Unknown Armies 3 has one of my favorite RPG battle systems ever. I'm not talking about the page of ways to avoid a fight, I'm talking about what happens after that when you inevitably ignore it. The weapon and spell rules collide with the coercion and sanity systems and the real fight takes place in the psychic terrain of the mind as much as the physical battlefield. Weapons and spells can kill you instantly but most of the time the fight is decided when someone breaks and runs away, or comes up with a novel way to disable the enemy with a spell that you'd never think to use in combat.
Adepts are the most mechanically dense caster type in UA3. They each get several pages of spells and often their own unique subsystems governing how they deploy them. Adepts are lifestyle magick users and would know their own spell lists by heart, but I don't. Sometimes it's worth pausing the game to pore over the spell list in search of the optimal play for a character who would, realistically, know exactly what to do. Sometimes it's better to just make something up and call it random magick. Especially if the NPC is powerful enough that they have charges to burn, like the Plutomancer and Agrimancer from The Colonel's Table. They got multiple sigs a day from their mundane business activities, they could just throw out random magick that fits their schools thematically and pay the premium for going outside the formula spells.
But I would like to color inside the lines of the game system whenever possible, because having restraints forces magick users to be more creative and stops them completely taking over the game. Unknown Armies is not a Pathfinder style game of tactical combat but I really appreciate how those designers gave NPC spellcasters with lengthy spell lists their own "tactics" section explaining what they did in a fight. Default behavior and a couple if/thens to account for the most likely outcomes of a battle. So I wrote this for Unknown Armies 3e.
These are spells for a street fight, where the caster wants to either disable their attackers or escape the situation. They don't encompass all the things Adepts can do outside of combat to ruin someone's life, which are typically more dangerous because the target doesn't know they're happening and can't fight back. When the NPCs do that, you've got the time to look in the spell list and pick things that fit their master plan and hit the players where they're vulnerable. This list is for what the NPCs do right the fuck now, in the middle of a fight.
Adepts have the ability to store spells in magick artifacts for later use. This is something you should decide beforehand based on the character's power level (checker, charger, big named faction NPC, global or cosmic NPC, etc), whether they use their charges often or save them up, and whether their caster school allows them to cheaply charge on a daily basis. The artifact creation process can create something from nothing, giving you more uses of a spell than the charges you put into it. Some schools become a lot more dangerous if they can carry an item around that lets them fire off a powerful spell over and over even after tabooing.
For now we'll cover the first nine spell schools in the UA3 core set, books 1 through 5, going alphabetically.
AGRIMANCY
Agrimancy is an expensive school with overcosted spells. Still, someone who ran a business with multiple farms under their umbrella could easily get a lot of charges, even majors on a yearly basis. Ballpark the number of charges an NPC has based on how many animals they could realistically raise and kill personally. Their spells are of limited use in a magick duel, but someone with a large farm should have armed fieldhands or family as backup.
Breaking the Predator's Fang (3 minors) is a good pre-buff since it's not time limited. Ignoring damage from a single attack lets you survive an ambush and an Agrimancer who controls sufficient land to charge regularly should always have it up. Agrimancers with lots of charges to burn can buff a whole team. The wording is fucky but I would interpret "Only one such shield can protect anyone at one time" as limiting each person to one shield, not limiting the caster to one shield total.
Raise From Stones (3 minors) is marginally useful for inflicting an Unnatural 3 shock versus unhardened foes when they see your gross rock people. Canonically this is what got Maria Menchaca kicked off the force in Maria in Three Parts. The little golems are otherwise useless in combat.
Domesticate (1 sig) stretches the bounds of my random street fight with no prep time framework, but if the Agrimancer has the juice for it and the fight is on a farm then it's fair game. Farm animals are no joke. A cow can gore people, a horse can cripple with one kick. A pissed off pig will kill. Adding an animal companion to the mix gives the players something else to attack and can also cover the sodbuster's escape.
