I've got a problem designing a new spell that i've named Eyebite.
The basic idea is magus A points at his target, bellows out his spell and the targets eyes explode, blinding them and creating a nasty wound.
Now, perdo corpus is obviously my go to art here and the blind someone we only have to look at the core book "Incantation of the Milky Eyes", P133 to see that this is a level 30 spell. But although IotME heals as a heavy wound, it doesn't actually do any damage. If I wanted my spell to remove the targets sight by actually exploding his eyes (or crushing them, pulping them, etc), how would I do this.
At the same base effect for IotME there is destroy or sever a limb so that it cannot heal naturally, which sounds similar to what I intend (exploded eyes being unlikely to ever heal naturally) but again, it doesn't say how you might do this while making it an injury.
It seems to me that the effect you want should be Base Level 25.
Base level 15 can temporarily cripple a limb. It takes level 20 to destroy the a limb to the point it will not heal naturally.
Base Level 20 can can temporarily destroy a person's sight. Alternatively, it can inflict an Incapacitating Wound.
Base level 30 kills a person.
I'd say that permanently destroying sight and causing an arbitrary wound less than death should be harder than level 20, but easier than level 30...
That said, I would point out it hardly seems the most efficient solution possible. If I wanted to wound and disable a person, I'd just inflict an incapacitating wound for Base level 20.
Would this spell need part target? I'm thinking it would.
So, base 25 - blind target in a way that won't heal naturally + medium wound
Range +1 for eye
Target +1 for Part
Total level 35
Or in more formal form
Eyebite PeCo35 R: Eye, D: Inst, T: Part
The magus causes the eyes of his foe to explode messily, spraying jelly and blood around while permanently blinding the target and inflicting a medium wound. More difficult and impractical to cast than many Perdo Corpus combat spells, Eyebite excels as a gory punishment for particularly hated foes and can be very intimidating to others who witness it. A spell of terror and mutilation, used only by the most dangerous and wicked of magi.
Base 25, +1 eye, +1 part
I would increase the range of the spell unless you want to get all stained by the exploding eyeballs. bad for your wine. It tastes metallic afterwards.
In a similar vein as exploding eyeballs AND inflicting injury. I have a query about hacking off arms.
At PeCo20 base effect you can destroy or sever a limb such that it won't heal naturally. Now I can imagine a spell that does this without wounding, i.e. the arm simply drops of and the wound covers up, blood vessels knit together etc. And I can imagine one where it actually wounds. The arm falls off, blood spurts everywhere, the target goes into shock and probably dies.
Now the second we can treat as an incapacitating wound.
BUT, base level 20 is also inflict an incapacitating wound. It seems too much of a freebie to allow limb severing and wound infliction at the same time to still be at base 20. But it also seems far too finessed and tricky to remove a limb WITHOUT doing the wound. Removing a limb via surgery or combat would automatically inflict an incapacitating wound and so having it not do so seems like it should be more difficult than not doing so.
So what do we think, should the base 20 remove limb effect also inflict a wound as standard or should that require a bump in magnitude to effect?
Option one is how I see the guideline working.
It may appear to cause horrible wounds, but that's cosmetic and largely depend on the caster's sigil.
I think we should be rather weary of making a spell that does more than one thing.
That said, if we want the spell to both cause the arm to all off and cause an incapacitating wound, I'd use the more expensive base guideline (irelevant here) and then bump it up a magnitude for 'combined effect'.