The title inspires thematics a lot more far-reaching than those I intend to ask for ^_^

Question...I have a weapon, with a power "inside" that does _some-effect_ to me, the wielder.

When the effect is turned off...the weapon counts as non-magical...thus penetrating Parma?
When the effect is turned on...since the target is not the weapon, the weapon counts as non-magical...thus penetrating Parma?

Yup that's the way I see it. There are those however who hold a different opinion. We had quite the discussion about it a few months ago, there's a section in the FAQ which deals with the question.

One worry was that a magic item could be inserted inside the parma (say by stabbing it into the magus/creature with might) and then the item could produce an effect bypassing parma. It was generally agreed (at least among those who favored the "inactive magic items are not stopped by parma" judgement) that magic resistance conforms to the surface of the creature including the interior surface of any wound or similar opening. Thus the magus would be protected from an arrow tip that turned into a rhinocerous/fireball/equivelent volume of poison.

Contrary to this, many (myself included) judged that if a magus swallows something they were not protected from it.

This brings up the idea of a volume of air that has somehow been enchanted as a magic item (perhaps as a charged item) and whether or not this could pass through parma if the magus inspired it. (New question that I just thought of now).

Edit; found the thread

http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=atlasgames&msg=563.1

For my purposes this answer is enough ^_^
Thanks Erik.
_________________

About the "later effect" subject...I think that Parma, and magic resistance in general, works like an "emanation from within".

Thus you also are protected "inside"; but that's just me :)
(I read the faq already ^^)

A magus killer would be to enchant the air around the magus to become simple smoke (a very low level effect) :)
This way you can't breath it...
- either it fails to enter the body or it enters but the lungs can't absorb it :P
- or it enters and you suck up smoke

Both ways the poor mage suffocates...regardless of the way Parma works.
Unless he manages to blow the smoke away while in apnea ^_^
Or not? ^_^

//About the "later effect" subject...I think that Parma, and magic resistance in general, works like an "emanation from within".
Thus you also are protected "inside"; but that's just me :)//

Yup, the magus suffocating in a "chamber of spring breezes" has come up before. (I'm not sure if I've ever seen the -damed if you do dammed if you don't- poison gas take on it before though.)

The issue that I have with an "emanation from within" parma is that it provides no explanation why a range personal spell wouldn't be stopped by parma.

"Edit; found the thread

http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=atlasgames&msg=563.1
"

Hey! That's the thread I started! That got pretty far as I recall. I think it was overall unresolved on certain issues, I'll have to check it out again.

I think one of the basic themes for consistency that the writers were trying to keep though was the idea that there should not be a way to hurt a magus because of their Parma. Other than resisting helpful magic, nothing bad should result. They gave an example of a magus turning the poison in a cup into water with Muto magic. Another wizard comes by and drinks it, the Parma resists the magic, the water turns back into poison, and poof the wizard's Parma was used to kill him. They decided for consistency's sake that the liquid itself was magical, and thus would not penetrate and endanger the wizard. Keep this example in mind for consistency's sake whenever someone tries to sneak one by the Parma. There are enough ways of getting through now, especially with the Penetration Ability rules, that gaming the system is unnecessary.

That's how I approach it now at any rate, though it took awhile for me to get over my own objection as to why a magic sword wouldn't penetrate a Parma. Now the players will as a rule include Penentration to the effect for just such an occasion. It doesn't always make sense, but for the most part it is consistent, which can ultimately keep the game running smoothly.

In your example of the magic smoke/suffocation trick, I'd refer back to the poison in the cup guideline and rule that the Parma can't be used to kill a wizard, and they'd have no problem breathing. In that specific example though it is different from the poison in the cup, but it is consistent with the idea that a Parma can't kill a wizard. Basically by adhering to this you won't have a bunch of wizards killing other wizards through their Parma.

Something to remember is the mediaeval paradigm.

Did they know/take account of air?

Even if they did, and you enchant air to become smoke, there's nothing to stop more (normal) air being near the magus for him/her to breathe.

OK, if you're good, you could enchant _all_ the air, but in the paradigm would they actually suffocate? The parma could just keep the 'bad miasma' out, letting the 'good miasma' in!

