Regen rate

[Alan Girm Moria]

Looking around I have not found anything concerning how quickly a master can regenerate their prana supply over time. Say a master went from full to empty in a battle how much time is needed to pass before their prana has returned to full? If I've missed it when searching I apologise.

[Arturia Pendragon]

I guess I will make this topic a bit longer, with general explanations, Nasu-Info, and Board Info, before I go over to the final answer; Regen Rate.

Mana - General Info

Mana is said to be the general life force of beings, animals and the planet. In RPs or games most might be already familiar with the term or when it is used as the blue energy, required to use magic or skills. The all to famous Mana Points.

Other terms

Mana is also tied to the use in talismans or tied to other concepts.

For example Ki, Reiki in Japan, Qi (chi) in China, Prana in Hindu, Ether in European Alchemy. Yoga also names prana and chakra (chakra points).

They are all the same or very similar, only given other names.

Od hereby is an energy that is seen everywhere and in the original concept actually identical with Mana, yet instead of speaking about the energy within an animal (Mana), indicating the energy all around (World).

Application
It is quite known in Chinese Medicine that there is an energy system within the body. From Chinese Medicine it would be the Chi, in Japanese just referred to as Ki. Fans of some ninja series might also be familiar with Chakra Points. It is in the body and a malfunction can lead to sickness, proper application to a strengthening of the system. People are known to subconsciously control it with proper breathing, but I will refrain from going into too much detail.

More interesting here, is that some old masters really said that it is better to train then use all the time with sex, as they will shoot their ki out with their semen. Some body fluids, carry ki over, just like sexual diseases.

Nasuverse Application

(All information taken from World Material I-III, but attempted to fit the board needs.)

Nasu simply took those words over and adapted it as he desired. Mana is the energy everywhere and taken from Akasha (the Concept of All and Everything.) Yet, because of a decline in magic, the mana became less, a rare resource used by many and in the end reducing the efficiency.

Breathing, Mana, Od, Prana

It is the natural way to get mana into the body, the mana after entering the body can be called 'Od' and be found in every being, basically being the aforementioned 'Ki'. It is not exactly too great in quality and won't help too much.

Magi are different, they can feed their magic circuits with mana and it is converted to prana. Although Od and Prana can be compared, it is quite similar as comparing 1kg gold with 1kg of stone (which contains a bit of gold). The quality is just too different. Prana can only exist within magic circuits.

There are still rare cases who are so profound with this Beathing that they are like a pure natural circuit and can perform miracles without the use of Thaumaturgy. Those are found in the East, especially and usually have nothing to do with magi. This is also a reason why specialists in Breathing would only increase their regen rate a bit (on the board).

Magic Circuits
They are innate, a person is born with them and they are tied to the soul. One can argue that magi concentrate on great lineage and 'proper breeding' to keep a good number, but it appears as if the body and soul are tied together as one unit. Basically a reborn being would be reborn with the proper body to fulfill the soul's requirements. The basic point here is, it is NOT possible to upgrade or add magic circuits because you want to. Results of tinkering with the own soul can and will lead to a catastrophe. No sane magus would do it.

Quality
Quality defines the quality of a Magic Circuits and explains how much it can store. It has never been said anywhere that the quality of a circuit improves the quality of 'breathing' (drawing prana into the circuits), nor that the use of prana will be efficient (Aozaki Aoko has only one circuit of unknown quality, but probably also not too great, yet uses a minimum amount of prana for her 'spells'.) Otherwise the sorceror Aozaki would have a circuit with a quality that could pale Blue Blood (Supreme Quality.) Quality only refers to the storage ability of one circuit and nothing else, and they can even less be tinkered with than the number of circuits.

Why a crest?
Crests are made out of Circuits and are basically an extra organ, which stores knowledge and Circuits for Prana Storage. What makes old families so great is basically the crest. A magus will always try to improve the crest, add more circuits through hard work, new spells and try to improve the added ones to reduce casting time, etc. This makes it logical that a person even during a time of magic decline, when circuit numbers grows low, will still be able to have dozens of circuits.

