MAGICAL COSTS, LIMITS, FAILURE AND CONSEQUENCES
/CORE RULE
Magic always has limits.
A spell may be powerful, reliable, beautiful, frightening, or socially prestigious, but it cannot freely ignore bodies, distance, resistance, materials, environment, law, or consequence.
The exact spell page controls its range, duration, effect, target, and mechanical cost.
Narration must not silently increase a spell’s power because the scene would benefit from a larger effect.
/NO UNIVERSAL FREE POWER
Valeune does not treat magic as effortless wish fulfillment.
Casting requires some combination of focus, training, bodily effort, time, words, gestures, tools, materials, connection, positioning, or emotional discipline according to the spell.
Do not invent a universal mana system unless one is explicitly established.
Do not describe every caster as possessing a visible energy bar.
Costs should arise from the school, spell, body, and situation.
/PHYSICAL STRAIN
Magic may cause fatigue, pain, dizziness, trembling, weakness, shortness of breath, nausea, sensory disruption, bleeding, muscle injury, headache, fever, or loss of coordination.
Physical strain should match the type and intensity of magic.
Repeated casting without rest increases risk.
A character cannot cast indefinitely because no mechanical spell slot has been mentioned in narration.
/MENTAL STRAIN
Magic may require concentration, memory, emotional control, symbolic precision, and resistance to distraction.
Mental strain can produce confusion, intrusive memory, inability to focus, emotional exhaustion, poor judgment, or temporary difficulty separating magical perception from ordinary experience.
Mental strain does not automatically mean madness.
Do not stigmatize mental illness by equating it with dangerous magic.
/MATERIAL COST
Some spells may require tools, written forms, prepared spaces, rare materials, blood, fuel, crafted objects, legal records, or ritual participants.
Materials must come from somewhere.
They may be expensive, regulated, stolen, fragile, regionally scarce, or difficult to transport.
Do not allow a caster to ignore material requirements because the needed object is inconvenient.
/TIME
Some magic is immediate.
Other effects require preparation, repeated action, ritual, study, or maintenance.
Urgency can reduce safety.
A caster interrupted during preparation may lose the spell, waste materials, create an incomplete effect, or expose themselves to danger.
Do not compress long rituals into seconds unless the exact spell permits it.
/RANGE
Range matters.
A spell affecting a nearby object cannot reach across a city.
A connection-based spell cannot automatically cross the continent.
Line of sight, physical barriers, magical wards, distance, weather, and knowledge of the target may interfere.
Do not expand range through dramatic narration.
/DURATION
No temporary effect becomes permanent merely because the caster wants it to last.
Maintained effects may require concentration, renewed casting, materials, or continued connection.
When duration ends, the consequences of what occurred during the effect remain.
A magically reinforced bridge may fail later if never physically repaired.
/RESISTANCE
People, objects, institutions, environments, and other magic can resist.
A target may possess will, training, wards, social support, physical strength, legal protection, or conflicting magical influence.
Resistance does not require the target to be a caster.
No spell automatically succeeds against every lower-level person.
/ENVIRONMENT
Magic interacts with physical surroundings.
Fire spreads.
Water carries contamination.
Force damages structures.
Movement can cause falls.
Memory work can be disrupted by noise, injury, or fear.
Blood work is affected by health and distance.
Heart work is affected by trust.
Hollow work is affected by record and witness.
The environment should create both opportunities and risks.
/FAILURE TYPES
A spell may fail completely.
It may produce only part of the intended effect.
It may affect the wrong target.
It may end too early.
It may become difficult to stop.
It may reveal the caster.
It may damage tools or materials.
It may produce a technically correct result with harmful consequences.
Failure should relate to the spell’s school and method rather than becoming random spectacle.
/BREATH FAILURE
Breath failure may misdirect movement, create excessive force, destabilize the caster, or cause injury through uncontrolled momentum.
/BONE FAILURE
Bone failure may preserve a flaw, confuse memory, reinforce the wrong structure, misidentify a boundary, or create harmful rigidity.
/BLOOD FAILURE
Blood failure may transfer too much, connect the wrong people, intensify injury, weaken the caster, or leave an unwanted connection active.
/HEART FAILURE
Heart failure may expose disagreement, collapse trust, distribute burden unfairly, or fail because commitment was not genuine.
/HOLLOW FAILURE
Hollow failure may erase the wrong trace, sever an unintended connection, create a visible absence, or damage the caster’s own memory.
/COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES
Magic may harm bystanders, property, evidence, relationships, public trust, political stability, or the environment.
A successful spell can still produce legal or moral consequences.
Moving a wagon out of danger may destroy a market stall.
Healing a criminal may create political suspicion.
Reading a memory may violate privacy.
Strengthening an oath may empower an unjust institution.
/LASTING HARM
Magical injury can leave scars, disability, chronic pain, damaged memory, weakened identity, broken connection, mistrust, legal restriction, or fear of future casting.
Not every injury is fully reversible.
Lasting consequences should not be added casually, but they must remain possible.
/LEGAL CONSEQUENCES
Illegal casting may result in investigation, fines, loss of professional standing, imprisonment, faction punishment, exile, or political scandal.
The seriousness depends on the spell, target, harm, authority, evidence, and region.
A noble caster may receive different treatment from a poor caster, reflecting Valeune’s inequality.
/SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES
A community may fear a Hollow practitioner.
A family may resent Blood magic used without consent.
A court may distrust memory evidence.
A faction may value a useful caster while exploiting them.
Reputation matters even when no law was broken.
/NO AUTOMATIC BACKLASH
Magic does not need to injure the caster every time.
Competent practice can be safe within limits.
Costs and risks should be meaningful without making every ordinary spell a disaster.
Failure should arise from difficulty, pressure, inexperience, resistance, overreach, damaged tools, or specific circumstances.
/GENERATION RULES
Use the exact spell’s listed limits.
Do not increase scale, range, duration, or certainty.
Account for preparation, materials, concentration, resistance, and environment.
Allow competent success.
Use failure when dramatically and mechanically justified.
Preserve consequences after the spell ends.
Do not use generic magical corruption as a substitute for precise harm.
/FINAL RULE
Magic should solve some problems, create others, and leave the practical world intact.
Its limits protect tension, character agency, class structure, geography, labor, and consequence.
Power becomes meaningful when it cannot do everything.