lesser devices with +60 Penetration.

[quote="Whitescar, post:21, topic:168157"]

  • Anything propelled by magic slows/stops, such that it doesn't reach the magus and cause any harm (this is standard rules in 5th ed.)
  • Any spells or spell effects which target the magus, or something of which the magus is a part (e.g., a group or room) have no effect on the magus (again, standard rules).
  • Any damage or damage bonus caused by a magical effect is reduced to zero. (non-standard, but this is the part that seems to solve many problems)[/quote]

How does the Magic Resistance know what a damage bonus is? Magic Resistance isn't smart.

I'm guessing your line of thinking is that the MR is stopping the magic, not the thing the magic is on. So the magically sharpened sword has to leave the magic behind when it enters MR. This kind of thinking has HUGE consequences. I could turn a boulder into a pebble, and have a grog drop the pebble onto someone with MR. The magic fails to penetrate, great! The target is crushed by the real mass of the boulder. I can stab a magus to death with a sword turned into a piece of bread.

Or if that doesn't work, your MR needs to be super smart - omniscient - and you get to argue with every spell effect your players ever produce every time it interacts with MR.

23

No, that's not necessary. Look at what I wrote above. You can have non-intelligent MR that does that. Something Muto'd into something else is entirely magical, so it can be entirely excluded by stopping magic, which is different than dispelling magic.

24

How is it more or less magical than a sword transformed by Edge of the Razor - a spell that has T:Individual, not T:Part? If I transform an mace to have a heavier head, what happens? If I enchant a wooden staff to be strong as iron, what then?

Basically you want MR to distinguish between minor performance alterations and whole-sale transformations. It has to be intelligent to do that. This will spawn a thousand little arguments in any saga (and the line will be different in every saga). Is a slightly bigger bear still a bear? What about a slightly stronger bear? What about an invisible bear? It's not magically transformed at all, just it's visual species have been destroyed. Does it bypass MR? There's no physical transformation going on there.

25

No, it really doesn't. You just have to think in different ways about things. The way you're thinking it through, sure. But that's not the only way of thinking it through.

For example, let's take something really different. Does it take intelligent MR to distinguish between ignoring the slow impact of something big while resisting the fast impact of something small?

26

You are singling out a single mode of attack, rather than establishing a general rule. So, how about others? What about animating a branch to hit you? The earth to form hands to hold you in place and strangle you, depriving you of Fatigue levels?

Your wording is a bit unclear, too - if I throw a rock at you but without active magic (invisible sling of Vilano), is that rock not "propelled by magic"?

I would suggest perhaps:

  • Any thing that is actively magically-controlled (Rego) will be physically blocked from reaching you, stopping or being diverted about an inch from your body.

Next,

  • Any spells or spell effects which target the magus, or something of which the magus is a part (e.g., a group or room) have no effect on the magus (again, standard rules).

I think that's a good general rule. It should be followed by a good general rule about how to treat spells that target things other than the magus.

Next,

  • Any damage or damage bonus caused by a magical effect is reduced to zero. (non-standard, but this is the part that seems to solve many problems)

Well first, if you apply this to indirect-effects such as increasing Strength, then this gets all tangled up as now I need to figure out which part of that damage is caused by the increase to Strength etc, as we discussed above. And that rock dropping on you - that certainly seems like damage caused by the magical effect indirectly to me. So you'll get lots of arguments in-game. It's very hard to run in-game.

So I would urge you to only apply this to direct magical effects. But note that this means that a buffed-up super-Strengthed, Gigantic, magus could punch you in the gut.

And second, it's thematically wrong. When that flaming sword hits the magus, the flames don't flicker out, nor does a magical shield form around the magus stopping the sword. Instead, the flames just mysteriously fail to burn him. This does not feel right to me. But that's a matter of taste.

And third, you are singling damage out. But what about a spell that chokes you, dropping your Fatigue ("suffocating air")? Or one that paralyses you ("water of paralysis")?

Consider perhaps

  • You (and your personal gear) are not affected by any magically-induced effect of a medium. Air turned to poison will not poison you, a magically created fire will not burn you, a magically sharpened sword will not add a damage bonus due to its sharpness against you, and so on.

This is still mightily-strange. The flames of the sword do not burn you, even though they still flicker. They don't even scorch your cloak. How weird. I personally prefer the "medium can't physically reach you" of the core rules.

