Ice mage

[LastCourier]

So i have a mage npc, ,with strong ice theme, but what spheres he need in order to froze object and create ice
While something like lightning or fire is easy and understandable, for cold force, correspondence and matter and even spirit, all seems viable.

[Imthestein]

I think you've covered it though I'm not certain why you would need Spirit unless you're explicitly entreating the spirits to do your magic. Forces covers the removal of heat making something cold, Correspondence makes it so you can do your magic at long distances, and Matter to make something solid or help with the cold effects. If I were to add anything it would be Prime to make it easier to use Quintessence or create more ice than you have water present

[Aleph]

Forces and Matter would be the base for most frost-related shenanigans.

I think creating ice would be Prime 2/Matter 2/Forces 3, unless you're freezing water to create it (Then Forces it's enough. Forces/Matter to magickally shape it)

[LastCourier]

I think you've covered it though I'm not certain why you would need Spirit unless you're explicitly entreating the spirits to do your magic. Forces covers the removal of heat making something cold, Correspondence makes it so you can do your magic at long distances, and Matter to make something solid or help with the cold effects. If I were to add anything it would be Prime to make it easier to use Quintessence or create more ice than you have water present

I wonder what type of damage cold does, by 20 book cold does bashing, but i imagine extremely low temperature dealing lethal or even aggravated

And also if character wants open a portal in order to summon spaces absolute zero cold, do he need spirit, or just Force/Correspondence? Because space in MtaS is Umbra, and to work with Umbra you need Spirit

[Bluecho]

Forces covers the removal of heat making something cold...

It's worth remembering that while this is a totally viable way of looking at it, the classification of Cold as the absence of Heat is a modern, scientific notion. The Spheres are explicitly designed to work based on whatever theoretical framework the mage character subscribes to.

Meaning while a Mage could use Forces to manipulate Heat in order to create its absence (Cold), they could just as easily say Cold itself is a force, equal and opposite to Heat, and can be manipulated directly.

[Heavy Arms]

I think creating ice would be Prime 2/Matter 2/Forces 3, unless you're freezing water to create it (Then Forces it's enough. Forces/Matter to magickally shape it)

Why would you need Forces here? Matter and Prime can create ice as well as they can create any other physical material. You'd only need to add Forces if you want it to stay ice despite local temperature/etc.

Matter can also shift states of matter on its own. By Matter 3, you can do almost any sort of ice-wizard shennanigans with just Matter. Maybe some Prime if you're somewhere really arid.

Forces is, of course, another way you can go, but if you're doing something that revolves around physical stuff, Matter is easier and more comprehensive (if occasionally weird as you can change glass to ice at Matter 2, but need Matter 3 to change water to ice).

[Mister_Dunpeal]

It might be one of those cases of 'potato/potatoh' where it could be done with EITHER Forces or Matter.. they're just taking different routes to the same result. Having both would probably give you even more flexibility.

[Aleph]

Why would you need Forces here? Matter and Prime can create ice as well as they can create any other physical material. You'd only need to add Forces if you want it to stay ice despite local temperature/etc.

Well, you likely want your ice to be cold

[Dataweaver]

But ice is cold; that's part of being ice.

[Heavy Arms]

If you use Forces and Prime to summon fire, it's hot. If you use Matter and Prime to summon ice, it's cold.

If you use Matter 2 to turn glass into ice, it will be whatever temperature the glass was and still be ice for the the duration anyway. If you use Matter 3, you can make it as cold as you want. If you use Matter 5 you can make ice that stays cold even if someone is burning through it with thermite.

[Ambrosia]

If you use Matter 2 to turn glass into ice, it will be whatever temperature the glass was and still be ice for the the duration anyway.

I think that's the only one that's controversial. "Room temperature ice" - that is, ice that actually *has* room temperature and stays ice - would fall under Matter 5, IMO.

With Matter 2 you would turn the glass into room-temperature ice and it would immediately do what a molecular ice-crystal-setup would do if it was room-temperature. Which is, probably, immediately turn into water in a rather spectacular and weird fashion. Mind you, that could be useful as it probably would be one of the ways to sneak your way into Matter 3 territory.

[Heavy Arms]

The problem is that Matter 2 doesn't let you change something's state. You can't change a solid into a liquid. So if you change a solid into a solid that's not stable at room temperature and it turns to liquid, you'd be getting around the stated limits of the level.

[Dataweaver]

I think that's the only one that's controversial. "Room temperature ice" - that is, ice that actually *has* room temperature and stays ice - would fall under Matter 5, IMO.

With Matter 2 you would turn the glass into room-temperature ice and it would immediately do what a molecular ice-crystal-setup would do if it was room-temperature. Which is, probably, immediately turn into water in a rather spectacular and weird fashion. Mind you, that could be useful as it probably would be one of the ways to sneak your way into Matter 3 territory.

That's too scientific for Magick, IMHO. Glass to ice should result in ice, with the sorts of properties that the average Sleeper would expect ice to have, including being cold. Spheres operate on the level of patterns in the Tapestry, not scientific principles of concepts; that sort of stuff gets imposed by the caster's Focus. An Etherite who is trying out a transmogrification device might run into the issue of room-temperature ice (or not, depending on the theory he's using to justify the transmogrification); a Hermetic who is casting a glass-to-ice spell probably won't.

Keep it simple.

[Ambrosia]

That's too scientific for Magick, IMHO. Glass to ice should result in ice, with the sorts of properties that the average Sleeper would expect ice to have, including being cold.

Oh, I agree!
But Heavy Arms was specifically referring to the ice being at the same temperature as the glass, and enduring like that until the duration ends. That kind of 'impossible matter' is specifically a Matter 5 thing.
I agree that 'Glass -> Ice' should just *usually* result in literally cold ice.

I'm not a big friend of the M20 "You need to know exactly how something works in order to create it via Magick" rule either - it depends on the paradigm. It's the difference between a Chorister calling out to The One to provide them with a blade to smite their enemies with, and an Etherite trying to craft the Cut-O-Matic 2000.

[Aleph]

If you use Forces and Prime to summon fire, it's hot. If you use Matter and Prime to summon ice, it's cold.

I'm not sure that comparison it's realy good. Forces allows to create fire, but also heat or cold. You can use Forces to summon ligth, and also to make it hot if you want, even when the ligth doesn't need to be hot. Forces can do hot w/o the fire, can Matter do cold w/o the ice?

Does Matter allow you to cool and heat stuff?, or it only allows you to do that when creating stuff that it's supposed to be "cold in it's natural state" or "hot in it's natural state"? (I can summon ice to cool my drink ... can I summon a hot blanket to not have cold in the winter? or would I need to summon something that can't not be hot - like magma?)

I assumed that heat and cold are properties of the Forces Sphere - Matter w/o Forces allows to create stuff that *can* exist at the current temperature, or stuff that it's Vulgar (like: by creating water, and altering the temperature it melts, effectively making room temperature ice)

IDK, I'm not opposed to the idea, I just never thought about it that way. Maybe I missed some wording on the Sphere