A lvl 25 spont/formulaic spell taking down Aegis rituals of level 35 and lower.
I was under the impression that it would atleast take a ritual effect of PeVi to take down the mighty Aegis... if only on the grounds of it being a powerfull effect.
I checked the errata and it is not there.
PeVi guidelines only say that the effects need to penetrate. Disenchant is a ritual but all the other examples are not and there are no reference to rituals that would help guide us.
I guess 3 questions:
1- Can spontaneous/formulaic PeVi effects dispell Rituals that have a duration greater than momentary?
2- If yes, can they dispell powerfull Rituals. By powerfull we include effects that were made rituals because of them being too powerfull & effects greater than level 50.
3 - If yes, yes, how come it is not mentioned anywhere that the reason nobody uses an Aegis is because it is so easilly dispelled and is only used as mockery example vs Bonisagus who wastes their lives away like Notatus did with the Aegis?
Consider trying to dispel a level-50 Aegis. Then you're looking at casting your PeVi 40ish with a casting total around the 90s or higher, unless you've got a bunch together doing Wizards' Communion.
There is nothing that I know of that says you need a Ritual to take down other Ritual effects.
The main purpose of the Aegis is to keep out supernatural entities, and make it harder to enter or affect the area protected by the Aegis.
Few magi will bother learning a spell useful only for bringing down an Aegis - it is too rarely useful.
More precisely (ArM5 p.161 - verrry easy to find):
If any spell is cast toward the Aegis (originating from outside it) by any magus who was not involved in the Aegis ritual, the Aegis resists the spell. <...> If the foreign spell cannot penetrate a resistance equal to the level of the Aegis, it fizzles out.
So an Hermetic magus casting a level 25 Unravelling the Fabric of Vim against the lv 35 Aegis must penetrate level 35 - thus achieve a casting total of at least 60.
Other beings - demons, faeries, hedgies or so - will rarely have such an effect at their disposal.
So I don't see a big problem here. An Hermetic magus bringing down another covenant's Aegis at R: Voice is just asking verrry loudly for a lot of trouble.
Casting Total + Penetration Bonus of at least 60. If you can somehow get an Arcane Connection to the Aegis, then you can get a large Pen bonus, bringing down the required Casting Total quite a bit.
Also, if you have some magi friends, then using Wizard's Communion can also make it a lot easier to penetrate.
Removing a covenant's Aegis would constitute Depriving a Magus of Power, and thus be a crime by itself. Not to mention the fact that you have just angered all resident Magi.
And given the rules for Vim as a Form, the primary target doesn't have to be the Aegis, it only has to be something affected by the Aegis.
Therefore the primary target could be a person or thing, which the caster has an arcane connection to, as long as the person or thing is within the Aegis when the dispel is cast.
Especially when contemplated in conjunction with an Intangible Tunnel so the dispel only needs to be Touch Range, and it gets very feasible for a Vim specialist with an AC to rather casually solo dispel a low to mid tier Aegis. A group working together can bring down high end defenses pretty reliably if they have the specialist leading them.
Outside of an open conflict like a Schism. Or a declaration of Wizard War against the Covenant. Magi have been known to fight one another after all.
Very likely. But them being able to easily determine who did it is also something else. And if anyone knows how to not leave magical tracks ... it is the Vim specialist that is casting an Aegis dispel.
These are some of the reasons I prefer to House Rule that Rituals require a Ritual to dispel. It seems ill fitting for more than just the Aegis. However with the Aegis in particular it seems to practically trivialize the "fortification" feel/aspect of the Aegis. Like an Aegis is what makes the "magical fortress" that Magi call home. And thus also consumes magical resources every year to keep it running. I just really don't like that you correspondingly don't have to invest resources in order to bring the "magic walls" down.
The same could be said about a variety of other things requiring a ritual that someone is willing to design and expend resources/vis on doing. As a general rule I think if it takes resource expenditure to cast something it should consume resources to take it down as well. It provides more of a strategic equilibrium between attackers and defenders.
The problem there is, that an Aegis does affect spells, effects and creatures with Might - but not ordinary people or even Hermetic visitors under the Aegis.
It arguably is affecting the entire area it is cast on, the same as a person warded is affected by the ward even if the ward is against something else like fire. And if you cast a dispel on the person for, say, wards (or something else appropriate to the effect, like Ignem), the spell only has to be active on them for the Vim spell to affect it.
You could also do it with a connection to a place inside of the Aegis as well, for the same purposes.
Why is it a ritual to disenchant a magical object, familiar bond and maybe longevity rituals but not for an Aegis? You can even break the boundary of the Aegis and it continues on but a simple PeVi spont can end it!?!
Just taking us back to the Shism war where on day 1 you have an army of druids that can spont the effect at level 25 easy & use AC's & Vis to achive high penetration totals dispelling many Aegis & then the same applies to Parma. Would be like cutting butter...
Why even bother with an Aegis that is below level 50...
I believe it is the difference between something that required season(s) in the lab in addition to raw vis, as opposed to a ritual spell that only took an hour (or two) to cast.
That season of lab work allowed the magus to essentially "harden" the effect against fluctuations of magic (waning and waxing with astronomical cycles, outside influences, etc.)
The time spent in the lab inventing the ritual spell allows you to cast it relatively safely. You have all those botch dice to roll against. But at least you can cast the spell. Again and again and again.
That's much like any formulaic spell that you spend a season in the lab inventing. Why would it make the ritual spell any harder to dispel than a regular formulaic?
Enchanting an item, or a familiar bond, is time spent in the lab for that single effect. To make it permanent for years and years and years. It is thus more robust.
But that's just my interpretation of the rules. And why they make sense to me.
Which is something explicitly declared to be unique to the Aegis and Parma, and that being part of what makes them significant setting defining magical breakthroughs. Other effects must interact with the Warping rules without these exceptions.
It doesn't justify considering Aegis (or Parma) in some way an exception to the Base Individual aspects of Vim as a Form.
And for that matter an Aegis is fully capable of affecting individuals inside it with, for example, Casting Penalties. I don't think anyone would argue that a Magus hit with a different spell that inflicted Casting Penalties (of which Vim is fully capable) was not affected by the effect.
Very much so.
Because Rituals benefit from the empowerment of both Vis and Ceremonial/Ritual Casting, compared to Formulaic Spells which are not similarly empowered.
Not to mention Ritual grade effects being (supposedly) more powerful in the setting, in theory.
And that is part of the rationale for the divide between Formulaic and Ritual to start with, the reason Rituals require it. Otherwise the difference between Formulaic Magic and Ritual Magic is (admittedly debatably) devalued. The Rituals seem not worth (as in significantly even staggeringly undervalued) the expenditure of resources and casting time if they are no more difficult to deal with than a one round counterspell that costs no resources at all.
I certainly wouldn't see it that way. Spells don't have Casting Totals, Characters have them when they try to cast spells.
And that is only one effect out of the Aegis. It also is Warding the entire area, and providing Magic Resistance, and everything else. So ... it seems pretty uncontroversial to me that it is affecting everyone and thing inside the Boundary.
Yet rituals spells are no harder to invent than formulaic spells of the same level. So, again, why would they be more robust than formulaics? Requiring raw vis to be cast seems flimsy as a reason for it. Even the longer casting time is relatively negligible as a cost of their casting.
IM, not saying it is wrong or right. I am just seeing the investment of one or more seasons in the effect itself as the treshhold that was by the game designers used to making something harder to dispel.
