Don’t worry, the power drops off with the inverse square of the distance. It’s lethal at pretty much any reasonable range, but then drops off quickly after a half mile or so.
Actually, it spreads as an Airy disc, which gives it a radius of about 300 metres at the far side of the planet, and the effect is divided among all the souls it hits. If you hit a city on the other side of the planet, you just take a couple days off everybody’s life. (The technical term is “statistical homicide”)
That would make sense as a general rule for spells, otherwise why do they bother having duels face-to-face rather than sniping from nearby mountains? (Or an invisible broomstick 2000m up..)
Given the descriptions of wandwork we’ve seen in canon and in MoR so far, I imagine it’d be difficult to reliably hit anything person-sized past thirty feet or so. You can’t sight down a wand if you have to swish and flick (though a wizard’s staff with a telescopic scope mounted on it is a nice Discworldly image), so it should be about as accurate as throwing a ball—which is to say not very.
We know of at least one spell that aims itself (Flitwick’s) and area affect spells are possible (with a massive fireball it doesn’t matter how you aim).
Alternatively, take a potion of +10 accuracy or the equivalent.
You would have to get extremely (un)lucky to do so. A human, lying down, takes up about 1 m^2 of space. Even if you fired it at a city with a population density of 10000 people/km^2, you’d still only have about a 1% chance of hitting someone (if you could even aim well enough to hit a city from 12000 km away).
So if you fire it at the ground, can you kill someone on the other side of the Earth? Not being blocked by inanimate objects is kinda lame too.
Don’t worry, the power drops off with the inverse square of the distance. It’s lethal at pretty much any reasonable range, but then drops off quickly after a half mile or so.
I just made that up.
Actually, it spreads as an Airy disc, which gives it a radius of about 300 metres at the far side of the planet, and the effect is divided among all the souls it hits. If you hit a city on the other side of the planet, you just take a couple days off everybody’s life. (The technical term is “statistical homicide”)
That would make sense as a general rule for spells, otherwise why do they bother having duels face-to-face rather than sniping from nearby mountains? (Or an invisible broomstick 2000m up..)
You do have to aim it by hand and eye. You try hitting a human-sized target from a moving platform at 2km.
Given the descriptions of wandwork we’ve seen in canon and in MoR so far, I imagine it’d be difficult to reliably hit anything person-sized past thirty feet or so. You can’t sight down a wand if you have to swish and flick (though a wizard’s staff with a telescopic scope mounted on it is a nice Discworldly image), so it should be about as accurate as throwing a ball—which is to say not very.
We know of at least one spell that aims itself (Flitwick’s) and area affect spells are possible (with a massive fireball it doesn’t matter how you aim).
Alternatively, take a potion of +10 accuracy or the equivalent.
Felix Felicis may be the only potion that performs that function, and it’s sufficiently broken to be the Potion Not Appearing In This Fic.
Just find something that was made by using up a lot of accuracy. That should do it.
A target with nothing but bulls-eyes will do.
You would have to get extremely (un)lucky to do so. A human, lying down, takes up about 1 m^2 of space. Even if you fired it at a city with a population density of 10000 people/km^2, you’d still only have about a 1% chance of hitting someone (if you could even aim well enough to hit a city from 12000 km away).