Until now, fighters and melee combat have been your go to. It’s easier. It gets you up close and personal with your opponents and you get to swing that cool flaming sword of yours. But that’s all you ever do. That’s the only type of character you play and it’s getting boring.

Magic is a fun and exciting way to branch out. But where the heck do you begin? Magic is vast and with so many options, it’s hard to know where to start. That’s whether you’re talking about D&D or Mythras, mind you. With so many magical disciplines in both systems, it can be rather overwhelming.

Fear not! For your beginner’s guide to Mythras’ magic is here. Heyo, I’m Kat and I’m here to break down the difference between magic in D&D and Mythras. In this guide, we’ll look at magic at the base level so you can start to understand how you learn, use, cast, and make a magical character in Mythras.

We’re going to start by delving into what forms of magic you can use.

Magic Disciplines or Magic Classes

Let’s break this down a moment so we’re all on the same page and you don’t feel too intimated by the concepts. D&D has 8 different magical classes in the Player’s Handbook. Each having their own special focus on what spells they can have or how they use them. Those 8 are:

1. Bard
2. Cleric
3. Druid
4. Paladin
5. Ranger
6. Sorcerer
7. Warlock
8. Wizard

Don’t worry, I’m well aware there are a few others brought in by other books, but we’re sticking to the basics here. Each of these classes are locked into what spells they have access to. And while each has some overlap with others, unless you multi-class or pick up a feat you’re casually pigeonholed into only those class spells.

While you have 8 classes to pick from in D&D, in Mythras you have 5 disciplines that can complement and be interwoven depending on the style of campaign your GM is running. Everything is tailored to the GM’s will, but in a magic heavy campaign there’s a lot of room for different flavours when it comes to your magic use. The 5 disciplines are:

1. Folk Magic – this is the most basic style of magic and represents simple natural magic that helps in everyday life.
2. Animism – This practise deals with the spirit world. Everything has a spirit of some kind - even some inanimate objects that have great natural, cultural or religious significance.
3. Mysticism – Personal magic that helps unlock incredible potential within the individual. The better your focus on reality, the more potential your magic has.
4. Sorcery – This is all about manipulating the fabric of reality. With better understanding and formulae the better your control of the surrounding world becomes and the more potent your magic is.
5. Theism – This discipline channels the power of the gods themselves.

Some of these play out similar to D&D classes, (theism specifically is very similar to Paladin or Cleric). But each of these options has their own unique take on the world and how to manipulate it for better or worse. How you focus your studies is how you figure out to what degree you can perform this magic, how fast or effectively in combat, or for whatever reason that it’s needed.

If you are looking for something more like D&D, though, I would recommend checking out Classic Fantasy and Classic Fantasy Imperative. These two books have magic designed to be akin to D&D while maintaining the Mythras d100 flare.

Without further ado let’s take a look at how you learn magic and what your spell count looks like.

Learning and Spell Count

As many of you who play D&D know, you start a magic class with a certain amount of spells and spell slots based on certain characteristics of the class and bonuses from your character. For instance, a wizard rolls out at level 1 with 3 cantrips (free spells), 2 spell slots (use of spells in a long rest), and 6 options for spells to cast.

Formidable little glass cannon, in my opinion. But how did he learn those spells and how often can he really cast them? Whether it’s a mentor, general skill, or items received, there’s no real reason for your wizard to start out with those beyond the fact that you chose that class.

When you look at magical traditions in Mythras, it explains how you learned your spells. The campaign will help define what options there are for those traditions. Some concepts for how or where you could learn your skills are:

• Cults – Organizations that can include religion, philosophy, or an individual.
• Guilds – Professional groups representing different trades or careers that use magic to assist their practitioners.
• Individual Teachers – This can be any magician, hermit, or old and wise counselor of whichever Magic Discipline.
• Social Castes – Certain cultures or careers can grant access to higher levels of magic. Like a Civilised culture might have a priestly career or caste to grant access to Theism spells.
• Totems – These are cultural symbols that are a focus of reverence and veneration that help individuals attain magical potential.
• Royalty or Noble Houses – Sometimes magic is only granted through bloodlines or practiced in certain houses (usually the ones in power).

Each of these can be an option depending on what your culture and career are and will directly affect which discipline of magic you gain access to. It’s not to say that a character from a Civilised culture couldn’t have the folk magic from barbarian cultures, it’s just less likely. But that thought brings us around to how frequently you can cast as a magician in Mythras.

You remember the wizard’s spell potential? Magic is listed in Magic Points in Mythras. Magic Points determine how frequently you can use these abilities or spells.

Where the number of spells you have access to depends on how saturated in magic your GM wants to have the setting. Low magic is 1d3 for the spells you have access to. Medium is 1d3+3 and Rich is 1d3+6. So the GM can allow 1–9 spells to be available to you in Mythras when you’re first starting out.

Now that you know how many spells are in your spell book and where they may have come from, let’s talk about the elephant in the room… that’s right! Casting times and components for spells.

