What is a target exactly?

[Furion_Transsanus]

@Furion Transsanus

Did I miss anything - posts or important passages?

I DID! More than once... Slams head into desk (after carefully removing the keyboard in advance)

@Marko Markoko

I disagree. The victim is the target of the PoF. Otherwise the rage would be Touch and you'd literally throw the thing. IoL is direct as well. I think Indirect would be such things as Wards, Edge of the Razor, Blade of Virulent Flame, and the like.

@Cuchulainshound

Let's be clear - the adoption of the word "target" for this purpose is, perhaps (and imo), one of the most unfortunate choices in RPG history - but it's what we've got, and what the current authors were stuck with, handed down from generations of editions ago.

By the rules, if you cast a PoF, the "target" of the casting is "a 2' thick, spear-shaped jet of fire" that reaches out to Voice Range. And then that hits anything you want it to - but that "anything" is ~not~ the "target" of the spell, not as the term is used in the rules.

If you wanted to create a "Throwing Spear of Fire", then the "target" would be a spear-shaped flame that could then be thrown at anything you want. But again, the "target" is the fire that's created, not the thing that the fire is then hurled at. Ranges determine where the magic (which is the "target" of the spell) shows up, or reaches out to, not where the intended victim of the spell effect is (tho' often/usually those are one and the same.)

That's the terminology of the rules, even if it's not how normal people speak outside of those constraints, (nor how the vast majority of new players hear those rules first time.)

Whatever the mage is aiming at, whatever s/he wishes to hurt with that spell, be it cast or chucked, is not "the target" of the spell as that term is used by the rules. (Unfortunately for any who speak English.) They are what the spell, the created fire, indirectly affects.

Now, sitting around a table, it's easy (easier?) to make a distinction between the Form target of the spell and the mage's target in the combat. But to use the term casually in posting can lead to massive confusion - and here we are.

@Erik Dahl

I can't tell what you're arguing here. Are you saying that according to the rules as written, the Target: Individual of Pilum of Fire refers to the pilum of flame, rather than the person it strikes? I'm sorry, but I'm certain that isn't the case. While Pilum doesn't say target, it does refer to the individual that it hits, and the other similar spells Flash of the Scarlet Flames, Coat of Flame and Ball of Abysmal Flame all explictly refer to the target as seperate from the fire.

@The Fixer

In fact, you create a fire (creo ignem ) at voice range.
The fact that it appears as a pilum of flame flying from your hand is just a special effect: You could just as easily have a spell that engulf the victim in a column of fire. Both would be the exact same level.

Anything else missing?