OOC: Magical Storage and Regeneration Headcanons, as well as how they affect Alex personally.
All magic requires some sort of energy source. This is pretty much a given in any sort of setting where magic happens to be a thing. In some cases, the source of magic is external: calling on the aid of spirits, drawing from ambient magic from the world around the caster, tapping into some sort of extra-dimensional pocket of energy... but in these cases, there are limitations.
Sometimes the spirits just don’t want to help you, or can’t hear you, or just simply need to recharge themselves. Sometimes an area can become magically depleted from too many spells being cast in the area. That extra-planar pocket? Well, it can only hold so much itself before its drained, like a pocket of oil that’s been fully tapped out.
Then you have the other option, which fits more into my actual headcanon. Most beings, whether or not they’re actually capable of using magic, can at least generate and store a certain amount of it in their own being. Now, with monsters, their entire being is pretty much made of magic, so it’s a little more obvious that they store it away. In humans who are not mages, a small amount is typically stored away in the SOUL, but otherwise doesn’t much affect the rest of the body.
Human Mages, however, have had their magic permeate through their body, so the body itself becomes able to store additional generated mana, much like a monster’s body would. This is part of the reason for the often extended lifespans of human mages; their entire bodies are constantly being affected by the presence of said magic. It is also why a mage will feel exhausted, lethargic, and sometimes even ill if they should entirely tap themselves out. Their body becomes used to the presence of magic supporting it, and doesn’t like it when that support gets cut off.
With most monsters, Health is Mana, and Mana is Health. There isn’t much of a separation between a monster’s mana stores and their health. This is largely because Monsters need magic for their bodies to even run. This is why it is extremely dangerous for a monster to use up too much magic, and would be fatal for one to tap themselves out of mana entirely. Because of this, when looking at a monster’s stats, you won’t typically see a separate MP stat, because HP and MP are one in the same.
With human mages, however, they technically can survive without magic. Their body wouldn’t like it if their magic was entirely cut off permanently, but eventually (assuming the mage in question wasn’t entirely too old, sick, or otherwise feeble) they’d learn to function just like a regular non-magical human again. Because of this, human mages typically have an additional stat showing when CHECKed.
“ALEXANDRIA FISCHER”
LV 1 HP 49 / 49- (500) MP 12960/12960
AT 10 EXP 0 MAT 20 DEF 50 NEXT 10 MDEF 90
For example, I used Alex’s stats above. Because of the circumstances of Alex refusing to actually use magic for over a decade, and in fact trying to hold it in from even accidentally releasing, her potential mana pool, or MP, became somewhat inflated. Even for a mage, magic permeates her body in a way that it wouldn’t with most other mages. This has a few unintended side effects that will be listed in a different headcanon later.
As far as magical regeneration goes, it can vary from monster to monster and mage to mage. While monsters often appear to regenerate magic slower, it’s actually usually about the same rate as a human, it’s simply that a portion of that freshly regenerated mana goes towards maintaining the monster’s body. So if you had a human mage and a monster that both had about 500 MP/HP respectively, the human mage would seemingly regain their MP about a third to about twice as fast as the Monster would regain HP.
I should note that I believe monsters are capable of using their own magic far more efficiently than a human ever would. For a monster casting a ‘spell’ that might cost a human mage say 50 MP, might only cost a monster less than even 1 HP. Which is why using magic isn’t typically a problem for monsters unless they majorly overdo it. It’s about the same equivalent of a human making themselves worn out by lifting something heavy all day. Do it too much and you might hurt yourself, but if you’re careful, then you’d be fine.
The rate of regeneration also varies from person to person, though typically falls around the range of 1-2 points a minute for low stat-ed monsters, to about 5-10 points a minute for higher stat-ed monsters and humans. This number can also be altered by a plethora of different things.
Emotional states are a major player in mana regeneration, even with humans. While human mages aren’t as physically affected by drastic emotional states like monsters are, their magic can be. Worry, stress, fear, pain... all these things can cause what amounts to a negative debuff, causing mana to regenerate slower, and occasionally even cease altogether in both monsters and humans. Likewise, positive emotions such as safety, joy, trust, and love can cause a sort of buffing effect, making the rate go up much faster than before.
Note that anger actually acts more like a positive effect, but can cause a bit of a crash once the anger has let up, acting as a temporary buff, followed by a debuff after the effect wears off.
Other things that tend to effect regeneration are acts such as sleeping and eating, though that tends to be less of a regeneration boost and more of a stat dump, gaining a set amount after eating certain types of things. Healthier foods and foods made with magic tend to give better stat increases, and likewise better rest will tend to do more for magic regain than fitful or uneasy rest.
Using Alex as an example again, her base MP stat is 12,960. Her personal base regeneration rate tends to fall around .15 MP/second, or 9 MP/minute. Assuming nothing is affecting her emotionally, she’d regain about 540 MP/hour, and take about 12 full hours to go from tapped out to fully charged. However, should she feel afraid or worried, that number could tank to about 3-4 MP/minute, which would cause her to only regain about 180-240 MP/hour, and take 72-54 hours to fully recharge.
Likewise, with positive emotions Alex’s regeneration rate could potentially soar as high as a full 1 MP/second, or 60 MP/minute, which would make for a whopping 3,600 MP/hour. At this rate, it’d only take her about 3.6 hours to fully recharge.
However, buff and debuffs can counter one another, and neutralize each other out, and typically in a real fight, it’s a lot harder to draw on positive emotions, so such a high boost wouldn’t be likely in most life or death situations.