I want to play out a Holy Grail War (from TYPE-MOON), wherein

>>52623604
Magecraft is generally different ways of... well, a specific type of scientific study.

The world is filled with an energy called Mana. All creatures with souls have these Magic Circuits that drink of this Mana and slowly, over time, convert it into Od- a fuel for the soul. Od is life force, or ki, or chi, or whatever you'd like to call it. However, magi have discovered that with the right meditation and process, you can *force* your magic circuits to drink way more mana than they should and produce what's called Prana- an active, tangible source of magical energy that can be used to manipulate the world.

Most All magecraft is based on this prana manipulation, and how it relates to different things. One magus studies, say, how crystals and gems work at storing, focusing, and manipulating prana. Another studies how time can be manipulated with prana, etc. etc.

Anyway. How you actually use magecraft is that, well, You kinda shove magic energy into the rules of physics, and force the world to change. Interfering directly with the laws of physics. The more interference, the more prana it takes. The better leverage you have- Elements and Origins both being leverage- the less prana it takes. So if you've got an element of fire, you can basically use that as a stamp to 'stamp' the idea of fire on the world where there isn't any fire. Then, lo and behold, suddenly you've got a fire there.

At least until the world realizes that you've put fire there, and gets upset at you like a GM who's a bit slow to patch his rules to accord for the loopholes you've put in.

You could also do that if you don't have 'fire' as an element, but then you'd need more leverage from somewhere. Such as, for example, having an Origin of 'friction' or something.

>>52624325
>Interfering directly with the laws of physics.
This is the sort of thing I need the help with the most, yes.
Without just giving a magus player a blank check, like a Mage: the Ascension game, unless that is what I'm supposed to do, but Fate's setting doesn't really feel like that, I think.

>>52623604
>>52624483

As for limits and methods, for the most part the 'method' is usually self-hypnosis. A normal human mind's state isn't one that can control magic energy, so you usually recite an aria or incantation- one you've autohypnotised yourself to believe takes your 'safety off', putting your mental state into one that can use magic. Such as Shirou Emiya's "Trace On". Other incantations aren't exactly self-hypnotic, but that's because the other incantations have been used so much by so many wizards that it's kind of worn grooves into reality.

So you enter a state, shove prana into it, carefully shape what you want the magic to do through your intellect and study, and then the effect takes place.

Magic crests, however, are essentially muscle memory for the soul, surgically removed and implanted generations down the line so that the muscle memory is so strong it might as well have been a macro for a videogame. You just stuff magic in, flip the switch, and bang, magecraft done.

The limit for magecraft is actually pretty simple.
>Anything that can be possible in the physical world through science, magecraft can do.
You can shoot a hunk of lead the speed of a bullet, specifically because guns can. You can poison someone else, because there are mechanisms in the world that allow that to happen. There's a thing called Magic or Sorcery, which is completely different, because Magic is specifically things that *aren't* possible through the physical world. Only certain people have special access to certain parts of, say, the GM's console. Everyone else has to deal with loopholes, but one person can be like '~Import sword' and flip the bird at the concept of Conservation of Mass.

>>52624483
Mage the Ascension is closer than anything else to Fate/Stay magic. Also the brutal wizard family/group politics.

Tohsaka Rin is notable as a mage that feels empathy. This is because she was trained wrongly, as a joke.

>>52624538
>Anything that can be possible in the physical world through science, magecraft can do.
Then, if I can get overly specific, what are the mechanics of something like Gandr?
A curse 'shot' that damages physical health, it's not really anything. Or does it just work because health is something "that can be decreased, so this decreases it"?

>>52624550
>Mage the Ascension is closer than anything else to Fate/Stay magic.
I guess I'll have to give it another go, it just felt like such a clusterfuck.
>Have your laugh at a fan of Fate calling something else a clusterfuck

>>52624483
I'd personally handle it like this. A player has X points they can spend on the following:

>Elements (Past the first- the first should be free)
>Origin (Usually only one, but optional)
>Crests
>Studies

Then they've got prana they can spend, and od which is an emergency prana they can use (though it regens much slower and if it runs out, they die)

Magecraft is done as, like, a skill. Each goal that the player wants to do with magic has its own DC, and the character has to spend a certain amount of prana in order to 'meet' the DC if they don't roll high enough. With a minimum of 1 prana, of course.
They get skill bonuses for having an element related to their goal, or a study in whatever they plan on doing.
Origins should be optional, but have a very significant change to this roll. Something like an Advantage or Disadvantage. Take two rolls and take the higher if your Origin is related, or take the lower if your Origin is contrary.

