Zone Wide Aspects and Tagging

[Ophidimancer]

When you manage to apply an Aspect to more than one target, can you Tag that Aspect for each target, or do you only get a Tag on one target and after that you need to spend FP's to Compel or Invoke that Aspect on other targets?

[Kordeth]

You only get one free tag of the aspect, the rest you have to pay for.

[Tush Hog]

The way I understand it, if the aspect is on the zone (like say "pitch dark") you have one tag. However, if you've put an aspect on everyone in the zone individually(something like "entangled in vines") you get a tag on each person who you've just put an aspect on.

Otherwise, doesn't seem like there are many reasons to buy a zone when you could just put a scene aspect on the place much cheaper.

[ahunting]

As far as i can tell if your willing to AoE a spell that applying the aspect, each person who gets the effect should get a free tag of it. Think something along the lines of group telepathy, applying Perfect Team Work, or some kind of Reverse Entropic Effect, Amazing Luck.  In the end it will be GM call, i'm certain plenty of folks will look at this and go No wai!!! and say that you need to spend for any use beyond the first. But it is a good idea to motivate wizards to do something other then Swing as big a magic attack as possible, Giving your whole team a free tag is most like easily as effective, and way more group friendly.   

[luminos]

sure, if you spend the shifts to make it zone wide, why not let everyone's aspect be tagged.  This would include enemies tagging the aspects as well...

[ahunting]

sure, if you spend the shifts to make it zone wide, why not let everyone's aspect be tagged.  This would include enemies tagging the aspects as well...

True if they were in that zone when the spell was cast of course.

[Ophidimancer]

Well I found this:

Scene aspects may imply some circumstances that will befall any (or many) of the characters in the scene—Everything Is Burning! is a classic example and a frequent aspect in any scene involving Harry Dresden. In such a case, it’s entirely apropos to act as if that aspect is on each character’s sheet and compel (see page 100) the aspect for each of them, dishing fate points
all around and nicely covering the effects the aspect has on the characters in the scene. Technically speaking, a player could try to use
a scene aspect to initiate a mass compel, but it’d be a pretty expensive proposition—he’d have to spend a fate point for every character he wants to be affected by the compel.

So I guess I would get one free Tag against one person, but everyone else I would either spend a FP or hope the GM compels of his own volition.

[CMEast]

Indeed, creating any aspect gives you one free tag, even if it's an aspect that would effect everyone in a zone. To get more tags you would have to create the aspect for each time you want to use it; either splitting the aspects across each target and getting one tag on each, or putting multiple tags on the scene aspect (dangerous as you can only tag an aspect once per roll, and the aspect could be removed before you use all the tags).

So you could create a 'blinding light' manoeuvre with a flash grenade (one free tag on the zone) or cast a 'blinding light' spell (3 shifts for the manouevre, 2 shifts for the zone and perhaps another shift for stickyness) for one free tag. Or you could make the same spell with 3 shifts for each person you want to affect and then each would have one free tag for you to use, that gets expensive very quickly though.

[Ophidimancer]

So you're saying that creating a zone or scene aspect only gets you one tag total, but a spray maneuver would get you a tag for each target?

Hmm ... I could see a strict interpretation invalidating that last use as well.

[CMEast]

Well that's how spell manoeuvres work anyway and I couldn't see why it wouldn't work for normal manoeuvres. There's no rule against it and it makes narrative sense. Bear in mind that extra successes just make an aspect sticky so you can't use those spare shifts to add an extra tag, they have to be added in to the original difficulty of the manoeuvre in the first place. Plus it might be abusable for navel-gazing manoeuvres.

[Tush Hog]

Well I found this:

So I guess I would get one free Tag against one person, but everyone else I would either spend a FP or hope the GM compels of his own volition.

If it's a scene aspect, yes. But then you haven't spent the extra two shifts to affect everyone in the zone. If you spend those two shifts to affect each individual in the zone you would get a free tag on each one. At least, that's how I'm interpreting it. 

[CMEast]

Only if it was a spell Tush Hog, though yes you're right (and I actually badly mis-worded that earlier above). I think Ophidimancer is enquiring about non-magical manoeuvres though.

[luminos]

If he is asking about non-magical maneuvers, how is he affecting multiple targets with it?

[Tush Hog]

Like luminous, I assumed he was talking about spell maneuvers. My bad 

[Ophidimancer]

Actually I was talking about spell maneuvers.  I'm just not sure about a spray maneuver allowing multiple free tags.

On the one hand, the rules say that you get to tag a maneuver only once and there is no specific exemption to that rule under the Evocation Maneuvers rules.

On the other hand, magic does allow other cases of multiple applications of actions that normally can't be done, and on top of that you do have to pay for it in shifts split up between targets, so it might be rules as doing multiple maneuvers.