Posted below are spells that are usable in addition to those in the Magic and Banestorm books.  All spells posted here are considered rare and it may be difficult to find a teacher.  However, you can teach yourself at x2 to cost for initially learning the spell if you know of it, or with a successful Thaumatology roll (modified for complexity) if you do not.

Ice Shield
                                                  Regular
Conjures a shield of ice that moves to protect the caster
from frontal attacks.  The DB granted by this spell is
cumulative with that of an actual shield but it does not
allow someone without a shield to block.  DB is not
cumulative with that of shield or block spell.  This shield
does particularly well against water attacks (not ice), any
successful block will increase the DB by 1 per die of water
damage of the attack.  Likewise blocking fire will diminish
the DB by 1 per die of damaged blocked.  ex.  A 3d+3 exploding
fireball would reduce the ice shield by 3DB, but a 9d fireball
might destroy it entirely! (excess damage does not harm caster)

duration: 1 minute
cost:  Twice the DB given to the target to a max DB of 5 (cost 10)
Half that to maintain.
Prerequisites:  Shield, Create Ice
This is a Water and Protection and Warning Spell


Frozen Skin
                                                  Regular
Adds to the DR of a living subject.  This is cumulative
with DR from actual armor.

duration: 1 minute
cost:  Twice the DB given to the target to a max DR of 5 (cost 10)
Half that to maintain.
Prerequisites:  Armor, Freeze OR Flesh to Ice
This is a Water and Protection and Warning Spell


Frozen Arm
                                                  Blocking
Stop a blow with only an arm.  If the spell succeeds the arm
becomes harder than ice - momentarily and automatically parries
the attacking weapon with no damage to the caster.  If the
spell fails the caster is parrying with just his arm!
cost:  1
Prerequisites:  Iron Arm, Freeze
This is a Water and Protection and Warning Spell

This message was last edited by the GM at 04:01, Mon 07 Aug 2017.

The GM reserves the right to make all final judgments on rules interpretations, however I do my best not to surprise anyone if I can help it.  Here are a few areas where I have realized that I deviate from the source books.

Survival - The skill description in the Characters source book says that you can simply roll against survival to feed up to 10 other people and that if you fail, they take physical damage.  I'm not buying it.  Rolling a success on survival allows you a situation where you can obtain food/water using another skill whether it be naturalist (to determine edible plants), tracking (to follow a game trail), or fishing.  Note if you are following a game trail you will likely also have to roll against stealth and a weapons skill, though game will also likely be larger than finding an edible tuber.

Walking long Distances - The book mentions a max move on good terrain of 10xMove miles per day.  This is downright absurd for sustained hiking.  Instead, I'll use a max move rate of 5xMove Miles per day.  Even in this case, hiking is likely to be significantly fatiguing over the long term with additional penalties (on top of reduced move) to those characters who have high levels of encumbrance.

Hero Points - Hero points are awarded for natural critical successes, good role play, and helping out the GM at times.  A hero point can be used as a one time shot of a 15 point advantage.  The normal usage of this is for Luck (to reroll a bad die roll another two times and take the best result) but I'm still waiting on a player who opts to take a use of Serendipity.

Finding Magic Items - The basic books say that you get a roll against IQ+Magery to recognize magic items when you first see them and again when you first touch them.  I'm a little bit more conservative than that.  If you just glance over an item in a general search, you are unlikely to recognize it is magical.  Doing a detailed search where you specifically say you are looking at an item gives you a much better chance.  I'm not going to put a hard and fast rule down however, to keep from the inevitable 'Finn touches everything' [Private to GM: Is anything Magical?]
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:52, Sun 06 May 2018.

Invisibility

I've received some questions on this one and have put a good deal of thought into it.  I think I am going to handle invisibility much like I handle Shape Shifting.  Anything that you are wearing at the time the spell is cast (the potion was drunk, etc.) will become invisible with you.  Anything that you are holding (weapons, shields, packs, etc.) will not be.  This will essentially nerf the combat capability of the spell without limiting it's usefulness in sneaking.  This can and will be revisited if we suddenly get a rash of invisible martial arts masters.

The jury is still out on weapons worn.  For now, assume that you can stay invisible with weapons in a sheath, etc. but once they are drawn, they become completely visible.  We'll see if updates are needed on that.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:39, Wed 10 Apr 2019.

Levitation

I've now had three fights where three different mages have used levitation.  To be honest it's getting increasingly weird, seeing as I have a hard time seeing how hovering would really be helpful in a fight, where fast movements and redirection make all the difference.  Being above somebody does have strategic implications in a fight, though those rapidly diminish if your opponent can step underneath you, making you lose sight...  As I'm a math nerd, I've decided to do what nerds do and drastically over-complicate things in hopes that lack of understanding will lead to no one attempting to min-max this ability.

Here are my adjustments to the book:

Levitation no longer allows an instantaneous 3 yards per second movement in any direction.  Instead, it allows an acceleration of 11 yds/sec² and a max move of 3 yds/sec.  For those thinking this is way better, remember that gravity rounds out to about 10 yds/sec².

Using a bit of vector math, this changes relatively little if you are using levitation to move laterally, you can start using a move of 3 on the first turn, though you can't instantaneously change direction while continuing to move 3 yards/sec.

The big change is that you can no longer move 9 feet upwards in a single second.  If you want to move upwards from a standing position, you accelerate to 1yd/sec on your first turn, 2yds/sec on your second turn, and acchieve your full rate of move 3yds/sec only after three seconds of movement.  Of course distance moved doesn't quite amount to the same thing (damn you calculus!) but with a jumping start, you can make the same assumptions - move of 1 yards/sec on your first turn, etc.

This also changes some things to combat.  No retreating defenses are allowed while levitating, though feverish defenses still are.  Additionally, even though casters aren't required to concentrate to move themselves (per the spell in magic) doing multiple things gets increasingly difficult due to the amount of movement and quick thinking required.  In game terms, your second action in a turn is at -2, third at -4, etc.  So if you move and attack, your attack is unmodified, however, your first defense is at -2, your second at -4, etc.  These penalties can be bought off as per a hard maneuver with no martial arts training required as a prerequisite.

Fighting at different levels while levitating (being above your opponent) bonuses to defense only apply to defense penalties while levitating, you can never get above your normal move/dodge/block score.  Additionally, if you are fighting from close combat, and leave enough room for your opponent to walk underneath you, they can make runaround attacks, targeting side hexes with an additional -2 to your defense.

Note that levitating to fifteen feet high and lobbing spells or arrows at foes from above is still a very viable tactic, though I hope that I have nerfed some of the implied abilities of this spell that may or may not have been originally intended.  I'm standing by for questions in the OOC thread.