Principles of Nimbic Energy

In Nimbus, magic is the art of harvesting, binding, and manipulating nimbic energy, which comes in a variety of different types. Most commonly found is the energy of the four major powers: light, earth, fire, and shadow. Energy is a physical substance that permeates objects, like water in a sponge. It can be extracted with binding rituals, which often damage the object when the energy is used in a spell and always deplete its supply of energy. It can also be extracted by completely destroying an object, i.e. by fire, in which case the energy is released as nimbic vapor. If there is enough nimbic vapor of the same type in an area, it will condense into a semi-stable cloud of energy called a nimbus.

Everything in Nimbus has some energy bound within it and the particular composition of that energy determines what makes the object unique. For example, most rocks contain almost entirely earth energy, but sulphur is unique from other rocks because it contains a small amount of fire energy as well. Living things’ physical forms and personalities are also determined by the composition of nimbic energies bound within them. Common medicine holds that ailments stem from an imbalance in the person’s nimbic energies that is incompatible with their nature. Warriors even more than mages cultivate an internal pool of nimbic energy to enhance their physical strength and combat skills.

In order to cast a spell in Nimbus, a mage must first obtain energy for the spell, then shape it into a pattern specific to the effect they want to create. Energy can be obtained by force, extracting it from the environment with binding rituals, or by worshiping or bargaining with magical entities who have large amounts of innate energy, such as gods and fey. After finding some energy and binding it to their control, a mage must shape it using the internal energy in their hands and bodies to guide the external energy in a technique called channeling. Simple spells can be performed just by channeling a single type of bound energy, but more advanced ones require precise mathematically defined patterns of a rainbow of different energy types. Once shaped, releasing the bindings on the energy produces magical effects.

There are many other uses of the basic principles of binding and nimbic energy. For example, there are certain magical entities such as fey who have so much nimbic energy within them that binding that energy binds the entity’s physical body as well, which can be handy for making deals or restraining rampant flamekin. Also, since the composition of an object’s nimbic energy determines its form, infusing particular types of energy into an object and extracting others allows you to transmute one object into another, which is the basic principle for alchemy.

In addition to energy from the major powers, you can also find energy from a variety of minor powers such as air and water energy. The difference between the major powers and the minor powers from an arcanist’s perspective is not how easily they are found (many minor powers can be found quite easily), but what concentrations they are found in. Air energy is thinly distributed across the world and it is rare to find enough of it in one place to be useful. Earth energy, on the other hand, is often found in concentrations sufficient for spellcasting. It is unknown just how many types of energy exist but some scholars theorize there are an infinite number. For example, wizards from Haytower have recently claimed they were able to extract cheese nimbic from a particularly unique gruyere; their experiments do not hold much weight with other scholars, though.

Game Mechanics

The principles of nimbic energy above describe the magic system of Nimbus in the abstract and could be applied to any RPG system. In order to make use of nimbic magic in a game, an implementation of rules specific to the system is needed. Below, I have implemented mechanics for nimbic magic in D&D 5e, D&D 3.5, and Fate Core.

D&D 5e

Wizard/Sorcerer Subclass – Nimbus Arcanist

D&D 3.5

For version 3.5 of D&D, the nimbus arcanist is a prestige class instead of a subclass but most of the mechanics remain the same.

Prestige Class – Nimbus Arcanist

You can take a maximum of 5 levels of this prestige class. At 1st level, gain the Nimbic Binding and Energy Channeling abilities described in the 5e rules above and spells equivalent to +1 level of an existing arcane spellcasting class. At subsequent levels, you may select an ability from the abilities listed in the 5e rules above or the Elemental Control ability described below, and also gain spells equivalent to +1 level of an existing arcane spellcasting class.

Fate Core

Fate Core does not have a default magic system of its own, so the following implementation of nimbic energy and binding comprises a complete magic system that can be used by any Fate character, rather than an extension as the D&D implementation above. This system introduces two skills, Binding and Channeling, an optional character aspect, Favor, and several stunts. Energy in this system exists as tokens on aspects that can be consumed through channeling or spellcasting.

Skill: Binding

Description: Binding is the skill of connecting to and asserting control over energy around you. It allows you to harvest energy for spells and channeling and also has a variety of uses for utility and countermagic.

Attack: Binding cannot ordinarily be used to attack.

Defend: You can use binding to defend against any magical attack.

Create an advantage: You can use binding to bind energy in the world around you. Do this by taking the “create an advantage” action on a scene aspect or something described as being in the scene (which becomes an aspect). Roll 4df+binding and put energy of a single type appropriate to the aspect onto the aspect in an amount equal to the amount you beat the GM’s difficulty by (GMs: I recommend setting this difficulty at zero most of the time). You can use this energy later to power channeling and spells. You can only perform this action on a given aspect once per scene.

Overcome: You can use binding to remove opponents’ bindings by overcoming the amount of energy they have bound on an aspect. When you succeed, remove all of your opponent’s energy on that aspect, but do not remove the aspect.

Skill: Channeling

Description: Channeling governs raw elemental manipulation of energy – moving earth, creating balls of fire, etc. In order to use the channeling skill you must expend one energy of any type. You can optionally expend more energy of the same type before you roll, with each additional energy granting +1 to the roll.

Attack: When you attack with channeling, you manipulate a physical manifestation of your energy type to do harm to your opponent. The damage you deal is of the energy type expended.

Defend: Same as attack. You can defend as long as it makes sense to do so with a physical manifestation of the energy type.

Create an advantage: You can create an advantage that involves physically manifesting or manipulating your energy type.

Overcome: You can use channeling to overcome physical obstacles where it makes sense to do so.

Aspect: Favor

The favor aspect represents your character’s philosophical alignment with one of Nimbus’ major or minor powers. It is written with the associated power and a rank, which begins at 2 when you take the aspect, for example, “Earth Favor 2”. When your favor aspect is compelled, you do not gain fate points and you do not have to pay fate points to refuse the compel. Instead, you will gain or lose a point from your favor rank (up to the maximum skill rank for the campaign). For compel reference, a quick summary of each major power’s philosophical stance follows:

You can take the “create an advantage” action to use favor to gain energy of your favored type by rolling 4df + your favor rank, then putting that many energy tokens onto your favor aspect. This can be done whenever there is no energy on your favor aspect.

Spells

Fiat elemental manipulation with channeling only goes so far. There is much that magic can do in Nimbus that is beyond that skill. Therefore, I recommend including a variety of spells accessible to players that can be used to spend energy in more interesting ways. Each spell has a cost in a combination of at least two elemental energies (because using only one energy type would be channeling) and an effect that describes what happens when the spell is cast. A roll is not required to cast these spells, just take an action and expend the energy. I recommend limiting a mage’s initial repertoire of spells to a handful so there is some thought given to energy types, but the maximum number of spells a mage can learn is unlimited. Below are some sample spells, all of which operate within the same zone as the caster and last until the end of the scene unless otherwise noted.

Stunts