Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
Mana is a form of energy, not a shorthand for how easy magic is. Otherwise, very high mana would be great (rather than being a disaster waiting to happen). Roma Arcana is just one weird timeline (they have dinosaurs as well), so it is not possible to generalize its features to other timelines.
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As I tried to explain that is the way GURPS in the past and until recently used mana - as a short hand for how easy/common magic was. Roma Arcana shows that mana need not be energy; there it represents how accessible spirits are to the wizard's requests.
[QUOTE=AlexanderHowl;2368725]When talking about magic,
Thaumatology is a better resource than
Fantasy anyway, and Chapter One presents a lot of options for sources of magic, with mana as only one possible source of magic (similar to the sources in
Powers).
It also has "In some beliefs, magic requires the involvement of supernatural beings,
usually intangible spirits." which is exactly what is going on with Roma Arcana.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DangerousThing
Just because you're not counting mana points doesn't mean that magic doesn't depend on mana.
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But the point was NOT mana as demonstrated by this post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
I've seen a similar comment, that "magic leans towards the lower Quanta".
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Magic in general be it mana, Sanctity, Alchemy, Psi, or superpowers with the 'dependent on mana level' limitation (-10$ IIRC) doesn't "leans towards the lower Quanta". Mana based magic
may lean that way but with around 130 realties where
we don't know the mana levels at all there is no way to canonal make that assumption and it doesn't seem to apply to alchemy based magic in any case.