Evocation is the quick-and-dirty method of using power; it’s basically the art of slinging magical energy around more-or-less directly. If the wizard has a high level of control, evocation can be efficient and deadly. If he can’t control it, then it’s inefficient, but still very possibly deadly—to himself and everyone around him.

In evocation, you gather your power, then shove it into a temporary construct of will to control its direction and effect. This covers magic such as the simple point-and-blast (or, in the case of higher skill, point-and-laser). It is quicker but less certain than thaumaturgy, and it doesn’t need any physical constructs to assist it (though certain tools—like staves, rods, and wands—can help direct the energy). If you try to draw too much power or can’t focus sharply enough on your virtual construct, then the release of energy shatters the construct inside your mind (resulting in unconsciousness, if you’re lucky) or breaks loose on the physical plane, expending more power and creating a much more dramatic effect than planned. This is why you don’t want to use evocation to call fire inside an old house unless you’re good at it. The arrival of a fire brigade tends to be very disruptive to arcane investigations.

While evocation doesn’t actually require physical aids or focusing items, many evocators do use focusing tools for an added bit of assistance. This may range from a chalk line quickly drawn to help visualize a boundary, to a trusted sword used as the directing point for a stroke of lightning, to a blasting rod spelled to make fire easier to control once conjured. Wizardly purists may hold that the true evocator needs only his will, but actual practitioners in the field have a high regard for their skin and tend to err of the side of caution.

Because of its quick and dirty nature, evocation has two practical limitations.

First, you can’t use evocation to affect anything beyond your line of sight. It’s hard enough to concentrate on holding the mental construct for the spell together; if you have to concentrate on a second spell to find your target, it’s just too much. Therefore, you cannot attack a target that you see through scrying or some other effect. Also, magical energy can only travel a certain distance before you need a more permanent construct to direct it accurately, and that’s the kind of thing you need thaumaturgy for.

The other limit is that anything you do with evocation has a very short duration, usually limited to an instant (in game terms, one round of combat). While it’s possible to keep certain evocation effects working for a little while by continuing to feed them power, even this will only work for a limited time. Long-lasting magic is the province of thaumaturgy.

How to Do It

1. Determine the effect you want to achieve (see “What You Can Do With It” below). This includes describing the element (such as one of the Classical elements of water, fire, air, earth, or spirit; see page 253 for more details) you want to use.

2. Describe the effect in terms of one of the following basic conflict actions: attack, block, maneuver, or counterspell.

3. Decide how many dice you want to put into the spell.

4. Make a Discipline roll to cast the spell. The difficulty is equal to the form you chose and how much dice you are using for damage or defense. The roll is modified by the presence of any focus items you may have, and whatever aspects you want to invoke.

5. Pay the cost of Magic Points to power the spell. Magic Point cost is determined by how much damage dice you select, and what attack form chosen.

If you meet or beat the difficulty, the spell is successful. If not, your margin of failure has to get soaked up. You can opt to take shifts of backlash (bad things happening to you, page 256) to get the spell to work as intended, or let it hit the environment as fallout (unintended consequences for your surroundings and the people and things in it, page 256) which will reduce the effectiveness of the spell.

Evocation is the magic of conflicts. Its effects are ultimately very simple, and can only do one of a few things: attack, block, maneuver, or counterspell.

Counterspelling is basically an attack against the energy of the spell itself—you summon up energy of your own to disrupt or redirect the energy holding the spell together. Mechanically, this is pretty straightforward. You need to equal or surpass the power of the effect you want to disrupt, and you roll it just like you would roll an attack spell. The tricky part is sussing out precisely how much power the spell is using, so that you know at least how much power you need to bring. You can try to guess—but if you don’t bring enough, the counterspell won’t work; if you bring too much, you run the risk of not being able to control it all. Figuring this out requires an assessment action (which is a free action, so you can do it just before you intend to counterspell) using Lore. Lore vs. Lore roll, with another Lore roll to determine how much power you need.

One of the ways in which evocation effects are defined is by elements, basic aspects (no pun intended) of reality that have different affinities for certain types of effects. These associations are based on tradition and folk belief rather than on science, and exist mainly to help wizards focus their effects more clearly. If a wizard can think of a blast as “fire” rather than “the ramifications of thermonuclear force,” he’s more likely to pull it off successfully.

The most common elemental system within the White Council comes from medieval Europe: the “Classical” one, consisting of fire, air, earth, and water (modern wizards also include “spirit”). When a wizard casts an evocation, he chooses one of these elements to be the basis of the effect.

To do an evocation, your wizard must gather power for the spell. The stronger his belief in magic, the more powerful his magic can be; this is represented by your Conviction skill. Most of the time, this is all you’ll have to go on—evocation is too quick and dirty to use other power sources the way a thaumaturgical spell can (page 267).

Theoretically, you can call up as much power as you wish, but the dangers increase dramatically. Past the limit of your Conviction, that power starts to take a severe toll on your wizard’s mind, forcing him to exhaustion. To track the Wizard’s reserve, you have Magic Points. All magic taps into these points. Evocation takes at least 1 point for even minor rote spells.

Every die of effect, uses Magic Points at a cost of 3 points per die. So if you were trying to send a blast of fire with a damage of 5D at some Red Court Vampire, it would cost 20 Magic Points. Lets say the Wizard decided instead to make a 5D exploding fireball in a group of Red Court Vampires, this would cost 25 Magic Points.

Once a wizard uses up his reserve of Magic Points to the point of 0, he may continue tapping into his reserve until it reaches its negative value. This has a cost, however, in the form of damage incurred. Every 3 points past 0, is a die of damage, and this is cumulative. Once the Wizard reaches negative value, if still alive, is totally drained of Magic energy and cannot summon any magic. In fact if they can stand at all or is conscious would be......amazing, but they may not be totally sane.

Casting an evocation spell ultimately boils down to controlling the release of the magical power that the wizard gathers so that it takes the shape of the spell in his mind. For everything to go smoothly, his Discipline roll must succeed versus the dificulty. The Discipline roll also controls spell targeting and sets the difficulty for defending against it.

You get to make this roll only once, at the instant that the spell energy is released. If you fail the Discipline roll, the dice of effect are released as uncontrolled power, which manifests as either backlash or fallout (see this page). Fortunately, you have a number of tools available to keep that from happening. You can invoke aspects to raise the Discipline roll and can also take backlash as damage (and thus possibly incur consequences) to try to cover the margin of failure.

When your Discipline roll does not match the amount of power put into the spell, bad things happen. The excess energy goes wild, causing havoc.

There are basically two kinds of trouble: backlash and fallout. Backlash affects the wizard; fallout affects the environment or other nearby targets. Like everything else, backlash and fallout are measured in damage—in this case, the difference between your failed Discipline roll and the gathered power. The worse the failure, the more the spell’s energy goes haywire, and the worse the effects get.

You get to choose how much backlash you absorb, with the rest going to the GM as fallout. Particularly self-sacrificing wizards may choose to take some or all the excess as backlash—especially if there are allies nearby who might bear the brunt of the fallout of the failed spell.

Any uncontrolled power taken as backlash remains a part of the spell and does not reduce its effect. Fallout is different: every point of fallout reduces the effect of the spell.

Backlash means that the spell energies run through the wizard, causing injury or other problems. This manifests as points of damage, which could require the taking of consequences in the usual way.

