Wonder item: Pipe of Pied Piper of Hamelin

Question

I am about to start a new Mage 20 campaign. I have never done a campaign of Mage before and while I have been storyteller of Vampire for a few years I am a bit doubtful on how to calculate the spheres of cerain effects.

One player wants theyr player character to have a wonder that is (or works like) the Pipe of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The PC has 2 points in the background Wonder so it means a Wonder of 4 to 6 points. The powers are like this:

• Using the pipe the mage can attract all rats from the surroundings (the rats in the sewers, the rats in that abandoned building, ...). The rats just are called to the mage but the mage cannot instruct the rats to do anything special. I have judge this power as Mind 2 / Correspondence 2 effect.
• Another use of the pipe is put the humans that can hear the mage in a soft trance. The humans will stop to do anything and they will just hear the music and walk behind the mage if he moves. Any violent or distracting event will take the humans out of the trance. I have judge this power to be a Mind 3 effect.

In both cases the actual number of rats or person affected will depend on the number of successes using the Pipe. The Pipe has Arete 5.

Is this wonder balanced rules wise? Are the effect and spheres right?

Answer 1

Although you've correctly sussed out that the second effect is Mind 3, the first one ought to be Life, since non-sapient creatures don't have minds in the ways that humans (and things that think like them) do. If all you're doing is beckoning real-world rats to your area, you could do that with Corr 2/Life 2, as per How Do You Do That?, page 90.