Spell Duration, Ending Spells

Typically a spell will have as its duration one of: instantaneous , some finite amount of time, concentration , or permanent . The circumstances under which spells can be ended are as follows.

• Instantaneous spells, even if they have lasting effects, go off and are done. The effects can only be reversed by time and effort, or possibly by other magic.

• Spells that last some finite amount of time may be ended early by their caster as follows. First, anything in the spell description supersedes the following. Second, the caster must still be close enough to the effect they wish to end to cast the spell that caused it. Third, it requires an action to end an effect with a delay of -3 using Csp. If, instead, the caster has done nothing else (other than moving or similar things that are consistent with casting spells) they may concentrate on a spell not requiring concentration and end it on a whim (perception or agility saves may be needed in combat, at referees discretion). This amounts to leaving your attention on the spell to achieve greater control.

• Spells that require concentration end when the concentration fails. If a mage takes damage while maintaining such spells, a stress save is required to keep the spell working. the stress save is normal for stamina damage and at -20 for hitpoint damage. It may or may not be possible to cast additional spells when holding concentration on a spell. If a spell description permits, no problem.

• Finally, permanent spells cannot be turned off except by dispel magic (or illusion) or as specified in the spell description. An exception to this is the rule that any spell requiring a special focus ends if that focus is destroyed.

Spell Casting in Combat

While a mage is casting a spell he is considered to be concentrating and hence has a penalty of twenty to his physical elusiveness. If the mage wishes to stop casting a spell, he must save vs stress, with a bonus of 20. This is called swallowing a spell. If the character takes stamina damage while casting a spell they must save vs stress to either keep casting or stop casting (they decide which). If a character takes hitpoint or health damage they must save vs stress at a penalty of twenty to keep casting or stop casting (again their choice). If any of these saves are blown, the character undergoes spell failure, using the amount he blew the save by as an addition to the spell failure roll. If a character is knocked unconscious while casting a spell they undergo automatic spell failure using the amount they blew the save by as a modifier to the spell failure roll. If a character undergoes spell failure he expends the mana for the spell. If a player successfully stops casting a spell he need not expend any mana.

Spell Casting when you Can't See/Hear

Spell casting requires the caster be able to see his hands (when gestures are required) and hear the magical words he is speaking. In dim light there is a penalty of 1-15 to spell casting rolls with 15 being the penalty for total darkness. Likewise there is a penalty of 1-5 for being unable to hear, for whatever reason. The skills Blind Spell Casting and Deaf Spell Casting can overcome these limitations. Spells that require no gestures or which require to words have no penalties in these circumstances.

Casting with Insufficient Mana

If a character has insufficient mana to cast a spell, but more than zero, and still wishes to cast a spell, then he makes the magic skill roll at -5 per mana lacking. Putting more mana into the spell than the minimum to get it off also requires a separate stress save at -5 per extra mana. This extra mana can be for effect or to hurry a spell. Blowing this stress save just means the spell is attempted at minimal mana. No matter what happens, the character undergoes spell failure (many failure results still let the spell go off). The spell failure is unmodified if the caster makes the casting roll; otherwise it uses the amount the casting roll was blown by as a modifier, as usual. A caster may not under-power a spell when they have sufficient mana for it. Casting a spell that costs more than your remaining mana reduces the caster to zero mana. There is no penalty, other than the automatic failure and draining of all mana, for insufficient mana. Insufficient stamina is another story - see the section on Casting with Insufficient Stamina.

Casting with Insufficient Stamina

Normally a spell costs one stamina to cast - a few don't and this is specified in their spell descriptions. Various spell failure results and other problems can cause a spell to cost more than one stamina. If a character is short stamina then each missing stamina costs d3 points of hitpoint damage, without defense, after the spell goes off. Replace 2d3 with d6 for multiple d3's.

Hurrying a Spell

There are three ways to hurry a spell. The caster can spend additional stamina, spend additional mana, or simply be careless about the spell.

• A mage may spend stamina to increase his casting speed, one stamina per additional pip of casting speed, but he may no more than double his casting speed in this fashion. This does not count as reducing the spells casting time.

• The caster may sacrifice one from his casting roll per pip faster he casts a spell, by being careless. This may not more than halve the casting time nor reduce it to better than -3.

• The caster may knock three off of a spell's casting time for +1 mana. This may not more than halve the casting time nor reduce it to better than -3.

