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Effect Forms

The real trick in casting spells is when you want to improvise on a ritual. That’s called grafting forms onto your spell. You have to do it, holding the original matrix together in your mind before you can speak the command phrase. Needless to say, it can get dicey real fast.
Grafting each form is a separate process that you can choose to represent with its own magic check. However, you don’t have to do that unless it adds drama to the scene. If you want to draw out casting the spell while the wizard ducks enemy attacks and dodges enemy arrows make hir roll separately for each check. If the wizard is casting from relative safety, you can simulate the entire process with a single check. As long as you agree on the final effects of the spell, either way works equally well.
If at any point you try to graft a form and fail, you lose the entire spell. It fizzles and nothing happens. If you make even a partial success, however, the spell remains intact.

Here are the basic forms:

The Area form makes your spell affect everybody in a place instead of just a single target. The size can get pretty big here, as long as there are walls to enclose the conceptual limits of the region. If you’re firing off a spell in empty space, though, it can only go maybe as big as a sports field. (From another perspective, that’s close enough to a city block.)
The caster chooses the shape of the region affected, although it can’t be wonky. Regular shapes only!
Each consecutive graft of this form doubles the size of the area again. (So, x2, x4, x8...)

This Form is for spells that take effect over a continuous region of space. If you’re casting a spell that creates individual objects or that affects discrete individuals, the GM and player may decide it’s more appropriate to use the Targets form. This is very subjective, of course, and it doesn’t matter all that much most of the time.
If you need a rule, fall back on this one: if you can dodge the effect, use Area. If you resist the effect by force of will or by fortitude of body, use Targets. I don’t think this rule is accurate all the time, but it is easy to apply.

The Power form makes your spell go off harder. Each level either doubles the spell's effect or overcomes one level of Reinforcement. That’s either / or; the same level can’t do both.
Each consecutive graft of this form doubles the effect again.

The Reinforced form makes your spell more difficult to dispel. Each graft of this effect forces a dispelling character to graft one level of Power onto hir Dispelling ritual to succeed.

The Size form makes your spell affect (or create) a larger (or more than one) target. It generally doubles the spell's scope.

The Targets form causes a spell that creates discrete, quantifiable effects to affect twice as many individuals. Each consecutive graft of this form doubles the effect again.

The last forms require some expertise and therefore are available only to wizards:

The Combination form attaches a different spell effect onto your first spell.

The Recurring form makes your spell go off more than once, as for a trap or a damage-over-time spell. Each consecutive graft allows the spell to take effect one additional time over the defined frequency. Alternately, the caster can use this form to delay a spell’s effect.

The Trigger form sets up an extended spell to go off upon given conditions. These conditions either have to be something the caster can perceive or a spell that can detect such things, like a Discernment spell.

Forms and Max Tier

This is where spells in this system get their ‘Level’. Wizards refer to spells using the term Tier, and a spell’s Tier is equal to the form levels added to it. A basic spell is ‘0 Tier’. A spell with Power 2 / Area 1 is a ‘3rd Tier’ spell.
When Highmagick wizards whip out their wands to compare sizes, Tier is the ranking they use most often.
Tier is also a hard limit on how powerful a caster can make a spell. Plebes can usually only manage Tier 0 or 1 rituals. Novices with several spells they use often can typically cast Tier 2 rituals. An apprentice wizard can usually manage Tier 3 rituals, and a trained wizard can get up to Tier 4. Many archwizards can cast spells up to Tier 5 or 6, but going above Tier 6 usually requires help from a ritual team.
A character can cast any spell up to hir max Tier without issue. If ze tries to add forms above hir Tier, though, ze suffers Disadvantage and risks losing the entire spell if ze takes harm or suffers any kind of distraction. What’s worse, it takes twice as long to graft forms above your tier. And even with all that, an ambitious caster can usually only manage one or two extra forms before hir spell collapses under its own weight.
Max Tier is an optional rule. If you don’t want to bother with it and you trust your players not to tank out on every spell, ignore it and only pull it out when you need it to make a point.

Bonus Forms

Sometimes, a situation or talent will add a free bonus form to a base spell upon casting it. You gain the advantage of the form without having to graft it onto the spell in question, and you’re free to graft other forms or the same form again to enhance the spell’s effect further.
Generally, you can only graft one free form onto a single base spell. If you have multiple forms available to you, you have to pick one. In some cases, the GM may remove this restriction.
Bonus forms do count toward spell tier.