Wartime Garden

A darklight magic girl game. Five character slots.

17 December, 197X. Trapped for months behind enemy lines, a small group of freezing, starving Civil Defense girls cling to a position on a frigid hill along the northern front. While digging foxholes in the snow, they find a tiny mysterious shrine. Eating the frozen offering buns in order to survive, the girls are drawn into another, magical war for the World Beneath the Dream.

Character Creation

Put your girl in the discussion tab.

Making a Person

Name
Only girls can be magic girls. No foreigners. Magic is sexist and racist. :(

Description
Physical and personality description. Try to include how being a child soldier in a losing war has affected you. Pre-war background is also good.

Stats

Things are done by rolling a pool of d10 derived from one stat. A magic girl's qualities as an ordinary human will tend to reflect on her powers. Everyone starts with a single dot in everything and has 7 further points to distribute. The starting stat cap is ●●●●. The hard cap is ●●●●●●●●●●.

Fitness
Speed, strength and overall physical conditioning. Fitness affects your health pool, melee damage, ground mobility and physical active defenses, which are usually either safer or less energy intensive than other options.

Wits
Reflexes and responsiveness in both combat and non-combat situations. Wits figures prominently in magical mobility, initiative, detection, resisting psychic incursion and acting out of turn or out of uniform.

Precision
Fine control of physical movement. This prominently includes shooting but is also important for controlling tells, sleight of hand, fine manipulation and the most energy-efficient combat maneuvers.

Smarts
Cleverness, perceptiveness, practical creativity and book smarts. Smarts expands magical options, often helping do more with less.

Heart
Intuition, magical reserves and straightforward feeling. Heart is important for those mahou shoujo interested in taking it to the limit with raw magical power.

Making a Magic Girl

Name: [your name/nickname] the [noun]. The theme is perceptual phenomena, e.g. Mei the Phantasm, Touka the Flare, Yuri the Aurora, Ehime the Echo etc.

Description and Colour
Under normal circumstances, the only indication of your power is heterochromia. Your right eye is different from your ordinary left eye, being of your chosen colour, possibly with a slightly larger pupil and scintilating light effects. During the transformation sequence, the special effects spill out from it. You cannot choose the same colour as your regular eye colour – that would be silly. Costume design is up to you but the group should try to come to a modicum of stylistic consensus.

Signature Weapon
Should be fantasy equipment, not a gun, but it can have moving parts or a magitechno design. Again, try to come to a consensus.

You were the girl who:

...found the shrine.

Your cardinal stat is Fitness.

...proposed eating the offerings.

Your cardinal stat is Wits.

...ate first.

Your cardinal stat is Precision.

...noticed something weird.

Your cardinal stat is Smarts.

...said thanks.

Your cardinal stat is Heart.

Cardinal Stat
Your cardinal stat significantly defines the magic girl's dominant proficiency even if she starts with only one dot in it. All rolls with your cardinal stat are -1 difficulty, cannot botch and the cost to buy dots in it is reduced.

Magical Girl Transformation
A magic girl's transformation is an overt display of power and is obvious and detectable unless superseded by some other magical effect. Going into transformation requires a transformation sequence involving normal clothes dissolving and magical light bursting out your right eye and congealing into the outfit. This forfeits initiative but can be started reflexively and cannot be interrupted. Unless otherwise specified, Powers only function while transformed.

Transformed mahou shoujo gain the following for free:

Basic Flight
Strictly non-combat flight. You are obvious, not particularly fast or maneuverable and cannot hover.

Barrier Dress
Magical girls normally never take lethal damage (all damage is effectively bashing) nor suffer wound penalties. When "killed", they will only de-transform.

Signature Gear
Your Signature Gear gives you +1d in two different things that make sense, like Ranged Damage, Melee Defense etc.

Fighting Evil

The exp currency is Shards. Shards are gained ingame by Purifying and Finishing things. Party unified.

Raising a stat costs 50.

Raising a cardinal stat costs 30.

Buying a Power costs 15x where x is the number of Powers you already have.

The default dice difficulty is 6. Having more 1's than successes is a potential botch but they otherwise don't subtract. Defender wins on a tie.

Initiative
Magic girls go last on the turn they transform but the transformation itself always happens first (so long as the girls are aware there is danger). After that, initiative is rolled with Wits where necessary. Mooks and mook groups always have 0 successes.

