which brings me to another question

[potestas]

attacks receive a bonus to weapon power via discipline otherwise know as the attack roll. Does the control(attack roll) apply to blocks and maneuvers. And while were at it just what can a maneuver do that simply turning the opponent into sludge doesn't do better?

[Hick Jr]

Okay, in order-

-Control roll does not apply to blocks. Whatever you picked as the power of the spell is the difficulty of the block. I think the control roll is used to target the maneuver, but the power of the spell is the difficulty to remove it. If my wizard threw a BLINDED maneuver at a WCV, using 5 shifts of power, rolling 7 shifts to control, the WCV would have to roll Epic+ to dodge the maneuver wholesale, and roll Superb+ to remove it if he flubbed his dodge.

-I've never played a wizard who could throw less than an 8 shift spell, so I always landed at least two Aspects. Or one really sticky one. Maneuver-bombing someone is a good setup if there's another evoker in the party, because they can tag those Aspects to boost their control roll for a nova. Invokes for Effect can do literally everything, as well. It's actually mentioned in one of the "sidebars" that most of Harry's "blasty" spells are actually maneuvers except the last one, which is an attack wherein tags all the Aspects he placed on the enemy or the environment. It's why he does a lot of goobering around with glancing hits and misses and blocks before blowing the shagnasty in two with a fireball.

[Taran]

Maneuvers:

The power of the maneuver is the difficulty to dodge it.  Just like blocks.

[potestas]

Okay, in order-

-Control roll does not apply to blocks. Whatever you picked as the power of the spell is the difficulty of the block. I think the control roll is used to target the maneuver, but the power of the spell is the difficulty to remove it. If my wizard threw a BLINDED maneuver at a WCV, using 5 shifts of power, rolling 7 shifts to control, the WCV would have to roll Epic+ to dodge the maneuver wholesale, and roll Superb+ to remove it if he flubbed his dodge.

-I've never played a wizard who could throw less than an 8 shift spell, so I always landed at least two Aspects. Or one really sticky one. Maneuver-bombing someone is a good setup if there's another evoker in the party, because they can tag those Aspects to boost their control roll for a nova. Invokes for Effect can do literally everything, as well. It's actually mentioned in one of the "sidebars" that most of Harry's "blasty" spells are actually maneuvers except the last one, which is an attack wherein tags all the Aspects he placed on the enemy or the environment. It's why he does a lot of goobering around with glancing hits and misses and blocks before blowing the shagnasty in two with a fireball.

if I do a maneuver like floor on fire will that also damage the people standing in it and if so how much damage. If I tag it for my next attack does that give me a bonus of +2. and if I am sufficiently powerful enough couldn't I just tag the player with player on fire as an attack and not worry about waiting around to finish off the player in the next exchange. I mean really doesn't it just save time to turn the person to mush first rather then set up a whole bunch of sticky maneuvers that you tag. I guess if you really need to take some one out and hes pretty tough you might have to do this but why bother against a lower powered enemies.

lets say you have 2 maneuvers on a target and you tag them do you need to use them immediately or can you keep tagging them and then on the 3rd exchange unleash a devastating attack? and do the tags count as power that needs to be controlled or does it just add to your power total.

[Mr. Death]

You can't do two maneuvers in one spell with plain Evocation.

[potestas]

You can't do two maneuvers in one spell with plain Evocation.

if they are sticky over the course of an exchange or two you can have two maneuvers on the area/target by casting another spell. So my question is do you have to tag it right away or can you build it up to use it all at once for say a plus 4 bonus

[potestas]

also are there any examples of maneuvers I could read about, I checked the wiki and I didn't see any

[Taran]

If it's sticky (if you succeed by at least +1 shifts) the aspect will last the entire scene (within reason).
If it's fragile (if you succeed by the bare minimum) the aspect will be extremely temporary and as soon as you tag it, it goes away.

So, in the first example, you could rack up a bunch of stickies, then tag 'em all for their total bonus.
In the second example, you'd probably have to use the fragile aspect on your next turn.

Maneuvers can target a person or scene.  They rarely target a zone, so you couldn't do a zone-wide maneuver.
So you would have to be careful with scene aspects, like "dimly lit" or "floor on fire" because there's a good chance your GM will make that bite you in the butt. ( I would).

Sometimes, I let maneuvers take people out...usually mooks.  Like an 8 shift(legendary) "tumbling debris" maneuver might cause people to be pinned under rubble or become so hampered that they're effectively out of the fight.  I might use it as a concession, for instance.  That shouldn't be used across the board, though and you should use the Power of the maneuver as a guide for how powerful the effect is.

Some people don't like it but I tend to use the Power of a maneuver as the strength of the effect often.  I find it keeps wizards from whipping around 10-shift maneuvers like "Earth Tremors".  To me, a 10 shift earth tremor will take down small and fragile buildings.  It's the kind of thing you use sparingly if you don't want to kill people.

It gets harder to adjudicate at higher refresh when you HAVE to do Powerful maneuvers to get them to stick to enemies...but honestly, I think a Powerful vampire or Skinwalker can stand to have a building fall on them without getting hurt.  An average-joe mortal can't.