Their blast is useless for self defense.
CAMERATURGY
Cameraturgy offensive spells require the caster to have photos of the target. If they've kept the players under surveillance they have a chance to survive an encounter, though they'd still rather not be in a real fight. Cameraturges with professional photography jobs can get minors equal to the hours they spend working every day, and if they're good at their job or have poignant moments handfed to them (wedding photographer, war correspondent, etc) upgrade some of those to sigs.
Frozen Moments (1 minor) and Empathy (2 sigs) inflict single target stress checks. Try to disable the most threatening enemy and get away.
Ex Treatment (1 minor) and The Great Divorce (1 sig) are single target blasts, but they require the Cameraturge to have a picture of the target ready and burn the eyes out. They're better for assassination than magick duels.
CINEMANCY
Cinemancers should be charging all the time. Unknown Armies player characters are constantly spouting references to things. If the novel GODWALKER teaches us anything it's that Unknown Armies is a world where magick users behave like RPG player characters.
Banana Peel Gag (1 minor) lets the Cinemancer escape danger or initiate an ambush by taking one person out of the fight for one action. Even if they pass the Fitness save to stand up that's still a turn they could have spent attacking. Spending an action to deny the enemy an action is only a good idea if you can do it before the fight starts, make your escape while they're down, or if you outnumber them.
I'm The Guy With The Gun (3 minors) sounds useful in combat, but really isn't. Never running out of ammo isn't worth three charges in a game where most fights are over in a couple rounds (pun intended). The one case I can think of where it would be great is a single shot weapon, like a rocket launcher or mortar. That's an absurd, narrow use case but it's also fun to have Resident Evil 4 style endless rockets.
Stormtrooper Combat Training (1 sig) is an update of the old Videomancy cartoon physics spell. It debuffs a roomful of on-duty cops, security guards or soldiers so they can't shoot anyone with their guns. It's useless against typical underworld hoods but can help you escape the police, or even win a fight with them.
Right Turn, Clyde (1 sig) guarantees your next attack hits. It takes an action to cast and you have to get hit at least once to use it. I don't think it's useful within our random ambush parameters. It could be vital if you had a one-shot magick item that you absolutely needed to connect with the target.
Cornwell
CRYPTOMANCY
Based on the formulas in Book 5, a lifestyle Cryptomancer in 3e can get ten minors and a couple significant charges a day. For a spell school themed around backline information manipulation they have a lot of spells that can only be cast in-person, some requiring physical touch. Call it a paradox.
The Forgotten (3 minors) removes someone from existence for 1 to 10 minutes. It's a touch attack, unhelpful against people trying to shoot you but a shoo in if you get grabbed. The disappearance doesn't trigger an Unnatural save because nobody remembers the missing person. The reappearance is an Unnatural 5 shock but probably comes too late to help the Cryptomancer.
The Lost (4 sigs) is The Forgotten but it lasts hours rather than minutes, which isn't a big improvement if your goal is to get the fuck away from your attackers right now. The real improvement is that it requires line of sight rather than touch, so you can get rid of people casting or shooting at you from outside arm's length.
Cutting The Cord (4 sigs) is an antimagic touch attack. It's potentially quite powerful but the charge cost and requirement to contact the target limit its utility in an unplanned brawl.
Fool's Gold (3 sigs) can transform an object into a different object that's roughly the same size and approximately the same material. You could use it to turn a stapler into a gun but in UA3 you can't shoot guns to kill unless you have the Provides Firearm Attacks identity. Turning something like a dumpster into a car and driving away is a safer bet. Like Delta Green, ramming attacks deal lots of damage in UA.
Tap The Source (2 sigs) summons a random demon. It's invisible and inaudible and not under the caster's control, but per the rules in the corebook it could possess someone. In a roomful of people the odds that it chooses the caster (assuming demons are like dogs and do things arbitrarily) are low. Maybe too expensive as a last resort option at two sigs.