Just something to consider. Otherwise, I agree that parma shouldn't harm a mage.

1) "knowing" about air - well my understanding is that they were a bit vague compared to modern descriptions. For example, "a wind" is an thing, rather than "a state of movement" of something else (air).
[Similarly, later philosophers had difficulties with the notion that would become known as "vacuum" - an idea which requires you to understand that air has a physical presence and can be removed]

on the other hand they seem happy with the notion of vapours.

2) "nothing to stop more normal air moving in" - ah there I disagree.
Spells seem quite capable of transforming the vapours around one into some other vapour; and the vapour around you remains there. There is no tendency for "normal air" to rush in and replace the "smoke". Rather, then normally observed tendency for smoke to disperse eventually makes the smoke fade away into non-existence.
(C13 physics, not C21!)

If on the other hand, the smoke is in "tendrils" (as it tends to be as it breaks up after then end of a spell) then yes, there is non-smoke (air) mixed in with it, and you can breathe that. (While a MuAu spell lasts, it will transform all the Air that it Targets; and a CrAu smoke will remain coherent while the spell lasts, then disperse.)

3) Similarly, PeAu does not produce an absence of air, and an in-rush of more air to replace the vanished air, but rather destroys the breathable qualities of air, leaving dead air in its place. You can't breathe dead air, so you suffocate unless you move.

4) note though, that just as when affecting ground beneath you, that it can be hard to affect an Ind target (unless it distinguishes itself by separating out into "a breeze"), and that a Part target will be needed (or larger, eg Room (all the air in a room), Stucture etc..)

5) Parma... Parma can keep out enchanted air - indeed it will naturally do so. However, the air around you will not remain fresh, and the Parma will not reach out and grab other fresh air to be drawn in, so you can all to easily suffocate if surrounded by magical vapours.

Parma is not intelligent - it just wards magic - so it *can* "harm" indirectly. Sometimes that's a bad thing, and you need to drop Parma in order to survive (or come up with some other spell).
You can't drink magically coloured water, either, unless you drop your parma.

"You can't drink magically coloured water, either, unless you drop your parma."

I thought that unless the spell altering the color of the water penetrated Parma , then you still get to drink the water as normal.

as a magically altered substance, it remains outside Parma...

(you can have a magically moved item, which loses its motion at the Parma, and then drops in passively - but that's 'cos motion is separable naturally - colour isn't)

Thanks muchly!

I was hoping someone more aware of this would add clearer ideas!

It's always hard to remove modern ideas from some of these discussions.

quote/
2) "nothing to stop more normal air moving in" - ah there I disagree.
Spells seem quite capable of transforming the vapours around one into some other vapour; and the vapour around you remains there. There is no tendency for "normal air" to rush in and replace the "smoke". Rather, then normally observed tendency for smoke to disperse eventually makes the smoke fade away into non-existence.
(C13 physics, not C21!)/quote

What I meant was, unless _all_ the various types of vapours are changed into something unbreathable, you _could_ rule that there was still enough there with the 'Vital Spark for Life' that you didn't suffocate.

quote/
If on the other hand, the smoke is in "tendrils" (as it tends to be as it breaks up after then end of a spell) then yes, there is non-smoke (air) mixed in with it, and you can breathe that. (While a MuAu spell lasts, it will transform all the Air that it Targets; and a CrAu smoke will remain coherent while the spell lasts, then disperse.)/quote
Can you target 'air' at all, since they didn't know it existed as an object?
Would CrAu remove 'breathability' or would any extra air just be added on to the normal air, so you could breathe the normal air 'underneath'?

I'm not trying to state a case within Ars rules, just exploring the mind-set. This was still well before even pioneering work by Priestley or Lavoisier.