The limits on these latter two techniques are linked in that the reduction in casting time, due to carelessness and added mana, may no more than halve the nominal casting time of a spell. For example, suppose a mage is casting an offensive spell with a delay of -12 and has a casting speed of +4. The mage may add up to +4 to his casting speed by spending up to four stamina. Separate from this the caster may reduce the casting time of the spell to -6 by either taking -6 to his casting roll or by spending two added mana. The caster could also split the difference and spend one added mana and take a penalty of -3 to cast. Added mana used to speed a spell does count against the casting roll at the usual rate of minus two per mana.

Targeting Spells

Many spells specify their range as ``targeting roll''. This means the spell requires a hit roll on a specific target, as described in combat, with the spell bonus (or possibly missile bonus if this is specified) and a -1/1" range modifier, unless the spell affects an area, which is treated in the next section. This range modifier gets worse in conditions of poor visibility. If the spell doesn't hit its intended target it will still hit something. The referee may declare a set of probabilities for objects in the area of the intended target, biased by the miss in a reasonable fashion, and roll to decide what it hits. The referee may alternately just state what happens. If a lone target it standing in front of a wall, for example, then a miss almost certainly hits the wall.

Area Effect Spells

Spells that don't affect a specific target (person, creature, etc.) but rather an area may be targeted as normal spells on a specific target. Such a successful targeting roll puts the target in question at the center of the area of effect. Area effect spells may also be thrown at a hex. A hex has a physical elusiveness of thirty, which means even a klutz has a seventy percent chance of hitting a nearby hex. Landing a spell in the same hex as a creature that is moving (has moved or is intending to move in the current combat round, remember, combat is a quantization of a continuous process) requires you to hit half the creature's physical elusiveness or 30, whichever is larger. Area effect spells take a range modifier of -2/1" instead of -1/1" unless the spell description specifies otherwise.

In the event that a hit roll with an area of effect spell (or attack of any sort if you're feeling lazy) misses then follow these easy steps. First use a die roll or common sense to determine which direction the miss went. Then if the miss was by less than 30, roll d6. If you get a 1 or 2, you missed by one hex, otherwise re-roll; keep adding a hex to the distance and re-rolling until you get a one or a two. If the hit roll was blown by 30 or more, use the above process but stop only if you roll a 1. The fast way to do this is to roll an hand full of dice and take them in right to left order until you hit a die of the right sort.

Foci

There are two kinds of Foci; personal and special. Personal foci enable a mage's Magic skill while special foci hold together the threads of a particular spell.

Personal Foci

Each mage has a personal focus. It contains a good part of his power and is acquired when a character learns Magic Skill. The focus may be any material object at all and must be on the mage's person or he will double the casting time and mana cost of each of his spells. Examples of common foci are a ring, a staff, a sword or a gem. A priest's focus, if he casts spells, is often his holy symbol. Making a new personal focus costs three unspent experience points or three mana point and fifteen determination points. A mage may stock spares if he wishes or have them made at exorbitant costs. A mage may take over another mage's personal focus after his death for one experience point and five DPs.

Special Foci

Some spells have an (F) after their name. They require a special focus, which may be any material object, including the mage's own personal focus, unless otherwise specified in the spell's description. A special focus is absolutely required to cast the spell it is associated with and a special focus requires an experience point to make after the beginning of play. The focus is made while the spell is being learned and focused spells cost +1 DP per rank to learn. Once made, a special focus may be used by anyone who knows the spell it is associated with. An example of a specific focus is the focus of a farsee spell which is a crystal ball or mirror. If the special focus of a spell is destroyed then the spell ends. A magic item incorporating a spell with a special focus requires that the magic item be a special focus for that spell or that the person using the magic item have a special focus for the spell.

Mana

Mana is magical force that pervades the world. All living things have some mana, usually a small amount, although most cannot use it. A mage draws in and stores mana and thus has an unnaturally large amount. Some animals such as cats and goats have 2d6 mana and are thus sometimes found in association with mages. Various areas of the world may have more or less mana. The elemental plane of ether is the source of mana and usually the rate at which people and items recharge is approximately doubled there. Areas like the Void or the Abyss may be low in mana or actively suck mana out of characters and items. Each referee will want to create his own low and high mana areas. The simplest system is to have a (possibly negative) multiplier to a mage's and item's recharge rate.

Regaining Mana

A mage's mana recharge factor is one third his second requisite, rounded normally, using his highest second requisite in any area of magic he has. For a character that uses mana but who is not a mage (who does not have magic skill) the recharge factor is one-sixth of their willpower. The rate a mage recharges depends on the amount of mana he has already and his physical condition.

