Overview
Ice mages exploit an Ice Entity, an ancient imprisoned evil that desires a frozen death for the entire universe. Wisps of an Ice Entity’s power and consciousness leak out of its prison. Ice mages draw on these wisps. By sacrificing their own body heat, they draw an Ice Entity’s diffuse attention to a nearby location, sapping an equal amount of heat from there.
Ice magic’s utility is narrow, as it is impossible to meaningfully affect large amounts of matter without freezing oneself to death. In return, however, ice mages are granted a rare gift: they effortlessly penetrate a soul’s innate resistance to hostile magic, allowing them to affect the matter inside someone else’s body.
Self-damage
Several Ice Magic features directly cause you to take physical stress to represent the loss of body heat and risk of hypothermia. Stress boxes filled this way can be recovered if you warm up again, but consequences cannot. This damage can be reduced or negated by anything that makes you resistant to having your (core) body temperature lowered.
Skills
Ice Magic
- Prerequisite: Frozen Pact
Single-cost skill. Describes the finesse with which you are able to manipulate your icy pact.
Stunts
Frozen Pact
- Prerequisite: Access to an Ice Entity’s power
- Cost: 100 XP
You have made contact and formed a tenuous bond with an Ice Entity, granting you access to ice magic.
Sliverkill
- Prerequisite: Ice Magic 20
- Cost: 50 XP
You freeze solid a small sliver of tissue inside an opponent’s heart, brain, spinal cord, or other vital organ. As an action, roll Ice Magic against the target’s choice of defending skill (see below). The target takes physical stress equal to twice the number of success shifts (0 on failure). You take one shift of physical stress from the heat lost.
Sliverkill Defense
- Blade magic: the blade mage attempts to cut away the connection that the Ice Entity is forming to their body. If you win the check with fewer shifts than your Ice Magic Aspect Bonus, damage is not doubled.
- Ice magic: the ice mage hijacks your connection to the Ice Entity and spreads out the effect. If you win the check with fewer shifts than your Ice Magic Aspect Bonus, damage is not doubled.
- Blood magic: the blood mage rapidly circulates the blood in the affected volume in an attempts to spread out and reduce the damage. Requires Pulse Control or Blood Shaper.
- Athletics: your target moves unpredictably, attempting to throw off your aim. Defender must be aware that you are trying to Sliverkill them or already be moving unpredictably for some other reason.
- Counterattacking: your target or someone else attacks you in an attempt to throw off your concentration. This is not technically a defense against Sliverkill; instead it prevents the Ice Magic vs. Defense roll from happening in the first place.
Cold Calculation
- Prerequisite: Ice Magic 20
- Cost: 50 XP
By carefully modulating your connection to the Ice Entity, you have learned to conserve core body heat and draw from your periphery instead. If you are near a sufficient heat source, Self-Damage is halved or negated (at GM discretion).
Entropy Thief
- Prerequisite: Ice Magic 40, Cold Calculation
- Cost: 200 XP
Your manipulations of the Ice Entity’s power are subtle and cunning, and you no longer have to sacrifice as much heat as you are taking. Self-damage taken from Ice Magic features is halved. This effect stacks with Cold Calculation.