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[Ambrosia]

This...is actually such an utterly simple, yet great house rule. I love it
While normally the ST needs to extend a bit of manual oversight over what their players are investing the XP in, this kind of lessens the burden just a tad, and it actually makes quite sense from an 'in-game' perspective....

[Ambrosia]

I think it highly boils down to, as usual, paradigm - and hence how the actual magic operates.

If the shield is essentially a constant 'push' that affects certain kinds of objects that try to hit you, it does not make sense that durability lowers - it is less of a barrier that wears down and more of a constant literal effect of physics around the mage.

If the forces shield is, in the mage's mind, a literal barrier that gets erected and to the mage has a certain strength like imaginary castle walls, it would make sense that the durability drops - perhaps through forces...

[Ambrosia]

Has it? I mean, outside of these forums....

[Ambrosia]

The official rule is that any magical damage *replaces* the normal attack's damage - purely for balancing reasons, really.
Magick damage can quickly get insanely high. An Arete 3 character can dash out 10 aggravated damage with fiery/electric forces very easily (spend 1 willpower for an extra success, spend ~2 Quintessence to lower diff -> probably 4 successes -> 8 damage + 1 'free' forces damage level -> 10 damage.). Remember that this is the damage result, not the hit result - those 10 damage don't get turned into dice and rolled.

And 10 damage pretty much equals...

[Ambrosia]

Woo! Thanks for the heads up!
I didn't know this podcast existed, and now I got all the episodes popped into my player.
Nice to see that the podcast also had quite an interesting startoff in its first episode Very worth listening to.

[Ambrosia]

And then it was revealed that the 'Igor' was actually the crazy Etherite, deformed by previous Paradox mishaps, and they had created a whole, unblemished clone of themselves to act as their servant - while nobody's looking.

Or you spin it even one step further


...

[Ambrosia]

Of note is, that the entry mixes up a few large primates. Not just Gorilla, but also primates like the Orangutan - which definitely more matches along the lines of strength 4.
So yeah, the problem of the entry isn't that it's too low, but that Gorilla either deserves its separate entry along 'Huge Apes', or it should suggest a scale of 3 - X....