Adding base individuals for light also would differentiate size and brightness, which brings up some very weird light options, and fun ones. Like having a spell that creates dazzling sunlight as bright as noon on the Sahara, but only illuminating a single person's face. Or a spell that illuminates an entire building with soft moonlight.
And brings up that light source / circle ring spell that arguably breaks hermetic law by extending past it's circle.
Thinking about this, I am not sure it is a problem, because there is no such thing as a "dark source".
If I Creo an Individual light source, it illuminates an area about 10 paces across.
If I Perdo an Individual light source, it stops illuminating an area about 10 paces across. However, that only makes that area completely dark if there are no other light sources illuminating it.
If I want to make an area of darkness, as this spell does, then I have to destroy all light within it. That would mean all light within the size of a large campfire. That seems to work out.
We could add a note about how Perdo works, as well.
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I think you're on really tenuous ground here, creating all sorts of problems. One the one hand you seem to be treating light as having a size. On the other you're using brightness to determine how far it travels.
If the base Individual for light/dark is 10 paces across, fine. But then PeIg base 3 should extinguish all light in that 10 paces across.
But you seem to be saying the Individual is based on the brightness. So are you saying I could use base 5 to make a small source of light high up and illuminate a very large portion of the world? Meanwhile, could Lamp without Flame illuminate a huge region? After all, even on a cloudy day that's enough light to light up the interiors of houses indirectly.
Basically, for brightness you seem to be conflating the size of the Individual with the brightness as determined by the base. So how to we build light spells properly?
No, that's not what I am saying at all.
Suppose I create a campfire. Basic Ignem Individual. No problems at all. This illuminates an area about ten paces across (sounds reasonable to me). If I make a campfire a long way up, I will be able to see it from a long way away, but it won't illuminate very much.
So, first proposal: you can create a base Individual that just emits light, not heat, and it emits as much light as a campfire. The Individual is only the size of a campfire, but it only emits light. (The absence of a visible source for the light is a cosmetic effect.) You can create it really high up if you like, but it would be like a campfire a long way away. You could see it, but it wouldn't illuminate anything near you.
Perdo allows you to destroy an Individual source of light. That stops that source of light illuminating the area it normally illuminates, but the area only becomes dark if nothing else is illuminating it.
If you want to destroy all light in a volume, then you are destroying Part of the light in a volume, normally, and the size you can affect is the same size as a base Individual ā so, a campfire. That's what the MoH spells are doing.
This is why it matters that there is no such thing as a darksource. The magus can't create an individual darksource the size of a campfire and have it deluminate an area 10 paces across, because there is no such thing as a darksource.
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You include nothing about the Base brightness in that 10 paces across illumination. The spell you are pulling from (Lamp Without Flame) is Base 4, but from your description so far I could get the same area with a Base 3 or even a Base 1.
Would Size Mags still work at their current 3/10/30/100 ratio for size of source compared to illumination? If I create a Base 1 "Light" with with Size +3, would it illuminate an area 300 paces across? Would the same spell but with Target: Group and Size +1 illuminate an area 100 paces across if the individual lights were spread out as far as possible to not have overlap or gaps?
If that is not the case, then you need to provide a breakdown of how far each Base "Brightness" illuminates.
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This isn't even close to what the PeIg guidelines say for darkness, though. They're all reducing light "in an area" not about a source. Meanwhile, example spells fit the guidelines and disagree with you about other things illuminating the region. You're making this argument based on rewriting the PeIg guidelines without having changed the PeIg guidelines.
Exactly. Now, it does look like this works with Mien of Helios (MoH p.110), with brighter lights illuminating further. But the question remains about how we handle size v. base.
Very true, the PeIg Base guidelines 2 and 3 specifically "greatly reduce/remove all" light in the area rather than having any effect on the actual source. A PeIg using the Base 3 large enough to cover a light source (no matter how bright it is) will result in no light.
Without any errata a Lamp without Flame should only have a source about 1 pace (the size of a large campfire or a hearth fire) which means a PeIg Base 3 with Target: Individual should be able to completely block out the light it produces. The way many have been reading it however it would only block out 1/100th of the light (10 paces diameter being roughly 100 1 pace diameters by the 3~10 stepping used in AM).
We may need some clarification or definition. We've discussed light, light sources, darkness, dark sources, campfires...
If I cast Creo ignem to illuminate a room, does it crate a source of light or does it create a sourceless light? Basically, can it create the light directly without specifying a light source?
Then we can see if PeIg can destroy light without destroying the source.
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Either, yes, and yes. All of these are explicitly covered already in the rules.
I think this is less clear than it could be, but I don't think anything is actually wrong, and the remaining problem is too big to be fixed in errata.
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Seconded.
A lot of the tension seem to stem from a confusion of Ā«rulesĀ» and Ā«guidelinesĀ».
When I first took up ArM3, what I loved was the lack of rules. Barring a few Hermetic limits, everything is possible with magic. Since you cannot possibly make rules for everything, this is not possible with solid rules.
