Great effort has been placed to make the system more leveled but it seems that one thing has still slipped. Meaby it was intended but I'd like to expose it here.

Charged items which are the new potions of the 5th ed can be created in one season & have a level effect up to the lab total of the project.

From my point of view Major Items should be the most powerfull items follwed by lesser Items & then charged items but this is not the case here.

If an alliance is confronted to an ennemy, a rogue magus or an entity whith magical resistence. Spells are useless unless you have an arcane connection. Major items cost a lot of ressources & time. Lesser items do not have sufficient power. This leaves Charged Items. in one season & no vis all the problems can be solved thru Charged Items.

With only 3-4 mages from an alliance in spring even you can muster a lab total of 80 fairly easilly if one of them is a specialist. By applying 40 lvl to penetration & 40 to the effect you have the ultimate killing tool. If the problem comes back you can spend another season & create 80/5 doses of the effect (labtotal /5) so you don't have to worry about it anymore.

To get the same effect with a major item you would need a much higher lab total, a pile of vis & quite a few seasons if not years...

Solutions if any ?

Except that you will need those 3-4 magi spending a full season in the lab every time a problem comes along....the SG just needs to keep them busy in the lab making those 1 shot items and they willnever advance, never make new LR, grow old, and die.

Making a major item that can be used more than once is much more valuable. Oh and I hope that your enemy gives you a season to spend in the lab making that one shot item.

One shot items aren't really a big problem.

Vis-boosted spontaneous magic as a - risky - quick no-brainer solution for bigger problems has been tackled in ArM5, so SGs need no longer avariciously control the Vis in their campaigns under that aspect.

By the introduction of sizes of targets, by giving spells like Aura of Rightful Authority a proper target, finally by making all 10th+ magnitude spells into rituals a lot of possible abuses have been removed.

Charged items still are powerful, and their possible use must still be carefully considered by the SG when designing adventures. But making such items to tackle a problem at least enforces wizardly behaviour, requiring prior information gathering and analysis, then allocation of time and Vis.

Kind regards,

Berengar

I think what a group of 3-4 wizards can do by making a charged item together is less than what they can do by using Wizards' Communion to cast formulaic spells.

I think the solution is not so much in trying to stop wizards from making powerful items, but in setting up the story so not all the problems can be solved with magic. For instance, the diabolist villain is under the protection of the baron, so not only do you have to stop the diabolist, you have to convince the baron to stop supporting him. Yes you could kill the villain first and present your case later but you take the risk that the baron might hold a grudge against you or even think you fabricated the evidence to justify murder.

The power of wizards always makes it challenging to create stories they can't just magic their way through. I try to avoid stories where everyone plays a magus at once for just that reason. I create stories so there is a need for companions and grogs as well.

<Remeber that after a certain level all effects become ritual and can thus only be placed in invested devices and talismans.>

I think it also is okay for charged items if the spell itself would only be a ritual because it is of lvl 50 or more.

But the major thing with charged items is that you can get a very high penetration for a spell which is the best way to kill something with magic resistence. Parma or not.

> I think it also is okay for charged items if the spell itself would only be a ritual
> because it is of lvl 50 or more.

I don't BELIEVE so. The key sentence is "Enchanted devices effects may have a level over 50, so long as there is no other reason for the SPELL to be a ritual, such as long duration, large target, or MAJOR EFFECT." Now the way I read it, the original spell must be under level 50, but any modifiers for the instilled effect do not count towards that. IMHO though, I really find the whole "everything 50th lvl or higher must be ritual" to be a poor change.

I reconize that this is just an interpretation, but is made because I find NO other example of what consitutes a major effect in the 5th ed book. (You'll notice such things as "Eyes of the Past" were taken out).

> But the major thing with charged items is that you can get a very high penetration
> for a spell which is the best way to kill something with magic resistence. Parma or not.

Of course, if you could get that high a lab total anyway and were simply willing to expend the vis, you could have a Lesser Enchantment that could last 70 years, with the same lvl 40 effect (whatever it is), 34 pts to penetration for a 68 penetration, still pretty good, 3 pts to allow 6 uses a day, and 3 pts to insure none but the makers could ever use it.

Heh, I can munchkin with the best of them. Though it has a lower penetration, it's not by much. It will be of use through a large portion of the group's lives, and it can't be turned against them. Of course it cost 8 vis, but that's all, and only one season needed to make it for probably more uses then would ever be needed. So the magi could then actually study to increase their own resistance.

This, of course, assumes that everyone in the group is naive... err loyal enough to trust that no one else would EVERY think of turning such power on the others. After all, reliable resistance is what made parma a requirement for an Order to form in the first place.

