I am unsure if this has been asked before but I am finding that I simply do not understand the Magic Rules at all how they are written. Either I am the most ignorant person in existence or simply unable to grasp it. The following are a few questions I had.

1. How do you actually get better with Magic since I cannot find any mention of raising ones MA for determining what level spells they have access to.

2. Why does it seem that the spell really don't do much of anything at lower levels? I read over them and honestly was not impressed by any of the spells since there is no real combative spells, defensive or even healing ones at a beginning characters level.

3. I simply do not understand how the whole Magic System is really suppose to work I mean do you just automatically know certain spells? Can you learn others? Why is it seem so hard to do any of the effects?

I've read and reread the book since it came out and I feel fairly confident that I understand most if the rules but Magic utterly confuses me.

Thank You all in advance... also I am relatively new to the forums so... be gentle )

Kimura

Kimura said:

Let me see if this helps.

1. Check out page 112 and table 56. Those are Magic Levels, which characters with the Gift get to learn new spells. They're based on your Intelligence. A character with Int 9 knows 40 levels worth of spells. If his Int goes up to 10, he can now know a total of 50 levels worth of spells.

You can purchase spells in one of two ways. As a path, in which case putting all 40 of those levels into a single path, such as Water, gives you access to all spells up to level 40. Or you can get them on a cherry picked basis, in which case each individual spell has a different cost, as show on page 113, table 57. You can mix and match them, and the rules for opposing schools costing more don't count for spells that are being purchased individually instead of as part of a path.

In the core book, the only way to learn more spells is to either have the Natural Knowledge of a Path advantage (which does not count towards you Maximum Magic Levels) or by increasing your Intelligence. One of the spanish books apparently offers another rule for buy with DP, but I don't have that one and can't comment.

2. You are right that low level spells are more utility and don't come across as impressive. This is to encourage focusing on and mastering a single Path, rather than mastering all of them. After all, sinking all your levels into a single path gets you the good stuff much quicker than spreading it out.

You can cast any spell you know as long as you have the Zeon. The trade off for that is to make memorizing individual spells harder to do.

Remember the limits of High and Divine Magic always apply, so most characters will only master a given path up to level 80.

3. Well, the GM can determine a maximum known level for spells for the start of the campaign, and the GM Screen has suggested limits based on the frequency of magic in the campaign. How you learn depends on the GM. If he decides that you can spend the Magic Levels and automatically learn the spells, then you can do it that way. Otherwise you need to find some method of learning, which is described under Magic Instruction.

One of the easiest way to do this is with a Grimoire. But you should also remember that a magic user can cast a spell from a Grimoire as long as they have the Zeon available for the spell (and the Intelligence to cast it). So even if you don't have a lot of spells that you have mastered with Magic Levels, you can increase your spell options with Grimoires.

I think your best bet is to go back and re-read pages 112 to 116 very closely. It's all there.

Hope that helps.

1. Your Magic level is determined by 3 things, your intelligence, The advantage natural path (or the Monster creation equivalent advantage) and what your allowed to have by level by the GM which should be maybe 1/2 of your Maximum spell level at the start not to surpass 40, (because you won't be going above 80 until your basically a god, if you have extra magic levels to spend (you reached level 80 for the max) then take another magic path because if you reach the higher levels you can just use one of your characteristic boosts that you get every other level to boost your intelligence giving you access to the above 80 powers.)

MA does not matter at all for your magic level. MA is based on power not intelligence and determines how fast you cast your spells and how fast you regenerate magic.

2. Remember that you can boost the power of lower level spells if you have the intelligence for it. For example let's say your using the level 22 spell Light Beam from the book of light. You have 10 intelligence so the maximum zeon rules for that spell (intelligenceX10) allow you to increase the zeon cost for the spell from 50 to 100 and for each 10 extra zeon that you spend you get +5 damage. So the end result is that you can unleash an 85 damage attack. It might seem low(if your crazy) but remember that it's an energy attack so if you attacked a guy in armor they have to have armor better than byrne to have any defense at all and byrne has an armor requirement of 60 which means humans essentially have no armor save 9 times out of 10. Supernatural creatures on the other hand often can't even be damaged unless the damage is energy.

Healing is another ball game entirely. Healing in anima isn't supposed to be easy so it's not surprising that it's difficult at first level however there is one (and I only know of one) very effective essence spell in at level 40 that allows you to increase regeneration to 16 in a 130 foot radius. It's not a daily spell so you can't use it to regrow lost limbs, although you could reattach them. The other ways to heal would basically be the 40-50 free access spell heal which returns 40 LP or the secondary ability medicine which at high levels would allow you to recover 70% of lost life points for no zeon cost whatsoever. So there's options.

3. First of all I'd recommend you read the magic advantages and page 109. Secondly yes and no you do and you don't automatically learn new spells. There's an advantage that allows you to know automatically all the spells up to level 40 of a path but beyond that your supposed to learn them in game ad per page 112 you have 1/2 of your magic levels as a mystical archtype or 1/4 as a nonmystical archtype (recommended) Beyond your skills given by that advantage you can increase your maximum magic path by adding points from your magic level, (although as I stated earlier I don't recommend going over 80 for any particular path..yet)

I don't know what you mean by so hard to do any of the effects but It's not surprising that your confused. There's basically 4 types of spells attack,defense,spiritual,and effect/automatic/detection The last one always works if you simply cast it so that's why i consider it one type. To do any of the first three you have to have magic projection or one of the magic projection modules which allows you to substitute attack or defense for magic projection.

First off Pure wizards have the potential to have the highest magic projection period. 5 more than the maximum for warlocks and that gap increases by 2.5 per level. Also they can effectively use both Magical attacks and magic shields which no other class can do, except for mystics who can also shoot lighting bolts and protect themselves with energy shields. Wizards also have the advantage (over warlocks not mystics) that they only need a couple of high characteristics, POW and INT. mystics only need high willpower The monsters. (Oh and dex bonuses help projection too..but not for warlocks only for wizards and mystics)

But anyway. If you use the advantage +50 zeon per level from the GM toolkit with creation points and take the elemental capability advantage (+20 MA for a specific Magical Path) +The Gift you can have an effective magic user from any of the fighter and prowler archtypes that'll like 10X Better than the Warlock because of his being completely being Jacked of secondary abilities. Just make sure you have a POW of 8 or higher (8 works fine). If you can handle the disadvantages you can go even further. Natural path would allow you to get by with a lower intelligence, another +50 zeon per level would allow you to have better reserves and superior magic regeneration the mainstay of typical spellcasters would be useful as well. If you have a wizard or a sorcerer with a wizard familiar you can user them as a zeon battery as well saving yourself precious points.

blackburn beat me to it.