Example: Magus 1: 20 circuits + Crest 40 Circuits
Example 2: Decline Magus 2: Circuit 1 + Crest 40 Circuits

The crest is like a relic, it is not affected by the decline.

Thaumaturgy

It draws especially on the power of Akasha to create 'miracles'. Yet, many things can be achieved by modern science and a decline of believe weakens the concept and thus magic. But the rule remains: Turning the impossible into possible. The fact that more things became possible through other means, does not include that Thaumaturgy is limited to the possible. (I won't deny that it is not all powerful, but no clear limiters have been given. Possible with science is not mentioned anywhere.)

Certainly modern spells are limited in effect, even more because of a lack of resource to actually cast them, and people try to use High Thaumaturgy or Great Rituals to counter that. Nonetheless, the difference between Magic and Thaumaturgy will thin out and eventually be completely unimportant. Especially old and powerful magi can use Thaumaturgy, which is so close to Real Magic that they are not bound to the rule "Not possible by science".

Most spells are delivered from Ancient Times, the application might be different, it might be harder to do, than just speaking a word of might, it might be to some degree tied to science, but it would be incorrect to cast it aside, because it is not possible with current science.

Modern Thaumaturgy can be compared to science, but it is not identical to science, and although far inferior to the past, still above science. Modern Thaumaturgy will still attempt to create a miracle, a supernatural phenomena, which does not abide physical laws, but the costs will be high. As it takes a toll on the user's mind, people can fry themselves. It is also better to orient oneself on science before going over board.

Equivalent Exchange

Instead of the Known Concept in Alchemy it just takes prana for the exchange to create the miracle. The exception are Phantasms. The problem hereby is that people automatically say, that something does not exist with science, so it does not exist with Thaumaturgy, while before those odd phenomena have existed, as a part of Real Magic. How much of the oddity or the unexpected still exists within the shadows somewhere, is unstated and so the Thaumaturgy is also not strictly bound down by Science. Yet everything on that Phantasm level will be automatically wiped out.

Curses

They are basically more found in the East, in charms or talismans. Orthodox Magi don't use them or are not as versed with their use as the eastern people. As this is a grail war with magi and not Witches, Shintoists, who might not even have Magic Circuits or Crests, less able to provide energy for a servant, it would be quite strange to see curses around. It also has to be noted that curses are still magic that can and will be flushed out by prana, which is naturally running through Magic Circuits and thus making curses of Eastern Magi less effective on Western Magi with Crests than on themselves. It is better to stick to a Western Concept.

Grail War and Prana

The master establishes a contract with the grail and the grail summons the servant and keeps them on the world with a prana supply, the rest of the prana has to come from the master. The contract between them sends prana to the servant and allows the other to know the location of their partner and their condition.

Servant Killing

They are souls brought back to life with an Ether Body, which can be called a miracle, as Ether stays for that. Explaining it with science is completely out of the question. A miracle of that age is more powerful than modern thaumaturgy, more powerful than anything science could bring forth. Yet thaumaturgy still leaning towards magic can deal some damage to them, while modern means are completely ineffective. It is basically just Nasu's attempt to create servants that can fight with each other while removing wannabe's with rocket launchers and machine guns to just mow them down. Attacks damage the physical stability of the servant until it can't return to the real world as a complete body, which means death.

Hits on vulnerable places like the head and heart deal more damage and are quite similar to stabbing or beheading a human being in effect. Turning into Spirit Form, can allow someone to walk through house walls, will reduce the prana costs, and will also remove vulnerable areas. A servant in spirit form takes damage as a whole unit, making fatal blows less likely, but this does not mean that they can't be harmed in spirit form.

Mana is in different forms in plants, living organisms, the air and the ground, with density changing, depending on the subject/object with air being the thinnest.

(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS A THOUGHT OF THE AUTHOR AND NOT PART OF THE WORLD MATERIAL OR OFFICIAL INFO.) As servants are in Spirit Form not exactly strong, it can be a reason, why they can be rejected by dense mana, and thus not sink into the ground, go through trees or possess human beings.

