What Are Magical Girls?

Magical girls eliminate supernatural things ("monsters"). They gain a magical focus, often a scepter or badge, which can be activated to bestow upon them a costume that grants fantastic magical powers and magically prevents them from being recognized. In exchange, magical girls receive the nagging instinct to investigate and meddle with most things supernatural - usually to destroy it. There's a reason why bigfoot is never found, and why there's very few hauntings in the world despite all the horrible murders.

Magical girls are created by Guides. Guides are intelligent, talking creatures about the size of a housecat (who sometimes literally look like a housecat) who have incredible knowledge of the supernatural, but no (apparent) overt powers except the ability to bestow a magical focus onto mundane humans. When activated, this magic focus transforms the human into a magical girl (regardless of how old or how male they were previously - and while the costume can be removed, the changes to the body are permanent for as long as you're a magical girl, which is often for the rest of your life, whether your magic powers are currently active or not). Most of the time a Guide will stick around to guide the magical girls they create (hence the name). Different Guides have different styles. Some of them view their girls' mundane lives as an inconvenience that distracts them from their duties, one which should be abandoned as soon as possible, while others will scold them for failing grades just as much as for letting monsters escape.

The Guides acknowledge no formal organization or hierarchy between themselves. They don't even acknowledge that they are a specific class of creature. The term "Guide" comes from the magical girls, and the Guides who use it at all do so reluctantly. Another informal term for the Guides is "Puuchu," since this is the sound made by a number of similar Guides (rumored by some to be a single extremely prolific Guide, possibly with the power to be in many places at once). This term is actually a lot more common than "Guide." This document uses Guide because it sounds less informal. And also because that's how it was written originally and I'm too lazy to fix it.

Some Guides select exclusively actual girls between the age of 7 and 16 to be magical girls, and their girls' powers fade as they enter their late teens, along with their memories of the supernatural, to go on to live normal lives and be replaced in the war against nightmare by new recruits. Other Guides recruit from anyone of any age and either sex and fix the form of their magical girls permanently, making them ageless, so they don't have to be replaced until killed. Some magical girls are taught to ruthlessly exterminate anyone who gets in their way, others have their powers revoked immediately if a single innocent bystander is killed. Some Guides wander around creating magical girls wherever there's a shortage, not sticking around to explain what's going on or introduce them to any other magical girls in the area, just leaving them to fight the supernatural on their own, led only by the magical girl instinct and with no understanding of what these things are or that they aren't alone in the fight.

With hundreds, if not thousands, of Guides, every permutation of creating and training magical girls has dozens of adherents, yet the Guides have no labels for the different philosophies, nor do they form any sort of political parties along these or any other philosophical lines. Every single Guide (apparently) has a personal, pre-existing relationship with every other Guide, and when they do form rivalries (even to the level of open hostility between their magical girls) over philosophical differences in how to go about magical girling, the rivalry is between two specific Guides and their specific history, not part of a greater conflict between different magical girl philosophy.

The magical girl instinct is difficult to resist. Ignoring the sixth sense that alerts them to nearby supernatural activity causes them to become nervous or fatigued, which can lead to suicidal depression. On the other hand, being a magical girl offers no particular defence against PTSD, so depression can be pretty common either way amongst those unfortunate enough to be transformed by one of the more ruthless guides. It's rumored that the monster-fighting instinct is like an addiction, and that if you can persevere through the withdrawal stage you'll stop suffering from the depression. Guides deny this ubiquitously, amongst those who are willing to talk about the consequences of resisting the magical girl instinct in the first place, anyway.

What Are Monsters?

Buggered if we know. We just kill the things.

What we do know is that monsters come in a vast array of shapes and sizes, that all of them are harmful to humans in one way or another and that quite often that way is outright murder, and that mundane humans literally cannot see them. Guides often explain this as "they rationalize it as something else." While we don't know whether the Guides say this because they're lying or mistaken, we do know it's bullshit. Monsters are, as often as not, something akin to a fire-breathing dragon or a shoggoth. People can rationalize away a lot of very obvious things, but #1 they usually have a reason related to protecting their ego and #2 rationalization loses to survival instinct basically every time, so even if almost or all humans were willing to rationalize everything away after the fact, they'd still freak out in the moment.

But they don't. A magical girl flying down the street firing blasts of magic at a monster is reported as a girl chasing a dog. A fire-breathing dragon roosting in a skyscraper and spitting out explosive fireballs in battle with a magical girl is reported as shoddy pipes leading to a series of gas explosions. So whatever the real reason for this "rationalization" is, it's probably magical - there are Guides who claim that yes, it's the same sort of magic that prevents magical girls from being recognized even when (as is often the case) their costumes do not conceal their face at all.

All Guides know about monsters, but not all of them will share their knowledge. Some of them tell inconsistent stories about their origins or motives. According to some Guides, all monsters are spawned by the Heart of Darkness, a great unconscious force that permeates some distant, horrific world and exists only to snuff out love and compassion in the world. Others claim that all monsters are ultimately the creations of the evil empress Tiamat, who draws her power from hatred and despair and can be undone only by love and happiness, and thus seeks to snuff out love and happiness to secure her reign for eternity. Others claim that Tiamat was killed ten, a hundred, a thousand, or a million years ago by some legendary magical girl (usually one trained by the Guide themselves or their mentor), and that the monsters have split into dozens of different factions each one seeking to become the new Dark Empress, and that they fight each other as much as humanity. Others claim that "monsters" is just a catch-all term for supernatural beings who are fundamentally incompatible with humanity, that they come from alien worlds, have alien minds, and want fundamentally different things from the world. Their Heaven is our Hell, so we must fight, and many of the different monster types are wholly different factions with completely separate origins.

The one monster whose origin is at least partially known for a fact is monster girls, because they (or at least some of them) are created when a Guide attempts to create a magical girl. This seems to happen more often when using magical girl creation methods that make the resulting girl more powerfully magical or less human psychologically. This has led to rumors that monster girls are just magical girls juiced up on too much magic, and that magical girls who accumulate too much magical power by fighting monsters will ultimately transform into monster girls and be turned on by the Guides and the other magical girls.

Monster girls act apparently on their own. None of the Guides ever take their side and they have no Guide-equivalents. They are led only by their own set of instincts. Their instinct is towards chaos, and tends to become more and more savage as time goes on. What starts as petty vandalism will often grow to robbbery, assault, and ultimately mass murder.

What Is The Multiverse?

Monsters get onto Earth from other worlds, and the dimensional portals sometimes work both ways. Non-Earth worlds are referred to as "otherworlds" and very little is known about them. There are portals that spew out monsters and which can be entered, but which no one ever returns from, so some speculate that there are hostile atmospheres out there. Some of the magical girls on Earth now are actually from other worlds. Some of them have had their appearances changed to match Earth, some come from otherworlds that are populated with humans to begin with, and some have blue skin or pointy ears.

Magical girls from Earth sometimes make assaults on sinister strongholds in worlds ruled by monsters, and are sometimes called upon to journey to other worlds also protected by the Guides to help the locals fight off some great evil, but only ever on a temporary basis. While Guides have a varying amount of tolerance for planehopping, they are at best unenthusiastically tolerant of leaving Earth behind to battle monsters across the planes. There are exceptions to this. Notably, when a world is being overrun by monsters, many (though not all) Guides will evacuate their girls rather than demanding they fight to the death for their home, and once they no longer have a homeworld, Guides show much less concern for magical girls traveling between worlds frequently. There are also some Guide-approved methods of casual world-hopping, like the strange apartments in an alien city that some magical girls are given, accessible from anywhere in the universe by drawing a door on any surface with any material - although the only way out of the apartment is back through the door, which always leads back to the place you just came from.

Just like their varying descriptions of monsters, Guides have varying descriptions of the multiverse. Some describe it as just other planets that you could reach by spaceship if you've got a few thousand years to crawl across the depths of space - magic portals are the only FTL travel known to exist. Other Guides claim that the otherworlds are wholly separate planes of reality accessible only by magic. Some Guides say that the entire multiverse is locked in an epic struggle between good and evil. Others say that the fight between magical girls and monsters takes place across only a small fraction of the multiverse, and is of minor or even trivial significance outside of the relatively small number of worlds directly involved (though these Guides will still stress the vital importance of the conflict - its scale may be *relatively* small but in absolute terms it is still tens or hundreds or thousands of billions of innocent lives at stake).

Some otherworlds are monster worlds, overrun by the enemies of the magical girls. Others are magical worlds, where people know about magical girls and may even use magic on a daily basis, however even on these worlds the locals aren't very well informed about the goings-on of the rest of the multiverse, what the Guides are, or which of the many, many conflicting reports of what exactly is going on are accurate. Some of them have inhabitants or climates that are radically different to that of Earth, while others have cities that could be mistaken for New York or Tokyo until you zoom out far enough to see that the geography matches no place on Earth.

What Is The Overcity?

Perhaps the first and most important trait of the Overcity for magical girls who weren't little girls prior to their recruitment is that the Overcity is a fully modern city dimension that knows what magical girls are and is entirely willing to sell you vodka even if you look like you're eight.

A more general overview is that the Overcity is an otherworld that is 100% city, with no discernible organization actually running or maintaining the city. Some parts of the city are totally deserted, but the trains still run and fresh food is set out on restaurant tables, apparently just in case a dense urban population shows up and needs it. Some parts of the city are non-euclidean nightmares that are impossible to even look at.

Some parts of the city are mercifully quite stable, and you can reliably run and patronize a pub there, which people do. It's called the Wand and Circlet and magical girls hang out there. Guides usually discourage casual patronage unless your homeworld's been destroyed, but particularly for magical girls who used to be 30-year old men, they make frequent visits anyway for reasons discussed in the first paragraph.

The Overcity also serves as a nexus between a plurality of worlds, and due to how much a nightmare the city can be to navigate or map, it's possible that it's connected to *every* world, and most of the portals just haven't been found yet. Getting to another world can require insanely specific rituals like walking between a street sign and a power pole, jumping up a stoop without touching any of the steps, knock four times and open up the door and you're in one world. Go to the left of both the sign and the pole and you're in another. Knock three times and it takes you to yet another world. And most combinations just lead inside the building. Some of these portals don't lead to other worlds, just to other parts of the Overcity. It's possible that the Overcity actually spans multiple worlds, all joined together by an enormous sprawl and its difficult to locate portals. There's no flash of light that lets you know when you've entered another dimension, so it's hard to know for sure.

The Overcity is a no man's land between the Guides and the monsters. Megatokyo is a similar-looking world, but it is firmly under the Guides' control, completely stable as opposed to the non-Euclidean cartography of the Overcity, and generally much more sensible. This is where the apartments granted to magical girls by the Interdimensional Home perk are located. Megatokyo loops back on itself like a Pacman board (and notably *not* like a spherical planet would), so it has no outer boundary to explore beyond. Nevertheless, some people believe it is a district of Overcity sealed off by the Guides by looping all its portals onto themselves and closing anything that couldn't be looped. On the other hand, is it really that hard to believe that there are at least two city dimensions in the multiverse? The multiverse is plenty big, after all.

The Hive is the monster girls' equivalent of Megatokyo. Maintained by an army of giant insects, it is deep monster territory much like Megatokyo is deep Guide territory. It doesn't loop in on itself, but no one's ever lasted more than a few weeks out in the unforgiving deserts past the massive oasis around which the Hive is built. Some say that the Hive is also part of the Overcity, located past the borders of the infinite sprawl.

CHARGEN

You have been given 1 orichalcum coin, 3 mithril coins, and 4 star iron coins to help guide your transformation into a magical girl. The process is largely random, but these coins offer you a modicum of control. The steps of chargen are:

1. Determine base stats and skills
2. Determine physical age (skip this if your character is already a 7-16 year old girl)
3. Determine body build ('')
4. Determine outfit
5. Determine weapon
6. Determine magic specialization
7. Determine magic power
8. Determine perks

You may spend your coins at any point in the process, including going back and spending coins to alter previous steps in light of later steps.

Variant rule: Original flavor chargen. In the 1.05 CYOA, the order of the chargen steps was:

1. Determine base stats and skills
2. Determine physical age
3. Determine body build
4. Determine magic specialization
5. Determine weapon
6. Determine outfit
7. Determine magic power
8. Determine perks

But then in the 1.2 (which this version of the game is based on) it was:

1. Determine physical age
2. Determine body build
3. Determine base stats and skills
4. Determine magic specialization
5. Determine weapon
6. Determine outfit
7. Determine standalone power
8. Determine perks

The standard order for chargen is given so that the chargen matches up to the most convenient order of explaining the rules. This way, first-time players can make a character at the same time as reading through the rules. But really, the order of the steps doesn't matter at all. Do it in any order you like.

ATTRIBUTES

Actions are resolved by rolling a six-sided die (1d6), adding a relevant attribute (or skill, explained later), and then comparing it against a target number (TN). If the total result of the die roll and the stat is equal to or greater than the TN, you succeed. Remember, you succeed if your total is greater than *or equal to* the TN, not just if it's greater than. If you hit the target, you succeed.

Sometimes the TN will be set by an opposed roll. In this case, the attacker rolls to set the TN, and the defender rolls to meet it. So, the defender wins ties. If it's a stealth check, the person looking is the attacker, the person hiding is the defender. If it's a chase, the person trying to escape is the defender, the person trying to catch them is the defender.

Attribute levels:

0-1: Literally crippled.
2-3: Well under average.
4-5: Average human.
6-7: Olympic athlete.
8-9: Batman levels of Vitality or Strength. Beyond human, but not so much that people immediately think it's supernatural. It could plausibly be just an unprecedented level of human achievement.
10-11: Spider-Man levels of Strength or Agility. Clearly superhuman.
12-13: Hulk levels of Strength. The realm of small gods.
14+: Superman levels of Strength, Agility, or Vitality. The realm of actually fairly large gods.

TN Chart:

2: Trivial
4: Simple
6: Routine
8: Average
10: Expert
12: Master
14: Supernatural
16: Insane
18: Godly
20: Nearly impossible

Strength (STR) determines your ability to deal damage physically, and also affects your ability to lift heavy objects or break down doors. When you hit someone with a physical attack, your damage will usually be 1d6+STR.

Vitality (VIT) determines how resistant to damage you are. Your armor is equal to your VIT, and your HP is your VIT. You also roll VIT to resist poisons or diseases or to shrug off fatigue. VIT of 8 or higher means that not only are you much harder to hurt, but you can magically survive damage that would ordinarily be fatal, from bloodloss that should be fatal at 8 to surviving impalement at 11 to shrugging off a decapitation at 14.

Agility (AGI) determines your ability to dodge and land attacks, your ability to get to hard to reach places, and things like sleight of hand or stealth.

Focus (FOC) determines your ability to remain focused on things that require mental effort or concentration, especially magic. FOC is your mana, and you roll FOC to use your magical powers, and also whenever willpower is needed, which covers both resisting magic that affects the mind, heart, or soul and things that require longterm mental focus, like studying. A lot of spells require you to spend Focus and then roll a Focus check. You spend the Focus immediately after the roll, so your check will not use the decreased Focus amount. For example, if you have 8 Focus and spend two of it on a spell that requires a Focus roll, you will roll 1d6+8 on that spell, not 1d6+6.

Luck (LUCK) is how things tend to turn out just right for you. It's also the only stat that really doesn't abbrieviate very well. Luck can be rolled for anything that isn't covered by any of the other stats, but mostly it serves as a reserve of lucky breaks. You can spend LUCK to increase the damage of one of your attacks, to decrease the damage you receive from an attack, or to reroll a check and keep the higher result. You can spend as much Luck on a single roll as you like.

There's an important difference in the stat descriptions between a stat determining something or being rolled for certain situations and when your stat *is* something. Vitality *is* your HP, so when you take damage, you lose Vitality, and your armor and ability to resist poison goes down, too. Likewise, FOC is your MP, so when you spend FOC on charging a powerful spell, your ability to cast other spells, or to remain mentally focused at all, decreases.

You recover one point of VIT and 1/2 of your maximum FOC (both rounded up) every time you get eight hours' rest. You cannot, generally speaking, sleep for more than eight hours at a time except when your VIT is below half its total, in which case you are badly injured enough that you can and probably should just stay in bed and rest until you're back above half. Your LUCK returns to maximum at the start of each episode.

Your skills are all at 4 by default. You may spend 1 star iron to gain +1 to a stat, 1 mithril to gain +2 to a stat, or 1 orichalcum for +4 to a stat. You cannot increase a stat to higher than your lowest stat+10 through coins.

SKILLS

Being a magical girl helps you with your homework, if you happen to have gotten an ungodly amount of FOC. But if your FOC is "only" an 8, you aren't necessarily going to be breezing through Calculus.

Skills are governed by one of the main stats, almost always AGI or FOC. Your default skill value is 1/2 of its governing main stat, rounded down.  There is then a skill bonus of +0 to +4 based on how much training the skill has had. A +1 represents basic familiarity, about ten hours' worth of practice. A +2 represents a consistent hobbyist's interest, about one hundred hours' worth of practice. A +3 represents a professional level of competency, about a thousand hours' worth of practice. A +4 represents a total mastery of the field, about ten thousand hours' worth of practice.

Additional levels of skill are possible and follow the same pattern of orders of magnitude (+5 at 100,000 hours, +6 at 1,000,000 hours, etc.), although the constraints of a human lifetime makes it almost impossible to reach these levels without lifelong dedication. Monsters or magical girls with extended or indefinite lifespans may have an easier time of it, however.

The five skills given below are going to show up often, but specific magical girls might have specific skills. One might be a car mechanic, or a photographer, or a dancer, or any of a thousand other skills not covered here. In that case, add a new skill to cover it. If you want your character to be omni-capable at a fairly broad category like sports, music, or science, that's fine, but since skills outside the main list are probably purely for fluff reasons you're probably better off with a more narrow but also more evocative skill, like baseball, flute, or chemistry. Custom skills which are directly helpful to magical girling are discouraged, but not outright banned. Generally speaking, having a Demolitions skill is not in the spirit of the magical girl genre, but GMs should use their best judgement as to whether specific requests are acceptable. If at all possible, players should instead pick a relevant default skill (unless they are intentionally picking something more narrow than a default skill).

Agility skills
-Acrobatics: Getting from point A to point B in non-standard ways. Useful when chasing or being chased.
-Larceny: This skill covers picking locks, hotwiring cars, and other illegal acts of manual dexterity.
-Stealth: Hiding and sneaking around.

Focus skills
-Social: You can decide whether you're good at getting people to do what you want because you're a charming and genuine person or because you're a manipulative sociopath. Either way, rolling this skill is not an excuse not to RP. I recommend rolling first and then RPing your results instead of RPing and then rolling. This helps avoid the thing where an awesome in-character speech gets paired with a nat 1 and you have to decide whether to ignore the rules or not.
-Learning: This is used to study and research. Helpful both for school and some jobs as well as researching monsters, if researching monsters is a thing that you bother with before shooting them in the face with laser beams. Just being in school doesn't count as practicing the learning skill, because only a small amount of time is spent actually doing research or seriously studying. Listening to lectures does not increase the skill (although it may count as tutoring and serve as a multiplier for hours invested elsewhere, see below), nor does doing long but easy busywork (that's just a total waste of time).
-Investigation: This covers looking for clues, spotting things which are hidden (like ambush monsters), seeing through lies, and reading people's expressions.

Starting from your character's sixth birthday, assign five hours per week. From their thirteenth birthday onwards, assign ten hours per week. From their eighteenth birthday onwards, assign fifteen hours per week. From their twenty-fifth birthday onwards, assign twenty hours per week. Before becoming a magical girl, at least half of these hours must be distributed between Learning, Social, and/or custom skills related to school or job. If your character is a veteran magical girl already, the hours from the time she became a magical girl onwards can be assigned however you like, although keep in mind this will have consequences for her backstory. If she stops assigning any hours to Learning at all once she becomes a magical girl, that implies she either left her old life behind immediately or else that her grades took an immediate nosedive. Alternatively, you can assign skills arbitrarily, which is much less math. The entire group should agree to one method or another.

Magical girls usually operate on a monster-of-the-week schedule, granting one additional week's worth of hours to distribute between skills every week. If you want to keep bookkeeping low, this pretty much amounts to the option to have a new +1 skill after each session if you're 13 and up, or two if you're 25 and up. It's only slightly more bookkeeping to keep track while building up to a +2 skill rating. Going from +2 to +3 takes a total of 45 weeks even if you're over 25 from the very start. If your campaign puts at least three or four weeks between each mission and lasts long enough, this might be worth keeping track of, but generally speaking, unless your campaign is quite long-running, skills going from +2 to +3 just won't happen. Going from +3 to +4 isn't even something you can consider unless you're running a campaign about veteran magical girls long since detached from their normal lives, whose day-to-day monster hunting isn't even worth paying attention to, with years-long gaps between missions that actually receive screentime.

Hours invested is literally the number of hours invested in practicing by default (talent is represented by your 1/2 attribute bonus to the skill), however the weekly hours available to be distributed can be tweaked by certain circumstances. First of all, you can temporarily increase the number of hours to higher than normal under exceptional circumstances. In the immediate aftermath of becoming a magical girl, some characters might find themselves investing up to double their usual time in practice, with the extra hours concentrated on things like stealth or acrobatics as they train to try and give themselves a more survivable skillset. After a while (4-8 weeks, probably), they'll settle back down into their usual pace. A similar boost might be granted in the weeks running up to a major confrontation if the magical girls know it's coming in advance.

