Mano a Mano Fantasy:Magical Powers

Magical Powers

In some games, witches, wizards, psychics and some creatures have magical powers. Each magical power is an ability or quality. Ability levels can determine the effectiveness of the magical power or how often it can be used. Character creators should make sure the game they are designing characters for allows these abilities or qualities before giving them to a character.

Magical Abilities

Necromancy

Necromancy is the art of communicating with the dead. Although the term necromancer has acquired dark connotations, necromancy itself does not necessarily involve dark deeds such as reanimating corpses or deadly spells. Clairvoyants and and psychic mediums are more typical examples of necromancy. Necromancy ability is a bonus to attempts to communicate with the spirit world.

Potion Making

Potion making is an ability which is used to create single-use items with magical effects. Some common types of potions are healing potions, love potions, and sleeping potions.

Zombie Mastery

Zombie mastery is an ability which allows a character to make undead zombies from an incapacitated or recently deceased people. It takes time to create a zombie so the zombie master cannot simply raise fallen foes as undead servants. The zombie has the agility, speed, toughness and power of the person but none of the person's abilities or qualities except for template abilities and qualities. The zombie master can control one zombie for each level of his zombie mastery. The zombie master can only issue one command per turn. The zombies only do what the master tells them and cannot perform extremely complicated tasks.

Golem mastery

Golem mastery is an ability which allows a character to create an artificial person. The golem master can only control one golem at a time, but the golem master can design the golem as he sees fit, and the CP of the golem improves with each level of golem mastery. A golem can do complex tasks but it interprets instructions literally, sometimes with unexpected results.

Telekinesis

Telekinesis is the ability to move things without touching them. The character is able to move things as if they were being carried or thrown with agility equal to the telekinesis ability and power equal to half of the telekinesis ability, rounded down.

Pyrokinesis

Pyrokinesis is the ability to magically start and control fires. Typically this ability is used to throw fireballs or light people on fire. The damage and attack modifier of a fire attack is equal to the character's pyrokinesis ability level. When a character is hit by a successful fire attack they take 1 point of fire damage every turn until they drop to the ground and put the fire out.

Illusion

Illusion is the ability to confuse the senses of others and create convincing impressions of things that aren't real. Illusion can be used strategically in two ways. If a victim is not expecting the illusion, the illusionist can trick the victim into thinking they have seen something which is not real. If the victim is expecting the illusion, the illusion can still prevent the victim from seeing what is really there including real threats.

Coercion

This ability allows a character to control another character's actions against their will. First the character using coercion must make a success roll using their coercion ability level. Then, on his own turn, the character using coercion can either perform an action or have the character he is controlling perform an action. The character being controlled cannot perform actions on his turn, but he can try to break free of the coercion by a success roll against the difficulty 10 + the controller's ability.

Magical Defense

Magical defense is an ability which can be used as a defense against magic and other attacks. The defense value of this ability is 10 plus the character's magical defense ability level. It can be used instead of a character's agility-based defenses, and it can also be used as a difficulty for magical powers used against the character like illusion and control.

Illumination

Illumination is the ability to create a bright light for seeing at night and in dark places. The ability level determines the brightness of the light. When illumination is first activated anyone who is facing the light and not prepared for it will be blinded for a number of turns equal to the illumination ability modifier.

Frog (or Toad or Pig)

Frog is the ability to turn people into frogs. This also includes the ability to turn people back into whatever they were before becoming a frog. Characters could also have abilities to turn people into other animals, plants or inanimate objects, but each ability allows the character to turn other characters into only one thing. Turning people into a frog requires a success roll. Turning people back into what they were is always successful.

Dispel

This is the ability to undo the effect of any magical power except for damage and side effects such as blindness from the illumination power. Dispelling an effect requires a success roll. The difficulty is usually 10 plus the modifier of the ability that caused the effect.

Magical Qualities

Familiar (CP of the familiar)

A familiar is an animal or animal-like companion. It is more intelligent than most animals and it can communicate with it's master telepathically. The CP value of this quality is the CP value of the familiar itself. Familiars are usually inconspicuous animals which are not as tough or powerful as a human.

Summoning (CP of the summoned creature)

Summoning is a quality which allows a character to summon a creature. The quality must specify what creature can be summoned. The CP of the quality is the CP of that creature. A character may have more than one summoning abiltiy, because he must have one summoning quality for each creature he can summon, and he can only summon one creature for each summoning quality. For example a character could have a dragon summoning quality and three fairy summoning qualities allowing him to have up to one dragon and three fairies summoned at any given time. When a creature is summoned it has no damage, but it takes time and concentration to summon a creature, so this cannot be done in combat. When a character summons a creature he must assign the creature a task. This can be as broad as fighting alongside the summoner in the next battle. After completing the task the summoned creature will disappear.

