I need some help on this skill as to wether or not my group and I are interpretting this correctly.

The way i and my friend are interpreting it is that its basically a check one has to make when casting a spell to see if it goes off and what range it has.

But our wizard is interpreting it as something that he combines with his attack when he makes attacks with his spells, so as his base he gets like 225 then he adds his role to it and generally beats his target critting and killing them.

Can anyone help me as to how magic projection is supposed to work? I really hope Anima isn't that broken.

To attack with a spell you use your Magic Projection. If you're a Warlock and you take the right module you can substitute your Attack for Magic Projection when making an attack, but you never combine the two values. Frankly it sounds like your wizard is misinterpreting the rules for their own benefit.

Ejud said:

Think of the roll are determining the max range of the spell

Say the player is casting Light Beam, at someone 15ft away. He/she needs a finial magic projection (base +roll) of 40 for it to be considered a valid cast at that range. If the target were say 1500ft away then the finial magic projection would need to be 180 or higher to be a valid cast at that range.

Now for offensive spells the finial magic projection is also what is used as the attack value when the target defends. Granted they are defending with the same penalties as defending against ranged attacks.

I already figured out that our wizard wasn't interpreting it right.

So basically magic projection is a check for the range of a spell and to see if it goes off.

But I'm still abit confused on magic projection for attacking and defending, based off of what Jtest typed, magic projection is the skill you use when making attacks or defense with magic instead of your attack and block or dodge and the values never get combined?

Exactly, the only time you will ever use anything other than Magic Projection for attacking (or defending if you are using a shield) is if you are a Warlock and you take the module that lets you use your Attack or Dodge/Block in place of Magic Projection.

Okay thanks, now to see how our wizard can try and weazle out of that.

Technically any time you cast a spell on another target you need to roll a magic projection, but since magic is invisible to most people and a ranged attack, the penalties to block or dodge it are crazy high that rolling all the time really isn't nessissarry. But magic (or psycic projection for that matter) are the combat stat for casters (or psychics)

Hrathen said:

Based on my understanding most of your offensive and defensive spells are visible to the naked eye, examples given on page 115 in the magic section. While I agree that most psychic abilities may be unseen, and some magic of the buff/debuff variety may not be over the top visible (say Aggravate damage or fragility); spells like Fireball on the other hand will be visible.

Those with see supernatural see invisible magic and psychic abilities as spiritual creatures. Taking the above examples say your casting fragility on an opponent, your spell could manifest as aura of an strange occult clock whose hands are spinning quickly. The average onlooker will see the casting and know magic of some sort is in play but not the effect, avoiding the spell will be hard because they cannot see(or are even aware) of the path its taking. An opponent with see supernatural may see an old spectral watch maker making their way towards them and dodge accordingly.

Granted thats just my take on it

I just finished up a beginners campaign as the GM and started a new one as a player. The only magic user we had in my campaign was a warlock and like mentioned earlier they can substitute attack/defense for their Magic projection which really simplifies things, but for someone who is playing a different kind of class it can get confusing. First off, you should take a look at the different kind of spells located on page 114-115 to get an idea of what to do. Spells in the Attack and Spiritual sub-types will require you to use your magic projection to hit targets as attack values. Some spells like defense and automatic may require no Magic protection at all as you would be targeting a spot within direct contact (or touch range) with you, although if you were to say, send a defense spell at an ally during combat, then you would have to roll magic projection based on how far he was away from you.

Overall their are six sub-types, Attack, defense, spiritual, effect, automatic, and detection. Attack and spiritual will require magic projection for things such as attack and range (though not always as some spells have a preset final attack value you use instead of a roll). Defensive spells will require MP rolls to determine distance, and sometimes you may use them as you would a shield, and therefore roll for a defensive value. the last three, Automatic, effect, and detection, are odd in that sometimes the require no roll at all. Take a create light spell from the effect section for example. If you were to create light in the are directly above you, their would be no roll required as it would be within the routine difficulty of the chart. However, say you would like to direct your spell 80 feet away, you would need to pass a difficulty role of 80 (a medium difficulty roll). Other spells such as automatic require no MP check at all, but instead require a certain condition to be fulfilled. The book uses the example of the spell mark of fear. Casting the spell happens automatically as long as you have generated the required zeon, although for the spell to take affect, another character or NPC needs to look at the affected area.

The Magic system in Anima is by far one of the most comprehensive and expansive systems of any RPG, it takes alot of reading, play testing, and even sometimes a little improvisation but once you get past the nitty-gritty of the rules, it opens up a world of possibilities, and is one of the things that really makes Anima shine. Hoped that helped, and if for some reason I misinterpreted something, than please feel free to correct me. Happy GM-ing everyone!