Flight spell?

[Nyarlathotep5150]

"While it’s theoretically possible to create a
spell which would allow one to fly, the ability
to fly (whether on a broomstick, a carpet, or
some other conveyance) does not come with
an instruction manual, and thus does not come
with the expertise to control the ability once it’s
available. Most wizards avoid trying, and those
who do usually quickly discover what the human
body was not meant to do." (YS283)

As with any spell, you first have to come up with a way to describe the effect your trying to get.  Are you using wind to 'blow' you upward, like Storm?  This may seem like a great idea until you consider that a wind strong enough to lift an adult into the air is not going to be gentle about it.  Imagine sticking your head out the window of an jet while in flight.  (But only imagine it, please, don't actually try it!)  Or perhaps you could use fire to give yourself a booster rocket effect, like Ironman?  Even if you assume that a human capable of such fine control of three seperate thrusts (intensity and directional vector for each), you still hit the problem that you're probably talking about three spells working concurrently to emulate it.

Also, what happens when the spell runs out?  Evocations don't last very long, and if you're 100 feet up and moving fast when your booster spell dies, you're likely to follow suit shortly.  Well, why not use Thaumaturgy?  Well, Thaumaturgy is designed to create strong, steady flows of magic, which would not respond at all well to the continuous stream of fine corrections necessary to controlling flight.

All in all, the most workable solution seems to be the use of Transformation to grant actual wings.  You can get away with Thaumaturgy, because you're really using the magic to give you the wings and the strength to use them -- which stays constant for the spell duration.  Even so, though, you have to learn what birds get from instinct built over millenia.  And a mistake -- perhaps a bone thinned out a bit too much in order to reduce weight, or a muscle not quite strong enough to withstand the strain of flight -- could be very, very constly.  And humans should probably begin the learning curve with Flight skill at zero.  The trick is to survive training that skill up enough to be a competant flier.

That said, it's really a question of how your group wants to handle it.  You could just say that the above methods work fine, and that part of the magic smooths out the control issues somehow.  You know, cuz it's magic, right?  Up to you.  If you do it this way, then I'd imagine you could stat it as an a spell to allow Athletics to accomplish the impossible ... specifically, to allow you to travel without a surface.  So a 6-shift Evocation would allow you to fly with the same speed as you'd run with an Athletics skill of 6 (but without having to deal with ground obstacles).  For one exchange, though -- you'd likely want to allocate a few shifts for duration.  Or you could use Thaumaturgy to accomplish the same, making it easier to get a longer duration and/or higher speeds.

   This is only partially accurate. You can make a thaumaturgical fly spell that works in the traditional, superman sense

(click to show/hide)

They talk about exactly that, in Changes. And make a potion of a watered down version of it to create zero-g.

Its also not out of the question to say that you could use air magic to emulate this spell with evocation.
   As the books said, creating the spell isn't hard, controlling the movement of flight is. and with the cost of losing control so high, most wizards don't bother.

[ralexs1991]

you should probably but a spoiler sensor over that

[Nyarlathotep5150]

you should probably but a spoiler sensor over that

  ...Umm. I did.

[ralexs1991]

well thats weird i guess my computer's being stupid again guess I didn't hit it hard enough last time lol 

[Ophidimancer]

The Wings Power doesn't necessarily need to represent actual flesh wings, right?

[ralexs1991]

The Wings Power doesn't necessarily need to represent actual flesh wings, right?

I'm pretty sure it does I don't have the books at hand so I can't check but I'm pretty sure that's what it means that is unless you take some kind of super natural power such as Human Guise [+0] that counteracts the physical wings not entirely sure I'll post a page reference when I get a chance

[MyNinjaH8sU]

The Wings Power doesn't necessarily need to represent actual flesh wings, right?

It does, actually. My personal reasoning for this is that it's not really about just flying, it's a Creature Feature power, and part of the notion of it is that humans don't have it. Also, I think it's a reminder that overall, physics have a large place in the Dresdenverse. Flying needs wings. If you want to fly without them, you are doing something like manipulating gravity or wind, and it won't be as controlled.

My vote in the end is still to have a Focused Practitioner that controls specifically Gravity and Electromagnetism, not even overall earth. Just have a rote spell be a very fine control of Gravimetric Forces, allowing him flight and propulsion, for basically a mental stress a scene as an evocation, or a quick bit of thaumaturgy if given the time.

Focused Practitioners are supposed to have really really good control over their specialty anyway.

[Becq]

   This is only partially accurate. You can make a thaumaturgical fly spell that works in the traditional, superman sense

(click to show/hide)

They talk about exactly that, in Changes. And make a potion of a watered down version of it to create zero-g.

Its also not out of the question to say that you could use air magic to emulate this spell with evocation.
   As the books said, creating the spell isn't hard, controlling the movement of flight is. and with the cost of losing control so high, most wizards don't bother.

Er ... are we not saying the same thing?  I said that Superman-style flight (ie, perfect control, being able to turn on a dime and stop, hover, etc) is not possible because of control issues.  You said that it was, but that it would be too difficult to control.  My take is that the result looks a lot more like Hancock-style flight ... except with a much squishier landing. 

(click to show/hide)

As you pointed out, stripped down versions are certainly much more feasible, aka the 'gliding' effect from Changes.

[zerogain]

My game's flying warden does it on channeled blasts of wind that are thematically similar to Storm of the X-Men.  The ring created by his Superb Lore and multiple enchanted item slots grants him the ability to move in 3 dimensions for a scene using his Lore to achieve dramatic effects such as clearing Barriers, evading Blocks, and using the spell to dodge.  He can activate this for "a scene" and do so up to three times per day, but each additional use (per enchanted items) inflicts stress.

It is certainly possible to manipulate gravity as presented by the case files.  Earth magic covers it on the grand sense, so I don't see why a Focused Practitioner specializing in earth magic or gravity couldn't exist.  If you want to handle flight with quick spells evocation will permit the caster straight line direct force effects.  Change gravity to levitate for a few exchanges, perhaps, or even create a quick shift under the caster to propel him upward into the air, but without extra shifts being spent on time an control these are one-time efforts that each cost one mental stress minimum.

Due to the already mentioned effect in Changes it is meet to say that you can affect only yourself with gravity alterations, and do not necessarily have to be walking on a column or raised energy.

Now I'm fuzzy on thaumaturgy, but trying to wrap my head around it.  I can't give you the number of shifts and such that you would need, but there's quite a few to create an effect that is going to be on the person for long enough to have direct control over movement long term.  The idea of creating a ritual to work this is possible, but again the effort involved is staggering due to the amount of shifts you need to cover time and other features.

If you want to use spellcasting to model flight, one of the best pieces of advice I received in my own query (http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,20386.0.html) was to ensure the spellcaster took an aspect that spoke directly to his having studied flight in the past.  Hands down, the easiest way to do this is to have the character take a modified version of Wings, call it whatever works for the character, have it cost -1 like Wings, but require the aspect.  At the very least the aspect will be useful in the application of said flight.  While Ophidimancer is right that Wings specifies actual wings, various other commentaries indicate to me that it's there because it just fits there.  I have no problem simply creating a new power that does exactly the same thing and calling it something else.