You can get more out of a single hour of practice if you have good guidance. A reliable textbook or manual or a good teacher can make one actual hour of practice count as two for as long as it lasts. Usually a textbook only provides a bonus for some specific number of weeks depending on its size, but no more than 8 and often only 1 or 2. A teacher can go on providing a bonus until your hours-invested equals theirs - and teaching you counts as practice for the teacher as well, so it'll take you a while to catch up.

Characters with high FOC can invest a higher total number of hours. If your FOC is 6 or 7, you can invest half again as many hours as normal for your age. If your FOC is 8 or 9, you can invest twice as many. If your FOC is 10 or higher, you can invest three times as many. At that point you start running out of hours in the day no matter how disciplined you are.

The amount of bookkeeping involved in all this is not overwhelming, but it certainly isn't trivial, either. An ultra-light bookkeeping advancement scheme is that every magical girl can get a +1 skill between sessions if they like and that is the end of it. No advancement higher than +1 ever except by boosting your main stats to increase the bonus from talent.

Lastly, there is beginner's luck. If your score in a skill is +1, you can use 1/2 of your Luck attribute or 1/2 of the skill's actual governing attribute, whichever is higher.

Your skills can be improved with thaum coins. You are not given any at the moment of your transformation, but you may be able to find them later.

Variant rule: No skills. In the standard system, the +2 and +3 skill bonuses, which are the most common, are half of 4 and 6, the human and peak human benchmarks. This means that a mundane human's skills are the same as their unmodified stats. If you ignore skills completely and just roll the governing attribute directly, everything gets much simpler and the math is essentially the same at the mundane level. Under a no-skills system, characters may have a harder time differentiating themselves from one another - you can't have a character who's quick and nimble but loud and noisy. Magical girls with a high stat will also utterly dominate relevant skills, meaning that high-FOC characters will be twice as good at physics as Stephen Hawking without even trying. This gives you fewer rules to keep track of (and adheres more closely to the CYOA image that inspired this system), and it gives a more light-hearted tone where magical girls excel at their talents to an aburd level thanks to their magic, so it is an excellent variant for one-shots.

Variant rule: All the skills. In this variant, everything you roll for is a skill. You never roll the main stats by themselves (although they still act as HP or MP). Resisting poison and disease is a Vitality skill called Fortitude. Resisting magical or mental effects is a Focus skill called Willpower. You wield your weapon with a skill governed by the stat used when rolling to-hit rather than rolling that stat directly. Your magic specialization is a Focus skill, and your standalone magic power is activated using the highest of any of your magic specialization skills (if you ever end up picking more than one). This is going to drastically reduce the advantage of having high AGI, which is a powerful stat, so it's good for balance, except it also makes the learning bonus from high FOC way more helpful, so really it replaces one superstat with another. It will also give the magical girls a much larger set of skills they'll want to advance up to +2 as fast as possible (and maybe +3 if it's a campaign that's expected to last a year or longer realtime), which will make them really suffer for that half of their time occupied by living a normal life. If you don't mind doubling the size of the average character's skill list and you want to emphasize the tension between mundane life and the duties of a magical girl, use this variant.

Variant rule: Lucky socializing. It is not generally true that the character best at making the ra ra friendship speeches is also one of the smartest in the group, but having both governed by FOC means that even if she has only a measley +1 in Learning, your social butterfly is probably going to have a total Learning value of something like 5 or 6, well over average, just because she probably has a very high FOC so that her Social will be top notch. If this bothers you, you can have the FOC skill be Deception and have regular Social be governed by Luck, instead. The standard rule operates under the assumption that love and compassion make you a more magically potent magical girl, which is perfectly fine until you have Sailor Mercury and Sailor Venus in the same party. The alternative explanation is that love and compassion bring you good karma.

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES

Only girls between the age of 7 and 16 can be imbued with the magical powers of the Guides. This presented a serious recruiting problem for the Guides, but eventually they found a solution: Use magic to physically transform recruits into girls between the age of 7 and 16 as part of the magical transformation process. This usually works fine, although it does increase the risk of accidentally turning the recruit into a monster girl.

If your character is already a girl between the age of 7 and 16, then you can select the options that describe their current bodies for these next two options (you cheater). They remain exactly how they were when their Guide found them. If your character is outside the age range or male, roll 1d10+6 to determine your new physical age and roll a 1d20 on the following chart to determine your physical development:

1-6: You are smaller than normal, sickly, thin, or look much younger than you are. +1 LUCK or +1 FOC.
7-14: You're average for your age. Nothing to write home about. +1 AGI or +1 VIT.
15-20: You are taller, bigger, wider, more muscular, or appear older than you are. +1 STR or +1 VIT.

The age roll determines only your apparent physical age. Your personality is unchanged, so if you were a weary, cynical old man before, you're still weary and cynical from your years of experience. You just look like a thirteen-year old girl now.

You may spend a star iron coin on the age roll to add or subtract one year. You may spend a mithril coin on the age roll to modify the result to any number between 7 and 16. You may spend an orichalcum coin to modify the result into any number at all. You may spend a mithril coin on the development roll to ignore the result and pick whichever option you like.

OUTFIT

The outfit a magical girl when they transform is summoned through a 15 second long transformation ritual that requires you to scream out insensible and often embarrassing things, such as "FURI KURI FURI KURA!" or "I kill you, I kill you dead!" while waving your focus item around. Your transformation phrase will never change, so pick carefully. If you're part of a squad, you might want to coordinate your phrases and outfits. The attribute bonus provided by the outfit applies whether you're transformed or not.

Roll 1d20 for your outfit's style. You can spend 1 star iron coin to add or subtract 4 from your result. You can spend 1 mithril coin to ignore the result and pick whichever style you want.

1-5: Skimpy. +1 AGI. Playboy bunny, body paint, chainmail bikini, anything that shows a lot of skin or is skintight in most places.

6-10: Flowing. +1 STR. This is most typically a long and frilly dress or kimono, but a big overcoat, a wizard robe, or anything else that can billow out dramatically in the wind will work.

11-15: Elaborate. +1 FOC. If you thought the Flowing style was frilly, you haven't seen *anything* yet.

16-20: Uniform. +1 VIT. Traditionally a sailor outfit, but school uniforms or business suits are also popular. In any case, it's stylized and won't look exactly like any actual school uniforms or business suits you might wear while not transformed, so your transformation will still look distinct from your normal clothes. Unless you commission a non-magical copy of your outfit, I suppose.

COMBAT

When in combat, everyone gets one action, one reaction, and an unlimited number of free actions (within the bounds of reason) per round. The regular actions are taken in order from highest AGI to lowest. If there's a tie, boss monsters go before magical girls, magical girls go before monster girls, monster girls go before regular monsters, regular monsters go before mundanes, and mundanes go before putties. When it is your turn, you can either move, attack, or roll a skill check. If you have a ranged weapon, you can also lay down suppressive fire or go into overwatch. You can take your reaction whenever it's triggered, which happens only under special circumstances, usually related to your magic powers. See the rules for magic powers for details.

Movement

An area is the basic unit of distance in combat. It's very roughly about 25 feet across and has some kind of defining feature that makes it different from neighboring areas. One area might be the art room, another might be the corridor out the door, and another might be the schoolyard out the window. Sometimes you might have two areas that are fairly similar, like the school gymnasium which is big enough to be 4x4 areas easily. If a fight is going on, light some areas on fire, crack the floor in others, rip some ceiling lights down to scatter debris and live wires across some more. Even areas that start out pretty same-y can quickly be differentiated with a bit of chaos. You can also sketch out very big, 30x40 maps in five minutes by having lots of areas be identical to their neighbors at start, and then differentiate them once people start getting into fights in them, letting any areas that don't end up hosting a melee remain same-y.

Also remember that areas only have to be distinct from their neighbors. It's perfectly fine if you have a lawn three areas across, and the left- and rightmost areas are identical, so long as the area in the middle has been flooded with electrified water with only a few statues and hedges sticking out above the lethal current.

Distance is usually measured in squares, which is the number of areas away something is. This is usually referred to as squares of distance, since areas are kind of like big, fat, 25x25 foot squares. They aren't necessarily exactly 25 feet square, though. "Squares" is just an easier unit to refer to than "areas." When you take a move action, you can move a number of squares equal to 1/4 of your AGI, rounded up.

Ranges:

Point blank: 0 squares (approximately the range at which you can rush and stab someone before they can draw and fire a sidearm)
Short range: 1-3 squares (approximate effective range of a sidearm)
Medium range: 4-12 squares (approximate effective range of a shotgun)
Long range: 13-60 squares (approximate effective range of an assault rifle)
Extreme range: 61-200 squares (approximate effective range of a sniper rifle)

These ranges are mostly used when making attacks (see below), but movement is also measured in squares. You can move a number of squares equal to half your AGI each round. Areas are big, so up to two dozen characters can fit in them at once, not counting any low fliers (high fliers would be in a different area, 25+ feet above the ground), which as a general rule means that you don't have to bother keeping track of how many people are in an area because there's always more room. Large crowds, especially of innocent bystanders, should be treated as difficult terrain rather than individual characters unto themselves (although ranged attacks, especially indiscriminate area attacks, should certainly still claim a few of the poor souls if you aren't running a "no one ever dies for any reason" kind of campaign).

Speaking of difficult terrain, some areas have it. Moving out of an area with difficult terrain requires two squares of movement instead of just one. Moving into an area with difficult terrain works normally. Cover is a related effect. When you have partial cover, any ranged attacks from outside the area you're in take a -1 penalty. Spray attacks take double the cover penalty. Some areas provide total cover instead of partial cover. Additionally, if there are two or more areas with partial cover between an attacker and their target, including the target's area, the target has total cover from that attacker specifically. The GM may have to rule on whether or not partial cover from intervening areas applies if there are height issues, in particular if a character goes out of their way to find a good vantage point to hit distant enemies without having to worry about partial or total cover. Total cover means it is impossible to be attacked at all. Attacks made from the same area as you (including ranged or magic attacks) and blast effects from areas outside of you are both unaffected by cover, including total cover.

Generally speaking, an area that has difficult terrain probably has cover, too, since they're usually both the result of things like debris or thick woods. If a place is built with defense in mind, however, like a bunker, it will have exterior walls to provide cover but an open interior to keep movement easy. From the other direction, things like mud or quicksand might cause difficult terrain without providing cover.

Certain types of movement can provoke attacks of opportunity from enemies. Only creatures with melee or fist attacks may make attacks of opportunity (ranged and magic characters get overwatch instead). If you attempt to leave an area with enemies and there are no friendly creatures in the area you're leaving, your enemies can take an attack of opportunity against you, a free melee or fist attack made as a reaction. If there are other friendly creatures in the square you're leaving, your enemies are too distracted to attack you on the way out.

Attacks

There are four different weapon types which each attack in slightly different ways. All of them follow the same basic formula, however: You roll your to-hit stat and the enemy rolls AGI to dodge. If you hit, you then deal damage. The enemy ignores damage equal to their armor, and the rest is subtracted from their Vitality.

Each magical girl gets a magic weapon. This weapon is summoned by their transformation. Often, their magic focus transforms into their weapon when they transform into a magical girl, which sometimes doesn't change its physical appearance at all, just grants it the power to fire projectiles or similar. Regardless of the details of where it comes from, the magic weapon is only available to a magical girl when she is transformed. She can still use other weapons whether she is transformed or not, but she can't use their special effects unless the weapon is of the same type as her personal weapon. This means that magical girls who don't have a magic weapon can't use other people's magic weapons at all, since they can't be used without attaching at least one effect. You get a stat bonus based on your personal weapon, but this bonus applies whether you are currently using that weapon or not, even if you aren't transformed (and when you get extra weapons from your magic specialization or other options, it doesn't usually give you the stat bonus). To determine your weapon, roll 1d20 on the following chart:

1-6: Melee. You gain +1 STR and +1 VIT. Melee weapons can be relatively straightforward, like a giant sword or hammer, or they can be utterly bizarre, like an umbrella. What's important is, you accomplish your violence by whacking people with it. When attacking, you roll 1d6+AGI to hit, and if you hit your enemy, you deal 1d6 damage. You may only attack someone at point-blank range. Each of your attacks can have one of the following effects for free, an additional effect for one Vitality, and all three effects for two Vitality:

-Powerful. Add your STR bonus to the damage.
-Whirlwind. You can attack every enemy in the same area as you. Make one attack roll and have all affected enemies roll AGI against it. You can choose not to attack targets within range.
-Charge. You may move up to your normal move speed and make an attack. You may keep moving after you make your attack if you have squares of movement left. Closing range like this counts as movement and anything triggered by your leaving or entering any areas you pass through during a charge will trigger like normal. You cannot charge through difficult terrain. If you whirlwind attack while charging, you can attack as many enemies as you like in every area you pass through, but cannot attack anyone in the area you started in, because you have to build up speed before you can begin your whirlwind charge.

7-12: Ranged. You gain +1 AGI. Ranged weapons can be modern guns, rocket launchers, or grenades, or ancient bows or slings. When attacking, you roll 1d6+AGI to hit, and if you hit your enemy, you deal 1d6 damage. You may attack your enemies from short range without penalty, and at medium or longer range you incur only a -1 penalty per range step. Your weapon's ammo is fueled by your magic. There is no mana cost to a regular attack, but you may spend one Focus to give an attack one of the following effects, two Focus to give an attack two of these effects, or four Focus to give an attack all three of them:

-Powerful. Add your FOC bonus to the damage.
-Area. Through explosive force or rapid fire, you can hit all enemies in a single area. Make one attack roll and have all affected enemies roll AGI against it. When combined with the Accurate effect, you can selectively target some creatures in the area while ignoring others. This attack can count as either spray or blast, but not both.
-Accurate. You do not take range penalties at medium range, and your range penalties at long and extreme range are reduced by one.

13-18: Magic. You gain +1 FOC. Magic weapons are usually staves or wands, but can be almost anything. Crystal balls, skulls, spellbooks, an umbrella wielded like a wand, your magic laser eyes, whatever. What they have in common is that they are used when using your magic specialization as well as with blasts of magic for standard combat. You roll 1d6+FOC to hit, and if you hit your enemy, you deal 1d8 damage. You may attack your enemies at range, but you take a -1 penalty per range step past point-blank. Every attack you make costs one Focus and gets one of the following effects automatically. You may spend an additional Focus to get two traits or three additional Focus (for four total) to get all three:

-Powerful. Add your FOC bonus to the damage.
-Area. Through explosive force or rapid fire, you can hit all enemies in a single area. Make one attack roll and have all affected enemies roll AGI against it. When combined with the Homing effect, you can selectively target some creatures in the area while ignoring others. This attack can count as either spray or blast, but not both.
-Homing. You can ignore cover, even complete cover, when attacking enemies.

19-20: Fist. You gain +2 STR. You pummel your opponents to death with nothing but your tiny little girl fists. And feet, and knees, and assorted other body parts with appropriate striking surfaces. You roll 1d6+AGI to hit, and if you hit your enemy, you deal 1d6 damage. You may only attack someone at point-blank range. Each of your attacks can have one of the following effects for free, and you can pay one Focus or Vitality to gain a second effect, or three Focus or Vitality (including paying 1 from Focus and 2 from Vitality or vice-versa) to gain all three.

-Piercing. Ignore enemy armor up to your AGI.
-Whirlwind. You can attack every enemy within range. Make one attack roll and have all affected enemies roll AGI against it. You can choose not to attack targets within range.
-Stunning. If you hit an enemy and their current (not maximum) VIT is lower than your STR, they are stunned and miss their next action. This happens even if you didn't actually deal any damage, so long as you hit them at all.

Balance note: Some people might guess that Fist is more powerful than the others because it's more rare. It's not. It's just an unusual weapon for a magical girl.

You may spend a star iron coin to add or subtract 4 from your roll. You may spend a mithril coin to ignore your roll and pick whichever weapon you like. You may spend an orichalcum coin to choose an additional weapon. You gain the stat boosts for both weapons. The new weapon can be either an actual completely separate weapon, or you can have one weapon with the capabilities of both. A gunblade that's both melee and ranged, or a Dragonball Z sort of fighting style that's both fist and magic, and so on.

Armor

Armor reduces incoming damage. Everyone has armor equal to their current Vitality by default, which means attacks that are not Powerful usually get nowhere. They might also have a bit of armor from mundane armor, although never more than a few points. Untyped armor works against all kinds of damage, including untyped damage. Typed armor (like fire armor or energy armor) only works against specific typed damage (fire damage or energy damage, respectively). Armor and damage are both untyped unless otherwise specified.

Some types of damage are piercing. Piercing damage ignores some amount of armor, by default all of it, unless it's armor of the same type as the piercing damage. Piercing fire damage is fire damage which pierces all armor, including untyped armor, except fire armor. It is NOT damage which pierces fire armor only. That would be fire piercing damage, not piercing fire damage. There is not actually any fire piercing damage in the game, because that would be hella confusing. If piercing damage is untyped, it ignores all armor.

Suppression

Suppression fire is an area spray attack that's particularly relentless. It requires two extra Focus (or ammo, if it's a mundane weapon) and you make a normal area attack, however for the rest of the round, so long as you aren't taken out, anyone who moves into the area, moves out of the area, or makes an attack from the area to another area (but not someone who makes an attack from the area to someone else in the same area) suffers an immediate attack as a free, not reaction, action. However, you cannot make attacks of opportunity while suppressing an area. Like any spray attack, cover penalties are doubled, however if a reaction shot is provoked by a character attempting movement (in or out of the area), they do not benefit from cover.

Overwatch

A ranged character can go into overwatch, declaring that they'll attack the first enemy they see moving. This takes their action, however any enemy who moves without having total cover from the overwatch character triggers a reaction attack by the overwatch character. Once this reaction has been triggered, the character is no longer in overwatch and will not make any additional reaction attacks. The overwatch character must attack the first enemy who triggers their overwatch or else waste the overwatch.

Chases in Combat

If a chase occurs in a combat, the chased moves as though through difficult terrain in a direction of their choice. The pursuer ends their turn in the same area the runner ended their movement if the chase is close, and in the area before the area the runner ended their movement if the chase is far. Both chasers and chased use their action as part of the chase and cannot attack, but they can still make reactions, including attacks of opportunity.

Friendship in Combat

Combat is not only an appropriate time for impassioned speeches about compassion and friendship, but probably the *most* appropriate time for them. Characters are entirely free to sacrifice their action to make a skill check using the Friendship rules in an effort to buff their allies or debuff their opponents.

Research in Combat

Characters may spend their action to make a skill check for investigation/research in the middle of combat only if they're searching an area for something or looking for clues or similar. They take a -1 penalty if there are enemies in the same area. Also, they probably can't continue their research if they leave the area, unless the thing they're researching is portable like a book rather than a crime scene. If they're trying to study, then while they are entirely free to continue studying in the middle of a fight, they usually only make a roll for that once every few hours and while round lengths are abstract, combats usually last a maximum of about five minutes (and that would be a marathon fight), so it's not going to come up. This means that characters can stop studying, fight ninja ghosts, and then go back to studying without taking penalties. It also means that characters can study *while* fighting ninja ghosts without taking penalties.

Stealth in Combat

Stealth checks to remain hidden are an action. Investigation checks to detect stealthers are an automatic reaction made by anyone in the same area as the stealther, however investigaters outside the area can dedicate an action to detecting the stealther instead if they like. A stealther who has total cover from an investigater cannot be detected. If a character has successfully entered stealth, they may take an attack against any enemy in range. That enemy is unaware and does not get to add their AGI to their dodge roll. Since the attack takes your action, your stealth will end after making your attack, however you can roll to resume stealth the next round. You take a -2 penalty to entering stealth in combat if you've engaged someone.

Variant rule: Don't worry about it. This isn't a variant rule so much as a suggestion for one-shots or people who prefer rules-light: The rules for suppression, overwatch, difficult terrain, cover, and attacks of opportunity make up over half the wordcount of this section. They're also there mostly to cover edge cases. If you don't use the cover rules, the balance of the game *does* change (the Homing effect is now worthless, for example), but it's not going to make the game unplayable or anything. You can just use regular movement and attack rules and it'll be fine.

CHASES

If both characters are standing on a perfectly flat and empty plain, then one of them has higher AGI than the other, and therefore a higher move speed, and therefore is going to catch up to the other. Fortunately for slower magical girls, chases almost never take place in perfectly flat frictionless vacuums, which means they have can take shortcuts and attempt daring feats of agility to catch up with or leave behind an opponent.

Chases can occur at one of two ranges. At close range, the chaser can see the chased. The chased first declares a TN of a stunt they are going to attempt in order to break line of sight, and then describes the stunt itself (for example: jumping through a window in an apartment, then out the door and out of line of sight). Players should feel free to improvise the details of what kind of traffic, buildings, and etc. are around (within reason) for this kind of thing. The description is just fluff, what's mechanically relevant is the stunt TN. The chased makes an Acrobatics check to try and meet the TN they've set for themselves. If they fail, they botch up the stunt and the chaser catches them. If they succeed, then the chase continues.

