Delayed Explosion
Creo Ignem 15
R: Touch, D: Concentration, T: Ind.
You touch an object, igniting an unnatural fire within it. The strength of the conflamation is initially weak, a mere tinge of heat, but it is maintained by your concetration. On the following rounds, you may focus to increase its power, up to +10 fire damage. If the damage destroys the object, it causes it to explode violently [causing no futher damage to anything else, generally - this is a cosmetic effect].
(Base 5, +1 touch, +1 concentration)
Is this reasonable? Or is a Rego requirement appropriate? The PC wants to touch an object, move away, and then have it explode - is there a simpler or better way to achieve this?
I Probably wouldn't go for a requisite but simply increase the final magnitude by one - my standard procedure for any Range/Duration/Target slightly differing from the standard.
Mine too - whenever something is outside the standard vanilla guidelines, one level for "complexity" can cover it.
But one must not rely on that as a response to everything - the spell effect should still be scrutinized.
The time delay is almost more appropriate to Waiting Ward - but not quite, since Concentration is maintained.
Creo creates something - here, the final effect is variable, which is a perfectly acceptable end result - many spell effects are nearly useless without conscious variability. To some this might mean "Control", but perhaps not the Rego sort of "Control" - Nothing is being moved, nor forced about, nor a natural state changed - merely the intensity of what was created.
(And I don't see Perdo being necessary - altho' it can be decreased, there is no mundane "starting amount" of fire to be decreased - the effect simple "creates" more or less from a starting point of zero.)
Since this represents (imo) a significant improvement over a standard "Base 5, +1 touch, +1 concentration" effect, I would say "yes", add +1 magnitude for gettin' fancy, and call it good.
What you have here is basically a spell with "Held" duration (Merinita Illusion Mysteries, Spell Timing, HoH:MC page 100), which is equivalent to Concentration. Building on that, an extra magnitude for a "Special" duration in vanilla Hermetic magic is acceptable.
Edit - actually, it's a bit better, since you could always opt not to go for the full +10 damage, but just let it die out. I'd say go for the Rego with its +1M.
I don't want to burden the PC with a Rego requisite, so I think I'll lower the degree of control to just 0/+10, which your advice indicates would be more reasonable as just a +1 magnitude.
Um... no, respectfully, I think you're confused as to what the "Control" in Rego does, and here you're applying the wrong sense of the word to that Technique.
You cannot use "Rego Ignem" to make a fire hotter, nor cooler. None of the ReIg guidelines even come close to suggesting such - but the CrIg do.
Rego is not ~any~ control, in ~any~ sense of the word - it is controlling a state or a location that the Form could naturally have. Controlling the changing color of a dog is specifically excluded by example - even tho' it is certainly "control", it's not a changing state in that sense, and it's not something the dog could "naturally" have.
Here, we have a fire - it is a fire of X intensity. To change the size/intensity of that fire, one either needs Creo or Perdo, (or both.) To be able to change that intensity may be "control", but that is not Rego, any more than the "change" is Muto. A fire of X intensity cannot naturally have X+10 intensity, unless it is boosted somehow - that's not Rego. The state of the fire is not changing, not the location or age or what-have-you, merely the intensity, from a Base 5 CrIg to something smaller and back.
That is more complex than a basic CrIg spell, but there is no aspect of Rego as described or defined that is relevant to this effect.
There are Rego Vim spells that could possibly achieve this effect (Watching Ward, Suppressing the Wizard's Handiwork), but that's affecting the state of the form of the magic within the spell (Vim), not the Form of the final effect (Ignem).
I believe not. The Rego is there to keep the object from actually burning until the mage decides it is time for it to explode. If he doesn't want it do, as per the original description of Yair's spell, then he just has to let his concentration lapse and the spell end. This is different from having it be equivalent to the "Held" duration: with a Held spell, once the spell is cast, you are committed to it exploding as soon as you stop concentrating.
The Rego is there to provide control over how the fire burns, and not to increase or decrease its intensity.
Yair's newer version does obviate the need for Rego, but change the way the spell works. The object will explode. It only becomes a question of when, not if.
I would agree with you, ~if~ that was how the spell was described. But it's not.
There is no fire which burns or does not burn, there is "nothing", which then increases from that "nothing" to "+10 damage" - that is an increase in intensity. (which is all Creo, baby!)
If the spell created a fire which could then be made hotter or cooler, then Rego could work - but this is not that, as I read it. The difference is the absence of any fire until the "explosion" - without a flame, there is no flame to control.
A very similar effect could be achieved, and perhaps the same end result, but that's not what was spelled out.
Ya, I did - "a mere tinge of heat" is not anything that needs to be controlled. It's something that needs to be increased.
Feel free to take your own advice.
Look, there are two almost identical effects, and the end result is almost indistinguishable - a sudden burst of heat raging out, "an explosion" for lack of a better word. But that end result is only coming from one of the two very similar effects:1) There is a roaring fire, and that fire has been "Controlled", so it only does damage when the "controller" wants it to. Think of a fire with a sliding plate of metal in front of it - drop the barrier, and the heat rages out! Put the barrier back, and you feel nothing.
There is a fire that can be varied, from "a mere tinge of heat" to a roaring fire. Think of a gas fireplace - increase the gas, and the heat rages out! Decrease the intensity, and you feel nothing.
Both end up with "control" (small "c") and both are adjustable, and both end up with that roar of flames - but one has a pre-existing raging fire that the caster limits via Rego, and the other starts with (almost) nothing and creates as much (or as little) fire as the caster wants at that moment via Creo.
The end result is the same, but the process - and the Technique - is distinctly different.
When Yair (above, the part that ~I~ read) used these words: "...a mere tinge of heat... On the following rounds, you may focus to increase its power, up to +10 fire damage", that, to me, clearly spoke of the second effect.
I'll say this one last time, and then just give up, because I don't know how to say it any more clearly, and if you don't get it it's beyond me to understand why - Rego does not "increase the power" of the flame. And that's exactly how Yair described the desired effect, and in as many words.
I wouldn't require Rego. The increase in heat can be achieved with creo alone, I would say. You are basically maintaining a creo spell, so getting "a little bit more crreo into the mix" should be possible
It is like the obliteration of the metallic barrier but from a Creo perspective. I like it. However, in a lot of cases the increase in heat will not shatter the item, but burn it in a flaming combustion. Quite spectacular as well, but not explosive.
The non-explosion thing was my thought too Xavi. If you wanted to make sure that an explosion was designed into the effect, what do you think you'd need - +1 mag?
If the fire actually expanded and burnt everything in a volume around it? Absolutely! And possibly more than one, depending on the size of that volume.
If the player wants to define the object as exploding, that can be purely cosmetic - burnt up, exploded, "gone" is gone no matter how you spell it. (This would assume that the item can be destroyed by +10 fire, natch. A steel sword or block of granite would not be phased.)
Otoh, if the player wants their mage to have a spell that creates a "blast" of fragments that fan out, that would be at least a magnitude. Me, I don't ~think~ I'd go more than one, because the effect is unpredictable and, ultimately, entirely under the control of the SG. If you blow up a wooden chest, there is no way to predict ~exactly~ what those flying bits would do. And there's no reason to expect the next chest to be of identical strength, construction, design and materials - it can be a "what's good for the story" sort of thing.
If you wanted to "make sure" that an explosion occurred and was dangerous, then it's Rego time, to throw stuff out forcefully, and that's at least +1 mag, probably +1 for the Requisite and another for the effect of breaking it up and affecting an area.