I am also hoping the use of lab text for charged items will be modified as well. What you point out is an obvious abuse. Likely the devs intended that most magi would not find it worth the time anyway, but even so, this oversimplified system should not let some who could barely make one charge for a level 40 effect turn around and make 8 charges in the single season following. That oversimplification is too much.

My Troupe discussed about this & it is a story breaker if you always have the option of taking one season to fix all the problems that come to you & the rest studying...

hense we came to the conclusion that charged items could not be modified. They are spells placed in an item & since the item does not have the power itself to sustain the spell ( no vis ) you can`t have the item modify the spell.

Lesser item are a bit more powerfull but still limited & the total modifications that the obj can support is equal to the level of the spell itself. That means that a spell cannot have more than double the penetration of the lvl of the spell itself which is much more reasonnable than lets says for examble a glove of fire lvl 10 w 40 lvl of penetration would affect an arch mage (if not a specialist of ignem & spell not mastered).

Major Items are not restricted since you have vim vis that enforce the effects placed in the Item.

OK, from all your posts now, I'm assuming that your original post was to point out something you believed needed to be fixed? Is that correct?

Your house rule on the charged items seems decent enough. I don't know if it's necessary so much, but it is internally consistent and certainly has it's appeal. For myself I see no problem with a wizard working a full season to enchant a one charged item to make that charge have a higher penetration then he could over hope for in a cast spell. He spent all that time enchanting and so forth. The only thing that unbalances it some for me, is that thier should be one shot charms that would allow an equivalent magic resistance. *shrug*

As to your lesser devices house rule. First, I'll note that it does not prevent my lesser enchantment modification to the munchkin idea of the high penetration charged items. The level of the spell is 40 and the total effects modifier is 40, the 2x modifier for 70 year use limit being applied to your lab total, not the effect. It may cost 8 pawns of vis, but you don't have to go back to make more.

Second, I don't think it's appropriate as a general rule. Perhaps if penetration was the only thing you were looking at. But consider a simple constant light source. It's conceivable to want to make an effect that's a lower level than the 2 times a day + environmental trigger effect modifier (sorry, don't have the 5th ed with me, so I can't check the math, but you get the idea).

Ultimately under the rules, I think the main thing stopping the whole banding together to make the uber 80 level effect is decent role-play. That just shouldn't be happening. As for more realistic levels but still high penetration, they put in a whole season for that one shot and will still have to be situated to use it and still have to deal with any quaesitors and any other number of another issues. I don't see it as a game breaker.

I DO, however, still have a problem with the whole "if you have a lab text for that kind of charged item, you can make a number of charges equal to 1/5 your lab total" (paraphrase, not true quote). It's related to a larger problem I see with this whole simplification of the lab activities, and it really shows how it lessons the intricasies (sp?). By getting rid of the simple +MT at time text made, the devs took away a straight forward tool in making it useful (just as with doing away with affinities). Now it's a doesn't do much, or does too much, usually unproportional situation (like with the major/minor focus, which is the closest thing to a replacement for 4th ed affinities).

By way of illustration, for charged items, a lab text for making a lvl 5 effect will let you make one more charge than you could without the lab text, assuming your lab total remains the same. Whoah, goofd thing you spent all that time making the text [sarcasm off]. But for say a lvl 50 effect that you could barely produce one charge for the first time around, a lab text will let you do 10 charges the very next season.

*shrug* Okay, bootstrapped one of my one issues. But, though it's not a game breaker, I see a bigger problem with those rules changes that are off for the non-extreme rules stretching than with the extreme cases (suching as getting 4 some magi to work together for a level 80 one shot effect).

I agree with you FujiYakumo: rules for lab text of charged items are ovesimplified, and are somewhat unbalanced. We could do a home rule to fix it: #1 let the mage have double charges w/ a lab text. #2 others solutions...

But I really think that the principal problem is the one presented by ExWilliam:
It is too easy to create magic item with high penetration.
Why is it game breaking? Because it allow a mage to affect a creature/mage with much more power. MUCH more.
I would intuitively think that the spells of a 30 years out of aprenticeship mage could NOT affect an 120y old mage with a level 25 effect.

With the rules as they are, a mage with 60 lab total can do a charged item with:
a 25lvl effect
+ 70 penetration (with 35 lvl in penetration)
it is equivalent of a mage with 95 casting total !!!

even a lab total of 40 can do
a lvl 20 effect
+ 40 penetration
equivalent of 60 casting total !!!

Maybe you would say, that it will be only for some uses, or that it take seasons for nothing. But I reject those arguments. In fact, just one "dose" is enough: and you even don't have to use it !
The other creature/mage would know that you could *easily* penetrate their defences, and much power is gained from that fact alone.
How come a battle ( not certamen) between two mages is resolved by an initiative roll ? Never such a battle would last more then 1 round !!

I do not think that is what the rules intended, and, moreover, I find this ... counter-intuitive.