After the chased makes their stunt, the chaser attempts a stunt of their own. They can either attempt a stunt to match the one the chased made and maintain the chase or they can attempt a new stunt with a TN 2 higher. If they make the higher TN stunt, then they've found some shortcut to cut off or intercept the chased and have caught them. If they make the same TN stunt, the chase continues at the same range. If they fail either stunt, the chased pulls ahead to a long range chase.

Chase stunt TN examples:

2: Walking
4: Running
6: Jumping over a three-foot wall
8: Climbing a chain-link fence
10: Jumping from rooftop to rooftop
12: Using parkour skills to climb up the balconies of an apartment building until you reach an open door
14: Running thirty feet across a wall
16: Running across water
18: Running straight up a wall indefinitely
20: Moving so fast you leave behind shadow clones that appear to be going the wrong way

In a long range chase, the chaser can no longer see their quarry, but line of sight was only broken a few minutes or even a few moments ago. The chaser knows that the chased is still around here somewhere. The chaser now rolls Investigation against the chased's Stealth to try and locate them again. If the chaser succeeds, the chase is back on at close range. If the chaser fails, their quarry has escaped and the chase is over.

Sometimes one party or another to a chase is *much* faster than the other. If the fast party is the chaser, nothing changes. The person being chased has the advantage of being able to direct where the chase goes, so they can head to tight quarters where they can break line of sight with acrobatics even if they have a much slower top speed compared to their opponent. If the fast party is being chased, however, it means that once they have a bit of a lead on their opponent, they don't have to hide, they can just rev up to maximum acceleration and be gone. If a character can move at double or more the speed of their pursuer, then once they reach a long range chase they automatically succeed, leaving their pursuer in the dust. The same applies if the character can move across terrain the other can't, at all. For example, if the chased can fly and the chaser can't, after successfully stunting their way out of a range where the chaser might be able to jump onto them (i.e. gotten to a long range chase), the chased can just fly away, no stealth required. The chased may incur a ranged attack on their way out if the chaser has one - something which never happens when a chase is ended by stealth.

Combat in Chases

A chaser with a ranged attack may make an attack against the chased when they're in a short range chase in place of attempting a stunt. The chased's AGI check on their stunt then becomes their defense. Which means that the chaser can see the target before deciding whether to stunt or attack, which is fine. If a chaser sees their quarry attempting a stunt that happens to line them up well for a lightning bolt to the back, they might decide to take the shot rather than continue running. Regardless, if the chased isn't hit, or is hit but takes no damage, their stunt is considered an automatic success and the chase moves to long range. If the chased is hit for damage, then the hit slows them down or botches their stunt enough that the chase continues at short range despite the chaser having stopped to line up their shot. If the chased is hit and taken out, the chase is over.

Friendship in Chases

When attempting your stunt, or attempting to find/hide from your opponent in a long range chase, you can try to talk to them or encourage your allies. You make a Social check as normal and either buff an ally or debuff an opponent, and then make your Acrobatics check for a close range chase. There is no penalty. If you are the chaser and rolling Investigation for a long range chase, there is still no penalty. If you are the chased and are trying to talk to your opponent while hiding, you take the same -2 penalty to your Stealth check as when trying to friendship while stealthing normally (see below), however your Social check to friendship is unaffected.

Research in Chases

If the thing you're investigating is portable, you can try to study it while running for your life. You take a -1 penalty to both actions.

Stealth in Chases

Stealth is built into chases in that a long range chase is resolved by sneaking away by default.

FRIENDSHIP

There's almost never a wrong time for a magical girl to give a rousing speech about the power of friendship, or to condemn their opponents' evil in the name of justice. And for monsters, just about anytime is an appropriate time to growl and hiss at magical girls or bystanders in a menacing way, or to urge on your putties with threats of dire consequences for failure.

You can roll Social to try and encourage your allies. The TN for your Social roll is the same as the TN they're trying to make, and if you succeed, they get a morale bonus to the roll equal to 1 plus half the amount you exceeded the TN, rounded down. So if you beat the TN by 2, they get a +2, if you beat it by 4, they get a +3, and so on. It works in reverse if you fail, however. Your efforts to encourage your ally just come across as irritating instead. If you fail by 1, they take a -1 morale penalty, if you fail by 2-3, they take a -2, if you fail by 4-5, they take a -3, and so on.

You can also use Social to intimidate or otherwise discourage opponents instead. This works just like encouraging, but in reverse. They take morale penalties if you meet or exceed the TN, and get morale bonuses if you fail. The TN in this case is an enemy Focus roll.

People only gain the bonuses or take the penalties if they do what you are encouraging or discouraging them to do, however. So, if you intimidate someone into a -4 penalty to attacking you and they decide to run away, the penalty does not apply. The thing you are encouraging or discouraging people from doing must fall under the category of a specific action, like making an attack in combat, stunting in a chase, or investigating in stealth. However, the penalty continues to apply for the duration of the scene, no matter how many times they attempt that specific action. Only the highest absolute value of any morale bonus or penalty applies during a scene, no matter how many times someone is encouraged or intimidated.

If you spend an extended amount of time talking to someone, you can attempt to befriend them. When you befriend someone, you spend an action to roll Social against their FOC, and you build up friendship with that person equal to the amount by which you beat their TN. If you fail, you have wasted an action, but there are no other consequences. When your friendship with someone is at least equal to their maximum (not current) Focus, you are friends with them and gain a +1 bonus to encouraging them.

If the person you're befriending is your ally, you can assume that you eventually succeed in becoming friends with them during downtime if you like, since they will presumably not be taking any action to stop you from befriending them. If you have a pre-existing relationship with another character at the start of the game, you can assume you are already friends with them. If you are already friends with someone, because you befriended them in an explicit scene or you both agreed to become friends during off-screen downtime, you start out each scene with friendship with them equal to their maximum Focus. If you'd like to roleplay out becoming friends with other party members (and I recommend it), roll Social against each other's FOC like when trying to befriend an enemy (see below), and keep it to one roll per scene. Scenes dedicated purely to becoming friends are fine, but you shouldn't have two such scenes in a row.

If the person you're trying to befriend is an enemy, however - for example, a monster girl you're trying to convince not to follow her chaotic instincts - they'll probably use their own actions to punch you in the face. If someone you are friends with tries to take a hostile action against you, that action suffers a -1 penalty for every point of friendship you have over their maximum Focus. This means that if a friend turns on you at the beginning of a scene, they won't take any penalties immediately, but if your Social is on par with their FOC it should only take one or two rolls to stack up serious penalties to their attacks, rendering them basically incapable of hitting you. On the other hand, unless there is a severe mismatch between your Social and your enemy's FOC, it will likely take several rolls to disarm them this way, because unlike your friend you must start from zero instead of starting out equal to their maximum FOC.

Villains using the befriending rule are usually building up seduction instead of friendship, with the idea typically being "seduced by the dark side" rather than "seduced by the hot villainess" (we won't tell anyone if you do the second one, though). In order to prevent their new apprentice from being crippled by morale penalties from friendships with their former allies, the villain must also dismantle existing friendships. This is done by rolling their Social against the highest friendship score of the target, which will be equal to the highest maximum FOC of any of their friends. If successful, the friendship score is decreased by the amount by which the villain succeeded.

Typically, a villain should only roll to dismantle a friendship once per scene. It's fine if the scene is dedicated specifically to dismantling that friendship, but scenes like that shouldn't be stacked in rapid succession with one another. Someone turning evil instantly feels like contrived drama, but someone's friendships slowly circling the drain scene-by-scene under the wicked influence of a beautiful monster, ultimately culminating in a betrayal, is much more satisfying. Seduction can be dismantled just like a friendship can, although this usually happens in a climactic encounter with the seduction being unraveled, and then the friendship rebuilt, using actions in combat rather than one scene at a time.

Friendships (and seductions) can also be dismantled without the intervention of villains if friends are taking overtly hostile actions against one another. A friendship degrades by 1d6 anytime friends take hostile action against each other, usually to a maximum of 1d6 per scene, though an exception may be made for a particularly heinous action. Not all opposition is hostile. Rivals can also be friends, but if it reaches the point where you're helping the monsters, jeopardizing your friend's safety, or acting less to outdo your friend and more just to sabotage them, you've crossed the threshold into hostility.

Morale effects do not stack with each other. Only the morale effect with the highest absolute value is used. If there's a tie between a negative and a positive value, use the positive value.

Combat in Friendship

As described above, you can attempt to encourage, discourage, or befriend people by taking an action to roll Social while in combat.

Chases/Research in Friendship

In both chase and research scenes, it's perfectly appropriate to make an encouragement roll, though this grants a -1 penalty to both the Social roll and whatever action you're taking in the chase or research as you're splitting your focus. Alternatively, you can focus on encouragement exclusively and take no penalty while also taking no other action. In a chase scene, this means you get left behind/caught automatically unless the chased fails their stunt (regardless of whether you're the chased or the chaser, the chased sets the pace of the chase).

A chase or research scene is also a perfectly appropriate time for a long-term friendship or seduction roll, and you can attempt to befriend someone by chasing them just like in combat. If you catch someone you're trying to befriend, you can make a free Social roll, without penalizing subsequent chase rolls, rather than engaging them in combat. Enemies attempting to run from you take the same morale penalties to their Acrobatics and Stealth checks as they would in combat.

Stealth in Friendship

Attempting to befriend people while hiding tends to work out really poorly for the hiding part of the action. You take a -2 penalty to stealth if you attempt to encourage, intimidate, or befriend someone while doing so. This includes if you're trying to befriend someone who's chasing you at long range.

Variant rule: Heartless monsters. A monster with a FOC of 9 or higher is going to be fairly difficult even for socially powerful magical girls to befriend. Very high FOC monsters, those with a FOC of 12 or even greater, will be nearly impossible to befriend. But a magical girl with a good Social can befriend monsters with low FOC very easily. That's actually a pretty limited problem. Magical girls only get more powerful by destroying monsters to absorb their magic, which means there's a built-in mechanical incentive not to use friendship to solve all problems.

More than that, befriending a monster might make him incapable of attacking you, personally, but it doesn't change the fact that it likes to cause chaos, probably lethal chaos, to bystanders, so there's a perfectly good in-character reason not to make friends with them and then let them go. Just telling them you don't want them to kill people doesn't give any penalties at all unless you are in the room with them right now telling them not to hurt those innocent people, and with a new monster walking in every week, your ability to babysit all of these things at once is going to get more and more overtaxed.

But let's say you have some monsters you really don't ever want befriended, or maybe you're running a campaign where the nature of monsters makes them inherently impossible to befriend, like they're devoid of all empathy and compassion. In this case, monsters are utterly immune to all efforts at befriending. Monster-human hybrids, including monster girls, can still be befriended, but efforts to befriend them take a -2 penalty because of the inhuman darkness in the hybrid's heart.

Variant rule: Half-hearted monsters. Maybe you want to make it possible to befriend monsters, but still give them an edge. In this case, give efforts to befriend any monster, whether they have human origins or not, a -2 penalty.

RESEARCH

When you want to find out something you don't know, you do research. There are two typical times this comes up in a game: Investigating a crime scene and researching the weaknesses of a monster-of-the-week. Both of these work fundamentally the same: You make a roll to build up a reserve of knowledge, you get one point of knowledge for meeting the TN and another for every point by which you exceeded the TN, and then you decide whether you're willing to invest the time it's going to take to build up more. If you are, you make another roll. The principle difference between the two is that they use different skills. Looking for clues is Investigation, researching monsters is Learning. Some Research scenes might call for other skills, for example, questioning lots of witnesses might call for Social.

The TN of an investigation is determined by how obscure the information is. The knowledge threshold is determined by how complex it is. Most monster research is quite obscure and has TNs in the realm of 10-12, or even a 14 for certain extremely ancient creatures. The knowledge needed is fairly low and usually you will get one new and useful fact about them (like a weakness) every two points of knowledge you accumulate. On the other hand, information on quantum physics may be freely available from the school library and require only a TN 8 or even TN 6 roll to uncover, but it is a vast and complicated subject that requires 20+ knowledge points for every single milestone.

The TN can vary based on the materials available. If you need to know the results of a putty autopsy, it's probably going to be TN 12 to find that in your local library (disguised as local myths and urban legends), TN 10 to find it in a personal cache of books on magic, and TN 8 if you have a putty to dissect on hand. If your research is going poorly, getting some new material can not only lower the TN, but reset the amount of time between rolls (see below). Related, when looking for clues, if the monster strikes again, the new crime scene might be sloppier, and in any case it is certainly a new crime scene, so the time required for each new roll will be reset back to 1 action (see below again).

The amount of time spent researching between rolls grows with every roll made, according to the following chart:

1st roll: 1 action
2nd roll: 5 actions (or one scene, if not in chase or combat)
3rd roll: 1/2 hour
4th roll: 1 hour
5th+ roll: Twice the previous roll

From the third roll on, the time is taken out of a character's reserve of hours for learning skills for the week. You can also take chunks out of time normally used for relaxation or, if you're really desperate, sleep. This is done by depleting FOC by a number of points equal to the number of hours spent. Characters with low FOC won't be losing sleep, but instead will get bored and start playing Angry Birds on their phone before long. Characters with high FOC will stay up much later than is medically advisable for a growing young girl before blacking out. Remember that when you spend FOC, your FOC decreases, and will take your Learning total down with it. You can burn FOC while you still have weekly hours available. Why? A week is a long time. If you dedicate the entire day to researching a new monster, there is still plenty of time tomorrow to do homework, practice magic, and catch up with friends.

Whenever you pass a milestone, you get one helpful fact about the situation. Usually the first or second milestone aren't as helpful as the third and on (if it has more than three milestones, which isn't really necessary). If you're investigating a crime scene, this will be a clue, of which every crime scene should come with at least three. If you're researching a monster, the first milestone or two will usually be interesting tidbits about the monster's backstory, and the third should be some kind of clearly exploitable weakness that allows the magical girls to thwart a major power the monster has, like being able to ignore the bonus armor from a magical spell or making themselves immune to a particularly devastating attack.

You can research an entire class of monsters instead of a specific monster, like putties or all monsters made by nightmare ooze - even if nightmare ooze is the source of 90% of the monsters-of-the-week. The facts derived from these investigations, especially if it's a supercategory containing lots of unique monsters, might not be very helpful, since they don't necessarily have unified weaknesses or special attacks in common with one another. This tends to be most useful on putties, who are nearly identical.

If a character ends up spending training hours or FOC on research, they still get those hours as training, however they do not count towards their mundane life requirements, even if they're using Learning.

Combat in Research

You might expect that people actively shooting at you would make it hard to concentrate. But really, you'd probably expect a nine-year old girl to break down crying when confronted by a shoggoth, rather than smashing its abhorrent teeth in with a giant mallet. Magical girls are *really* good at keeping their cool under pressure, so attempting research while in combat only takes up an action and does not impose any penalties. It may be a good strategy to have most of the team keep the monster busy while the brainiac tries to discover its weakness.

Chases in Research

Reading a book while sprinting through an obstacle course makes it harder to do both. Regardless of whether or not you've lost your cool, the book is still bouncing up and down and you have to keep looking up to see the next obstacle in the course. If you're attempting to research and chase (or be chased) at the same time, both actions take a -1, regardless of whether the chase is long or short range. If your research is tied to a specific place, like a library or a crime scene, you can only continue your research on the very first round of the chase as the pursuer. After that, you've left the area. As the one being chased, you can just lead the chasers in circles around the area forever (Random Number God willing).

Friendship in Research

Research can certainly benefit from some cheerleading, and is also a good time to make friendship rolls if you're trying to establish a longterm friendship with someone. You can even do both in the same research scene.

Stealth in Research

Staying hidden and looking around are pretty hard to do at the same time, just because of angles and noise. If you attempt to hide and look for clues/read a book at the same time, you take a -1 to both actions.

Rule variant: Mundane research. By default, a character's mundane life is kept mostly in the background by covering all mundane obligations by just dedicating half of their weekly skill hours to it. It can be emphasized slightly more by instead requiring characters to roll Learning (or a relevant custom skill) to stay on top of their school or job. In the beginning of each session, characters make a Learning check against TN 6 with a three-point knowledge milestone. The first milestone is equivalent to a C-grade, the next (at six total knowledge) is equivalent to a B-grade, and the next is an A. Characters with high FOC or a well-trained Learning should be able to hit the B-grade with just the first two rolls fairly regularly, and occasionally reach A-grade just from that. Characters with lower scores may have to sink extra time in to get good grades or, if they're unlucky, to pass at all.

Rule variant: Mundane research, but more. A second variant that builds on the first would be to give each of five different classes (say, Math, History, Science, English, and French) a different research task. The knowledge threshold is instead only two points, so coupled with the low TN most students should get a C or B on average rolls, but will usually suffer in at least one class and need to focus their efforts there. Combined with the All The Skills rule and requiring a different custom skill for each class instead of using Learning can increase the pressure on skill development imposed by continuing a mundane life, particularly if they want to excel. Characters who are under eleven should use the standard mundane research rules, because they're in elementary school and don't have separate classes yet.

Rule variant: Mundane socializing. Like the mundane research, above, but use the Social skill for a "class" that's actually your social life. The "C-grade" means maintaining friendships, but somewhat distantly, the B-grade means that you are a normal kid with a normal life, and the A-grade makes you a social butterfly who goes to all the parties. A failing grade means you have become a social recluse.

STEALTH

Stealth isn't as simple as success making you invisible and failure means you're spotted. Like combat, stealth operates on roughly 25 foot square areas. Every time you want to take an action in a zone, including leaving it, you must make a Stealth check, opposed by the Investigation check of whoever might be looking for you. Success means you complete the action, but failure means alert level rises and you must make another Stealth check to hide from the guards.

There are four levels of detection:

-Unaware. ("God, guard duty is boring. I hope something exciting happens, I don't care what it is.")
-Suspicious. ("Hey, what was that noise?")
-Alerted. ("I saw something! Someone's in here!")
-Aware. ("You there! Halt!")

If you succeed on a Stealth check against unaware guards, you accomplish the action. If you fail, any guards who beat you are now suspicious and will come to investigate. You must make another Stealth check. If you succeed on this check, the guard goes back to being unaware ("it was just a rat") and you accomplish the action. If you fail, the guard becomes alerted. Any other guards in the area become suspicious as he shouts an alarm ("Hey, someone's in here!"). He can also raise the alarm for guards in other rooms if he has a radio or walkie-talkie or a telepathic link to legions of putties or something. In any case, you must now make a Stealth check against not only the alerted guard, but also all of the now-suspicious guards. The suspicious guards behave exactly as suspicious guards normally do, becoming unaware if they fail to detect you ("Bob's jumpy tonight") and only becoming alerted if they succeed ("I saw it too!").

If you successfully stealth past an alerted guard, he becomes merely suspicious and you complete your action. You do not have to make any more stealth checks until you take another action, however guards who have been alerted will be permanently suspicious from now on. If you fail to stealth past an alerted guard, he becomes aware. He sees you, and there is probably going to be either a combat or a chase now. Additionally, all guards who can hear the aware guard become alerted, so even if you fight your way through the room and re-enter stealth before reinforcements arrive, you now have lots of suspicious guards to deal with. A guard who has been aware of you but loses track of you because you successfully evade him in a chase becomes suspicious. He knows you're out there somewhere, but he doesn't know if you're in the same area anymore.

As you can tell, stealthing past large groups of guards gets out of hand in a hurry, so you'll want to avoid heavily guarded areas. If the area you need to be in is heavily guarded, try to draw guards away from it. Or you can just have a Stealth score that's six point higher than the guards' so that you're impossible to detect, in which case don't even bother rolling.

Guards who can see in a certain room due to cameras, scrying pools, etc. etc. count as being in the room as well, which means one guard can be in many different rooms simultaneously for purposes of stealth. On the bright side, these guards can't engage in chase or combat if they spot you. On the other hand, a guard who can see into multiple rooms due to having eyes on the ends of each of their many long tentacles can engage in an immediate chase or combat using said tentacle.

Just like NPC guards, if a magical girl is trying to detect a sneaking enemy, they are usually unaware by default and have to succeed multiple times in order to detect an enemy. You cannot simply declare yourself suspicious because you failed an apparently pointless Investigation check, for the same reason that the GM can't declare that his guards all become suspicious as soon as you're on the premises because they have a hunch.

If your goal in a stealth scene is to pull off a heist, that is, to reach a guarded object and take it while preferably not confronting anyone, it's possible that you might have to roll larceny to prize the object from alarms in order to get your hands on it without alerting (as in, one step lower than aware) all guards in the building or triggering some trap or even to reach it at all. These are all actions that provoke Stealth checks. On the other hand, it's possible that the item is actually just lying around. Maybe you forgot your magic focus in school and have to break in after hours to retrieve it without letting the night janitors see you. In this case, it doesn't require an action to just pick the item up, you just have to reach the area where it's located and get back out again.

Combat in Stealth

If you attack someone from stealth, you get a free attack on them before combat begins. If your AGI is higher than theirs, this means you get two attacks in a row. An attacked enemy is automatically aware of you, however if you defeat them in the surprise round, they cannot alert their fellows. Even if their fellows are alerted, they are still only alerted for the first round, and only become aware if they are in the same room as you after the complete first round of combat. If you take out all aware enemies before the end of the first round, the alerted enemies are not automatically aware of you, and you can make a Stealth check to return them to being merely suspicious.