However, assigning spell levels used to be very hard. ArM4 was a relief, with the guidelines resolving many common cases and variations. Spell design was made quicker and more objective in most cases.
However, the guidelines explicitly allowed for exceptions. Some spells would break the guidelines due to original research or odd legacies. Errors of judgement were ok. Magic is not supposed to be that predictable anyway.
If we now turn guidelines into rules, we restrict the game. As the ruleset grows beyond the manageable, spell design becomes harder and more time consuming. Complexity makes the spell design process error prone, and since finite rules cannot cover an infinite world of possibilities, the game has been limited.
I agree that Lamp without Flame could have been better explained, but the view that it violates the guideline must build on some assumption that the guidelines form a complete rule set. All canon says about the base size is,
The base Individual for Ignem is a large campfire or the fire in the hearth of a great hall.
Translating this into the size of an illuminated sphere could be done in any number of ways, as has been discussed. So while the size of a flame is well defined, the size of `a' light is not.
IMO the main problem is the relationship between light and species, which is not well understood in terms of modern physics, as well as the relationship between light and light source. E.g. does a magical flame emit magical or non-magical light? Some basics of the cosmology is missing from the books.
I do agree that Lamp without Flame and Orb of Darkness should have used the same interpretation of target sizes, but then I am more inclined to blame the authors of MoH which contain so many odd guideline interpretations. Alternatively, it could be due to the inventor of Orb having a bad day (experimental work and a bad die roll), or simply being less clever.
What could possibly fit in an erratum is a caveat, noting that some spells deviate from the guidelines due to experimental results or other reasons. Such deviations in canon spells are generally known in the Order, as part of the established Magic Theory.
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Everyone stopped arguing because David decided this was too big to fix in errata.
A large part of the problem is that there is no such thing as a sourceless light if it provides illumination of any kind outside of is area of effect and can be seen from outside of its area of effect. What is called a "sourceless light" is actually an area producing light. That area is the source. Within the area the light does not have a source but comes from every direction but once you are out of the area then the light is coming from the area. Now there is going to be far less shadow and glare than from a small source (like a modern light bulb) because the area of light is weaker and much larger to what we in modern day are used to.
Much of the problem with Lamp without Flame is that it says it illuminates an area 10 paces. Under current rules, while it might provide light in that 10 paces it would only be "sourceless" in an area roughly 1 pace. A single PeIg Base 3 (covering an area 1 pace) would be all that is required to block it. However many seem to read the illuminate 10 paces as meaning the spell is that large. Comparing it to every other light producing/removing spell using the illuminated area as the actual source gives it Size +2 for free. This is not just compared to spells in MoH but other ones in the Core. To bring it inline with every other spell in every other book except Mien of Helios (which is itself an exceptional spell) would only require the "sourceless" source/core/whatever of the light be 1 pace while it illuminates an area 10 paces. But no, people want that actual "sourceless" source for the spell to be 10 paces which means every other spell of that type is operating at ~0.1% the efficiency.
I am rather disgruntled that on multiple occasions I have found a single spell which is wrong compared to every other spell of its type and a large group of people (including David) jump in trying to say "no it is correct" then try to change the rules so it is. Rather than fixing the one wrong thing they propose changes that ether break or make highly inefficient every other spell of that type. Lamp without Flame is wrong by RAW and RAI. Trackless Step is impossible without being classified as a legacy spell that does not line up with Hermetic Theory.
Fix the one thing that is wrong, especially when it is an easy fix. Lamp without Flame is a sourceless sphere of 1 pace that illuminates an area 10 paces across. Boom, fixed and in line with every other light/darkness spell. Trackless Step is a "legacy spell" that does something "outside of Hermetic Theory" (Not the duration, but the targeting and how large a target it can affect). If you are wondering, a hermetic version would be ReCo(Te) Base 4 P/C/I which uses the Terram Requisite to prevent the target from interacting with dirt, the same way similar spells allow you to walk on water or spider webs. Simple fixes that do not actually change what the spell does and do not create a problem for other spells.
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Where does it say? No base target size is given for light. The only base size quoted is in terms of fire. How (and if) that applies to light is not stated.
I find four core spells that actually work on light (rather than flames or heat).
- Moonbeam is feeble, but then it seems to be designed to be discreet. It is unnecessarily restrictive also by requiring the encircling arms.
- Well without Light works on a structure, and does not say anything about its size.
- Light Shaft of the Night (ReIg) works on a group of moonbeams or starlights. You could argue that it should affect (with group target) ten times the area of Lamp without Flame, instead of the 2Ā¼ times that it does affect, but then the target is the beams of light which can hardly be measured in paces.
- and of course Lamp without Flame
Which of the core spells do you find inconsistent with Lamp without Flame?
You really want to start an argument over something that has been beaten to death over three different threads? Go back, read all of them, and do not make arguments that have been covered already. Otherwise I am just going to ignore anything you have to say on the matter.
Oh, and this is me being very nice considering how pissed off I am over the whole thing.
Thanks. Same to you.