Or, just summoning "glass". Or the "wholly unnatural" effect. Or that the spell is designed with the intent before hand instead of random stone.
Why do I keep coming back...
Just to ensure we're on the same page, that part you quoted was me agreeing with you that there aren't any special requirements for the glass, and that part looks like it works fine.
Ah darn it, you're right. My intent was that the caster could spray lava around, but didn't consider that the max materials would be an issue. I guess if I was going to continue to thrash the spell out I'd chaneg the text to something like "Over the duration, this spell can create up to 100 cubic feet of material, roughly 5 cubic feet per round..." so that its clear that it appears over the duration.
Why does the spell level get lower when the character has Elemental Magic? I thought the virtue changed the calculation of the Casting Total, and did not reduce the spell level.
The spells should be designed the same way, its just that the character has a virtue which allows them to ignore any elemental requisites. What am I missing?
The magnitude of the spell is lower than what I used based upon your examples.
So if starting with a lower base. Elementalist adds Fire, then ignores the requisite. I'm trying to get at damage for
1: the base
2: bonus for requisites (which an elementalist ignores)
What exactly the elementalist gets to ignore isn't important at the moment. It is, however, the major reason I keep adding requirements to boost spells. I'm trying to get at what those requirements can do.
I cheerfully disagree. If I recall correctly (maybe not, it's been several threads and heated discussions all along the way) your basic premise is that Elemental Magic gets rid of the necessity of adding the extra magnitude requisites sometimes imply, and quite a few of us disagree with that interpretation and all the consequences of "Elemental Spells", at least 5 levels lower just because you consider that getting rid of the penalty of needing to use the lower art between the primary one and the requisite is not enough.
By the way, your idea of opening an Intangible Tunnel to a cloud and then casting a lightning at touch range keeps bugging me. Did you know that 75% of natural lightnings (those created in clouds, in real life) never actually even hit the ground? That could be a problem for an attack spell who creates a lightning at a cloud, I think. And the obvious solution would be something like adding a Rego requisite and some extra magnitudes for unnaturally hitting whoever you designate (ending probably either at the same level as the corebook lightning or one or two magnitudes below if only because it requires a storm cloud above and being cast in the open, and these extra limitations well deserve some mercy with the final level).
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My suss is to stay very close to RAW, which means each additional sub-power, and/or sub-effect, and/or complex cosmetic effects should add at least 1 to 3 magnitudes. That said, I'm also a big fan of separating spells so that one spell cannot do a wide variety of things. And also designing spell so it is the highest base and the most prominent form and tech that dictate how the spell is written.
So having a spell which inflicts fire damage uses the baseline (say base 5 for +10 damage), easy. A spell which crates lightning bolts is also pretty clear.
If the two were combined, then its a CrAu/Ig spell, and not a CrIg/Au spell. The CrAu is the harder/higher spell, and the Ig is the add-on Form. In this scenario I'd say the the Ignem is added in a scale of +1 mag is +5 damage, because that is the way Ig spells tend to scale their damage.
I think the calculatons for damage for that spell idea should be CrAu base +30, plus Ig +15, for a total of +45 damage per casting, however creatures with immunity to a particular type of damage should deduct from the total damage as needed. So... "Explosion of Lightning and Flame" might be a CrAu/Ig 50 spell.
A spell at Range: Touch which is used through a tunnel should not hard the caster as the caster is touchnig the Tunnel and not the "victim". The tunnel acts as a safe proxy. If a CrIg spell is cast at Touch upon a victim directly then I think there should be damage to the caster (imho) or at the very least the risk of some.
I've been thinking of a house ruled version that scales the magnitudes added down instead of fully ignoring it. Will make the math harder, but I mean... is that a consideration anymore? Heh.
ArM mentions adding +2m if the added effect is 6th magnitude or higher... which may just be outdated.
I get wanting to separate spells that way, it makes sense normally. It's just, blurring that line is the point of the Elemental Magic Virtue. Adding a corpus req and magnitude to a MuAn will make it able to transform both ways, from human to animal, from animal to human all in one spell. It's the main example adding magnitudes to spells.
I think the where that Virtue goes off the rails is if it ignores the entirety of the magnitude. One thing I've seen with an elemental character is the ignoring of the casting requirement means one can specialise in one element, then use it for everything at lower levels. The xp gain is superfluous, it's a bit redundant.
I wonder if some of the pushback on Arts combinations creating certain effects in general is because an Elementalist can exploit it?
I don’t want to get too deep into a discussion on how the virtue works in play because I think we will (probably) disagree on first principals, so getting to a view on a house rule would be tough.
Let me know if you want me to outline my view.
That said, a house rule is a house rule - and I’m a huge fan of doing whatever works for the players on your table rather than what the rule book says. IMO Fun and fairness are more Important than rules, as long as the implementation of the rules is internally congruent in the game setting.
Definitely. I think if I can better understand the spell design and requirements then I can offer up ways for players to accomplish what they want to and facilitate creative play.
