I'm sorry you are going "gaaah" but that's how the rules are written. Only the closest past of your target must be within range.
Direwolf isnt the only one who disagrees with you.
I dont think you understand the Aristotelian Physics either.
But , unless a line author proves either or both of us wrong ,
i wont keep arguing it.
Even if you created Size +10 coal dust at +01 Touch Range , it will not naturally spread in the manner you describe.
The cone shape might be cosmetic , but could also call for a Finesse Roll , at least , to spread it.
I think there's a fallacy here - the "spreading" is cosmetic only. The perfectly RAW way of describing the spell would be: a flat triangular "blanket" of dust springs into existence, with the apex at your fingertip. I really do not think creating Terram in a flat, roughly triangular shape has enough complexity to require a Finesse roll.
Now, if you invoked the "if the effects of a spell look just too powerful, feel free to disallow it / make it a ritual" clause, then I may agree - it's a highly subjective issue and I could see it not working well in some sagas. But without invoking that clause, I fail to see substance to the objections.
Vrylakos point about high finesse being required to create "weaponized" ultra fine dust is also good (I wonder - what finesse we are talking about here? I do not have Tales of Mythic Europe).
That's a pity, because really, according to RAW, only the closest part of your target must be within range. I could see how you'd want to house rule against it though.
Let me assure you , i never House Rule anything , if i can help it. 
It's perfectly possible to cover Mythic Europe in sand , if you want , i even designed a tower of sand that reached the Lunar Sphere.
I agree that you can create dust in any standard geometric shape you want.
To create perfect geometric shapes , you do need a minor mystery virtue , as an aside.
(page 93 , TMRE)
You still did not respond to the level of the spell being higher though , 20 rather than 05.
Or see that my substituting Diamond Dust (Base 25: Create Gemstone) is also wrong.
Read the description of Boundary on page 113.
So your CrTe Touch Range spell can extend no further than a Hermetic Boundary Target.
I thought I did. Your level 20 is the combination of two aspects.
First, you add two magnitudes suggesting that range should be Sight rather than Touch. This differs from the RAW because only the closest part of the target should be within range, as I repeatedly pointed out.
Next, you add a magnitude for the fineness of the dust. As I said responding to Vrylakos, I am starting to be convinced that getting the fine-ness right may not be so easy, though it's not clear just how hard it should be and whether it's an issue of Finesse or magnitude.
Actually, I just thought it was irrelevant to the discussion at hand 
, though now I notice my mistake.
It's not just the base that's wrong. The name ("abrasive") seems to suggest that you do damage by the relative motion of the dust to the victims. In that case, you would need a Rego requisite, because you are imparting movement to your Creation that is not purely cosmetic (similar to, say, "the crystal dart").
This is a complete non-sequitur
The corebook is just saying that the Boundary target needs to have a fairly clear ... boundary. How you can conclude from this that at Touch Range you cannot affect targets that extend further than a Hermetic Boundary really escapes me.
Honestly, I no longer view this discussion as productive. Hoping not to offend anyone, I'm just bailing out of it.
That wasnt me im afraid.
Base should be 3 , because coal is Stone , creating coal dust is not base 01 because it is dust.
You need an extra magnitude on Size , because Stone base individual is one cubic pace , not 10.
If you cant just make a Boundary target anything you want , Range should be the same.
It needs to be defined.
Why have Voice and Sight Ranges , if Touch for any Creo spell can reach any target you define ,
if you create enough of anything.
Dust is group. see CrTe15 Seal the Earth, ArM5 p 152
A pace is 30 inches. see PeTe15 Pit of the Gaping Earth, ArM5 p 155
The basic group is 1562 cu ft, at 1 inch tick that's 18750 sq ft, or triangle sides of 200 feet. You need 2 extra magnitude to get your 2000 feet.
While the "natural placement" of a group of animals or plant is spread over a patch of ground, the "natural placement" of dust is in a pile. Unless there is a canon spell that behaves as yours, you need a hard Rego requisite.
As mentioned by Vrylakos, you need Finesse to get a fine, explosive powder.
(Base: 1, +1 Touch, +1 Diam, +2 Group, +2 size, +1 Rego effect)
As written, your spell is CrTe 20 and requires a Finesse roll.
I did a few hours of research, and based myself on the comparison between the least powerful, permanent artifical magnets strength and magnetite, and then used that modifier against the expressed numbers for magnetic strength measured in kJ of energy per cubic meter of magnetic material.
If you want to compare the numbers you´re looking for is the BH and the Tesla values.
You dont like that your spell and idea as written wont work, fine, dont blame me.
That i dont like using it myself doesnt mean im not making allowances for it. 
Thats because i usually try to do "my homework" quite seriously. As i said above, i spent a few hours looking up how magnetic strength and energy is measured and expressed and did the math as best i could despite a few directly comparable numbers not being findable during that time. Its certainly possible that i messed something up.
But if a manufactured magnet, which is at its worst 5 times stronger than magnetite has an energy value per cubic meter of material that is less than what a regular car engine will produce, while a cubic meter of sand will weigh 2-3.5 tons(yes i looked up specific weight for different sorts of sand(from just under 2 up to almost 4) as well as magnetite(5.5), this means i would have had to mess up in the extreme to even make the idea remotely workable.
I already suggested a simple way to make something almost the same workable...
As an absolute minimum, you need to include in the spell that the magnetic energy is raised by magnitudes, otherwise the lift generated wont come near the weight.
So the spell ends up a bit higher in level, is that so extremely horrible? "-oh how dreadful, i cant spont the spell to make a ship fly!"?
