Magic
Spells in Fantasy Hero are an application of the Hero powers system, with appropriate limitations applied to simulate the conventional restrictions of magical spells. The spells commonly require incantations (verbal), gestures (physical), a skill roll, and in many cases some type of focus. This last is an object of some type that can be taken or destroyed, thereby hindering the spell caster.
However, practically any kind of magic system can be described within the context of the HERO System's open design to suit the needs, vision, or fictional inspiration of a particular campaign or setting. This extreme flexibility of design is both a feature that is particularly of interest to GM's and players that want to model very specific forms of magic in their setting(s), but can also be overwhelming to GM's and players that just want to play a game with some established boundaries and not have to worry about such things themselves.
The earlier edition of the Fantasy Hero book included a series of theme oriented "colleges", and a specific mechanical basis for spellcasting. This was a specific implementation of the abstract concept of "magic", but as it was the published example available, it in effect became the de facto standard. This runs counter to the "universal" precepts of the HERO System, and the 5th edition supplement excises it entirely.
Instead, 68 pages of Fantasy HERO for 5th edition are dedicated to Magic Systems and concepts, dealing in the broad concept of magic, and exploring topics that should be considered when making a custom magic system. Ways of modeling some concepts and tropes found in genre fiction and film are covered as well. The flexibility and expressiveness of the HERO System's buy-a-mechanic effects-driven character design model is highlighted in this fashion. In addition to the high concepts, twelve distinct example magic systems across the gamut of power levels and styles are presented in summary, with two to three columns each on average.
Two related products, the Fantasy Hero Grimoire and Fantasy Hero Grimoire II, are compilations of spells intended for use in the Fantasy Hero genre, particularly suited to be used with the default magic system of the Turakian Age, one of the four published HERO System Fantasy settings. The spells are subdivided into colleges or schools. The available schools are alchemy, conjuration, divination, druidry, elemental magic (for each of the elements as well as ice, light, and shadow), enchantment, necromancy, sorcery, thaumaturgy, witchcraft, wizardry, and divine magic. Fantasy Hero Grimoire II extends the spells and magic in the first grimoire, and adds a number of more unusual and esoteric colleges of magic. Thus the book details spells for shamanism, chaos magic, rune magic, areomancy, and so forth.
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Famous quotes containing the word magic:
“a flying open of doors, convergence
of magic objects into
feathered hands and crested heads, a prospect
of winter verve, a buildup to abundance.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organised visual lying.”
—Terence Donovan (b. 1936)
“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”
—Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945)