What makes a mage?

Training, that's all. This means that anybody can become a mage. Mages learn how to manipulate mana that exists nearly everywhere and use it to cast spells. The ability of a mage is measured in "tiers", low tier mages are the weakest, mid tier is the next most powerful and high tier mages the most powerful of them all. Spells are also placed in tiers and mages can only cast spells from their tier and the tiers below them. Chosen Ones are all high tier mages but can also cast master tier spells.

Cooldown and miscasts

When a mage casts a spell they enter "cooldown". They cannot cast that spell again for an amount of time based on the spell, some spells have low cooldowns measured in seconds while some have cooldowns measured in months. While in cooldown the mage can cast other spells but will have a chance to miscast. By default your mages will not cast spells while in cooldown.

A mage has a 5% chance to miscast for every low tier spell they have in cooldown, 10% for every mid tier spell, 20% for every high tier spell and 40% if they have a master tier spell in cooldown. These add up; casting 4 low tier spells and a mid tier spell gives you a 30% chance to miscast. If you miscast then the spell is reversed in some way to be bad, if you are launching a fireball then you catch fire, if you are healing your allies they are hurt.

Concentration

Several spells state that they need no concentration, some concentration or all of a mage's concentration. No concentration means that there is no link to the caster after the spell is cast, what they do or don't do will not affect the spell. Some concentration means that they can still walk and even talk a little but they must be able to concentrate on the spell they have cast. Full concentration means that they cannot even walk and will often sit down to cast it. If a mage that requires some amount of concentration is distracted then the spell will fall apart.

Buying Mages

Mages are bought as a type of military unit, they are rather expensive but require no upkeep.

• Low tier mages cost 0.5 materials each
• Mid tier mages cost 2 materials each
• High tier mages cost 8 materials each

Getting spells

There are many different spell lists, as a nation you can research spells from one or more lists at which point all mages in your nation can use that spell. Each spell costs both materials and spell points, spell points are generated by magical academies, the points are lost at the end of each turn so you cannot store them up. Each team also gets 50 magical research points for free. Below is a table to show the pricing of spells for research, the red text is the equation used to add on the price per level, the "L" is the level of the spell you are researching (you start with level 0 so at first L will be 1).

Tier	Materials cost	Research cost		Level	Materials	Points
Low	1 + L x 1	10 + L x 5
Mid	2 + L x 1.5	10 + L x 15
High	5 + L x 2	60 + L x 40
Master	6 + L x 3	100 + L x 200

Tidbits

• If no range is given then as long as you can see the target you can target them, this applies through things such as telescopes and magical seeing spells.
• If a range is given then the caster must be able to see the point either themselves or through a magical scrying device, spell or ability.
• Cooldown begins from the moment that the spell is cast, if the spell fails it cooldown still comes into effect.
• Unless it's specifically stated, a caster may choose themselves as one of the targets of the spell.
• Diminishing returns means that each subsequent effect has 70% of the effect of the last one, 5 Castings will be 2.77 times as powerful as a single casting.
• A quick reminder on how %'s work compared to multipliers, a 100% improvement doubles something, a 200% improvement triples it.
• Stat boosting spells do not stack, instead the biggest bonus for each stat is chosen from all the spells cast. The exception to this are the daemonic transfigure, metamorphose and ascension type spells which alter the base stats of the target.