The servant, your prana tank

Servants are already summoned with a good tank, C alone is basically twice the amount of Tohsaka Rin, and the avg magus is only supposed to have 25 anyway. A servant's main issue is that they can't 'breath' themselves, and so require a contract to get prana. Alternatives are getting Od, which is only given by two means, blood sucking (if the servant can do that), and intercourse. Masters are usually better for that, because they have a better amount. A strong intimate connection shared between two individuals will also form a temporary contract that will send prana units over.

Many will just refer to it as Prana Regeneration for the MRF (Mana Regen Forum, although it does not really regenerate Mana). People are just exchanging units, they are not becoming a dynamo that produces mana for the surroundings, that can again be turned into prana and given to the servant. Yet, thanks to this methods a servant can get prana from more than one person.

An alternative is consuming souls of humans, called eating, turning them into nothing other than Wraith and consuming the life force, directly. It is unclear how many prana units a servant can get, but it is assumed to be less than the given amount of a master and it takes dozens of commoners to match a regular master supply, even of a weaker one.

Mana Regeneration

Most interesting for the board might be how much Mana one can find in the air and how much a master thus can regenerate their prana and how much a servant can get. Mana declines with a decline of magic, and some earlier Time Tables spoke of a complete extinction in the future. Fate/Extra, an alternative universe, has an alternate future and magic died much earlier, being completely replaced by science, which again turned into the creation of cyberspace, so beyond the imagination of our current science that it was again completely supernatural.

We have on the board a big catastrophe, in the form of the 5th war, an incident that was so 'world shaping' that an entire town has vanished. A supernatural phenomenon, with many incidents following to avoid a revelation of the truth. This inevitably leads to an increase in believe of the supernatural and thus a strengthening of the concept. The natural result is an increase in magic. We can also apply the fact that the Grail itself is pushing Mana into the air and surroundings, thus increasing the general ability of everyone to regenerate mana.

The downside to this is, that we also have a lot more participants that require said mana and so lower the rate again.

Church and Thaumaturgy?
Believe is the main word, and the church one of the strongest remaining concepts. The church is Thaumaturgy. They are also interested in fighting vampires, purge the unclean etc., but just like in times when conversion to the religion was more of a bloody crusade, they certainly are still not performing those desires through prayers.

While the clergymen will remain clean and pure, they send others to do the dirty work and those are not holy men, they are trained killers, sometimes exactly recruited out of the rows of the enemy, and will use whatever means necessary to fulfill their goal. They will use Thaumaturgy, they will use Conceptional Weapons, made with Alchemy, etc. etc. The church is doing the same as the magi, the only difference is that magi do it for the sake of reaching Akasha or developing themselves, while Church members might do it for their faith and to stop magi.

Instead of seeing themselves as evil, they would just strengthen their hatred for magi, that they are at fault for making them resort to such means like turning themselves into monsters. Yet, the previously mentioned hunters are not always clergymen, rather than recruited monsters, and they could care less who or what they hunt or for what purpose. Hypocrites will fill the rows of those, who brand their sword against magecraft. And? Does it matter?

Board Prana Regen Rate
We will go with around 20% regen per day for one of the boards avg magus (which might lie around 200 Prana), hence around 40 Pr/24hr. We are not going to be picky on that and you can assume to also make good use of leylines some areas with dense (not deadly) mana, etc. It would go over the limit of the thinkable to say that a magus is full with every new thread, but that's our limit.

ADDON: SPELLS
We want to keep spells and not large area phenomena. As previously stated, spells are actually not stoppable and also leave the casters control after they were sent out, IF YOU ARE NOT A REAL MAGICIAN (Caster). We allow some freedom, but it should not go over board. If you suddenly add spells which really influence everything in the surrounding and modify climate on continents, then you need a good explanation to tell us how this can still be 'only' an A rank spell. We don't allow anything above A and for certain do you need to finance this phenomenon with prana. Such tricks will consume a couple of thousands of prana units, which exceeds the limits of the character prana. It is as such natural that they will not get approved.

[Illyasviel von Einzbern]

Pinned for future reference.