Magic and Spirits

Magic

Much like Decking and the Matrix, Magic is very simplified. Having an Aspect that includes Awakened allows use of Sorcery and Conjuring Skills to accomplish the Four Actions of FATE Core.

Sorcery is used for all things involving spells and general Magic issues. Conjuring is used for the summoning and banishment of spirits.

Like Shadowrun, Magic users fall into three groups: Mages, Shamans and Adepts.

Adepts are the easiest, as their Powers from Shadowrun are easily converted to FATE Stunts and Extras. We can also go beyond the book - anything you can conceive of for your Adept, we can turn into a Stunt.

For Killing Hands, for example, I model it this way:

Stunt: Killing Hands: When using Fight, you deal +1 Stress to a target, if your damage would be reduced below 1, you still inflict 1 Stress and gain a Boost. You may spend a Fate point once per scene to "stage up" any Consequence - Mild to Moderate, Moderate to Severe.

Mages or Hermetic Mages summon elemental spirits (if they summon at all) and use the Hermetic trappings to color their magic. Since they can't get the Totem Stunt, they can instead be part of Mystical Societies, or have Mentor Spirits they can turn to for guidance.

Shamans are more primal, tied to the Essence of the Earth. They summon Spirits that reflect their surroundings.

Sorcery 

Magic allows you to use the Sorcery skill to shape Mana in a way that you can use to Create an Advantage, Overcome an Obstacle, Attack a person or thing or Defend yourself from harmful spells and magical effects.

There are no spell lists. Magic-using characters are free to narrate the looks and effects of their spells however they see fit. Logical Aspects will be chosen based on narration. Outside of the scope of what can be done with Magic, the rules governing its use in this Hack are the same rules used to govern every other action in FATE Core, with this exception:

Magic always succeeds.

That changes our Four Outcomes from:

• Succeed with Style
• Succeed
• Tie
• Fail

To:

• Succeed with Style
• Succeed
• Succeed at Minor Cost
• Succeed at Serious Cost

Why the change? To model Drain.

Drain

Since we don't have a list of spells that give us Drain Codes and calculations, we need another way to model Drain. We're doing that in two ways. The first is, as you can see above, making Magic a two-edged sword. You cannot fail when casting a spell, but the costs can be quite high if the roll doesn't go your way. The second way we model Drain is:

If you do not match the difficulty when making a Sorcery or Conjuring Test, you must take the difference between the two as Stress. If the Difficulty of the test you were attempting is higher than your Sorcery or Conjuring, whichever is higher, the Drain is noted on your Physical Track. If it is equal to or lower than those ratings, it is noted on your Mental Track.

So, if I have Sorcery 4 and I need to match a Fantastic test (6) and I only get a 3 after my roll, I'm going to be taking 3 Stress on my Physical Track. If I have a 4 Sorcery and I needed a 4 but got a 3, I'd take one stress to my Mental Track instead.

Now let's define those costs.

What are costs?

Straight out of FATE, in the section titled Making Failure Awesome:

Succeed at a Cost
You can also offer to give the PCs what they want, but at a price—in this case, the failed roll means they weren’t able to achieve their goals without consequence.
A minor cost should complicate the PC’s life. Like the above suggestion, this focuses on using failure as a means to change up the situation a bit, rather than just negating whatever the PCwanted. Some suggestions:

• Foreshadow some imminent peril. “The lock opens with a soft click, but the same can’t be said for the vault door. If they didn’t know you were here before, they sure do now.”

• Introduce a new wrinkle. “Yes, the Guildmaster is able to put you in touch with a mage who can translate the withered tome—a guy named Berthold. You know him, actually, but the last time you saw him was years ago, when he caught you with his wife.”

• Present the player with a tough choice. “You brace the collapsing ceiling long enough for two of the others to get through safely, but not the rest. Who’s it going to be?”

• Place an aspect on the PC or the scene. “Somehow you manage to land on your feet, but with a Twisted Ankle as a souvenir.”

• Give an NPC a boost. “Nikolai surprises you a bit by agreeing to your offer, but he does so with a wry smile that makes you uneasy. Clearly, Nikolai Has A Plan.”

• Check one of the PC’s stress boxes. Careful with this one—it’s only a real cost if the PC’s likely to take more hits in the same scene. If you don’t think that’s going to happen, go with another choice.

A serious cost does more than complicate the PC’s life or promise something worse to come—it takes a serious and possibly irrevocable toll, right now.
One way you can do this is by taking a minor cost to the next level. Instead of suspecting that a guard heard them open the vault, a few guards burst in the room, weapons drawn. Instead of being merely cut off from their allies by a collapsing ceiling, one or more of those allies ends up buried in the debris. Instead of merely having to face an awkward situation with Berthold, he’s still angry and out for their blood.
Other options could include:

• Reinforce the opposition. You might clear one of an NPC’s stress boxes, improve one of their skills by one step for the scene, or give them a new aspect with a free invocation.

• Bring in new opposition or a new obstacle, such as additional enemies or a situation aspect that worsens the situation.

• Delay success. The task at hand will take much longer than expected.

• Give the PC a consequence that follows logically from the circumstances—mild if they have one available, moderate if they don’t.

