Magic

Now we will be dealing with magic. Although magic is used and obtained like skills and is a part of the skills system, due to it’s complexity, differences, and overall size, magic was given its own sub-section. Here we will focus only on magic, how magic works with the skills system, and list the many different magic spells available.

The Fundamentals of Magic

Before you can even begin to understand how magic works in Legends of Nor’Ova, you need to forget all that you think you know about magic. Magic in Legends of Nor’Ova is very different from magic found in other games, movies, books, and the like. Therefore you will need to read over this section very carefully and familiarize yourself with how magic works in Legends of Nor’Ova, even if you do not plan on using magic yourself. You never know when your character will have to deal with magic and you will want to have a good understanding of how magic works.

To better understand magic, it is important to understand these key points, Magic is Natural, Magic is a Skill, and Magic is Not a Skill.

  • Magic is Natural: In Legends of Nor’Ova, magic is treated as a natural ability in which everyone has access to. Magic is simply the result of manipulating the runic elements of the game world and producing an effect. Since everything that lives and breathes or has lived is tied to a runic element, anyone and any creature can find ways of manipulating their element and producing magic. However you can only manipulate the element that you are connected to. If your character’s runic element is earth, then you can not hope to learn pyromancy (fire magic). You may be able to learn spells from other elements from rune stones however.

  • Magic is a Skill: One of the important things about magic in Legends of Nor’Ova that makes it so different from magic found elsewhere is that magic is part of the skills system. You would obtain magic spells just like you would obtain skills, by spending character points and even increasing their levels. Magic Spells cost Soul and you can only use 1 spell action like you can with skills. There are no spell components to keep track of, unless you go into sorcery, or complicated foreign magic words to remember to use a magic spell. You simply use them like you would any other skill.

  • Magic is Not a Skill: In as many ways as magic spells are like skills, they are also different from normal skills. While you can learn and choose from any type of skill as long as you meet the skill’s prerequisites, that is not the case with magic spells. With magic spells you are limited to choosing spells from your runic element. Also spells are most likely to take longer to use than normal skills, and are often more costly. Magic spells are also categorized differently than regular skills. You also have to roll to successfully use magic, which you may not have to do with skills. Magic also can't be chained like skills. However the largest difference between magic and skills is that along side of magic spells you also have minor elemental manipulations.

What Are Minor Elemental Manipulations?

Minor Elemental Manipulations is quickly manipulating your element to produce a weak magical effect. There may be instances when you do not want to cast a full magic spell, like say you want to light a camp fire or a torch. If your character’s runic element is fire, you would have access to massive fire spells, but all of them would be too costly and too powerful to just light a simple torch or camp fire. You would be more likely to catch yourself or your friends on fire. Instead, this would be a great time to make a minor elemental manipulation. With very small effort your character could pull just enough fire from your element to light the camp fire or torch. The best part of it all is that minor elemental manipulations are so quick and easy to do that they don’t use any of your battle actions. So lighting that torch didn’t slow you down in the least bit. Also anyone can make a minor elemental manipulation, even if they don’t have a single spell. This is because everyone is born under a runic element and everyone has that natural potential to use magic.

How to Use Minor Elemental Manipulations

There is no definitive listing for all the possible minor elemental manipulations you can preform. There are just so many possibilities that what you can and can’t do is only limited to your imagination and your magical power. You simply only need to describe what you want to try to achieve with your minor elemental manipulation and your GM will check to see if your character has enough power to preform it. Let’s say for example that your character’s runic element is earth. Your character falls off of a steep cliff to his certain death. There is no float magic for geomancy. Instead, you decide to make a minor elemental manipulation and pull upon your earth element just enough that the ground becomes soft so that even though it will still hurt when you land you will at least still be alive. If you hadn’t thought ahead and made such a minor elemental manipulation you would be spending the next few hours creating a new character.

So you may be thinking, what are the limits to minor elemental manipulations, if there are any? There are some restrictions that you will need to keep in mind, and they are all listed below.

  • A Minor Elemental Manipulation cannot replicate an existing spell. You cannot use minor elemental manipulations to try to preform a weaker version of an existing spell, however you can use an existing spell to give you and idea. For example, you cannot expect to hover and half the height as with the Float spell, however you can use a similar effect to cause you to fall gracefully feet first or to jump just a bit farther.

