It does give a fun new meaning to "lighting a fire under their arse", however.

Sadly I do not think it would work for lighting a cigarette by the RAW. Well technically it would ignite, it would just be the entire thing and not the tip. An indirect combat spell is the way to go if you want to ignite part of an item.

Ok so get an anti-smoking fanatic to ignite someone elses cigarette.

Nah, you just need a custom version (Ignite Cigarettes) that takes an "only works on the tip of objects" limitation for reduced drain. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Or, y'know, use ignite on a random object and then use that as a match...

OR has nothing to do with size, I've said that three times in this thread already. However, you do roll damage resistance for all spells that are not DIRECT combat spells. They are the exception that ignore damage resist, Indirect combat spells, i.e. the elemental effect ones such as lighting bolt or fireball have first an opposed test to HIT like a ranged attack and then damage resistance is rolled by target. The main diffrence between ignite and flamethrower is that ignite make the target catch fire while the flamethrower _may_ cuase it to catch fire.

Direct combat spells (powerbolt, manabolt, stunbolt and ball versions of these) are the exception, not the norm when it comes to damage resistance.

doublepost

I'd say the main difference is that Flamethrower's a combat spell and Ignite's a manipulation spell.

Bah, no imagination amongst some people. What, no mage snapping his fingers and having a small, magical flame appear somewhere on his hand to light small objects with? For shame...

Flameaura's much more impressive. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)


Or one could design a new spell:

Flamefingers

Type: P
Range: Caster only
Duration: S
DV: (F/2)

Flamefingers is a restricted version of the Flameaura spell that effects only the extended fingertips or palm(s) of the magician casting the spell. It may set objects on fire if the caster's hits exceed the OR.

Or a called shot with a flamethrower spell at force 1, or if the GM lets you force 0. Indirect spells I can call a shot and hit a specific part of an object, everything else unless otherwise noted hits the whole object.

Thing is, the object continues to burn until it is extinguished or consumed. So, even if you ruled that the building only took [force] DV on turn one, that DV is going to increase every 3 seconds or +20DV every minute until fire teams come to put it out. If it takes them 5 minutes to get the FD out there and actively working to put out the blaze, you've already got every inch of the structure trying to soak 100+[force] DV over and over again.

Ignite as written is terribly, horribly effective at destroying games.

Can you give proof for that?
Indirect Spells are not the exception, they are explicitly ruled like that and don't use OR.

The two types of Combat spells are precisely worded where there is a soak roll and where there isn't. All other spells (like physical manipulations for example) do exactly what their descriptions say. So an inanimate object is consumed by an Ignite spell unless extinguished, if the spell achieves the OR. They don't get any soak roll. Living targets get one because it is in the description. There is no general rule for magical damage.

"Fire" is not a material. (Unless I missed a specific entry that states otherwise)

Actually, yes, you missed my posting the entire spell description on the previous page. Here it is again.

Please note the inclusion of fire among the given examples of materials and elements the spell may affect.

~Umidori

Eh it burns normally until consumed or put out. Burns normally gives the GM a lot of wiggle room. I can easily say a force 6 fire burning normally on plas-steel just goes out on its own. Just as a side point though the increasing in box box of damage is only under against living creatures part of the spell description. So a meta-human turns into a pile of ash if it is not put out, a building does whatever a building would do if it was lit on fire by a force X fire. Which unless it is wood, or you are throwing some really awesome spells means it goes out on its own IMO, making this spell a pile of suck.

My apoloies then.

You know, I've had a thought. Ignite suddenly becomes somewhat useful if you change it from a permanent spell to a sustained one.


So, let's do a trial run. You cast at force, ohh... four. You roll well and get five hits on the spellcasting test, only four count. Against a nonliving target, that will beat most OR values and cause the target to become red hot. Let's say you cast it on a street samurai's prized katana. The red hot metal is now dangerous to maintain a hold on (unless wielded via cyberlimb, which this particular samurai lacks). Stubbornly, he chooses not to drop his favorite blade and has to resist 4 Fire damage. He rolls 4 Body + 3 (6 / 2) Impact Armor and scores a lucky 3 hits, taking 1 box of physical damage. Despite this, he swings at his opponent, you! He rolls 5 Agility + 5 Blades vs. your 4 Reaction + 2 Clubs - 2 Spell Sustain as you attempt to parry the blow with your old-school mage's staff. The samurai gets 3 hits against your 1 hit, dealing 5 ([4 Strength / 2] + 3) + 2 Net Hit for 7 boxes of physical damage. You roll your 3 Body and 4 Impact Armor, getting a solid 3 hits, and you take 4 boxes of physical damage. Ouch! Fortunately, the red hot metal of the blade doesn't cause any additional Fire Damage, as it does not remain in contact with your body long enough to do so.

However, since the red hot metal of the katana is weakened, it is more likely to break in combat. In this case, let's say the GM decides that every time the blade is used to make or defend against an attack, the wielder must roll a single die - rolling a one results in the weapon being damaged or destroyed. In this instance the samurai rolls a 2, narrowly avoiding ruining his heat-softened blade.

Let's say that instead of the katana, you cast the spell on the samurai himself. He resists your 4 Spellcasting test hits with his 4 Body, getting an amazing 3 hits, but that's not enough to resist the spell and he is enveloped by Force 4 flames. These flames deal 4 Fire Damage, resisted normally, at the end of every combat turn. The samurai, suddenly hot under the collar, decides he'd rather not stay on fire if he can help it and spends a Complex Action to stop, drop, and roll, which the gamemaster decides reduces the Force of the flames by 3, with the downside that the samurai sacrifices his action and is now prone.

