Rune Magic

Every point in the Rune Lore attribute grants mastery over a number of runes of your choice: +1 (1) 6. +2 (9) +1 (2) 7. +3 (12) +1 (3) 8. +3 (15) +2 (5) 9. +3 (18) +2 (7) 10. +4 (22) All runes use your Rune-lore attribute to activate, no matter how recently you learned a rune. You’re assumed to be familiar with every rune in the Futhark alphabet, and to be working on your mastery of all of them, but to have only achieved that mastery over a few. Runes tap into the essential forces of creation, and runic magic is at its heart a manipulation of these primal forces. Reckless use of runes can be extremely dangerous, and practitioners of runic magic are treated like time-bombs waiting to go off by civilians, as eventually even the most careful rune-mage will experience a dangerous backfire. Runic spells are syntactic - they work like linguistic phrases, not like mathematical formulas. This means that you must have mastered at least two runes (a noun and a verb) before you can really cast anything, but that runic magic offers a great deal of flexibility from mastering only a few runes. “Create Fire” can do anything from a fireball to a candle-flame, if your Rune Lore is good enough; with enough mastered, you can become a fantastically versatile caster. Regardless of the runes used, the maximum PL of any spell is equal to your Rune Lore attribute. The more runes you use in a spell, the harder the spell becomes but the more control you have over its nature and outcome if it is successful. Each rune added beyond the second grants +1d4 (exploding as normal) to the final roll for a spell. Casting a runic spell without materials is as simple as drawing a rune in the air with a finger or wand (which can be as simple as a stick or piece of bone capable of channeling mana). Each rune requires a Move or Major action; a simple two-rune spell can be cast in a single round, but more complex spells require more time because of how many motions are necessary to draw the runes with precision. Drawing every rune properly requires a Rune Lore roll; rolls are added together and then divided by the number of runes being used. Any individual rune activation roll of 10 or less results in a backfire for the entire spell; the DM rolls on the spell critical failure table, and interprets the result. The result that causes a backfire goes up by 2 per rune beyond the second rune involved in the spell, i.e. 12 or lower for 3 runes, 14 or lower for 4 runes, etc. Runic spells can be inscribed onto paper, wood, leather, clay, stone, metal, clothes, or skin, in order to save them for future use. Inscription takes 10 minutes for a 2-rune spell, 1 hour for a 3-rune spell, 8 hours for a 4-rune spell, and multiple days for a 5-rune or higher spell. A rune-mage can only maintain a number of inscriptions equal to their Rune Lore level. Any inscriptions crafted beyond this limit are simply mundane words, with no magical potential. However, using a prepared spell takes only a single Major action and a single Rune Lore roll. It also has no risk of backfire, as the time to make the inscription takes into account the time required to fix any mistakes that might cause a backfire.