Magic Users

People and creatures that can manipulate magical forces

High Fantasy Magic
Permission Aspect

All magic users must have an aspect to justify their use of magic. Whether it is included in an existing aspect or a new one all together, your permission aspect must include the source of your magic in some way. The source of your magic is how you obtained your powers. Your source gives the group more information about your character and her powers, but it also serves as a flaw for your GM to compel. Each source includes a casting skill, which is talked about in more detail in the Important Skills section, later on. Choose one of the three following sources and incorporate it into one of your character aspects.

Ex. 1 - Ancestral Heritage: Your ancestors were magically gifted; their power flows through your veins. As a result, you have naturally inherited their abilities. Magic users with the Ancestral Heritage have not gone through all of the training of a wizard or a sage, and their magic tends to occasionally go haywire as a result. This can result in spells affecting the wrong target or even producing random results.

Example aspects: Arrogant Elven sorcerer, Descendant of the Great Mazul

Ex. 2 - Divine Patron: You are a disciple of a deity or some other-worldly being. In return, you have been blessed with magical abilities. You can occasionally communicate with your patron, but when you do, the responses you receive are generally vague and puzzling. Magic users with the Divine Patron source are subject to the whims of their deity. Patrons may require their disciples to act according to a certain code of ethics, or aid in specific quests. They also may weaken or take away magical abilities if a disciple is not obeying their laws. Example aspects: Dwarven priest of Thanin: The Just, The last disciple of Argoth

Ex. 3 - Relentless Training: You have not inherited your magical abilities, but instead, you have trained long and hard to do what you do. Years of your life have been spent studying old tomes and testing magical theories. Magic users with the Relentless Training source are usually holed up somewhere while they perfect their abilities. Wizards and the like know a great deal, but most of their non-magical knowledge is just that: knowledge. They have not had many chances to apply that knowledge in the real world. Example aspects: Snoody human wizard, Apprentice of Hezir: The Magnificent.

Magic Disciplines

Magic disciplines represent the types of magic that you are able to use, regardless of how you obtained the ability. Once you have a permission aspect, you must choose one or more magic disciplines in order to use magic. For a list of the available magic disciplines, see page 15.

Using Magic

Once you have a permission aspect and one or more magic disciplines, you can use magic. This is done via your existing skill list. When you would like to use magic to solve a problem, ask yourself the following questions: “What is the character doing?” and “Why is it worthy of a roll?” Once you have answered these questions, use the answers to help determine which skill should be used.

For example, I have a character named Radcliff “Rad” Longfellow. In order to use magic, Rad has the aspect Grumpy old wizard, and the disciplines: Energy, Fire, and Illusion. If I want to have Rad shoot a fireball, I can roll Rad's Shoot skill. If I want him to create a force field out of Energy, I might roll his Crafts skill, since he is creating a barrier. If I want him to trick someone with an Illusion, I can roll Deceive. Then any narration that comes out of that action can be a magical one.

Fate Accelerated

All of the examples used throughout this guide reference Fate Core skills rather than the approaches from Fate Accelerated. This is because using magic with approaches is much easier to grasp. You can still use this system with Fate Accelerated by applying the same principles.

Important Skills

All skills are still important for magic users, but the following two tend to come up especially often when dealing with magic.

Casting Skill

Each of the sources of magic above brings with it a casting skill. The casting skill is simply the skill that you use to perform magic. Generally, you will be using whichever skill that best represents the challenging part of the current action. However, sometimes it is clear that a roll is needed, but no skill fits the action perfectly. Other times, the difficult part of an action is casting the spell itself. In these cases, use your casting skill.

Will

The Will skill is more important for all characters than usual, because it is used for resisting most hostile magical effects. It can also be used by Magic Caster to maintain a spell. If someone wants to overcome a magical effect that you created, you can roll Will to defend against it, if it makes sense in the narrative.