• Starting at empty a mage regains an amount of mana equal to his recharge factor at the rate of one per minute.

• He then regains up to a total of twice his recharge factor at a rate of one per five minutes.

• Thereafter the mage regains mana at the rate of one per five minutes if he is meditating (cannot be done while wounded), one per ten minutes if sleeping, one per twenty minutes if resting, one per hour if walking riding, etc, and not at all otherwise, e.g. in combat, bleeding, or suffering from severe wounds. Magic skill is required in order to meditate.

Some magic items may contain mana not associated with their embedded spells. The mage may use this mana as his own but it recharges independently as if it were a recharging magic item at a rate of one per ten minutes. This sort of mana is embedded into an item by Thaumaturgy or Item Smith spell or occurs naturally in some stones. See the section on Campaign Color for details.

The Doubling Factor

This rule is the result of play testing and is meant to prevent something called the ``Conniption 4k-Chthulhu Masher Beast'' (due to M. Coleman Miller). In the Illusion spells are a number of spells that have 2x effect for +1 mana. A player in the original ROP campaign designed a clot of two-to-the-twelfth (yes that's 4096) razor edged tentacles, a device capable of eating a minor God. The rule to fix this is as follows. The number of doublings a mage may spend extra mana for are limited to two more doublings than his rank in excess of the spells rank. Hence, a rank three mage casting a rank one spell is two ranks above the spell and can purchase four doublings. If a given casting has two or more effects that can be doubled, this rule is applied separately to those doublings. The exception to the doubling rule is duration where as many doublings as the caster can afford may be purchased. This rule does not apply at all to linear increases, e.g. ``+1 missile for +1 mana''.

Priestly Magic and Invocational Spells

Priests are different from mage's in that they learn magic more as ritual and have less theoretical understanding of spells and the process of magic. This is a disadvantage - they simply pay full price for their areas of magic and never get the rake off on cost for learning subsequent areas in a school. On the other hand, priests have the help of a god with some of their spells. The spells where the priest gets help are called invocational spells , designated within the text of the spell description. For reason of game balance, low ranking mage spells cannot be too useful. For reason of plausibility they cannot have too great a reach or complexity even if they aren't so useful. Priests spells peel back both these restrictions to some degree. The rational for this is that some of their spells are not creating the effect directly but are rather invoking the help of the priest's patron deity. Either the God is consciously taking a hand or the priest is simply triggering a part or portion of a spell the God cast long ago. Examples of invocational spells are ones that allow fast healing, permit the priest to know what is going on far away, or which permit the opposition of powerful extra-planar beings. These are rank 4+ sorts of effects that priests may be able to tap at lower ranks of spell.

The flip side of invocational spells is that they are usually hedged about with restrictions. A priest may be able to talk across the length of the continent but only with another priest while they are both in temples. A priest may have an incredible spell for creating secret doors but one that only works inside his patron's temple. A priest may be able to do healing at far greater rates than a mage but the ability will only work on those of whom the deity will likely approve. In addition to the restrictions having to do with the ultimate author of the effect's personal prejudices, use of an invocational spell involves some level of notice by the deity. The degree and type of attention varies from god to god and spell to spell. As a rule of thumb, more power implies more attention. Gods with a cult having a complex code of morality will pay more attention than those with a mission. The details should be included in the spell descriptions of invocational spells.

Priest spells that are not invocational are treated, within the rules, exactly as mage spells. They may be placed in items, cast as usual, written on scrolls, and draw no special attention from the patron deity.

Invocational spells, since they are incomplete, may or may not be placed in items, on scrolls, etc. Each spell should specify this. In the absence of a specification it is assumed that invocational spells can be placed in items and written on scrolls, but the referee may step in and declare otherwise if there are balance problems. In addition any invocational spell that goes in an item may have the restriction that it will only work for or only fail to work on a priest or follower of the god (there were four possibilities there).

The referee should go to some trouble to specify the details of a god's cult. Their common dress, ranks, church structure, holy symbol(s), and of course a spell list. It is possible for a god's invocational spells to outlive the god leaving the possibility of a cult of a dead god that still has spells with power. If an adventure involves the death of a god the referee should figure out the effect on the invocational spells of the priests involved.

