Incantation Magic

Incantation magic is the harnessing of naturally occuring mana in the area to manipulate your surroundings. The dragons taught their followers how to handle this energy and so anyone who practices is viewed with suspision in most areas, but it's rarely illegal.

Quick Start Guide

You cannot have a path skill above ritual magic. Add your Incantation Gift level to both.
Choose a spell from Premade Spells.
Use the casting time to Prepare an Incantation.
Make a prepared casting roll (at -5 if not in a proper workstation or -2 portable workstation) with the appropriate spell penalty listed on the spell.

Critical Success: +2 on casting roll
Succes: normal casting roll
Failed: -3 on casting roll
Critically Failed: unable to cast

When you want to cast the prepared spell, take a Concentrate maneuver and roll against the appropriate path skill only modified by the results of the above prepared casting roll.

Important Articles

Incantation Gift [10/Level]

Having one level of this allows you to make a Sense roll to detect magical items whenever they come into vision. This magical talent adds its level to Ritual Magic, Musical Influence, to the eight Incantation Path skills, to any of the Imbuement Skills, and to the above Sense rolls. A character cannot have more than 4 levels of Incantation Gift maximum.

There are two versions that allow use of two different Core Skills:

Standard (normal cost)- Uses Ritual Magic. May create incantations, infusions, scripts, and enchantments. When someone is casting a spell using Ritual Magic, you may roll against your Ritual Magic skill at the same penalty as the spell they are casting to identify it before it is fully casted. Beating the roll gives you the Path(s) used, beating the roll by 5 gives you the effects (Strengthen, Destroy, etc.) and removes the penalty for countering it with Celestial Magic, and beating the roll by 10 lets you know what exactly the spell does and gives you a +5 to counter the spell with Celestial Magic.

Musical (-50%)- Uses Musical Influence. You must have Singing or Musical Instrument at 14+ in order to use this. Someone listening to you cast a spell must have at least 1 point in Musical Influence to even recognize that you are casting a spell, then they may roll vs their own Musical Influence to identify the song with the same results as above. You cannot cast a spell or incantation without singing or playing a musical instrument. This cannot be used to make infusions, or scripts. You may still create incantations and enchantments however.

A character must meet certain requirements before they are able to buy different levels of incantation gift:

Incantation Gift 1 (Apprentice):

1 point in Ancient Draconic [1]

Incantation Gift 2 (Magician): Both

Unmodified Ritual Magic (IQ+0) [8]
4 different Unmodified Path or Imbuement Skills at (IQ-2) or (DX-2) [2] each. [8]

Incantation Gift 3 (Wizard): Both

Unmodified Ritual Magic (IQ+3) [24]
2 different Unmodified Path or Imbuement Skills at (IQ+1) or (DX+1) [12] each. [24]

Incantation Gift 4 (Archmage): Both

Unmodified Ritual Magic (IQ+) [40]
Any Unmodified Path or Imbuement Skill at (IQ+8) or (DX+8) [40]

Magical Paths

Incantation magic consists of 8 paths, each of which count as IQ/Very Hard skills. Ritual Magic (or Musical Influence) is a prerequisite for any Path skill, and no Path skill can ever exceed the caster's Ritual Magic (or Musical Influence) skill. If attempting to use a Path skill you are not trained in, count it as the lower or 12 or Ritual Magic-6.

Arcanum

The Path of Arcanum is focused on affecting magic, spells, magical creations like golems or enchanted items. This path may affect spells from any magical source, but cannot affect any deific spells.

Augury

The Path of Arcanum is focused on limited glimpses in the near past or future, bestowing small and short-lived blessings and curses, altering the odds of completely random events, manipulating fate and cosmological events, and making the impossible possible or even likely.

Cosmology

The Path of Cosmology effectively acts as both Path of Mesmerism and Path of Transfiguration, but restricted to celestial beings whether coporeal or not. This includes Half-Celestials and those affected by deific curses.

Elementalism

This Path can affect other forms of matter and energy. You can affect air, earth, fire, metal, water, wood, etc. This path does allow you to effect Celestial Elementals.

Mesmerism

This Path is often used to add some mental advantages or disadvantages to a subject. Only sentient subjects (IQ6+), but does affect celestial creatures that are sentient.

