Mage Basic Career

Auras is the magic of Defense. A shield against threats both magical and physical. When cast there is a flash of Green light.

Special Rules for the Auras School:

A character may only have one physical defensive Aura spell – Vigilance or Invulnerability – on them at any one time, not both. Similarly, a character may only have one magical defensive Aura spell – Defense, Negation, Reflection, or Absorption – on them at any one time. If a character has a latent defensive spell and an incompatible spell is cast on them, the spell that uses the most Power Points takes precedence. Aura of Resistance and Purity will not stack with themselves but can be combined with a physical and magical spell defense.

If a character is hit with a Destroy Magic spell then all the spells of the Auras School are lost, excluding the Armor and Stamina spells. Further rules and description of the Destroy Magic spell is listed under the Thaumaturgy School.

The magical spell defenses may or may not work on other forms of magic than just the spells in these rules. For example, they are known to work against spell songs, but they do not work against curses. If you do not know whether some mystical attack on your character can be prevented by a magical defense, you can try invoking it, but even if the defense does not work, it is still used up.

Grants access to Rank 2 Auras spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Auras spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Auras spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Auras spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Bonds is the magic of restraint, holding objects or characters in place. The flash of magic associated with bonds is a deep blue color.

Special Rules for the Bond School:

Any Bond School spell can be removed by its caster. The caster must touch the target player of the spell and say, “I Release You From (name of spell)”. This also applies to the Imprisonment spell, as the act of touching the target player refers to the ability of the caster to make physical contact with the target, not the caster’s character and the target character.

Almost all the Bond spells can be removed by a Dispel Magic; Imprisonment and Impenetrable Portal are the only two listed here that cannot. The Pin, Bind, Paralysis, and Imprisonment spells are not mutually exclusive and therefore, a character can be effected by all four at once.

Characters with an exceptional Strength Bonus are immune to the effects of certain Bonds School spells. Only a Strength Bonus that is combinable counts at all towards determining if a character is immune to a Bonds School spell. Skills, spells and alchemical items that grant a non-combinable Strength Bonus are never considered in the calculations, but skills and spells that grant even a temporary combinable Strength Bonus do count. The table below outlines the required Strength Bonus needed and what spell immunities are gained.

Spell Name
Strength Bonus

Some characters are immune to the effects of Bond School spells. The commonly encountered ones are ethereal or incorporeal undead. Others to be sure exist, but the player must learn of these during game play.

Grants access to Rank 2 Bonds spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Bonds spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Bonds spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Bonds spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Charms is the magic of interfering with your opponents mind. From dazzling them with lights, to convincing them you're a trusted ally. The flash of magic when charms are cast is Yellow.

Special Rules for the Charms School:

Any Charm spell can be removed by its caster. The caster must touch the target of the spell and say, “I Release You From (name of spell).” Charm spells do not cease their effects if the caster falls unconscious or is in any stage of their Death Count.

The Enslave and Dominate spells are incompatible spells. If a character already has one of these spells cast on them and another spell is cast, the spell that uses the greater number of Power Points takes precedence. If a character has one of these spells cast on them and the same spell is cast on them again, the more recently cast spell takes precedence. Also, you cannot command someone to do something they cannot do; for example, you cannot order a character to resist a Speak the Truth spell if they could not normally resist it; you can cast a Resist Suggestion and order the character to use it. Similarly, you cannot order a person to use a Slay skill on someone if they do not have the skill or have already used it during that Tag Cycle.

Remember, a character can never be forced through the use of these spells to lose permanent pool points, Body Points or skills.

Grants access to Rank 2 Charms spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Charms spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Charms spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Charms spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Death magic tampers with the body. Removing senses and injuring it directly. Death magic has a Gray flash of light when cast.

Special Rules for the Death school:

If a Death spell does damage, it does so directly to a character’s Body Points. Death spells do not affect armor. Death spells that cause damage will heal undead; the undead adds to its Body Points the amount of damage that would normally be done by the spell, up to the character’s starting total. The Kill spell has a special effect on undead and is described below, but note that lesser undead dissolve into dust when they are slain and cannot be restored by these spells. The rest of the non-damaging spells will have no effect on undead.

Grants access to Rank 2 Death spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Death spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Death spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Death spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

In order to learn Demonology, the character must be taught by a demon capable of teaching this magic. This demon will extract a price for this knowledge, nothing less than their immortal soul. This demonic pact marks the characters soul forever and when the character dies they are guaranteed to spend the rest of eternity in Hell.

Should this contract with Hell ever be broken, the character is unable to cast Demonology spells until a new pact is made.

Making the initial pact can be a tricky matter. The character must find a teacher in-game. Demons guard their knowledge most jealously and do not normally allow tomes to be made.