Magic Items

A magic item may or may not require magic skill or concentration to use, the item's description will specify. The default magic item requires concentration and may only be triggered by a person or creature with magic skill. If an item requires concentration, you use the combat modifiers for casting a spell while using it (minus twenty physical elusiveness). Some magic items will have permanently embedded spells that function when the item is worn. Putting spells with a duration in such a magic item extends their duration indefinitely. For example, a ring with a permanent protection from fire spell with a trigger of being worn will protect the wearer so long as he wears the ring. Other magic items will have mana in them which must be deducted as it is used. It may recharge or be rechargable. Most player character mages will notice that many spells that might well be useful in combat take a very long time to cast. Spells in a magic item may be activated with a delay of minus three as the time to cast such spells is folded, for the most part, into the creation of the item. It is possible to create items that take longer to activate by simply so specifying in the trigger conditions.

Making Magic Items

Overview

There are four sorts of magic items, charged, recharging, permanent, and special. A charged item has mana in it that may be used once to power a spell and is then gone. The mana may be replaced by a mage with some effort. Recharging items are like charged items but they can absorb mana out of the environment and recharge themselves roughly as fast as a mage's fastest recharge rate (1 mana per 10 minutes or 6 per hour). Permanent items have their spells functioning whenever they are properly triggered and gain a huge duration advantage. Special items are created by casting spells that create something magical. Magic potions, Bradley Marbles, and a Cloak of Invisibility are all examples of this type of magic item. Excepting special items, which vary a lot, charged items are the easiest to make, recharging the next easiest, and permanent the hardest. For both sorts of charged items the charge is recorded in mana points. When a spell is cast, its mana cost is deducted from the reserve.

Activation point costs for magic items

All magic items are made by dumping activation points from the mage into the item. The loss of such points is permanent: they are lost to the mage. Activation points are either mana from the mage's personal store or unspent experience earned by the mage.

• A charged item ends up containing as much mana as its most expensive spell times the number of activation points dumped into it. As spells are cast their costs is deducted from the reserve.

• A recharging item requires a number of activation points equal to half it's mana reserve. All the spells in it draw on that mana reserve.

• A permanent item requires that its creator use as many activation points as the sum of the mana in each of its spells. These spells then function whenever the trigger conditions of the item are met.

• An item that requires a special focus must either be the special focus (which costs +1 activation point) or will only work when used by someone who has a special focus for that spell and knows how to use the special focus (typically this means they must know how to cast the spell).

A magic item may have one or many spells in it but only spells it's creator can cast. A spell that requires a special focus requires that either the magic item be a special focus or that the person using the magic item have such a special focus when they use the item.

Action Diagrams

Magic items are described with action diagrams which specify how they are activated and which of their spells go off under what conditions. These action diagrams have access to various information depending on what the mage that created them does. The complexity of a magic item is measured by the number of decisions that its action diagram contains, the number of different types information it has available to it, and the type of item (charged, recharging, or permanent) that it is. Here is an example of the action diagram for a wand that a fire elementalist might want to create. The wand has both a fire bolt and fireball spell in it and the possessor of the item is supposed to be able to trigger either one.

If possessor is trying to trigger item then
If possessor wants a firebolt
then throw a firebolt,
otherwise throw a fireball.

This item makes two decisions and has access to simple information from its possessor's mind. The first decision is not strictly speaking needed but it is safer. Without it, if the possessor of an item was trying to trigger a ring and was in the state of concentration used to trigger magic items, then the ring or the wand might go off (or both on successive rounds). The cost of various sorts of information is given in the Magic Item Information and Complexity Chart. The player wishing to design their own magic items should peruse the examples of magic items to get a good idea how to use the various sorts of magic item subsystems. When a magic item has a sense it has it at its creator's level of perception and uses his perception save. Thus if a hard-of-hearing mage who manufactured a ring of thunderbolts triggered by the command word ``blast'' it would very likely require a loud yell of ``blast'' to get the ring to work. Using the example fire wand, the possessor would simply visualize the effect he wants, fireball or firebolt. Normally sending information to the magic item requires concentration, for +2 complexity the item does not require that the caster concentrate to send the information to the caster. An additional benefit of paying for avoiding concentration is that someone without magic skill can, themselves, mentally trigger an item that does not require concentration. The caster may leave an empty space (expansion slot?) in an item's action diagram by simply having a decision that points to it. There are many examples of magic items in the section with the catchy title Examples of Magic Items .

When executing an action diagram, a trained mage will be aware when a magic item wants additional information but not necessarily what that information is. The ability to ask for specific information can get around this limitation. In our example magic item, the fire wand, inability to give the correct answer could cause trouble: if a mage using the wand tried to trigger it to produce a lightning bolt he would get a fireball - the way the action diagram is written if a mage tries to trigger the item and doesn't ask for a firebolt, he gets a fireball. A better action diagram for the wand might be:

If possesor is trying to trigger item then
If firebolt desired throw a firebolt, else
If fireball desired throw a fireball.

