Spell Design: The Thread Before the Grimoire

[ezzelino]

@The Fixer

@SJE

And how unnatural would it be for a lightning bolt to strike from a dark cloud, or even a cloudless sky?

I'd say:

• A storm going on: base guideline, as this is perfectly natural to have lighting then.
• Grey to dark clouds without a storm: +1 magnitude (this is "slightly unnatural")
• Little to no clouds: + 2 magnitudes ("very unnatural")
• From your hands, in a cave or building: +4 magnitudes ("wholly divorced from its natural context")

There's something to be said about range, but as I'm working from serf's parma, I'm not sure at all. I'd say maybe you'd need to create these in the sky (sight) and redirect them to the earth through Rego, so I'm not sure that'd be more efficient.
Of course, you could probably, with rego and range sight, try to "seize" existing lightning and make it fall on someone, but good luck with the finesse on that.

I'd say:

• With a storm cloud above, whether it's already raining or not, +0 magnitudes (it's perfectly normal)

• From clear blue skies, either +0 or +1 magnitudes. Bolts "out of the blue" or "out of clear sky" are sufficiently "normal" that they have become an idiomatic expression in many languages (modern science knows that they are not really out of the blue, and instead arch down from a storm cloud that can be miles away - but this is a different story)

• in a cave or building, +1 magnitudes (the guidelines specifically give "indoors" as an example for this magnitude modifier).

• from your fingertips, +4 magnitudes (again, that's what the guidelines say).