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 (in the case of Vancian Magic). 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 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 Cool Down, Trauma Inn, Healing Spring, Healing Checkpoint.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Literature
- The Black Magician Trilogy: A mage's power regenerates to a natural maximum that varies from person to person, though Black magic can boost it far higher by draining Mana or Life Energy from others. Sonea is forcibly recruited into Wizarding School when it's found that her unused magic reserves have grown near to the point of a Phlebotinum Overload.
- In A Mage's Power, mana charges by simple breathing, eating and drinking. It takes a while to get back to a full charge with this method.
- 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.
- Mages in Ra regenerate mana. With foresight, mana can be stored in objects, allowing more to regenerate and increasing the amount to hand.
- In The Stormlight Archive, the eponymous Stormlight, stored within gemstones, is the fuel for the Surgebinding powers of the Knights Radiant. Every few days, a hightstorm comes through, and among its other effects it saturates every gemstone it passes over with Light.
- There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: As said in "Take off"
, Delta's starts with:
Current mana: 20/20. Regen: 1 per day.
Tabletop Games
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- In Magic: The Gathering, each turn starts with the untap step, where your tapped cards (such as lands that you tapped for mana, creatures you attacked with, etc.) get untapped and ready to be used again.
Video Games
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura uses "Fatigue" as Mana, which regenerated at a rate based on a character's Constitution stat.
- BlazBlue
- Hakumen has a regenerating magatama gauge in place of the regular super meter. This powers both his specials as well as supers.
- Everyone gets gradual super meter regeneration when low on health or in Unlimited mode.
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm features a rare accessory called the Lover’s Charm, which causes the wearer to regain RP fairly quickly over time.
- In Brave Story New Traveller (for the PSP), attacking enemies normally restores BP for spells and special attacks.
- In some Castlevania games, magic would restore over time. Some games would have an equippable item that sped up the restoration. This includes:
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
- Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
- Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
- Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: The meter fills up much, much faster than in any other game, due to the combat system being designed so that every attack requires at least some magic.
- Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
- In Crystalis, equipping Deo's Pendant gradually restores MP when the player stands still.
- 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 three melee classes, on the other hand, have to build up their supply of power (Fury for Barbarians, Spirit for Monks, Wrath for Crusaders) through melee attacks on enemies rather than just standing around. Note that all classes can increase their regeneration rate with equipment, and some classes have special conditions (Demon Hunters have Hatred regenerate faster than Discipline, while Wrath will regenerate at a crawl while in combat and rapidly while out of combat).
- Disgaea: Disgaea 2 has the Ghosts, who regenerate 20% of their maximum SP per turn (and thanks to the Lover specialist, it can rise as high as 45%). Later games would nerf this to 10% per turn. The "Utilitarian" innocent in Disgaea 5 gives its wielder 5% SP per turn, and the Fairy class has the Ghost's SP regeneration passive.
- The Dishonored series has a small portion of regenerating mana, just enough to use one of your transport power like blink or far reach once, right up until Death of the outsider where all your mana regenerates.
- Dragon Age II: Mage Hawkes mana replenishes slowly over time, unlike the fighter and rogue counterpart, stamina, which is refilled by killing and stabbing respectively.
- Dungeon Keeper 2: Your dungeon generates Mana at a rate proportionate to the amount of territory you control; rare Mana Vault tiles count for 100 normal tiles each. Your Imps, Booby Traps, and spells reduce the regeneration rate and/or have a fixed activation cost.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Oblivion adds it to the series, with Magicka restoring over time at a pace determined by the player character's Willpower score. The previous means of restoration, like potions and absorption effects, remain for urgent regeneration.
- Skyrim keeps the system from Oblivion, while also adding Regenerating Health to the series.
- Elvira II: Jaws of Cerberus. Power points replenish themselves automatically over time, though very slowly.
