Many spells meet resistance. A Dispel meets the buff it tries to lift. A Detect meets the aura that hides a thief. A Teleport meets a mana storm at its target. Who wins should depend on the skill, but even more on who cast it. A level 100 Sage must cast a stronger Dispel than a level 40 master who bought two ranks of it.

Every cast skill therefore carries one number, its Potency (P). “Spell level” would be the natural word, but Lv. already means the rank of a skill, so this page says Potency.

How Potency Is Built link

Potency is fixed at the moment of the cast and stays with whatever the skill leaves behind: a buff, a debuff, an enchantment, a hiding aura, a trap. When the caster later changes gear, the spell already cast does not change.

  P = Rank + Level + Mind + Focus + Place
  

The rank says how well the skill is known. Level and Mind say who knows it. Masters and Bestias use the same formula.

Example Casters link

About 100 is the ceiling of one caster. Everything above needs a ritual.

Potency Bands link

Players see Potency as a band, not as a number. A caster sees the band of their own skills in the skill window. Magic Sense Lv. 4 shows the band of a spell it picks apart, so a Sage can judge a seal before trying it.

Edge: One Curve for Every Contest link

Every contest uses the same curve. A is the attacker’s Potency, D the defender’s:

  Edge = 0.5 + (A - D) / 50        clamped to 0 .. 1
  

Equal spells are a coin flip. A lead of 25 always wins, and a gap of 25 never does. When the outcome is yes or no, Edge is the chance. When the outcome is an amount, like a detection range, Edge is the share of it that the attacker gets. Players learn one rule and can read every contest from it.

Potency alone never changes the numbers in a skill’s own table: damage, healing, duration, radius, number of users. Those come from the rank, as before. Only a ritual charge raises them, and only by a little.

Contests link

Dispel link

Dispel rolls once per buff on the target, each against the Potency of that buff. A Master Sage (80) lifts an adept’s Blessing (49) for sure, but lifts another master’s buff only half of the time. A dabbler (33) can clean off faint buffs and nothing else. Buffs that are not dispellable stay out of it, as before.

This replaces the base chance (50 + 10 × SkillLv)% and the target’s SMDEF. The rank is now part of the Dispel’s Potency, and the defence is the buff’s own Potency.

Enchantments and Seals link

An enchantment takes the Potency of the one who bound it as its strength. Some enchantments have a fixed Potency instead, see Fixed Potency.

The Postal Seal has P 90. A Master Sage (80) breaks it 30% of the time. With Dispel’s 15 s cooldown they get two tries in the 30 s the sack lies on the ground, 51% together. These are the odds the postal page has today. An adept (49) has no chance.

A gang can charge a ritual before the ambush and break the seal for sure. That takes six players, a circle next to the road and a kill within one minute of the charge, so it stays rare.

Resist link

A creature defends against hostile spells with its Resolve:

  Resolve = 30 + level / 4 + Mind + Focus        level / 4 at most 30
  

30 stands for the creature’s own mind, which it knows as well as a fully learned skill. A caster at max rank with the same level and Mind as the target meets it as an equal. Resolve and Potency replace the level term of the resist formula:

  S = attribute1 + attribute2
R = S / (S + 150) + (Resolve - P) / 100
R is clamped to 0 .. 0.8
  

Example. The level-40 bestia from the status effect page has VIT 50 and STR 30, so its attributes give 35%. Its INT 20 and WIL 20 give Mind 6, so its Resolve is 30 + 10 + 6 = 46.

Brutes with high VIT but a dull mind still shrug off a weak caster. A master caster cuts through their body’s resistance. Immunities stay absolute: no Potency lands a stun on a boss.

Concealment and Detection link

HIDDEN, CLOAKED and Suppress Aura take the Potency of the one who hid. A detecting skill finds a concealed target only within part of its range:

  range against this target = range × Edge(P detect - P conceal)
  

A level 80 Scholar with Magic Sense Lv. 5 (50 m, P 70) finds a dabbler’s Suppress Aura (P 33) at the full 50 m. Against a level 100 Wizard’s aura (P 80) the range shrinks to 15 m. The hider is not invisible, but the seeker must come close. Suppress Aura’s own column “Mana Suppression” goes away: its rank now works through Potency.

Counter-Magic link

The same contest decides every spell that stops another spell:

• Magic Rod catches a single-target spell with a chance of Edge(P rod - P spell). A failed catch lets the spell land, and the rod stays up for the next one.
• Land Protector rolls once for each ground spell cast into it. A stronger spell can still take root.
• Suppress Magic multiplies its interrupt chance by Edge(P suppress - P spell) of the spell it tries to break.

Against the World link

Some spells do not fight another caster but the place. The world gives them a Disturbance D instead of a defender’s Potency.

A Teleport lands off target by up to 1.4 km × (1 - Edge(P - D)). This is the story from the Master Skills page in numbers: Saferu (P 80) jumps 8 km (D 50) into a mana storm (D 90). Edge is 30%, and the group lands up to 980 m off target. Without the storm the group lands on the rune. A jump of 20 km (D 110) is a lottery for one caster and exact with a ritual charge.

Scry uses the same Edge for how clearly it shows the far place. A Warp Portal uses it for where its far end opens.

Fixed Potency link

Spells that no player cast have a fixed Potency.

Refresh link

Effects do not stack: a second cast refreshes the first. With Potency, a weaker cast cannot refresh a stronger one. It fails, and the caster is told so. Otherwise an ally with a faint buff could lower a friend’s protection, and an enemy could cover a strong curse with a weak one to make it easy to lift.