At the time the pact is signed, the character must choose which aspect of Hell they will follow: fire, ice, undeath, and shadow. This will directly affect how the character’s spells work. For example, should the character choose fire, then the type of demon they summon is fire and the spells will deal fire damage. Their aspect never changes unless their contract is passed to another and they change the aspect.

The four <Aspect> verbals would be:

• From the Unending and Fiery Pits of Hell I...

• From the Unending and Icy Pits of Hell I...

• From the Unending and Undying Pits of Hell I...

• From the Unending and Shadowy Pits of Hell I...

Grants access to Rank 2 Demonology spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Demonology spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Demonology spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Demonology spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Enchantments is air magic, and deals lightning damage. The color of its magic is Orange.

There are no special rules for Enchantments.

Grants access to Rank 2 Enchantments spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Enchantments spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Enchantments spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Enchantments spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Healing is the magic of life, restoring and rejuvenating the injured and destroying undead. There is a flash of Pink when it is cast.

Special Rules for the Healing School:

If your character knows how to cast any Healing spells, you must be aware of all the logistical responsibilities involved. The necessary tag exchanges are described below, but you should read the Playing the Game Chapter for more details.

Healing magic that harms undead does double the normal damage. For example, a Heal Person spell that would normally heal for 12 Body Points would do 24 points of direct body damage to the undead character. Like with any spell, the caster should not double the damage when calling the effect of their spell, the player of the undead character will do the appropriate modifications themselves. If a spell does not list a special affect for undead characters, then it has no effect

Grants access to Rank 2 Healing spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Healing spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Healing spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Ice is the magic of freezing. Whether it's blood or breath it can stop it in its tracks. There is a Light Blue flash of light when Ice spells are cast.

There are no special rules for the Ice School.

Grants access to Rank 2 Ice spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Ice spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Ice spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Ice spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Necromancy involves the creation and control of undead. When it is cast there is a sickly black miasma of a flash of color.

Special Rules for the Necromancy School:

There are five types of undead that can be created with magic spells: Zombies, Skeletons, Ghouls, Revenants, and Death Slaves. All other forms of undead are created by ritual magic, which players must learn about in-game or are spontaneously created. When your character learns Necromancy, you must carry any costuming and claws for the undead you wish to create and their approved undead Character Card.

No undead creation spell can be cast on a body in sunlight. The Create Zombie, Create Skeleton, and Create Revenant spells work in two ways. First the character can cast it on an already dead corpse of the appropriate type. The second method allows the character to cast the spell on a character in their Death Count, “infecting” them with the creation spell. When character reaches the end of their Death Count, they will be raised as the appropriate type of undead.

If a caster creates an undead with a necromantic spell, they have control over it. The creatures made by Create Zombie, Create Skeleton, Create Ghoul, and Create Revenant are mindless undead; they can obey simple commands for example: “Guard me,” “Give all your possessions to that soldier,” “Walk around this cemetery and attack all living things but me,” but they cannot do anything that requires creative thought or forces them to make a decision, for example, “Establish a defensive perimeter,” “Guard my friends but attack my enemies,” “If I die, carry my body back to the Necromancer’s Guild.”

All undead are hurt by Heal Person and by Heal Life spells, and can be healed by certain spells of the Death School. Heal Life is never a saving grace for a living character that has been turned into an undead; the only common way an undead character can be brought back to life is through some Healing School spell or to be resurrected at the Healers Guild. There may exist other lost magical spells or sorcery rituals that can bring the character back from being undead.

If Sever Magic is used on the caster to cancel their control over their undead, they will continue to follow and carry out their last commands. If they did not have any specific commands, then the undead revert to their normal behavior: attack and slay all living things including their creator. If another caster uses a Command Undead to issue a command, the original creator may override that command if they are present; the original caster just has to speak for the undead to obey.

If your character is turned into an undead, then a death must be recorded on your character card when you are resurrected, and you will suffer the normal consequences of the Death System. All of the undead created in this school, unless noted in the spell description, will last for 1 hour then turn to dust. However, if the character is un-resurrectable, the effect is permanent until destroyed. As with all spells, the undead creation spells do not last past the end of an Event, so if a character is undead at the end of an Event, they are not undead at the beginning of the following Event. However, the player must still go to the Healer’s Guild and resurrect normally, unless their character is unresurrectable.

Grants access to Rank 2 Necromancy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Necromancy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Necromancy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Necromancy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

For each build spent in Power Points, a character will earn 1 Power Point to use to cast spells with. If the character has Mage Basic Career Skill List then they instead earn 1.5 Power Points per build spent. This is retroactive if they later learn the skill list.

Power Points are per-tag and will refresh back up to the character's learned max every 12 hours at 7:00. Because of this each purchase counts as a tag skill for rare rules that interact with a character's tags.