But this makes an additional decision and is hence a more complex magic item. An item pays only for the most complex sort of information it needs from the possessor's mind. If it needs moderately complex and very complex data that costs 4 and not 6 points. Knowing the possessor is unconscious as the result of an attack is moderately complex information. Knowing what the possessor considers to be his home is complex information. Knowing what skills or profession a wielder has or is is counted as complex information.

The simplest action diagram for a permanent item is ``function continuously''. Such an item requires no information and is on whenever it is worn or possessed.

Computing Complexity

The complexity of a magic item is the number of decisions it must make plus the complexity adds for information sources, memory, and control structures, plus 3 if the item is recharging or 6 if it is permanent. An item pays the complexity cost of an information source only once no matter how often it uses that source. The complexity add for type of mana (charged, recharging, permanent) is only paid for the best sort of mana in the item if it has multiple sorts. There is a type of decision called a parameter check used to allow spells that can spend added mana in several ways to be cast in those different ways based on moderately complex information from the possessors mind. The complexity of a parameter check is one, plus one for each additional stacked spell inside the parameter check (stacked spells are those that can be ``cast with'' other spells like soft lightning). A protection spell that could trade of between added duration and added protection would have a complexity one parameter check. A lightning bolt that could trade of damage for additional bolts and optionally be forked, soft, or include lightning travel would require a complexity four parameter check; three stacked spells.

Optional Extra Decisions

There is an extra sort of decision that a referee may wish to exclude or only permit to extremely advanced mages. A Loop is a decision that allows a magic item to keep going from its creation or after it is triggered. A Loop is a complexity 2 decision. With loops an action diagram of a sacrificial knife that was used to summon demons could look like this:

If blood sacrifice performed then
Repeat Loop
If charged, Summon Demon
Until abjured in name of Azinthill

This knife would continue summoning demons as soon as it had first been triggered with blood. The complexity of the knife would be 1 - knowledge of own mana, 2 - moderately complex information from the possessor's mind to verify the caster has used the item in a blood sacrifice, 2 - for hearing, 2 - two different If decisions, 2 - a Loop, and 3 for recharging item, for a total of 13. Loops can be Repeat (stuff) Until Condition , While Condition do (stuff) , or N Times do (stuff) , where N is a whole number.

Waiting permits a magic item to wait until something sets it off. An action diagram might contain ``Wait until touched'' or some such. A ``wait'' requires that the item have access to the information needed to resolve the specified conditions. The advantage of a wait is that as soon as the item can function (it charged, etc.) it functions instantly when the wait until condition is fulfilled.

Actually Making Items

When a mage is making a magic item, he draws the action diagram for the item and checks it with the referee. With the action diagram in hand and the complexity computed the caster puts in the spells one at a time, making the casting roll for each one. This casting roll is at a penalty of -3 per point of complexity in the item in addition to any other casting penalties for rank or mana. This is the complexity of the whole entire item, not just the part of it connected with the specific spell. The skill Item Maker can help with this.

Any spells that are not put in or which get a spell failure result in which the spell fails cause their position(s) in the action diagram to be a ``do nothing'' that spends as much mana as the spell that would have gone there. A mage can intentionally give an item a part of its action diagram that causes all the charged or recharging mana to run out all over the floor. This may not be a bad thing, see the section of Items and Spell Failure. It can also be used to make items that require a ritual and bleed their charge if the ritual is wrong. When the last spell is placed (or fails to be placed) into the item the activation points (mana or unspent experience) needed to activate the item are drained from the mage and into the item and it becomes active.

If the spells are cast in a single set way with a fixed mana cost then they are simply referred to by name in the action diagram. If a spell is to be made variable then they must have access to moderately complex information from the possessor's mind and make a decision called a parameter check with bounds set by the maker of the magic item. For example, a ring with a lightning bolt modified by a lightning form with 12 mana available may be cast as a fixed spell with a 5/1 die lightning bolt that causes the wielder to appear where the bolt hits. With a parameter check the item can function as a 5/1 die lightning bolt with the travel ability or up to +7/+7 dice of damage, a maximum of 12/8 dice. The magic item action diagram would look like this:

If user triggering item
If user wishes travel: 5/1 lightning form
else throw lightning (Parameter Check) 5-12d6

There are three decisions, two Ifs and one parameter check, and the item uses simple information to check the wielder's wishes and moderately complex information to decide on the 5-12 die base damage for the lightning bolt. Its complexity is thus 3+2=5. Since this item is for use by a warrior it might be a good idea to raise the complexity to 7 and remove the need to concentrate in order to trigger the item. A parameter check must have a default setting that is used if the information used to do the parameter check is not available for whatever reason.

