You're really sort of overthinking how long it takes to form a bond. For one, there's variance in the depth of a bond, so a person could form a shallow bond with a place and just not get a lot out of it. It's not all or nothing.

Oh? How are "shallow" bonds depicted or hinted at overall? I've yet to read anything about mages making minor bonds, for whatever purposes they might have.

Agents of Artifice.
While there are instances of Jace pulling on extraplanar bonds, most of the time he looks at the local mana first and pulls whatever he can out of it. But those bonds aren't deep and he drops them out of memory pretty much as soon as they're tapped out. These are places he's spent maybe 5 minutes at too, so it isn't like he has some deep spiritual connection to them.

It'd be the equivalent of discarding a land card for 1 mana.

Hmm, I have AoA somewhere, I should dig it up and check on that.

Unaware whether you are savvy with D&D or not (esp 5th edition) but then if these shallow bonds were also options, how might that be done differently than a 'typical' mana bond?

5th ed. is essentially a stripped down 3rd ed which acted as a basis for Pathfinder of which I'm very familiar.
What I wouldsuggest is to view them as stats on a map the same as objects have things like thickness/hardness and HP.

My suggestion would be to come up with a communal mana pool for given maps and have a d% roll for compatibility to draw mana from it. Have the pool be accessible to anyone on the map, but have factors like color and such impact the success of the d% roll. Maybe tie it in to the skill points in concentration to augment that?

Maybe add in a time factor too, with mana burn as the punishment in case someone just wants to gobble up the mana for no reason. Mana burn would probably best be a fading CON damage.

Or at least, that's how I'd do things.

Oh right, we have discussed this; we both are invested into PF, tho I'd prefer to use the Plane Shift material with D&D in mind, as they obviously intended. Hmm, I'm interested, but let's see if I understand what you're driving at. So, on any given map (preferably grid in this case) dictate how much mana is "on" the map and what colors (presumably to match up with what types of terrain are present, aaand.... do what with a d%?

To draw from the map pool, rather than established bonds, the player would roll a d% to see how many points they can draw out of the terrain each time. Adding points to concentrate can enhance the result.
The d% represents the compatibility of the person with the color on the map. So a person drawing the right type for their character would get a bonus to make it easier, an allied color would get no bonus, and an enemy color would get a small penalty.

Oh okay, I see, though 5E #1 doesn't *really* do skill checks the way PF does, and Concentration is literally just "Oh, this spell requires concentration. So I'm concentrating... X, Y, & Z can disrupt my concentration, where at least X is trying to cast a second spell that requires concentration." So I'd find something equivalent (could just passively say "You're a Goblin with no modifications making you count as dual-colored, so you're Mono-Red so to speak, thus get a bonus to the d% roll when gathering red mana, no bonus if you try for Black or Green next turn, and/or a small penalty to the d% roll if you try for White or Blue next turn")

Hmm, if that's an impromptu bond, what would be a good general way to make more permanent mana bonds?

Again on the Jodah series, the narrator of that series once explained why most couldn't or didn't use magic when it was theoretically proven that anyone could use magic. However, I didn't quite understand the explanation. The only thing I understood was that in order to be good at magecraft it has to be taught when they are young (basically the Jedi "too old" explanation). Can anyone explain what they meant.

I am glad mana burn is out. I honestly can't imagine how you would reconcile an universal need for careful management with or characters

Eh, just like they reconciled it when mana burn was still around. Really, I think people are overestimating how difficult it is to not ge mana burned. But at the end of the day, officially removing mana burn from the lore would mostly bother me because it would make the cosmology even more inconsistent. It's an established rule, and if your fictional universe doesn't follow those, it has a problem.

I like to think of mana burn narratively like Spider-Man's web shooters. We know they're there and that's how his webbing works, but it only becomes relevant when the writers decide they get damaged in a fight or that Spidey runs out of web fluid. It's something that's easy to write around and not bring up, but it's an option that's available if you want to create some additional tension.

I think it introduces kind of an unnatural mindset in those cases.

Then there's the sheer flavor dissonance. Too much life and holiness apparently turns you into a zombie

I'm considering perhaps using the mana gained using the temporary method could be used to cast spells using the spell points variant (1st=2, 2nd=3, 3rd=5, 4th=6, 5th=7, 6th=9, 7th=10, 8th=11, 9th=13, tho for color's sake I'd make cantrips cost 1) however, enable players to pay extra of their associated color(s) mana gained to make a renewable spell slot associated with that color. Not sure the increments. For example...

Green Elf.
# of Green Mana Points for # Lvl Green Spell Slot = A. Y×Y B. Y×2 C. Y×3 (Y = 2 for 1st level, 3 for 2nd level, etc)

I wasn't even aware that mana burn was featured in any of the books. I actually read the Ice Age Cycle too.

But to come back to this:
Eeer... not sure? Do you remember where exactly that's explained (which book, perhaps chapter or general context, perhaps even page number)? I'd need to refresh my memory on that explanation before I can try to help you make sense of it . From the top of my head, I think the part where anyone can learn magic (or not) hasn't been handled very consistently throughout the lore in general. It's definitely a bit of a big deal in the Greensleeves trilogy that many people are just hopeless muggles forever, but of course those books rely heavily on super outdated concepts of magic from the pre-revisionist era, so that's by no means a strong indication. I don't specifically remember other stories bringing it up one way or another, though. At least I'm pretty sure that not everyone can learn every colour...

