When to Penetrate

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by RadicalTurnip

I have an astral 2 mage equipped with the mirror that lets you mindhunt. She also has the eye of penetration, does this actually help, or is it a static penetration because the item is casting?

I'm not sure about this one.

Are battlefield-wide spells effected by penetration (like Heat from Hell, Darkness, Bone-breaking/whatever it's called), are they effected by caster level?

Unless a spell says "MR negates" or "MR negates easily", then penetration and magic resist have no effect on it. Any effect listed under the spell that has a '+' is boosted by magic skill levels that are greater than the minimum. If you have more than the minimum magic skill, then the fatigue cost is reduced to (original fatigue)/(1+(current level)-(minimum level)). So if you have one more skill level, then fatigue is halved, two more and it is one third. Spell casting encumbrance is still added onto this.

What about province-targeting spells, like wolven winter, Fires from afar, flames from the sky? I assume province-targeting creature spells don't benefit from pen or caster level(like Send Horror, Earth Attack, etc).

These follow the same rules as battlefield spells, so unless an effect is listed for greater skill levels they have no effect.