Duckface Dragon
=UDIC=

>What I meant was, unless _all_ the various types of vapours are changed
>into something unbreathable, you _could_ rule that there was still
>enough there with the 'Vital Spark for Life' that you didn't suffocate.

unless there is something "obviously" different about the vapours in some place, it is safe to assume uniformity.
(Never mind what the modern mind might think)

>Can you target 'air' at all, since they didn't know it existed as an
>object?

there's the rub -- one answer is "read what 5th ed says in the core book"... it has some good definitions of what the Forms do and do not cover.
It does cover invisible vapours, including a notion of "dead air" which you can't breathe, so it's partway to what you might expect. It also covers breezes as tangible, manipulable individuals...

> Would CrAu remove 'breathability' or would any extra air just be
> added on to the normal air, so you could breathe the normal air
>'underneath'?

not sure what you mean.
CrAu can create a new vapour (scent, smoke, etc) which will add to and mix in with anything pre-existing;
CrAu can *perfect* an existing vapour, making it more breathable etc.
CrAu cannot make something less perfect, making air into poison (though it can create poisonous vapours - a subtle distinction between creation & change!)

>I'm not trying to state a case within Ars rules, just exploring the
>mind-set. This was still well before even pioneering work by
>Priestley or Lavoisier

it's a fascinating set of views to explore (and I am no expert!)
You should be very careful to set aside any views of the likes of P or L - they are too prone to observe and explain, rather than theorise in the abstract.
Many ME explanations fail tests of observability in our world; the ArM world is a compromise between "it works sensibly" and "it works as per the ME theories". In many cases, someone with access to the Hermetic Arts can learn a great deal about how the world ticks - though that itself is not very in paradigm...

Sorry , but i still dont get why 'Colour' can't be filtered out of water.
If there is a continuing Muto Spell affecting the water , you can still drink the water.
The spell causing the change , if it does not penetrate parma , does not prevent you drinking the liquid , or getting wet.

To me that's like saying
"I can waterproof myself , by causing all the rain falling on me to change colour".

because Parma is a *shield* not a *filter*

it cannot filter anything... that is not what it does.

The apparent "filtering" or separation of the motion of a Rego'd item is not separation or filtering but still shielding: when the item meets the shield it stops.
To be more precise: if the item was under the influence of a Momentary Rego spell, that moment has now ended, the spell is over (as it would be even without the Parma). Since it is now no longer influenced by Magic, it can fall through the shield.
If it started under the influence of a continuing (eg Conc) duration Rego spell, then it remains shielded away from the magus, blocked by the Parma. The initial hurled motion stopped briefly (at the Parma), but now the continuing Rego movement is continuously blocked while it lasts.

If you place a Momentary[*] colour spell on water and try to drink it, you get a wet face: the colour is momentarily blocked (if you get the timing right!), but then the moment passes, and the water flows freely - and probably having spread round the Parama shield, falls all over your face. This will be uncoloured water - but it would also be uncoloured if you had flashed the colour but left it on the table.

If the colour spell lasts longer (Conc, Diam, Sun,...) then the Parma will block it whilesoever the spell affects it.

[* Momentary spells don't last just one sub-second instant, but a brief period: Sample spells suggest "sometimes upto one game round, but certainly no longer"]

If you look back through the archives of this list, if you read the Berklist mailing list archives, or consult the ArM5 FAQ
http://redcap.org/FAQ/FAQ.html

you will find extensive discussion on this subject.

In summary: to make MR consistent, 5e applies some clear and wide-ranging rules. One of the consequences of this is that as well as "harmful" magic, both "benign" and "helpful" magics are also blocked - the Parma has no intelligence in it.
Yes, the Purple-Polka-Dot sword *is* blocked by MR. (It's just one of the more creative ways for a magus to shield themselves).

>"I can waterproof myself , by causing all the rain falling on me to
>change colour".

if you can cast that big a spell ("all the rain..."), you are have enough power to protect yourself in numerous magical ways.

there are no spells that "affect rain as it enters an area, transforming it on the way in and lapsing on the way out".
There are spells, targeting the rain, which transform a speicified amount of rain: all the rain currently falling in an area as the spell is cast.
(If cast on the cloud, and continuing to affect the cloud, then the rain that falls from the cloud is affected)

"Sorry , but i still dont get why 'Colour' can't be filtered out of water.
If there is a continuing Muto Spell affecting the water , you can still drink the water.
The spell causing the change , if it does not penetrate parma , does not prevent you drinking the liquid , or getting wet.