  • A Minor Elemental Manipulation cannot be used to heal, do damage, affect armor, or any other major effect.There are spells and skills that do those things. However you could, for example, make a minor water elemental manipulation to increase the effects of a potion or healing spell, or to speed the healing of a wound.

Minor Elemental Manipulation Effects Can Be Sustained

One feature that you have with minor elemental manipulation that you do not have with traditional spells is that their effects can be made to last longer than just for an instant. In other words, they can be sustained. All you would need to do to keep up the manipulation’s effects is to continuously pump in Soul points. You will need to pump in half of the points that you used to create the effect for every round or minute you want the effect to last. So if you used 10 Soul to create the effect you will need to spend 5 Soul for every round or minute you keep up the effect.

Lets say your character’s runic element is fire. You walk into a pitch black room and realize that you have no lantern or torch. No worries, with a minor elemental manipulation, you can create a small glowing ember that gives off a small glow lighting up the area around you. But keeping that glow up for a second isn’t going to help you navigate the dark room, so you decide to keep the glowing ember within the palm of your hand, spending a small amount of Soul for each minute that you need the light for.

Now not every effect can be sustained. You will need to ask the GM if the effect you are wanting to keep going can be sustained or not before doing so.

Environmental Effects on Magic

Due to the fact that elemental magic is elemental, the environment can play an effect on the magic you are casting. If the environment has a larger amount of your element present, your magic will be stronger. If the environment has a lesser amount of the element you are casting, your element will be weaker. If the element present in your environment is about average, then there would be no change.

Gaining Magic Spells

spellexample.png

This is a spell that has no other spell in front of it. If your runic element is fire you can easily gain this spell for 50 character points. If your runic element is fire and you are of the flame affinity, you only need to spend the 25 character points to obtain this spell. You can gain this spell for 50 character points from a rune stone as long as your runic element is not water. Remember, the character point cost is double if you are not of that runic element affinity.

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This is the spell chain of the spell Visual Distortion. As you can see it branches off in several spots. If you wanted to get Fire's Steed, you would need to get master Visual Distortion and Smoke Screen. Also note, this is what would be in a runestone containing Visual Distortion, so if you get a runestone for Visual Distortion, it will contain all of these spells, but it might not contain all of their levels.

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This is the Spell Sheet for your character sheet. Each spell block is formated for you to record up to 4 levels of spell improvements,and has the 4 bubbles to check off.

You would gain magic spells similar to how you gain skills. In order to acquire a spell, you must spend character points. The amount of character points you must spend depends on the spell's cost. In order to acquire a spell, it needs to be a spell that isn't linked to another spell by an arrow, or linked to a spell that you already possess, and it must be in your runic element. 

Once you have acquired a spell, you will fill in the first bubble on the spell block on your magic type spell progression page, and record the spell information on your spell page of your character sheet. After you've acquired that spell, you could pay a higher cost to acquire its second level, then its third, and finally its fourth - if the spell has more than one bubble. For each level you acquire of the spell, you will fill in a bubble. You can only acquire a higher level spell or the next tier level spell in the chain after you have mastered the first level of the spell.

In order to acquire a spell's second level, you need to have master the main spell at level 1. You do not need to acquire the other spells in the spell chain to increase your mastered spell's level, but you do need to master the level you are on before increasing the spell's level.

Like wise, in order to acquire the next tier spell in the spell chain you must master the previous connecting spell first. You do not however need to have upgraded the spell fully to proceed to the next spell.

Runic Element & Runic Affinity

Your runic element is simply the elemental sphere that you are connected to through your runic soul. If you are born under the runic element of fire, then you can access any fire magic spell.

Your runic affinity is which part of the runic element you are stronger connected to. For example, if you have the runic element of fire, you will have an affinity to either flame or light. If your affinity is to flame, then you only have to pay the basic character point cost for that spell, the cost that is listed on the spell tree. Otherwise, you will pay double that cost. Also you will only be able to perform quick manipulations of the flame affinity of your element.

Learning A Spell Through Rune Stones

You can of course learn magic through rune stones. There is a unique advantage to doing so, mainly that you can learn a spell from any element that you are not weak against. So if you are of the fire element you could not learn any water magic, even with a rune stone, however you could learn air magic. You would pay double the listed character point cost if the spell isn't of your affinity, of course.