Necromancy

This Path effectively acts as both Path of Mesmerism and Path of Transfiguration, but restriced to the dead and undead. This includes corpses (walking or otherwise) and spirits of the dead (but not celestial).

Protection

This Path includes wards, warnings, and physical enhancements to protect a particular person, their gear, and/or their location.

Transfiguration

This Path includes sapient beings' (IQ 6+) bodies. This cannot affect plants or animals.

Casting Spells

Incantation magic is very versitile with multiple ways to cast it's spells. Any spells cast without any equipment, prior preparation, or the Field Caster advantage are at a -5 penalty. It's very useful to have a list of a couple spells with what they do, how long they take to cast, and their penalty to cast.

Below is a step-by-step instruction on how to cast an Incantation Spell.

1. Choosing The Spell

The first step is to Pick a prebuilt spell or Create your own spell. If you're still new to incantation casting, it is recommended to pick a prebuilt spell. The next step depends on whether you are casting the spell right here, right now (on the left below) or you're preparing the spell as a solution to a future problem (on the right below).

2. Field Casting

Incantation magic, usually, requires a controlled environment. Without it, the incanter suffers -5 to all rolls to cast a spell. In the field, this can be negated by setting up a Portable Workspace Kit.

Setting up a Portable Workspace takes 5 minutes and a roll against the higher of Ritual Magic or Symbol Drawing. The caster deploys their workspace then draws in the symbols necessary. The caster then stands or sits next to the workspace to "charge it with mana". Once prepared, the caster may cast spells at no penalty for as long as they remain within a 2 yard radius from the workspace. After exiting the radius, it loses its "charge" and must be set up again. A Field Caster (below) completely bypasses the need for a workspace.

2. Prepared Casting

If an incantor wishes to prepare a few spells ahead of time, they must be in a controlled environment with no chance of being interrupted. This is usually a small town at the least, but a Well Hidden or Defensible camp in the wilderness will suffice in most circumstances. A Portable Workspace Kit will work if proper facilities are unavailable, but all casting attempts are at a -5 penalty while using it. If you have access to a proper workspace, you incure no penalties and a bonus if the workspace is of higher quality!

Incantations can be made for free, but they are only usable by the caster. Scripts and Infusions have a slight material cost, but anyone can use them. For more details about each option, go here.

3. The Casting Roll

Once you have a spell to cast, there will be Path skills, a Path Skill Penalty, and a Casting Time. We will worry about Casting Time later. There can be multiple Path skills attached to the same spells but there will always be at least 1 (if there are more than 2 Paths attached to a spell, give a -1 penalty for each Path past the first two). The Path Skill Penalty is based on the Spell Penalty and will be listed with the pre-created spell or determined based on the effects you applied to your spell.

When you have determined all of the above, you roll against the lowest Path skill you know - the Path Skill Penalty (a spell uses both Transfiguration and Elementalism which you have at 12 and 14 respectively, with a Path Penalty of -2. you would roll vs Transfiguration-2). If you're not comfortable with your ability to make the Casting Roll, there are ways to improve it using rules found in Casting Modifiers below. The effects of the casting are:

A Critical Failure results in the spell failing spectacularly! Will likely do maximum damage to the caster(s) or help enemies.
A Failure results in the ritual failing. You can try again, but are at a cumulative -1 to skill unless you first wait for the full, unmodified casting time of the ritual
A Success lets you cast a spell on any inanimate or willing target, use the margin of success to determine general effectiveness and precision. If the target is not willing, the target resists as a Quick contest using the better of their HT or Will, plus bonuses from Magic Resistance. Unaware subjects resist any spell, even a helpful one.
A Critical Success results in an unexpected boon to your spell. The spell should be around 50% better. It deals more damage, gives extra advantages, etc.

Afterward, the spell lasts for whatever duration it was given. The mage may cancel it at any time with a Concentration Maneuver as long as they are free to move and speak freely.

3. The Attaching Roll

For the purposes of simplification, we will assume you are attaching an Incantation instead of brewing an Infusion or writing a Script. When you are preparing an Incantation, you're attaching a spell to your Aura. When you are attaching a spell to your Aura, you use the same casting roll as normal casting, but the results are slightly different.