DETRITOMANCY
Detritomancers can get one minor per two hours of work. They can farm a single Sig per week per site they have illegal access to, but each Minor farmed also has a 1% chance to grant a Sig instead. It's the first caster school on our list with blasts that come out when you want them and don't require any preparation.
Laziness (2 minors) is a stacking debuff that clears on a daily basis rather than being "sticky" (cleared when it changes the outcome of a roll). At 2 charges for every 10% it's too expensive and takes too many actions to be worth casting.
Too Much Junk Food (1 minor) is better, just barely. It's a minor blast and only deals damage equal to an unarmed attack, meaning it's equivalent to punching someone. In fact it's worse because your chance to hit goes down if the target has decent Fitness. The main advantage of a blast spell that you can fire off apropos of nothing is that being attacked by magick is a minimum Rank 4 Unnatural shock in the example list. The physical damage is nothing compared to the psychological effect of feeling your body crack and rupture when prodded by a sorcerer.
Slipping Through The Cracks (2 sigs) lets the caster pass unnoticed if nobody is searching for them, but anyone who's alert gets a Notice at -20% to track them. Against a group of characters that means one person will probably succeed, making this an expensive gamble.
Your Body, Your Temple (1 sig) is the sig version of Junk Food. It can deal firearms damage and potentially instakill the target, or destroy inanimate objects. This is the first resort of cornered Detritomancers who can afford it.
Futility (2 sigs) is the Detritomancer's version of Feeblemind, preventing the target from taking most actions via an overwhelming sense of futility that requires a Self 8 save to ignore whenever they do anything. It's not as dramatic as the blasts but it lasts longer and doesn't require the caster to touch the victim.
ENTROPOMANCY
An explosive spell school with lots of formula spells to fend off an unplanned ambush, Entropomancy's combat power is limited by the difficulty of charging. By definition a bodybagger cannot safely gather X charges over Y time. A charging action has to be at least 10% likely to fail in order to count. You could hypothetically run a gambler's ruin type simulation in excel to see how many charges a lifestyle Entropomancer could "safely" gather in a day before the inevitable bust. Easier to just err on the side of a smaller number of charges.
Since we're spoiled for choice I'll ignore the spells with dubious utility.
The Evil Eye (1 minor) is the Entropomancy minor blast. It doesn't require touch and it's obviously supernatural, inflicting wounds in the shape of letters and pictures. The unarmed damage is secondary to the stress test it inflicts on the target and onlookers. I don't think the damage gamble is that useful.
Bulletproof Chutzpah (2 minors) gives you a cloak of displacement effect. 50% miss chance. It lasts 1 to 10 rounds, which isn't a lot, but most UA3 battles only last a couple rounds anyway.
Killing Stare (1 sig) is the sig blast. If the caster can afford it they'll use it immediately to blow the most dangerous opponent away.
Luck of the Damned (1 sig) lets the caster cancel an attack against them. This is the one thing that could persauade an Entropomancer not to blow all their charges right away. Keep a sig in their back pocket, negate instant death. They can use it to negate damage from an attack, or make an improbable escape like jumping off a building.
Edit The World (2 sigs) is more expensive than an unprepared Entropomancer can afford, but if they have two sigs to spare it's the ultimate fight ender. Survive an ambush by deciding not to be there in the first place. The limiting factor besides the cost is that Entropomancers are compulsive risk takers. They could simply edit themselves out of a fight, but they'd rather change the circumstances so that it happens anyway with them in a stronger starting position.
EPIDEROMANCY
The most straightforward caster school in Unknown Armies comes with the most straightforward deck of combat spells. Friend of the show MagnificentTophat did a good writeup on how many charges a lifestyle Epi can realistically get, but as always this has to be balanced against how often they would spend those charges in their daily activities. Epideromancers are most vulnerable after charging, but experienced mages can buff their own max HP over a longer time horizon with Body Like Iron to give themselves a cushion.
