I'm really curious to see what the various views (in and out of character) are on the different forms. What's your favourite form and why? Is it Corpus because you really don't trust others making your longevity potion? Is it Vim because it allows you to summon demons ahemm avoid Twilight? Is it Imaginem because it really rocks paired with the Glamour mystery?
But overall, Mentem is on top of the list : providing information, avoiding quaesitorial investigation, controlling emotions, erasing/modifying memories, ... it's just so cool
Also because it boosts the magical resistance against Mentem effects, and I believe the worst that could happen to a Magus (besides loosing his Gift or see his Parma Magica blasted away in combat) is being under the influence of something like Enslave the Mortal Mind (remember the Imperius Curse in HP ?).
Vim comes on second position : wards are really useful as well as PeVi spells.
Animal.
The reason is similar to the think of Mentem and Corpus of anothers. Animal are everywhere in Mythic Europe. Animal and relatd to them materials creates the strong of the armys. There are many usefullness in the Animal Form, including make better the phsysical and three of mental Characteristics yours fmiliars and others things.
I voted Corpus, but i'm fond of Muto corporem which usually use 2 forms or more to change into an animal, into mist, into magical beast... boost endurance and so on..
Also love rego corporem spells like string of the unwilling marionette that I find really funny to use.
I think mentem is my favorite: learning, knowing, influencing, manipulating but only slightly more than Corpus , animal, terram and vim. The only form I really don't get enthusiastic over is herbam. I have played with all sorts of variety of characters and enjoyed my auram and terram characters as much as my mentem, corpus and Vim ones.
I voted vim because casting spells on spells makes such a beautiful complex of magic system relations, like an elegant formula that illuminates a physical behavior in a way that gives you new insight. It's the most interesting from a game mechanics point of view and your fellow magi will always appreciate having a vim specialist in the covenant.
From a pure usefulness point of view anything that deals with solids can't be beat. The most useful magus/maga at the covenant has probably has a strong command of herbam or terram (although animal and corpus are close and auram, aquam and ignem could be made to serve with a sufficiently powerful magus)
Hmmm difficult question actually.
Playing around with light and darkness, heat and cold as in Ignem is always fun, especially when you come up with yet another new way to use it. And i doubt if i ever made a character for myself without at least 4-9 in Ignem.
Aquam can superbly useful in oh so many ways, not to forget in the shape of ice it can be rather poweful even...
Auram, well you can do surprisingly much with air and gasses.
My "best" character ever specialised in Imagonem, mostly together with Intellego to gain information but also allowing easy access to invisibility and illusions that could do lots of interesting things(and fun attack spells, like the ~"Itch that wont go away", blinding light and explody type sounds knocking people senseless(or knocking down doors for that matter, hehe (by replicating the sound of many thunderclaps all in one for example(just stack enough + to size to make it work, damage made compared to base level isnt high, but its area effect so against large groups its a superior attack form))).
Corpus is the most useful, but certainly not my favourite.
I guess ill go with... oh i dont know so ill be the first to pick Aquam then!
Uh ... ? How can you cause direct physical damage with imaginem? I assume you are talking about "baseline" Imaginem, not Imaginem augmented by e.g. the Glamour mystery, right?
Imagonem creates illusions... But an illusion of sound IS sound. Throw enough sound at anything and it can cause LOTS of damage. To be simple, if you add lets say +7 to size modifier, what you´re doing is taking the most noise a person can create, take it 10.000.000 times and let it "go off" from a single dotsized location. Thats really a quite hideous amount of energy. If you could do that for real, the energy is probably enough to instakill a person in the same spot.
And creating the illusion of extremely bright light, creates the effect of that light also regardless of wether its illusionary or not, essentially doing the same as the visual part of the flashbang grenades police use for forced entries, and if you think "just a bit of light" cant hurt anyone, well youre wrong, even if it wont cause visible wounds.
Based on my understanding of Mythic Europe theory, I am quite sure species don't do anything unless they hit their matching organs. If you were to create a zillion chair species, it is unclear whether it could drown out other species or simply make a very sharp chair image.
Yes, you could create species "like the Sun" or "like a loud noise" which could blind and deafen the organs receiving them, but I don't think vaporizing someone is remotely possible.
Yes, but haptic species do not travel through air, which limits their usefulness. Moreover, I have problem accepting it would actually do damage even if it causes great pain. With glamour, sure, but not by itself. And if you don't need Ignem to create the effects of fire, then you could use pure Corpus for spontaneous combustion.
A retching smell is a much better ranged way to disable mundanes and they'd have a good chance of choking on it. :mrgreen:
This is because, IIRC, direwolf uses modern physics in his game.
In these, high sound deplaces air (unless I'm wrong), thus the shockwave.
In mythic europe, I doubt this would work like that. Not without Auram, at least.
One might consider that, even in a "real world phycics" game, such a spell might in fact require Auram, just as a blinding spell might require Ignem for light.
In fact, given mythic europe physics, can Imaginem be used to blind (by bright light) or deafen per se? Maybe, but then, maybe not, my rules fu is not high enough for this.