Fallout means that the spell energies flow into the environment, causing unintended consequences. This can manifest in a number of different ways. The GM may place aspects on the environment or on targets that the wizard didn’t intend to hit (like his friends and innocent bystanders), or she may assign damage and consequences directly. The GM is encouraged to think of the worst applications of Murphy’s Law possible and enact them. Remember, the wizard was arrogant enough to try to control the forces of the universe—and failed. When fallout happens, it’s the universe putting that wizard in his place, and it’s the GM’s job to take the universe’s side. Greek tragedies have been written about this sort of thing.

As we hinted above, it should be noted that backlash is a kind of safety mechanism for the wizard—if he chooses to absorb it all himself, his spell should still go off as intended because he was willing to pay the extra cost. Fallout is another story entirely, because the wizard has just released the energy into the world and let it run wild. When determining the effect of the spell that caused the fallout, the GM should determine how the dice of damage behave.

Finally, there are focus items, the most common tools of the evocator’s trade. Most wizards rely on focus items to reduce the risks inherent to evocation. These vary widely in terms of what they can be, and they depend highly on the wizard’s particular paradigm of magic. For example, Harry Dresden has a lot of the traditional, medieval English wizard thing going on, so he has a rune-carved staff and wand (blasting rod) as his primary focus items. A wizard with a Far Eastern bent might have prepared scrolls with mystical calligraphy on them. A wizard of a religious bent might brandish a symbol of his faith.

The main purpose of a focus item is to make it easier to control the release of energy in an evocation. In a way, it’s a method to add extra control to the construct in the wizard’s mind. If he can envision the energy traveling down his arm into a rod and the rod is an actual object, it’s easier than if the construct is entirely mental. Using a focus item may give you a +1D bonus either to Conviction (making it safer to summon more dice) or Discipline (making it easier to control the spell) for a specific application. See “Crafting” on page 278 for more information about the types of bonuses focus item provide as well as how to build them. Typically (and traditionally), a focus item is used only for one element. However, it is possible for a focus item to be more powerful, adding a bigger bonus or being useful for various types of evocation. A highly personal focus item may also be one of your aspects and could provide additional bonuses via invocation.

Over time, a wizard uses a particular evocation often enough that it settles into mental “muscle memory,” and its use becomes reflexive. When this happens, the spell is considered to be a rote spell. Your wizard may know a number of evocation rotes equal to the numeric rating of his Lore skill. So, a wizard with 4D Lore knows up to four evocation rotes.

A rote spell is defined as one specific application of evocation in a single element, such as a fire attack, a particular air maneuver, or a spirit block. It always manifests in exactly the same way each time, has the same power level, places the exact same aspect, etc. Any change in the parameters of the spell disqualifies it from being a rote.

The big benefit of knowing a rote spell is that you don’t have to roll Discipline to control it. It’s assumed that you can control the spell energy at a level equal to your Discipline dice, allowing you to act as if you’d rolled a success on the dice every time. You still need to make a Discipline roll to target the spell, however; there’s just no chance of accidental failure. Focus items add their bonuses automatically if they are tied in to the rote, but there’s a caveat: if the wizard does the rote with the focus item, then that item is a requirement for the rote every time he wants to use it. (This is why Harry gets so nervous about entering combat without his staff and blasting rod—he loses the benefits of the rote spell and has to roll each spell as a normal evocation.)

Aspect invocations and other such trickery may be used after the fact, just as if you had rolled a zero and then wanted to invoke something.

Finally, keep in mind that you can have a rote that’s more powerful than you can control with a Discipline roll of Easy (7), which would basically cause automatic fallout or backlash when used unless you can invoke some aspects to make up the difference. This is clearly not for the fainthearted, but it might be useful as a sort of “last resort plan,” making sure you can put the heavy damage out there in a moment of dire need.

Sometimes, it behooves a wizard to maintain a spell effect for an indefinite length of time especially when the effect is a block or maneuver. Normally, you’d assign more power as indicated on the chart below to make the spell persist longer than an exchange. However, this makes the lifespan of very powerful effects depressingly short.

Alternately, you can actively funnel more energy into an evocation to maintain it, but this takes up one action for the round. This is functionally equivalent to rolling another spell. Summon the power per additional round you want the spell to last, and make another Discipline roll to control it. This takes up your action and deals Magic Points as per the usual rules for a normal evocation; the advantage is that you don’t have to sacrifice the efficacy of the original spell—it keeps the rating of the original roll. If successful, the spell effect stays active for that length of time.

Sometimes, you might commit energy to an evocation, only to discover that circumstances warrant a different effect than the one you originally chose. This happens most often with blocks—you put up a shield of some sort that you’re maintaining, only to find out that what you really need to do is attack or maneuver. It’s true that you could simply cast another spell, but there are times when a wizard needs to economize his resources—like when a demon is about to eat his face.

In those circumstances, you have an option—you can reuse the spell energy from an effect you currently have active, spending the Magic Points on another evocation without having to roll another spell. This is subject to some limitations:

1. The spell must have been maintained from a previous roundinto the current one.
2. ŠŠ The spell must not have been used already for its original function in the current round.
3. You must be able to describe how the energy could plausibly be redirected.

Presuming these things are the case, you can use the current power value of the spell to act as a different kind of spell. If the new kind of spell requires a roll for targeting (like with an attack or maneuver), you may roll Discipline. This immediately cancels out the previous effect, as the spell energy can no longer be used for that purpose.

Thaumaturgy is the safest, most reliable method of doing magic—pretty much the polar opposite of evocation. The primary differences between the two are matters of preparation, time, and mindset.

In evocation, you summon up your power, envision the result you desire, and attempt to control the energy on the fly. Because the construct is made up only from the caster’s will and the elements are held solely as concepts in the caster’s mind, evocation can achieve only simple effects, with a very good chance of something going wrong.

By contrast, thaumaturgy sets up the construct physically and allows the elements to act as a lens through which the wizard then focuses his power. Because the spellcaster doesn’t have to concentrate to keep the construct in mind (it’s right there in front of him), he creates a much stronger and more stable effect— meaning he can focus on achieving effects of much greater complexity and subtlety. He can also direct power into the spell gradually, making it far less likely that something will go awry.

Thaumaturgy also allows the wizard the luxury of drawing power from sources other than himself—such as bound spirits, forces of nature, or the assistance of others. Over time, the effects of thaumaturgy are more powerful than those of evocation. While a blast of fire may injure, a ritual curse can leave you and your offspring crippled for generations.

Most of the spells in traditional tomes, or the ones passed down through schools of sorcery, are basically thaumaturgy. They can be described in physical terms—if you follow the recipe of the spell correctly, feeding in the power that it requires, the spell/ritual will work. Particularly effective thaumaturgical rituals require elaborate physical preparations (such as rare items, multiple casters, unusual times of year, or outside influence such as storms) and may also require a minimal influx of power; this makes them usable by people who, otherwise, would never be regarded as wizards. This can be useful, or it can be very dangerous. (Sadly, it’s usually both.)

Thaumaturgy lets you make the most of time, preparation, and materials—without those, it just can’t be done. Therefore, there are two primary practical limitations.

The first is a matter of time. Thaumaturgy is a slow art, with the fastest of spells taking a minute or more, and many taking much longer than that. Patience is necessary; speed is being traded for versatility and potency.

The second is a matter of symbols. In order to affect a target at great range (whether in physical distance or some other dimension), some sort of link must be established to that target via symbolic representations, the incorporation of recently-separated bits of the target (blood, hair, a family keepsake), and so on. Without these physical materials on hand to represent the target in absentia—as well as for anchoring the purpose of the spell to the ritual—a thaumaturgic spell simply has nowhere to go and nothing to do.

