Mana Burn

Mana Burn
3 sec cast
Cost: 14% of base mana
Destroy 10% of the target's mana (up to a maximum of 20% of your own maximum mana). For each mana destroyed in this way, the target takes 0.5 Shadow damage.

—World of Warcraft, later removed from the game.

An attack or ability that damages the Mana Meter of the victim. Other secondary effects may come in to play, but this is the ability's primary purpose.

A fighter-type character capable of this trope and capable of spamming it in a very short time will be able to remove a Squishy Wizard anytime. This makes it a favored ability of the Mage Killer.

Mana Drain is a subtrope where the mana is given to the caster. A subtrope of Meta Power, as it deals with impacting a supernatural ability.

---

Video Game Examples

Card Battle Game

• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft:
  • The Demon Hunter spell Mana Burn causes the opponent to have 2 less Mana on their next turn.
  • The Sword of a Thousand Truths sets your opponent's mana crystals to zero when you attack them. Of course, acquiring the Sword is not easy, since you need to kill off seven copies of Elwynn Boar (and you can only run two copies of them in your deck).

Dungeon Crawlers

• Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: There's a sheep-like FOE in Scarlet Pillars that is capable of inflicting Sleep onto the party characters. If this happens, in the next turn the enemy will perform Dream Eater, which fully depletes their TP meter, rendering them unable to perform any special skills. This makes it a very dangerous opponent. This FOE returns in Etrian Odyssey Nexus (specifically in Western Shrine), and retains this ability.

Fighting Games

• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces: The held down version of Chrono's Struggle Bind will bring his opponent's MP down to zero in addition to restricting them.
• Neji's Byakugan works this way in the Naruto fighting games.
• Street Fighter 6: Chip damage from blocking first goes to the player's Drive Gauge, which is used to perform parries, Overdrives, and other special techniques. If the Drive Gauge is depleted and the player is in a Burnout state, chip damage will go to their HP instead.

Final Fantasy

• This is a recurring ability type in the Final Fantasy series:
  • Final Fantasy II introduced the concept to the series in the form of the Sap spell, which, interestingly enough, combines it with a Percent Damage Attack. When cast, it cuts targets' current MP based on the caster's spell level.^mathSpecifically, it's reduced to 1/[caster's Sap level + 1].
  • Final Fantasy V introduces the Magic Hammer Blue Magic spell, which halves the target's current MP
  • Final Fantasy VI has the Rasp spell. Interestingly, some enemies and even a few bosses can also be defeated by reducing their MP to zero. Against these foes, Rasp and its sister spell Osmose end up surprisingly useful, since opponents that Turn Red in any capacity will only do so when their HP is running low. The enemies affected by this appear to be more magical, such as: Moonforms, Clouds, and the Skull Dragon bosses.
  • Magic Hammer is a recurring Blue Magic spell that switches between this and Mana Drain depending on the game (in Final Fantasy VII, it drains). Also, Barret's second Level 1 Limit Break, Mindblow, which damages MP without draining.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, the Osafune/Bizen Boat's Verse of Oblivion release drains MP from surrounding enemies. Oracles may drain MP as well.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has Magic Break, Manastrike, and Soul Sphere on top of those mentioned already. The Damage -> MP skill is a sort of inversion, as it redirects incoming damage to the user's mana pool.
  • This is a side effect to the 'Venom' status effect in Final Fantasy IX, as well as rendering the afflicted character unable to act.
  • Manticores in Final Fantasy XI can indirectly perform a this by using Riddle, which lowers max MP by a significant amount. You definitely don't get the MP back when it wears off.
  • Many enemies in Final Fantasy X-2 have abilities that target your party's MP, and likewise your party can do this - either by burning it or draining it. Specific examples are the Gunner's "Target MP" and "Quarter Pounder" abilities.
  • Final Fantasy XII:
    • The reaper-type enemies and the Demon Wall boss have the "Annul" ability, which reduces your MP to 0.
    • Stepping on a Leech trap will also greatly reduce your MP.
    • While not an attack per se, the Rafflesia boss battle is locked to a state where your party members have their MP drained overtime. And rather quick too; it's basically the status effect Sap if it affects the MP. There is no point trying to get it back with Ether, since it will drain faster than you heal, so you have to use items to heal or remove status ailments. The Esper Ultima can do a similar thing (among many other stat screw-ups) in her boss battle.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has a few enemies that can damage your MP, which is an absolute killer for casters and healers and it can also mess up Dark Knights since, despite being a physical based tank class, they use MP for a lot of their skills.

Hack and Slash

• Diablo II has the "Mana Burn" modifier that can spawn on unique monsters, which takes some of your mana when they hit you. There are also regular monsters with mana draining attacks. Encountering a monster with both Mana Burn and lightning enchanted is "fun".