In fact, it permit a mage to have more than two times his "normal" penetration.
I understand that there are others sorts of challenges that cannot be resolved that way.
But i think that all this messed up the "magic" hierarchy.

Just think it the other way around: an ennemy mage could do this one use item to get rid of a player character.

I had a big battle between two magas in my campaign it lasted many minutes...It would not have been that fun if I just said: "Julia point her want and zap Goliarde. She is now incouscious, and Julia close in to kill her with a knife"

Truly, I don't understand how someone could not see this as a "game breaker"...

But then I only have my campaign standpoint.

Any imput will be read and appreciated :)

Iudicium

Not trying to be nit-picky but....
A level 25 damaging effect with 35 levels in pentration (to get that +70 penetration in your example) gives a modified level of effect of 60.

Therefore your example mage would make 0 progress on instilling the effect each year. If he experimented with a risk factor of 3 then he would only make (stress die +3) * 2 (for an effect that expires in 70 years) progress each season, but would still need to accumulate 60 points of progress. He should average 16 points of progress each season. If he does not botch and avoids adverse rolls on the experimentation table he will finish in 4 seasons.

However, the odds of avoiding a botch increase dramatically if you must roll multiple times. With a 3 risk modifier you will get at least 1 level of botch 28% of the time you roll a zero on the stress die. If you need to roll a stress die 4 times on the item (once each season for 4 seasons) you have a 35% chance of getting at least one zero.

You are facing about 1 in 10 chance of having to roll on the disaster chart on the experimentation table.....look at the chart, you do not want to go there. The least malicious result will simply destroy the item and something else valuable in your lab. At worst you can endanger your covenant several times over and go into twilight while your sodalis deal with the effects.

Anyway, my point is you will need a substantially higher lab total to make this item as anything but a 1 shotter. If you do make it a one shotter, I hope you make your targetting roll, and that there is one one of the thing you are facing.

Read the section about charged Items.

You only need a labtotal equal to the modified effect to get one charge & then spend another full season & you will create lvl/5 charges with the lab text.

Yes, I was talking about charged items.
As the rules are, you just have to equal the difficulty with the lab total to do one dose. ( and more, you could do 12 doses the next season with the lab text, but that is out of subject, because the problem is just to be able to make ONE dose :)

Only the most fools would do experimentation on such a delicate project :P ( no pun intended to you, daoc2k, I like to discuss)

Tou said:
"If you do make it a one shotter, I hope you make your targetting roll, and that there is one one of the thing you are facing."

Now spells need targetting only, and only if, they are not resisted. If I understood well ( see parma + targeting )

As I said, just the risk for a great magus to meet a young one with such a wand of (sleep, blindness, 5 lvl dommages, anything crippling, etc) 70 penetration is "balance breaking". If that wand of +70pen would be so easy to do, great magus would not exist anymore in the way that we know now. There would be lucky mages, that will be respected, and powerful mage that would not exit their sancta, otherwise they would be lucky ones. Power in arts is no more as before, a simple mesure of the capacity of a mage to defend himself, and retaliate. All mages knows that all mages CAN retaliate WITH succes (I concede some exeptions, but they are few), 10, 20, 50, 80 years old magus.

I'm in search of a way to fix this. This rule for penetration will never be applied in our campaign. We have already tried: disaster. An ennemy that the caracters were fighting for many years ( 10, 15 ? ) was now taken of in 1 season (dispose of the ennemy)or 2 seasons (dispose of most ennemy encountered, that way)

I was like:
:O

And then the search for an answer has begun...;)

Any idea to a rule to make an effect of penetration into a charged items ? minor item ? major ?

Iudicium, The Warder of Spirits

One way to handle the problem in an ArM5 campaign - especially if it became troublesome - is to be very strict about the items protected by a magus' Parma.

Note that in ArM5 - differently from ArM4 - there are no ReVi effects giving a static protection from magic any more. So such effects can also not be enchanted into magic items, not even if only an item itself is to be protected. In consequence, magic items made by Hermetic magi cannot be protected from magic attacks in a generic way any more: unless you create house rules, all Hermetic magic items but Talismans are highly vulnerable to even low level spells targeting them.
If you are very strict about ArM5 p. 85: "... and other items that are very close to her", an old magus with sufficient Finesse can destroy a wand pointed at him with a fast cast spell before it's trigger action is performed.

Kind regards,

Berengar

"Magic protection for an item is it not the level of the highest level of the spell invested in the deveice ?"

That is a possible house rule for your campaign, if you want it that way.
I do not know the source you got this rule from, though - unless for your campaign you just extended the resistance of an item's *enchantment* versus the Disenchant spell (ArM5 p. 160) to also include magic resistance of the item *proper*, e. g. against manipulation or destruction by magic.

