Magic and the Mists¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
This document covers how magic works at the table and how the Mists drive recovery. The cosmology of the Mists lives in the setting material; this file covers only the mechanical layer. It assumes the d6 combat engine in the core-rules document.
Magic in this game is uncanny rather than utilitarian. There is no spell catalogue. What a caster can do is expressed through the same Pool the rest of the company rolls, read through a class's combos and Tactics.
Mana and The Old Craft¶
Some classes, the Mage foremost, turn misses into fuel. The Old Craft Tactic lets a caster set aside any die showing a 1 as Mana rather than treating it as a miss. Mana accumulates across a fight and resets only between fights.
Mana is a resource a class spends on effects defined by that class. Because a 1 always misses in the core resolution, The Old Craft gives the Mage a use for the worst face on the die, turning the Pool's dead results into a slow-building reservoir. The specific effects Mana pays for are a per-class open question and are not yet fixed.
Healing In the Fight¶
Wounds close on their own between fights, so a healer's value is not patching afterward. It is preventing Falls during the fight. See the core-rules document for why: a Fallen Retainer is gone until the Mists return them, so a Fall prevented is a fighter kept for the next battle.
Healer Combos¶
A healer's in-combat ability, typically gated behind a Triple or a similar combo, restores 1 Hit Point to a target. This is dramatic, rare, and the primary reason to bring a healer.
The Priest's Hand¶
RELOCATING (2026-07-29). The Priest's Hand and healing-as-restoration are moving to the Priest Guild layer, not a class or universal Tactic. The First Level Tactics axis has been retired (see retired-mechanics). This section is a placeholder pending that rework, owned by Daniel. Healing as a class feature is retired; in-fight survival is now the Warden and the Knight, and between-fights recovery is the Mists.
Update (2026-07-29). Advancement is now defined (see character-creation): joining the Priest Guild costs 3 Advancement Points and grants standing plus a small starter perk, not yet defined. The Priest's Hand itself is a bigger Guild ability, bought afterward as a Specialty once the Character has Priest standing. It is not handed out automatically on joining.
The Priest's Hand (relocating to the Priest Guild). Instead of rolling their own personal die this turn, the caster may fully restore one ally: reversing a wound on a standing combatant, or fully reviving a Fallen combatant, Retainer or Character, so long as it fell during the current battle and that battle has not yet ended. The cost is the caster's personal die only; the rest of their Company still rolls normally. A revived combatant does not act the turn it returns; it resumes contributing on the caster's next turn.
Open question carried into the Guild rework: whether reviving a Fallen Character with The Priest's Hand also refunds the Life that Fall cost.
Between-Fights Recovery Is the Mists' Work¶
No roll restores a Fallen combatant between fights. Combatants still standing are simply made whole, and the Fallen return when the Mists bring them back, all together, on the GM's timing. Resurrection in Hynafol is the work of the Mists, not of any caster. It is not prayed for, paid for, or negotiated.
The one exception inside a battle is The Priest's Hand and healer combos above, which act only within the fight in which the combatant Fell. Once a battle ends, the Fallen belong to the Mists.
Wellsprings¶
Wellsprings modify the Lives economy rather than the combat engine, so they are documented in full in the core-rules Lives section. In brief: a combatant that dies at a Wellspring is returned by the Mists without expending a Life. Wellsprings exist only in Hynafol and are sought after by lords, since adjacent Wellsprings can sustain a war indefinitely until specific fictional conditions dissolve them.
Coup de Grace denies this mercy. A deliberate killing blow delivered to a combatant who has already Fallen always costs a Life in full, even next to a Wellspring (core-rules, Part Eleven). This is the one exception to the paragraph above, and it joins the seed doc's own Wellspring language on the list of Documentation Debt this file and 00-design/03_The_Mists.docx still owe each other; see open-questions.