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Magic & Runes

The system Arx is remembered for, and the one place where the manual layer and the stat layer point the same direction.

Anatomy

  • 21 rune symbols in the engine (Rune.h): Aam (create), Nhi (negate), Mega (improve), Yok (fire), Taar (projectile), Kaom (protection), Vitae (life), Vista (vision), Stregum (magic), Morte (death), Cosum (object), Comunicatum (communication), Movis (movement), Tempus (time), Folgora (storm), Spacium (space), Tera (earth), Cetrius (poison), Rhaa (lower), Fridd (ice), and Akbaa, which is reserved for the god and never enters the player's kit.
  • 50 spells, tiered 1–10, distributed 5 / 5 / 5 / 6 / 5 / 5 / 5 / 5 / 5 / 4. Ten are flagged secret (bSecret) — they never appear in the book and must be learned from the world: Harm, Activate Portal, Ice Projectile, Curse, Cold Protection, Poison Projection, Slow Down, Ice Field, Life Drain, Fake Summon.
  • Runes are found as physical objects, not unlocked by level. Vocabulary is a loot table, which is why the mage's power curve is authored by level design rather than by XP.

Full table with rune sequences and costs: Spell Data.

The gesture is not a difficulty gate

Rune sequences are 2–4 symbols long, and length barely correlates with tier. Every tier-1 spell is two runes; tier 10 ranges from two (Control Target: Movis Comunicatum) to four (Mass Incinerate: Mega Aam Mega Yok). Tier 9 is uniformly three.

That is a deliberate flattening. The manual cost of casting stays roughly constant for the whole game while spell power scales tenfold, so the ritual keeps its texture without degenerating into a dexterity tax at high level. What actually gates a spell is owning the runes and having the caster level.

Caster level: one number, three jobs

casterLevel = clamp((Casting + Mind) × 0.1, 1, 10)

It sets spell power, it sets duration, and for offensive spells it sets the mana cost. Utility spells are flat (Heal 4, Enchant Weapon 35, Freeze Time 60, Mass Incinerate 160); attack spells are multiplied (Magic Missile ×1, Ice Projectile ×1.5, Poison ×2, Fireball ×3, Paralyse ×3, Lightning ×6, Mass Lightning ×8).

The efficiency trap

Fireball: damage 3 × CL, cost 3 × CL → exactly 1 damage per mana at every level. What levelling buys is burst per cast and blast radius (30 × CL units), not efficiency. Magic Missile: missile count clamp((CL+1)/2, 1, 5), damage (4 + CL × 0.2) × 0.8 each, cost CL × 1 → 3.4 damage/mana at CL 1, falling to 2.4 at CL 10, and the missile count is hard-capped at 5 from CL 9, so the last levels buy cost and nothing else.

The mage does not become more efficient. He becomes more concentrated — bigger single blows out of the same pool. Mana throughput, not spell power, is the balancing lever, which is why Ethereal Link (regen) matters more than it looks.

Precast: the concession to real time

Drawing three runes takes seconds you do not have mid-fight, so the game lets you bank spells: 3 precast slots, FIFO (a fourth push evicts the oldest), 1-second global cooldown between launches, mana checked and charged at launch, and a ~550 ms cast animation before the effect fires.

This is the whole design compromise in one feature. Without it, gesture casting would only work out of combat and the mage build would collapse into pre-buffing. With it, combat magic becomes a preparation game — you enter a room already holding three loaded spells — which fits the dungeon-crawl fantasy better than a hotbar would have.

Touchpoints

  • → Character Build: Casting and Mind jointly set caster level; Mind also sets the mana pool, making it the most overloaded stat in the game.
  • → Combat: Enchant Weapon and the damage spells are the mage's route into a system otherwise governed by Strength.
  • → Stealth & Light: Ignit/Douse manipulate the light level that stealth is measured against; Invisibility bypasses the check entirely.
  • → Simulation & Interaction: Telekinesis and Create Food are physics/needs verbs wearing a spell costume.
  • → World & Level Structure: runes are placed items, so spell access is a level-design decision.

What breaks if you remove it

Everything. Strip gesture casting and Arx is a competent, forgettable dungeon crawler with worse melee than its contemporaries. The rune system is the reason the game is still discussed.