Chases in Stealth

If both parties to a chase are trying to hide from third parties, it's possible to have a stealth chase. The action for both of them is to chase or flee. If a guard becomes suspicious and you have to hide, it counts as failing a stunt in a close range chase. In a long range chase, it makes no difference, so long as you aren't caught. If you're caught during a chase, the other party succeeds automatically unless they were also caught, in which case it's possible that you are now both in a chase scene with the people who caught you, which may end up with both of you getting to long range and then entering back into a close range chase with one another while stealthing to escape the long range chase from the third party. Stealth chases are *weird*, man.

Friendship in Stealth

It is possible, though generally inadvisable, to do the Batman thing where you talk to your enemy from the shadows and somehow remain hidden. If an enemy isn't alerted, they become alerted after you talk to them, and you take a -2 penalty to your Stealth check to avoid being caught. It is possible to intimidate someone (taunting might be a more appropriate fluffing in this case) into taking penalties to looking for you.

Research in Stealth

Every action spent investigating something requires a separate Stealth check. This means taking a quick look around for your initial roll requires only one Stealth check, but examining the place more closely requires another five. If you don't have a high enough Stealth to beat the guards' Investigation regardless of rolls, it's probably wisest to lure any guards away before settling in for five turns of research.

MAGIC SPECIALIZATIONS

When magical girls transform they gain access to powerful magic, specialized into one of several different schools or elements. These magic weapons and powers are available to a magical girl only while she's transformed.

Roll 1d20 to determine your magical specialization. You may spend 1 star iron coin to change your result to one that is higher or lower by 1 than what you rolled, for example changing ice(2) to fire(1) or air(3). If you roll a 20, you cannot turn it into a 1, and vice-versa. You can spend 1 mithril coin to add or subtract any multiple of three to your roll, ignoring monster girl results. So if you roll time(7), you can change to spirit(4), fire(1), darkness(10), wood(13), or gravity(16). You can also spend a mithril to guarantee a result of 19-20 (corruption). You can spend 1 orichalcum coin to ignore the result completely and pick any specialization you like.

Specializations give stat bonuses, and sometimes there's an option of which bonus you want. Commas separate options from one another and from automatic bonuses. For example, Ice is listed as "+2 STR or +2 FOC, +1 VIT." This means that every ice user always gets +1 VIT, and can choose between +2 STR or +2 FOC. You benefit from these bonuses whether you're transformed or not.

Specializations very commonly give new weapons. These weapons can use all the effects normally associated with that weapon type (i.e. a ranged weapon can use the Powerful, Accurate, and Area effects) in addition to any new effects granted by the magic. You must pay for the effects exactly the same as you normally would (with Focus or Vitality or what-have-you) and cannot have more than three effects on a single attack. You do not gain any stat bonuses from these new weapons like you do from your standard weapon. Although you can use the effects of your magic specialization's weapon type when attacking with your magic, you do not count as trained in that weapon type and cannot use mundane versions of the weapon. So, if you're an air user, your magic works like a ranged weapon and you can use ranged weapon effects when making air attacks, however you are not trained with ranged weapons and cannot use ranged weapon effects when attacking with a mundane firearm, bow, sling, etc.

Each specialization comes with three magic abilities independent from the weapon it grants. You may pick one of these to begin with, and pick 1 additional ability for each mithril coin you spend.

Variant rule: Skilled magic. If you're using the all the skills rule variant, you can have your command of magic be based on your skill in that magic rather than the number of mithril coins sunk into it. At +1 you have one ability, at +2 you have two, and at +3 you have all three. Like many of the variants that build on all the skills, this puts even more pressure on the magical girls to train as many of their skills as fast as they can, and makes the choice of which skill to train much harder. Unlike many of the other skill-based variants, though, it takes some pressure off of your coins in exchange.

1) Fire. +3 STR or +3 FOC. Fire users are often inspiring and couraegeous. You gain a magic attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit and deals 1d10 fire damage (or if you already have a magic attack, it's upgraded to 1d10 and now deals fire damage). This attack costs 1 mana and automatically has either the envelope or the area blast effect (theoretically you could also pay two mana to use both, but there's really no point). If you have a magic weapon already, you can pay extra Focus for extra effects from the magic weapon list up to a maximum of three total effects. If you have a different weapon type, that weapon cannot use the envelope or area blast effects, but it can deal fire damage instead of its normal untyped damage.

-Envelope: Ignore partial, but not complete, cover when attacking a single target.
-Area blast:  Through explosive force or a massive cone of flame, you can hit all enemies in a single area. Make one attack roll and have all affected enemies roll AGI against it. When combined with the Accurate or Homing effect, you can selectively target some creatures in the area while ignoring others. This attack is always a blast attack, not a spray.

Fire Resistance: You have fire armor equal to your FOC. This is a passive benefit.

Cleansing Heat: You can use cleansing heat to remove any debuff by rolling your FOC against either the static TN of the debuff or, if it comes from an ability, against the roll used to activate that ability (usually an enemy FOC roll). The attempt costs 1 Focus, and you can convert Focus into a bonus on the roll on a 1:1 basis. This conversion occurs *after* the roll, not before, so spending Focus won't decrease your Focus roll.

Rocket Jump: In a short range chase scene, you can use a blast of fire as a rocket jump, rolling FOC instead of AGI for a stunt. This costs 1 Focus.

2) Ice. +2 STR or +2 FOC, +1 VIT. Ice users usually become more empathetic and in control of their emotions. You gain a magic weapon that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit and deals 1d8 cold damage, as well as a ranged weapon that rolls 1d6+AGI to hit and deals 1d6 untyped damage. Your regular weapon attack can deal cold damage or untyped damage.

Cold Resistance: You gain cold armor equal to your FOC. This is a passive benefit.

Shield: When you are attacked, you may spend one mana to roll 1d6+FOC to avoid the attack instead of 1d6+AGI.

Freeze: Roll 1d6+FOC against an enemy's 1d6+AGI. The enemy's feet are frozen to the ground and immobilized for a number of actions equal to the amount by which you beat their score. This attack costs one mana. It can be made an area attack for 2 mana, and a discriminate area attack for 4 mana. If used as an area attack, it is neither spray nor blast.

Freeze attacks can also be used in a chase. As usual, the chase moves to long range if the attack fails, however if it succeeds by only one point and stuns the opponent for only one round, the chase continues at short range. If the opponent is stunned for two rounds, you catch them automatically, but the freeze wears off as soon as you do. If stunned for three or more rounds, they are still frozen when you catch them. If you are being chased and fail to freeze them, you are caught, if you freeze them for only one round, the chase continues at short range, if for two rounds, it moves to long range, and if for three or more, you escape automatically.

3) Air. +4 AGI. Air users usually become more cheerful and curious. Air users gain a ranged attack with slicing vacuums of air that rolls 1d6+AGI to hit, but deals only 1d4 untyped damage. In addition to the normal ranged effects, it can also benefit from the disrupt effect:

-Disrupt: Any enemy who takes damage from this attack takes a penalty to any action equal to the damage dealt until the end of their next turn.

Intercept: You can blow away projectile weapons. Spend 1 FOC and roll 1d6+FOC as a reflex when an enemy makes an attack with a ranged or magic weapon. The attack doesn't have to be targeting you, but it does have to be originating from or targeting someone within range of your magic attack, and you take range penalties on the FOC roll as though you were making an attack. Your target is the attack itself, so you can use the range penalty from the attacker, the target, or any area in between the two (if the attack passes through your area on its way to its target, it is point-blank range). The incoming attack takes a penalty equal to the difference between your result and the attack result.

Curiosity: Your curiosity makes you better at finding things. You gain a +2 bonus to Investigation when trying to find something or someone (but not for reading expressions).

Flight: You can fly. This doubles your movement speed, allows you to ignore difficult ground, and allows you to fly into sky areas located above other areas. This often allows you to ignore partial or total cover. When in a chase, if you reach long range and the enemy can't fly, instead of hiding you can just fly away. The enemy gets one round to attack you with any ranged attacks, but cannot possibly catch up to you.

4) Spirit. +2 VIT, +1 LUCK or +1 FOC. Spirit users are usually laid back and calm. Spirit users gain a small cloud of floating weapons, whether proper melee weapons like swords and lances or just random debris, which grants them a melee attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit and deals 1d6 damage.

Poltergeist artillery: You can summon an angry spirit into any area within medium range for 1 Focus. The poltergeist always goes last in initiative order and indiscriminately attacks everyone in the location with an attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, using your current FOC, and deals 1d6 damage. You can spend an extra Focus to make the poltergeist make selective attacks.

Dollomancy: You can shove spirits into inanimate objects to animate them. You can spend 2 Focus to animate a minion doll, which is a small object, like an actual doll, and has 3 STR, 3 VIT, 5 AGI, 2 FOC, and 4 LUCK. You can spend 4 Focus to animate a heavy doll, which is a larger objcet, like a suit of armor, and has 2 FOC, 4 LUCK, and an 8, 6, and 3 to distribute between STR, VIT, and AGI. You can spend 8 Focus to animate a giant doll, which is a very large object, like a 15-foot tall statue, and has 2 FOC, 4 LUCK, two 8s and a 2 to distribute between STR, VIT, and AGI.

Finally, you can spend 12 Focus to animate a companion doll. A companion doll is a human-sized but much more fully realized object, traditionally a lifelike statue (like Galatea), and has a 10, an 8, two 6s, and a 4, which can be assigned wherever you like. You can also give your companion doll one magic specialization that you, yourself also know, including dollomancy (unfortunately, even if you put the 10 in FOC, the companion doll doesn't have enough juice to make her own companion and start an infinite chain).

When you animate a doll, they remain animate whether you are conscious or even alive, but each morning you must spend half as much Focus as it took to animate them to keep them animate.

Exorcism: Your Spirit magic attack deals double damage to all spirit creatures, whether they're incorporeal, animating an object, or possessing a creature. This is a passive effect that requires no Focus to activate.

Variant rule: Skilled dollomancy. If you're using the all the skills variant, you may also wish to use a variant whereby you cannot animate a doll unless your Spirit Magic skill is as high as the Focus it takes to animate them. This makes little difference to the minion or heavy doll, but could put the giant doll out of reach for character with barely enough FOC to animate them under normal rules, and will make the companion doll nearly impossible to achieve. If you want the giant doll to be an accomplishment and the companion doll to be a legendary sort of Spirit Magic (and you like or don't mind all the effects of the all the skills variant we're building on), use this rule variant.

5) Reinforcement. +1 STR, +1 AGI, +1 FOC, +1 LUCK. Reinforcement users tend to become more altruistic, sometimes to their own chagrin. They do not gain a weapon, but instead gain a magical shield. They can roll 1d6+FOC to resist attacks instead of 1d6+AGI. They can also spend 1 Focus to shield an ally as a reaction, rolling their own 1d6+FOC in addition to their ally's 1d6+AGI and using the higher of the two as the defense.

Ward: You can enchant a magical ward on something. For one Focus you can enchant something to give the wearer +1 Vitality for one round, for three you can increase it to +2, for six you can increase it to +3, for ten you can increase it to +4, and for fifteen Focus you can enchant something to give a +5 bonus to Vitality. This continues scaling upwards indefinitely, but if you're spending twenty-one Focus on anything you are cheating. The Ward lasts for only five rounds, but you can decrease the Vitality bonus by 1 to make it last for a full day, decrease the bonus by 2 to make it last indefinitely. You still have to pay the full Focus cost, so for a permanent +2 bonus you have to pay 10 Focus. A warded item doesn't have to be real armor, although if it is real armor the magic bonus stacks with the normal bonus, but not with other magic bonuses, so wearing multiple warded objects doesn't help, and wearing a warded tiara with body armor works just as well as wearing warded body armor.

You can also make a warded item unwearable and unwieldable to a certain category of people, defined in advance. This category can be very specific, like "anyone but the specific person(s) I'm making the item for," very general, like "anyone who isn't a monster," or somewhat vague, like "anyone who is pure of heart." The GM is the final arbiter on what qualifies for the latter, and it's entirely possible for your character to be surprised as what counts as "pure of heart."

Empower: Your magic helps you to help your allies. You have a +2 bonus to Social for encouraging allies (but not for intimidating or befriending).

Heal: You can spend 4 Focus to heal yourself or an ally. Roll 1d6+FOC and heal Vitality equal to your result. You can boost the target above their maximum Vitality with this, but they will lose one Vitality every round at the end of their turn until they're back at or below their maximum.

Variant rule: Skilled wards. If you're using the all the skills variant, you can tie the "indefinite" length of a ward with its Vitality bonus decreased by 2 to your skill level in Reinforcement Magic. At +1, it loses one point of Vitality bonus every week, at +2 it loses a point per month, at +3 it loses a point per year, at +4 it loses a point per decade, and at +5 it loses a point per century. If you somehow manage to get up to +6 or higher, it lasts one more century for every point above 5. For gameplay purposes, all of these are "indefinite" because whenever the enchantment gets close to wearing out the reinforcement user can refresh it on an off-day and still be at full Focus for the mission, but it's some neat flavor that only very powerful mages can make enchantments that last for generations.

6) Psychic. +2 FOC, +2 LUCK. Psychic users warp people's minds and are usually a little bit crazy themselves. A psychic user gains a magic weapon that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, the enemy must roll 1d6+FOC to dodge, and if successful the attack deals 1d6 piercing psychic damage to enemy Focus, not Vitality. This attack automatically ignores partial cover, but not total cover. An enemy's Focus serves as armor against this attack just like their Vitality would against a normal attack. In addition to normal magic effects, this attack can benefit from the disrupt effect:

-Disrupt: Any enemy who takes damage from this attack takes a penalty to any action equal to the damage dealt until the end of their next turn.

Strong-Minded: Maybe you have strong will. Maybe you're just kinda crazy and that makes your mind hard to meddle with. Either way, you get a +2 bonus to FOC rolls made to resist mental effects and gain psychic armor equal to your FOC. This is a passive effect.

Memory Edit: You can edit someone's memories so long as they're within medium range and you can see them. Spend one Focus and roll your Focus against theirs. If they're awake, they gain a +2 bonus to resisting your edits. If you succeed, you can change one thing in their memory. You can remove someone from their memory, add someone else to their memory, make them forget entire events altogether, or make them remember new ones. If you want to replace their memory of one person with another, you must add the new person first, then remove the old one. If you start with the removal, you can still add a new person to their memory, but it won't replace the original person, because there's nothing left of the original memory for the fabrication to grab onto.

Enslave: You can mentally enslave someone to your will. Spend two Focus and roll your Focus against theirs. If you succeed, you can determine how their next action will be used. If you wish to enslave someone for a second turn, you must spend one additional point of Focus and roll your Focus against theirs again.

7) Time. +2 LUCK, +1 VIT or +1 AGI. Time users usually become better at crtiical thinking and problem solving. They do not get any kind of attack by default.

Warp Time: You can slow time down or speed it up. Slowing time down allows you to enter into bullet time. You can spend 1 Focus to gain a +1 bonus to AGI for one round, 3 Focus to gain a +2 bonus, 6 Focus for +3, 10 Focus for +4, or 15 Focus for +5. The bonus ends at the end of your next turn. You can reduce the bonus by 1 in order to make it last for one extra round, so you can spend 15 Focus to get a +4 bonus for two rounds.

You can also slow time down. This is easier, and you can slow yourself down almost to a standstill for a full hour per Focus spent. Mechanically speaking, this might give your allies time to rustle up a cure for some kind of deadly poison in your veins that'll kill you in seconds, by drawing those seconds out to hours. For the most part, though, you'll use it to skip math class without skipping math class. Do be careful about the teacher calling on you, though.

Freeze Time: You can stop time. Only you and anything attached to your magical transformation can move while time is stopped. This means that your outfit and your weapon are golden, but everything else won't do anything until time resumes. You can pick up guns, point them at someone, and pull the trigger, but nothing will happen. The powder can't ignite and the bullet can't move until time resumes. If you take your hand off the gun, it will hang motionless in the air, because it can't fall until time resumes. If you pick up a sword and swing it into something, their flesh will be torn by the momentum, but they can't bleed until time resumes. By spending four Focus, you can go two additional actions on your turn (remember that the original action is consumed to use magic at all). You can spend an additional four focus to get one extra action each turn.

Reverse Time: You can make time flow backwards. This isn't a time machine, if you go back in time ten seconds you'll be where you were ten seconds ago, but no one but you will be aware that time has reversed, so you can do things differently the second time. You can spend two Focus to reroll any roll you make, but not someone else's roll. You must keep the second roll, even if it is lower, but you can spend another two Focus to reroll it again, for as many times as you like. You can spend eight Focus to undo an entire scene and go back to how things were at the start. You can spend sixteen Focus (if you can even manage to get your Focus that high) to roll back an entire week, to before the mission even started.

8) Lightning. +2 AGI, +1 STR or +1 FOC. Lightning users tend to be quick-witted. Lightning users gain a special attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, deals 1d8 energy damage on hitting, and uses exclusively the below effects. You must spend at least 1 Focus and use at least 1 effect in each lightning attack. You may spend 2 Focus  for 2 effects or 4 Focus for 3 effects. You cannot put 4 effects on a single lightning attack. Lightning users can use the energy stun and piercing energy effects on their lightning special attacks. Lightning special attacks may attack at range, take no penalties for medium range attacks, and their penalty for long and extreme range attacks are reduced by one. Their regular attacks can also deal energy damage.

-Energy stun. If you hit an enemy and their current (not maximum) VIT is lower than your FOC, they are stunned and miss their next action. This happens even if you didn't actually deal any damage, so long as you hit them at all.
-Piercing energy. Ignore enemy armor unless it is energy armor.
-Powerful. Add your FOC bonus to the attack.
-Accurate. You do not take range penalties at medium range, and your range penalties at long and extreme range are reduced by one.

Energy Resistance: You gain energy armor equal to your FOC. This is a passive effect.

Supercharged Bolt: Your lightning magic attack is increased from 1d8 damage to 1d10.

Lightning Fast: You can spend one Focus to gain a +1 AGI and double your movement speed for one action. If you activate Lightning Fast while in a long range chase and the enemy cannot keep up somehow, you escape automatically.

9) Sound. +1 AGI, +2 FOC, +1 LUCK. Sound users usually channel their magic through a musical instrument. They're often musicians, but the ones who aren't are perhaps the more dangerous ones. Music users have a special attack that hits with 1d6+FOC, must be dodged with a FOC roll instead of AGI, and deals 1d8 damage at point-blank range only, and can use only the effects listed below as part of this attack. One effect requires one Focus, two effects require two Focus, and all three requires four Focus. Every attack must have at least one effect.

-Stunning performance. If you hit an enemy and their current (not maximum) VIT is lower than your FOC, they are stunned and miss their next action. This happens even if you didn't actually deal any damage, so long as you hit them at all.
-Soundwave: Make one attack roll and have all enemies in the same area as you roll AGI against it. This is an area blast attack and is automatically selective. If combined with Amplitude, this attack affects not only the area you're in, but all neighboring areas as well. You do not take the -1 penalty.
-Amplitude: You can attack out to short range with this attack, but you take a -1 penalty.

Good Vibrations: When you roll to encourage, you can spend one Focus to encourage all allies in a single area (not necessarily the one you are in, so long as it's within range - you don't even need clear line of sight, so long as they can hear the music). You can spend another Focus to expand the area of effect to areas neighboring the one you're targeting.

Earworm: Distract your enemies with a catchy song they can't get out of their heads. Or with some hideous mic feedback. Either way, spend one Focus to roll Focus and have everyone in the same area as you roll Focus to resist. Anyone who fails takes a penalty to all actions equal to the amount by which they failed until the end of their next turn.

Death Metal: Your sound special attack gains an additional effect option:

-Death metal. Anyone hit by this attack whose VIT is half your FOC or less is instantly taken out, even if they take no damage.

10) Darkness. +1 VIT, +2 STR or +2 FOC. Darkness users tend to have a talent for writing the most cringeworthy poems imaginable. Darkness users have a magic attack that hits with a 1d6+FOC, must be dodged with LUCK instead of AGI, and deals 1d8 shadow damage on a hit. Their regular attacks can also deal shadow damage. In addition to the usual Magic effects, this attack can benefit from the Hex effect:

-Hex. Damage the opponent's LUCK instead of VIT with this attack. LUCK provides armor against the attack just like VIT does. If their LUCK becomes negative, you can spend their negative LUCK points for them as a free action and at any time. Negative LUCK points can be spent to force them to reroll any attack, attribute check, or skill check and keep the worst result. You can also spend their negative LUCK to increase the damage they take or decrease the damage they deal on a single attack on a 1:1 basis. You can only spend negative LUCK on rolls directly relevant to the person wtih the negative LUCK. Hex attacks ignore mundane armor.

Invisibility: Spend one Focus to become invisible for a few seconds. This gives you a +2 bonus to stealth for one round of combat, chase, or stealth. When using this in stealth, this bonus applies not only for the roll to accomplish something, but also all rolls to avoid detection should you fail the first roll, up until the point you either complete the action or are detected. When using this in a short-range chase, you can move to a long-range chase immediately, however the stealth bonus does not persist to the long-range chase (although you can spend another Focus to remain invisible in the next round). If you use this in combat, you may make stealth checks to re-enter stealth as a free action, even if you just attacked someone.

