Circular shafts and magic circles

[lvgreen]

Mage wants to "curse" a place with a circular well.
Has created a Ring Duration Target Circle spell to freeze water.
Was going to cast it on the circular rim of the well so when water bucket is drawn up it's contents are frozen. Is that what happens - the water at the bottom of the circular well shaft is liquid but freezes when raised past them rim?

Then a change of mind, doesn't want the water drawers see the water freeze.
Now scraping a line around the inner circumference of the well shaft about half way down, and the spell cast on that circle. Would that work?

[Jank (Medusa)]

Since the water was not at the rim of the well when the spell was cast I would not subject it to the freezing effect.

What is sought is pretty complex and in my view would need an item with 2 powers: one to detect and a second to frreze (with the first as trigger).

[neilnjae (Neil Smith)]

I'd say that the water at the bottom of the well is within the circle, so freezes as soon as the spell is cast and stays frozen while the Ring is intact. (After all, Ward spells will extend upwards from just the circle used the cast them.)

If you want the water to freeze when it crosses some other boundary, I'd agree with Medusa and say you'll need an item with linked effects, or some variation of Watching Ward to combine spells.

[Jank (Medusa)]

I would rule the water in the well as a room target rather than circle.

The curcle being traced is not at water level but several meters above. While a ward against demons would protect someone standing within it, how far up does the "tube" extend? I have seen wells, like the one in Ronneburg castle, extend 10+ m down before you hit water.

[lvgreen]

@Jank

I would rule the water in the well as a room target rather than circle.

The curcle being traced is not at water level but several meters above. While a ward against demons would protect someone standing within it, how far up does the "tube" extend?

You have pinpointed what is annoying me about this question.
The questioner seems to be assuming that the Circle Target spell only affects what passes through the 2-D plane of the Circle, while the ward example affects a 3-D volume, that is only tangential to the 2-D plane of the Ward circle. And yet the well-shaft can be considered a 3-D extension of the Circle. My head hurts.

In the Ward example, if the Warded individual jumps in place, are they warded during the period their volume is not tangential to Circle (ie airborne)?

Perhaps I should have asked what are the volume constraints of a Circle spell?

[OneShot]

Best wait for ArM5D - but in the meantime you can read this monster of a thread:

Circle Duration & Existing Spells

Here are my proposals for this thread. First, errata Ring Duration: Ring (p. 112): Modify the first clause to read "until the target of the spell, or part of the target, moves outside the ring". Second, errata Circle Target: Circle (p. 112): Add the following sentence as the third sentence of the definition. "Note that the circle itself is not inside the circle, and thus not targeted by the spell even if it would be a legal target." Third, errata in the following insert (on page 113, although…

[lvgreen]

I need to improve my Search-fu, as I think I was looking for that.

And if I add "affects a 3-D volume that must intersect or be tangential to the 2-D plane of the circle" it should fix a lot of problems.

Of course there will be the quibble that surface the circle is not always a plane, to which I can respond "so long as a line segment from one side of the circle to the other intersects, it counts".
And add a minute amount of temporal inertia and it will handle jumping in place.

[The_Fixer]

Afaict (and remember ), you can, with a container ring:

• affect all that's inside at the time of casting, so freeze all the water in the well
• affect whatever comes inside the ring, while it's inside. So, freeze the water the moment it enters, but it'll unfreeze once it's taken out.

So, as a curse, I'd go with PeAq, so that all water which enters the ring is destroyed.