DECKERS

By Brice Daury (cubeball@citytel1.citytel.net)

Description

This is a bizarre form of spellcaster, somewhere between the Hedge Magician and the true mage. These individuals are able to cast powerful spells and summon incredible creatures to aid them without fear of Paradox, yet they are so dependent upon their foci that they can never learn to alter reality without them! The really odd thing about these magus is their focus -- they all summon their powers through decks of cards depicting different spells and monsters, known as the card-game called Sorcery: the Summoning. Without their decks, these magus are little better than useless (and usually, not too much fun to be around either!) in combat situations, but with them, they are deadly opponents who laugh at Paradox.

Game Stats

You probably get the idea -- these guys cannot focus their powers without a set of Magic-like cards and to reflect this, they are best played by those who own at least a small amount of the afore-mentioned cards. Any card that you have, your character may too be considered to have. These magus are also different in that they do not have spheres of magick, cannot do free-form magick and do not suffer from Paradox. These magus do have Arete (and it is actually very important to them-see later) and also Quintessence to power their "castings." The character"s Arete score determines the cards which she is capable of having in her deck; the maximum card mana cost that the character can cast is equal to twice the Arete of the caster. The cost to cast each spell is 1 quintessence for cards requiring Arete 1-3 or 2 Quintessence for Arete 4-6, anything higher than this costs the user 3 Quintessence points.

Quintessence

Special rules apply to these character's Quintessence and deck size/number of possible spells. The character's deck size is determined by her rank in the Deck Background, which these characters must have at level one (mandatory). The character's Deck rating can also be affected by his Resources: for every two levels of that background, add one level to the character"s Deck (maximum of +2 in this manner), with the total ability never exceeding level 6. The maximum number of Quintessence that the character may have is equal to one-third the total size of the deck in Quintessence. This quintessence is expressed physically as floating balls of energy that circles the character until "spent" and once spent, it (and the cards they are summoned from) disappear. These cards are then regenerated like normal Quintessence, using the Avatar or someone's use of Prime, until the normal limit of this Deck score is reached. If no other means comes up, the character can always wait, they have the ability to regenerate these quintessence/cards at the rate of two per hour of non-combat and rest/meditation.

So, the character is created like normal, except for the fact that they do not have or need magickal Spheres and they also start with only 10 freebie points to reflect the fact that they are both paradox-free and require less freebie points to purchase Spheres. Also, the character does start with one point in the Deck background to make them more potent.

New Background: Deck

*	The character has a deck consisting of 30 cards(max. 10 Quintessence)
**	The character has a maximum deck of 40 cards (max. 13 Quintessence)
***	Has Deck of up to 45 cards in total (max. 15 Quintessence)
****	Deck may not exceed the limit of 50 cards (max. 18 Quintessence)
*****	Maximum Deck size of 60 cards (max. Quintessence of 20)
******	Deck can be upto 75 cards in length(max. 0f 25 Quintessence)

Note: These Quintessence are found in solid form. Kike Tass, the cards marked "mana" are the character"s Quintessence and they can be used by others, although, due to the very specialized nature of this Quintessence, they are good for only 1/5th their normal Quintessence value to anyone other than another Decker (this is why these magus rarely accept challenges to play the card game on mundane terms for "ante"). Another note is that the character must have his deck to use magick -- they are unique and only replaceable with the deck of another of their kind, since they can only attune one deck mentally to the flow of magick and they must therefore steal/beg/borrow another's deck if theirs is lost. Any cards they acquire during the course of play are automatically added to their deck rating and this is the only way to increase it. Also, for every 5 new cards, they can add one to their Quintessence pool -- meaning that open fighting amongst these magus is not unheard of.