My point with that is this:  Often times, if you put a maneuver on someone like "floor on fire", you might not have to ask the question, "does this do damage to people?".  Sometimes it complicates combat, sometimes it takes out mooks or causes them to retreat and sometimes it does nothing at all.

A maneuver could be virtually anything:

Water maneuvers: slippery floor; wet; foggy;
Air maneuvers: foggy; windy; breezy; Gusting winds;
Earth: uneven terrain; dusty; debris;
Fire: On Fire; Smokey; Boiling Hot/Scorching; Ashes Everywhere!

Other aspects like "disarmed"; tripped; Blinded; prone; are good aspects as well but, lately, I've liked them less.  Instead, I like to do a maneuver like, "sand in the eyes" instead of blinded.  Because it's a little more generic and can lead to other complications other than just "blinded".  And that way, if they turn down the compel and choose not to be blind, it still makes sense if they have "sand in their eyes".

[Mr. Death]

Maneuvers can target a person or scene.  They rarely target a zone, so you couldn't do a zone-wide maneuver.

The example of Harry's spell at the end of Grave Peril is a zone-wide maneuver. It's described in the book as 3 shifts to maneuver, 2 to make it fill the whole zone's worth of ghosts.

[Taran]

The example of Harry's spell at the end of Grave Peril is a zone-wide maneuver. It's described in the book as 3 shifts to maneuver, 2 to make it fill the whole zone's worth of ghosts.

Sorry, where is it described?  Is it in OW?  I don't know that book as well as YS. I've always gone by the fact that YS (in the spell maneuvers section) doesn't specifically state you can do zone wide.

It's mentioned 2 shifts for zone-wide evocation attacks or splitting power for spray attacks
It's mentioned 2 shifts to target multiple allies in a zone with a block/armour or using a block for borders
It doesn't mention zone-wide maneuvers at all.

Edit: this is where I base my interpretation

Maneuver
As with normal skills, evocation maneuvers
cover a broad variety of potential effects, mainly
geared toward creating a momentary advantage
for you or removing one from your opponents.
More often than not, this places a temporary
aspect on a target or on the scene, or removes
a temporary aspect from a target or from the
scene.

(emphasis, mine)

I don't really like the idea of zone-wide spell maneuvers because doing them can start a debate over using a tag or single FP to start multiple compels. (which I like to avoid) I like scene aspects more since they can, potentially, target everyone - friends and foes.

In any case, that's just my preference.  I often, as a GM, have "scene aspects" that are specific to certain zones because it makes sense.  So, I guess I'm more against zone-wide maneuvers that target multiple Characters in a zone.  If it comes down to it, I prefer to use spray attack rules for maneuvers on multiple enemies.

[Mr. Death]

Sorry, where is it described?  Is it in OW?  I don't know that book as well as YS. I've always gone by the fact that YS (in the spell maneuvers section) doesn't specifically state you can do zone wide.

It's in YS, in the list of example spells.

[Blk4ce]

YS page 299, the memorium spell.

[Taran]

Memorium, Memoratum,
Memoritus
In the Grave Peril casefile, Harry defeated
Bianca by encouraging a mob of ghosts—
victims of Bianca and the Red Court—to take
their revenge.
Type: Thaumaturgy, transformation
Complexity: 5 shifts (+3 for a maneuver, +2 to
hit all targets in a zone)
Duration: One scene
Effect: Harry applies the aspect Revenge Is
Ours to the ghosts which Harry tags to indirectly
attack Bianca.
Notes: The ghosts were there already, so Harry
didn’t need to summon them—just nudge
them over the edge.

I have no idea how I would adjudicate this spell if it came up in my game.  I guess, since, with thaumaturgy, you adjudicate the complexity of the spell by how many zones It takes + all other factors, you have to do that.

IMO:
First, I'd call that a scene aspect.  It hit one zone, sure, but the whole fight happened in one room.

A complexity 5 (3 shift maneuver) Ritual defeated a Red Court Noble and her entourage?  I certainly wouldn't allow it in any game I ran - at least, not exactly like that.

How did it work, mechanically?  Did everyone concede and hand their FP's over to the next BB for a future conflict?  Did it just enable the ghost (which were passive NPC's) to become active?

Are the "targets" the ghosts or the Vampires?  I would say the Ghosts.

So maybe the ghosts were a "scene aspect" that Harry assessed or declared and he used the ritual as a justification to invoke the scene aspect and make them attack.

That's probably how I'd do it. 

The Complexity would be equal to the difficulty to get the ghosts motivated. the complexity would increase by how many ghosts you want to get, so I guess I'd use zones in that situation - if  you want to hit every ghost.  But only because they're not an enemy - they're an aspect up until the point they become active.  If he wanted to target every RCV, I'd make it a thaum attack instead of a maneuver.

[Mr. Death]

The way I understood it, it's a maneuver on the ghost, which essentially created a whole bunch of ghost NPCs that attacked the vampires.

[potestas]

cool thank you for the explanations