Learning other elemental magic can of course make you quite the powerful wizard indeed, however it is not the only advantage. It also decreases the character point costs of any spell in your runic element by 25%! So if you were of the runic element of fire, with the flame affinity, you could learn Visual Distortion for 19 character points instead of 25!

You will gain character points as usual when using spells from a rune stone, however you will not be able to use those spells without that rune stone if you do not master them, unless of course they are of your element. Mastering them means reaching their mastery rate maximum. Once that is achieved, you will have that spell permanently, even if you do not have that rune stone equipped. Also you can only learn and use rune stone spells if that rune stone is equipped on your weapon or armor.

Using Magic Spells

In order to use a spell, you must have the spell and declare that you are using it. Meaning that if you want to use the level 1 Visual Distortion spell, you need to have it and say that you are using it. You also need to roll for it, rolling its Success Rate or lower to use it. You would then apply the effect and stat cost.

You also need to decide at which level you want to use the spell. Just because you have the spell all the way at its fourth level, it doesn't mean you have to use it at its fourth level. You might find it more beneficial to only use that spell at the second level, usually because you don't have enough Soul or Endurance to do otherwise. However, if you want to use the spell at a higher level, you will have a lower chance to do so. For example, the level 4 of Sharp Fire has a success rate of 55 meaning that you would need to roll 55 or below to use it which is not an easy task. If you do make that roll, you get to use the spell at Level 4, containing the effects of the 3 previous levels as well. If you do not succeed however, but roll a 70, you get to use the level 2 Sharp Fire, so while you didn't use the level 4 spell, you still get to cast a spell. The catch here is that you will still apply the stat cost of the level 4 spell. 

When using magic you also have a casting speed. The casting speed tells you in how many rounds a normal person would take to cast that spell. The higher up the spell chain, the higher the casting speed. The higher the spell level, the higher the casting speed. If you have a casting speed of 3 and the spell you are casting has a casting speed of 4, the spell will not take place until your next turn. The casting speed will always apply no matter if you choose to use only the level 3 of the spell, it won't decrease like the stat cost will. However, if you fail to cast the spell at the level you are trying to cast it, you don't apply that level's casting speed. Instead you will apply the level's casting speed of the spell you managed to cast. Or if you failed the spell entirely, you have no casting speed to worry about. You still don't get to try again because you used your casting action, but at least it won't decrease from your casting speed for the next round.

spelltableexample.png

Above is an example of reading a spell on the spell table for your elemental magic page. It lists the basics of each level as well as any other basic information, and the success rates and character point costs of each level. If you want more information, you'll need to click on the blue spell name which will take you to the detailed page of the spell.

spellpageexample.png

Above is an example of the spell description page that you might see when you click on the spell's name on the spell table. As you can see, it lists more detailed information about each spell's level. It is advised to open up the spell's description page whenever you acquire a spell to ensure that you have the most relevant information about that spell.

In most cases you do not get to chain together spells. There are however some spells that allow for chaining together. These spells will say so in the spell description. If the spell you are using allows it to be chained with another spell, that means you can also cast that other spell. You will have to remember to apply its stat cost and casting speed.

Unlike with skills, you do not get to chain together all of the spells of a spell chain. This is because while skills aren't self contained, spells are. You can however cast the higher level of the spell, which includes all of the effects of the previous levels and base spell.

Using Spells From the Rune Stone

As stated before, you can also use spells that are in rune stones. It is how you will learn those spells that you may not normally have access to. As long as the rune stone is equipped on your character, you can use the spells within them.

½ of the spells stat cost will come from your character. The other half is drained from the stone. Once that stone runs out of Soul, it looses everything in it and becomes a normal ylem stone. Therefore you’ll need to be careful. Remember, you can only charge it if it is your element!

The spell’s casting speed is dependent upon your character only.

The rune stone will at the very least hold the level 1 of every spell in that rune stone. The levels of each spell within the stone will depend on the stone's purity. The other spells will not open until you have acquired the previous spell connected to it, but you are not required to have mastered that previous spell. You would only need to master it if you want to go to the next spell level.

When the spell is mastered, it will not drain Soul from the rune stone should you have it equipped, it will only drain it from you. HOwever, you can still use the rune stone to cover up to half of its Soul cost should you so desire.

More on using Rune Stones will be discussed in Rune Stones, Anima Stones, and Enchanting page.

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