Critical Failure results in a botched spell with the same results as a critical failure from regular casting.
A Failure results in the spell attaching, but the Activation Roll (below) is at a -3 penalty.
A Success means the spell has been attached successfully.
A Critical Success means the spell has been attached successfully and your Activation Roll is at a +2 bonus!.

Casting Time

Most spells take minutes if not hours or days to cast. However, you don't have to spend that time right as you want to use the spell. You may lengthen or shorten the time it takes to cast a spell to incure a bonus or penalty to the casting roll. This will be explained better in Spell Creation. If you are casting a complicated spell, you may use Focused Aptitude to reduce the amount of effects by 1 when determining time required to cast. If you want to cast spells much more quickly, then you may take the Adept advatage and make casting times a fraction of what they were.

Casting Modifiers

Mana Levels

Mana Levels can have a big impact on your casting ability.

You cannot cast spells into or out of No Mana areas.
Low Mana areas apply a -5 penalty.
Normal Mana areas don't apply any bonuses or penalties.
High Mana areas give a +2 bonus.
Very High Mana areas give +5 bonus.

If you and your target are in different Mana Levels, stack the penalties and bonuses. (Example: You are in High Mana, your target is in Low Mana, the total penalty would be a -3 to cast your spell).

Magical Components

These generic ingredients range from monster remains to magically potent materials like crystals from a high-mana zone or flower petals from another realm. A lot of ingredients will give a general use bonus to spells being cast before vanishing. Some ingredients may only help one Path, effect, or even a particular ritual, so they may only be able to be used in those circumstances. For a list of specific components, go here.

Type	Bonus*	Cost	Weight
Improvised	0	1 SP ($10)	0.1 lbs.
Basic	+1	3 SP ($30)	0.3 lbs.
Good	+2	1 GP ($100)	1 lb.
Fine	+3	3 GP ($300)	3 lbs.
Legendary	+4 or more	at least 10 GP ($1000+)	at least 5 lbs.

*You may use several components of one type to give you a better bonus. Using at least 8 of one grade gives another +1: using 30 or mor gives +2.

Voluntary Sacrifice

Casters and their allies can sacrifice FP, HP, or Energy Reserve (Magical) to gain a bonus on the casting roll. This takes 1 minute (or 1 second with Adept below) per source to tap. Allies sacrificing FP, HP, or ER may do so as a free action, but they must remain in contact with the caster for the entire time it takes them to tap a source and they can only offer up the same type of energy (e.g., FP or HP, but not FP and HP). You cannot mix sources for a bonus, nor can you tap a power item's energy.

SP Total	FP*	HP*	ER*
0-5	5	3	2
6-10	10	6	4
11-15	15	9	6
16-20	20	12	8
21-25	20	15	10
26-30	25	18	12
31-35	30	21	14
+5	+5	+3	+2

* Per +1 bonus

Premade Spells

Incantation Magic allows you to create almost any kind of spell you can think of. But if you want something fairly standard or need an example of how some things work, you can go here.

Optional Advantages

Field Caster [10]

You ignore the requirement for having to create a circle allowing you to cast spells in the field using the base casting time for the ritual. You must have at least Incantation Gift 2 to use this.

Adept [10]

This power-up allows an incanter to cast more quickly. When determining casting time, read "minutes" as "seconds", "hours" as "minutes", "days" as "hours", "weeks" as "days", and "months" as "weeks". This also speeds Voluntary Sacrifice, but nothing else. You must have at least Incantation Gift 3 to use this.

Focused Aptitude [1/Path]

1 point (Requires 12+ in relevant Path)

Your skill is such that when determining the time it takes to perform a specific spell's ritual, reduce the total number of effects by one (moving up one step for Casting Time). A casting time of five minutes becomes two minutes; one of two minutes becomes one minute. You must have at least a 12+ in the relevant Path Skill to use this.

Rote Invocation [1/every +1 bonus you give to a spell]

You must specialize by specific spell. Each level of this power-up provides +1 to effective Path skill when casting it. You may buy as many levels as you wish, but after offsetting penalties, Rote Invocation cannot provide more than a net +4 bonus.