The Mirror Lies (1 minor) lets you disguise yourself as someone else. I wouldn't put this here except that I saw a player escape an ambush at night by changing into someone else after breaking line of sight from their attackers.
Greater Warping (3 minors) doesn't deal damage but lets you sculpt the target's body as you please. It costs three times as much but guaranteeing a disabling injury is more important than dealing damage. Cover the eyes, ears and mouth with skin. Fuse the hands and feet into clubs.
Body Like A Still Pond (1 sig) makes you bulletproof. It's a good pre-buff for an Epi with charges to burn. In an ambush it depends on if they can afford it and if there aren't more compelling uses for their one spell per round. It's not a bad idea if you physically can't reach the shooter (or multiple shooters) to zap them.
Body Melting (1 sig) is Warping but with bigger damage, giving you a wider range of options to mutilate the target. You can use it like Greater Warping to disable the limbs and sense organs.
Body Horror (1 sig) sounded cool in my head, but it's only single target. You transform yourself into something gross and inflict an Unnatural shock equal to the sum of the dice (from 2 to a cap of 10). It only affects one person and it's not guaranteed that the shock will be big enough to matter (or that they'll fail). If it hit a group it would be a good way to disable a crowd of attackers, especially attackers out of touch range.
Epis have a lot of self buffs and enemy debuffs that help in the long run but don't matter in a street fight. Draining the enemy's stat points isn't worth it when the same charge cost lets you instantly cripple them. On the other hand a desperate Epi can mutilate themselves for a Major and transform into a horrible monster.
FULMINATURGY
Fulminaturges get a Sig every day just by walking around with a CCW. A committed gunsel should have plenty of spells to spare, but their list isn't actually great for personal combat. The school is themed around social order and symbolism rather than dealing damage, and the spells reflect that.
Steady Hand, Steady Heart (2 minors) lets you ignore a failed stress check. That won't stop your attackers but it'll preserve your ability to act freely. I mentioned above that most fights in UA3 end with SAN failure and this spell prevents that from happening to you.
Gimlet Eye (1 minor) lets you hit a single target with a Violence check that caps out at rank 4. Unknown Armies characters typically have beefy Violence meters and forcing a single target to test isn't a good use of your action.
There Are Many Like It (2 sigs) lets you disable a gun in your line of sight. If someone shoots at you, cast this. It's expensive and only takes one weapon out of the equation, but in a world where only people with Provides Firearm Attacks can shoot to kill, the attacking force might not have a lot of shooters.
Bulletproof (2 sigs) lets you ignore between 1 and 10 firearms attacks. Given the length of a typical UA3 combat that's more than enough, unless you're up against a large squad of armed attackers.
Mao's Garden (3 sigs) lets you start a riot and direct the initial outburst of violence. In a crowded area this is incredibly dangerous. Being the target of a riot deals massive damage to everyone identified as a bad guy. If a Fulminaturge gets attacked in a populated place, this is what they bust out.
Now I'm A Gun (1 sig) is the sig blast. It taboos you since it counts as shooting someone. If you've got one sig left then there's not a lot else to spend it on. The minor spells aren't great for self defense. Plus once you taboo you can shoot people without consequence. If you know how to use your gun then you can deal firearms damage consequence free every round.
If you practice the other school of Fulminaturgy that lets you kill people, it's a lot simpler. Make yourself bulletproof and shoot everyone. Mao's Garden still might be worth it.
GNOMON
The GNOMON spell list is almost totally worthless in a fight. It's all based on digital information manipulation and could be incredibly powerful in a prepared ambush but if you get cornered there's not a whole lot you can do. The only way the GNOMON caster school could be dangerous if you catch them unprepared is if the machine took control of their body using the Significant Charging system, turning them into a hypercompetent Peter Watts style military zombie that attacked heedless of its own safety until it or the threat was eliminated.That's it for today. Part two will be from Katharomancy to Viaturgy.
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