To me that's like saying
"I can waterproof myself , by causing all the rain falling on me to change colour"."

As much as I am inclined in many ways to agree with you that is not how the rules work. Parma keeps magic away rather than canceling it.

So if you attempt to drink magical water it will simply flow in a hightly unnatural and peculiar fashion down your body to the floor, but you will not be able to drink it.

This is of course a nasty way of "outing" a mage to the church for example since something like that happening could be very hard to explain away.

This leads to a lot of silly things in my mind but I think it is up to the SG and players in the end to come up with something they feel is sensible and can live with.

And your spell would infact waterproof you...MuAu change rain to pink rain would (assuming it didn't penetrate your parma) indeed keep you dry. Come to think on it could you wear a cloak with cloak of duckfeathers on it? Or pick up a magical object? *shrug* Its far better to not think about parma too much.

//Parma is a *shield* not a *filter*
it cannot filter anything... that is not what it does.

If you place a Momentary[*] colour spell on water and try to drink it, you get a wet face: the colour is momentarily blocked (if you get the timing right!), but then the moment passes, and the water flows freely - and probably having spread round the Parama shield, falls all over your face. This will be uncoloured water - but it would also be uncoloured if you had flashed the colour but left it on the table.//

Haven't Considered this.
Does this also mean that if a magus comes across a hole in the ground he can then fill the hole with water using CrAq, and then cross the hole by walking on the magically created water, and not sink?

What if a magus is submerged and uses MuAq to turn the water breathable, will the now magically altered water be stopped by parma and cause suffocation?

Another question.
A magus is in a room. I fill the room with tightly packed dirt duration sun. Can the magus walk through the dirt since his parma will keep the magic dirt away, or as I presume will he be immobilized since he doesn't have the strength to push several tons of dirt? If he is immobilized I presume he will cast spells without gestures, right? For how long will he have an airsupply within his parma "bubble"? Can he create an air supply allowing him to breathe until the dirt disappears, without lowering his parma? And if he lowers his parma will he then be crushed by the weight of the dirt above him? I would think so.

Enough ranting for now.
Hail Eris!
Flarg

//This leads to a lot of silly things in my mind but I think it is up to the SG and players in the end to come up with something they feel is sensible and can live with.//

In my opinion things that are less silly and harmful than previous takes on the parma (well, only in that I found inconsistancy to be quite bothersome for my game and I have been enjoying not having to fudge my way around parma questions for the last year. Waving one's hands and saying "it's magic don't think about it so hard" might work better in some circumstances.)

//And your spell would infact waterproof you...MuAu change rain to pink rain would (assuming it didn't penetrate your parma) indeed keep you dry. Come to think on it could you wear a cloak with cloak of duckfeathers on it? Or pick up a magical object? *shrug* Its far better to not think about parma too much.//

Not to repeat a topic that's been rather exaustivly debated, but it doesn't seem to me or many others that parma would protect against an enchanted item unless there is an active magical effect or spell functioning upon it. So a magic item wouldn't be resisted unless the item itself was magically glowing or transformed into a frog or the like. Check out the FAQ.

I am under the impression that unlike the parmas that we had in previous editions the fifth edition take on the parma does bear thinking about because it is consistant.

"In my opinion things that are less silly and harmful than previous takes on the parma (well, only in that I found inconsistancy to be quite bothersome for my game and I have been enjoying not having to fudge my way around parma questions for the last year. Waving one's hands and saying "it's magic don't think about it so hard" might work better in some circumstances.)"

Ah well less metagaming and more roleplaying could probably result in the same thing too. I find it difficult to keep a straight face when presented with things like "the purple grog defence" and so forth. Just me I guess. I think I can count on 1 hand the number of parma rolls I have made so I hardly see the need to get too excited about it.

"Not to repeat a topic that's been rather exaustivly debated, but it doesn't seem to me or many others that parma would protect against an enchanted item unless there is an active magical effect or spell functioning upon it. So a magic item wouldn't be resisted unless the item itself was magically glowing or transformed into a frog or the like. Check out the FAQ.