Spell Failure when Making Items

When a mage creates a magic item with a spell that failed there are two possible cases. If the result does not allow the spell to go off, then whatever bad side effects there may be happen to the caster, once, and there is an empty (but mana sucking) spot in the item's action diagram. If the result allows the spell to function but with bad side effects then the spell in the item has those side effects but it otherwise used normally. If there is an empty spot in a diagram then a mage may, for added complexity equal to one-third that of the original item in question, graft a new action diagram into that spot. None of these spells can draw any more mana than the empty spot was supposed to. These failure based empty slots are thus slightly more limited than standard empty slots.

Time to Make Magic Items

In addition to any time cost in determination points of casting spells in an item, it takes a number of DPs equal to three plus the complexity of the item plus four times the the amount the complexity of the item exceeds the mage's highest rank in any area of magic. So if a rank five fire elementalist were making a complexity seven item it would cost him 3+7+4*(7-5)=18 determination points.

Time formula:

Mana or Experience Cost of Items

Charged items have an amount of mana in them equal to the cost of the most expensive spell in them, multiplied by the number of activation points (mana or unspent experience) spent making them. The caster may put in a number of activation points less than or equal his highest rank in any area of magic that he used to place a spell in the item. As spells are cast from a charged item their mana is deducted from the total mana store. So, for example, a lightning bolt wand made by a rank 4 air elementalist with a (parameter check) up to 12/8 die lightning bolt would contain 14, 28, 42, or 56 mana if the mage put in 1, 2, 3, or 4 activation points. The caster could cast a 5/1 mana lightning bolt and would deduct 7 mana from the reserve. Note that it is possible to expand a reserve later - which is a nice hedge against spell failure. You must spend at least one activation point to make an item.

Recharging magic items have a mana store equal to twice the invested activation points and it is up to the mage to put in enough mana or unspent experience to power the spells in them. There is no limit to the amount of mana or experience a mage may invest in a recharging item. As spells are cast, mana is deducted from the store and it returns at a rate of 6 mana per hour in a region with nominal recharge rate.

Permanent magic items require one activation point per mana in any embedded spell. This high cost may be mitigated by use of special materials, natural mana containing objects, or other dodges. Making a ring set with mana stones (gems containing some natural store of mana) might allow a caster to avoid spending too much experience. A caster must spend at least one mana or experience of his own when making an item.

What Can Be Permanent?

Only spells with a nontrivial duration may be put in a permanent item. Whenever a spell in a permanent magic item is activated by its action diagram it is on, there are no duration restrictions. This is one of the big motives for making a permanent magic item: you get the effect without any restriction on duration. Spells that have an instantaneous duration, like a lightning bolt, may be, at best, placed in a recharging item. Spells cast out of charged or recharging items have their usual duration.

Sequencing and Delay

A magic item can fire one spell per round if functioning independent of a character and may fire one spell per possessor's action otherwise. A second spell counts as an off hand action if it does not require a second triggering event. An item that fires a lightning bolt and a heal self in response to the same trigger can get those spells off with a delay of eight (or whatever the possessor's off hand action delay is) between the, if the action diagram (and mana reserve in the item) permit. In other words, a single action by the possessor of a magic item may trigger multiple spells. Spells that allow a delay or trigger conditions aside, an action diagram may contain both delays and multiple spells in a single action. In the case that there are multiple spells that result from a single triggering event then they go off on successive caster's actions (if the caster makes that their action) or at a speed of 2d6+creators Csp-3 if the posessor of the item ``fires and forgets'' (the three may be replaced by other, longer delays, at the whim of the magic item's creator). If the creator's CSP is unknown make it d3+highest rank in item (and record it). The caster may also specify a delay or trigger condition that uses the information available to the item. Trigger conditions are covered by the complexity cost of senses but a delay has a complexity cost of log base 2 of the length of the delay in rounds, rounded normally. An item with multiple delays pays only for the longest delay it has.

