Magic Theory questions wrt The Crystal Dart, Teeth of the Earth Mother, Group Target

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Greetings and Salutations, fellow Wizards of the Ars Magica Forum.

I, Niemand ex Tytalus, have ran into some trouble in my study of Magic Theory, and figured I should put my Apt Student virtue to good use.

In particular, I have three questions:
(1) What’s up with The Crystal Dart (TCD)?
(2) How come Teeth of the Earth Mother does so much for so little?
(3) How do Targets work with indirect effect spells anyways?

I’ll lay out my grievances in order.

(1)
The spell TCD seems relatively simple from a pure gameist perspective. Pick some target and damage it. Sure.
But reconstructing the spell to the best of my ability yields a combination of two effects:

Constructing The Crystal Dart; Voice Mom Ind MuTe 5 (Base 3 +2 Voice); Targeting some dirt/stone to transform it into a pointy (+5 damage) crystal dart.
Controlling The Crystal Dart; Voice Mom Ind ReTe 5 (Base 3 +2 Voice); Targeting said crystal dart to launch it at a target at high (+5 damage) speeds.

Since both effects are of the same level, whether it’s Mu(Re)Te or Re(Mu)Te is arbitrary.

This however obviously doesn’t mesh well with the ReTe 10 Wielding the Invisible Sling, which implies that moving a stone object ‘at arrow-like speeds’ would be Base 4 at least.
Does TCD get to have a cheaper effect because it’s more specific, or should it really be a Re(Mu)Te 15 spell using that guideline?

Anyways, TCD doing 10 damage at level 10 is silly considering the low level attack spell Pilum of Fire does 15 at level 20. Though TCD is limited in pen via the req and in useability by requiring dirt nearby, it’s a weird place for a spell to be.

(2)
Similarly, what’s up with Teeth of the Earth Mother? Stripping away the duration and group size results in The Impaling Tooth; Voice Mom Ind MuTe 15; that skewers a single target for +25 damage!!!

Furthermore, the ‘+2 fancy effects’ is super unspecific. Either the whole ‘build cages etc’ is totally free or it’s worth a magnitude, implying The Impaling Tooth would actually be a MuTe 10 for +25 damage. Neither case seems good.

All in all, Teeth of the Earth Mother really should be effect level 25 for +25 damage (i.e. Base 3 change dirt so that it’s slightly unnatural +6 for reinforcement and sharpening) +2 voice +2 group +2 sun +1 complexity for a total spell level of 60……

This would imply a single target variant would be around 35 or a non-damaging variant at the default 35 levels. Having both and more at 35 is just silly IMO. Imagine if conjuring the mystic tower was by default also an attack spell doing +35 damage by smushing a target! Or, conversely, if Ball of Abyssal Flame also somehow built you a house…

And finally, what’s up with the Group Target?
First, Group +2 implies 100 base stone individuals, i.e. 100 cubic paces. A 18in diameter 12ft cylinder is around 1.5 cubic paces, a cone around 0.5 - the ‘teeth’ should be somewhere in between - thus there should be a good few more than 20.
Second, Group obviously refers to creating a Group of teeth, but how does that relate to impaling people? Can I impale one Individual target with all of the teeth, or is it one tooth per Individual target up to 20?

Either way, it does way too much at its level. Who would ever bother learning that snoozefest of a spell, Ball of Abyssal Flame, if the same-level Teeth of the Earth mother is way cooler? Particularly iff you can impale one target with all teeth. What’s +35 damage compared to +25 damage x20?

This brings me to my final topic:

(3)
In this regard, how does the small-t targeting of targets outside of Individual generally work with indirect effects anyways?
Note the distinction between the proximate big-t-Target (the dart) and the ultimate small-t-target (the one it’s launched at).

First, let’s consider the Part Target.
Imagine you wish to harm a specific part, such as the legs of a given hapless victim - that is, the ultimate target is a part.
A Perdo Corpus attack spell obviously needs the Part Target and a formula targeted at the legs. Intuitively, I’d demand the same of an appropriate TCD variant, but since only the ultimate target it narrowed while the Target is unchanged, it seems TCD can just achieve it by default?
I suppose I’d demand a +1 magnitude ‘complexity’ modifier for a more precise TCD variant, but it still seems unhermetic and wishy washy.

Second, what’s up with Group Targets?
It’s once again quite simple for, say, Perdo Corpus spells, since proximate & ultimate targets match up, but complicated for indirect effects.
Since the (proximate) Target of TCD is the dart itself, a Group variant would create either ten crystal darts, or one crystal dart with the mass of up to ten normal ones, or anything inbetween.
Let’s go with the simplest cases and assume we just create ten darts. But are they now launched at (a) one (ultimate) target? or at (b) up to ten (ultimate) targets, one dart per target max?

In case of (a), multicasting is effectively redundant and good riddance. However, Perdo Corpus is effectively fully obsolete, and you end up with a single spell being able to both deal with hordes as well as meaty single targets (albeit limited by soak&pen as always). Broadly, the x10 damage at +1 magnitude seems a bit silly.

In case of (b), indirect attack spells are brought in line with direct ones, but what’s the magical theory reason? If anything, it should be easier to direct all ten darts at one target than at ten distinct targets…

Thus, from a magic theory perspective, it seems reasonable to allow (a), but perhaps at the cost of an additional magnitude? +2 magnitudes for x10 injuries seems fine since it’s still limited by soak and injuries are roughly quadratic wrt damage.