1. Determine the desired spell effect. This will help determine the complexity of the spell. Especially if there is damage or something that uses dice.

2. If the complexity level of the spell is equal to or less than your Lore dice amount times three, assume you have everything you need to cast the spell and you require no additional effort for preparation. If the complexity of the spell is greater than your Lore, your wizard must enter a preparation stage during which he researches the spell further, assembles the necessary components, acquires additional sources of power, and finishes the spell construct. You must make up the deficit between your Lore and the total complexity of the spell. There are multiple techniques for doing this at the table.

1. Invoke aspects: Every aspect you can invoke to narrate a part of preparation adds 6 points toward the complexity deficit.
2. Make declarations: You can declare a mini-scene relevant to preparation, where you use a skill and create a temporary aspect to tag. When successful, this is worth 6 points toward the complexity deficit. If the effort fails, the spell isn’t automatically a bust, but no forward progress is made, either.
3. Accept or inflict consequences: For every consequence you are willing to take or inflict on others for the sake of preparation, add the value of the consequence in shifts toward the deficit: so, a mild consequence would add 6 points. (Blood sacrifice is a dark but very potent path many a black magic practitioner can take.)
4. Skip a scene – For every scene you can participate in during a session and choose to skip in favor of preparing the spell, you can add 3 points toward the complexity deficit.
5. Perform a Ritual-by performing a ritual, based on how elaborate, relevant, and detailed it is can deduct from the Complexity Level of the spell. (See page 41)
6. Symbolic Links-by finding objects to include in the spell’s casting, the wizard can reduce the Complexity Level of the spell. (See page 43)

3. When the complexity deficit is met, you can move into actually casting the ritual. The casting process is identical to the process for evocation. The amount of power to funnel into the spell is equal to the spell’s Complexity Level and the wizard must roll Discipline to control that energy, with any uncontrolled shifts potentially becoming backlash or fallout. Unlike evocation, so long as you continue to make your Discipline rolls, you can continue to funnel power into the spell in successive rounds of casting. When the power in the spell equals the complexity, you’ve successfully cast it.

Thaumaturgy carries an extremely broad range of effects under its banner: summoning and binding supernatural entities like spirits or demons, divination and detection, wards, curses, temporary and permanent enchantments on people and things…the list is potentially endless. Fortunately, most of what thaumaturgy does can be broken down into some basic principles that make different spells relatively easy to parse out in game terms—namely, how to determine the complexity of the spell.

Dealing with spirits and other supernatural entities (such as demons) from a “safe” distance is one of the hallmarks of ritual magic. The traditional sorcerer from folklore relies entirely on summoning and binding demons to accomplish his aims—and typically pays a terrible price in the process. It is wise for a budding wizard to heed these cautionary tales. Dealing with spirits and demons is no simple task.

There are three parts for summoning a spirit, each of which can (and often should) be done as its own spell—though a very ambitious wizard can always try to build a spell that incorporates two or more of these parts:

1. Create a container to hold the entity.
2. ŠŠSummon the entity.
3. Control the entity (binding).

Containing the entity requires you to create a container, much like crafting a ward (page 276) with a very specific purpose and the intent to keep things in rather than out. As with a ward, the complexity of the containment spell should depend on a combination of duration and the strength of the block. Use the rules for wards when creating a spell of this type. Focused practitioners specializing in summoning and binding can always cast containment spells for use with their work, even if they have no facility for creating wards in general.

Summoning a supernatural entity is a matter of willing it to your presence and having a place to contain the entity when it arrives—typically a casting circle. This usually requires enough levels of complexity to beat the entity in a contest of Conviction, so you’re wise to shoot for five or more dice above the being’s Conviction. Ten is about the minimum number to make safety probable, as that’s sized to beat a 10D Conviction. Therefore, most summoning requires a bit of preparation beforehand. Usually, this time is spent sussing out the entity’s True Name. Once your wizard successfully casts the spell, the entity appears in the designated space.

There is no guarantee the summoned entity will behave how you want it to. You will have to bargain with the entity to achieve your desires. There’s nothing technically magical about this part of the interaction, and a wizard who expects to do this regularly should make sure he’s well versed in Persuasion, Con/Deceit, Charm, or Intimidation.

Even when contained strongly, an entity may try to break the bonds of the summoning circle via trickery (a broken container loses all its strength, instantly) or by main force (launching attacks through the block, usually with its Conviction as the attacking skill). In the latter case, this is a direct conflict of will against will. The wizard must win in order to maintain his circle and keep the entity trapped (a victory can also be used as an opportunity to banish it). If the entity wins, it escapes the wizard’s grasp, and then it’s free to do as it wishes. This is usually a bad thing. Luckily, with a strong container established, the wizard usually has the upper hand and may be able to inflict some harm on the entity in return (see below).

Binding the entity is a third, optional step. You exert your will over the entity, forcing it into your service. Done as another spell, this is considered a fully transformative effect and therefore requires enough shifts to take out the demon as if it were a full conflict.

A more haphazard and dangerous approach is using the entity’s True Name to assault the being directly, trying to wear it down in an actual exchange-by-exchange conflict. In such a case, you can use your Discipline as the attacking skill, inflicting mental damage on the creature, or you can step it up to genuine spellcraft and assault the creature with spirit evocations.

That True Name must be guarded carefully. Any skilled practitioner that learns a creature’s True Name can make similar attacks to wrest control of the creature away from its original master. (Without the True Name, evocations directed at the creature simply work to disrupt its manifestation and send it away.) Regardless, bindings formed in this way are imperfect and decay more rapidly than those achieved by way of ritual.

Once the entity is bound, you must work to keep the bond reinforced—after the entity has recovered from the consequences it sustained in the initial conflict, it will likely attempt to escape and the spell will probably need to be recast. In time, this cycle of need can become a problem of its own. Also keep in mind that most entities really don’t appreciate being controlled in such a one-sided way; a bound entity will likely do everything it can to subtly undermine your control until it can make a bid to break away.

Conjuration is the art of creating objects of seeming substance out of nothing. When it comes down to it, though, this is a shell game. None of the things that conjuration creates are actually real; they’re made of ectoplasm, the nothing-stuff of the Nevernever, and once the energy that’s telling that ectoplasm to be something leaches out, it dissolves—first into goo, then into nothing at all.

Here, the complexity of the conjuration is a matter of detail and scale (both quantity and size), as well as the believability of the creation. Note: All of these items still look “a little off ” or “unreal.”

In terms of believability, if the wizard wants to pass the conjured object off as real, he must commit more levels of complexity to the spell—basic conjured objects have a Easy difficulty of believability.

A wizard can use the Sight or other means of divination to figure out that something’s made of ectoplasm, though, so the chances of avoiding supernatural detection are fairly slim.

Often, ectoplasm is used to create a body for a summoned spirit to inhabit so it can physically interact with the world. Usually this ectoplasm is generated by the summoned creature, not the summoner, but in some cases a body must be constructed deliberately in advance.

Divination can take several forms, all basically falling under the general header of “gathering information.” The most common example from Harry’s casefiles is his tracking spell, but there are several other forms that fall within the scope of divination: direct scrying, forecasting and prophecy, telepathy and psychometry, and various other kinds of sensory magic.

