Hogwarts Student Handbook

Welcome to Hogwarts! This is an explanation of the basic Pottercraft mechanics and links to more detailed explanations of advanced systems like Quidditch or Transfiguration.

Getting Started
Please see this page for server rules and expectations, as well as an explanation of Discord formatting conventions.

Creating and Updating Your Character
You may enter Hogwarts as any year between first and fourth, provided you explain where your character has been and what they've been doing since age 11. (Note: The first year entry point, while giving your character less combat or Quidditch skill initially, allows for a greater range of character development and for roleplay of "classic" scenarios, e.g. shopping in Diagon Alley for the first time, riding the boats to Hogwarts, and being sorted during the general Sorting Ceremony.)

The year of a student refers simply to their grade level in the Hogwarts system, e.g., a third-year student's year is 3. Someone who has not yet attended Hogwarts or received equivalent magical education has year 0; someone who has graduated from Hogwarts or completed equivalent magical education has year 7, the same as seventh-year students at Hogwarts. This number is simply used to determine a baseline for their educational development in all subjects. Even if your character has received private tutoring before attending Hogwarts, it's best to use the year that they're classified as within Hogwarts, making use of Advancements to express unusual levels of skill or talent.

In addition to posting your character in the #characters channel on Pottercraft, you should also create a wiki page for them and enter them into our spell system by filling out this form.

Advancements
Every character is Average in any given subject by default, but what if you want your character to be particularly gifted or learned--or behind their peers--in a specific field? When you create your character, you're given the opportunity to specify a level of advancement for each of the following subjects: You may specify your character's effective year in any of these nine subjects during character creation and every year following, when you fill out this form to advance their effective year. No character is amazing at everything, though. Ignoring subjects your character is average or behind in, the total number of years your character is effectively better than their year can't exceed four. (Note: deciding to be behind in something doesn't let the character be ahead in five!) There's also nothing wrong with making a character who's just average at everything or even behind in everything, if you want. If you want to play a character as being exceptionally bad at something, just remember that you can always play your results as being worse than the dice would tend to indicate.
 * Charms (used in casting most spells)
 * Potions (used in brewing or possessing useful potions)
 * Transfiguration (used in casting some spells and in nonverbal elemental transfiguration)
 * Flying (Quidditch - see below, broom racing, performing stunts)
 * Fighting (used to dodge, aim, or perform nonmagical maneuvers such as punching)
 * Animals
 * Plants
 * Reading (used for general research, History, or answering theoretical questions in class)
 * The Inner Eye (used for divination)

Every year during the summer break, you'll have the opportunity to change your character's advancements. If you want to go from third to sixth years in Animals, or vice versa, go for it - severe changes will need to be approved by the worldbuilding team, and you may experience differences in how easily you can cast spells. The new advancements still have to add up to four years' worth of superiority, in subjects your character is better than average, just as before. (Remember, being behind does not allow you to pick more things to be good at!)

Focus Tokens
Focus tokens are used to represent what your character has spent focused time, attention, study, and/or practice to learn. Spending focus tokens is not necessary to advance in magical education. It is perfectly possible for an average student to graduate Hogwarts as a quite competent wix having not spent a single focus token. This is because every character is considered to have mastered--i.e., can consistently and successfully do--any spell, potion, or transfiguration element which is below their effective year in the relevant subject. Focus tokens are principally spent on magic of the same year or above. Magic isn't year-locked; your character can conceivably learn and master an adult-level (i.e. year-7) spell before beginning Hogwarts, if you don't mind having hardly any focus tokens left over after doing that! The cost to master a spell for years 1-6 is as follows: All spells assigned to Year 7 will always require at least one token, even if a character has graduated from Hogwarts.
 * 0 for a spell below your year
 * 1 for a spell of your year
 * 3 for a spell 2 years above (1 + 2)
 * 6 for a spell 3 years above (1 + 2 + 3)
 * 10 for a spell 4 years above (1 + 2 + 3 + 4)
 * ...and so on.

During summer break or at the beginning of each IC year (see below), you may update your character's class standing by filling out this form. As your character's effective year increases, if any spells above their year have been mastered, the "top" year's worth (or more if the improvement is by more than one year) of tokens in each magic for that subject is refunded. This is currently the only way to get back spent focus tokens.

The grimoire spreadsheet lists every type of magic you can currently spend focus tokens on; fill out the Focus Tokens Expenditure Form at any time to do so, if you have enough unspent focus tokens. (This is not a complete list of all magic available to you, but a list of topics you are able to learn at Hogwarts or in the general wizarding community. For things like dark or forgotten magic, please contact the worldbuilding team.) You receive 40 focus tokens when you create your character; you will not get more focus tokens over time, although you may have some refunded to you when your character's effective year in Charms, Potions, or Transfiguration increases. There is not currently any other system in place for getting spent tokens back.

