Improvised Magic
When designing Reclaim the Wild, we intentionally kept Magic regimented and simple. This is, after all, how it is generally used by Link in various Zelda games – he learns specific Spells with specific functions, but he can’t create new magical effects out of thin air. Further, the versions of Hyrule we’ve seen throughout the Zelda games rarely had wizards and sorcerers who practiced flamboyant magic in the town square; even the few other Heroes we see were typically scholars, knights, or otherwise lacking in magical prowess.
However, players or GMs might want mages to be able to creatively use magic off-the-cuff, free from the shackles of rote, memorized Spells. Heroes in your game may want to craft small illusions to help tell stories by the campfire, douse the whole party in water to clean off after a particularly messy fight, or want to permanently enchant a door against being opened by evil creatures. For cases like these, we present Improvised Magic.
This system should be considered a Master Mode rule – it adds complexity, expanding what magically-inclined players can do. It also adds complexity to the GM’s life, since wizardly Heroes can now invent all kinds of new solutions to the problems and obstacles they’ve concocted.
Limitations
While Improvised Magic is a versatile tool, it is not all-powerful. It is limited both by your imagination, and also by a few guidelines, below.
- Improvised Magic cannot directly inflict damage or heal wounds. However, Improvised Magic can indirectly cause damage – for instance, if you lit a campfire with an Improvised Spell, and someone stepped into that campfire, they would take damage from that fire. Improvised Magic is capable of causing or removing some Status Ailments, though this is typically considered complex magic, carrying with it a real risk of failure.
- Improvised Magic cannot create permanent objects. While an Improvised Spell might be able to conjure a flame, form a snowball, or fill a glass of water, it cannot create a sword or a pencil. Anything created by an Improvised Spell is ephemeral and temporary, and when closely inspected, its results can clearly be seen as magical.
- You must know a Spell on which to base your Improvised Magic. Without this grounding in the fundamentals of magic, you lack the knowledge and skill to use Improvised Magic. For instance, if you were to decide to chill a glass of water, you would need to know at least one Spell that had some kind of icy effect – be it a spell like Kotake’s Ice Beam, which causes Ice-type damage, or a spell like Blizzagia’s Breath, which doesn’t cause damage but does have obviously ice-related effects.
- Improvised Magic can’t let you ignore other rules. For instance, you cannot use Improvised Magic to repair weapons, or to craft weapons without a Forge.
- The GM retains final say on what can or cannot be done with Improvised Magic.
Cost & Size of Effect
An Improvised spell’s cost and the size of its effect are intertwined. In short: the larger the Improvised Magic’s effect, the more Magic is required to perform it.
| Size (Feet) | Size Category | Magic Cost |
| Less than 1’ | Diminutive | 4 |
| 1’ – 2’ | Tiny | 6 |
| 2’ – 4’ | Small | 8 |
| 4’ – 8’ | Medium | 12 |
| 8’ – 16’ | Large | 16 |
| 16’ – 32’ | Huge | 20 |
| 32’ – 64’ | Gigantic | 30 |
| 64’ and up | Colossal | 40 |
Note that these costs are a little bit more expensive than you might expect for a typical Spell. This is intentional! This higher cost is intended to ensure that Improvised Magic is not a panacea, replacing utility Spells purchased with Tokens.
However, don’t let this higher cost dissuade you from using Improvised Magic for trivial concerns! Remember that Spent Magic returns at the end of the encounter or scene. This means you can Spend your Magic with impunity while in safety, so long as you’re certain that Yiga assassins aren’t going to bust down the door anytime soon.
Cost Type
An Improvised Spell’s cost may be either Bound, Burned, or Spent.
- If the Spell’s effect is momentary, lasting no more than a minute or two, then it is simply Spent when the Spell is cast.
- If the Spell’s effect is intended to be permanent, if it has any kind of restorative or reparative effect, or if it performs the duty of a Mundane or Miscellaneous Tool, then the Magic is Burned.
- Finally, if the Spell is meant to persist for a variable duration – longer than a few minutes, shorter than a day – then its Magic is Bound.
- Should the caster dismiss the Spell’s effects of their own volition, then the Magic that was Bound in the Spell is returned to the caster.
- Should the Spell be forcibly ended, its Magic is then Burned, rather than returning to the caster.
Complexity
Not all Improvised Spells are simple tasks. Complex or complicated tasks, such as repairing a broken bone, may require additional Magic expenditure – and necessitate a Trait check.
When a Hero wishes to perform an Improvised Spell with a complex effect that has a real risk of failure, the GM should determine a DC for that effect. Then, multiply the Improvised Spell’s cost by (DC / 10), to determine its actual cost.
The Trait rolled for the Spell depends on how its Magic is utilized, determined previously.
- If the Magic is Spent, then use Willpower.
- If the Magic is Bound, use Arcana.
- If the Magic is Burned, use Enchanting.
If the Hero fails this check, then the Magic is Spent (regardless of whether it would’ve been Bound, Burned, or Spent on success) and the Improvised Spell’s effect fails to take hold or occur. (The GM is at liberty to allow the Improvised Spell to cause some partial effect, depending on the spell, the circumstances, and the closeness of the roll.) The Hero may or may not be able to try again, depending on the Spell and on the results of their failure.
Depending on the nature of the Improvised Spell – particularly if it’s being used on a creature – it may instead be better to model the Spell like an attack. In these cases, decide whether Concentration or Vitality is the better defense against the Spell’s effect, and then proceed with rolling To-Hit that defense per normal. Also depending on the nature of the Spell, you might substitute Arcana, Enchanting, or Willpower in place of Accuracy in the To-Hit roll, at the GM’s discretion.
As an aside, you may also decide to modify the cost of Improvised Magic based on its complexity, even if you don’t intend to actually roll a Trait Check or roll To-Hit. As with so much else in Improvised Magic, this too is at the GM’s discretion.
Range
Generally, Improvised Magic must be done ‘close up’, with its caster adjacent to the effect – that is, in a Burst, Blast, Cone, Line, Melee, Self, or Sweep range. (Remember that the more squares an Improvised Spell effects, the more it costs!)
At GM discretion, an Improvised Spell may be a Ranged Projectile or “X Targets in Y Squares”. We suggest that such Improvised Spells be considered complex enough to fail, to match their usefulness – particularly since these kinds of Spells are more often used in dangerous situations, where a wizard might want to stay behind cover while, say, giving a patrolling guard a hotfoot.
Example Improvised Spells
Caster’s Cleanup
Size: Medium; Requires one Spell that deals with Water
Cost: 12 Magic (Burned)
Effect: You clean yourself or an adjacent target from tip to toe, scrubbing away all dirt and grime. This removes the Sand-Covered, Soaked, or Oil-Soaked status from you, and counts as using a unit of Soap on yourself.
Firestarter
Size: Diminutive; Requires one Spell that deals with Fire
Cost: 4 Magic (Burned)
Effect: You ignite one flammable, unattended object adjacent to you. This can be useful for starting campfires, lighting your pipe, or igniting a brushfire.
Medeo
Size: Huge; Requires one Spell that deals with Light
Cost: 20 Magic
Effect: A classic bit of stage magic, famously used in traveling productions of I Want To Be Your Canary. Medeo appears to be a huge, devastating rain of light and meteors, but is actually harmless.