Blue Rose AGE edition has quite strong separation between 'evil' magic (sorcery) and normal arcana. Most of straighforward damage dealing spells fall under sorcery. But there seem to be few places where you can deal damage indirectly. My main question here is about the intent - are those spells really the backdoor hacks for 'good' adepts to deal damage with spells reliably every round?
Putting aside 'enchant weapon' kind of spells, there seem to be 3 damage dealing spells in basic book.
- Ignite Fire from Fire Shaping
- Frostbite from Cold Shaping
- Striking with Objects from Move Object
(let's ignore Earthquake as well, it is slight overkill for normal combat)
Strike with Objects is quite straighforward and will turn Blue Rose adepts into Jedi wannabies. But can Ignite Fire and Frostbite be used to deal damage in combat reliably?
From Ignite Fire
As a major action, you can set any flammable object in your line of sight on fire with a successful TN 13 Fire Shaping test. Targets must make a TN 13 Dexterity resistance test. A successful resistance test means the fire goes out, whereas a failed test results in 2d6 fire damage.
Is target an object here or person holding/wearing that object? Is expected usage of that spell to find anything flammable on enemies each round and set everybody on fire?
From Frostbite
With a successful TN 11 test, you can lower the temperature of an area a foot across intensely enough to deal 1d6 penetrating damage from the cold. Every 2 points of Outcome increases the damage by 1d6, to a maximum of 6d6.
There is no resistance test here - does it mean that you can deal automatic damage (possibly very huge) each round with an easy spellcasting test? Or is 'area a foot across' easy enough to move out of, so nobody who isn't immobilized would ever get caught by the damage part of the spell?