Phase: Spend two Focus to become intangible for a few seconds. This gives you an infinite armor score against fire, cold, energy, acid, and untyped damage. This means you can still be harmed by psychic, shadow, and light damage, but nothing else.

Death Curse: Spend one Focus to cast the death curse on an enemy and roll 3d6. The enemy must roll 3d6. If all three come up as 1s, the enemy is instantly killed. Because this attack has no effect whatsoever except instant death, if a LUCK point is used to prevent the attack from killing the target, nothing happens at all (make liberal use of hex attacks to deplete an enemy's LUCK reserves). You may spend an additional focus to make it a 2d6 roll, and two more (for four Focus total) to make it a 1d6. You may double the amount of Focus spent to make it a discriminate area attack. In this case, every affected creature rolls independently. The death curse kills things, but does not destroy them, so anything that can continue to function independent of any controlling consciousness (if it has a FOC of 0) will not be affected. This includes mostly zombie minions or mindless robots or similar. Robots that are conscious, independent actors are still affected by the death curse. It's magic, it don't care if you're technically organic or not.

11) Illusion. +2 STR, +1 VIT, +1 LUCK. Illusion users often become more artistic. Illusion mages get a magic attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, but if it hits at all, instead of dealing damage it blinds the enemy with a flash of light and color, stunning them for one round. This attack can benefit from the Area and Homing magic effects, but not Powerful.

Mirror Image: You can create illusionary dopplegangers of yourself. These illusions move independently, but cannot affect the physical world. Spend one Focus per doppleganger you wish to create. Each time an enemy attempts to target you, they must roll an opposed Focus test with a -1 penalty for each doppleganger past the first that you create, and if they lose, their attack targets a mirror image instead. If you're being pursued in a chase, you can use a doppleganger to impose a -1 penalty on the person chasing you per doppleganger created (including the first). Mirror images last for five rounds, or one scene outside of combat, and must remain in the same area as you unless you have Distant Illusion.

Major Illusions: You can create general purpose illusions. As a standard action, you can create an illusion by spending 1 Focus and rolling 1d6+FOC. Illusions can only be about as big as ten cubed feet (right about enough for one person), with an additional ten cubed feet of illusion for every additional point of Focus spent. The thoroughness of the illusion based on the result according to the TN chart below. If you're trying to create an illusion of a certain TN and roll under, the illusion is still created, but is missing any elements that aren't available at whatever TN you actually reached. You must still decide what illusion you are trying to create before rolling, however. If your illusion is more real than you want it to be, you can choose to use a lower TN.

2: The illusion completely fizzles. No effect.

4: You can change the hue on something a little.

6: You can make something appear to be there which isn't, but it's silent,
unmoving, and appears clearly unreal if examined for more than a moment.

8: You can make a silent, unmoving illusion.

10: You can make an illusion that moves a little, like flags rippling or a sleeping creature breathing, and which has sound, which must also be steady and follow a set pattern. You can't change either the movement or noise of the illusion after it's made, except to cause it to dispel the illusion completely.

12: You can make an illusion that moves around like a living creature and makes sound, but it only reacts to things if you consciously direct it to do so. This direction is not obvious to bystanders, but it does require your focus. Illusions at this level can mimic smells. Particularly strong smells can be tasted, but illusions at this level cannot create textures, so tasting illusions tends to feel very strange.

14: You can make an illusion that has basic reactions entirely independent of yours, like turning to look at bright lights or loud noise and giving a cheerful greeting to anyone who speaks to them, but which cannot do complex things like carry on a conversation or respond to an enemy's attacks. Illusions at this level can also mimic texture. Although you can put your hand straight through it if it holds still, the illusion will react to other people touching it, so unless someone picks it up and realizes it's weightless or gets hit by it and realizes there's no force at all to the blows or similar, the illusion will appear fully real. Feel free to magic up illusionary cookies to eat and not get fat from.

16: You can make an illusion that can act completely autonomously from you, and believably so. It can fence with a foe in such a way that its sword never hits anything to keep its illusionary nature secret. It can be a dozen different people having complex interactios with one another (provided you dump enough Focus into creating that many people).

18: You can make an illusion that feels solid and weighs about five pounds per cubic foot of illusion. This is much lighter than most substances (a person would weigh about fifty pounds), but it nevertheless makes your illusion almost impossible to discern from reality and allows it to interact with the physical world, albeit weakly.

20: You can fully simulate an illusionary being, wholly indistinguishable from reality.

When someone wants to see through an illusion, they must roll Focus against whatever TN you hit for your illusion.

Major illusions can't have more than one actor (a person, animal, automaton, vehicle, or something else with lots of moving parts and points of articulation - flags blowing in the wind don't count, but anything much more complex than that will) moving at once unless you also have the Mirror Image power. Major Illusions must be in the same area as you (including the point of origin for any sounds or smells being in the same area) unless you have Distant Illusion, however the illusions may still be visible, audible, etc. from other areas. So, if you make an illusion of ten people in the same area as you, people outside the area will see those people, but the people must stay in the same area as you.

Illusions add to reality. They do not replace it. If you create an illusion of an empty field and then walk through that field, you will not be hidden, because you will be just as visible through your illusion of an empty field as you would be through the empty field itself. You *can* create an illusion of a hedge maze springing up out of nowhere to obstruct enemy vision, although that's going to get people pretty suspicious on its own (in mechanical terms guards would likely be not just suspicious, but alerted).

No matter how many different things you are making illusions of at once, they all have the same TN and effect, which is whatever the last illusion roll you made was. This means that if you make an illusion of one person and then decide to create another, the quality of the first illusionary person may suddenly change (for better or for worse). It's entirely fine to create an illusion of two different people from the beginning, though (provided you pay two Focus, or they're just really short people).

Distant Illusion: You can create illusions in areas other than the one you're in. You take a -1 penalty for each range step past point blank to all Focus checks related to the illusion (i.e. -1 at short range, -2 at medium, etc.).

12) Light. +2 VIT, +1 FOC, +1 AGI. Light users often become more honest and sincere. If they're cynics, this will probably end up with them becoming very blunt. Light users gain a ranged attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, deals 1d6 light damage, and can use all of the ranged weapon effects. If a light attack uses the area effect, it must be blast, not spray. Their regular attacks can also deal light damage.

Light Sabre: You can concentrate the light you wield into a melee weapon. This weapon rolls 1d6+AGI to hit, deals 1d8 light damage, and can use any of the effects listed below. An attack with one effect costs one Focus, two effects costs two, and three effects costs four Focus. You cannot have more than three effects on this attack, and you do not have to have any effects at all.

-Powerful. Add your FOC bonus to the attack.
-Whirlwind. You can attack every enemy in the same area as you. Make one attack roll and have all affected enemies roll AGI against it. You can choose not to attack targets within range.
-Charge. You may move up to your normal move speed and make an attack. You may keep moving after you make your attack. Closing range like this counts as movement and anything triggered by your leaving or entering any areas you pass through during a charge will trigger like normal. You cannot charge through difficult terrain. If you whirlwind attack while charging, you can attack as many enemies as you like in every area you pass through, but cannot attack anyone in the area you started in, because you have to build up speed before you can begin your whirlwind charge.
-Piercing. Ignore enemy armor up to your FOC.

Lie Detector: You know when someone's lying. Don't bother rolling, it's automatic.

Lantern of Truth: You're really good at seeing things. Like, wow. You gain a +2 bonus to Focus checks made to find objects, see through lies, and detect illusions. If you successfully see through an illusion, you can immediately dispel it in a shimmer of light.

13) Wood. +2 FOC, +1 STR, +1 VIT. Wood users usually get better at gardening and can grow all sorts of plant life well, even without the help of their magic powers. Though with their magic powers, there's hardly any incentive to do it the old-fashioned way. When transformed, wood mages have creeping vines and ivy all over their body (over or under their clothes) which they can use as a melee attack. This attack hits with 1d6+AGI, deals 1d6 damage, and can use any of the melee effects.

Wood mages also gain the ability to animate plant life as minions who will do their bidding. By default, you can animate small plants and shrubs for 2 Focus, who have straight 3s across every stat. A plant minion remains animate only for five rounds, or about one complete scene. You can spend half as much Focus as it took to animate them to keep them animate an extra five turns, and you can spend this Focus at any time while the plants are still animate, not just when you first animate them. A plant minion that becomes inanimate due to running out of VIT rather than due to the spell expiring can be tended back to health for one hour of downtime per VIT damage it's taken.

Treant: You can animate much bigger plants than just shrubs. Larger bushes or small trees (~8 feet tall) can be animated for 4 Focus to create creatures with 5 STR, 5 VIT, 3 AGI, 3 FOC, and 3 LUCK. Larger trees (10-20 feet tall) can be animated, and small gardens' worth of smaller plants melded together, for 6 Focus to create treants with 7 STR, 7 VIT, 2 AGI, 3 FOC, and 3 LUCK. Finally, with 8 Focus you can create massive treants from trees 30+ feet tall or entire greenhouses of smaller plants, with 9 STR, 9 VIT, 2 AGI, 3 FOC, and 3 LUCK. Keep in mind that, unless you have the Seed power, you need to bring these things with you to animate them.

Seed: You can grow your plant minions, even the 50 foot redwood treants, from seeds. When they become inanimate, they return to their seed form. If they became inanimate due to losing all VIT, their seed form becomes cracked and dead, and you will have to replace that minion with another. You will still need the seed of a big tree to animate a big tree, however. Rose seeds produce roses, not oaks.

Green Thumb: You can grow your plant minions to become even more powerful than they would be normally. When animating a plant minion, you can spend 1 Focus to increase their STR or VIT by +1, 2 Focus to increase it by +2, and 4 Focus to increase it by +3. You can stack these to, for example, spend 8 Focus to increase both stats by +3. You can also spend Focus to improve their AGI or FOC, which grants twice the bonus as the STR or VIT bonuses. These bonuses can be applied at any time while a plant minion is animate, but go away once the plant minion is deanimated.

You can also create a grove, which is some kind of natural location that serves as a focus for your power. Greenhouses and gardens count as "natural," although if they're small enough you may have difficulty fitting in your larger minions. A grove requires five hours of downtime to create initially, but is self-sustaining afterwards. A grove can be no more than about one hundred feet square and must be fairly dense with plantlife throughout its entire ground area, but you may create as many as you like (including several adjacent to one another) so long as you're willing to put in the five hours a piece for them.

When in your grove, you can cast rituals that will permanently empower one or more of your plant minions with the above bonuses by paying hours of downtime equal to the amount of Focus spent to grant them temporarily. Your plant minions must be in fully grown form during this time, not seeds, but when in your grove a plant can remain animate for a full day, and extending its animate period for half-Focus will keep it animate for another full day.

You can also spend 1 Focus to heal a plant minion for 1d6 VIT, or any non-plant organic creature for 1d3 VIT. This increases to 2d6 VIT for plants and 1d6 VIT for other organics when in your grove.

14) Empathy. +2 LUCK, +1 STR or +1 FOC. Empathy users' personality and talents don't shift permanently, but they tend to mimic the general mood of those around them more than normal humans. You can store up reserves of emotional energy and discharge them later on. You can drain away the emotions of others to gain a debuff attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, against which an enemy must roll FOC to defend, and which deals 1d6+FOC damage to FOC on a hit. Focus also serves as armor on this attack rather than Vitality. If this attack drains an enemy to 0 FOC, they sink into such apathetic despair that they will no longer act at all, not even to save theirs or their allies' lives. This attack works by draining other emotions away, so it is always, always available, regardless of circumstances, and does not require shifting a mood.

The other powers in the psychic set are different moods which must be shifted between. You can begin a session with whatever mood you like stored up, and can then shift the mood whenever you have at least a dozen or so people (not counting you) experiencing a certain emotion to draw power from. You can't reclaim a mood you had previously after shifting to a new one unless you find a new source of emotion for that mood. If you are actively drawing on a source of energy that's much, much bigger than normal, a thousand people or more, you gain a free point of Focus each round which can be spent on powering any of that mood's abilities. If you do not spend the extra Focus point, it goes away.

Anger: When you store up angry energy, you gain a magic attack that rolls 1d6+FOC to hit, deals 1d10 piercing psychic damage, and can benefit from any of the usual magic effects. People in a fight tend to be angry, so unless you're fighting automatons and don't have any allies, you will likely have enough ambient anger on hand to use this power in any fight.

Joy: When you store up happy energy, you gain healing and buff abilities. While channeling Joy, you can spend 1 Focus to heal an ally for 1d6 damage as a standard action or provide a shield that absorbs 1d6+FOC damage as a reaction. The shield always intercepts the attack, but dissipates after intercepting a single attack no matter how much damage it absorbs. Joy is fairly uncommon in battles, so once you shift from Joy to Anger or Fear you will probably not be able to shift back until you get some downtime.

Fear: When you store up frightened energy, you can paralyze an opponent with terror. This is a magic attack that rolls 1d6+FOC against enemy FOC instead of AGI. If it hits, instead of dealing damage all affected enemies are stunned for one turn. This attack benefits from all the normal magic effects. If there's any emotion more common in fights than anger, it's fear, from the bystanders if nothing else, so this mood is almost always available in a battle.

15) Water. +2 AGI, +1 STR, +1 FOC. Water users tend to become more sneaky and cunning. Water users gain a melee attack which can deal either cold or untyped damage, and their regular attacks can also deal cold damage. The water attack hits on a 1d6+AGI roll and deals 1d4 damage, and can benefit from all the usual melee effects. The first effect is free, the second one costs one Focus, and a third costs two additional Focus (for three Focus total).

Waterbending: Your mastery over your watery weapon has grown to the point where you can manipulate it with greater finesse than just slamming enemies with jets of water from your hands or even smacking them around with a short range water whip. Your water melee attack can now benefit from the following effects. You can still only have three effects on an attack.

-Lunge. Your control of water extends further away from you than it did before. Adjacent areas count as point-blank range for purposes of this attack.
-Water Shield. You surround yourself with a shield of water from which you make attacks. Any attacks targeting you take a -1 penalty until the beginning of your next turn. Energy attacks made at short or longer range fail automatically, as the water absorbs them. At point-blank range, enemies making energy attacks can still hit you by running through the water shield and attacking you from inside.
-Stunning. If you hit an enemy and their current (not maximum) VIT is lower than your FOC, they are stunned and miss their next action. This happens even if you didn't actually deal any damage, so long as you hit them at all.

Drown: You can surround an opponent in a sphere of water, slowly drowning them. Spend 2 Focus and roll 1d6+FOC against your opponent's 1d6+AGI. If you hit them, they are both immobilized and take a point of damage that round. On subsequent rounds, your enemy can only take actions to try and escape, rolling their AGI against your FOC again. If they fail, they take another point of damage. Enemies take a penalty equal to the amount of damage they've taken from drowning for all rolls until two turns after they escape. The turn immediately after they escape, they spend time coughing and catching their breath. It does not take any actions to sustain the sphere of water, however if you take any damage to VIT or FOC while sustaining a sphere you must roll 1d6+FOC and meet a TN of at least 10 or else the sphere(s) collapses immediately. This attack can be used at range.

Water healing: Your water has acquired healing properties. You can spend 1 Focus to heal anyone within range of your water melee attack (so the same area as you or, with Waterbending, adjacent areas as well).

16) Gravity. +4 FOC. Gravity users tend to become more tense and serious. Your most basic technique is to increase or decrease or decrease the weight on someone, which costs 2 Focus. Someone who has had their weight increased takes a -2 penalty to AGI but gains a +2 bonus to STR, because their blows hit with more weight. Someone with their weight decreased has the reverse. Additionally, someone with their weight decreased may be knocked into an adjacent zone if they take untyped damage, at the discretion of the attacker (who may choose to, for example, pound them into the ground or uppercut them straight up into the air rather than punt them into an adjacent zone). If attempting to change the weight of an unwilling target, you must roll 1d6+FOC against their 1d6+AGI.

Gravity Shift: You can shift gravity so that you or a target falls sideways or upwards. Combined with your basic gravity manipulation abilities, this can be used to drastically increase or decrease someone's strength or agility. You may spend 6 Focus to grant a +4/-4 bonus to STR/AGI or AGI/STR, and you can spend 1 Focus to reverse that penalty at any time, including spending two or more Focus to shift it between rolls within the same action.

Gravity Slam: By first decreasing the weight of someone, then knocking them up in the air, then increasing their weight, you can slam them hard into the ground. You can make a melee attack against someone with 1d6+AGI and spend 4 Focus to deal 1d6 damage for the initial attack and 1d6 untyped piercing damage for the slam. The slam does not require a separate roll. If you have a melee or a fist attack, you can add Gravity Slam onto one of those attacks. This is not an effect, and so can be added onto an attack that already has three effects. If combined with whirlwind, you can slam all of your opponents down at once, without increasing the cost.

Black Holes: You can create a tiny pocket of hyper-strong gravity, then cancel that gravity outside of a small sphere. This results in a bubble that will devour anything it touches, including light, like a black hole, but which won't affect anything outside its small radius. Make a ranged attack with 1d6+FOC and 4 Focus. For every ranged step past point-blank, you must spend 1 additional Focus. You still take the penalties for a ranged attack like normal (-1 at medium, -2 at long, etc.). If the attack hits an enemy, they take 2d6+FOC piercing untyped damage. This is a ranged attack and can benefit from ranged attack effects like normal, however a spray Area effect doubles the Focus cost of the attack. A blast Area effect costs the normal amount of Focus (depending on how many other effects are on the attack). Anyone who dodges the blast Area effect must immediately move to an adjacent area as a free action, as the blast totally annihilates the entire area it's targeting. If you use a gravity buster blast against the area you're in, you are the epicenter and cannot possibly escape. You will absolutely die, but may be able to take your enemies down with you.

You can also create wormholes. To do this you create two gravity busters and fix them in place. Each buster costs 8 Focus, but once created, they are permanent. They will destroy anything they touch (for the same 2d6+FOC damage as a gravity buster) unless you or another gravity user with black holes is there to guide them through safely. You don't have to link one end of the wormhole to another immediately. Each wormhole can form a passage between a maximum of two locations, but there's nothing stopping you from choosing a room where you place the endpoint of every wormhole you make, allowing for rapid travel from one wormhole to any other.

If you're within arm's reach of a black hole, you can use this power to dispel it immediately. The matter within is scattered harmlessly into the void. A TN 4 attack (rolling 1d6+AGI) can do this in combat at point-blank range.

17) Stone. +3 STR or +3 VIT. Stone users usually gain an innate grasp of architecture. You have a magic attack that attacks with 1d6+FOC and deals 1d8 damage on a hit. This attack can benefit from all the usual magic effects.

Stoneskin: You can surround yourself with a second, stony skin for 4 Focus. The stone skin serves as a second pool of VIT equal to your own VIT. It takes damage in place of you until it is destroyed. Damage that ignores armor will also ignore your stoneskin VIT.

Quake: You can shatter the earth causing huge fissures to crack the earth or pillars of stone to be shunted outwards from below. The most straightforward application is to quake an area for 6 Focus, which acts as a 1d6+FOC area blast attack dealing 2d6+FOC damage indiscriminately to everyone in the targeted area, and additionally causes the targeted area to become difficult ground and provides partial cover. You can also use this to create total cover in an area without launching an attack, also for 6 Focus, by causing stone to shoot up in the form of a protective wall or other structure. You can create all manner of structure with this, even one spanning multiple areas if you have enough Focus or you're willing to take the time.

Heart of Stone: Stone magic shapes more than just literal rocks. With this power, you can push the very essence of stone into yourself or an ally. You can increase the STR or VIT of yourself or an ally for one round by an amount equal to the Focus you spend. This does not cost an action, and is a magic bonus, and thus does not stack with other magic bonuses.

18) Beast. +1 STR, +1 AGI, +1 VIT or +1 LUCK. Beast users often find themselves growing more concerned for animals than they did before. A beast user can form friendships with animals and gains all the usual bonuses for doing so. Beast girls have no innate power to summon animals, so they usually end up building up a menagerie of small, swift creatures who can serve as messengers to summon their furry friends from the woods when they're needed. If a beast mage is on the attack, they'd be wise to assemble their army in advance, otherwise they'll have to rely on whatever animals happen to be around. There's almost always animals around, but rats and spiders don't make for proper tanky minions the way bears and wolves do.

Animal Power: You can grant yourself the strength of a bear, the vitality of a tortoise, the agility of a hawk, the focus of an owl, and the luck of a fox. You can pay Focus to grant yourself a 1:1 magic bonus to any one stat, which lasts for one round. This does not cost an action.

Dire Animals: You can transform an animal into a bigger, stronger version of itself. It costs 2 Focus to increase its size once, from the size of a rat to the size of a wolf or the size of a wolf to the size of a bear, 4 Focus to increase it twice, from rat to bear, and 8 Focus to increase it three times, from rat to larger than a bear (or a human). There's nothing stopping you from dropping an eight Focus transformation on a bear to make it into a forty foot-tall kaiju. Each increase in size grants it +2 STR, +2 VIT, and -1 AGI. The transformation lasts for five rounds.

