We are going full bore with the Genesys Project and already seeing several types of magic in use and the game is still in pre-order!
In the Genesys Project we call spells or spell like powers simply "Powers", and whoa do they have a myriad of available powers that can be accessed in the game.
If you have not been caught up, in the Genesys Project you can create your own factions how you want them to be. What you may not know is just how many different types of magic there is. We are going to be discussing a couple them today.
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What are Powers
Powers allow mortals (and sometimes immortals) to use energy and channel it from beyond the veil of reality into both useful and destructive forms.
Lets start off with the basics
Casters have difficulties to cast their powers when they roll their dice. Its simply a d6 + Willpower to achieve their difficulty. Difficulty is determined by their Life Domain, (humanoids, fey, biests, reptilia, and Insekt). While an average difficulty to cast a power is around 8, you can see it takes someone very dedicated to cast powers in the game.
Channeling Energy
Channeling the energy from the beyond is difficult just to get a power cast. To do this casters learn or know various methods of casting to channel the energy, whether it's through themselves (Wizardry), or through pious faith casting (Priests) there are many ways to add to the die roll of casting.
For example a Wizard is attempting to cast a strong fire power with a difficulty of 10! How they heck can he do that reliably with only a Willpower of 6 (which is a good solid Willpower). To do this he can do something called Channeling. For the Wizard he or she is channeling his own energies and those from beyond through his or her body (Sounds dangerous and it is!). So going to channel his toughness into the power, with a Toughness of 2 he can channel all of it into the power, giving him a +2 to his Willpower! This means he is casting successfully on a 2+.
So what happens if he fails on that 2+ die roll. Since he is channeling his own energies he would lose that 2 toughness he channeled! Yep, he would pass out and battlefield.
Life and Death of a Spell Caster
There is also something called a Mortal Threshold. This is that number you don't go over or you die! Rather spectacularly the model is killed as the mortal body can only handle so much power going through it. While the base difficulty of a power might 8, the mortal threshold for example might be 12.
So lets look at our Wizard with a Willpower of 6, and who is channeling 2 toughness into the power. Being a Humanoid his Mortal Threshold is 12. So if he or she channels that toughness of 2 into casting the power on a 5+ would cross that mortal threshold and die.
All sorts of abilities might allow you to alter that die roll, like the ability Focus and or a wand- allowing you to move the die result by 1, or other abilities that might raise your mortal threshold or a Wizard's Staff. Now you can start to see just how a wizard will learn and us magic.
Did I mention that the Fey are not mortal? hmmm. Yea they have no mortal threshold!
Skinning the Cat
What a horrible phrase, but in The Genesys Project there are many types of Spellcasting. Some allow you to cast through the prayers of Religous Followers (Priests) essentially helping to aid in casting. There are Druids, who cast channeling through terrain pieces on the board, and many more like the Occult who use charismatic leaders and along with the voices of those that follow them to cast powers.
There are several different methods of casting, including some that do not use Willpower at all, but instead use psychic energies using their Discipline!
Power Augmentation
Last but not least is adding to strength of these powers, or manipulating them to become area affects. Power Augmentation is an ability that allows you to alter your powers, adding properties to them to grant them greater strength, range, area effects and more, but all the while increasing the difficulty of the power.
Thats it for now. We will come back and talk shop again on the casting of powers, starting with the various methods of casting. Priests, Dark Lords, Druids, Wizards, Sorcerers, Innate Powers and more all a part of the Genesys Project.