Focus tokens in Quidditch positions (Beating, Chasing, Keeping, and Seeking) will not be refunded as your effective year increases because they are used differently. See the section on Quidditch for more information.

If you don't have enough focus tokens in a spell, potion, or transfiguration element for your character to have it mastered, that doesn't mean your character can't do it! Refer to the section on Casting Spells for more information.

Calendars and Scheduling
Pottercraft progresses at a rate of four IC years to one OOC year, but instead of a calendar, RPs occur during the appropriate term. The approximate durations are as follows: Events are posted periodically throughout the year and typically occur on OOC weekends, although the duration of the event varies.
 * Fall term: 5 weeks
 * Winter break: 1 week
 * Spring term: 5 weeks
 * Summer break: 2 weeks

Casting Spells
If you have mastered a spell, congratulations! You get to cast it without having to roll a die. If not, roll a single die with the dice size equal to one plus the number of tokens it would cost to master the magic. If you get a one, your character succeeded anyway. (Sometimes a spell has a mastery effect which lets the caster use it in more general circumstances or in specific ways if and only if the caster has the spell mastered, but this is uncommon.) Refer to the table below to confirm dice sizes for common power differences for spells and potions. ...and so on!

Brewing Potions
To brew a potion you have not yet mastered that is above your effective year, roll a die of the same size as called for above: 1+ number of focus tokens remaining to mastery. If you roll a one, congratulations, you successfully brewed the potion and now have it in your inventory. Even better - if you find yourself in a situation where certain types of potion would be useful, simply roll to see if it's already in your inventory without having to brew it beforehand! There are currently no restrictions on brewing and trading potions, but beware - we consider blatant and repeated abuse of the system to be misconduct and will discipline players accordingly. If you're going to use a potion on another character, you must first obtain OOC permission or allow the other player to decide whether it impacts them. For example, if a fight breaks out suddenly without prior planning, you may say "[OC] opened the vial and slung it at [other character]," thus allowing the other player to react by saying the potion hit them or that it splashed harmlessly against a wall.

In the Classroom
While you can always simply choose to roleplay that your character does poorly, acceptably, outstandingly, etc. at tasks in the classroom and out, you might want the thrill that comes in rolling fistfuls of dice to see if your character succeeds or not. If that's you, read on.

First, determine what your character's degree of knowledge of the topic at hand most likely is. This is at your discretion and determines the number of dice to roll. The dice size is your effective year in Plants for Herbology, Animals for Care of Magical Creatures, the Inner Eye for Divination, etc. The number you are attempting to reach will be set by your professor, as well as the number of times you may attempt before the end of class. (Professors: use this calculator to set a target number that will result in about half the Acceptable-level students succeeding.)
 * Outstanding (A) rolls 5 die.
 * Exceeds Expectations (B) rolls 4.
 * Acceptable (C) rolls 3.
 * Poor (D) rolls 2.
 * Dreadful (F) rolls 1.
 * Troll (very low F) rolls no die.

Professors may also choose to give cumulative tasks, that is, ones where students attempt to complete a task within the time allotted, adding the roll outcomes from successive attempts to reach a target difficulty. Of course, these systems can also be used outside the classroom, but it's often harder to pinpoint a grade to describe the character's level of relevant knowledge.

General Extracurricular Mechanics
Here are some optional roll systems for doing tasks and challenges outside of class and off the Quidditch pitch. (Typically you'll want to round up in cases of partial numbers.) Remember that you can also simply roleplay that your character succeeds or fails based on your own decisions, with OOC consent if it's against another player's character!

Combat
Sometimes characters get into fights with other characters--squabbles before class or on the train, duels at midnight or in the dueling club, or even all-out brawls in the Quidditch stands or in the Ravenclaw common room on debate night. In those precious few minutes before busybody professors and prefects wade in to break things up, it's easy for emotions to be running high and players to want their characters to win, or at least get a few good licks and hexes in.

This is where opposed rolls of single dice--where each player's die size is their character's respective effective year in Fighting--come in. (Higher is better; reroll ties.) Dodging--or using the environment to block--spells and fists opposes aiming. Shooting a spell off fast opposes shooting a spell off fast, when it's important to determine who shot first. (Sometimes it's better to just treat it as an exchange.) And if it comes down to a battle of wills or of arm muscles, not every character can be the stubbornest cuss in the school. Fortune favours the one with the higher effective year in Fighting.