With divination spells, the main things to consider are how much information you want and how hard it would normally be to get that information. That’s why Harry’s tracking spell is ultimately pretty easy to pull off—all he gets is a general sense of the target’s location, but no other information. This makes it a simple action which nearly always has a low complexity.

Things become more complicated when you actively monitor the target in some way. First, if the target is behind a threshold or any other kind of supernatural protection, you have to overcome that. Second, even unaware targets have a natural defense against being “read” or seen against their will—basically a defense roll, just like targets get if you take a swing at them in a fight. This commonly defaults to Conviction or Presence, depending on the context of the scrying. So you will want to beef up the complexity fairly high to overcome these obstacles, naturally leading to some prep scenes devoted to finding good links to the target and whatnot.

Veils are spirit evocations (page 255) that bend attention, light, and energy away from prying eyes. They typically require ongoing concentration to remain in place. Evocation’s veils also tend to be fairly personal in scale—covering the caster himself and maybe a few of his allies.

However, it is possible to use thaumaturgy to set up a long-term veil, concealing something for days without ongoing concentration. Large White Council convocations, if they occur in public places, usually have a large-scale thaumaturgic veil covering the entire venue to keep normal mortals from getting too curious about the proceedings.

The complexity of a large veil is equal to whatever difficulty the wizard wants others to beat in order to detect whatever’s behind the veil; as usual, more is better.

Veils often block detection in both directions. Perceiving things outside a veil while you are within it faces a similar block, at half the veil’s strength. Increase the complexity of a veil by 10 in order to create a veil that doesn’t impede looking out at all. (For an evocation veil, this increases the power requirement of the spell by 10.)

In addition, bigger veils mean a higher complexity. Concealing the caster himself or a small group is within the scope of an evocation veil which equals about 3” to 1” area, at 9 to 3 added to Complexity. Thaumaturgical veils are not usually mobile and are constrained by thresholds and other barriers that scatter magical energies (such as a river).

Casting a veil as a ritual means the wizard doesn’t really have to worry about maintaining it; if he wants it to last past the next sunrise, he’ll need extra duration levels as noted in Thautmaturgy Duration Chart (page 46).

A ward is basically a very potent version of a block using thaumaturgy instead of evocation. It’s intended to protect an area—usually a home or sanctum—from physical or magical intrusion. Wards are similar to thresholds (page 230), except they’re quite a bit more potent. Most wizards need stronger protection against occupational hazards such as hostile demons, malicious magic, and hungry monsters.

A ward’s basic function is reflecting energies back onto their source. Someone who collides with a ward at a brisk walk might experience something equivalent to a hard shove, while someone running full tilt into a ward would most certainly get knocked to the ground. Magical force gets the same treatment—a powerful spell cast on a good ward usually ends up being very bad for the intruder.

In addition to this basic function, wards can be rigged to contain other magic that gets triggered when the ward encounters significant force. The most common of these is a magical “landmine,” where a large evocation effect (such as a fire burst) is encased in a sigil behind the ward. The ward releases its energy when the containment provided by the ward is breached. Other effects are possible, though; the enchantment known as a wardflame can be attached to a ward as an early detection system, showing the wizard when something is coming his way by causing nearby candles to burn bright blue (or some other light-show).

The base complexity of a ward is directly related to its desired strength, so you should aim for this to be pretty high: 31+ (Heroic) is a pretty good target to shoot for if you’re moderately good. This represents the ward’s capacity for reflecting attacks.

When something hits the ward, compare the damage values. If the ward prevails, hit the attacker with an effect of the appropriate type for equal shifts. So if someone rolls a Moderate (15) attack against a ward, he has to try to avoid a Moderate (15) attack from the rebounding force. If someone hits it with a 6D evocation, he has to dodge a 6D evocation.

If the attack surpasses the block strength of the ward, then the ward is breached; apply whatever damage that gets through to the target just like bypassing a block. Alternatively, the attacker may apply the excess damage directly toward getting rid of the ward itself; each breachwill reduce the value of the ward by 1D or 3 points until it’s gone. While a ward is technically still around at 0 point strength, most lack the energy to hold themselves together at that point; a ward needs to be reduced to –4 points or -1D+1 to be considered completely nullified.

By default, a ward lasts until the next sunrise unless you add complexity to make it last longer, which is explained in “Duration and Enhanced Evocation” (pages 40+46). In addition, any spells you wish to include as part of the ward construct add their complexity values directly onto the ward. It must all be cast as one spell. If you want a layered defense, you’ll have to spend a bit of time setting it up.

Wards don’t have a “scale” concern, the way that veils do, and they cannot move. They are almost always tied to a particular place’s natural thresholds—think of them as a super-boosted immune system—so they are limited by the size of that threshold. Without a threshold they can only be set up to cover a small area at most—usually a point of transition such as a doorway or intersection.

Wards (and possibly veils) normally manifest broad effects that target everything. To make a ward or veil more selective, you can add simple conditions to the spell, increasing its complexity by 2 for each simple condition added.

Make no mistake—a ward spell can’t “think” for itself, but it can be taught to recognize something incorporated into its symbolic links. You might establish a condition that allows someone to pass through unaffected so long as he’s wearing one of five amulets; you might add a drop of your blood to the ritual components to ensure that you can pass through. Regardless, conditions must be based on something observable, without any element of decision-making: wearing an amulet, living beings, people who say “open sesame,” that sort of thing. These aren’t detection systems—though a divination spell could be combined with a ward to create a more actively discerning ward.

With all of this, the ability to produce a relevant symbolic link is key for each condition. A vial of White Court vampire blood could be used to create a ward that only repels those of the sexy-deadly persuasion (or create a veil that masks one’s presence from their kind alone). Without it, such selectivity just couldn’t be achieved.

These rules are pretty intricate, giving you a lot of options for how you can set up wards and defenses. But it’s a pretty safe bet that any wardcapable spellcaster worth his salt will have his base of operations protected by at least a basic ward.

If it hasn’t been explicitly declared otherwise, assume a wizard’s ward strength to be equal to the highest of Conviction, Discipline, or Lore. In fact, that’s a reasonable assumption for any kind of “preset” magical effect if the GM or player needs to establish one in the course of play. Just assume the caster’s highest magical stat is what you’re dealing with, and use aspects to bolster the totals as appropriate.

So if the PCs are breaking into an NPC wizard’s sanctum, and the NPC wizard has a Superb (6D) Conviction, you can safely assume that the fire trap he has set up is a 5D evocation. Tick a couple of fate points off that NPC, invoke a couple of aspects (say, Meticulous and Paranoid), and now it’s a 9D evocation. And so on.

While crafting things like focus items and potions is considered a type of thaumaturgy, it

To avoid that boring repetition, the game handles crafting through the application of stunts. Wizard characters get a number of “slots” for different kinds of items, under the assumption that there is a practical maximum of items that a wizard can make and maintain at one time. That number rises via character advancement (and the purchase of the Refinement ability—see page 182), allowing the wizard to either possess more items or create stronger ones.

1. Focus Items-enhance and facilitate the magic of the user in a particular way
2. Enchanted Items-store energy and release it again in some predetermined manner, sort of like a “spell in a box.”

Harry Dresden’s usual kit of magic items includes three focus items (staff, blasting rod, and shield bracelet) and a few enchanted items (his duster, the kinetic force rings, and the occasional potion).

Potions and their ilk are a kind of fire-andforget enchanted item. They store energy, but once consumed, the energy is used up and the item is effectively destroyed.

