[VariousRen]

Backstory, skip to the end for properly stated questions:

I recently switched my group over from a custom made magic system (Quite similar to word magic in Thaumatology) to a combination of Sorcery and RPM. The RPM side is working great, and everything seems to be clearly defined enough to be useful, but general enough to be improvised.

Likewise, Sorcery has been great for almost everything, but I've run into a problem with the Control advantage. I think it's just my inexperience with the advantage in particular and Powers in general, but I'm having a hard time understanding what should and should not be possible with it.

The concept that is causing problems is an elementalist, who creates and controls various materials. Create and Control are obvious, straight forward advantages for this. Perfect! In our last game the players were on the high sea, got into a ship-on-ship battle, and ended up with a 6ft square hole at the water line thanks to the enemies ram. The wizard asked if he could use his Control 2 (Water) spell to stop the water from entering the ship after the ram was removed so they wouldn't sink immediately.

Some very quick and rough calculations ended up with something like 2 tons of water entering the ship every second through a hole that size, so I ruled that no, he couldn't do it (control 2 only effects 40lb of material). But after thinking about it, only the surface of the material would need to be controlled, making a screen of water to hold the rest of the ocean back. Some more thinking made me realise I don't really understand how limited Control is suppose to be!

So my questions:

1. How many levels of control(water) would you need to hold back the ocean through a 6ft square hole?

2. Can you use control to make a surface that holds back the rest, instead of controlling an entire amount of the material (A balloon of controlled material to move other stuff around)?

3. The speed of your control is given in an absolute Level yards/sec. What happens when you use control to force something against something else?

4. If I have control (wood) and an increased range enhancement, can I use that to deflect arrows before they hit me if I'm prepared?

5. How much of the material must you be in contact with to Control it? Could you leave a very thin string of the material leading away from the main mass to you so you can control it at a distance?