Rituals link

One caster tops out at about P 100. A ritual is how a group pushes the next skill of one master further. It uses the Mana Circle, a ring of Mana Concentrate laid into the ground with a focus stone in its middle.

How a Ritual Runs link

1. Lay the circle. A master places the Mana Circle. They are its leader. The circle stays after the ritual, and other groups can use it too.
2. Gather. Up to 5 helpers step into the ring and use the focus stone to join. Each player sends one helper: their master or one of their Bestias, never both. So one player cannot fill a circle alone. A helper with Ritual Fatigue cannot join.
3. Start. The leader uses the focus stone. Nobody can join any more. Every participant pays a quarter of their maximum mana and starts to channel.
4. Hold for 30 seconds. The channeling rules apply to each participant: damage, STUN, FROZEN, STONE or a move ends their part. A helper who drops out adds nothing. If the leader drops out, the ritual fails. Guarding the circle is the job of whoever is not in it.
5. Charge. When the 30 seconds are over, the leader gets the buff Ritual Charge. It holds the bonus for 60 seconds.
6. Release. The next skill the leader uses takes the charge, whatever skill it is. The charge is spent even if the skill misses or fails.
7. Rest. Every participant who joined gets the debuff Ritual Fatigue for 5 minutes, whether the ritual worked or failed. While it holds, they cannot join or lead a ritual.

Ritual Charge and Ritual Fatigue cannot be dispelled. The charge ends when the leader dies. Everyone around can see the charge on the leader, so a charged master walking at a ward stone is a target.

The Charge link

  Bonus  = ManaFactor × sum of each helper's share
share  = helper level / 6, rounded down, at most 20
P with charge = P of the skill + Bonus, at most 150
  

ManaFactor is the one of the Mana Circle: 0.5 in a drained region, 1.0 in an ordinary one, 1.5 where mana runs thick. It is read where the circle lies. A Bestia helper’s share uses the Bestia’s level.

The cap of 150 is what no circle can bind, however strong. It keeps the strongest goals, like a ward stone, at a known chance and stops ever stronger circles from turning them into a routine.

Against a ward stone (P 174) the full circle of level 100 helpers has 2% per try. With a 5-minute rest between tries, one circle needs four to five hours on average, and the village has all that time to drive it away. A circle of level 60 helpers has no chance at all.

How Every Skill Reacts to a Charge link

Any skill can take a charge: a Dispel, a Fire Bolt, a Heal, a Teleport, a crafting skill. Each skill reacts in one or more of four ways:

A skill that has a contest and also deals damage, like a Stone Curse or a Fire Bolt with a burn, gets both. Surge is small on purpose. Six players who channel for 30 seconds and rest for 5 minutes get one Meteor Storm that hits a quarter harder, not a city-killer.

Each skill script says which reactions it has. A skill with none of the four ignores the charge, and the skill window says so before the leader wastes a ritual on it.

What Rituals Are For link

• Countering a ward stone. A Dispel with a charge is the counter-magic the Protected Zones wait for. It takes a full circle of strong players, many tries and a village that does not drive them away.
• Long or stormy jumps. A charged Teleport or Warp Portal lands where it should, even through a mana storm.
• Lasting work. A charged Spell Binding makes a trap or alarm that only another charged skill can find or lift. A settlement can guard its gate with it.
• Hiding something big. A charged Suppress Aura on a camp or a stash is out of reach of any single seeker.
• The opening blow. A charged curse on a strong foe cuts through its resist, and a charged spell hits a little harder. The group pays with five minutes of rest.
• Crafting. A smith forging a masterpiece takes a charge into the next forge roll, as the Mana Circle does today.

Hooks for Later link

These are not designed yet, but they fit the same rule:

• Orders. The rituals of the Orders at temples and citadels are charged skills. “Cheaper rituals” in a dominated region can be a better ManaFactor there.
• Doomsday. A rift can carry a Potency that grows each day it stays open. A sealing ritual is a contest against it. The longer the world waits, the closer the rift comes to the cap, and the luckier the circle must be.

Pages This Changes link

When this concept is accepted, these pages change:

• Status Effects: the level term of Resist becomes (Resolve - P) / 100. Concealment takes the hider’s Potency, and Detect works within range × Edge. Ritual Charge and Ritual Fatigue join the list.
• Master Skills: Dispel loses its base chance table. Suppress Aura loses its suppression column. Mana Circles run as a ritual with a charge, so a crafting rite and a spell ritual are the same thing. Bestias may now join.
• Items: the formula Dispel base chance - strength becomes Edge(P dispel - strength). A dropped endowed weapon keeps the binder’s Potency instead of 0.
• Postal System: the seal gets P 90. The odds stay the same, and a charged gang can break it for sure.
• PvP: the ward stone gets P 174 and the charged Dispel as its counter.

Server Notes link

Today Dispel lifts every dispellable buff, Detect finds every concealed creature, and Resist weighs only attributes and level. Potency changes that in a few places:

• One calculator turns a cast into a Potency. It needs the skill rank, the caster’s level and status values, the equipment bonus and the mana concentration at the caster.
• ActiveStatusEffect and the item enchantment carry that Potency. The enchantment’s strength is the same value.
• StatusEffectService.dispel rolls Edge per effect. StatusResistance.of takes Resolve and Potency in place of the level lead. The Detecting system compares the two Potencies per target.
• Ritual Charge and Ritual Fatigue are status effects. The charge holds its bonus and participant count. The skill pipeline spends the charge on the next cast and hands its bonus to the calculator and to the skill script, which applies its reactions.
• The Mana Circle is a prop with a focus stone. Using it joins or starts the ritual, and the circle runs the 30-second channel of all participants.