Animal Morph: You can turn into any variety of animal for 3 Focus. Your STR, VIT, and AGI are replaced by the animal's stat block and you also become much less suspicious in most situations (although just because a rat won't raise alarms doesn't mean people won't try to kill you). Your FOC and LUCK are not affected.

MONSTER GIRLS

If you rolled a 19-20, your transformation has gone wrong. Instead of a magical girl, you are a monster girl. Your stats are monstrously large and you gain access to two different specializations right off the bat. Like the magical girls, you retain a mundane form, but when you transform, your clothes remain the same (except in that they may suffer some damage from the transformation) and instead your body twists into a monstrous chimera. Your instinct is to spread chaos rather than to fight the supernatural, and the Guides are your enemy.

Roll another d20 to determine exactly what kind of monster girl you've become.

1-2) Lamia. +3 STR or +3 FOC, +2 STR or +2 FOC, +1 STR, +1 VIT. You have been corrupted into a lamia monster girl, with the lower half of your body transformed into a snake. Your tongue probably gets all snakey too. Your massive body is possessed of a constant hunger and sating it will likely be a constant concern. You have access to the powers of both the Ice and Fire specializations (you do not gain the stat boosts, however), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

Your snake tail makes you more mobile, granting you a +2 Acrobatics bonus, however you take a -2 Stealth penalty. You can wrap your snake tail around someone as a melee attack, rolling 1d6+AGI to hit. If you hit, you deal only one point of damage, however your victim can take no actions except to attempt escape. To attempt escape they must roll 1d6+STR against your own 1d6+STR, and if they fail (or don't even try) they take another point of damage.

3-4) Drider. +2 STR or +2 FOC, +2 FOC, +1 VIT, +1 STR, +1 LUCK. You have been corrupted into a drider monster girl, with the lower half of your body turned into an enormous spider's body. You need your lair to be safe. Anyone who finds it must never live to tell. You have access to the powers of both the psychic and darkness paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

You can climb up walls, giving you a +2 Acrobatics bonus in short-range chases provided you have a significantly high wall to climb up (a boulder-strewn field, for example, only has objects 4-ish feet tall to climb, so your spider-climbing abilities wouldn't help you there). The huge size of your spider butt would grant you a Stealth penalty, but spiders are naturally adept at sticking to shadows, which cancels it out.

You can also spin webs. When you do so, roll Vitality to create the web and roll Stealth to hide it. Anyone who moves into or out of the area you made the web in must make an Investigation check against your Stealth check. If they fail, they are caught in the web, and must roll STR against the VIT check you used to make the web to try and escape it. If they fail, they can make a check again on the next round, however if they fail three times before escaping, they become hopelessly entangled. If you are in the same area or reach the same area before they escape, you can take an action to cocoon them. This imposes a -4 penalty on all their future attempts to escape.

5-6) Vampire. +3 AGI, +2 LUCK, +1 FOC, +1 AGI or +1 AGI. You have been corrupted into a vampire monster girl, sprouting bat wings from your back. You don't need to drink human blood, in the same sense that a meth addict is probably not going to die without their drug. You have access to the powers of both the air and time paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

If you hit someone with a melee attack, you can suck their blood instead of dealing damage. You deal only one point of damage, but gain 1d6 points of Focus. This can allow your Focus to exceed your maximum, however your Focus will decrease by one at the end of your turn until it is at or below your maximum.

During the daylight hours, your stats are all reduced by half, rounded up. At night, you can transform your hands into razor sharp claws. This gives you a free melee attack, with all the usual effects and which can additionally benefit from the piercing effect.

-Piercing. Ignore enemy armor up to your AGI.

7-8) Fallen Angel. +3 VIT, +2 FOC, +1 STR, +2 AGI. You have been corrupted into a fallen angel monster girl, sprouting bird wings from your back. You want to help people. It just so happens you are an absolutely atrocious judge of character and inevitably choose to help horrible, evil people. You have access to the powers of both the reinforcement and light paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

Your wings allow you to glide, so that you never take damage from falling, and gain a +1 bonus to Acrobatics due to the drastically increased distance of your horizontal jumps.

During the night, your stats are all reduced by half, rounded up. In daylight, your feathers can be transformed into razor sharp knives which can be thrown as a ranged attack. This ranged attack has all the usual effects and can additionally benefit from the piercing effect.

-Piercing. Ignore enemy armor up to your AGI.

9-10) Dryad. +3 STR, +2 VIT, +2 FOC, +1 LUCK. You have been corrupted into a dryad monster girl, human except for the bark-like texture of your skin and the foliage in your hair. Nature is just more important than people. You want to help plants grow, particularly ones that crack foundations and tear buildings apart. You have access to the powers of both the wood and illusion paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

Your bark-like skin gives you +1 armor automatically. You take double damage from fire, cold, and shadow attacks.

11-12) Siren. +3 FOC, +3 AGI, +1 STR, +1 LUCK. You're a humanoid, but you have slippery blue skin, gills, razor-sharp teeth, and those weird webby ears. You're only comfortable in water, but you hate isolation and crave adoration. Which is no problem that abduction can't solve. You have access to the powers of both the water and sound paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

Water doesn't count as difficult ground for you, but you dry out pretty rapidly outside water. You take 1 VIT damage every hour you're outside of water, which pierces all armor. You can prevent the damage by turning on a sink and rubbing water all over your body once every hour, but you'll still be uncomfortably dried out until you get yourself properly submerged.

13-14) Were. +2 STR, +2 LUCK, +1 AGI, +1 STR or FOC, +1 VIT or LUCK. You have animal ears, tail, claws, fangs, and patches of fur in some places, whether just hair that flows into a mane or patches that extend out from your hands and feet to about halfway up your limbs. When angered or upset, even just a little, you completely lose control and enter into a blind rage. You have access to both the beast and empathy paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

You gain a claw attack that serves as both a melee and a fist attack. It rolls 1d6+AGI to hit and deals 1d6 damage, and may benefit from any of the melee or fist specials. You can spend a mithril coin to buy the Monstrous Metamorphosis perk in addition to, rather than instead of, one of your other perks.

15-16) Djinn. +4 FOC, +2 AGI, +1 STR or +1 FOC. Djinn have pointed ears, exude a slight aura of smoke or mist, and their skin, hair, and eyes can be absolutely any color at all, which means they are rarely natural human colors. Your ability to understand nuance has suddenly and completely atrophied at the same time as your desire to help others has suddenly become all-consuming. You are filled with the unending and burning desire to seek out others to help, eavesdrop on their conversations until they express a desire or frustration, and then act in an extremely literal and straightforward way to fulfill the desire or remove the frustration. Annoying bosses get murdered, desires for wealth are fulfilled by robbing banks and dropping the money on their doorstep, and so on. You have access to the lightning and gravity paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

Your genie powers also allow you to conjure things. You can summon absolutely any mundane item to your location for only one Focus, or you can create it from nothing for two Focus. The item appears on the ground (no using it to crush your enemies with flying ice cream trucks), and if you summon it, anyone who was wearing it, carrying it, or inside of it will be summoned along with them.

17-18) Golem. +3 STR or +3 VIT, +2 VIT, +1 STR, +1 FOC or +1 LUCK. You're made from stone or crystal or metal, like a spirit mage's heavy doll in appearance. In spirit, however, you are devoid of personal connections, family, friends, touch, and you will be slowly driven insane by the isolation. Higher FOC may last longer, but it is only a matter of time. You have access to the stone and spirit paths (you do not gain the stat boosts), and may pick two powers from either or one from each to start with.

Your rocky fists give you a fist attack automatically. This attack works exactly like a normal fist weapon, hitting with 1d6+AGI for 1d6 damage and using the regular fist effects.

19-20) Dark Magical Girl. +2 FOC, +1 STR, +1 VIT, +1 AGI, +1 LUCK. Good news(?). The corruption has only spread part of the way. You're a dark magical girl, which means you aren't a monster girl. Your Guide may still insist on your friends destroying you before you complete your transformation, but only if they're particularly ruthless, particularly cautious, or strongly dislike you personally. There's a creeping bit of megalomania, that if only you were in charge you could just fix anything, but it's easier to resist than most monster girl instincts and let's be honest, *most* people think they could solve all the world's problems if they were appointed hegemon. Roll again on the normal specialization table for your real magic specialization. If you roll another 19-20, you may take whatever you like. Whatever the result, it is clearly corrupted. The fire is a dark purple or blue, the stone is razor sharp obsidian, light is sickly green or angry red, and so on.

MAGIC POWERS

While magic specializations represent a fairly broad portfolio of related magic powers, the magic powers listed here are a specific, self-contained power. Roll 1d20 to determine your magic power. You may spend 1 mithril coin to ignore the result and pick whichever power you want. You may spend 1 orichalcum coin to select an entirely new magic power.

1-2) Killing Blow. +1 STR or +1 FOC. You gain an incredibly powerful attack. You must spend all your remaining Focus, which must be at least 5 (if you still have just 4 Focus, you *must* take the +1 FOC option), and shout out its name before you can use it. The attack may be a point-blank range attack that rolls 1d6+AGI to hit with the effects of whirlwind, charge, and either powerful or piercing, or it may be a magic attack that rolls 1d6+AGI or 1d6+FOC to hit with the effects of powerful, area, and either accurate or homing. You must choose in advance whether the ranged version will be a blast area or a spray area. Regardless, it deals 2d6 damage by default, and deals an extra 1d6 of damage for every 1 FOC past the first 5 spent on it. You may also sacrifice one of your three effects to increase the damage by 1d6. You can choose to sacrifice an effect for more damage whenever you make the attack - it does not have to be set when you first gain the effect.

3-4) Hammerspace. You can place things inside of a transdimensional pocket and later on retrieve them. The pocket can be accessed when you aren't transformed and is attached to no particular part of your outfit and can be accessed regardless of what you're wearing, even if you don't actually have any pockets at all. The pocket can contain objects of any size, but you must be able to lift them up to put them inside. When you reach inside your hammerspace pocket, the item you're looking for is always on top, and all items inside are held in perfect stasis while they're in hammerspace. Living things cannot be put in hammerspace. You have this power even when not transformed.

5-6) Familiar. You have a familiar. This is a small, Guide-like creature, but unlike the Guides they are created when you gain this power and therefore have no idea how this whole magical girl thing works. Your familiar has a powerful natural loyalty to you, can communicate with you telepathically, and you can see through their eyes. Their loyalty does have limits, however. If you do not keep them properly fed and sheltered, they will leave to take care of themselves until you get your act together. Your familiars stats are one 6, three 4s, and one 2, which may be allocated wherever you like. As you can probably guess, you have this power even when not transformed.

7-8) Focused assault. You may spend two Focus to add the piercing or powerful effect to any attack, or four Focus to add both the piercing and powerful effects. If the attack is melee or fist, the powerful effect adds STR damage. If it is ranged or magic, the powerful effect adds FOC damage. Regardless of attack type the piercing effects ignores armor equal to your AGI. In any case, these effects are bonus effects, so they do not count against the usual limit of three effects and they can be stacked with duplicates of themselves provided on the normal weapon attack. So, if you make a melee attack, you can add the powerful effect for free to add your STR to the damage, and then spend another 2 Focus on focused assault's bonus powerful effect to add your STR to the damage again, and you could still add on two more effects.

9-10) Barrage. Any ranged or magic attacks you make may take the spray area effect without paying Focus. Magic attacks must take and pay for at least one other effect. If you have this power, you may make an attack simultaneously a spray area effect and a blast area effect, which doubles the damage in addition to allowing you to ignore partial cover and use suppressive fire all in the same attack. You must pay for the second area effect (only the first one is free) and you still have a maximum of three total effects.

11-12) Power of Friendship. When you defeat an enemy, you can make a Social roll against their FOC to try and start a friendship with them immediately as a free action. If you succeed, that enemy will follow you in your adventures. They don't count as full friends (with mechanical bonuses and all) until you build up a friendship score with them that's greater than their FOC, and while you're still building up friendship they may work against you, sabotage your plans, or even attack you outright, however they will not help your enemies directly and will probably help you fight against them, because they are the only ones allowed to defeat you. They might remain a rival after they've been fully befriended, but they will no longer seek to sabotage your plans and will always be there to help you when you're in trouble. They'll just rub your nose in how you needed their help after the fact. You have this power even when you aren't transformed. Every time you use this power to successfully start a beaten enemy on the path to friendship, you take a -1 penalty to the Social rolls made to start a friendship with other defeated enemies. You will eventually stack up penalties so high you can't make new friends this way - we only have so much room in the cast.

13-14) Shadow Clones. You can create shadow clones for 4 Focus each. Shadow clones share your STR, AGI, and FOC scores (including having their FOC decrease with yours), but can make attacks independently. Each shadow clone has start out with VIT equal to your current amount, however their maximum VIT is *zero*, so they always lose VIT at the end of their turn until they run out and dissipate. Shadow clones have no LUCK at all. They must remain in the same area as you or they dissipate immediately.

15-16) Third Eye. You have a sixth sense for detecting otherwordly influences. All magical girls have a vague feeling when something supernatural starts happening, but yours is far more precise. When something supernatural happens nearby, you don't just get a general direction, you know exactly where it took place. When there's a disguised monster in a crowd, you don't just get a vague feeling, that someone in the crowd is a monster, you know who it is as soon as you lay eyes on them. The only way to hide from your power is to stay out of line of sight altogether with Stealth. Attempts to lie won't even get out the gate, because your Detect Monster is flawless. You have this power even when you aren't transformed.

17-18) Regeneration. You can spend Focus to recover Vitality on a 1:1 basis. Your natural healing is also improved. If your current Vitality is at least half your maximum, you recover one VIT every five rounds. If it's below half your maximum, you recover one VIT every hour. You have this power even when you aren't transformed.

19-20) Tentacle Fun. Or actually usually ribbons, lengths of chain, or thorny vines. Honestly I'm not sure why OP called this Tentacle Fun since he himself seems reluctant to make it actual tentacles, but I'm trying to stick to the CYOA so that people can use it as a reference for chargen, so here we are. In any case, these are autonomous long ropey-things that follow your commands, act on your turn, and have a melee attack that can hit enemies in adjacent areas as well as your own at no additional cost in FOC or VIT, and which can be used to bind an enemy instead of dealing damage on a hit, but which is otherwise identical to a normal melee attack (with the same effects, stats, etc.). An enemy who is bound can take no actions except to escape, and must roll their STR against yours to do so. The tentacles cannot act when they are binding someone. You can also use them as grappling hooks for a +1 to Acrobatics, although this takes both yours and their turn for the round.

PERKS

Finally, you have a few random perks that may help you out on your adventures. Roll 1d20 twice on the combat list, twice on the support list, and once on whichever list you like. If you get the same thing twice, take the option of the same number from the other list. If you have that perk too, take whichever perk you like. All of these things are presumably somehow helpful, convenient, or at the very least benign, but they're also totally random so you might find some of them unhelpful or even counterproductive. Prayers to the Random Number God may help. You can spend 1 star iron coin to swap a perk for the same numbered perk on the other table. You can spend 1 mithril coin to ignore one result and pick whatever perk you want from the appropriate table. You may spend 1 orichalcum coin to select two extra perks from either table. Perks can be used whether you are transformed or not.

Combat

1) Secondary weapon. You gain a minor weapon, like a melee dagger, or a minor attachment for a weapon, like attaching a melee bayonet to a ranged rifle, or maybe you just learn how to use a weapon that already works both ways the other way, like learning how to give people melee whacks with your otherwise magic staff. You get +1 to a stat associated with the new weapon (but not the weapon stat boost itself) and are proficient with weapons of that type.

2) Martial Training: You've been trained in how to fight. You have +1 STR and you can spend a LUCK point to cause any one attack targeting you to miss, no matter what it is.

3) Enhanced Weapon. Your weapon is just stronger than other magical girls'. +1 to one of the stats granted by the weapon.

4) Scrying Pool. You gain an artifact, usually either a mirror or a small bowl that can be filled with water. Once per moonrise you can ask a single question of this artifact, and it will show you images of the past, present, or possible futures relevant to your query. This gives you a +2 bonus on a single research roll, and depending on whether your question can be entirely answered in a brief glimpse of another time and place, may give you exactly what you were looking for so you don't have to bother with anymore research anyway. The scrying pool can be lost or stolen.

5) Gifted. You are more talented than most with your magic, and your magic makes you more talented than most at relevant tasks. You gain a +1 bonus to a stat granted by your specialization.

6) You aren't exactly made of rubber, but you have far greater range of motion in your limbs and joints than should be humanly possible. You have +1 AGI, and a +2 bonus to Acrobatics rolls made to get through tight spaces or worm your way out of ropes you've been tied up in.

7) Enhanced Transformation. You can transform to and from your magical girl form in seconds, and are invincible during the transformation.

8) Mask of Disguise. You have a small artifact, usually (but not always) literally a mask, that can temporarily transform you into another person, complete with clothing and minor items like purses, badges, and identifying papers that are entirely correct and will scan properly. You cannot disguise yourself as anyone specific, and despite your papers scanning correctly you are not actually in any databases. This is a physical transformation lasting two hours, which must be recharged for six hours between uses. The mask of disguise can be lost or stolen.

9) Blood Magic. You can spend VIT as though it were FOC. +1 VIT.

10) Hammerspace Handbag. You have a handbag that's infinitely large on the inside. Only things that can fit into the handbag can be stored inside of it, but it can fit an infinite number of suitably small things. The hammerspace handbag can be lost or stolen.

11) Enhanced Sustenance. You need only four hours of sleep to be fully rested (including recovering VIT and FOC), and need only 1/5 the amount of food. You do not need to breathe, and you will remain in good health regardless of your diet. You also become generally more resilient and gain +1 VIT.

12) Enhanced Outfit. Your outfit provides some serious protection, even if it's just a chainmail bikini or bodypaint. Don't ask how, it's magic. You gain +2 armor when transformed. This stacks with the Ward enchantments. You also gain +1 VIT.

13) Phial of healing. This is some kind of container that can be magically refilled with water so pure and clean it heals the wounds of those who drink it. The phial can be charged with as much FOC as you like, and anyone who drinks it will be healed for VIT equal to the FOC the phial was charged with. Like most forms of healing, this can take you above your maximum, but you lose 1 VIT at the end of your turn until you're at or below your maximum. The charge on the phial expires after five rounds.

14) Allies. You gain two veteran magical girls as allies. They were given their powers using a much weaker version of the transformation from long ago so they aren't nearly as strong as you, but they have the benefit of experience. Their stats are 1d4+3, they have a random weapon and outfit style but do not gain bonus attributes from them, and a random magic specialization with all three associated powers. They have no perks and no standalone power. The veteran duo have their own missions to attend and won't join in every single battle, but they'll show up to help out as much as they can if the situation is dire.

You gain +1 to any attribute thanks to their guidance. They have invested 1,000 hours into every relevant magical girl skill (including their own randomly rolled magical specialties, if you're using a rule variant where those have dedicated skills) and can train you in them during downtime. Each of them has also invested 10,000 hours into a specific skill randomly rolled on the table below (your GM may wish to add extra entries to make it fit a larger die size if you have more relevant skills).

1: Acrobatics
2: Stealth
3: Larceny
4: Investigation
5: Research
6: Social

Your allies will stick with you even if you are a monster girl, although it may make them uncomfortable at first and they may desert you if you do anything heinous.

15) Monstrous Metamorphosis. When you get angry enough, you lose control and transform into a monstrous creature. You develop traits like that of a monster girl - fur, scales, fangs, claws, slitted eyes. If you're *already* a monster girl, you'll turn into a straight-up monster, without any girl left. You gain +2 STR, AGI, and VIT in this state, but you're also feral and out of control. You can decide when you're angry enough to enter it, but once you do you must attack every turn. You can pick the target, but if you run out of enemies, you must attack bystanders or allies. At the end of your turn, you can attempt to end the frenzy by rolling 1d6. If you roll 1-5, the frenzy continues. If you get a 6, you revert back to normal and fall unconscious immediately. If your VIT is above half, you will wake up on your next turn. If your VIT is below half, you will wake up in about an hour. You can transform into your monster form straight from your normal form, without becoming a magical girl in between.

16) Sorcery. The magical girl transformation allows you to channel intense amounts of magic, but with the assistance of runes and chants it's possible to cast some magic even without the power of the transformation. You have minor control over the element of your specialization(s) even when not transformed. You gain a skill related to the specialization (if you are using the all the skills rule variant, you already have this). When it reaches +1, you gain minor control of the element including a version of your attack which works at half-damage and takes double range penalties. When it reaches +2, you can have access to all your basic magic even when not transformed, but no powers. At +3 (you can do it!), +4 (maybe not so much), and +5 (hahaha no), you unlock one power each when not transformed. You can teach this magic to other people. You also gain +1 FOC.

17) Wings. Your outfit comes equipped with a pair of wings. You can glide, which gives you a +1 bonus to Acrobatics and prevents you from ever taking falling damage. If you already have wings, you can fly as though with the Air power. If you have wings and the Flight power from Air, your move speed while flying doubles. Unlike most perks, this one is active only when you are transformed.