To my knowledge there is in ArM5 no rule giving magic resistance to any magic items but Talismans, and - as I stated above - the possibility from ArM4 to give people, animals or things magic resistance with a ReVi effect was explicitly removed from ArM5 (see p.161).

Kind regards,

Berengar

Berengar:
Your proposition is well-tought of, and original, and thanks for the effort :)
But I think it cannot be applied, for two reasons:

- Mages would enflame clothings, or all worn. (or other effects, like strangulate him with his clothes, etc)
That I do not want: objects worn should be resisted, unless they are extraordinary long.

- Otherwise, mages would construct rings (or circlets, etc) of fireball, instead of wands, as they are more close to the body.
That also I do not want: It has no in-game logic, or such logic would be bizzare and not game worthy IMHO

Draco (SHADOWSTALKE)
Having charged items no penetration ? We have tought of this. Maybe it is good, but it doesn't solve the same problem for minor item or even major item ( which are not that much costly to do, despite what some thinks ;) I would like a global solution for this.

Trully, this is a core problem. For us at least ;)
I don't see an easy answer for now...

Our gang will *try* to come to a good answer to this, and post it here. :)

May Saturn be alligned with the stars of your covenant,
Iudicium

Iudicium,

the clothes of a maga are protected by the ArM5 rules about Magic Resistance on p. 85 explicitly. Everything else is a judgement call about being "very close to her". For example: Is the gem of a finger-ring, when unequivocally pointed towards another person, still "very close"?

If you now consider the limitations on the trigger conditions of magic items from p.98, you find that it is not trivial to design conditions where a one effect item (which cannot read intentions or thoughts) is always as close as clothing to a magus, while the gesture of pointing it towards a target is still unmistakeable, e. g. does not inadvertently target the caster. Requiring at least a solid Intelligence plus Magic Theory plus stress roll to design such a safe trigger is quite reasonable. Especially if sedentary old enemies and problems of your campaign transferred to ArM5 have trouble surviving new magic items.

Also ArM5 magic items are *always* vulnerable when away from a Parma or the Aegis, not only when brandished. Do magi go to bed with them? Don't they ever lend them out? Are they always allowed to bring them into an inn, a church, a monastery? What do they do with their items when renewing their Parma every dawn and sunset?
These aspects alone might go al long way to balance things in a campaign.

Kind regards,

Berengar

- Having charged items no penetration ? We have tought of this. Maybe it is good, but it doesn't solve the same problem for minor item or even major item ( which are not that much costly to do, despite what some thinks ;) I would like a global solution for this.

A non-charged item requires a much higher lab total. For the effect described above (lvl 25 w/penetration of 70), you'd need a lab total of 120 to make a lesser enchantment. For a major enchantment the cost (in vis) would be higher.

Unless we're dealing with an archmage this is well above what most magi can do...

I think this is the best fix. Lesser and Major enchanted items require drastically higher lab totals (or time investment) which should make ones with extreme pentrations very rare.

The other thing that should not be overlooked is the reaction of other Magi. If you are carrying around an item with a 70 penetration, and others find out about it, I think you will become the target of widespread harassment. The only reason to ahev such an item would be to kill other Hermetic Magi (at least that is what would be argued in Tribunal.) I see many Certamen challenges in your future, acusations of wrongdoing, politcal backstabbing and other skulldrudgery.

In any game I would be playing in the creation of an item along the lines of 70 penetration would entail giving your character a Dark Secret flaw for free.

Make (encourage through roleplay)the players discard such items and lock up the lab texts. Players generate their own story hooks with this stuff.

"The other thing that should not be overlooked is the reaction of other Magi. If you are carrying around an item with a 70 penetration, and others find out about it, I think you will become the target of widespread harassment. The only reason to ahev such an item would be to kill other Hermetic Magi (at least that is what would be argued in Tribunal.)"

Actually, you'd need the penetration to affect anything with a Might score. It would be easy enough to argue that the item was made to be able to defend against some demon/fae/dragon/whatever that bothers the covenant, even though the covenant never did anything to bother said creature in the first place. (Of course, for this to be argues in tribunal, it would be good to detail on how others found out in the first place there was this item with such a good penetration on it...was the mage using it on some other mage, and which one provoked the attack? )

On a like note, I would still allow penetration for charged items purely for being able to make charged items that could affect magical creatures - Arrows of Demon Slaying, for example.

The charged item rules don't really bother me, since it's a one shot (or few shot) item being made when the mage could spend the time studying instead. You also still need to have a high total in order to have a high penetration. For the above example of a 70 penetration, that's still +35 levels of effect...not the easiest thing to come up with earlier in the game.

As for earlier examples of the 30 year mage easily taking out the 120 year old mage, I'd expect the 120 year old mage to easily take care of a charged item problem with Disenchant or Unravelling the Fabric of (Form).