Actions refresh at the beginning of the round. Everyone declares in initiative order. Magic girls get two actions per round by default. They can expend any and all available actions as soon as their init comes up or hold any/all actions in reserve for defense or to interject on some specified condition later in the round.

Resources
You have (Fitness + 5) of health bar by default. Whenever you are hit, you lose your remaining actions until the next round and any multi-turn task will be interrupted. Being quite lightweight, taking more than 1 damage at a go is liable to knock a magic girl down, send her flying or put her at the bottom of a crater (and the initiative order). This is a Fitness save. When health hits 0, you are knocked out and will de-transform. Health only regenerates through Powers or between sessions. Once transformed, magic girls gain (Heart x 5) of mana bar. So long as you are not knocked out, you regain (Heart) mana at the start of each round at the same time your actions refresh.

Combat
Moving while directly engaged in combat is an action with distance determined by a buildup of successes. This is normally simplified to half your Fitness rating rounded up or your full Fitness if you use both your actions. Add 1 if Fitness is your cardinal stat. Movement becomes much faster with some magic.

Melee attacks roll Fitness both to hit and for damage unless it is a called strike on a small target in which case it rolls Precision to hit with an increased difficulty. Standard shooting attacks generally use Precision to hit either way and usually damage based on Heart. Excess successes do not become damage. Round up.

Depending on the Power used, shooting powers may be ungainly to use up close, too imprecise to call a shot with or conversely could be of such scale that the target's defenses are restricted. Group type enemies in particular are resilient against direct attacks that don't have area-of-effect scale. Particularly large or powerful enemies can be reduced to 0 health but cannot be truly destroyed without a Finisher like a Combo Attack.

Passive defenses are based on Precision by default and does not require an action but is risky to rely upon as it loses effectiveness in many situations. Wide area-of-effect dangers are too large for a sidestep to avoid and repeated or enveloping attacks can overwhelm it. Provided the magic girl's signature weapon isn't a bow or something, parrying or deflecting becomes another defensive option. Active defenses are based on Fitness by default. These options are more intensive, requiring an action and possibly a Power and mana to use, but are generally safer. Full dodges or blocks can remove the defender from danger so long as they succeed.

Powers

Each magic girl should make up their own attack names and special effects. You'll probably be able to think of something you want that's not listed here. You can pick two powers to start.

Powers are probably not balanced right now. Subject to rebalancing!

Ranged Attacks

Dream Shot (MP: 4)
A basic short to medium range magic attack. It hits with d(Precision) and deals d(Heart) damage.

Conical Blast (MP: 4)
A short range, conical area-of-effect magic attack. Deals d(Heart/2) damage in a cone.

Curtain Fire (MP: 6) (req: Dream Shot)
Unlike a regular magic attack, Curtain Fire is shot with d(Smarts) and follows danmaku defense rules. It deals d2 damage per hit in a large AoE.

Dream Beam (MP: 8) (req: Dream Shot)
A more powerful medium to long range magic attack. Deals d(Heart) + 2 damage.

Dream Buster (MP: 8) (req: Dream Beam)
Allows you to first charge up a Dream Beam for a single extra turn (both costs must be paid). Adds d(Heart) in damage and grants linear AoE, allowing it to pierce minor enemies.

Bendy Dream (MP: 4) (req: Dream Beam)
A weaker beam that fires out to long range and has no minimum range penalty. Can get around cover to some extent. It is fired with d(Smarts) and deals d(Heart) damage.

Melee

Magic Strike (MP: 1)
Melee attack or Power deals + 1 damage. Doesn't require an action.

Magic Flurry (MP: 4)
Trade the current action for (Fitness/2) melee attacks that do half damage each.

Magic Parry (passive) (req: compatible signature gear)
You can parry or deflect (passive melee defense) against ranged attacks.

Sword Force (MP: 2) (req: Magic Strike + compatible signature gear)
Melee attack that manifests as energy and goes out to short range. Deals d(Fitness/2) damage.

Shockwave (MP: 3) (req: Magic Strike + compatible signature gear)
Melee range attack. Circular shockwave blows out from point of impact. Deals d(Fitness/2) damage in a ring.

Knockback Force (MP: 2) (req: Magic Strike + compatible signature gear)
Melee attack or Power deals + 1 damage and has extra knockback force. Doesn't require an action.

Waif Fu (MP: 1)
When using a passive defense against a melee attack, roll excess successes back against the attacker.