Focus items are very straightforward. They enhance a wizard’s spellcasting in a particular fashion by providing a bonus to one part of the spellcasting effort. Typically hand-crafted by the wizard, focus items are bound to the particular magic they’re intended to work with through a monotonous process of ritual attunement, where the wizard sits with the item in a casting circle or similar ritual space and visualizes its use for hours on end. After a period of weeks or months, the item is ready.

For evocation focuses, this bonus may be applied to either the wizard’s Conviction or Discipline.

For thaumaturgy focuses, this bonus may be applied to the wizard’s upper limit of complexity (Lore) for thaumaturgy or to the wizard’s control (Discipline) rolls for casting. The type of bonus must be determined and locked down at the time the item is created.

In addition, you must specify which type of evocation or thaumaturgy is enhanced by the

Subsequent focus item slots allow you to create new focus items. Alternatively, one or more slots may be spent to add greater capacity to an existing focus item.

The total number of slots a focus item uses is equal to the number of elements or types multiplied by the total of the bonuses. So an item that offered +1D offensive power and +1D offensive control to fire and earth evocations would take up 4 slots.

All bonuses of an item always apply to all of the types on the item: you can’t have +2D complexity for necromancy and +1D complexity for wards in the same focus item, because the +2D complexity should apply to both necromancy and wards.

This makes for narrow, potent focus items (one element or type with a large bonus) and broad, less potent focus items (many elements or types with a small bonus). Broad, potent focus items are very rare. As a result, most wizards tend to have many small bonus items for specific jobs, like a craftsman’s toolbox.

The one restriction on the bonuses provided is that they may not total to a number greater than your Lore. So if your Lore is Good (3D), you can have an evocation focus item that provides +3D to offensive control, offensive power, defensive power, or defensive control, or a focus item that provides +1D to three of those, or +2D to one and +1D to another, but you can’t construct one that provides bonuses totaling 4D or more.

The number of elements or types is not restricted, so long as you have enough slots to accommodate them.

If you are willing to lock the item down to only ever being useful for one specific spell— such as an established evocation rote or a divination spell that always looks for the same thing—then you get a single free “slot upgrade” to add an extra +1D bonus.

You can’t benefit from the same type of bonus (e.g., a control bonus) from two or more items

Enchanted items are intended to hold a single, pre-generated effect that is stored until released, after which the energy in the item must be recharged. The construction process is very similar to the process for creating a focus item, except that the wizard also imbues the item with minute amounts of spell energy as he goes through the attunement process, gradually shaping it to hold the energy it’s designed for.

Making an enchanted item requires one enchanted item slot, which can be acquired by trading in a focus item slot for two enchanted item slots.

When you create an enchanted item, you must specify the effect that the item performs. Nearly any effect within the range of thaumaturgy or evocation is allowed (though evocation tends to be easier because the amount of power involved is usually comparatively small), subject to two limitations:

1. The effect has a strength equal to your Lore
2. It may only be used once per game session. After it’s used, the item requires time to recharge by some means that you determine; this is assumed to take long enough to reach into the next session.

You may increase the number of uses per session by one by reducing the base strength of the item by one.

So if you have Good (3D) Lore, you could create an enchanted item with an effect strength of Good (3D) that you can use once per session, or an item with an effect strength of Average (2D) that you can use three times per session. When doing this, the base strength of the item may not go below 2D.

The strength of an enchanted item may be reduced by one to make it usable by someone other than the caster, such as a magically armored coat that anyone can wear.

It’s possible that using an enchanted item will require some kind of skill roll, particularly if it needs to be targeted in some way; discuss this with the GM and follow whatever course seems logical Defensive items (ones that provide armor or a block, for example) often consume a use at the time of defense and don’t require a separate action to activate. If an enchanted item runs out of uses in a session, if wielded by a practitioner, he may make additional uses anyway by taking one level of damage per use.

Subsequent enchanted item slots allow you to:

1. ŠŠ Create a new enchanted item with a new effectŠŠ
2. Add +1D to the strength of the default effect on an existing enchanted item
3. Add 2 to the uses per session for an existing enchanted item

Regardless, an item’s casting strength after all bonuses are totaled should never exceed two times the crafter’s Lore rating—at least not without a very good rationale and a ton of baggage.

Crafting specializations for items and potions aren’t used for control or complexity; they usually affect frequency or strength without making you spend an extra slot to do it.

A frequency specialization allows you one more use per session.

A strength specialization increases the effect strength of your basic enchanted items by 1 (this strength specialization bonus can’t be traded in for an additional per-session use).

In the case of potions, this can create stronger potions, or ones that you can get two uses out of.

Alternatively, a crafting specialization may be applied to increase the limit on how many bonuses may be placed on a single focus item (a focus specialization).

You can create focus items which are used to provide frequency and strength bonuses for crafting when making other items and potions. That said, you can’t create a focus item that helps you create other focus items. It’s... uh, it’s a magic thing. Just doesn’t work.

Potions are very similar to enchanted items in terms of function (and, in fact, even use enchanted item slots to make), but are both more limited and more flexible. To be able to make a potion, you must commit an existing open enchanted item slot to be a potion slot. When you’re outfitting your wizard, consider leaving some enchanted item slots unallocated so you can create potions as you need them.

At the beginning of each session, you may declare what potions you have on hand to fill those slots, or otherwise leave them open. If you have an open slot and a successful Lore roll or a fate point to spend, you may later declare that you coincidentally have an appropriate potion. A given potion can only be used once, period, but it doesn’t face a surcharge for being usable by someone else.

The effect strength of a potion, like enchanted items, is equal to the wizard’s Lore. Multiple slots devoted to potions allow the wizard to either:

1. ŠŠ Have multiple potions at one time; or, ŠŠ
2. Add +1D to the strength of any potion

Unlike a normal enchanted item, the effect strength of the potion may be boosted on the fly or at the time it is created with the invocation of aspects. Each invocation allows the potion’s strength to be increased by 2D. You may choose to take a compel in order to get this bonus for free, but that means the GM can introduce that compel at any time later without giving you the opportunity to refuse—you’ve already agreed to it by taking the additional strength for the potion. In general, only one such “pay-it forward” compel should be allowed at a time.

Power is hard to squirrel away without it being noticed. This is particularly true where items are concerned, both in terms of their physical and supernatural dimensions. First, the physical. Use this chart as a guideline, counting up the number of slots spent on a single item.

And so on. The size of an item will play into how hard it is to physically detect. Fortunately, even when a magic item is physically obvious, it’s not always obvious what it’s for. A beat cop might not look at a staff as much more than a funky walking-stick, even though such a thing is as lethal as a machine-gun in the hands of the right wizard.

That’s where the supernatural dimension comes in. Those who are in the know (generally, those with actual occult training) can use their Lore skill to pick up on the presence of an item of magical potency, getting a +1D to the roll for every two enchantment slots or one focus slot spent in the item’s construction. A staff composed of 4 focus item slots provides a whopping +4D bonus to that roll—so while it might look like a funky walking-stick, a trained pro will recognize right away that it’s an object of absolutely lethal potency. This isn’t the same as knowing what the staff does, mind you—it only identifies it as an item of supernatural power.

Few supernatural types take kindly to someone walking into their establishment while loaded down with big, nasty enchanted and focus items—the same as anyone wouldn’t react well to someone showing up toting two assault rifles and a bandolier of grenades. This is why many wizards go for multiple small items, rather than a single, multi-functional whopper of a thing (this also helps spread out the risk of loss).

