Arcane Arrester Options

[Seth]

The character—and she alone—treats Force-based effects (damage, paralysis, etc.) at half (round down) actual strength. Note that the actual Force of the spell is not actually reduced. For instance, a character with Arcane Arrester targeted by a Force 5 spell would resist it as if it were a Force 2 spell, though the spellcaster could still add hits to improve the effect

I have a character with this power (I made a gnome for the looks small and helpless advantage), and I don't really understand how it works.

Here are a couple of corner cases:

A bad guy mage casts a force 6 direct spell at me with 5 success. Normally I would take 11 damage. As the arcane arrester do I take 6 or 8? If the spell was actually a force 3 spell, the hits would be capped to 3: meaning I would take 6 damage. However in this case I think the spell has been cast, so prehaps the 5 successes add to the force of 3... meaning 8 damage

The same argument applies to buff spells or healing spells: does the reduction in the force of the spell cap the nett hits.

My opinion is that the nett hits are capped at the force of the cast spell, and that arcane arrestor impacts only a very few spells (damage and those in which the force has to be more than one of your attributes).