In other words, don't buy more than four levels unless you expect to face penalties for SP, circumstances, etc. In practice, this is best reserved for a few "signature" rituals. Raise your Path skills for the rest.

For the purposes of this advantage, a specific spell must keep the same effects and modifiers, but the modifiers may be different magnitudes.

Additional Mechanics

Blocking Spells

Some defensive rituals (especially those of Path of Protection) make sense as a type of active defense. Such "blocking" spells can be cast only once per turn, and require a skill roll at an additional -10 beyond whatever the spell requires.

If Voluntary Sacrifice is used to offset this, it requires an additional Ritual Magic skill roll at -10 (-5 for Adepts) to gain the bonus fast enough to use it with the spell. If the roll fails, the ritual wasn't performed fast enough to work and if it was the caster who was targeted, they do not get an active defense, unless they took an All-Out Defesne (Double Defense).

Incantations and Enchantments can also be activated as a blocking spell, but the rolls to activate them are at a -10 as well. You may use Voluntary Sacrifice on both of these as exactly as above.

Conditional Spells

An incanter can delay a spell so that it doesn't happen until a specific set of circumstances are met. Conditional spells are similar to incantations, but require and additional +5 SP and the casting roll is made immediately. For example, Dispelling could be cast conditionally with the trigger being "The first time a spell successfully affects me." More complex triggers are possible, but they require an additional Sense Arcanum effect if an IQ 5 being could understand the trigger conditions, or Sense Arcanum plus Bestows a Bonus (raising effective IQ for this single purpose) for more complicated commands.

The spell will "hang" indefinitely, either stationary or attached to a subject. Once triggered, it will last for it's normal Duration. The caster cannot cancel the spell before it expires or prolong the Duration; by casting conditionally, they are giving up control of the spell. Conditional spells are subject to Stacking Spells (below) and take up one of the caster's magic slots.

Divination

Divining the future requires a Sense Augury effect to determine the most likely answer to any question. The response comes as a flash of insight. Its clarity is wholly up to the GM, but is based on the margin of success of the spell and on whether the answer would disturb any plans the GM might have. Complexity makes divination difficult, however. Consulting the Size and Speed/Range Table, the GM should find the total number of reasonable answers in the "Linear Measurement" column and apply the penalty in the "Speed/Range" column to the roll to invoke the ritual, in addition to the normal spell penalty. For example, if a cursed throne has 10 different magical effects if you sit on it, then it would inflict another -4 in addition to the penalty associated with casting the spell. If the caster has Fortune-Telling, they can attempt to use it as a complementary skill for this spell.

The GM should interpret a question about part of a situation as if it were about the overall situation. For example, if the delvers know for a fact that an artifact is in one of eight dungeons, an incanter cannot cast eight "yes/no" divinations to locate it ("Is it in Dungeon A? No? Then is it in Dungeon B?" the GM should treat the first spell cast as a divination with eight possible answers.

Familiars

Incanters can gain familiars just like divine casters. Familiars can give any of the Incantation Magic advantages (besides Unuasual Background (Incantation Mage or Draconic Lineage) and Incantation Gift) to their master while they are around. You can find more information on Familiars here.

Magic Vs Magic

There are two ways to negate an ongoing incantation magic effect: either overcoming it with another, higher-SP spell, or dispelling it outright. Either way, Girded is an easy way to make dispelling magic more powerful or to make a ritual harder to dispel. Casters can use Sense Arcanum to determine the existing spell's SP and effective Path skill before they try to displace or dispel it.

The brute force method is to cast a new spell on the target in a way that exploits Stacking Spells (below). If the new spell uses the same spell effect as the old one, and costs more SP (whether naturally or via Girded), it simply displaces the original spell.

Dispelling effects outright is a special application of Destroy Arcanum. If cast successfully, roll a Quick Contest between the dispellr's Path of Arcanum and the opposing caster's Path skill (adjusted only for multiple path skills). For this Quick Contest only, calculate the SP penalty for each spell and revers it - a high-SP spell has an easier time countering a low-SP one, while a low-SP spell will have difficulty with a high-SP one.