The basic problem is that we want the magical sword to still skewer the magus, but that at the same time we want the arc of flames to be diverted around the magus. Tricks like taking the damage away fail to divert the flames, yet diverting the flames will mean stopping the sword.

  • If something with an active magical effect comes within an inch of the magus and fails to penetrate, the magus will become aware that the entity is under an active magical effect (e.g., poison made to look like water, or a deadly snake turned into a scarf).

Yeah, that's nice to have but way too late to do anything about it in most cases.

27

The last thought of Invictus the Invincible, Magus ex Flambeau, was being aware his parma detected a dozen invisible arrows. He however died with a smile on his face, knowing no mediocre magus could have stopped his mighty blade Wizardbane with a ridiculous pink dot.

4 Likes
28

So - your rule is that MR prevents magic from affecting the magus, by blocking something if it's "entirely" made up of magic and suppressing the magic if it is not. Right?

If I understood correctly, I guess that means that the flames created around the sword aren't entirely magical as they're suppressed, while that small portion of the arc of fiery ribbons is entirely magical as it's blocked. Sorry, but that seems rather arbitrary. I'm sure it works for you, but for me it is basically deciding each spell/effect individually, a sort of intelligent MR.

Huh. Like.

29

This has been my solution since...always. I don't like it if a magically sharpened sword is blocked completely. I just want the magical effect to be resisted.

2 Likes
30

Same here.

Also that moment when the party plans to go to the beast lair and grogs and fighting companions start browsing the enhanced weapons' catalog trying to figure enemy mights and doing maths to see what weapon to choose seems pretty silly to me.

If you got Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, you carry Excalibur. Having it wielded on the side and weaving a cheap, mundane sword to fight the big guys is not just un-mythical, it's just playing through a glitch in the rules.

Also I have the feeling that you are looking at Parma from a logical perspective, like if it were programmed, or have to follow a specific logic pattern, or should be conscious to get any result that falls outside any case-when logic workflow. This is magic, folks! From time to time it's good to think a while about that, and toss logic out the window.

Anyway solving it isn't a problem either. It's ok for magi to be targeted by enchanted weaponry. It is not like any magus worrying about being hit by an enchanted weapon is going to be short on defensive spells and strategies. Also magi don't tend to have a shield grog around for his conversational skills.

I don't like it because I love when a magus have to drop his Parma to cast a spell on himself (though casting on yourself isn't that hard, because an arcane connection to yourself is't particularly hard to get).

31

The solution for enchanted weapons is for them to actually have Penetration.

1 Like
32

I disagree.

But then, I don't think the pink dot issue is a bug, so much as a feature. This is a game about powerful magi. Let them be powerful.

To be honest, I love Blunting the Iron's Bite (Magi of Hermes, p. 50) is not only clever design, but quite possibly the best thing in that entire book.

33

No, not at all. Mine is that the magic is blocked, but not the mundane. If something has been entirely transformed, then it's all magic, right?

34

I'm not sure I agree with that.
Sure, it's clever. But it is still an exploit of the bug-feature. Granted, it is an effect which does something, not just a cosmetic pink dot.

In a game about powerful wizards, why take shortcuts like that?
Why not permanently ruin the sword with Perdo? Like the spell Blunt the Viper's Fang which I'm guessing inspired this.
If you want top use Muto rather than Perdo, then transform the sword into a sausage! Or a sword-shaped piece of clay, to keep it within Terram.

I say this, because it can't work both ways. If your sword is wreathed in flames, and the flames are too weak to affect the dragon - I just don't like it that the sword by itself is suddenly blocked.

But I don't like it either, if the Pen of the Muto effect to warp the sword is insufficient, then the magus gets hit with a normal, unwarped sword... Or maybe I can live with that...your magic is too weak, so this trick won't save you. In this case it would have been better to use the Perdo version, since it is D:Mom Pen won't matter.

35

and here we get to the core problem- everybody wants parma to do something different.
Can't solve that.

3 Likes
36

I know.

[Tounge-In-Cheek]
As anyone who've spent any time in software development can tell you: If it's been documented, it's not a bug, it's a feature. And Heavens know it should be considered documented by now, given the space that's been wasted debating it.
[/Tounge-In-Cheek]
But seriously, given how many other effects that are simply exploits of other odd details, how is this one a huge problem? turning your field into a room in order to save Vis is fine, but actually using how magic works is bad. Sort of like how using the fact that air that doesn't move is a great insulator for heat is an exploit of the rules of physics in our universe.

