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This is when Mana, or a similar special power, recharges itself over time, whether it's magic points (or tech points, or psychic points, etc.) being restored or spell and special attack uses being restored. As long as the magic restoration doesn't require using an item, ability, sleeping it off, etc.
The exact form can vary wildly. Sometimes the recharge can happen anywhere, sometimes it requires walking around, sometimes it requires standing still, sometimes it requires an item equipped, and sometimes the recharge only happens in certain spots.
This does not preclude magic also being restored by a healing area or item, but those tend to heal a greater amount than this trope, to make up for them not being as readily accessible.
Many modern RPGs actually use a hybrid form: you have both the (slowly) regenerating mana that limits how many spells can be cast in succession and the spell Cool Downs, which limits how often a spell can be cast.
A Sister Trope to Mana Potion, Regenerating Health, Gradual Regeneration.
Compare Trauma Inn, Healing Spring, Healing Checkpoint.
Examples
- Special attacks in Xenoblade automatically recharge after using, although the more powerful ones take longer to recharge.
- In Brave Story New Traveller for the PSP, attacking enemies normally restores BP for spells and special attacks.
- In Final Fantasy XII, walking around restores magic points. So it encourages running in circles in fights, even when it doesn't give any dodging bonuses.
- In the first two Persona games, walking around restored magic points.
- In Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Kingdom Hearts Coded, and Kingdom Hearts 3D each spell would recharge itself after being cast.
- In some Castlevania games, magic would restore over time. Some games would have an equippable item that sped up the restoration.
- In additional to the classic "hearts as mana" system, the Castlevania games Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia, and Harmony of Despair feature mana that slowly regenerates on its own (though you can speed it up with food, equipment, or in the case of Soma, equipping a certain soul).
- In Crystalis, equipping Deo's Pendant gradually restores MP when the player stands still.
- The Mana Meter in some of The Elder Scrolls games gradually restores itself.
- The ink bottles in Ōkami refill themselves gradually.
- In Vagrant Story, magic and health restore a point every few seconds.
- Diablo 2.
- The primary magic-using classes in Diablo III, the Wizard and the Witch Doctor, regenerate their Arcane Power and their Mana, respectively. The Demon Hunter relies on two regenerating magic reserves called Hatred and Discipline, the former of which recharges faster than the latter. The two melee classes, on the other hand, have to build up their supply of power (Fury for Barbarians, Spirit for Monks) through melee attacks on enemies rather than just standing around.
- The Golden Sun series has "psynergy points" restored by walking around the world.
- In the Myth Adventures series Magic is done using Ley Line energy. A skilled magician can build up & store the energy like a human(oid) battery and let it out later, so even if there are no ley lines around he can still do magic. But then he's depleted and has to go to an area with ley lines in order to recharge. It's a learned skill, but once you learn it it happens in the background so it's as good as automatic.
- Happens that way in The Dresden Files. Magic restores itself by just resting. Unless one is in a magic circle which prevents a magic user from regaining magic by drawing on the Background Magic Field.
- In Evil Islands, since for some reason the magic meter is shared with the stamina, you can recharge magic by resting (simply standing still without atacking).
- Dungeons & Dragons. In 1st Edition psionics worked this way. Using psionic powers used up the character's psionic strength points. Over time the strength points were gradually recovered. The speed of recovery was based on how much the psionic exerted himself, from zero points/hour for hard exertion to 24 points/hour while sleeping.
- Call Of Cthulhu. Characters have a number of magic points equal to their POW score. Casting Cthulhu Mythos spells uses up the character's magic points. A character regains 1 magic point each (24/POW) hours.
- In Realm Of The Mad God, MP slowly refills over time. The wisdom stat increases the rate of recovery.
- Trickster Online: Has under the Magic Skill Tree the skill "Aura of Mana" which increases MP Recovery rate for the whole party up to 3.6 times the normal mana regeneration. It requires activation and being between a radius from the caster (however the skill isn't that popular with power gamers and the fact that Skill Points are hard to farm).
- Nox had "mana stones": stationary glowing pillars that quickly restored your mana if you stood nearby, though individual mana stones could be drained of mana, requiring a few seconds for them to refill with more mana. Particularly when playing as wizard, controlling large conglomerations of mana stones was essential to winning long battles.
- mana also regenerated very slowly away from mana stones, but mana stones are a much faster means of mana regeneration.
- In World of Warcraft, all caster classes consistently regenerate their mana. The rate of regeneration is lower in battle than out and can be increased with the Spirit stat. Getting mana regeneration as high as possible is critical for healers above all else.
- Elvira II: Jaws of Cerberus. Power points replenish themselves automatically over time, though very slowly.
- Tales of Maj'Eyal has a number of different resources. Stamina and psi points always regenerate on their own, albeit slowly. Mana points, however, only regenerate naturally for certain classes; otherwise, you need to get lucky with equipment drops or rely on the Level Up Fill Up. The other resources don't regenerate; you have to fulfill their particular esoteric requirements to get more of them.
- Ys: Some of the games have the Magic Meter refill in various ways. In some games, it refills automatically. In others, it refills when attacking enemies normally.
- Star Wars games which let the player control a Jedi almost always have the Force pool regenerate on its own when the player is not using their powers.
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura uses "Fatigue" as Mana, which regenerated at a rate based on a character's Constitution stat.
- Mages in Ra regenerate mana. With foresight, mana can be stored in objects, allowing more to regenerate and increasing the amount to hand.
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