From: rbarrett@dept.english.upenn.edu (Robert Barrett)
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:23:27 -0400 (EDT)
Lydia mentioned some of the things Mike was saying about tonight's story, and my mind bagan to race at the thought of his fiendish imagination cooking up enemies for my beloved Scots hedge-wizard. So, in a desparate attempt to cover my ass, I double-checked the Major Magic Deficiency (Common) and the Resistance/Parma rules. And, I'm happy to say, Alanus's gawdawful inability to manipulate Perdo magics does *not* affect his Parma against Perdo spells . . . b/c Parama rolls only use the *Form* of the attacking spell! Yay! Hurrah! No more worries of Alanus falling victim to a three-year apprentice with his first Perdo spell!
Of course, I'm sure Mike has countless other ways to kill me, so I'll stop cheering right now.
Rob
Actually: This is probably open to interpretation. The question is mostly whether or not Parma Magica "includes" the deficient Technique -- I'd say that because, for example, you can specialize your Parma Magica in a certain Technique, that the Technique is as integral to Parma as the Form score is. (Of course, altneratively, one could say that Deficiencies only apply to things where the score is being added directly.)
A magus' magic resistance is actually two parts:
Parma Magica score: Parma*5 + Aura + stress die (possibly minus fatigue and body level penalties)
Form bonus: the score in the Form being defended against. If you have a Deficiency in the Form, its score is halved, but this doesn't affect the Parma Magica part of the total.
If you count the Parma score as depending on the Arts in question, then Major Deficiencies would divide the Parma score in half (but the full Form bonus stll counts).
The distinction between the Parma and Form Bonus parts of the Magic Resistance is, I think, important, since, for example, you can get your Parma nuked by a Wind of Mundane Silence, but you still get your Form to resist even without your Parma. And you can suppress each of these separately.
This is the way it's currently implemented on-MUSH, and this is what I'm doing for Vespers (which has a ton of magi with big deficiencies).
Mike, of course, will probably disagree totally. ;) (Dividing Parma by half is rather harsh.)
-- Lydia