But! Remember how I can't have it both ways? Neither can you.
What happens if I turn a sword into a boiled sausage and then proceed to hit you with it?
If Blunting the Iron's Bite doesn't work because yourParma merely blocks the effect, hitting you with this sausage would then leave you with a nice cut across ... wherever.
Or a person turned into a wolf delivers a rather sad bite.

Which - to me - is more of a problem than the "Infamous Pink Dot".

I honestly don't mind.
It makes it hard to make "magic weapons", but other than that, where's the hurt?
Or, you could make a fix saying that Creo-effects by default do not attach to objects.
In Exemplia: The flames move independently of the sword, unless a magnitude is spent to attach them.

Forceless casting. And I honestly thinks it weakens Muto needlessly.

I like it very much when there's more than one solution to a problem. Not just "use Perdo instead, it's better."

And here of course, we have the crux of the problem.

37

And I've pointed out how it's really not a big deal and more of a waste of a magus' time and effort.

My point is, if a large group of people are unhappy about something enough to argue about it for over 20 years, telling them you have no problem with it is not a solution.

Note that penetration on enchanted devices can get VERY high.

Same thing again. The premise of this thread is that the pink dot problem, the boulder problem, and the poison-wine problems, are problems, and is about solving them. If you disagree they are problems, that's fine, but comments to that effect are irrelevant to this thread.

I'm guessing your line of thinking is that the MR is stopping the magic, not the thing the magic is on.

How does the Magic Resistance know what a damage bonus is? Magic Resistance isn't smart.

My reasoning is not that MR stops the magic, because that leads to the boulder problem - let's not go round in circles by pointing out problems already dealt with at the beginning. The whole point of this exercise is a Parma that does not have any of these problems.

I had considered whether what I'm proposing is a form of "intelligent Parma", but on reflection I don't think it is. It prevents magical damage, in the same way armour prevents mundane damage - so do you think armour is smart?

1 Like
38

I would suggest perhaps:

  • Any thing that is actively magically-controlled (Rego) will be physically blocked from reaching you, stopping or being diverted about an inch from your body.
    Next,
  • Any spells or spell effects which target the magus, or something of which the magus is a part (e.g., a group or room) have no effect on the magus (again, standard rules).
    I think that's a good general rule. It should be followed by a good general rule about how to treat spells that target things other than the magus.

Thanks for this. These are basically unmodified attributes of PM direct from the 5th ed. standard rules, so I would be applying every clarification of them from 5th ed. too.

Consider perhaps

  • You (and your personal gear) are not affected by any magically-induced effect of a medium. Air turned to poison will not poison you, a magically created fire will not burn you, a magically sharpened sword will not add a damage bonus due to its sharpness against you, and so on.

This is still mightily-strange. The flames of the sword do not burn you, even though they still flicker. They don't even scorch your cloak. How weird. I personally prefer the "medium can't physically reach you" of the core rules.

This could work, but it would have to be clarified as "will not suffer harm from a magically-induced effect of a medium", because otherwise you get the boulder problem. I find it a lot less weird than the standard rules. I can envisage that an active enchantment is like a field of energy maintaining the effect (which fits with the way active enchantments work in the rules), and when that fails to penetrate PM, the energy is nullified.

BUT, on the other hand, I think I may be perfectly happy with the idea that, if the magus wasn't the target of a spell, he could be paralysed. I think I'd be happy with the damage limit as a sufficient form of magical defence. But perhaps you think that would be too easy to circumvent?

39

Well, your movement bit prevents a person from being tossed really high to fall to their death, which might otherwise bypass the resistance. ReTe (or whatever) T: Part whatever is beneath them to lift them quickly and then let the magic be done.

40

The last thought of Invictus the Invincible, Magus ex Flambeau, was being aware his parma detected a dozen invisible arrows. He however died with a smile on his face, knowing no mediocre magus could have stopped his mighty blade Wizardbane with a ridiculous pink dot.

This is excellent - thank you Ahriman, you've stuck perfectly to the thread brief! Exactly the kind of thing I was after. I can't see a way round this one, so I think it would have to be allowed. And I think I might be happy with that - because unlike the pink dot, at least it makes intuitive, logical sense. I'm sure many people won't be happy with it though.

Can anyone see a way round this one that doesn't bring back the pink dot, boulder or poison-wine problem?