A magic item that has a mind is an exception to these rules. A number of different spells, e.g. animate gem, can be used to build a magic item with a mind. Such a magic item can use its action diagram to constrain the use of the spells by the intelligence or can simply use the intelligence as a controller. This may give you an annoying magic item but also one that can function autonomously. Having a mind in a magic item requires the mind be externally supplied by some means separate from the making of magic items. It such a mind is present the caster may refer to it in the action diagram (this counts as a decision) or simply give it control (this is an additional complexity of one). The speed of such a mind is typically inherited from it's creator - see spell descriptions and the section on items with minds for details.

Modifying Existing Items

Expanding or Modifying a Charged Item

For charged items, a caster who goes up a rank, who didn't maximally power an item when he made it, or who acquires an item which contains at least one spell in its action diagram which is in an area of magic he knows may expand the item's charge capacity. The time this takes is 5 DP plus the difference in the DP cost of making the original and expanded item, as computed in the section on time to make magic items. For most charged items this complexity difference is zero but the caster may also emend the action diagram. If the action diagram is emended (modified without adding any additional spells - spells may be removed) then a casting roll in an area of magic that the character and at least on spell in the item have in common is required at -3 per added, deleted, or modified complexity and -1 per original complexity. If this roll is blown by 30 or less the attempt simply fails. If it is blown by more than 30 then the referee may capriciously modify the action diagram.

Grafting Action Diagrams

It is possible to put a second, independent magic item into the a given physical focus, both items function independently. This increases the complexity of putting in the new magic item by one third the complexity of the old item. The action diagram of an old magic item may be made a part of the action diagram of a new item for an increased complexity equal to one-half the complexity of the old diagram, if the maker has at least one area of magic represented in the old action diagram. The full complexity of the old action diagram is used if the mage making the modifications does not have at least one area of magic represented in the old action diagram. It is easy to set up a spell failure of the ``impossible circumstances'' sort this way. Making the old tree part of the new tree has the effect of allowing the new magic item to draw on the mana store of the old item. It may also allow a mage to recharge an item he previously could not as it may add a spell he knows to an item that did not used to have them. If there is an (intentional or failure based) empty slot in an items action diagram then a new action diagram may be grafted on in that spot for added complexity equal to 1/3 the original item's.

Changing Physical Foci

For a cost of ten DPs plus one DP per point of complexity in an item, a mage may attempt to move one magic item from one physical focus to another. This requires a magic skill roll, at +5 per added determination point spent on care, to a maximum of twice the mage's magic skill roll. There is a penalty of -3 per area of magic involved in the item that the caster does not have as well as -10 per school he does not have. In addition there is a penalty of -15 per rank above the caster's of the highest ranking spell in the item being moved. If the caster blows the roll by 30 or more there is no effect, nothing changes. If the caster blows the roll by 30 then there is a 50% chance the item will be transfered and every spell in the item gains an unmodified spell failure roll. The transfer may be to an empty slot in another item in which case there is an additional DP cost of 1/3 the complexity of the item accepting the moved item; the magic skill roll is also penalized by the complexity of the accepting item.

Getting back the Charge

Both charged and recharging magic items need to get their charge back at some point. It takes one DP of meditation over a charged magic item to recharge it by the mage's recharge factor (see : Regaining Mana) and the mage doing the recharging must know at least one spell in the item to recharge it. Round normally for fractional DPs. A recharging item recharges at a rate of one mana per ten minutes (like a meditating mage). Both of these recharge rates assume that the magic item is sitting in magically normal territory. The multiplier for recharge in especially mana rich or mana poor regions applies to recharging both sorts of magic items.

Some Special Cases of Items

Spells with Runes

A number of spells such as Rune of Accuracy, Magestaff, or Rune of Wounding force the mage to go to a great deal of trouble to create a rune which does nothing until mana is dumped into it. This dumping of mana has a delay of (-3) and is much easier than casting a spell. In particular, it requires no spell casting roll and allows the caster to use combat rather than spell casting modifiers to his elusiveness.

Any mage may learn to activate a runic spell on an item in his possession. This requires a number of DP equal to the highest rank rune in the spell times three, +5 if the mage does not have the area of magic for the rune, +10 if the mage has no area of magic in the school for the rune. This cost is divided by three if the mage has the spell in question.

Such runes are much easier to make permanent than normal spells. Any mage who wishes (or is forced for that matter) may permanently activate such a rune by permanently expending the mana. This action has a delay of (-1) per mana expended and requires concentration. The referee may disallow any particular rune from this rule. Keep in mind that weapons are constantly at risk of breaking and are hence very "fragile". The complexity of such magic items is zero and they are of type ``special''.