18) Symbol of Purification. You have some kind of small object, like an amulet or a ring, which creates an aura that repels monsters. It doesn't physically fling them from its radius, but it does make monsters take a penalty while in the same area as the symbol. The penalty depends on the amount of charge you give it. Every 2 FOC grants a -1 penalty to all rolls, rounded up (in the absolute sense, so 1-2 FOC gives a -1 penalty, 3-4 gives a -2, etc. etc.). If you are a monster, you can wear one of these yourself. You'll suffer the penalty, but so long as you have even a -1, it will mask your monstrous nature from being supernaturally detected by any means. If you are a monster and you have your symbol of purification with you during downtime, all hours spent on training have their effect reduced by half.

19) Awareness. You become much more aware of everything your mundane senses tell you. This gives you a +1 bonus to Investigation, allows you to treat your AGI as 1 higher for purposes of initiative, and allows you to use your AGI bonus even when being attacked by a hidden enemy.

20) Big Friend. You're friends with a monster girl. What could possibly go wrong? Your monster girl ally is a fully empowered monster girl generated according to the normal rules. Go straight to the monster girl chart to roll her specialization, but otherwise create her exactly like a normal character except that she has no perks and no coins to spend. She isn't a fulltime party member, but she'll show up to help you out anytime you're headed for a serious fight. She'll also come to help you out when you're in trouble, provided you're nearby enough that she can find out about it and show up to help. You gain a +1 to any attribute as she shares forbidden secrets with you.

Support

1) Interdimensional Bro. Eythor the stoner is actually an interdimensional tourist and completely immortal - he cannot be killed by any means. He works various minimum wage jobs to get by. You get to live with Eythor, he will provide a convincing legal identity for you, as well as food and shelter for free. He can get you into a school if you want, and he'll act as your legal guardian anytime you need one. Eythor relocates to another dimension every couple of years. He might put off such a relocation for a while for your sake, but sooner or later he'll move on, and if you want to keep rooming with him, you'll have to follow. If he moves on without you, he won't hold any kind of grudge, and will gladly room with you again if he bumps into you later, even if it's been centuries.

2) Closure of Sorts. Everyone who ever knew you instantly and completely forgets about you. Reality warps to tie up all loose ends. Pets find themselves suddenly in the possession of new owners. Children or other dependents find themselves in new families. All your possessions are instantly divided up amongst who you'd like to receive them, and they will not remember where they got them but also will not be surprised that they have them. It will just be some old thing they got from somewhere, so long ago they can't really remember the details. This brings good karma, granting you +1 LUCk.

3) Destiny. You have a destiny, which is probably to defend some specific place or person or destroy some specific boss monster. When fighting enemies that threaten the place/person or work for (or are) the boss monster, you can spend a Luck point to automatically get a 6 on any one roll. You must spend the Luck point before rolling. You also get +1 LUCK.

4) Talent. You're really good at something. Pick one skill. Your hours invested in that skill count double. This stacks with other multipliers.

5) Interdimensional Home. You have a studio apartment located in an alternate dimension. The apartment can be accessed by drawing a door on a wall or floor, with chalk or paint or by scratching the outline into dirt or sand, and then stepping through. Inside the apartment is a keychain with six keys. Anyone who is intentionally given a key will have that key sink into their skin and magically dissolve into their essence, and will be able to enter the apartment by drawing a door from that point forward. If they already have a key, any remaining keys given to them will not dissolve and can instead be given to others. Your Guide will take you to the apartment and give you all six keys - the first will give you access to the apartment and the other five can be given to whoever you like. Whenever you leave the apartment building, you arrive out of whatever door was last used to enter. This means that if you enter from point A and a friend with a key enters from point B, you'll both exit from point B. Guides can always enter the apartment, whether they have a key or not, and can appear inside of it without using the door. Some of them find ignoring the door to be impolite and only do so in emergencies. A subset of those think it impolite to enter the apartment without permission at all, and again do so only in emergencies.

The apartment has a large window made of unbreakable glass that looks out over a city in perpetual night. Cars drive on an eight-lane road below, and across you can see an apartment building in which other girls similar to you have their own interdimensional homes. The apartment contains a small kitchen with food that restocks itself at random, but usually about once a week, with enough low quality TV dinners, instant soups, and so on to feed six inhabitants comfortably. There is only one bedroom, but there's also a couch and a closet containing four sleeping bags. The apartment also contains a television, but the channels are numbered with symbols in an alien language, they're usually static, and when they're not, what exactly is playing seems to be completely random and usually unearthly. The apartment has wifi, but all the webpages are in what looks like the same alien language. Any attempt to make calls, texts, or send emails to machines back on Earth will fail. You can send texts to people in the same dimension, but as you have no way to leave the apartment, that's only useful if you happen to bump into someone else with an interdimensional apartment or if you're one of those people who would rather text even when the person you're talking to is right on the other side of the door.

Monster girls can have interdimensional homes, too. The furnishings are roughly the same, but the apartment is carved from dirt as though by giant ants, there are no doors between the bedroom, the living room/kitchen, or the bathroom, only holes chewed through the dirt from one room to the next, and the appliances and plumbing are all clearly of alien design, with a rounded, organic aesthetic, often plugged into the wall by what looks like intestines rather than wires. They cannot be unplugged, only ripped out, spraying blood and some kind of stomach acid everywhere. The attached appliance dies and withers away, and a new one will grow out of the wall over the next few weeks. The apartment's food supply are strange globules of green-ish substances and what appears to be some kind of reddish-yellow dogfood. The taste is mediocre, though no more than the magical girls' food.

The monster apartment's indestructible window looks out over a neighboring hive tower in eternal dusk. Other monster girls can be seen in apartments of their own in the tower, and giant insects roam across the red earth of the surface (as opposed to the brown earth of the apartment's interior) between and around the hive towers. The wifi connects to the same alien internet as the magical girls' apartments, but there is no television. Instead, the food glands dispense various psychedelic, hallucinogenic, and aphrodesiac fungi. These have no longterm physical side effects (on monster girls, anyway), but can form purely psychological addictions. Instead of keys, monster girls receive a stinger that can inject up to five people with a fluid that, once injected into a host, is self-replicating but cannot survive outside that host, and allows them to access the apartment. Monster girls with this perk produce their own version of the fluid naturally.

6) Incognito. You are very difficult to notice unless you're purposely attracting attention to yourself. You can walk right past guards or other authority figures unless you're entering highly restricted areas, and people forget your face shortly after interacting with you.

7) Environmental Sealing. You suffer no damage from drowning, suffocation, extreme heat, extreme cold, or other environmental effects. This allows you to ignore certain attacks, like drown, but doesn't help you with things like being lit on fire or submerged in lava, and while it might be slightly more comfortable to be stabbed by icicles when you can't feel the cold, you have still been stabbed. You have +1 fire armor and +1 cold armor, and are immune to attacks that try to drown or suffocate you.

8) Panic Button. You can teleport yourself to a random safe location with whatever facilities or supplies you need to recover to full strength, however this location is not guaranteed to be easy to return from or to remain safe after your arrival. This is only usable on the full moon. You will know when it's the full moon, and the ability will remain usable and on the current schedule of Earth's moon even when in other dimensions with other moons, even if Earth's moon is destroyed or has its orbit altered.

9) Warning Tokens. You have a pair of small tokens of some sort. One is for people. One is for places. The people token can be given to any person you like, and the place token can be mounted to a permanent fixture of a place. You are aware of any danger occurring or about to occur near the person or place for as long as the token is intact.

10) Absolute Direction. If you have a destination or object in mind, you know what direction it is in. It must be a place or object you know exists and have a decent mental image of. Attempting to find abstract concepts like 'true love' or nonspecific things like 'a weapon capable of killing a vampire in one stroke' will not work. Things like 'my keys' or 'the dark empress Tiamat' will work fine, though.

11) Big Backpack. You receive a big backpack with useful items inside. The backpack is magical and has infinite holding space, and never weighs more than about fifteen pounds no matter how much you put into it. It generates a healthy meal in a brown paper bag inside it twice a day, will generate the appropriate legal ID for your location for you once per day, and when it first generates it has clothing appropriate to your new body (or just a new outfit if your character was already a 7-16 year old girl), basic survival tools, a small laptop that never breaks and always updates, and $10,000 (or an equivalent amount in currency appropriate to your location) in cash. Aside from the food and ID, all the backpack's other items do not regenerate. If you lose, trade, or spend them, they're gone. The backpack itself can be summoned back to you if it's every lost or stolen, and will appear lying around somewhere tucked just out of sight as soon as you do. Try checking under the bed. It's never very hard to find once summoned.

12) Rebirth. If you die, you will reincarnate at the next sunrise. You will wake up wherever it is you went to sleep last, as though waking up from a nightmare. No one will remember your having died, although the other events of the previous day will be clear.

13) Masculinity. Rather than a magical girl, you become a Tuxedo Mask type person, male but with identical abilities and function as a magical girl. This gives you +1 LUCK. Never mind why.

14) Patron. An entity other than the Guides have taken an interest in you and seeks to win you over to their side. Both your Guide and your new patron will try to incentivize you to take their side. Eventually, you will be forced to choose one or the other, but for a while you can fight for both. You gain +1 to any attribute. See the Patrons section to roll up who exactly has taken an interest in you.

15) Money. You get a debit card that is stocked up with $3000, inflation adjusted, every month for the rest of eternity (if you end up dead, the card will be reassigned to another magical girl). The debit card automatically translates the money into a local currency when swiped. If you're in a place without commonly accepted digital currency, you will be able to swipe the debit card to withdraw local currency (including gold doubloons or little silver dogs or whatever weird currency is used around here) at any ATM. If you're in a place without ATMs, you'll be able to find one in a secluded place no matter where you are. Even if you're in a very crowded area and can't get away, the ATM will find a way to contrive its way into a hidden location, and you will know where it is (usually the ATM accomplishes this by becoming pocket-sized). If you're in some medieval mud village on a primitive otherworld inhabited mostly by elves, you can turn an alley and find an ATM to swipe your card and get $3000 of gold sovereigns to spend. The ATM will vanish as soon as it's out of your line of sight once you've made your withdrawal.

16) Twin Soul. Your soul was split in half during the transformation and you became two magical girls instead of one. You have the same magical specialty and power within that specialty, but each of you have 70% (rounded up) of your stats. You have the same age, body, outfit, and weapons (do not add the weapon and outfit stat bonuses to your twin, just add them into your normal total and then take 70% of them). You can transfer any standalone power or perk you have received to your twin instead. Otherwise, they do not receive powers or perks. The exception is any stat boosts received from perks (including the +2 to X perks), which are added into your stat total just like everything else to be divided into 70% (rounded up). Your twin automatically loves you and will be your most loyal ally, only leaving you in the face of egregious abuse.

17) Soul Jar. You don't actually inhabit your body anymore. Instead, your soul is contained in a small and somewhat fragile object and you control your body like a puppet. If the jar shatters, you'll die instantly. So long as you are within ten miles (well over extreme range) of your body, you can control it fine. At 10-20 miles, however, your manual dexterity, perception, and focus all take a drastic nosedive and your AGI and FOC are both cut in half. Beyond twenty miles, you can only direct your body to moan and shuffle like a zombie. Your AGI and FOC are reduced to 1. Your maximum FOC is affected, but your current FOC will not be reduced if it's already at or below the new threshold.

If your VIT ever drops to zero, you can go on fighting. You take a -1 penalty to all stats, to a minimum of zero, for every point of damage taken after your VIT is reduced to nothing, and you can keep on fighting until your STR or AGI are reduced to zero, which paralyzes you. You can recover from this stat damage at the same rate you recover from VIT damage, and once your other stats have recovered, you can recover from VIT damage like normal. Never mind the fact that you are extremely dead. You'll get better, so long as your soul jar remains intact.

18) Eternal Style. Your body and clothes are always clean and in pristine condition, including hair, teeth, ody odor, and body hair. You can also summon a mundane but stylish outfit at-will. The clothing will vanish two hours after being removed from your person, simply disappearing as soon as no one's looking. Technically it can be preserved if someone is constantly staring right at it at all times. Cameras don't count, they'll disappear as soon as no one's looking at the feed and when someone goes over the footage, the clothes will just never have been there at all.

19) Revivification. You don't die even if you're killed. When "dead" you are transported to a ghostly otherworld and will soon be able to find your way back to life. You will leave behind a corpse and will return to the land of the living in a new body. Is it really the same "you" at all, or just a doppleganger with your memories?

20) Fake Parents. You now have a pair of people who are convinced they are your parents. It's not clear if they're normal humans who've had their memories magically altered (which is an available power to psychic mages, after all), magical constructs, or reality itself rewriting you into having always been a little girl with these people as your parents, with only you remembering the unaltered timeline. Regardless, they have all the appropriate documents proving you are their child. Your fake parents really love you, expect you to go to school and keep your grades up, and will react with the same magical "rationalization" as any other mundane when confronted with the supernatural.

PATRONS

If you rolled the patron perk, roll a d20 on this table to determine who your second patron is. You may also wish to read up on this table if options for alternative patrons are presented during play.

1-14) Another Guide. Guides sometimes attempt to poach magical girls from one another. Another Guide with a radically different philosophy towards magical girls has taken an interest in you and would like you to leave your original team to join (or found, or re-found, as the case may be) theirs. If your Guide is distant, the new one is probably more hands-on. If your Guide tells you nothing, the new one is probably more liberal with information, although it may not be accurate. If your Guide is chatty, so is the new one, but their version of the story is almost always contradictory. If your Guide just created you and then left you to your own devices, your new one will actually stick around, though they might not stay very close.

Although their philosophy and battle doctrine may be radically divergent, your new Guide will have you fighting more or less the same battles as the old one. Except in the event of infighting between the two Guides, magical girls with this patron will not have any particular need for conflict with their more traditional comrades.

15-16) Lesser Force. Powerful wizards, bored faerie nobles, and powerful magical entities like dragons may desire a relatively powerful, but still mostly human, servant to take care of issues in places they cannot reach or would be too easily noticed, or else merely to deal with tasks the entity is bored with taking care of themselves and do not consider so critically important as to require their personal intervention.

While there are many, many different varieties of lesser powers, all of them have three important things in common. First, they are independent and relatively weak. Unlike the Guides, who are an extremely large alliance, or the gods and horrors, who are individually incredibly powerful, lesser powers simply cannot hold their own against the other major factions of the multiverse. In fact, a full team of five or so magical girls might collectively be an equal match for a lesser power. This means magical girls who serve a lesser power can't count on the same kind of backup that the Guides can provide. If you are facing overwhelming odds, no one will assemble an interdimensional army of fifty magical girls to even them. Worse still, while the Guides' strongholds are secured behind many layers of defenses such that invading them would require a series of decisive losses to the monsters, the lesser forces' influence is often not very strong outside their own small demesne, and being attacked or besieged is a constant threat.

Related, lesser powers also tend to be strongly specialized into a single path of magic, wielding catastrophic power within that field, but relatively little outside of it (if you are representing different magic paths with different skills, lesser powers typically have 1,000,000+ hours invested in their chosen path, but if they have other paths at all, they have only 10-100 hours invested in them). If your specialization matches theirs (and it probably does, or else they wouldn't be courting your loyalty), you gain a free second power in that specialization and will be able to use them as a tutor in relevant skills indefinitely.

Second, as a consequence of the first, lesser powers are subtle. They very much do not want to draw attention to themselves from the more powerful factions. As such, while they will often ask you to secure powerful magic artifacts, locii of mystic energy, the loyalty of magical creatures (possibly even including monsters), and so on, they absolutely do not want you to do so if that means bringing you into conflict with more powerful forces - and that includes the Guides, so they'll give you a lot of slack for avoiding confrontations with your team. They will not likely be as forgiving when it comes to avoiding confrontations with other lesser powers, however, and many lesser powers have enemies and rivals amongst their peers - fights between lesser powers in an effort to consolidate their power into something greater are incessant.

Third, lesser forces have alien minds. This is more true of some than others - a wizard who was once a mortal human will have long forgotten the ways of man and, in any case, is from 13th century France and therefore doesn't have a whole lot in common with you to begin with. The vast cultural gaps, his numbness and apathy to human suffering, and the severe personality changes wrought by his total immersion in his path of magic will have made him almost unrecognizable. Fey princes, dragons, etc. are even less easily understood, and the communication impairment works both ways. Your patron will not understand you, and you will not understand them.

That said, your patron still understands your language and many lesser powers are quite a bit more willing to give you a giant pile of money in exchange for your services. Most other patrons are so many levels removed from the mundane world, so immersed in an economy where mundane wealth is worthless, that they consider any desire for it to be a childlike affectation, not a serious concern. Lesser powers, even if they do not understand human emotion, understand perfectly well the human economy and physiology, and are perfectly willing to negotiate payment, whether in gold that you can exchange for local currency or just by making room for you in the many halls of their own palatial residence or whatever other payment you might negotiate.

17) Deity. There are beings who take sustenance from the worship of mortals. Many of them claim to be ancient gods who have now lost their former power, although some (including most Guides) claim that they are relative newcomers to humanity, and are only taking up the mantle of ancient gods because that is more convenient than making a name from nothing.

Regardless, deities are preposterously capable within their portfolio. Many of them have the equivalent of billions (+9, +10, +11) or trillions (+12, +13, +14) of hours of experience in relevant skills. Although they will not tutor you personally, you gain a talent for all these skills, as per the talent perk, and some deities may also grant you access to an angelic servant who can serve as your tutor, or a library (or simply an infinitely thorough, bigger on the inside than the outside manual) to learn from, or both. In any case, you can expect to advance these skills at quadruple the normal rate. In addition, you become a physical paragon, with a +1 bonus to STR, AGI, and VIT.

Your deity grants these boons in exchange for your spreading the word of their gospel, however, and this makes you an obvious target for any of the deity's enemies - of which there will surely be no short supply. A deity's enemies are most often other deities, powerful monster bosses, or horrors, all three of which a lone magical girl will have little chance of defeating, and even a full team may find themselves completely outmatched (particularly by the horrors). Deities tend to have an extremely bad gauge of the comparative power of their servants as opposed to the forces arrayed against them, and will have little understanding or sympathy for a magical girl who fails to overcome overwhelming odds. From the deity's perspective (or lack thereof), their champions are never outmatched and any defeat must only be the result of cowardice, lack of faith, or sloth.

No deities claim to represent the Judeo-Christian God. Rumor has it that this is because the Judeo-Christian God is actually a creation or misinterpretation of the Beacons.

18) Beacon. Beacons look just like Guides. Which is to say that they're approximately house-cat sized and cute, and otherwise they're very morphologically distinct from both each other and any given Guide. Many people believe they're a splinter faction from the Guides.

Like Guides, Beacons do not acknowledge any formal organization amongst one another and instead appear to have a pre-existing relationship with every other Guide or Beacon. Unlike Guides, they all tell the same story. The Beacons claim they are unrelated to Guides, that the Guides are using magical girls as pawns to fight their enemies and force perfect order, and with it, stagnation, upon the world. Beacons claim that their own goal is to shepherd humanity to greatness, for though yours is a weak and ignorant world now, all worlds were once like this, and yours will blossom in time. All benefit from the growth of one, and one benefits from the growth of all.

The Beacons' goal is to uphold and propagate their three virtues: Generosity, to use what resources and abilities one has for the good of everyone, not just oneself. Humility, to recognize others as equals and not seek to assert superiority over them in any way. Restraint, when battle is needed (as per the virtue of Generosity), to never do more harm than is necessary, particularly to innocent bystanders, but even to enemies.

Volumes have been written on each of these virtues, volumes which Beacons will cheerfully encourage their magical girls to read and meditate upon. They expect their girls to uphold the virtues at all times, and while they are very forgiving for human weakness, they can be extremely judgemental when they believe one of their flock has stopped trying altogether. They may require some demonstration of commitment to virtue to prove a willingness to do what is right, and that your recent transgressions were due to the frailties of the human soul (which the Beacons will gladly forgive) and not due to a simple lack of effort (which they will not).

The Beacons are generally very kind creatures, but they show what is perhaps a darker side to those they judge and find wanting. For magical girls or others of their flock who they deem to have turned away from the light and rebuffed all offers of redemption, they promise nothing else but a swift and painless death, even if your transgressions are as simple as ignoring the plight of the weak. Once you have sworn a vow to uphold the virtues of the Beacons, you are held to a higher standard - and a higher penalty should you turn away from the light.

While you are considered one of the Beacon's faithful, however, they will do all in their power to make you happy and content, not with material wealth, but by providing love and support. You gain the Fake Parents perk for free. If you have this perk already, roll for another free support perk. The light of the Beacons also shines from within you, granting you a +2 bonus against any effort to forcibly alter your mind or body.

Beacons fight with anything that threatens humanity or other magically underdeveloped races. They fight with the monsters. They fight with the Guides. They fight with the horrors. They fight with deities and lesser powers. Depending on what kind of Guide the other girls in your team have, you may end up butting heads with them or even fighting them. You may also need their help fighting enemies completely unrelated to the fight between Guides and monsters. The Beacons will not excommunicate you if you fail to convince your friends to help you fight a powerful enemy and decline to make a suicide run against it solo, but they will likely demand a demonstration of courage and virtue to prove that you avoided the fight because it was hopeless, not because you were persuaded to abandon the cause by peer pressure.

