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 leveling up. 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. 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 5 Soul to create the effect you will need to spend 3 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.
A Primer on Minor Elemental Manipulations
The rules here only give a brief example of how minor elemental manipulations work, but that may still leave many questions. The system itself is basically a freely open version of magic, just low level. With it you can quickly light fires for example without needing a full on magic spell. You have full on creative freedom here, within the guidelines of the rules and approval of your GM. Here are just a few quick examples to get you started, the magic page on your element may provide a few more examples.
If you are a pyromancer with the flame affinity you could use minor manipulations to light a camp fire or make a torch. Light affinity could make their weapon glow.
Someone of air might use this to sustain their breathing for longer breath holding, whereas someone of sound might carry their voice or lessen any noises being made.
Someone of earth may make stone outcroppings to ease their climb, while someone of nature could bring up roots to trip those chasing them.
Perhaps famously someone of time no matter their affinity could cause their pursuant to trip and fall, like in the example below.
An Example of a Minor Elemental Manipulation
Lets say we have a mage, Zalen, who is in a rough spot. An enemy is charging at him and he is not well prepared for it. He does not have time to cast a spell since he has someone to fend off in front of him. He decides to use momentary magic to help him. He targets on the enemy in front of him and makes a quick hand movement. He sends just a little bit of time magic over at his enemy’s ankle, causing his enemy’s feet to run out of sync from the rest of his body. Since the man is running, the magic catches him off-guard. The enemy looses his footing and struggles to keep standing. He stops for a moment to regain his stance before coming farther. Now, Zalen has more time to defend against the enemy in front of him.
This example is just one example of what you can do with minor manipulations. They are not meant to be powerful, but quick, and to fill in the small spots that magic could help with but don't really call for a spell.
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. Each runic magic page will describe for you the basic effects that the environment would have on your magic.
Gaining Magic Spells
You would gain magic spells similar to how you gain skills. In order to acquire a spell, you must acquire a spell node. Otherwise you will not have any magic. You can acquire spell nodes no matter your profession as every profession's node chart has them. The Runic Mage profession however will have more spell nodes available than any other profession. 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 record the spell information on your spell page of your character sheet.
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 can acquire spells of the flame affinity quite easily. However to acquire spells of the light affinity, which is the other affinity of fire, you will have to sacrifice 2 spell nodes. Or you could learn it through a rune stone.
Costs to learn spells
If the spell is of your element and affinity, it cost 1 spell node to learn a spell. If it is outside of your affinity but of your element you can learn it at the cost of 2 spell nodes. If it is from a rune stone and of your element, the affinity does not matter, it is still at the cost of 1 spell node. Below is the cost breakdown.
- Magic Spell same element and affinity: 1 spell node
- Magic Spell same element different affinity: 2 spell nodes
- Magic Spell different element (only from rune stone, can't be of element you are weak to): 2 spell nodes
- Magic Spell from rune stone same element different affinity: 1 spell node
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 can also learn spells of your element that are not of your affinity. Each spell that you learn through your rune stone of your element cost 1 spell node, however if it is from a different element it cost 2 spell nodes. You can only learn spells from different elements from rune stones.
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 Visual Distortion spell, you need to have it and say that you are using it. You also need to roll for it, rolling its Cast Roll or lower to use it. You would then apply the effect and stat cost.
When using magic you also have a spell casting speed. The spell 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 spell casting speed. If you have a runic speed of 3 and the spell you are casting has a spell casting speed of 4, the spell will not take place until your next turn. 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.
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 hold the first spell of the spell family. To make available the next spell, you need to let the rune stone "learn" the next spell by using one of your spells you can learn. Each time your character can learn a spell, you could let the rune stone learn the spell instead. Then you will be able to learn that spell as well from the rune stone.
More on using Rune Stones will be discussed in Rune Stones and Enchanting page.