Life Sphere grappling

[Wyrdangel]

Greetings

I've been trying to find a mechanic for a mage with Life 3 and Prime 2+ to create a quick grapple/restraint along the lines of strong roots quickly growing up and wrapping around the target. I *think* Life3/Prime 2 would be enough for that since the added Prime allows one to create the plant matter from nothing but curious to see what others think. I assume the target would be able to potentially dodge or strength roll as well. I'd like to use something similar as a non-deadly combat rote but not entirely sure what the mechanics should be.

[Dataweaver]

If you're doing it in an area where there could plausibly be plant seeds, you could probably skip the Prime 2 requirement.

[Heavy Arms]

The biggest problem is probably going to be getting enough successes to do this quickly (assuming quick means functional grappling in combat). You don't even need Prime unless there aren't plants around you. Life 3 alone can already radically alter a plant.

[Wyrdangel]

I was thinking that adding the Prime component would maybe take care of the speed part since that allows the Mage to conjure things out of thin air... So hopefully I'd be less growing something up than creating it and the appearance of it growing would be more of a visual special-effect bit of flavor if you get my drift. 😁

[Heavy Arms]

You can't really just add Spheres to deal with speed in this case. Life 3 can, per the book, instantly cause a tree to morph inside-out.

The control on this is that feats of magic require more successes the bigger they are, and mages don't have big dice-pools to get those successes with in a single roll. Once you rack up the successes, roots from nearby trees burst out on the ground and wrap around the target pretty much instantly. It's all the turns standing there casting the spell to make that happen that you can't simply speed up.

[Dataweaver]

It also puts it within Storyteller judgment call territory. If your storyteller decides that growing vines out of the ground to entangle your opponent is a basic feat, then you only need two successes to do it. The only way that additional spheres might affect this would be if the Storyteller determines that it's a simpler feat with more spheres than it is without.

[Wyrdangel]

Gotcha...that makes sense to me now...thanks for the input everybody