You're not supposed to be able to just invent your own spells EITHER.  You're supposed to look up spells that have been cast a LOT and where mana really easily falls into the resulting ruts in reality.

...yes.

This isn't even actually a Carissa Sevar thing.  Anybody who can cast spells AT ALL in Golarion is going to be able to figure out simple tricks with affinity mana.

Once she's manipulating it, she'll be able to feel that all the usual forces that she expects to affect the mana are still there, weakly tugging at it.  It's just that Earth mana experiences additional forces, stronger and much easier to find balancing points for.  It's as if this mana has all the same physics as Carissa's previous universe, but with a new set of physical laws and forces and mana types added on top of that as addenda, designed to allow people to cast simple spells without... studying very hard.

You're not supposed to be able to just invent your own spells EITHER.  You're supposed to look up spells that have been cast a LOT and where mana really easily falls into the resulting ruts in reality.

...yes.

This isn't even actually a Carissa Sevar thing.  Anybody who can cast spells AT ALL in Golarion is going to be able to figure out simple tricks with affinity mana.

Once she's manipulating it, she'll be able to feel that all the usual forces that she expects to affect her mana are still there, weakly tugging at it.  It's just that Earth-aspected mana experiences additional forces, stronger and much easier to find balancing points for.  It's as if this mana has all the same physics as Carissa's previous universe, but with a new set of physical laws and forces and mana types added on top of that as addenda, designed to allow people to cast simple spells without... studying very hard.