Pyrotechnics is fire magic. From creating a simple flame to the highest damage single spell in the elements, that is pyro. There is a telltale flash of Red light when pyro is cast.

Special rules of Pyrotechnics:

Except for the Match spell, Pyrotechnics spells do not create actual fires. The flames do magical damage and do not actually burn anything; a caster can hurt a character with a Fireball spell, but they cannot use Fireball to set a house on fire.

Despite the word "eldritch" in the pyrotechnics verbal, no spell in this school deals "Eldritch" typed damage. It is only "Magic Fire" damage for purposes of damage resistance and appropriate defenses.

Grants access to Rank 2 Pyrotechnics spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Pyrotechnics spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Pyrotechnics spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Pyrotechnics spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

When the character learns this skill they are able to read magical writing. This skill is needed to use scrolls, without it a character cannot even tell what spell is written on the scroll.

This skill is also required to read any tome that teaches you magic, for example the magical tomes in the Guild of Arcane Lore

Shadow Magic is a relatively new school of magic, and not much is known about it. This school deals in shadowy enhancement spells, damaging undead, and causing fear. There is a strange shadow-like emanation of light when its spells are cast or invoked.

Special Rules for the Shadow Magic School:

This school of low magic is only usable from sundown to sunup, 7 pm to 7 am. Additionally, most spells in this school will dissipate with the sun rising instead of the end of the Event.

Damage done in this school is suffixed by the word “…Ghost” and is the same effect as an Oil of Ghost Blade. Ghost damage harms a character’s Body Points directly and bypasses Armor Points. A character with Damage Resistance: Silver or better will not be harmed by the attack (ghost is not better than silver damage). There is one exception to this rule; undead are affected by ghost damage regardless of their Damage Resistance

Grants access to Rank 2 Shadow spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Shadow spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Shadow spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Shadow spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Thaumaturgy is the magic of magic. It is the main way spellcasters can interact with ongoing spells. There is a flash of Purple light when it's spells are cast or invoked.

Special Rules for the Thaumaturgy School:

The Detect Magic, See Magic, Identify Magic, Detect Curse, and Know Your Curse spells have a logistical limitation. If there is no one present who, out-of-game, can inform the caster of the magical properties of an item, then these spells do not work but do not cost the character any Power Points. Also, the first three spells cannot detect the presence or effects of alchemical items.

Thaumaturgy spells work the same on low magic, Nature Magic and Spell Singing. Many work normally on most sorcery rituals.

The word “thaumaturgy” is pronounced “THAW-ma-tur-jee.”

Grants access to Rank 2 Thaumaturgy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 3 Thaumaturgy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 4 Thaumaturgy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

Grants access to Rank 5 Thaumaturgy spells. All spells unlocked by this rank skill are detailed below.

This skill gives the character the ability to call damage with Quarterstaff weapons. If a character does not have the appropriate weapon skill, then not only can they not call damage, but if the weapon they are holding is struck, they take that damage anyway.

Weapon skills are NOT hand specific the way proficiencies are. And a character can use the weapon in either hand with no penalty.

A quarterstaff can be used to block with one hand.

The base damage for a Quarterstaff is 2 with both hands.

This skill gives the character the ability to call damage with Small Weapons. If a character does not have the appropriate weapon skill, then not only can they not call damage, but if the weapon they are holding is struck, they take that damage anyway.

Small Weapon costs 0 build and anyone can learn this skill. The character does not need to start with it, but then they cannot use Small Weapons. However, any character that learns any Weapon Skill automatically learns Small Weapon and has it added to their character card.

Weapon skills are NOT hand specific the way proficiencies are. And a character can use the weapon in either hand with no penalty.

The base damage for a Small Weapon is 1 in either hand.

This skill is broken down into various categories of weapons. The character must learn each skill individually. All these skills give the character the ability to call damage with that weapon type. If a character does not have the appropriate skill, not only can they not call damage, but should the weapon they are holding be struck, they take the damage anyway. The Small Weapon skill costs zero Build Points and anyone can learn this skill. The character does not have to take the skill if they do not want, but they then cannot use a small weapon. However, any character that learns a weapon skill automatically learns the Small Weapon skill and it is put on their Character Card. If a character has the One-Handed Edge and Two-Handed Edge skills they can use a Bastard Sword as well. The same is true for the blunt weapons skills. Weapon skills are not hand specific. A character with the One- Handed Edge skill can use their short sword in either their right or left hand with no penalty. Bastard weapons used in one hand will do one less point of damage then when used with two hands. Two handed weapons of any type must be used with two hands to cause damage but can still be used to block attacks if used in one hand. Any marital parry skill the character has with their two handed weapon can be used while only using one hand. All weapons fall into one of the listed weapon categories. Any new weapon to the game must fall into one of these categories.