[Thaumatology] Syntactic Magic: Damage Parameter and Modifiers

[Adelus]

I'm currently working on a worked example of a Verb/Noun spell system (with various Traditions as specializations, with altered Verb/Noun difficulty and different practices/trappings) and I'm running into what I feel is a sign of Syntactic Magic's incompleteness.

The Damage parameter is not looking pretty good. There doesn't seem to be any consistent suggestions for how to model the effects of several modifiers present for normal Innate Attacks. For instance, if I were to try and make some kind of Firestorm spell/ritual, which is a 1d Burning attack with a variable Area, Mobile 2 and Persistent, there are no default rules for adding any modifiers.

If we borrow from Personal Abilities, dropping the minimum to 0 and changing points to percent added (with limitations able to counter percent added, but never give back energy or give a skill bonus), we might be able to work out skill penalties/energy costs, but there is already a parameter for Area. As for Persistent, should that be used or the Duration parameter? Should the magnitude of an enhancement/limitation's change be dependent on the total dice as well?

And I've seen suggestions for Cyclic or RoF to just work out the total damage over time or for all the shots, but isn't it different if a spell with 7 cycles ticks once per second compared to once per day?

I've also seen it suggested that you should just add an appropriate effect or word combo to do that kind of meta-magic - I.E. "Control X" in order to modify the behavior of an attack. But this doesn't really answer anything for magnitude. Shouldn't it be different if you modify by adding Armor Divisor (2) compared to Armor Divisor (10)? Or Homing vs. just Guided?

I'm not sure how to go about making a fix or kludge for this, so I'm asking you guys on the forum for any suggestions you might have.

P.S. And what about varying kinds and degrees of penetration modifiers, like Malediction, Armor Divisor, etc.?