I was all prepped for some cool RP involving chanting, detecting magic, then drawing blood from a fellow player to bonding items to them, got a ref to help us handle it mechanically, and he said that “Oh you can just detect magic or bond an item like snapping your finger”
Is this true? I was all ready to do some cool RP and felt disappointed.
By what the wiki says, Create bond is a regular spell.
[quote]Regular spells
[ul]]Require at least ten seconds of appropriate roleplaying/:m][/ul]
…]
To cast a regular spell you must complete at least ten seconds of appropriate roleplaying including spell vocals, and the use of one hand.
[/quote]
If you were do bond me to something, your RP would be much more appreciated than a snapping of your finger. But you do indeed not need to make a minute-long ritual out of it, when time is pressing.
The ref was probably just being metaphorical, or at least I’d hope! The ten seconds of roleplaying is indeed a minimum, and it requires speaking in a voice audible to people for a few metres around you (i.e. a normal speaking voice at least). So it’s not quite “snapping your finger” IC but it is as simple as speaking a ten second incantation at its bare minimum.
All the ref needs to know is logistical however - player and ribbon ID numbers. So I often do the roleplaying first before finding a ref, or vice versa, as it’s rare for a ref to happen to be standing there at the right moment (and it tends to take longer to sort out the logistics than to do the roleplaying…)
All that aside, little elaborate rituals of that sort are completely supported by the game setting and really enhance the feel of magic in my opinion, so I’d go for it in any case!
I’d go with that too; wiki is minimum, what you have planned enhances roleplay. Everybody wins.
So as they say, min physrep is 10 seconds. Typically for Detect Magic I won’t go much beyond that, but a bond will be slightly more involved - I have a couple of incantations I use which are about ten seconds long if I say them at top speed but are usually done slower.
As far as the ref is concerned, for bonding I will usually give them the admin and then go and do the RP while they go and admin someone else, while for Detect Magic I will give them the ribbon ID as fast as I can, then start the RP and keep RPing till they give me the response 
Nobody is going to complain that you have wasted 50 seconds by making your RP too interesting.
As long as people aren’t queuing for the regio behind you, and your target hasn’t got so bored they have wandered off to the toilets, go for it