And the target in this case is what? Oh yeah, you´re creating a material at your fingertips... Which then amazingly leaps out and neatly covers the ground exactly where you want it.
Rego requisite to spread it and Range Sight to reach as far as you want to. And as Ravenscroft says, probably Base 3 not 1.
And now that Tugdual mentions it, i realise that Target Group may be needed as well, although im not sure i would demand it.
You go severely munchkin and expect NO disagreement?
To be fair, Direwolf, this last comment of yours (a) seems to indicate a complete warping of ezzelino's quoted statement and (b) justifies his view of the discussion as unproductive. Maybe you're too invested in "winning" the conversation at this point?
Their saga, their rules. If he wants to have a flying ship with a level 1 spontaneous spell, I would be extremely wary of ruling him out of his idea for his saga. We would do it differently, but that is a different matter. 
I would not post such a spell in the grimore, though. It has caused too much heat to be considered a widely agreed on spell.
Cheers,
Xavi
There was no Ignem Requisite in the spell though. 
Sure, Hermetic magic has limits and rules, but it is not limited by what is possible under Aristotelian physics. Aristotelean physics is how the natural world in Mythic Europe apparently works. Hermetic magic is supernatural.
And just by saying "its supernatural" i can simply use Muto Base 10 to make whatever unnatural changes i want ,
without at least reference to what is normal and how far the violation of essential nature goes ,
is still handwaving.
I also said that there should be some reference to an in-game mechanic
to determine what can be done with a changed substance and its effects.
At no stage did i say it was limited , except by the limits of Hermetic magic.
The argument was that the lodestone sand spell , was too low a level
and the property of earth as being unable to initiate precipitate motion was not changed.
If i am running a game , i want some method of reining in excess.
Just saying , as the SG , "i dont like it" , is hardly fair to a creative player.
Not really, he can do whatever he wants in his game. But its a spell that totally do NOT belong in the grimoire.
Its level has been trimmed down extremely and in highly questionable ways.
Base level 2 too low, +1 and Rego requisite, +2 from Sight range, Pace definition used is way beyond the normal one(for most at least, IIRC some others use the roman doublepace as well?) and +1 from changing to Group...
So worst(?) case, its 6 magnitudes to low and fails to include highend requirement for a Finesse roll that might be needed(as it seems that is actually RAW(i wouldnt know i dont have that book)).
That sort of breaks the system completely. Unacceptable really. The attempt to justify the use of Touch range ticked me off quite good. I could totally be persuaded to let the base level thing and the Individual instead of Group slide but adding controlled mobility without Rego and having infinite conditional range, those two were just so extreme...
And the other spell was not quite as bad on the technical level, it just wouldnt work at all as described.
And if you dont believe me there, please do take the time to check up on the simplified maths i did on the strength of magnets, i certainly COULD have messed it up. I highly doubt i messed it up by a >1000 times wrong though.
AND i already posted an alternative for it that WOULD work. It would only take slightly more effort and a Formulaic spell below level 30. But absolutely wanting it to work fine with an easy Spontaneous spell?
No, that's the point. If you are using a guideline that lets you do something unnatural,then there is no need to reference what is "normal".
The only issue is whether or not the effect violates the limits of Hermetic magic. Which is the Limit of the Divine, and the Limit of Essential Nature, and so forth. What is possible or not under Aristotelian physics is irrelevant. Aristotelian physics is not a Limit of Magic.
I think that the issue is that ezzelino is not trying to create an effect that produces something that modern physics would recongise as either magnetism or a "part of magnetism". He is creating an effect that has "the properties he describes it as having". The only way that magnets are relevant is that the concept is partly similar --- magnets are just being used as a metaphor for us to understand the type of effect, he is not literally trying to create a form of magnetism. So an argument based on "magnets don't work like that" isn't partically relevant.
It's a bit like when I say "I am attracted to Heidi Klum" --- I don't Iiterally mean she exudes a magnetic field and the force I feel is related to my velocity through it.
Are you sure you dont frequent RPG.net?
I still did not say that it was a limit.
There is a baseline within the game of how things work normally.
Muto makes unnatural changes.
Without reference to the baseline , how do we judge the extent to which things can be changed.
Objects move at a certain speed through water , they move faster through air and faster still through fire.
If i change the air to give it the quality of fire , such that objects move more quickly , how fast do they move.
No worries , its supernatural , without need to refer to natural limits in any regard whatsover , natural limits are irrelevant.
Feel free to handwave any such movement value that suits you.
It isnt Rego , so no need to check for comparisons , that might be useful in extrapolation.
The game designers at least might prefer some internal consistency , other than YSMV.
No, he specified that the effect would be that of naturally occuring permanent magnetism(even if he accidentally used the wrong mineral name).
Gives all sand in the target area one property of haematite (lodestone): it tends to move towards iron (and steel etc.) with a strength growing with the amount of sand (and iron) and decreasing with the distance. Importantly, the sand remains sand, so iron does not tend to move towards it (as it would if it were real haematite).
And if it WAS "the properties he describes it as having" rather than part of the natural property of a real stone, that would make the used base level even more cutdown to the extreme.
To make it work, the spell needs to selectively produce a limited part of a natural property, not a natural effect, and it needs to raise the strength of that property at least thousands of times, preferably >10 times that again.
There are the other questions about it already mentioned in the thread as well.
Which is why i suggested the "make sand have lots and lots of negative weight"-spell, it can be used almost the same way as the original one, but should work just fine. But its also considerably higher level.
Which i think is perfectly fine, as i said, if you want players to have flying ships shouldnt they have to work at least a minimum amount for it?