Spells on Scrolls

The skill Scroll Making produces scrolls that, when read, cause the spell written on them to go off. The scroll contains complete directions for casting the spell and the needed mana but it isn't a charged, recharging, or permanent magic item; it is special. The person reading the scroll is actually using their own mind and spirit to cast the spell. The scroll isn't doing it. This is a technical distinction that may be important in some circumstances. Scrolls are not rechargable - they are rewriteable. See the skill Scroll Making for details.

Spell versus Spell Rolls

If two spells have opposite effects, e.g. a pest summoning spell and a pest dismissing spell, or opposed effects, e.g. two elementalists both trying to control the same elemental, then the two spell must roll versus one another. The more recent spell rolls to defeat the extant one. The number to roll under is 50 adjusted by 10 per spell rank and 3 per mana in the appropriate direction. Any spell may spend extra mana to modify any spell versus spell roll it is involved in by 5 per added mana used to do nothing else, save for Dispel Magic and Dispel Illusion which are explained in their description.

Breaking Magic Items

This section covers the rules for breaking magic items. In overview, the magic in a magic item tends to hold an item together in spite of outside forces that would normally destroy it. This is reflected by the magic items intrinsic save , described below.

Magic Item Intrinsic Save

A magic item's intrinsic save is

Items with Minds

A magic item with a mind has an intelligence, wisdom, charisma, willpower, and luck. These values are typically inherited from a creator or are, unless otherwise specified, three times the rank of the spell that created them. From these basic stats the magic item also has spiritual stats (Ego, Mind, and Sanity) and insanity, luck, magic, perception, and stress saves, determination points, spirit and magic casting speeds, mental elusiveness, and perceptual integrity. The perception save only applies to senses an item has. These senses are used when the item must make decisions and resist coercion.

Spiritual combat can be used to ``possess'' items letting the possessor become the item's mind or, while the item's mind is recovering, making the item act like a mindless item. An item with a mind can use the spells in the item of it own volition. Typically, an owner can use a magic item normally unless the item's mind objects. In this case a competitive stress save is needed. The item makes a stress save and then the owner must make a stress save at minus the amount the item made its save by (a normal save if the item blew its save) to use the item normally. The stress save adds +2d3 pips to the time needed to use the item. Spells can be thrown at an item if the caster is aware of the item's mind and the referee feels they are appropriate, e.g. the control spells in item smithy that coerce an item's mind. Add an item's intrinsic saves to its ``character sheet'' if you make one up. An item's Mind is added to its intrinsic save as a magic item.

If an item has embedded skills, e.g. in a Rune of Power, then the items mind may use them itself or let the item's owner use them. The owner can use them over the item's objections with a competitive stress save, as detailed above. If the skills are physical, these skills may not be much use but skills like areas of magic can be used by the item's mind. If the creator of the item's mind had magic skill then the item's mind is considered to have it too with the roll granted by its statistics. Powering spells cast by the item's mind uses mana from the item. An item's mind can learn new spells if it has senses (and a way to learn, e.g. sharing senses with a mage or something). An item's mind need not use gestures and words in the real world - they are considered to be being made on a small pocket of the spirit plane, but the spells go off in the world where the item is.

Sometimes a creature, like an elemental or demon, is bound into an item as its mind. These rules cover that circumstance as well. The creature cannot use its physical statistics and its body is inapparent. Its mental statistics are used as its statistics as an item mind.

Items with Minds: Communication

A mind in a magic item can talk, by exchanging surface thoughts, with anyone touching an item. They must share a common language for this to be communication. Typically a mind in an item is sort of frozen. It can only gain new skills very slowly and tends to remember things from its past or origin much more efficiently than recent happenings, though this is not always true. If a possessor of such an item practices they may permit an item to use their voice and senses. Some spells may limit or extend the abilities of a mind in an item.

Magic you can Buy

Typically you cannot buy magical items; they must be made or found. Some sorts of minor magic can be purchased for high prices. This section contains a few suggestions (connected with common needs) and sort of a pricing guide. There is no guarantee that anything in particular will be for sale; you must locate an appropriate mage or dealer. In addition with things made to order, keep in mind that spells above third rank can get their caster killed on a bad day and those above fifth rank are often deadly to their casters - unless the caster has an absurdly high rank.

Potions

The rough cost for a potion is based on the rank of the spell needed to create it plus the mana cost of creating it plus a rarity modifier of +10-200% for very rare ingredients. In addition it typical adds 10-50 nobles to have a preservation spell of some sort on the potion. Finally, DPs can cost quite a bit.