- In Elsword, attacking or taking damage recovers some MP. Some accessories and equipment effects increase the amount of MP regained, and some characters have passive abilities to let them regain more MP.
- Eternal Darkness: magick can be regained through walking or running. Alternatively casting a magick pool and walking around in it will make it regain faster.
- In Evil Islands, since for some reason the Mana Meter is shared with the Sprint Meter, you can recharge magic by resting (simply standing still without attacking).
- Fable: The Hero's mana regenerates over time, though the base rate is slow enough to be of minimal use in combat. He can load up a Stat Stick with Mana Augmentations to accelerate it hugely.
- The stamina points work like this in Fantasy Life.
- In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, each unit starts a battle with zero MP and gains 10 MP on its turns. This prevents them from using their most powerful and expensive abilities right away.
- In Final Fantasy XI, the Red Mage and Rune Fencer jobs gain access to Refresh spells, which will regenerate MP to a player over time. Also, the Summoner and Paladin jobs can unlock a passive trait called "Auto-Refresh", which has a smaller effect than the Refresh spell, but is always active. Finally, certain drinks (mostly juices) can restore MP over time, granting a similar but weak mana regeneration effect.
- 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 places with heavy mist (where you can see faint yellow reflections, like in Feywood and Giruvegan), you will recover MP faster.
- In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, spell uses restore over time.
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has MP restored by a few points per turn. This carried over to the sequel, and since everyone there starts battle with 0 MP, it's where most of your MP will come from.
- Final Fantasy XIV has MP regenerate over time, but it also recovers at a slower rate if the player is in active combat.
- The Black Mages in-game are notable for having incredible powerful MP regeneration (32%-62% of total HP per 3-second interval) while in the Umbral Ice stance to make up for the fact that its spells would run their MP pools dry from a handful amount of spells.
- As of Stormblood expansion, all caster classes has Lucid Dreaming role action which accelerates the MP regeneration rate on top of reducing the likelihood of being targeted by enemies, making it useful for prolonged combats. Physical ranged DPS has Refresh role action which gives a party-wide MP regeneration.
- Golden Sun:
- The series has "psynergy points" restored by walking around the world.
- Becomes a plot point during the Mercury Lighthouse where Mia recovers PP in every round of combat, long before PP-restoring gear is available. It's because she's attuned to Mercury (the water element) while the Mars-aligned Saturos is weakened. Other characters are similarly restored during the other three lighthouses, though opposite-aligned characters aren't powerful enough to be limited like Saturos was.
- The speed force meter in Justice League Heroes: The Flash works this way.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- In Kingdom Hearts mana could be slowly restored by landing standard attacks.
- The Mana Meter in Kingdom Hearts II recharges after a set amount of time once depleted.
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Kingdom Hearts coded, and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] have a Command Deck instead of mana. Each spell and technique would recharge themselves after being cast.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds does this for its energy gauge, replacing the Magic Meter from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Most items, including the bow, draw from the same meter, suggesting a magic bow that creates arrows on-demand. While it limits the use of items that were never limited before (such as the hammer or Hookshot), it has the positive effect of ensuring you never completely run out of, say, bombs. It also gets drained by the painting transformation mechanic, which introduces a time limit element to segments where Link must become a painting to cross long gaps.
- Lunarosse restores a portion of the character's MP every few turns in battle. This is balanced by the fact that MP-restoring items are very rare until late in the game.
- In Lunar: Walking School, your MP regenerates naturally, and the main purpose of buying better robes is to raise the rate it restores.
- Later games in the Mega Man franchise have regenerating Weapon Energy. Like other power-up not available in the older series, it is shown as a way that Technology Marches On.
- In Monster Sanctuary, monsters replenish their mana every turn based on their Mana Regeneration stat.
- Everyone in Nexus Clash recharges one Magic Point every fifteen minutes, at the same time as they regenerate actions they can take. Some classes get their magic back a lot faster or have other ways of recovering it.
- 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.