It's disappointing to sell the game to friends as being the best most versatile Magic system and for them to dismiss is a lame because they think the Magic system works like it's described, but it doesn't. I keep bringing up Aristotle and the 4 elements because when I describe Magic based upon Plato and Aristotle, people much more well versed with the topic than I am have no interest after seeing inconsistencies.
The Elemental Magic discussion is best put off if we want to talk about other things, I agree with Rex on this. Spells being discussed are easier to discuss if they don't include such potential bonuses, especially since people who weren't closely following the previous thread may not understand it. Easier to write the spells as raw as possible, just like we wouldn't include Flexible Formulaic Magic including an upgrade from Sun to Moon.
I'm guessing this is an older edition or a sidebar I'm not aware of... What was this referencing?
Deciding exactly where 'too much into one spell' always feels like a troupe-based judgement call. Adding Rego into an explosion spell to protect the caster feels fine, but fusing Endurance of the Berserker with Bind Wounds by adding a requisite feels like casting two spells at once, rather than one spell with added bonuses.
Regarding the MuCo(An)/MuAn(Co) spell... I believe the requisite is required for the spell to work at all, because you're transforming one Form into the other, and the added magnitude is to let one spell do either direction. Does that sound correct?
Its in RAW, top of Ars 5e p.115 says
What I mean by outdated is those words were written far before much of the supplement material and a decade of play testing.
You think you could make cold versions of ever Creo Ignem spell, add 1 magnitude and shoot cold "Fire"
I guess it's posible, but those spells would not always benefit from the elemental magic virtue in the casting total. It would be very circumstantial. The E.M. is applied when one of the 4x elemental types is in the spell design, not so for a Technique. Creating cold is essentially a Technique change for Ignem, not an additional Form (as PeIg primarily, perhaps MuIg).
eg. A typical CrIg spell - Pillum of Fire (CrIg20, Base 10, R:V) for +15 damage. It is creating a fire to burn the victim.
-- Then suss what is "cold fire"? Either PeIg to chill the target, or MuIg to make a magical fire that burns but does not feel cold.
-- The spell becomes CrIg/Mu or CrIg/Pe with +1 mag for +5 damage. That's not better for E.M.
So a spell which used PeAq to inflict damage through dehydration, which also inflicts damage with PeIg cold would be suitable.
-- a mix of Parching Wind (PeAq20, +10 damage using base 5, Ars p123) and Chill Touch style spell (PeIg +2 mag equals +10 damage).
-- Call it ... Frozen Drought (PeAq/Ig 30) which inflicts +20 damage.
An M.E caster with a higher Aquam could ignore having a lower ignem score in the casting total for the second spell example, but EM does not apply to the first.
I just mean as a stylistic way to do cold. Since Ignem is energy manipulation and not the element of Fire, as far as these forums are concerned. No other form else just makes things cold. Part of trying to figure out damage scaling for the arts for me is trying to figure out a way to do cold that isn't Ignem, why I just gets arguments started. So, my thought is just do PrIg for a cold based damage dealer.
Be careful, were getting into territory which causes flaming posts and trolls to derail. PeIg doesn't have corpus requirements like PeAq, so it will be easier to do damage and drain fatigue with PeIg or CrIg.
Damage scaling is essentially +1 mag per +5 damage for most forms I can think of. Perhaps the Rego Vim.sling damage is different-I can’t recall at present. I think poison damage is different too.
The Base effect changes how hard it is to start with, then scale up. I don’t allow two concurrent bases to combine from two different Forms to exceed that scaling, so that the core spells remain competitive.
That’s all I use and I’ve not had too much angst from the forums or from the internet on all my damage spells.
A little time with minimal online access and I miss a lot. Well, let me clear up some recent things:
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ArM5 is pretty clear that Hermetic magic does not follow Aristotle. This is made clear in A&A where it talks about the mix that led to Hermetic magic and states that investigation into the new Aristotle may be useless. Also, in HMRE, we can see that Elementalist magic follows Aristotle's elements much more closely, and breakthroughs/integration are required to get the Hermetic elements to more fully use these principles. So expecting Hermetic elements to follow Aristotle's elements is expecting to come to incorrect conclusions because it's starting from an incorrect premise.
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From HMRE, it's pretty clear Elemental Magic is not supposed to be nearly so abusive. HMRE says multiple times that some Hermetic magi possess this supernatural Virtue as a Hermetic Virtue, not a different Virtue with the same name. Since it's supposed to be the same Virtue, just applied to Hermetic magic, let's see what it says. How is the lack of disadvantages part written there? It's written that "he may use the highest Form score among them rather than the lowest." So that should be the proper interpretation of "there is no dis- advantage in adding elemental Form requisites to any elemental spell." So let's not build confusing spells without extra magnitudes as needed for requisites.
(Also, there is a clarification on earning of experience: "If he gains experience in more than one Form in a single season (perhaps from Adventure experience), he cannot assign more than one free experience point to each Ability," which means putting 1 point from Adventure Experience into each Form yields 2 points total in each Form, not 4 points.)
A&A pg 11
I see you're now on the same page and caught up.