Maybe allow different Target (sizes) for proximate/ultimate target but demand a magnitude when they’re different?

The aesthetic of barraging a single target with a thousand darts or impaling a single evildoer with a dozen or more spikes is awesome and i want to retain it, but x10 damage for a +1 magnitude increase seems generally unbalanced.

Please provide some insights. How should it work magic theory or balancing wise? Have you personally ruled on this matter in game and how?

Thanks in advance.

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The crystal dart is confusing, yes. Btw, definitive edition apparently reduced it to +5 damage and made it a relatively useless spell, since there is no longer any reason to pick this over Wielding the Invisible Sling, unless you happen to have a focus that applies to the first and not the second spell. I'm kind of not really going to give you a lengthy answer to justify old stats. For Teeth of the Earth Mother, I would judge the damage from the total effect of the spell. You simply wouldn't have as much damage from dumping the +2 group and +2 fancy effect and making a single stone spike.

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Ty for the note on the crystal dart, but I still have to disagree wrt the Teeth of the Earth Mother - a single magnitude shouldn’t both contribute to group size and damage, that’s double dipping! Two magnitudes per magnitude! Compare again Ball of Abyssal Flame and Incantation of Lightning.

I suppose the only kind of answer I’d easily accept is something along the lines of ‘doylist it’s a legacy effect so it’s overtuned, you can’t achieve it with simple guidelines, watsonian it’s sympathic with some divine tale or created by an archmage so it gets to be stronger’ so I may be guilty of begging the question…

Ultimately my main, most burning, question is: can group-Target indirect spells such as Teeth of the Earth Mother etc hit a single small-t-target several times? If yes, isn’t this op? If not, why?

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Incantation of Lightning is actually not the best argument. It has +4 Unnatural because you shoot the lighting from your hand. If you changed it to range Sight, and removed the +4 unnatural, you’ll have a CrAu20 spell that deals +35 damage from lightning, but then you’d need a storm cloud to cast it, which is a different mitigator, and you won’t be able to cast it indoors or underground.

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Incantation of Lightning variants would be +1 unnatural to have lightning strike its natural target at an unnatural time or +2 unnatural to have lightning strike an unnatural target given a cloud. Something like that, at least, and at +30 damage not +35 anyways

Regardless, IoL and BoAF are mechanically (near) identical level 35 spells while TotEM gets group target (+2) and long-term effects (+1~+3) at cost of a mere 5 damage (-1).

6

Not all forms deal damage based on the base guideline. Creo Ignem does, and so do the poison and acid spells, but Terram is very circumstantial, so is Herbam. Scaling the target makes a lot of sense to increase damage in Terram.

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If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that TotEM is a single-small-t-target spell, i.e. the +2 group is actually a +2 damage mag? I suppose that’d make sense scaling wise (with the leftover mag + limitation being spent on the gimmick), but it does say to skewer enemies and all of the readings I’ve seen of it so far seem to indicate you could small-t-target several enemies.

Just as an aside, I wouldn’t call Terram ‘very circumstantial’ - YMMV but I’d say, situations where dirt/stone is scarce are more circumstantial than otherwise - at least inland.

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Yes and no. Terram and Herbam don't work like Ignem and Aquam acids work for damage. What I'm saying is that the +25 damage is the result of being skewered by up to twenty pillars raising from the ground and pushing you against the others as they converge and pierce you from all sides. Arguably, yes, the spell can skewer more than one victim, however, the way I read the spell, when you're skewered by the teeths, you're also fundamentally trapped because you can suffer more damage in successive rounds from struggling. I don't suppose most victims end up with an 18 inch hole and get stuck to the base - they get pierced but also pushed towards where the teeths converge. Hence, I wouldn't allow a single teeth to do as much damage by taking away the group parameter, or the fancy effect (although part of the fancy effect also goes towards being able to use a single spell to trap as well as damage enemies).

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I can speak to TCD very specifically, and it didn’t just change with DE. Yes, you see why there is a problem with it and thus why there is an erratum for it:

The Crystal Dart (p. 154): Change the second sentence to begin: "It does +5 damage (because of the sharp edges of the crystal as much as its speed)".

Why is this? Don’t just compare it to Wielding the Invisible Sling, but also to Dagger of Ice. Wielding the Invisible Sling gives you the baseline for flinging a rock very quickly under continuous magic. Dagger of Ice gives some clarity that the game accepts sharpness and the like giving another +5 beyond wha the size of the flung object can manage. So why not +10? Look at the base for Wielding the Invisible Sling: 4. Look at the secondary base for TCD: ≤3. How do we know ≤3? Because if you do the calculation with base 4 you get Re(Me)Te 15, as you noted. So there are two ways to correct this spell, which shows up across many books. Option 1: change its Arts and level, which must be done across a multitude of books and may well include needing to change other spells magi have or change their Arts. For example, the core book’s ex Miscellanea and Verditius examples would not have 120 levels of spells. Option 2: correct the damage in this description. Clearly option 2 is far, far simpler.

Now, that does make it somewhat useless right now. But not entirely. TCD can use a bit of dirt. WTIS needs a decent-sized rock. So you might be able to manage TCD at times when you can’t mange WTIS.

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