Arcana Simple System

The following rules are very much an incomplete work in progress. Current notes and drafts can be found here.

## Basics

Each character capable of casting magic possesses an additional INT-based Magic skill.

Each caster possesses a pool of (INT+5+LVL)/2 Mana Points (MP).  The pool gradually regenerates in its entirety over the course of two hours, regardless of rest or other conditions.

## Casting spells

A caster willing to cast a spell must first of all pay its cost in MP and AP.

He must then take a Magic roll. On failure, the spell has no effect on the target.

### ﻿Ａ ｅ ｓ ｔ ｈ ｅ ｔ ｉ ｃ

Casting a spell emits a small amount of light and noise.

The spell will also manifest to the naked eye as it takes effect, e.g. *Damage, DT sensitive* might take the shape of a magical bolt or a ray of light. Feel free to come up with your own trapping.

## Available spells and learning

Each caster starts with the spells *Light* and *Telekinesis, light* for free in his repertoire.

A caster's repertoire of spells is increased by purchasing the Additional Spells perk. The perk can be purchased at level 2, then again at levels 6, 12, 16 and 20. Each perk unlocks two new spells.

## Spell list

Where

* **Range**:
	+ Self: can only affect caster, no modifiers to the Magic roll;
	+ Touch: can affect caster or a target he's able to touch, no modifiers to the Magic roll;
	+ Short range: can affect a target at a distance, with the relative modifiers to the Magic roll;
* **MP**: cost in Mana Points for the spell;
* **AP**: cost in Action Points for the spell;
* **Lasting**: at the beginning of his round, the caster may extend the duration of a Lasting spell active in the previous round, by paying again its MP and AP cost. No Magic roll is required.

## Design notes

### Goals

* Priorities, in order of importance: balance, simplicity, show accurateness, FoE accurateness, Fallout accurateness.
* Casters should not be able to rely exclusively on magic and live a happy life.
* Thus, acquiring magic should be limited and cheap.
* Magic should be as little of a closed system as possible, that is to say it should depend on Skills and SPECIAL

### Implementation choices

* For symmetry with all other abilities, Magic is a skill and casting always requires a roll to succeed.
* For simplicity's sake, there is no Potency of sorts.
* To discourage minmaxing, spells tend to depend on a variety of SPECIAL's.
* To allow casters to also acquire other abilities and to avoid overspecialization, there are very few perks dedicated to magic.
* Mana is meant to be such that the caster can more or less enter each encounter with a full pool. The pool should be expended quickly, then relatively quickly regenerate out of combat.
* In accord, the mana pool is shallow. This requires deliberation on which spells to cast and allows to write some mildly powerful ones, knowing that, with a sizable mana cost, they'll only get used one or two times per encounter and thus won't be too unbalancing.
* The mechanism for spells with a duration is not very flexible, especially in terms of MP granularity. This however comes with a considerable tradeoff in simplicity.
* Spells liberally offload mechanics to other parts of the ruleset. This makes them more elegant and increases integration.
* There are always hard rules for everything. A GM might decide to ignore them if he likes, as is the golden rule by default, but the ruleset always offers something to fall back to.
* Complicated formulas are not the end of the world, especially if they can be computed when levelling and then cached, but an effort is made to avoid them.
* Complicated control-flow for spell usage is absolutely forbidden.

### John Faggot the Average

On average, a FoE/Muny Character would have a value of 5.7 in each SPECIAL.

Let John Faggot the Average have 6 in all SPECIAL's. He will be our test dummy for the effectiveness of spells.

Notation: JFAx, where x is his character level.

2. ↑ Use Doctor if you're playing with the split skills.
3. ↑ Depending so heavily on a skill makes the spell roughly scale with level.
4. ↑ The existence of a healing spell is not debatable. Consequently, Unicorns will always be the best healers. It then makes sense to require some investment in the area for the spell to be of use.
5. ↑ This is necessary because MP regenerate very quickly.
6. ↑ The 3/4 in the formula and the cap keep healing items very important, which is good because they're expensive consumables.
7. ↑ PLEASE for the love of God do not allow food to heal HP.
8. ↑ (STR+1)\*25lbs.
9. ↑ STR+INT+CHA+1d10.
10. ↑ Say, two squares instead of one if you’re using the grid.
11. ↑ It's odd to have STR come up in these formulas, but it's meant so weaklings can't have a workaround to still be as effective in combat as actual fighters.
12. ↑ Size 1 counts as two Size 0's, Size 2 counts as four Size 0's etc. Likewise, Size -1 counts as half of a Size 0 etc.
 1. ↑ JFA7 has a pool of 9 MP.
2. ↑ 10+ damage per bullet. 4 bullets in total, at most 3 per turn.
3. ↑ 24++ damage per bullet. 9 bullets in total, at most 3 per turn.
4. ↑ 9m radius.
5. ↑ Effective Strength: 18. Move by 9m (fall damage for 9m: 2d10). Smash for 18+ damage. 475lbs (215kg) max weight.
6. ↑ Effective Strength: 6.
7. ↑ 47m radius, 4 passengers.
8. ↑ 10DT.
9. ↑ 71HP for at most 9 rounds.
 1. ↑ 52m radius, 5 passengers.