19) Horrors. So, the bad news is that you're going to go insane. The other bad news is that there isn't really any good news to go along with this. A horror from beyond human comprehension whispers in your dreams, giving you restless sleep. You're constantly just a little bit exhausted, not enough to impair you significantly (no mechanical penalties), and in fact you gain half again as many weekly hours of training because of your insomnia, but you are constantly irate and will slowly develop paranoia, begin to hallucinate voices and then visually, and finally start suffering total psychotic breakdowns.

The Horrors want you to help them enter the world. If you help them, their forerunners and harbingers will provide you aid, at first appearing as allies to help you complete the ritual, but as your patron's trust in you grows, his abominable creations will become your servants. All that you know and love will be devoured when your patron comes. If you help them, you will be devoured first, granted blissful oblivion before all the Earth is twisted by madness incarnate. Towards the beginning you will probably be opposed principally by the Beacons or various MIB organizations. Towards the end, everyone and everything will try to prevent you from completing your apocalyptic ritual. The ones who aren't just calling Earth a lost cause and evacuating, anyway. Even if your patron is defeated for now, it will only forestall the inevitable.

20) Ebon Mint. The good news is that the Ebon Mint is a spider at the center of a vast web, and all the magical wealth in the world seems to be migrating towards their coffers. Further good news is that the Ebon Mint doesn't mind you working for another patron. They don't just accept that you'll be working for both patrons for a time while they try to entice you to make a full conversion - every patron does that. The Ebon Mint doesn't care if you work for another patron indefinitely. In fact, they'd *prefer* you work for another patron indefinitely - provided that you remember your real loyalty lies with the Mint. This gives them an agent in someone else's organization.

Finally, the Ebon Mint loans you a black coin, a palm-sized disc made of vorpal alloyed with some unknown other substance, capable of granting significant and terrible power. Maybe you'll spend it immediately. Maybe it's your ace in the hole. Maybe you're just holding onto it to keep it out of the hands of people who would spend it. Either way, the black coin is worth several vorpal coins, and the loan of an item whose value is measured in multiple priceless coins has a vaguely defined interest rate. The Ebon Mint will give you tasks to accomplish alongside your regular missions, and these tasks will pay off your interest while you work up the three vorpal coins needed to pay back the loan. There is no need to pay every vorpal coin you get back to the Mint, of course. They are all too happy to have you in their debt longer.

Occasionally, however, these missions may be just beyond your abilities. Missing an interest payment increases your debt dramatically. Comparatively cheap is to call upon the vast resources of the Ebon Mint to accomplish your mission. And their deep coffers can supply almost anything: Rare items with fantastic powers, mercenaries, passage to hard-to-reach places, the sudden ceasefire or alliance of virtually any lesser power. These debts are usually measured in thaum or star iron, but sometimes they come in mithril or orichalcum, and these coins with more vague exchange rates come with the priceless interest rates. Rather than paying off that interest with coins, the missions the Mint gives you will cross more boundaries. As your debt mounts, you'll be expected to find and share secrets kept by your teammates and your Guide. Weaknesses, blackmail material, loved ones they'd do anything to save. Eventually they'll expect you to represent the Mint in exploiting this information to drag someone else into their web.

But maybe you'll stay ahead of their interest rates unassisted while you scrounge up the three vorpal coins needed to pay them off. You'll still be a part of their network and you can still buy their services - paying up front if you have spare coins - but the interest rate will be greatly reduced. The Ebon Mint is unlikely to try to push you back into debt, provided you've demonstrated some degree of loyalty already. You are more powerful or more resourceful than they'd anticipated, and they'd rather have you as an agent of their network than risk turning you into a liability they will have to sink resources into removing.

The black coin can be used for an immediate and drastic power-up. It has two charges. Consume the first, and you become a dark magical girl. You select one new weapon or one new standalone power, and your magic, both what you had before and your new weapon or power, is corrupted and dark. If you consume the second charge, you immediately transform into a monster girl. Pick a monster girl type to transform into. You gain +1 to any of the attributes granted by that form, gain both the new magic paths, and gain two new magic powers from amongst those in the paths associated with your new form. If you already have one or both of the magic paths, you can select a magic path of your choice to replace it, however your new powers must come from the magic paths associated with the monster girl you've turned into. If you already have both of them maxed out, you don't gain new powers, but you still gain two new paths of your choice (since you already have both the paths associated with your new form). You can consume the first and second charge of the black coin all at once, and doing so does not count as an action.

XX) Solo. So, maybe your Guide deserted you. Maybe the lesser power you were working for has died. Maybe you paid off your debt to the Ebon Mint and decided to walk away. Maybe you decided to just leave your former patron without tying up any loose ends at all. Regardless, all the other factions and patrons will be happy to hire you as a mercenary in exchange for a few coins (usually star iron or a hefty chunk of thaum, unless the job is really big), and you can still track down monsters and harvest coins from them on your own.

However, you have no backup, no reserve of resources for training or emergency power-ups, no home base, nothing. If you cut ties to any former patrons, they are unlikely to take it well. A Guide in particular will frequently consider any magical girl who leaves the team (to work alone or for another patron) to be a traitor and will instruct their other girls to kill the so-called traitor on sight. As is often the case with Guides, this only applies to one specific Guide and that Guide's allies. Other Guides won't necessarily pursue the vendetta. Deities are often endlessly vengeful, and lesser powers may be as well. Horrors are largely apathetic, and Beacons will not bear ill will to magical girls who leave their order provided they do not join forces with dark factions, though Beacons often demand a final act of virtuous service to prove goodwill before allowing a girl to leave on good terms.

Plus, there's still that pesky magical girl instinct to deal with. You'll need to keep killing monsters, which means whatever job you find had better be compatible with, or better yet principally concern, killing monsters regularly. And that's going to make enemies of the monster faction(s) in a hurry, an enmity you'll have to deal with on your own.

ADVANCMENT

Once set, you cannot change your age, development, or magic specialization. However, you can change your attributes, your perks, your standalone power, your weapon, and your outfit, and while you can't change your specialization, you can add new ones. This is done exactly the same in play as during chargen: By spending coins. Star iron, mithril, and orichalcum coins do exactly what they've always done, but there are two new coins for advancement.

A thaum coin can be spent for a free hour of skill advancement or a +1 magic bonus to a single attribute for one round (using thaum coins for this bonus does not take an action). This bonus doesn't stack with itself or with other magic bonuses, but you can add it to every attribute at once, and there's no limit to the number of rounds in a row you can maintain the bonus except your reserve of thaum coins.

A vorpal coin can be spent to gain a new magic specialization. When you spend a vorpal coin, you must roll on the chart, and you can spend mithril or orichalcum coins to modify this roll just like your original specialization roll. If you roll a specialization you already have, roll again. Once you've spent a vorpal coin, you must gain a new specialization, even if you land on a monster girl transformation. If you're not prepared to be betrayed by your Guide, make sure you have an orichalcum coin in reserve.

Where do coins come from? They come from absorbing the magic of defeated monsters, and monsters get more coins by devouring humans or especially magical girls. Monsters are often created from coins that have been melted down and then smelted into new creations. Some places in the multiverse naturally produce the soul essence of coins in their mineral forms, allowing them to be mined as ores and then smelted directly into coins that magical girls can spend or else forged into monsters.

Putties are made from thaum. Depending on the size of the putty patrol, they may or may not contain enough thaum for a complete coin. The exact efficiency with which putties are made also varies. Some putties are elites who require half a coin or even a full coin for each putty, while others are even more cannon fodder than usual and three dozen of them can be made from a single thaum coin.

Most monsters are made mainly from star iron, usually alloyed with some amount of thaum, sometimes mithril or orichalcum. Monsters forged from a star iron-mithril alloy are more versatile and have a diverse set of physical attributes, like tails, wings, claws, scaly hides, etc. etc., whereas monsters forged from pure mithril tend to be smaller, less hideous, and less adaptable. Monsters forged from star iron-orichalcum alloys are powerful elites. Monsters forged from a mithril-thaum alloy are usually capable of human-level intellect whereas other monsters aren't, and star iron-thaum alloy monsters usually have a half-dozen or more thaum coins in their makeup in addition to their one, maybe two star iron or mithril coins. A monster may also be smelted from all four, with an orichalcum coin, one or two mithril and star iron coins, and a half-dozen or so thaum coins for an intelligent and powerful beast.

Star iron alloy and pure star iron monsters usually travel in packs. Since monsters can usually only breed with their same species (or occasionally only with humans, in which case all offspring are their same species), and when forged they are usually mass-produced, monster packs are often monotype even though mixed monster packs are more efficient. Some monsters are racist against other monster types, but since this is, tactically speaking, a lot like having a prejudice against everything except your fellow Fighters, this is not a bandwagon that many monsters are eager to jump onto.

Boss monsters have a vorpal coin at their core and are usually alloyed with at least six other coins of star iron, mithril, and/or orichalcum. Unintelligent boss monsters have only these, but intelligent boss monsters have at least a half-dozen thaum coins in their alloy as well. The vorpal coin gives them magical powers in addition to their deadly natural weapons and whatever mundane armaments they've created or acquired. Boss monsters usually have two orichalcum coins, two mithril, and four star iron in addition to a dozen-odd thaum coins. They're a fair match for a team of 3-4 average magical girls, particularly considering that they often rule over clans of putties and/or packs of regular monsters.

Monster girls have every kind of metal, but usually not enough to make full coins out of them. Despite having about two vorpal, three orichalcum, four mithril, and many hundreds of thaum in their makeup, they (and for that matter, other monsters) drop much fewer coins than it costs to produce them when destroyed. The coins they drop are usually one or two mithril, two or three star iron, and at least a half-dozen thaum, but since they do have orichalcum and vorpal in them, they will also occasionally drop one of those coins (but almost never one of each).

When monsters are defeated and their magical essences absorbed, the magical girls who've defeated them must divide up the coins amongst themselves. If they can't come to a rapid agreement and claim the coins, the coins will be drawn to girls at random (roll a die on a chart of every magical girl present for each coin, and the coin goes to whoever gets rolled - this may end up with one lucky girl hogging more than her fair share of coins). If the magical girls can come to a quick agreement of how to split the coins, however, the coins will not resist the distribution the girls agree to. Coins can be stored over time.

Earth doesn't seem to contain any mines for the magical metals that make up the coins, but it's stuffed to bursting with humans. Monsters have some way of converting devoured humans into magical metals to make themselves stronger, but the exchange rate is vague and may be random. It's not known how significant the amount of the magical metals that can be harvested from devouring Earth's entire human population is, and the Guides claim that the battle for Earth is being fought for humanitarian reasons anyway, but no one knows how much they're telling the truth.

The magical coins are used as universal currency, because everyone needs them. Thaum coins are the staple, since they're so weak that someone might trade one for a head of cabbage or a night in a hotel. Even star iron coins are valuable enough that they aren't usually used for anything other than rare, expensive purchases (a used car or otherworldly equivalent, for example) or bulk purchases. Star iron coins are also often used as rewards. As a general rule, a thaum is worth about $10 and a star iron is worth about $500, although there is certainly no standard exchange rate of mundane to magical goods and the laws of supply and demand are really wacky when it comes to interdimensional trading. An iPhone is worth considerably less than one star iron to someone who has magic that can mimic half its features already, and is barely even worth a few thaum to someone who lives on a non-magic world who can't recharge it and has no hope of ever finding wifi. On the other hand, a computer scientist stuck in a dieselpunk world where vacuum tubes are still used for computing might find a working example of an iPhone to be worth an orichalcum (if he even has an orichalcum).

Depending on what exactly you're trying to accomplish and how lucky you are, you might require as few as two or as many as five star iron to equal a single mithril. Three star iron coins to a mithril coin is considered a roughly standard exchange rate, however this does not at all equate to 150 thaum being worth 1 mithril. Mithril is very hard to come by and no amount of thaum will accomplish the magical feats mithril is capable of, so the exchange rate isn't as straightforward as with the abstract currency most people are used to dealing with. Mithril is usually worth about 1,000 thaum, and about five times the value of that thaum in mundane goods (or about $50,000).

Like mithril, orichalcum coins have a fairly stable exchange rate with coins that can accomplish similar feats (i.e. mithril and star iron) but a crazy exchange rate with thaum and mundane goods. Orichalcum coins are worth about 2 mithril or 6 star iron, but it takes something like 10,000 thaum to convince most people to part with an orichalcum and usually people won't trade orichalcum for any amount of mundane wealth, although there are always exceptions based on circumstance. Particularly, if someone is weak, they may trade an orichalcum away for much less than the worth of even a mithril, just because they want to get a potentially dangerous item off of their hands and still make some kind of profit out of the bargain.

Vorpal coins are completely priceless, uncomparable not only to mundane wealth but to any amount of other magical material. The black coins of the Ebon Mint are made from vorpal alloyed with another, unknown material. Alchemical experiments to reproduce the black coins have consistently been failures, leading to the belief that either the black coins are an extremely complex alloy or else that the Ebon Mint controls some unique magical metal extracted from some hidden mine.

Variant rule: Rare coins. These rules are written with a party of 3-4 magical girls in mind. The idea is that each session everyone will get at least one coin, and one person will get something awesome like an orichalcum coin. If you have only one magical girl in the campaign, they will be loaded down with absurdly large amounts of coins very quickly. In order to avoid this, when monsters drop coins, roll a 1d3 or a 1d4. Only on a max roll will they actually drop the coin. Otherwise, the coin is destroyed along with the monster. You might not want to bother with this for thaum coins, since they're not nearly as valuable.

Variant rule: No stat advancement. Since a stat can't be boosted to more than 10 higher than the lowest stat by coins, getting stats above 14 takes some effort. Even so, a determined magical girl will get there fairly quickly, particularly if she happened to roll up a fairly monostat build. So if you want to keep magical girls on roughly the same plane from start to finish and have them principally get stronger by way of more magic and perks (and skill increases, depending on what skill rules you're using), you can prohibit stat advancement via coin after chargen.

BESTIARY

Animals:

As a general rule, these will only show up when a beast mage is siccing them on her enemies. But hey, maybe some nature spirits get angry at pollution and go on a rampage.

Ant
STR:-4 VIT:-6 AGI:3 FOC:0 LUCK:2
Tiny: Ants have a +4 bonus to Stealth. This bonus decreases to +2 if they are increased in size once, and they lose it altogether if they are increased in size twice.

Bear
STR:6 VIT:5 AGI:4 FOC:1 LUCK:4

Dolphin
STR:5 VIT:5 AGI:8 FOC:2 LUCK:4
Aquatic: Dolphins can swim just fine, but will have a bad time on land.

Hawk
STR:2 VIT:2 AGI:7 FOC:1 LUCK:4
Flying: Hawks have flight automatically, giving them a +2 bonus to Acrobatics, allowing them to escape chases as soon as they reach long range and doubling their move speed in combat.

Rat
STR:1 VIT:2 AGI:7 FOC:1 LUCK:4
Sneaky: Rats have a +2 bonus to Stealth.

Spider
STR:-5 VIT:-6 AGI:5 FOC:0 LUCK:3
Sneaky: Spiders have a +2 bonus to Stealth.
Spider-Climb: Spiders have no difficulty at all climbing sheer surfaces. This gives them a +2 Acrobatics bonus in short-range chases.
Webs: Spiders can spin webs. When they do so, roll Vitality to create the web and roll Stealth to hide it. Anyone who moves into or out of the area they made the web in must make an Investigation check against the spider's Stealth check. If the victim fails, they are caught in the web, and must roll STR against the spider's VIT to try and escape it. If they fail again, they can make a check again on the next round, however if they fail three times before escaping, they become hopelessly entangled. If the spider is in the same area or reaches the same area before the victim escapes, the spider can take an action to cocoon them. This imposes a -4 penalty on all their future attempts to escape.

Wolf
STR:3 VIT:3 AGI:5 FOC:1 LUCK:4
Pack hunters: Wolves in the same pack count as being friends with one another automatically.

Shadows:

Shadows feed upon the dark emotions of the human heart, mostly fear and hatred. When magical metals are alloyed with this pure darkness, they become the shadows. Darklings are used as scouts, surveying new worlds for conquest, looking for places with large concentrations of people with dark hearts to be harvested.

Shadow grunts and large shadows are the bread and butter of a shadow invasion, mook platoons that support the more powerful shadow elites. Gargoyles, divers, and ghosts are specialized shadow enemies for aerial, aquatic, and spooky combat, respectively. Shades and stalkers lead squads of a dozen or so of these shadow soldiers, whether the standard or specialized variety, and are also sometimes dispatched to infiltrate the target society using their illusion powers to disguise their true nature.

Yin and yang lanterns provide powerful magical support, whether to regular grunts or to more specialized shadows, and the presence of these unlit lanterns typically indicates that the captains of the shadow army have arrived. Each captain is a unique entity. The examples given here are the Shadow Guardian, the Shadow Predator, and the Shadow Warlock. Oblivion is the leader of the shadows, and typically only comes to a world when it is ready to be wholly devoured by his shadow minions. Sometimes he comes to direct the shadows against powerful opposition if his captains have been unable to defeat them alone. Oblivion is accompanied at all times by a flight of dark angels.

Darkling [1/10 thaum]
STR:2 VIT:2 AGI:4 FOC:1 LUCK:1
One With Shadow: Darklings have a +4 bonus to Stealth in shadowy areas.

Shadow Grunt [1/4 thaum]
STR:4 VIT:4 AGI:4 FOC:2 LUCK:1

Large Shadow [1/2 thaum]
STR:6 VIT:7 AGI:2 FOC:2 LUCK:1

Gargoyle [1 star iron, 1 mithril]
STR:3 VIT:3 AGI:6 FOC:3 LUCK:2
Flying: Gargoyles have flight automatically, giving them a +2 bonus to Acrobatics, allowing them to escape chases as soon as they reach long range and doubling their move speed in combat.

Diver [1 star iron, 1 mithril]
STR:5 VIT:5 AGI:5 FOC:3 LUCK:2
Aquatic: Divers can swim just fine, but will have a bad time on land.

Yin Lantern [1 star iron, 2 mithril]
STR:1 VIT:1 AGI:7 FOC:7 LUCK:2
Flying: Yin lanterns have flight automatically, giving them a +2 bonus to Acrobatics, allowing them to escape chases as soon as they reach long range and doubling their move speed in combat.
Yin Mage: A yin lantern has either the Reinforcement, Sound, Time, or Water magic specialization with all three powers. Yin lanterns are rarely Time mages.

Yang Lantern [1 star iron, 2 mithril]
STR:1 VIT:1 AGI:7 FOC:7 LUCK:2
Flying: Yang lanterns have flight automatically, giving them a +2 bonus to Acrobatics, allowing them to escape chases as soon as they reach long range and doubling their move speed in combat.
Yang Mage: A yang lantern has either the Fire, Ice, Lightning, or Gravity magic specialization with all three powers. Yang lanterns are rarely Gravity mages.

Ghost [2 star iron, 4 mithril]
STR:1 VIT:5 AGI:4 FOC:4 LUCK:2
Flying: Ghosts have flight automatically, giving them a +2 bonus to Acrobatics, allowing them to escape chases as soon as they reach long range and doubling their move speed in combat.
Incorporeal: Ghosts can only harmed by typed damage.
Ghost Mage: A ghost has either the Spirit, Psychic, Darkness, or Illusion magic specialization with all three powers.

Shade [4 thaum, 2 star iron, 2 mithril]
STR:4 VIT:4 AGI:5 FOC:5 LUCK:4
Shadow Mage: A shade has a total of three powers from the Illusion and Darkness magic specializations.

Stalker [8 thaum, 3 star iron, 3 mithril]
STR:7 VIT:5 AGI:7 FOC:5 LUCK:4
Shadow Mage: A stalker has a total of four powers from the Illusion and Darkness magic specializations.

Shadow Guardian [4 star iron, 1 orichalcum]
STR:9 VIT:10 AGI:4 FOC:3 LUCK:3

Shadow Predator [8 thaum, 3 star iron, 1 mithril, 1 orichalcum]
STR:9 VIT:6 AGI:8 FOC:5 LUCK:3
Shadow Mage: The Shadow Predator has all six powers from the Illusion and Darkness magic specializations.

Shadow Warlock [8 thaum, 3 star iron, 2 mithril, 1 orichalcum]
STR:5 VIT:7 AGI:7 FOC:9 LUCK:4
Taijitu Mage: The Shadow Warlock has three powers from the Fire and Reinforcement magic specializations and two powers each from the Ice, Lightning, Darkness, and Psychic magic specializations.

Dark Angel [3 star iron, 3 mithril]
STR:8 VIT:7 AGI:8 FOC:3 LUCK:2
Flying: Dark angels have flight automatically, giving them a +2 bonus to Acrobatics, allowing them to escape chases as soon as they reach long range and doubling their move speed in combat.

Oblivion [16 thaum, 4 star iron, 4 mithril, 2 orichalcum, 1 vorpal]
STR:9 VIT:10 AGI:9 FOC:9 LUCK:6
Taijitu Mage: Oblivion has three powers from the Darkness and Reinforcement magic specializations and two powers each from the Ice, Lightning, Fire, and Psychic magic specializations.