Thaumaturgy that fundamentally, lastingly changes the target—whether it’s the target’s body, mind, emotions, or even luck—falls into the category of transformation and disruption. Often, this is dark stuff—curses, mind control, destructive shapeshifting, and death magic.

Of all the methods available through thaumaturgy, these are the ones most prone to run afoul of the Laws of Magic (page 232). Regardless of what the spell changes, this is a violent act to the target: people and things are very good at being what they are, and this sort of magic forces them to be what they aren’t.

As such, these forms of thaumaturgy rely on the same mechanical principle—most of them inflict damage or temporary aspects on a target. Entropic curses inflict aspects that reflect bad luck and other kinds of misfortune. Emotion magic inflicts aspects related to emotional states (lust, anger, fear, etc.) that the victim can fall prey to. Mind control is just that—the aspect, when compelled, forces the victim to act in a certain way. In rarer cases, a curse might actually be fully transformative, changing the shape or nature of a being permanently.

Because these forms of thaumaturgy function via consequences, a wizard needs to make sure that the spell is complex enough to overcome any resistance the target might be able to raise (defense rolls, stamina, or strength rolls, etc.), as well as add enough dice for the desired level of consequence (4D for a temporary aspect, 5D for mild, 6D for moderate, 8D for severe, 10D for extreme). Anything that is fully transformative must be powerful enough to achieve a “mortally wounded” result on the target, which can be extremely complex, which isn’t to say there aren’t sorcerers out there practicing that kind of black magic. Sadly, there are plenty.

Transportation magics are all about getting the wizard (or someone—or something—else) from one place to another. Teleportation is rare if not completely absent—though a clever wizard can certainly make it seem like that’s what he’s done. Instead, there are spells which impart speed or other kinds of motion, and those which rip holes into or out of the Nevernever.

All the types of thaumaturgy listed so far are divided along functional lines. Plenty of spellcasters focus their specializations by function—you have divinators, wardsmen, crafters, summoners, and the like. But just as often, thaumaturgists specialize not along functional lines, but instead along thematic lines. A thematic specialization looks at the subject matter in which all the various functions of thaumaturgy are applied—an ectomancer will be particularly effective with summoning, binding, divining, veiling, warding, crafting, transforming, disrupting, and transporting ghosts and other non-demonic spirits, for example.

Following this paragraph are a few thematic specializations, but the possibilities are as varied as spellcasters themselves. If you want to introduce a new specialization for your character, that’s totally fine. The main thing the GM needs to watch out for here is ensuring that the theme is both strongly expressed and limited in scope; a theme which really amounts to “everything” in application is no theme at all—it’s a cheat.

Many thematic approaches to thaumaturgy run some sort of risk of skirting—if not outright violating—the Laws of Magic. Nearly all of them can be used to kill. Biomancy can be used to transform another; necromancy often reaches beyond the borders of life; psychomancy might be used to invade the thoughts of another. Tread lightly!

Biomancy- Biomancy is a term used for those who work magics upon the body. Shapeshifting is an extreme application of this art, whether in part or in full (see “Transformation and Disruption,” page 33), but it’s hardly the only application. Healing magics fall under this specialization. The main problem with healing magic is that it can’t do much more than modern science can—and it requires just as much real, mundane knowledge of biology as a surgeon to wield well. Still, biomancy can be used to lessen pain, provide first aid type treatment and other forms of physical therapy, and examine the physical conditions of someone’s body (that’s a biomantic divination, right there) including nifty Star Trek style tricks like “scanning for life-forms.” The main advantage of healing magic in the game is in providing justification to begin the recovery process (page 220) without any other effort. Use the damage level, modified by relationship as the spell complexity. (Wounded (Moderate), Wounded Twice (Difficult), Incapacitated (Very Difficult), Mortally Wounded (Heroic)) Remember, the recovery time can’t be shortened with these kinds of magics—the target still has to go through the healing naturally. Biomancy can also be used for short-term supercharging. Look to the early part of “Transportation and Worldwalking” on page 34 for some possible applications (e.g., boosted running speed, etc.). Biomantic rituals, items, and potions can be used to boost strength, speed, perception, and other functions of biology—provided that the body being boosted can withstand the stresses of such an effort. Just because muscles have been supercharged to lift a small car doesn’t mean they’re built to withstand the damage that would do; inflicting consequences on the beneficiary to boost spell effectiveness is not uncommon (Torn Muscle Tissue, etc.).

Diabolism- Diabolism refers to spellcraft involving a demonic component. This is usually very bad news, but a specialization in demonic thaumaturgy can also be used to effectively combat the influences of demons—locating demons, purging the possessed, constructing wards that are especially potent against demons, binding and banishing demons that have gotten loose. But it’s just as easy to cross the line and start using demons for your needs. Demons can be consulted for information via divination (though this invariably produces hazy, vague results—demons would rather be summoned), or by summoning them and entering negotiation for the particulars. They can be bound into service and sent out as infernal attack dogs. While information gathering is something of a grey practice, summoning a demon and putting it into service to kill is a clear-cut case of black magic (there’s a straight line of connection between the intent to kill and the summoning of the demon; cue the First Law).

Ectomancy- Ectomancy is the practice of spellcraft involving (generally non-demonic) spirits, focused especially upon ghosts. Conceptually, ectomancy has much in common with diabolism and necromancy, but it mostly stays within the safe zone in between. It manages to neatly dodge the Fifth Law thanks to the nature of ghosts themselves; ghosts aren’t actual dead people—they’re the supernatural “echoes” of the dead. That said, ghosts can put on quite a convincing show, often possessing some or most of the knowledge and skills of the person that cast the echo, and this makes them potentially useful to a talented ectomancer. Ectomancers tend to get noticed by ghosts and often find themselves haunted by those who are looking for a way to speak to the living. Many ectomancers develop a natural ability to see—or at least acutely sense—the presence of ghosts, simply using Lore as the perception skill. In application, ectomancy can access all of the functions of thaumaturgy as applied to (or by) ghosts and spirits. Ghosts can be summoned and bound into service, sent away or used to kill via disruption, used as a ritual component to enchant items or divine information, and so on. Ectomantic spells can be constructed that specifically target ghosts as well, whether it’s a ward against spirits or a scrying attempt to divine their presence. Some ectomancers may even be able to access a skill from a ghost’s skillset, in an act somewhat like voluntary possession; here, the skill acquired is limited by the level of skill the ghost possesses, and the value of the skill rating is added to the complexity for the binding spell.

Entropomancy- Entropomancy goes by a variety of names— malocchio, maladicto, katadesmoi—and in all cases it amounts to essentially the same thing: the refined art of inflicting curses on targets, driving their lives toward greater disarray (and at its extreme, death). So long as the magic follows the principle of “things fall apart,” entropomancy has an affinity for it. This sort of magic doesn’t have to kill its target—it can just make things suck for them. At its weakest, the curses inflicted by a malocchio are transitory: maneuver-equivalent, inflicting temporary aspects ranging from Bad Luck to Two Left Feet to Comes Off Like A Jerk. Curses might carry a little bit of deliberate hexing with them (page 258), causing technology to fail around a target even though he isn’t a practitioner himself. It’s entirely possible to play a low-level entropomancer in this way, focused not on death but on mischief. The problem, of course, is that magic is tied closely to what you believe you are, what you believe you’re capable of doing. Entropomancers face regular temptation to make the next curse a little worse, because they already believe in their hearts that they’re the sort of people that make sure other folks have a bad day. Sure, you could hit someone with a curse that makes him stumble at just the wrong moment…but why not have him stumble in front of a car? Eventually, cursing tends to become more vicious and direct; giving someone a heart attack is entirely possible and—while it takes a lot of energy to do it—can be done in such a way as to be nearly undetectable as foul play (our example of Victor Sells set aside). The classic is the full-on entropy curse that gives entropomancy its name. This is a dark seething invisible force that follows the victim around and encourages the environment to kill him a lot—falling power-lines, cars full of bees, frozen turkeys plummeting from an empty sky. It’s not a very precise or very quick way to do it, but dire entropy curses do tend to get the job done, often as bizarrely as circumstances will allow.