If you’re stuck for just how serious a serious cost should be, you may want to use the margin of failure as a gauge. For instance, in the vault-opening example, above—the one where the guards hear the PC and burst in the room—if the player failed their Burglary roll by 1 or 2, thePCs outnumber the guards. Not a tough fight, but a fight nonetheless. If they failed it by 3 to 5, it’s an even match, one that’s likely to use up resources like fate points or consequences. But if they failed by 6 or more, they’re outnumbered and in real dange

           The exact Cost will depend upon the situation, but should follow those rules.
Yes, that means that if you try to do something at an extremely high Difficulty and Succeed At Major cost, between the stress and the Cost you could be really hurt. That's magic in the Shadows for you

Astral Projecting And Assensing

All Mages and Shamans may project themselves into the Astral Plane, per Shadowrun. The rules don't change, just the setting. In order to be seen on the Material Plane, they must willingly gain the Aspect Materialized. This allows them to be seen and heard, but they are still unable to affect the Material realm.
A Mage may Assense and use their Investigate Skill to Overcome Obtacles or Create Advantages that are related to Astral or Magical Phenomena.

Conjuring

Spirits add a little complexity to our rules, but we'll keep it as simple as possible.
Both Hermetic Mages and Shamans can Summon Spirits. Mages must spend a number of hours equal to the Force of the Elemental Spirit they wish to call in ritual. Shamans Summon on the fly.

Commonalities between Spirits

All Spirits share these things, regardless of anything else they are.
Resistance to Normal Weaponry: The Shadowrun rules use the word Immune but that's a little too strong for system, since we are using Aspects and Aspects are Always True. So, we'll change the wording to reflect how the rules really work. Spirits are highly resistant to Normal Weapons - Firearms and Melee weapons. They reduce any incoming Stress by 2 and ignore any Mild Consequences created by these sources of Damage. That means that Spirits are very resistant to 4 shifts or less of Normal Damage - they reduce it by 2 Automatically, can take the remaining 2 as a Mild Consequence and then ignore that Consequence.

That means that teams without Magical Backup will need to work together to Create Advantages and use them collectively to land a hit with a lot of Stress on the Spirit in order to damage it with normal weapons.

Spirits all have Will equal to their Force which they use to resist Magic Damage and Weapons damage that most other characters would use Athletics to Dodge.
Spirits cannot act independently, they must be given instructions. A mage may spend a Fate Point to give them the Aspect Independent which gives them the ability to act on their own.

Spirits are either only on the Astral Plane or they may willingly gain the Aspect Materialized to affect things outside the Astral Plane

Elemental or Hermetic Spirits must be summoned via ritual, as noted above. When summoned, they have 3 services available. If a Magician Succeeds with Style during the Summoning, they may add to those services.

All Elementals are Weak to their opposing Element, and increase all incoming Stress by 2 when it comes from a Source they are Weak to.

Nature or Shamanic Spirits

Are summoned on the fly. They are Aspected towards the domain they are called from and may not leave, as per Shadowrun rules. They also have three services when summoned and those services may be added to, as noted above.

Summoning a Spirit

The Magician names the Force of the Spirit he is attempting to Conjure and makes an Overcome test against a Difficulty equal to the Force of the Spirit.
Spirits above Force 6 cannot be summoned on the fly, even if they are Nature Spirits. Spirits of this level of power require long, complicated rituals that must be followed exactly. With the number of Skills and Aspects a Force 8 Spirit can start with, they begin to take on their own personalities. At this point, instead of just general, nameless Flame Elemental, you are calling upon Emberwind, Denizen of the City of Brass or Coyote's Howl. Spirits of this nature have their own will, desires, plans and needs.
The Spirit Materializes with the following, based on their Force:
Skill points equal to their Force that may be divided among as many skills as necessary. Often, a Spirit only needs one Skill at its highest level. These skills can be free-form: for example, a Force 4 Fire Elemental only really needs the Skill Burning Things (essentially, Fight and Shoot wrapped up in one specific skill) to reflect its nature and allow it to use its powers to affect the environment and characters.
If the mage succeeds with Style, he may place an additional Aspect on the Spirit and gain a free Invoke on that Aspect.
Spirits have a number of Aspects equal to their Force, divided by 2, minimum 1.
For low-Force spirits, this Aspect will simply be what they are - A Watcher Spirit, for example.
A Force 4 Fire Elemental has two Aspects - Fire Elemental and Searing Hot, for example. It could be Big or Unquenchable or anything else you can imagine that fits into the concept of the Spirit.
Spirits can absorb a number of Stress equal to their Force before dissipating.
Starting at Force 4, a Spirit can sustain and Mild Consequence. At Force 6, they can take a Mild and and Moderate Consequence. Spirits have to be Force 7 or greater in order for their Materialized forms to be able to sustain a Serious Consequence.

Combat with a Spirit

The best way to defeat a Spirit is to attack it with Sorcery. Spirits can also be attacked in close quarters but instead of using the Fight skill, characters must use their Will skill instead, as their force of personalty counts for far more than their kung-fu (Unless you have a special stunt, like a Physical Adept with Spirit Hunter that allows them to use their Fight in this conflict or something similar).

Attempting to damage a Spirit with Firearms or other Normal weapons is covered above.
Conjuring can be used to Banish a Spirit by making an Overcome roll equal to the Spirit's Force. Conjuring can also be used to take over a Spirit by trying to Overcome the mage controlling the Spirit. A Contested Conjuring roll is made. The winner maintains control.

Loosing control of a Spirit

If the Mage who is in control of a Spirit is killed or rendered unconscious, the Spirit immediately gains the Aspect Uncontrolled and is under the control of the GM. Most of the time, the Spirit will take advantage of this option to flee, but angry or vindictive Spirits may use this opportunity to take revenge on the person who summoned or controlled them.




As you can see, there's a lot of room in here to add things on. Enchanting, use of the Materialized Aspect in fun and unique ways. I leave it up to you to flesh it out in further detail, if you'd like.