Fake edit: I love how you keep referring to the Ice Age trilogy as the Jodah series. Jodah is the best character

The task mage came into being from the simple fact, while in theory anyone can learn to cast a spell, not many do, and very, very few do spellcraft well at all. In this wizards are similar to musicians. The truly great bards and troubadours can rhyme on the spot, create new melodies, master any instrument, and do so with grace and elan. Most of the rest of the population aren't real singers, or composers, or players, and can't be bothered anyway. Then there are those who know one or two good songs, can carry a tune, and entertain with those songs and nothing more...They know a few spells very, very well but have lacked either the desire or ability to press on to discover the nature of magic itself.

Page 62-63, Chapter 4 in the Eternal Ice book

There is also some slight information on page 203, Chapter 12 in the same book. They make a comparison between warriors and mages.

Edit: The whole Jodah series is the best followed by Legends Cycle 2 saga. These two series are the only series that really show how magic works. Also the Old Ravnica books or the Old Kos books are my third favorite-loved that epic fist fight in the second book also liked how we had an angel main character.

Then there's pre-rev the books Arena, Whispering Woods, Shattered Chains, and the crossover Final Sacrifice, that really try to make in-world magic follow the game mechanics.

Ah, thanks, that's quite helpful. I think the part about warriors and mages is particularly insightful. It basically says that both professions need lots of training, but that there are a lot more warriors than mages because being a warrior is all about the normal, visible kind of reality as opposed to the magical and invisible one. The former just makes it easier for people to wrap their brains around; it's easier to understand what a warrior does and how he does it.

The average peasant does not need to have reality explained or justified. [...] Magic, on the other hand, requires a sense of faith in an unseen world, even though the forces of that world have effect in reality. Magery is more of an art than a science and as such requires a level of comprehension. That is a step that few seem to be able to take.

I'm sort of on the fence when it comes to the portrayal of magic in Legends II (disclaimer: I only started reading the third book yesterday in what little time I have for private reading atm, so I haven't read through the entire trilogy yet). On the one hand, it does a nice job explaining why the locations in the books have the colours they have, and what it means for a person to be a particular colour. I also like the descriptions of Meha tapping into the geological features of the land, and Testuo basically summons an aether copy of Lord Dark as a sparring partner, which is a nice (and probably coincidental) nod to the model of the Ice Age books. The fun game of 'spot the card reference' is also really nice. On the other hand, the magic of Tetsuo and some other people feels more like it's straight out of Dragon Ball Z. The fact that he can do pretty much anything that he wants as long as it's roughly in his colours doesn't exactly make him more fun to read about. His ill-defined skillset also leads to awkward plot holes like the one in Assassin's Blade. So, he and Ayesha are fighting their way through obscene masses of metal snakes to find and destroy the Serpent Generator, but have to take several detours and even climb out of the window and along the facade to get close to the damn thing. And then Tetsuo suddenly casts Gaseous Form on himself and Ayesha, which enables them to hover and pass through walls??? Why didn't he do that at once? The part where Lord Dark redirects black mana to Kusho is also kind of bizarre. Like, fine, I believe he can do that, but why does that result in people on Kusho getting some strange addicition to magic? Rather than, you know, the island producing black mana?

It makes sense to me. Dark cast a spell that redirects and shapes black mana into Kusho in the form of curse that poisons the lands Mana pool. It is basically a "turn all lands into swamps in addition to whatever type of land it is" plus with a added effect.



I honestly can't see why you have a problem with that. The trilogy makes it abundantly clear that the lands in madara are particularly potent. Which means in-universe they probably tap for or or Mana or more without side effects because Gameplay/Story Segregation. Furthermore, this man is no novice battlemage getting ready to journey across the land and therefore gain more lands. This man is a master who is not only well traveled IE very powerful but very, very good at swordmanship. A deadly combination if Baral is any indication.

Side Tangent-Gathering magic is handled badly in-universe I think. There are times when characters take a few minutes to gather Mana for a probable Five Mana spell but other times mages cast counters which are two mana or three mana instantly then comment they could do it all day.

I definitely can see that regardless of the medium (besides the TCG itself) it's extremely difficult to actually adhere to the actual mana system of the game. Yes, now and then they can be compared without much problem, but exact # of mana symbols you add to your mana pool by tapping N lands OR mana costs generally aren't consistent. Heck, for example, devoid on colored-mana-cost Eldrazi doesn't do anything but adjust the gaming environment. Maybe it'd be easier to put mana costs into tiers, 0-3 is the lowest tier, for example, 4-6 is a medium tier, 7-9 is high tier, and 2-digits worth of CMC is just well beyond that.

Can anyone consider a method of tracking the nature of 5th D&D tile maps? If I could, I'd have the map on the table AND a smaller scale representative on hand to track whether a mana-providing tile is "tapped" or not.