Incantation Magic vs Divine Magic: Incanters and divine casters will inevitably interact. Incantation magic cannot "displace" divine spells, but they can be used to counter them; rather than an SP-based bonus, the divine spell has a bonus in the Contest equal to twice its energy cost (before any discount for high skill). When a divine caster uses any Meta-Spells to counter an incantation magic spell, the incantation spell resists with the caster's unmodified Path skill; for the purpose of Counterspell, Suspend Spell, etc., the "cost of the spell countered" is its SP penalty, inverted.

Multiple Path Skills

Some spells require more than one Path skill to cast. For such spells, use the lower of the two Paths for all purposes. If a spell requires three or more Path skills, then the caster uses the lowest one and is at an additional -1 (to all rolls for the spell) for every skill past the first two.

Recognizing Spells

If you see an incanter casting a spell, whether you have Incantation Gift or not, you may attempt a Ritual Magic roll to get an idea of what the person is casting. If the person is using an incantation, this roll is at a -5. When finding an infusion, you must be able to examine it and take 10 minutes and an Alchemy roll to identify it. When finding an enchanted item, you must be able to examine it and take 10 minutes and an Enchant skill roll. All of the above can be replaced with an appropriate Sense Arcanum spell effect (the incantation would need to be cast as a Blocking spell to identify before the incantation is cast).

Critical failure or a failure of 6 or more results in absolutely no information available.
A failure of 5 or less gives you the Path skill(s) used in the spell.
A success gives you the Path skill(s) and Effect(s) used, but not any Modifiers
A critical success gives you the Path skill(s), Effect(s), and the Modifiers used in the spell

Stacking Spells

Magic never stacks in any way. Use the following guidelines if in doubt:

Subjects of a spell cannot be affected by more than two of the same spell effect from different rituals. For instance, you couldn't use Strengthen Transfiguration in one spell to give someon DR 1, Strengthen Transfiguration in a second one to give +2 to HP, and then cast a thrid Strengthen Transfiguration ritual for +1 to ST. In such cases, the spell with the most SP remains and the other Disappear.

Similar bonuses, results, etc. from different rituals are never cumulative with each other, regardless of the spell effect used. For example, getting +3 to rolls to reisit disease from Strengthen Protection and using Strengthen Transfiguration to bestow Resistant to Metabolic Hazards (+3) results in +3 against disease, not +6. The GM has the final say on how "similar" two results are.

You can't use magic to make anyone better at magic (no free lunches). A ritual cannot give a bonus to casting spells, bestow Incantation Gift, and so on. It could give you Magic Resistance or reduce a target's Incantation Gift. This also extends to any metagame traits bestowed by magic (e.g., magical Luck couldn't be used to reroll anything related to spellcasting), and to additional HP or FP (which cannot be sacrificed or spent to power rituals or spells). This applies only to spells - not permanent forms of magic or areas of high mana.

No one can be the subject of more than two "buffing" incantation spells. Such spells include any spell effect that gives its subject bonuses (Bestows a Bonus), advantages (Altered Traits), etc. In cases where this conflicts, the two spells with the highest SP total remain and the others fizzle. Where SP totals are tied, the oldest of the two spells disapears. For example, if you cast Strengthen Transfiguration for +1 ST, then Create Elementalism for +2 DR, and then added +1 to active defenses from Strengthen Augury, the Transfiguration ritual would fade.

Warding

Wards are protective spells to keep out hostile forces: a specific monster type, magic, etc. In order for the designated threat to cross a ward, it must win a Quick Contest vs. The war's Power, which starts equal to the incanter's Path skill (modified only for Multiple Path Skills). Enemy magic rolls against its effective skill level (or equivalent), while hostile creatures use the higher of HT or Will, plus Magic Resistance. If the attacker loses or ties, it can try again, but at a cumulative -1. If it wins, then the ward no longer affects it, and the ward's Power is reduced by 1 versus similar threats. This makes it difficult to shield against hords of monsters or a constant barrage of forces. Use Bestows a Bonus to enhance a ward's Power; warding off one type of creature is a single bonus, more is a moderate range.

Wards against a specific type of creature or force require an appropriate Path (e.g., Path of Cosmology for a Celestial or Oath of Arcanum for hostile magic), and are always a Control effect.