Alternate Mana Level Names

[Anders]

No Mana = Clear
Low Mana = Glassy
Normal Mana = Foggy
High Mana = Brumous
Very High Mana = Pea Souper

Which raises the possibility that it may be more difficult to detect magic in a world with lots of mana, because you get a lot of "noise".

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by shawnhcorey

Isildur, like Aragon, was also half-elven.

I don't see the relevance. I was responding to the question of whether anyone other than a hobbit became invisible when wearing the One Ring. Isildur was certainly not a hobbit.

[Anders]

Is that really relevant to the original post?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

Is that really relevant to the original post?

Not especially. But I've already made my comment on the original post.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anders

Is that really relevant to the original post?

It is not, and I apologize for the temporary derailment of the thread.

[Anders]

I think going with sensory analogues is a good way to describe this. I used visibility - other metaphors would be brightness or sound level. We use other senses less, but temperature and smell strength might be interesting to try out.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

I think going with sensory analogues is a good way to describe this. I used visibility - other metaphors would be brightness or sound level. We use other senses less, but temperature and smell strength might be interesting to try out.

Affecting visibility seems like it would be a form of Obscure. I would make it Obscure (Detect Mana) and include the magic awareness that goes into Magery 0 with it.

But I don't think that being in an environment that permits the use of magic inherently interferes with the awareness of magic, any more than having light inherently interferes with vision.

[Anders]

Yeah, but it's not a power of an individual person - it's how mana works in that world.

It is also off-topic, but I will make a note of it for future use.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Eh, it's all fiat anyway. The whole concept of defined "zones," where you have a +0 to cast over there and a -5 to cast twenty feet thataway, doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- it'd stand to reason that there'd be a gradually diminishing band instead. Which, of course, would be a pain in the ass to adjudicate.

Thaumatology has Continuous Mana for this and yeah if you're using CM that's like ten different levels it'd be too many names to remember so I'd just refer to it by level.

I'd probably like to see something like whichever level of mana is higher than no/zero to be "mana 1" though. AFAIK that's the new "Very Low Mana" (-10 to skill) introduced in Thaumatology though I guess Continuous Mana might widen that spectrum.

"might grant anything from -10 to +10 to spells" doesn't explicitly outlaw -11 or +11 but "treat a level of -10 to -8 as very low mana (above)" seems to strongly imply -10 is the next step above No Mana like a hard cap

"and +8 or higher as very high" weirdly is not "+8 to +10" which seems to give more flexibility for +11 possibly existing

One of the major changes to High Mana is skill bonuses which I don't think apply to High/VeryHigh in the traditional systems.

Elements that struggle to adapt to a continuous system: "Other effects related to mana level – harm to mana dependent creatures, FP recovery rates, critical failure rules, etc."

It'd be cool if we could make these linear where possible. I could see doing that for harm to mana dependent creatures (make the HP damage scale in decile damage per increment) or with FP recovery (instead of recovering 1 FP per 1 energy spent at +10, you might recover between 0.1 and 0.9 from +1 to +9) but can't think how to do this with crit fail rules.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'll go one further. Middle-earth is high mana. Anyone can perform magic if they know how. If Sam had told the elves of Lothlórien that he liked making ropes, they say they could have taught him skill such as that which made the elven-rope they give him, the rope that comes undone when asked and which burns and freezes servants of the Enemy.

Maybe this is accomplished via Path/Book Magery and Middle Earth allows for the "Limited Non-Mage Ceremonies" usage? T126 does allow mana or sanctity to influence rituals but I think it's optional.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

"They" put spells on the treasure. You might read that as "Gandalf, at their behest," but I don't think so.

Perhaps them aiding him doing Ceremonial Magic?

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Anyway, later it is said that the dwarves, and definitely the dwarves, "spoke fragments of broken spells of opening" when trying to get into the side-door. They know magic, but not a lot.

Might this just be stuff like "open sesame" where they know of certain words keyed to magical opening?

Though yeah the way they're trying to compile random fragments sounds almost like they're trying the Ritual Magic rules defaulting their "Path of X" skill to use spell techniques at default.

[CraigR]

Originally Posted by Plane

No/Trace/Thin/Dense works well.

I don't like "Very Dense" (want something more unique) nor Ubiquitous (too many syllables) maybe "Thick" ?

How about "Concentrated"?