I am under the impression that unlike the parmas that we had in previous editions the fifth edition take on the parma does bear thinking about because it is consistant."

If it has been "extensively debated" then it obviously isn't terribly clear or else it has loop holes the size of small warships. Under most circumstances consistant and clear statements don't leave room for extensive debate...unless the people involved in the debate are just doing it because they refuse to admit they are wrong or some such but that is not really a debate about the rules at that point.

If you can stop a sword with parma because the blade is pink. Then a cloak of duckfeathers would be resisted (the cloak is under a magic effect). Which means that after casting the spell on your cloak you could not touch it. This is starting to produce silliness. A magic ring (like say your talisman) would require you to suppress parma to put it on (assuming it was sitting on the table, and assuming it has a constant magical effect) though once it was on that would be fine. The only person who dies in a room supplied with air by the "Chamber of Spring Breezes" is the mage who casts it. The list goes on.

I never noticed parma was terrible in 4th Edition. I doubt it is either better or worse in 5th. I don't see what is accomplished by debating something like this...how many angles can fit on the end of a carbon fibre nano-tube would likely be far less prone to controversy.

At the end of the day how parma works is defined by how your SG wants it to work. That is fine enough for me...when one of them says, "Make a parma roll" I do so...beyond that I don't worry about parma.

//Ah well less metagaming and more roleplaying could probably result in the same thing too. I find it difficult to keep a straight face when presented with things like "the purple grog defence" and so forth. Just me I guess. I think I can count on 1 hand the number of parma rolls I have made so I hardly see the need to get too excited about it.//

Well I wasn't comletely serious about the green grog defese. The problem with not metagaming is that the functioning of the parma is a concrete and obsevable thing in the setting so if the characters don't take advantage of the knowlege that they as characters have it makes it more difficult to susspend disbelief. The fourth edition parma did have loop holes the size of small warships in it that's what prompted the change.

//If it has been "extensively debated" then it obviously isn't terribly clear or else it has loop holes the size of small warships. Under most circumstances consistant and clear statements don't leave room for extensive debate...unless the people involved in the debate are just doing it because they refuse to admit they are wrong or some such but that is not really a debate about the rules at that point.//

In all fairness I never said that it was clear. In fact I advised that people think about it.

//If you can stop a sword with parma because the blade is pink. Then a cloak of duckfeathers would be resisted (the cloak is under a magic effect). Which means that after casting the spell on your cloak you could not touch it.//

There is no provision against touching a magic, that's why the book gives the example of a magus walking acrss an enchanted bridge.

//This is starting to produce silliness. A magic ring (like say your talisman) would require you to suppress parma to put it on (assuming it was sitting on the table, and assuming it has a constant magical effect) though once it was on that would be fine. //

This is exactly true and disscussed in the section on parma. If you want to have magic at a range greater than personal affect you, you need to surpress your parma. (Talismans can cast range personal spells on you so they can get around this.)

//The only person who dies in a room supplied with air by the "Chamber of Spring Breezes" is the mage who casts it. The list goes on.//

If you choose to take the opinion that the target of the chamber of spring breezes is all of the air in the chamber this could be true. There are lots of ways for the magus to extricate himself from this predicament. If you take the opinion that parma filters magic rather than stops it, it then becomes trivially easy to kill a magus with their own parma.

//I never noticed parma was terrible in 4th Edition. I doubt it is either better or worse in 5th. I don't see what is accomplished by debating something like this...how many angles can fit on the end of a carbon fibre nano-tube would likely be far less prone to controversy.//

I did notice that parma was terribe in 4th edition. There is no question to me that the rules in fifth are a great improvement. What is accomplished by discussing this is a better understanding of how parma works so when the issue comes up in a game a ruleing can be quickly and authoritivley made and people can get back to the story.

//At the end of the day how parma works is defined by how your SG wants it to work. That is fine enough for me...when one of them says, "Make a parma roll" I do so...beyond that I don't worry about parma.//

Did you realize that you don't roll for parma anymore?

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Atlas Games