And finally, a crest is gives them 'fire and forget' spells that always fire off properly. A set price, a set effect.

Let's say you've got a magus with a specialty in time manipulation, a bunch of haste spells in their crest, and wind manipulation for their element, and 'Intact' as their origin. Their friend is bleeding to death on the ground, and they want to stop it until the ambulance comes.

The DC for stopping time for a bleeding-out-ally long enough is, let's say, a 30. If they have a Study in time manipulation, that gives them a Proficiency bonus to their check. A +5 or whatever. They only roll a 6, which means their total is an 11. That means the cost is extremely expensive- 19 prana if they want to succeed in the spell. But if they rolled higher- a 15 or something- then the price is ten points lower, and much more manageable.

>>52624681
It probably actually weakens the target's immune system a bunch, or has their white blood cells start attacking the body for a while. Something which diseases actually do.

>>52624681
Speaking of Gandr, where does it fit with the Element system?
Who has access to it?

>>52624693
This is a big help, thank you!

>>52624722
It's technically rune magecraft, which basically means it's one of those 'incantations' that've been used so much by so many wizards that it's 'worn grooves' into reality. Even if it's not really a rune.

>>52624757
>>52624693
Then, keep in mind that the magus's Origin is 'Intact'. That means that instead of stopping time for an ally, he could perhaps use that Origin as leverage to keep his body intact. The DC for healing him would be, again, let's say a 30. While this time he doesn't have any bonuses due to Studies and no 'healing spell' in his crest, he could still roll twice and take the better. That means that, odds are, he'd roll a 15 or higher, meaning it would only cost him on average 15 prana or so.

But if he had an element of Water too, he could use water magecraft with his origin to get a +5 to both rolls, taking the higher of either. But he doesn't, so bad luck on him.

And then later, he can't actually use his magecraft in combat very well, because the opposite of 'intact' is destroy. Any spell he does to destroy something, break objects, or anything that is damaging something he'd have to roll twice and take the lower. So since he's got the 'wind' element, he can't exactly be smashing stuff into other stuff, or making severing blades of wind to cut shit.

But... Electrifying something isn't destroying it. It might kill someone, but that's not because it's literally breaking their body, it's just... giving their nervous systems a bit of a shock to stop their heart. So this clever magus could be throwing around a bit of lightning instead of smashing stuff with wind.

This thread is as good a place as any to ask:
Have any of you actually run a game in the Nasuverse?
What was it, and how did you keep it all straight?
Or was it just freeform play by post.

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>>52625803
I played in a campaign run by a friend, and his system was a pretty simple 'roll100, add +10 per rank in spell/skill' system. Servant ranks were balanced differently, and I don't exactly remember much.

I just remember I was a specialist in making golem familiars and Bounded Fields, and ended up buffing my mystic code golem high enough that I was walking around and pretending I'd fucked with the summoning ritual enough that I got two opposed servants- 'Monster' and 'Slayer'. 'Monster' was, of course, the golem with a bunch of prana-disruption and mana-absorbant properties. Slayer was the servant Saber, AKA Roland of Charlemagne.

>>52625911
Damn, son.

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>>52626087
Yeah. That game was a lot of fun, even though it died before much happened. Did a lot of prepping. Even pre-war prep happened. I ended up laying a bunch of tracks about a fake break-in to a museum in prague, fake plane tickets under my real name, everything like that, so people thought I went to prague to grab a catalyst to summon 'Monster', to make people think that it was the jewish golem of prague. Even carved 'emet' on its forehead.

I even ended up allying with another player, who'd made a bunch of 'od magnets', tying them to balloons and setting them loose in the sky, so the balloons would cluster over places where magecraft are often used.

I mostly prepped after the war started by thowing out a handful of inactive bounded fields all over the goddamn place, most of which are on-the-spot sudden bomb shelters. Burying jars of hidden prana-filled blood to power them, and generally just draining ambient mana out of the city's atmosphere, making it that much harder for other people to use magecraft.

>>52626274
>That game was a lot of fun, even though it died before much happened.
God damn, that is such a common occurrence.

It's hard to describe, but I like how everything is exceptions, even if it makes it very hard to wrap your head around.
I think just put together a skeleton frame of how things should work at the core, and then point out that every rule will be broken constantly, usually by spending more magical energy.
And then point out that that rule breaking rule can also be broken. Because fuck it.

>>52623604
You'd need a significant level of double blind mechanics for the PVP before even considering setting specifics

>>52627884
I'm planning on running it for 2, one Master and one Servant pair
Their mechanics may turn out to be pretty different from each other, like they're playing different games, almost, but somehow that seems on track for how it would be