Wizard's Boost and Wizard's Reach

Wizard's Boost states that it adds a magnitude to a spell of the appropriate Form. This can be range, duration, or target. Wizard's Reach simply increases the range of a spell.

So, I'm not seeing any different between Wizard's Boost (Range) and Wizard's Reach in effect. Am I missing something?

However, there's a key difference, in that Wizard's Boost has touch range, and I'm contemplating a magus with the Hermetic Flaw Short-Ranged Magic. Could I bypass my flaw by modifying touch spells with Wizard's Boost (Range), making them Voice range?

You need at least R: Touch to affect your own spells. You need at least R: Voice to affect someone else's spells. Wizard's Boost (Range) is a magnitude lower than the equivalent Wizard's Reach, but it can only work on your own spells.

Yes, that does work. There are other options, too:

Here is an option, slower but with fewer spells:

  1. Opening the Intangible Tunnel version at R: Touch.
  2. Wizard's Boost (Range) for Vim to get that to R: Voice.

Here is an option that is tougher (if you're willing to suck it up for one spell, probably mastering it a bit, and assuming your ReVi is good) than the prior one but similar:

  1. Opening the Intangible Tunnel version at R: Voice/Sight.
  2. Wizard's Boost (Range) for Vim to bump that further.

It should be noted that these last two options also allow you to effectively do spontaneous magic at longer ranges, which you cannot do with Wizard's Boost (Range).

Wizard's Boost says that the effects of the boost "are for the storyguide to determine", rather than being reliably an increase in the range when you want it to be.

As a storyguide, I'd generally be inclined to have Wizard's Boost affect the base effect of the spell, where that makes sense - for example, rather than creating fire doing +15 damage, you're now creating fire doing +20 damage rather than affecting the parameters. My reasoning for this is that that's the sort of effect where it makes sense to just say "and the storyguide determines what happens on a case-by-case basis". It's vague enough that you're probably going to have lots of different approaches, though.

I was going to respond about the same thing, but the OP specifically was looking at the variants of Wizard's Boost (specifically to raise R/T/D), not Wizard's Boost itself. Those variants are more particular, whereas Wizard's Boost itself might not increase any of them, perhaps increasing potency or something else.

And indeed i would argue that there is no "Wizard's Boost (Reach)", there is instead Wizard's Reach of [Form], if we follow the MuVi guidelines.

Please go back an read Wizard's Boost to understand what the OP is talking about. Here is the relevant part (emphasis mine):

The OP says "Wizard's Boost (Range)" (pretty clearly meaning the Range version) and compares it to Wizard's Reach, both of which are specific to Form. This is all about R: Touch v. R: Voice.

Exactly. I wanted to make sure I understood this, because it looked like a way to cast a Voice range spell without a tremendous penalty - the character has Short-Ranged Magic, which halves lab and casting totals for any spell beyond Touch range.

Yup. It works. I gave some other tricks above. A fun one if you're good at Creo and Rego: create a small animal, open an intangible tunnel to it, send it where you want it to be, and then blow it up through the tunnel with a blast large enough to get those nearby. All R: Touch! Of course, you can do less violent things, too.

There was added an erratum a few years ago:

Cheers

Thank you One Shot.

I thought that I understood these spells but this has made me wonder if I've been mistaken. What follows is how I've interpreted the rules - perhaps someone could correct me if I've misunderstood.

With the errata, the text of Wizard's Boost says:


Wizard's Boost (Form)
R: Touch, D: Mom, T: Ind

You cast this spell as another spell of a level less than this one is cast. The effect of the other spell increases 5 levels in power, but not past the level of the Wizard's Boost. The effects of the extra 5 levels of power are for the storyguide to determine. A Wizard's Boost may never affect a single spell more than once. There are ten versions of this spell, one for each Hermetic Form. This does not allow spontaneous or formulaic spells to reach Year duration or Boundary target, unless the Wizard's Boost is a ritual.
(Base effect, +1 Touch)

{First side issue: shouldn't that first sentence read "... less than or equal to this one ..."?}
{Second side issue: isn't the comment about spontaneous spells in that last sentence irrelevant, as Muto Vim cannot affect any spontaneous spells?}


My underlying belief was that a MuVi spell which "significantly changes" a spell can change one of the following: range, duration, target or power. The published version of Wizard's Boost modifies the power (and only the power) of a spell being cast by yourself only. The published version of Wizard's Reach modifies the range (and only the range) of a spell being cast by either yourself or another mage. There would also be other MuVi spells which modify the duration and the target, those MuVi spells themselves having either Touch or Voice range.

Consequently, if you've learned Wizard's Boost (Corpus) at Touch range and are casting it as a formulaic spell, it will modify the power of one of your own Corpus spells; it won't sometimes increase the range, sometimes the power, sometimes the duration. eg, the effect of Chirurgeon's Healing Touch is to heal a Light wound so application of Wizard's Boost (Corpus) would likely modify it to heal a Medium wound; Wizard's Boost (Ignem) would likely modify Pilum of Fire from +15 damage to +20 damage, etc.

I think the main issue with that sentence was the lack of clarity in "for any Form." Would that mean the one spell would work for any Form, or would it mean there variants for any Form you want? Ultimately, that sentence existing or not just doesn't matter at all outside of that possible confusion. Beyond that, it''s all just semantics.

Let's work from Wizard's Reach (Form). They work at R: Voice and affect spells of up to 5 levels lower. We'll invent our own and call it Wizard's Own Reach (Form), using exactly the same guideline in the same way but at R: Touch. Now it only works on your own spells of up to it own level. So it's not called Wizard's Boost (Range) (Form), but it's exactly the same thing.

So the answer to the OP remains the same. The difference is that by using R: Touch it only works on your spells, saving you a magnitude when trying to affect the same level of spell. And, yes, you could still cast everything at R: Touch and pull off R: Voice using this method.