Shapeshifting (combines the CP of both forms)

Shapeshifting is a quality which allows a character to transform himself into a specific creature. This creature has it's own character sheet and can be totally different from the shapeshifter's normal form. Normal shapeshifting takes time and concentration so a character cannot shapeshift in the middle of combat with this quality. Fast shapeshifting only requires a single turn to transform into the alternate form or turn back into the character's original form. The CP value of a shapeshifter is a percentage of the total CP of both forms added together. The percentage depends on how often the player can control when his character transforms and how long the transformation takes.

	normal	fast	how often the character must assume a certain form
	40%	60%	the player never decides when to transform
	50%	70%	day, night, odd days, weekdays, weekends, when injured
	60%	80%	1 day a week, a few days a month, 30 to 90 days a year
	70%	90%	1 hour a day, on a full moon, when incapacitated
	80%	100%	the player always decides when to transform

For example, suppose that four werewolves can transform from 300 CP humans into 400 CP wolves, but they don't transform at the same speed and some have to transform at specific times. The total CP of both forms before adding shapeshifting is 700 CP.

• One is a fast shapeshifter who always controls when he transforms. The CP value of this shapeshifter is 100% of the total or 700 CP.
• The second is a fast shapeshifter who always returns to human form when incapacitated. The CP value of this shapeshifter is 90% of the total or 630 CP.
• The next werewolf is a normal (slow) shapeshifter who always a wolf on Thursdays and also returns to human form when incapacitated. Since Thursdays are hopefully much more common than being incapacitated, the CP value of this shapeshifter is 80% of the total or 560 CP.
• The last werewolf is usually human and never transforms voluntarily, but automatically becomes a wolf when injured. Fortunately he is also a fast shapeshifter: slowly shapeshifting when injured wouldn't give him the more powerful wolf form until after he was done fighting whatever injured him. This werewolf's CP value is 70% of the total or 490 CP.

Linked Health (10 CP for both characters)

Linked health is a quality which allows two characters to combine their toughness. They are both injured if and only if the total damage and stun of both characters is greater than half of their combined toughness. They are both incapacitated if and only if the total damage and stun of both characters is greater than or equal to their combined toughness. This quality always links the same two characters together. Decide which two characters are linked when you give them this quality. Both characters must have the quality. The CP value of linked health is 10 CP for each character. A character with a familiar can have linked health with the familiar.

Intangible (50 CP)

The character is insubstantial or incorporeal and cannot touch or be touched physically. Although the precise rules might vary between games, intangible characters can usually touch other intangible objects, such as their clothes and other intangible characters. They are also able to walk through walls but they can rest on solid surfaces and take no falling damage. Intangible characters are often able to fly (this requires the separate flight quality.)

Temporary Intangibility (200 CP)

The character can become intangible and return to normal at will. In combat the player controlling the character decides whether the character will become tangible or intangible at the beginning of their turn. The character then remains in that state at least until the character's next turn.

Invisible (50 CP)

The character and his equipment cannot be seen. The character still makes sounds and smells, leaves footprints and reflects echoes and heat and so forth. Shooting the character or hitting the character with a thrown weapon is impossible without successfully detecting the character's position first. The invisible character has a +4 attack modifier when striking and a a +4 defense modifier against all attacks except grappling. The invisible character even has a +2 modifier to grappling attacks and defense against grappling.

Temporary Invisibility (100 CP)

The character can become visible or invisible at will. In combat the player controlling the character decides whether the character will become visible or invisible at the beginning of their turn. The character then remains in that state at least until the character's next turn.

Ageless (0 CP)

An ageless character does not grow older, or stops growing older at a certain age. Although this ability has significant personal advantages, it is worth 0 CP because its subtle disadvantages can be more significant to gameplay. A possible disadvantage of agelessness would be having to change identities every 10 years or so to conceal this quality.

Immortal (50 CP)

The character cannot die, at least not by any means generally available in the game. Immortality does not prevent a character from being injured or incapacitated and recovering at the normal rate. It does include the ability to regenerate lost body parts if necessary. A character cannot have both the ageless and immortal qualities because immortal characters do not grow older or stop growing older at a certain age.

Invulnerable (100 CP, 300 CP, or 1000 CP)

The character cannot receive stun or damage by any means generally available in the game, except possibly for a list of one or more specific weaknesses. The CP value of invulnerability depends on whether the character has weaknesses and how common those weaknesses are. If the character's weaknesses are common enough to be discovered accidentally and easily acquired, then invulnerability is worth 100 CP. If the character's weaknesses are difficult to discover or acquire then invulnerability is worth 300 CP. If the character has no weaknesses then invulnerability is worth 1000 CP.