Hey, i wanted to know how exactly some of the things in the spells you guys create are designed, i've seen things like "complexity +3" describing the level of the spell, or things like "for this spell you have to roll finesse against an Ease Factor of +9". Are these things on the Core Rulebook and i just glossed over it, is it something you learn to distinguish over years of play, are there rules for these things? Thanks in advance.
Complexity is mostly experience. And sometimes people actually post their designs here in hopes of getting some level of input/help as to how much complexity you'd need.
I know I have.
Finesse, in some cases you have guidelines for it (e.g. Rego Craft magic).,
Look at adding levels of Complexity the same as you would look at adding levels of Size. Rather than making the target of the effect larger, it allows you to perform more actions with the spell.
So a default spell performs one "Action". Maybe two or even three very simple actions. Like Size, each added point of Complexity increases that by an order of magnitude (x10).
Let us look at two enchanted items in Covenants, page 121, Bookstand of Hespera and Tireless Servant. While one is ReHe and the other is ReCo, the Base 10 effect of both is identical. BoH has no Complexity and it has the simple action of following the Magus around. It also does not need additional uses per day since this is the only action it performs. TS has +2 Complexity and can perform a range of simple actions as commanded by the Magus, including independently. It also needs Unlimited usage since different commands could be considered different uses.
Another way of assessing complexity is by asking yourself how many additional effects or parameters are you adding onto a spell just by describing it? In the base book, there is the requisites section at page 114-115 which I find really useful piece of guideline for assessing this. Because sometimes, the intellego vim effect you really want happens to be three different intellego vim effects wrapped into one, with a cosmetic effect added on top, because why settle for Pierce the Magic Veil when you could have Pierce the Magic Veil that tells you the aura strength on both sides of the regio border and whether the regio is regularly accessed (e.g. traces of magic). In this case, even though you're not adding requisites, the same rule applies. You wouldn't add complexity for the cosmetic effect, but you would add a +1 complexity per added effect for a total of +2, possibly +2 for one of those if after defining the exact parameters you realise building a stone-alone spell instead of the effect would result in a level 30 spell on its own. This is complexity, which some spells call another name - for example, Conjuring the Mystic Tower, you're not just conjuring a large carved bloc of stone, you're conjuring a tower that has a basement, that has floors instead of being an empty shell, and whose layout you can personalize during the ritual. +3.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense, thank you