The core book has a InAu15 spell called True Sight of the Air that would let you see even in a storm.
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Do we have a numeric size for a base individual for Ignem? I can't locate anything besides "a large campfire". And I think you are calculating based on area, not volume. If you go with volume it should be an increase of 10x by each +3 size.
Another option is to make a coat of flames using baseline 5 (+5 damage with unnatural shape) to create flames at R: Touch around you and add a Rego requisite to make the flames expand around you in the shape of a dome, isolating you from the snowstorm. Based on Circle of Encompassing Flames you should be able to manage up to 50m² with an individual, or an hemisphere with a 3m radius. Here, keeping the thickness of the dome constant and increasing only the surface area, each +2 magnitudes for size should give you x10 times the radius.
I find this difficult to express in terms of hermetic magic. Maybe something non-standard (for example, something like Treading the Ashen Path). Also, note that since the target is the created flame you can't really target only the snow unless you add requisites (but if you stick to the "heat to be hot/warm" guidelines this should prevent unwanted damage to most things.
So, going with that as inspiration: Trailblazing the Snowstorm (Base 3 (heat to be hot on touch), +1 Touch, +2 Group, +3 size, +1 fancy effect (keeps being cast while the caster walks seven miles)): while you walk sparks dart from you, heating everything in a 10 paces radius. Under a snowstorm this means you will melt the snow falling around you. This spell can be used in other situations, and can ignite very flammable objects (a Flambeau once burned down a village after accidently igniting a nearby wheat field). You can walk for 7 miles with each casting of this spell.
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PeIg has Conjuration of the Indubitable Cold. Could you not apply the same concepts to a CrIg spell?
While that precise example comes from MoH, the idea of non-standard targets is right there in the corebook, in the Spells chapter. IIRC, it's right after the R/D/T are described in detail, in a small paragraph about how to change targets.
In short (and Serf's Parma): You can't use non standard R/D/T with spontaneous magic, but you can invent formulaic spells that make use of them. For that, you take the closest existing target, and add 1 magnitude.
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You are right. It is there. What then is the logic of requiring mysteries to get access to R/D/Ts like road and bloodline? Logically anyone should be able to invent formulaic spells using such R/D/Ts.
The critical issue for using custom R/D/T for formulaic spells with just ArM5 p.114 is, that it
... is largely left to storyguide interpretation.
So T: Pair may look universally accepted as a custom Target, while T: Road may rather look like requiring either Faerie Magic or Mercurian Road Magic.
But a more eccentric SG may allow T: Road anyway by p.114, and not approve of T: Pair at all as a matter of taste.
Good point, but not entirely satisfactory.
Is faerie magic still worth a virtue if anybody can design road and bloodline spells? Just because the virtue is needed for spontaneous magic?
I am a fond defender of the examplars model of 3ed, with abundant use of special R/D/Ts, but not at the expense of devaluing virtues and house specialities.
My interpretation is that the non standard R/D/T spells in the book were developed through experimentation, getting a modified effect roll or something similar. I'm thinking about Treading the Ashen Path, The Earth Split Asunder, Wind at the Back and others.
P.114 shouldn't be an argument to say "just add a magnitude and design the effect in any way you want". Otherwise, non standard R/D/T wouldn't be... well... non standard. Let's not forget that one of the most atractive points in Ars is exactly it's magic system, both flexible and rigorous.
Using p.114 to freely infringe, in a systematic way, upon R/D/T (provided by other virtues or not) is, in my opinion, stretching things. And it indeed devaluates virtues such as Faerie Magic.
In last analysis not only R/D/T, everything in the rules is "left to the storyguide interpretation". Even this comment. So take it with a grain of salt.
I personally dislike non-standard R/D/T for the forum, which is why I don't think I have ever designed something that uses it for questions on the boards (and it often gets brought up to me). My issue is not that I do not use it in my own personal Saga, but that it requires approval from the SG which makes it YSMV. I try to avoid YSMV answers unless it is to a question asked by an SG for their own Saga.
As for the Base Individual of Ignem being a fire 1 pace across, that came up in a large argument which drew in several of the writers. That 1 pace was both the easiest to work with and roughly the correct size to fit the descriptive text with even the writers using it for the thread, so it has become my default standard. You are free to use what ever you desire in your own Saga but anything you choose other than 1 pace will lead to working with fractional amounts.
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Yeah, that was my interpretation too, until somebody pointed out this particular phrasing in the core book. There are a few examples of explicitly unique spells in canon. It always confuses (or more accurately, annoys) me when spells, not so marked, use the guidelines in ways I do not understand.
The phrase and the interpretation aren't mutually exclusive.
As for the rest, ditto.
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Let's consider that you can.
You still "pay" for it with one extra magnitude. This may be enough for some people to get tired of this
To see it another way: Is a minor virtue giving you +5 to casting total when using, say, Sun duration worth it?
Especially if it also allows you to use it in spontaneous magic, something which wouldn't possible otherwise?
This is not that different to Minor Potent Magic in a R/D/T, only, admitedly, a little stronger.
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To my understanding, this requires an eccentic storyguide. And yes, eccentric storyguides can certainly do more.
Faerie Magic is anyway more valuable because it prevents Warping by Faerie Auras and makes them add to your magic totals, and - most importantly - is required to gain Merinita Mystery Virtues.
I had thought that "non-standard" R/D/Ts meant something like "range 50 yards, but I don't have to shout", or "I want this spell to last seven days". Road and Bloodline seem out of scope because Hermetic magic doesn't know what a road or bloodline is. I suppose you could fake up Road spells with an InTe requisite.
It should also be quite easy to create the Astrological durations, though, give or take a bit of inaccuracy in correspondence to the positions of the stars. As already noted, the difficulty would be higher, (So that only seems worth it for someone who wants to pretend they have initiated Celestial Magic.)
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I agree that my take does tend to be that there are more limits on the R/D/Ts that can be designed without without virtues. Exactly what those are is harder to define, but I wouldn't allow pushing of Hermetic capabilities with them (as Bjornaer sensory magic, say, does).
It is significant that 5ed has removed all quantified measurement in 5ed. Near and reach are both gone. Instead all the ranges are based on contact by senses, except AC. We have touch, voice, and sight, as well as eye contact and self. All of these, including AC, feel like plausible conduits for magic. A measure in yards does not.
Road too makes sense, but a breakthrough or a virtue is fair, but not enormously useful when you have to sense the target as well. The Intellego road spells are neat.
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Yes, the flavour of the ranges is really good (though strictly speaking Voice isn't sensory, as it works on deaf beings). If you wanted to take the idea further, maybe you could have non-standard ranges such as "Within the same Boundary" - though you'd still need a means to target, so they might not be very useful.
True, it is the species that matters, and not the sensory reception. Species becomes a vehicle for magic.
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Ooooh!
Nice.
And one additionnal tidbit: It seems to work both ways.
Voice flows from you to the target.
Sight goes from the target to you.
You might say "if I can see them, they can see me", but an invisible mage can still use Sight range spells.
=> Original research time!
Are spells able to go back the flow of species, like salmon in the river?
Are spell transmited by something which ain't your species, but goes along with it?
Following this concept to extremes, it almost sounds like a spell-combat focused magus should learn the Art of Imaginem as much, or more so than Vim.
Vim to modify the magic
Imagonem to change ranges, and possibly targets?