Still, if this isn't Muggle-style fisticuffs (and it may very well be), there's more to it than Fighting rolls. It's not enough for your character to, theoretically, land a spell on their opponent; if your character doesn't have the spell mastered and you don't succeed at the spellcasting roll, well, the spell certainly won't have the intended effect, and it may well fizzle off your wand rather than happening at all. It's a good time to consider letting your character suffer an embarrassing or even dangerous effect from the miscast spell. Similarly, if your character is the one hit by a spell, roleplay the effects appropriately, and if they're hit by two or more spells simultaneously, consider having the magic interact in unpredictable and horrible ways. No multi-person fight at Hogwarts should really end up lasting long enough without staff intervention (use NPC professors if you must! That's the sort of thing they're meant for!) that being knocked out of the fight means missed opportunities.

When mastered, Protego (including the higher-level forms, Protego Duo and Protego Tria) provides its targets with a pool of points which can be spent to add to defensive rolls if the incoming spells meet the shield''s requirements. See the Protego description/s in the grimoire for additional information.

Nonverbal Spellcasting
While some spells (and all Quidditch skills, transfiguration elements, and potions) are inherently nonverbal, many spells require the use of incantations to cast. However, it's possible for your character to learn to cast some of those spells nonverbally. While it's typically taught in year 6, any character can learn early by spending a total of 10 focus tokens on four mastered spells: 4 for the first, 3 for the second, 2 for the third, and 1 for the fourth. Fill out this form to spend the focus tokens to master the spell. Any spell below year 7 that is afterward mastered can be successfully cast nonverbally.

To attempt to cast a spell that has not been mastered (nonverbally or otherwise), roll a die of size 1+ (tokens remaining to mastery) + (tokens remaining to nonverbal mastery, depending on how many spells you have previously spent focus tokens on). If you roll a 1, you succeed.

You may not cast year 7 spells nonverbally.

Transfiguration
See A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration for a discussion on elemental transfiguration.

Quidditch
Focus tokens spent on the Quidditch skills Beating, Chasing, Keeping, and Seeking work differently to ones spent on other magic. When playing Quidditch, while rolls are typically opposed rolls with players rolling dice the size of their effective year, the number of dice you roll starts off equal to the number of focus tokens your character has in the skill for the position your character is playing. So a fourth-year Beater with six focus tokens in Beating would start the game making opposed rolls using six dice each with four sides. (Bludgers and Snitches acting autonomously roll 1d20.) You can lose dice over the course of the game if your character is hit by a Bludger, Blatched, or (if your character is a Seeker) faked out about the location of the Snitch by the opposing Seeker. When you're out of dice, you're out of the game--so you can't begin a game of Quidditch without having at least one focus token in your chosen position.

Further mechanics for Quidditch can be found pinned in the Quidditch pitch channel or in Quidditch Through the Ages on this wiki.

Magical Items
There are four main ways an object can be magical: Animation is a type of transfiguration in which non-sentient objects (that resemble sentient ones and are not magic in any way) are imbued with sentience, the ability to sense and respond to the environment according to goals and habits. It's like a magical top-down approach to making a reactive magic item: "Let's just give it a personality and it'll take care of the rest." Most things that resemble people or animals and have varied reactions to their circumstances are animated. At Hogwarts, this includes the portraits, the suits of armor, many of the statues, most of the mirrors, and some of the chess sets. 'More information on Animation and other elements of Transfiguration (not'' Transfiguration spells) can be found here. '''(See Appendix III for the limitations of Animation.)
 * 1) It was made using Potions or Alchemy.
 * 2) It's currently under the effect of one or more charms or transfiguration spells.
 * 3) It's been animated.
 * 4) It's been enchanted.

Enchantment is the craft of imbuing spells into a runic array, to be placed on an object or area. This is a bottom-up approach, akin to programming, where all the cases and conditions are carefully mapped out, in a way that's kind of a pain to do--but once you've got a working array, it's quite simple to copy it many times. Some enchanted items your character might encounter include Sneakoscopes, Exploding Snap cards, Bludgers, Snitches, and broomsticks. A more detailed breakdown of Enchantment can be found here.

If you want your character to have a magic item, unless it's something one-of-a-kind like a Deathly Hallow or the Philosopher's Stone or the Mirror of Erised, you can pretty much just say your character has whatever it is. There might be a few eyebrows raised at a young student having their own Pensieve or mokeskin pouch (and having a broomstick as a first-year is against the rules), but there's no system for rationing them out.

If you want your character to make a magic item, it's as simple as using the right magic in the first two cases. Animation requires a single transfiguration element but has some limitations and materials requirements that require reading the appendices in A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration to fully understand. Magical Theory is where you'll go to find out about Enchantment, if that's something you want your character to use. You don't actually have to lay out the entire runic array yourself, but coming up with exactly what your character wants the enchantment to do, and to what or whom, and under what circumstances, is an important part of the design process. Talk over your ideas for your character's animation- or enchantment-based project with us, and we'll help you figure out if it's feasible, and, if so, what to roleplay to make it happen!