Let's run it at a high force now, let's say 11. Targeting an assault trooper's light machine gun, you get only 3 hits, but that meets the threshhold set by the high-tech gun's OR 3. It glows red hot, and unless the trooper drops it before the end of the combat turn, he'll have to stage down 11 Fire damage, which is nothing to sneeze at! Furthermore, the GM rules that the high spell force creates enough heat to substantially weaken the weapon. Interestingly, the assault trooper is a little bit suicidal, and decides to hang on to his weapon despite his blistering fingers. He opens fire on you with a full wide burst, but because his gun's barrel is almost molten at this point, the GM decides he loses the benefits of his Gas-Vent system. While you suffer a -9 DP to dodge because of the full wide burst, his malfunctioning gun causes him to suffer 5 uncompensated recoil, which is doubled to 10 because he's using a heavy weapon. You may not even have a single die to roll, but then again neither does he! You emerge unscathed! Then, as the Combat Turn comes to a close, the trooper suddenly has to resist that 11 Fire damage he ignored earlier. With only half his normal impact armor and a bad roll, he only manages to soak 2 points, for a whopping 9 physical damage!

If you had instead cast the spell on the trooper himself, your 3 spellcasting hits would have come close to losing out to his 2 body hits. The trooper again chooses to ignore the danger and spends his turn shooting, but gets tagged by one of your teammates for 3 physical damage. When the end of the turn comes, he manages to soak 4 damage, but that's just not enough to keep him from falling unconscious from an addition 7 damage, and then burning to death next turn.

A few other possible uses for New Ignite include setting off explosive materials, shattering standard glass windows via heat expansion, melting hardened glass to create openings, softening walls or door to make it easier to blow through them, making floors and other surfaces too hot to cross safely, instantly boiling a cup of water for your soy-ramen, and a whole lot else too.

~Umidori

So, in your experience, fires normally just put themselves out? I don't know about all that... I mean, they can fail to produce enough energy to spread, but once something is aflame, it likes to continue as it started.
From my experience, once you've got something like iron or steel oxidizing to the point that it's on fire, you're not looking at a happy, speedy resolution. Sure, you can rule that what the spell says happens, doesn't happen, but let's not mince words about what it is the GM is doing there. It's not wiggling; it's a total rewrite Nerf.

What we've got here is a poorly thought out, completely broken spell which needs to be re-written so as to not be either instant Apocalypse or Nerf burn.

I actually like this spell.

It is not great for combat, but it is great for other purposes. I think this is the intent of the spell. And yes you can go around making apocalypse but try it and see how far you will get!

This is not a spell that should be tossed around for fun, but be used only when you really need to burn through something.

And in my opinion, the line of sight means that you need to see pretty much all of your target, so focusing on an entire city would have to be area of effect, not line of sight. But I do agree it is difficult to set the limit on how much it can affect, this will have to be a gm call.

There are no area of effect spells but indirect combat spells in SR. Even for LOS(A) you have to be able to see all of the area if you want to affect all of the possible area of a sphere with radius Force meters.

There are remarkably few materials that simply don't burn. Even fire retardant materials do burn, but it takes enormous amounts of energy (heat) to do so. I've seen a diamond that was on fire (notably it was doing so inside a bath of liquid oxygen).

You have a object that isn't particularly flammable its barrier rating is 8 it has a force 6 fire in it. IMO it goes out because the force of the fire isn't enough to keep going. If it exceeds the barrier rating I might let it keep going, but against a lot of materials I'd be comparing it to FX2. And yes I have seen plenty of fires just go out., And its not a re-write nerf, I am not mincing words I am following the spell description. I don't let a force 1 ignite burn a citymaster to the ground, it doesn't make sense in gameplay or logical sense by how fires work. Like any other fire to keep burning the heat of the fire has to be enough to burn the materials it is in contact with if not it will go out and fairly quickly. It might take a while to cool down but it will go out.

And yes the spell needs a rewrite.

Just as a nitpick: a part of any automatic weapon's design is the cooling mechanism (even if just the appropriate amount of bare metal) to keep the barrel from overheating. A successful Force 11 Ignite spell will have greatly overcome the cooling mechanism. A red hot barrel is step one of a very nasty surprise if you keep firing.

You're still thinking about ignite as a shroud of fire applied to an object. That's not what it is. It's kenetic agitation until the object itself is so excited that it begins to combust. By its very description, the material in question, is on fire. It's not a fire applied to a target, but a target which has gotten so hot, that it bursts into flame. The material is the source of the fire. I guess you could compare it to the mutant power of Gambit of the X-Men. The mage excites the object's molecular structure, like some kind of psychic microwave, up to the point that it catches fire and ignites nearby combustibles.

Also, a citymaster would need at least a force 5 spell to surpass the "extreme" OR threshold of 4+, which is not that easy to pull off. Still it's too easy, especially for those "natural materials" like, say, a whole forest..
I guess just adding a "volume of affected material" qualifier to the threshold would calm the spell down considerably. Like +1 to OR/threshold for every m³ of affected material beyond the first. That way a tree with a volume of 3 m³ would have a threshold of 3 while a barrel of crude oil would have a threshold of 1 still. Meanwhile the citymaster with a volume of, say, 4 cubic meters of metal/material would have a near impossible threshold of 7 to set alight, though its tires would be a simpler threshold of 2.

Ever witnessed a modern highrise building of glass and steel burn? It is an awe inspiring sight... once something actually bursts into flame, it will tend to remain on fire until steps are taken to put it out... even modern buildings burn quite nicely once lit... there is generally enough materials to sustein a fire once it has been ignited...

And yes, soem fires do eventually go out on their own, but only after the consumables have been ... consumed... once steel has started to actually burn (ie. produce a flame), it will continue to do so in most circumstances...

Keep the Faith