It occurs to me that it would be both funny and possibly useful to be able to create instant reputations through gossip. Hence my turning to the forum to figure out the legal parameters.
Ideally, I don't want to cause warping, which limits the effect to 25 or less.
I'm going to start with the Level 5 Rego Mentem effect: "Incline a person to a particular sort of response." In this case, the inclination will be to come up with facts (embroidered or even completely false as needed) about a specified person that support a particular reputation, and gossip about them.
The best I can do without warping looks like Touch/Concentration/Room, and that means the magus involved has to maintain concentration for as long as possible. And that sucks.
I'm thinking, instead, to make it an Eye/Sun/Ind enchanted item with unlimited activations. Something that you wear on your head or around you neck. You activate it by saying "I feel like a _______", where the blank is whatever instant reputation you want to develop, and it then zaps everyone you make eye-contact with until you take it off. Level 30 to enchant it.
Thoughts? Am I missing something subtle or obvious?
Base 5, +1 eye, +2 sun, +0 ind = level 20, no? So you still have leverage to increase a pair of parameters without warping. Changing eye to voice? Would work.
Auto granting a level 3 reputation sounds like fun Be careful on how you act afterwards though! Further interactions with these people might be tricky if they remember they did something because your reputation but suddenly are not aware of your reputation anymore. The scenics potential of that spell is awesome, though
Well, that's the thing. It doesn't create a reputation, it makes people strongly inclined to build a reputation for you.
It'd be most useful at gatherings, where suddenly everyone who you make eye-contact with wants to make up gossip about you. And, because of how people are, they will tend to try to top each other. And so they become meme-carriers for whatever reputation you want to build. After the spell ends, they aren't magically compelled to gossip about you, but everything they've said is still floating around in the crowd.
Ah! I see. I missunderstood you then Yeah, that would be useful better with the Sun duration then, and maybe at Sight range in case you want to develop a PHYSICAL reputation.
And well, if it is only a few castings here and there, who cares about warping anyway?
There's a spell in Guardians of the Forests (Chapter 7) under Imanitos Mendax's grimoire which does something similar:
However, I don't think this is a very good bit of spell design (and I say this as the author of this spell!), but GotF was a bit odd because ArM5 was so new. Nowadays I would formulate it like this:
As long as the target meets a sufficient number of people, this will spread information effectively. Cast this on a few people a day and you could probably build a reputation in a very short time. If you want to be a bit more certain, the level 10 ReMe guideline ("Imbue all of a person’s responses with a particular emotion") will have the target actively seeking out people to tell them the information he knows -- knocking on doors, accosting strangers in the street, and so on.
Be careful on how you act afterwards though! Further interactions with these people might be tricky if they remember they did something because your reputation but suddenly are not aware of your reputation anymore. The scenics potential of that spell is awesome, though 
