How spells work

Every spell, whether you cast it or a creature does, follows the same rules. Its shape decides what it covers. Its resolution decides whether it rolls to hit. Its damage type adds a rule of its own: fire burns, cold slows, lightning jumps (see Spell types). And its ladders make it stronger as your stats grow. A few spells follow a rule no other spell does (see Spells with a rule of their own, where zones are too). For the spells themselves, their levels, and their costs, see Magic.

Casting a spell

Some classes give spells: the priest, druid, wizard, and witch a few, a bard, a paladin, or a ranger one or two (see What your class gives). You cast them from the abilities menu as spells. Each costs mana by its spell level and your armour. It is greyed out (“too little”) while you have less mana; there is no other wait.

• A burst flies and goes off as a scroll’s does.
• A line runs through everyone on it; its blows and kills are yours.
• A hex falls on a hostile you see within its reach.

Shapes

A spell strikes one target (a ray, a bolt, a touch, or yourself) or an area (a cone, a line, or a burst). Areas cost more mana: the base cost is multiplied by the shape’s share.

• A ray or a bolt flies along the line toward the place you aim at, and strikes the first creature in its way. A hex is cast the same way at a hostile creature you see, and falls on it.
• A line runs through everyone on it, as far as its length, until a wall stops it.
• A cone fans out from you toward where you aim, a quarter turn wide, as far as its length.
• A burst flies toward where you aim and goes off on the first creature in its way (or at the spot you aimed at). It strikes everyone it reaches within its radius, half as hard at its edge. It can catch you too.
• A touch reaches only a creature next to you.

How far a spell reaches is in its row, and so is how much further your Willpower takes it. A hex’s or a blessing’s row says how long your Presence makes it last. Each degree lasts as long again, up to the maximum its status allows. A burst’s cost depends on its base radius.

How a spell finds its target

Each spell has one of four resolutions:

• An attack spell rolls to hit like a missile: 2d12 plus your Dexterity’s modifier, against the target’s Defence. It can miss, it can be a critical hit, and it does full damage. (A spell may name another stat to aim with, but none does yet. A spell scroll or a wand always aims with Dexterity.)
• An auto spell always hits, for less damage.
• An area spell hits everyone in its shape with no roll, for less again per target. Evasion halves what it does.
• A touch spell rolls to hit at arm’s length. It does the most damage, for less mana.

Only attack and touch spells can be critical hits. Like a blow, they threaten a critical on a natural 22 or more, and a critical rolls the damage again.

• Magic items of the Magus add their number to your own spells’ roll to hit.
• Baleful items widen the threat range by their number (a Baleful +2 threatens from 20), never below 2.
• Neither helps a spell scroll you read or a wand you use.
• Your caster style adds to the roll when you cast the spell yourself.

Resistances take their share of any spell’s damage. Armour takes none.

What each resolution does to a spell’s cost:

How a spell grows

Each spell’s row lists its ladders: a stat, and the scores at which the spell changes. When your score reaches a number, you cast at that rung. The score is the one your character screen shows, with what your status effects, stat damage, and magic items do to it. A low score never shrinks a spell below its base.

Spell damage is rolled dice, as written in the spell’s row. What makes it grow is its ladder, plus your talents and items. Your talents and magic items each add in their own way, listed in their own row:

• A rung. Empower (a wizard’s, at level 32) takes your spells a rung up their damage and healing ladders, and Archmage (at 60) two. Spells already on the last rung stay there.
• Bigger dice. Keen mind, taken for a school of magic or an element, makes those spells roll dice a size bigger for you: a d6 becomes a d7, a d8 a d9.
• A die more. Brimming rolls a die more on your damage and healing spells, and they cost a tenth more mana.
• A bonus. Potent magic items add 1 to 3 to every spell’s roll, harm or healing (a Potent +2 ring makes 4d6 into 4d6+2).
• A die rolled again. Sure hand rolls a spell die that shows a 1 once more, and that roll stands.
• Reach and degrees. School focus, taken for a school or an element, makes those spells reach a cell farther (range or length, not a burst’s radius, and never a touch’s) and cost 10 % less. Magic items of Farcasting add their cells to every spell’s reach but a touch’s, and of Lingering their degrees to every blessing and hex.
• The spell’s rank. Reading a spell’s grimoire again deepens it, and each rank adds what the spell’s own table says, in any of these ways and a few more (the aim, the critical range, the casting time, the mana): see Spell ranks.

They apply in this order: the rung, then the dice, then the roll (with its rerolls), then the harm, then the extra effects. A critical rolls the dice twice, as a blow’s does.

A spell scroll you read casts at the rung its row gives, whatever your stats. The scroll of fireball’s is 1, so 6d6. Scroll adept makes it a rung higher. A wand casts at a rung of its own, a rung higher with Wand mastery, and higher again with items of Wands. Your other talents and items work on scrolls and wands as on your own casts, and their reach and degrees are yours.

Most of these talents belong to Spellcraft, the tree a wizard takes bonus talents from, alongside Scholar. See Talents for every talent that affects spells.

Two kinds of damage only magic does, force and necrotic, are among the damage types.

The spells you cast are yours. What they kill earns you its experience, and a spell of your own that catches you can kill you.

See also: Magic, Spell types, and Spells with a rule of their own.