This is probably a dumb question, but do these spells stage up with successes, or are they stcuk at M damage. I'd assume they stage up since everything else does, but the way the sentence reads in MiTS always gave me the impression that they didn't.

Good Question. I always do it as "No", but I see no reason for calling my way Canon, they may indeed stage up for all I know...

Sphynx

I don't think they stage either

As far as I know, staging only occurs with spells that deal damage due to proper or effective targeting. Spells like Flame Aura and Firewall have their sizes determined by successes; the damage they do is an indirect effect of their casting, and thus not staged.

oh well, that's the way they read to me too, and they didn't really reverse engeneir if they were damage spells that staged. I was just hoping that since every other thing seems to stage these would too. I really like the spells sfx, but I have trouble justifying taking them when the damage component is basically ignored by all foes, especially since I may take drain from the casting of firewall at least.

Flame Aura is a nice spell because regardless of the Force, it still adds +2 to the Power of melee attacks. Grab it at Force 1, get a Sustaining Focus, and you can have a nice bonus (and cool effect) if you get into hand-to-hand combat.

If your GM uses the optional grenade staging rules then it would make sense to apply them to these spells as well.

-3Threes

Why? You're still throwing a grenade so as to damage others to your maximum effect. Firewall and Flame Aura just creates a wall of fire to throws flames around your body. They do their damage purely upon the free will of the opponents voluntarily risking themselves to come into contact with the damaging effect.

If your successes are usually increasing the size of the wall, couldn't they increase the density instead? You could choose to have a more densely concentrated, and therefore more damaging wall of fire?

That would require the creation of a new spell.

For what it's worth, by the fire rules in Cannon Companion (pg98), all continuous fire damage has a base Damage Level of Moderate. Only the Power varies, from 3 for a campfire to 20 for a burning building. Being on fire is not ever going to instantly put you at deadly, unless you get dropped in lava or the Sun or something similarly goofy; it may guarantee that you will be at deadly in 10 seconds, unless you can make some truly riduculous body rolls. This seems like a good rule of thumb to go by.