Casting Times and Components

You don’t have to worry all that much about your components. There aren’t many GMs that I’ve encountered that care about base material components in D&D. Just the more extravagant ones like, ‘a tiny reliquary worth at least 1000gp containing a sacred relic’ which is needed for ‘Holy Aura’ on pg 251 of The Player’s Handbook.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. In D&D, there are 3 styles of components. Verbal (V), Somatic (S), and Material (M). Most spells require some degree of V or S components, while M is spell dependent.

When we shift to Mythras, the requirements to cast spells are much different. The casting requirements are what the GM requires of you and prepping spells before combat does ease the difficulty grade to cast them. When you go to cast a spell in Mythras, you need clear thoughts, have the ability to gesture, so you S component. You need the ability to vocalise, your V component, and the ability to see or sense your target if the spell requires a target.

Each of these things changes when it comes to range and consumption of your magic points or in D&D spell slots. Each spell in D&D costs a spell slot, unless it is a cantrip or a ritual spell. Mythras, each spell has a base value of 1 magic point. The more complex the spell, the more points it takes.

Like D&D, Mythras also has a duration level, be it instant or concentration based. In this case it’s all about what you cast first and what comes after. With D&D, so long as you have the spell slots, you can cast any number of spells in whatever order. So long as you don’t try to cast two concentration spells because the second will override the first.

That’s the same concept in Mythras except, if you cast something like Darkness, which is a concentration spell, then cast Bladesharp which is not. You’ll lose your concentration on Darkness. This is that realism you’ll notice I mention through all these blogs. Mythras gives you that sense of realism because once you cast a spell that requires concentration to cast something else, you would need to break your concentration to be able to cast another spell.

Speaking of breaking concentration, most spells in Mythras and D&D are situational. Meaning that once combat or the scenario is over, the spells are dismissed. If you want to beforehand, you can easily dismiss it without issue.

Here’s the huge difference between the two systems: you recover your magic points and spell slots differently.

Recovering Your Magic

When it comes to D&D, everything you do or have issues with (beyond the occasional permanent injury or curse) vanishes after a long rest. Spell slots return, injuries magically disappear. Poof, you’re as healthy as when you left the tavern that very first day!

Mythras’ magic recovery isn’t always that easy. Sure, in a magic heavy campaign there is a passive magic point regeneration every hour, but there are other ways your GM can give your campaign flavour when it comes to recovery. Things like requiring sacrifices to regain them, finding and resting at magical locations. You could destroy magical objects to recover a certain number of points or spend time in worship or being worshiped.

The other thing we should talk about is what can happen when you run out of your magic points. In D&D, unless you are running a bard, cleric, paladin, ranger, or warlock (with the right build) when you run out of spell slots you’re pretty much useless beyond the cantrips you know. And some of those cantrips may not be the most helpful in all situations.

Mythras, as a general rule, follows the same thoughts as D&D. When you’re out, you’re out. But if the GM wants to give you the opportunity to role play there are some ways to cast beyond your expansive pool with some minor to major problems. Things that can happen when you run out of MP are:

• Fatigue Accrual – You gain 1 level of fatigue for every point past 0 you use.
• Hit Point Attrition – Every time you cast a spell past 0 points, each of your Hit point zones goes down by 1
• Unconsciousness – When you hit 0 you fall unconscious until you’ve regained at least 1 magic point
• Willpower – You must make a willpower roll to remain conscious. You can continue casting past your limit, but the difficulty only gets harder
• Endurance or die – When you hit 0 it’s do or die, friend. Make an endurance roll and succeed or you get to roll a new character.

I personally adore the concept of fatigue accrual or hit point attrition. It means that you can keep casting, it’s just gonna hurt. But none of that explains how you create a magic character, of course.

Using a Magician

Now, for the sake of time and not boring you, I’m not going to go through all the ins and outs of crafting the character in more than a thought. D&D has extensive build help, as does Mythras with the Character Creation Workbook. What you will come away with, though, is what to ask and expect when crafting a magic character in Mythras.

The biggest things you need to think about are:

• What level of magic is in this campaign (such as light, moderate or heavy)?
• What type of magic would I like to use?
• Is it available to the career or culture choice I would like to use?
• What type of tradition am I following?
• Are all 5 disciplines available to learn throughout my adventuring career?

These are designed to get you thinking and talking with your GM about what you can and can’t do. Learning new traditions is something that without the appropriate teacher and time you can’t do in Mythras, unlike in D&D where you just state that you’re going to multiclass into a warlock after being a barbarian for five levels.

It gives Mythras the edge when it comes to story, functionality, and tactical thoughts overall. So now what?

Conclusion

Whether you’re running D&D or Mythras in magic, it all depends on the flexibility of the GM and the world you’re in as to how magic is used. Mythras’ magic is just as flexible and gives more reasons to be a magical character.

You have your pool of magic points that you can cast beyond with consequence. You have your traditions that are the reasons for you to have the magic you do. You even have magics tailored to more than just throwing a fireball into the room and praying everything dies. With the 5 disciplines of magic available in Mythras Core Rules, there is much to be entertained and challenged by. So don’t be afraid of starting your magical career.

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