Necromancy- Ah, necromancy. The art of death magic barely needs an introduction, and nearly all of it is in violation of the Fifth Law. Whether used with good intentions or bad, reaching beyond the borders of life is bad news, no matter if it’s reanimating a dead body as a zombie, calling back a departed soul moments after death, or engaging in human sacrifice to harness the power of death. Zombies and the like are a case of summoning and binding an animating spirit—usually a really stupid one that just knows how to follow instructions—into the flesh of a dead man, then convincing that flesh to get up and start walking again (this typically requires the inclusion of something to stand in for a heartbeat, like a drum or a bitchin’ set of subwoofers and the latest gangsta rap on loop). Where the flesh is weak, ectoplasm suffices, conjured in sufficient quantities to give the body the musculature it needs to move. The dark grey area here—deepest, darkest grey—involves the manipulation of ghosts (usually by doing something unspeakable with their physical remains as part of the spell) and the reanimation of dead creatures that never had a soul in the first place (say, a dinosaur). Such necromancers exist, but rarely without sanction. The Wardens of the White Council like to exercise a fairly broad interpretation of the Fifth Law, given half the chance. And with reason; those who practice necromancy inevitably seem to seek out the lost and hidden lore of the great necromancer Kemmler, engaging in Kemmlerian Necromancy (page 291), becoming even more powerful than before. It’s all bad.

Photomancy- Photomancy is the art of manipulating light and imagery with magic. The most obvious application here is with veils, but disguise and illusion are also along for the ride. Focused light can also produce heat-based effects; on the evocation side, photomancy tends to manifest as a manipulation of fire. Disguises and illusions created by photomancy operate much like veils, save that they’re oriented on fooling someone rather than simply hiding from them. This is a block action against visual detection of the disguise, though if an illusion or disguised individual behaves in a way obviously out of character, the block isn’t going to be much help. Less obvious applications of photomancy include bending light away from an area (a maneuver, to place a Shadowed aspect on a location, for example) and divinations that seek out a particular image and/or cause something you’re seeking to glow. Focused practitioners that use photomancy exclusively seem to have no aptitude for manipulating ectoplasm—meaning their illusions never have any physical substance to back them up unless they’re wrapped around an actual physical object. More broadly talented wizards often incorporate a little bit of ectoplasm into their photomantic efforts, creating illusions that can actually interact with the environment.

Psychomancy- Practitioners that read and manipulate minds are called psychomancers (or sometimes neuromancers). Given that these acts violate the Third and Fourth Laws of Magic, they may also be called headless, thanks to the action of the Wardens. Psychomancy is neither well documented nor condoned, though it seems every now and again some new wizard comes along with a talent for it, trained or not. The Council does its best to intercede as quickly as possible in such cases. There are some grey areas that can be explored, mostly safely. Psychomancy might be used to draw the thoughts out of the brain of a dead man—no living person nor active mind is violated in such a case, and the borders of life are not crossed. Empathically reading the emotional state of someone isn’t a violation of his thoughts so much as an application of psychomancy to boost your ability to perceive such information (done as a divination). And then there’s the legal but dangerous area of wielding psychomancy against yourself—supercharging your brain for an all-nighter or to improve your reaction time, digging into your own memories to pull out information you didn’t realize was there, removing your ability to feel fear, and so on. But synapses and minds are fragile—when you can plug right into your brain’s pleasure-center and press the big red MORE button, or accidentally destroy your ability to feel inhibition, it’s not long before you’re indistinguishable from a meth-head. Just because you’re doing it to yourself doesn’t make the act any less violent. See the “supercharging” discussions about transportation (page 33) and biomancy (page 35) for guidelines on the dangers of this. Some alternative forms of psychomancy specialize in a particular range of thought— phobomancy focuses entirely on fear, for example. These variants are encountered almost as often as psychomancy itself.

Given the guidelines above, it’s fairly easy to determine the specific complexity of a spell in points. This number represents the investment of both preparation and gathered power. You can move straight into the casting stage if the spell’s complexity is equal to or less than your Lore (after it’s adjusted by focus items—see page 27). This indicates that your wizard’s personal collection of knowledge and accouterments suffices for the spell. If the complexity exceeds this limit—or under other circumstances dictated by logic—additional effort is required to set up the spell and you go into the preparation stage, detailed on page 41. (Remember, every 3pts = 1D, so a Lore of 5D = 15 pts, a Complexity Level of more than 15 requires preparation.)

Some effects of thaumaturgy seem to be enhanced examples of evocation effects: wards instead of blocks, long-lasting veils to hide a sacred site, magical traps waiting to be sprung, etc. The complexity of these spells usually equals the power you would need to cast the spell as an evocation, but keep in mind that thaumaturgy allows for much greater strength in effect. It’s not uncommon for a wizard to push the complexity up to get a 10D ward.

Another thing to consider is duration. Many of the effects of thaumaturgy are expressed in system terms that already have a set duration—maneuvers and Stun damage don’t last beyond a scene, and heavier damage remain until enough time has passed that recovery is possible.

It is possible to set up spells that last a great deal longer by adding complexity. You can choose to move the spell’s duration up one step on the time chart (page 46) starting from an appropriate default and adding to the complexity for every step up you want to go. So a curse that acts as a maneuver to put Bad Luck on a target might start from “15 minutes” (about the length of that particular scene), and you could make it last all day by adding 5D (15) of complexity to the spell. Duration can be applied to a spell in a flexible sense—how long the energies will hang around until triggered, how long a particular effect will last, and so on.

If the default duration is not clear (such as curses that are cast on a location, or a ward that doesn’t express its effects in terms of aspects) use this guideline: thaumaturgic spells typically last until the next sunrise, as this cycle weakens magical energies. So increasing from there would start at “an afternoon” or “a day” on the time chart. Again, this “until sunrise” default doesn’t apply

If you don’t have a Lore rating high enough to cover the complexity of the spell (page 264), then you need to spend time in preparation before you can cast it. Preparation time is normally divided into three broad categories: researching the ritual, obtaining stronger symbolic links, or acquiring additional power sources. Taken as a whole, the collection of ritual elements, symbolic links, and power sources is called a spell construct. The construct is a physical container for the energies of the spell, and the container helps your wizard focus his power like a lens and direct it with more stability and safety. The more elaborate the construct, the more power it can hold. This allows for more complicated effects.

If your Lore covers the complexity and allows you to skip the preparation work, these three things are still happening in the spell—it’s just assumed that they’re done fast enough and well enough that there’s no need to spend additional preparation time on it. In other words, small spells can be whipped up quickly—like Harry Dresden does with a few of his quick tracking spells, using some chalk, a bit of hair, and a few murmured words of power. Regardless, the symbolic links are key here—if you don’t have them, with or without the preparation phase, you just can’t cast the spell.

