Daniel Newwyn
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Changes to the magic system
🕑 Added 2025-07-25 20:49:59 +0000 UTCThe system’s over-complexity has always been a weaker part of the book, so Rolen is making changes to it. Here are the changes. They will be gradually implemented into later chapters of the book after another round of revision.
1. Both Thaumaturgy and System definition now require these components for casting a spell:
Technique
(or aid from magical Items)
+
Intent
(through emotions, mnemonics, or simply thinking about casting the spell)
+
Timing
(casting the spell at the right time)
This is to cast a good spell. Many spells don’t call for all of these elements, like Shameflare.
2. Then, to control the spell, you need the fourth component: Inner Resonance. Because of this, ARC (Aetheric Resonance Control) has simply been replaced by RES (Inner Resonance).
3. How is this different from the last version?
Intent merged with emotions and mnemonics
You can communicate intent through thoughts and mnemonics anyway. No need for this to be a separate component.
Control & Resonance merged into one
Inner Resonance is basically how good you can control your spell. There’s no need for them to be separate stats.
4. So now, the stats tracked by the system serve simple purposes:
STR: How physically strong you are
DEX: How physically fast and stealthy you are
FOR: How fast you can physically heal and how resilient you are to emotional & mind manipulation
SYN: How good your magical timing is
INT: How well you immediately deduce and intuitively find out how a spell works
EMO: How well you control your emotional channeling
RES: How good you control your spell, and how much spellpower you amplify AFTER the spell is cast
The reason why Stupenstone Fling is so hard for Fabrisse to cast is because it requires a lot of timing through SYN, something that Fabrisse really sucks at. The reason why it’s weak as heck and often doesn't reach the maximum speed, power, or flies in a weird arc is because his RES is bad.
40% Stupenstone Core Alignment (Stable) + 40% Thread Synchronization + 20% Kinetic Channeling Efficiency
His timing already accounts for 40% of the base effectiveness of the spell. Messing it up would mean the spell sucks.
In contrast, the reason why spells like Shameflare are so easy to cast is because its Aetheric Reaction Equation is simple:
60% Shame + 40% Thought → Shameflare
He just needs to think about casting Shameflare and feel the shame to cast it.
Some spells are harder to cast, but the components aren’t Fabrisse’s weakness, like Veil of Shame. Here’s its equation:
68% Emotional Overload: Shame + 24% Mnemonic + 8% Thread Synchronization → Veil of Shame
So he just needs to feel overwhelming shame and cast the right mnemonic to cast the Veil of Shame. If he times his emotional release well, it makes the Veil a bit cleaner (a perfect 100% instead of 92%).
Comments
danielnewwyn
Yes. I plan to give it very few opportunities to actually increase inner resonance, so it would make sense to save up his level up attributes into RES
mapts
That’s probably a good change, but does that mean innate resonance can now be increased through the system?
