I have a magus with Mercurian Magic who will probably want to invent some small and easy spells to make his life easier, without having to take 15 minutes per magnitude to cast one. This is a sample of these spells.
Kindle the Lamps (CrIg 10)
R: Touch, D: Mom, T:Room
Lights up any number of fire-based sources of illumination in a room, such as lamps, torches and candles. The closest sources are lit first and the effect propagates through the room until all sources are lit. If the caster is familiar with the room and its content, he can be selective of which sources to light up and leave others unlit. The spell can only kindle flame from wicks and other extremely flammable objects.
(Base 2, +1 Touch, +2 Room, +1 selective choice)
Snuff Out the Lamps (PeIg 5)
R: Touch, D: Mom, T:Room
Snuffs out small flames within a room, such as lamps and candles. The farthest flames are snuffed out first and the effect propagates through the room until all sources are out. Only very small flames are affected, so that even a torch stays alight.
(Base 2, +1 Touch, +2 Room)
Note: The lowest Base for extinguishing a fire is 4, but since I'm limiting the effect to very small flames, I felt that reducing this to Base 2 was reasonable.
The subject line sounds lifted from a Flambeau version of Karate Kid
"Kindle the lamps, right hand. Snuff out the lamps, left hand. Kindle the lamps, snuff out the lamps. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth. Kindle the lamps, snuff out the lamps. Don't forget to breathe, very important."
I'd say that to create a group of flames you'd have to use T:Group, not T:Room (see "Targets and Creo" on p.113 of the core book -- only Individual and Group when creating stuff). You could argue that you are heating everything in the Room, to the point where flammable materials catch fire, but I'd probably not allow it.
Incidentally, I'm also not sure whether "selective choice" is ok. The description of Group seems very clear about the fact that your objects in a Group must be "metaphysically together". With the "selective choice" bit you are evading this restriction. It sounds a little like trying to target a "Part of a Group". If I did allow it, +1 magnitude is actually what I'd add myself, however.
Good question. I didn't even think of that, because I was seeing this more as using the guildeline "Base 2: Ignite something extremely flamable (like oil or a wick)" instead of actually creating a flame.
Thinking of it now, I would submit that the restriction reads "The target of a Creo spell that actually creates something is the thing created" and the the spell doesn't create a fire, it rather ignites all the wicks within the room. This may be a matter a semantics, but isn't magic semantics?
I accept that this might be considered saga-dependent.
Note that I limit this by saying that the magus has to be familiar with the room. You have to know what you want to exclude. But this also hinges in the use of the T:Room as opposed to T:Group.
The objective is to be able to light the lamps, without lighting every possible light sources (such as burners, scented candles, etc.) within the room.
A different way to do this might have been the use of D:Conc, to allow him to light each source in succession withhout having to recast the spell, but lighting one lamp per round seems too slow.
Another reason to use T:Room is that otherwise the magus needs to be able to sense each lamp -- this may be difficult for the first one if the room is in the dark and/or unfamiliar. Picture this as a very typical scene: the magus comes into his lab and, with a simple gesture, lights all of the oil lamps therein.
Yes, that's what I was saying. You could argue that "ignition", like "heating" or "illumination", of an object is not the creation of a flame, so it can work. I'd probably not allow it, but I could see other troupes doing so. And... hmm, the more I think about it, the less sure I am.
Yes, I could see what you were trying to accomplish.
But! If the magus does not know where the wicks are, I would not allow him to blindly "turn the lights on" -- unless he had an Arcane connection to the wicks etc. etc. On the other hand, if the magus does know the position of the wicks, he can set them on fire by creating a Group of flames at their "guessed" positions even if he can't perceive the wicks. No need for a dubious "selective choice". And since one only needs a tiny spark to light a wick, and there are a lot of sparks in 10 bonfires' worth of Ignem (one base Group), the magus can even do it for one less magnitude than you had envisioned!
On the other hand, then the spell would need to be R:Voice instead of R:Touch, which brings it right back to the same level.
In this instance, I see the T:Room having both advantages and disadvantages. It allows the magus to light all the lamps in the room, even if it is really large. But it will not work outdoors because there is no room to target.
I'm not a native speaker of english, so I figured there might be some quirk of language here that might have eluded me.
Having looked up Ignite in a handful of online dictionaries though, I have to ask:
How is Igniting something not creating a flame? And if you want to argue that it's a process (verb), shouldn't you be using Rego instead?
Could someone please enlighten me on this? (yes, pun intended, sorry)
Remember that the candles need to be forming a group (one near each other) in order to be able to apply the Group Target. If they are distributed all around a room I would say that they are not a group. And if there are more than 10 candles you would need size increments as well.
Using Room ignites all extremely flammable material around. make sure you are not wearing flammable clothes or that yo did not spill oil on them. I can easily envision a cave full of floating candles (random Rego direction for all of them) in several colors. The apprentice flambeau having to ignite groups of them by size or by color (great to improve finesse) while soaked himself in oil (so he has to dodge the flying candles or fast cast perdo ignem spells) sounds like FUN.
Creating a flame is exactly that -- out of nothing, there is a flame, sustained by magic. That flame is an Individual. Multiple flames are a Group.
Igniting is applying heat to an object so that it begins to burn -- there is an existing medium to support that fire. Heat can be applied in different ways, such as a flame (heated gas), concentrated light, friction, etc. The object is an Individual. Multiple objects are a Group. You can target all such objects that are in a Room.
That's my reasoning.
(Disclaimer: I am not a native speaker of English either, although I am very good with it. My native language is French, though, which shares many roots with English.)