Rituals are largely a matter of research and consultation. The wizard learns the steps and tools he needs from a book, scroll, or some other source of knowledge such as a mentor or contact. Magical knowledge is often very closely guarded. Many wizards do not wish to share the secrets they have learned, so they keep their sanctums warded against intrusion. Likewise, many spirits and supernatural beings (especially demons) traffic heavily in magical lore—a powerful currency when bargaining with magical practitioners. Some rituals also simply require tools and components that are difficult to fashion or acquire, like a spike of pure diamond or the blood of a White Court vampire.

The other minimum requirement is one or more symbolic links—objects that are included in the ritual process that metaphorically represent where the spell energies are being sent. The voodoo doll is probably the most popular example from folklore, but a specific target can be represented in many different ways: a personal possession that has emotional resonance, a sculpture or model of the target, a

Gathering symbolic links to an individual can be a tricky prospect, as the best ones literally involve taking a piece of the target itself, whether physically or emotionally. For maximum effectiveness, you may need to break into a prospective target’s house for a prized possession, or stalk the target to find a stray strand of hair. Some wizards even resort to violence or have an independent party commit violence for them. Linking to a supernatural creature is even trickier. They are much harder to “sneak up on” in every sense—you will likely be required to risk resources, work through proxies, and make

Even getting a link to a place can be difficult at times. The best links are to-scale representations, requiring certain detail. Some areas might be guarded, warded, or restricted in access somehow, requiring you to be very clever to bypass those restrictions.

Finally, many wizards attempt to boost their effectiveness with contributions of power outside themselves. This allows the wizard to cast very potent and complicated spells, with the external power sources doing most of the heavy lifting. This power can come from a variety of sources, listed on page 45. Acquiring power from entities is a matter of convincing them to contribute their power willingly, or forcing them to do so via magical binding, kidnapping, bargaining, or other coercion. Taking the power from an artifact or site requires either researching a means to access the power that is in accordance with its nature, or deliberately desecrating it—which could result in its destruction. Harnessing the power from a natural event (storms, earthquakes) requires precise timing to incorporate the event into the casting, as nature can be rather fickle. And then there’s dealing with plain old mortals—either they’re actively willing to assist in the casting, or they aren’t, and the wizard has to decide if he’s willing to kidnap, torture, and sacrifice lives in the pursuit of his goals.

Compared to the other two components of spell preparation, power sources are by far the

Anyone not willing to assist can be forced, but that requires coercive magic, the threat of harm,

Sponsored Magic is the name we’re giving to spellcasting that draws on power sources other than the caster himself (he can still draw on his own power; it’s just not an exclusive arrangement). These power sources, called sponsors, are at least semi-aware, if not fully-aware, entities. Ancient and strange and potent, they have agendas of their own, and they view those to whom they grant a modicum of their own power as their agents throughout Creation.

Sponsored Magic, then, is the result of a contract, pact, or other binding arrangement, implicit or explicit. Some part of your soul is in hock. Seelie and Unseelie Magic (see the abilities on page 290) are examples of this concept, drawing on the ancient powers of the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie.

In practice, this is essentially equivalent to taking the Channeling and Ritual abilities priced at 2 refresh apiece, with the sponsored source of power replacing the usual specialized focus (this is why Seelie Magic is priced as a 4 refresh ability). If the character is already a practitioner of evocation and/or thaumaturgy, the source gets “tacked on” to his existing spellcasting abilities as an extra area of focus, reducing the cost by 1 refresh apiece.

This can be mix and match: if the character knows evocation but not thaumaturgy, the price would be a total of 3 refresh—1 to tack the sponsored source onto evocation, 2 to pick up “Ritual” for the sponsored magic. Some power sources may come with additional potent benefits, increasing the cost. Specific power sources may have other special rules regarding refresh cost; see the list starting on page 290.

Sponsored magic is subject to the limitations of evocation and thaumaturgy, which it emulates (or supplements). In order to gain the benefits of sponsored magic, the spell you’re casting must align with the agenda of the sponsor (page 289) and fit into the theme and scope of the sponsor’s particular “flavor” of power (see the types of sponsored magic, page 290). As a result, sponsored magic is narrower in its focus and has a sort of implicit approval component, in exchange for the extra bit of potency and flexibility it offers.

When aspects result from the casting effort—whether inflicted on yourself or others as consequences or temporary aspects, or as part of the preparation phase—they’re always colored, at least a touch, by the sponsor’s influence and agenda. If you take a consequence from sponsored magic, whether from backlash or just because, it gives the sponsor a window to compel you in various ways. For example, hellfire is a vicious sponsored source and wants to push you towards a greater commitment to black magic and the influence of those Down Below—aspects brought on by your casting will reflect that.

Sponsored magic spells are put together exactly like evocation and thaumaturgy. Use the procedures described in those sections (starting on page 249 and page 261 respectively).

Sponsored magic provides a few major benefits.

1. The first is the “extra oomph” the source provides in keeping with its agenda. This may

provide special potency against a portion of supernaturally tough creatures, partially satisfying the Catch on their Toughness abilities; this allows you to treat them as one level less potent—only Inhumanly Tough instead of Supernaturally Tough, for example. Summer magic is especially nasty to the scions of Winter, and vice-versa.

2. Sometimes the power source is instead more potent (or at least faster) when directed against certain types of problems, such as Summer’s ability to do more potent healing effects (the sponsor takes care of all that pesky biological know-how) and the ability to do certain things with the effects of thaumaturgy, but at the speed of evocation.

3. When these benefits are particularly broad, the refresh cost of the sponsored magic may increase. These situations will be sketched out in each sponsored magic’s description (starting on page 290).

4. In addition, if you already practice evocation, you may use a sponsored power source to “supercharge” an element you’ve already specialized in. So Summer magic might combine with the air element to give a “breath of life” effect; hellfire might combine with fire to produce, well, hell-fire; and Kemmlerian necromancy might combine with the spirit element to inflict potent visions of death upon a victim. This sort of combination allows the spellcaster to use his existing evocation specialization bonuses with the new power source. Mechanically you can think of this as extra dice or special effects on the roll.

5. Finally, another broader benefit offered by all types of sponsored magic is the ability of the sponsor to cover you when you can’t make your expenses. Once per roll, you may invoke an aspect without spending a fate point. Doing so adds one to the debt between you and your sponsor. The sponsor may collect on this debt later, trading in compels on you for that debt on a one-for-one basis—compels that get you no fate points if you accept, and which you must accept unless you have an actual fate point to spend to refuse it. Invariably these compels run along the lines of pushing you to act in accordance with the sponsor’s agenda.

Whenever a character comes onto the scene and practices sponsored magic, there’s an agenda at work—whether the character is a willing agent of it or not, he’ll be serving it eventually. The GM should know what that agenda is, whether or not she chooses to share some or all of it with the character in question. An agenda that doesn’t force the character to make regular, tough choices—especially when he’s accumulated some debt—is no agenda at all. Go for the throat.

For example, draw on enough soulfire and God might push you to destroy that demon at all costs, rather than taking the time to recover from consequences while you allow the demon to escape. Or maybe He’ll just demand that you find it in your heart to forgive a bitter enemy. Draw on enough hellfire and you might find yourself destroying more than just monsters and the occasional architecture—those destructive tendencies could creep into your life and relationships as well, or even drive you toward murder.