- The Of Pen and Paper series:
- Knights of Pen and Paper: The E.T's Gaia Friend passive gives them 1 Mana Point regeneration per turn.
- Knights of Pen and Paper 2: The Mage's Arcane Flow passive gives them 1 Energy regeneration per turn.
- The ink bottles in Ōkami refill themselves gradually.
- In The Persistence, your Dark Matter meter refills every couple of seconds so you can teleport around often. Plus, there are armors you can wear that increases the meter's regeneration.
- Persona:
- In the first game, and Persona 2, walking around restores magic points.
- Persona 3 introduces the Invigorate passive, which regenerates SP per turn in combat. While the individual effects are low, they do stack.
- In Realm of the Mad God, MP slowly refills over time. The wisdom stat increases the rate of recovery.
- Remnants of Isolation: 2 Mana is restored for every round of combat.
- Science Girls!: 1 point of SP, the energy for all a character's actions other than fleeing and defending, is restored for every round of combat.
- Shantae:
- Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Magic Fill's in-inventory description is: "Your Magic Meter refills automatically", which means over time.
- Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: In Hard Core Mode, the Magical Tiara constantly restores Shantae's Mana Meter while it's worn.
- Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Coral Siren Monster Card: "The Magic Meter will refill over time!"
- In Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows, Plague Knight's mana meter will start slowly refilling a moment after using an arcana.
- 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.
- 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.
- In Terraria, when anything that consumes mana is used, there's a small delay before the mana regeneration reaches full speed. A Mana Potion will instantly recover a set amount of mana, at the cost of a "Mana Sickness" debuff that temporarily reduces the power of magical attacks, forcing a dedicated mage to choose between dealing reduced damage or avoiding enemies until their mana regenerates.
- Tianhuo and Velvet from Them's Fightin' Herds both have magic that automatically regenerates over time.
- Trails of Cold Steel: Rean's sister Elise joins the party late in the second game. She regains magic points and hit points in direct proportion to the magic damage that she inflicts. Other characters will sometimes give each other small refills of magic points, depending on the strength of their combat links.
- 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).
- 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.
- In Warcraft I through III, all casters and (in Warcraft III) all heroes regenerated mana. For heroes, this depended on their Intelligence stat, while casters gains increased regen and total mana with their upgrades. You could gain a mana regeneration rate so high you could never run out, but were still limited by ability cooldowns.
- Warcraft III's Archmage's are so good at magic they literally exude mana via their Brilliance Aura, which boosts their and nearby units' mana regeneration.
- The Undead's Destroyer units have very powerful mana-consuming attacks, but have negative mana regeneration. Instead, they have other spells that let them consume magic buffs or take mana from other units to fuel themselves.
- Starcraft and Starcraft II have similar mechanics. In the latter, Egon Stetmann regenerates mana very quickly out of combat but not during combat.
- In Warcraft I through III, all casters and (in Warcraft III) all heroes regenerated mana. For heroes, this depended on their Intelligence stat, while casters gains increased regen and total mana with their upgrades. You could gain a mana regeneration rate so high you could never run out, but were still limited by ability cooldowns.
- In Vagrant Story, magic and health restore a point every few seconds.
- Warframe features an aura mod that grants you and your party energy regeneration (at less than one unit per second, but auras can stack for a total of 2.4 units per second). The abilities learned from completing The War Within draw power from their own regenerating energy pools.
- The Wolf and the Waves: Your Curse meter will refill over time, but it's so slow you're better off dealing damage or eating a blue mushroom to fill it.
- Workshop In The Ironwood Grove:
- Special attacks in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 automatically recharge after using, although the more powerful ones take longer to recharge.
- 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.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Under normal circumstances magic energy regenerates over time until reaches the maximum level a magic user has built it up to. If a magic user has only recently unlocked their potential to gain more spells and did so under unusual circumstances, their magic energy keeps on regenerating past the level where they can keep it in and Power Incontinence results.