MMORPGs

• City of Heroes has the Sappers of the Malta Group — a well-known annoyance, especially for Tanks and other archetypes whose strengths are based around powers that require a regular flow of Endurance and stop working once the meter's drained.
  • Players also have access to Mana Burning abilities, particularly Electric Themed Powersets. A Kinetics/Electrical Blast Defender can render enemies helpless if she knows what she's doing. An Electric/Electric Blaster is even better at it.
  • Other enemies, such as the Carnival of Shadows, have similar attacks that can drain your endurance, or stop you from regenerating it.
    • At least players with Electric Armor can get the last laugh, having gained 90% resistance to endurance draining powers by the level that the above enemies start appearing at.
• EVE Online has energy destabilizers (usually called neuts) that empty some of the target's capacitor at the cost of a smaller amount of your own capacitor. Ships that specialize in this such as the Curse and certain Dominix setups can be particularly fearsome in solo/small group PVP, especially against defensive builds that are dependent on their ships' capacitor.
• Guild Wars has Mesmers, who are masters of this trope. They have many, many ways to inflict this on enemies, so much that it becomes a valid strategy to completely deny your enemy any mana at all, rendering him effectively useless while the Mesmer is free to pound away. Some examples include but are not limited to:
  • Energy Burn/Energy Surge, both of which are this attacks, only with the added effect that the number of mana burned is multiplied, then dealt to the enemy's health. Doesn't hurt that the damage from these skills are also Armor Piercing.
  • Spirit Shackles: A particularly annoying skill which chips away at the target's mana every time he attacks. A careless victim can easily find himself with no mana at all in very short order.
  • Energy Tap/Energy Drain: Textbook Mana Drain attacks used for energy management as well as annoying your enemy.
  • Ether Lord: A rather bizarre skill that first empties the caster of all mana, then rapidly drains the enemy's mana while filling up the caster's mana.
  • Rangers have the Debilitating Shot skill, the sole purpose of which is to deal a large chunk of mana damage to the target.
  • Necromancers have the Wither elite skill, which drains both the target's health and mana. However, since mana constantly regenerates, it effectively just stops their regeneration, or at least slows it down (depending on the class and amount of natural regeneration you get).
• Kingdom of Loathing has several of these. Shub-Jigguwatt starts combat by draining your MP to zero and dealing damage equal to half the MP lost. Storm cows start combat by reducing your MP to 50 and dealing damage fully equal to the MP lost. Numerous other monsters have a special attack they can use repeatedly that drains some of your MP, proportionally healing the monster in the process.
• The Umbral Sword wielded by the Revenant in Nexus Clash erodes the Mana Meter of the enemy with every strike. Since Revenants are inherently Glass Cannons vulnerable to overwhelming magical damage, this means that their best defense really is a good offense.
• Ragnarok Online's "Soul Burn" skill depletes the enemies SP completely. If you have the skill on max level, it additionally damages the opponent with his depleted mana x2. However, this could also backfire on the caster, with the exact same effects.
• In Warframe, Magnetic attacks will drain energy from players and reduce the shield of mooks. Various enemies have variations of it; Infested Ancient Disruptors can poke the player with their tentacle to drain energy, Councilor Vay Hek will spam a 100% mana burn attack in the later phases of his boss fight, and Parasitic Eximus enemies will slowly deplete the energy of nearby players. Grineer Galleons often have special doors with a scanning sensor that will completely drain the energy and shields of players who walk through it without destroying the sensor.
• In World of Warcraft, Priests and some enemies have an ability called Mana Burn, which removes the target's mana and then deals damage equal to half the mana lost.
  • Hunters and Warlocks also used to be able to affect enemy mana (but the latter used a Mana Drain for it) while Human Priests had an additional ability named Feedback (based on a Warcraft III passive ability that causes attacks to burn some mana), but all three were eventually removed entirely.
  • Blood Elf Spell Breakers and Arcane Towers have the Feedback ability, which reduces mana and deals damage equal to the mana lost with every attack, in addition to the damage they already do.
  • The wisp's self-destruct ability destroys mana, and damages summoned units.

MOBAs

• Defense of the Ancients Nerubian Assassin has the Mana Burn nuke. Anti-Mage has a passive that drains mana with each attack. Keeper of the Light has a debuff that drains mana based on distance moved. Obsidian Destroyer has a disable that steals Intelligence and his ultimate burns mana or deals damage based on the amount of Intelligence that an enemy hero has. Diffusal Blade/Disperser is an item that gives the passive to any hero.
• In Heroes of Newerth, Magebane has a manaburn passive attack and Nullfire Blade gives gives this passive to any hero. Witch Slayer has an ability that drains mana from enemies for himself while channeling it. Moira has an ability that temporarily drains an opponent's entire mana supply, which is restored over time. However, spending mana before it fully recovers will restart the process.

Mons Series

• The chill debuff in Monster Sanctuary reduces the amount of mana that a monster regenerates at the start of each turn.
• Pokémon gives us Spite (which reduces PP^note 2 to 5 PP (randomized) on Generation II-III, 4 PP on Generation IV onwards from the last move the opponent used), Grudge (removes all PP of the move that KO'd the user), and the passive ability Pressure (increases opponent's PP usage by 1).
  • In Pokémon Emerald, Phoebe of the Elite 4 uses this as part of her strategy, having all of the mentioned moves and a few Pokémon with the Pressure ability to wear down the player's PP.
  • Gigantamax Duraludon has G-Max Depletion, which burns 2 PP of the target's last move used while also dealing Dragon-type damage.
  • Galarian Slowking has Eerie Spell, a Psychic-type Special-based damaging move that also drains 3 PP from the target's most recently-used move.

Racing Games

• In ONRUSH, the Outlaw's RUSH ability drains the boost gauges of all nearby enemy vehicles.

Real-Time Strategy

• Starcraft has the Science Vessel's EMP, which drains all energy and shields. Dark Archons have a Feedback ability, which causes literal Mana Burn, instantly draining all energy and dealing damage equal to lost energy. Which leads to a 1-shot-kill against targets with more mana than hitpoints.
  • In StarCraft II the Ghost inherits the EMP, changed to only drain 100 energy and shields, and the High Templar inherits Feedback unchanged.
• In Video Game/Warcraft III, the demon hunter and some demonic units have the mana burn ability, which damages the target's mana and damages the target's health by the amount of mana lost, not very pleasant if the target hero is a caster or worse, a mana-based tank.

Role-Playing Games

• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura uses "Fatigue" as mana. Blunt weapons, such as hammers and maces, do fatigue damage, effectively draining mana from mages while knocking them unconscious. A variety of other items have similar effects.
• Born Under the Rain: Kazemde's Deafening Shout damages the party's MP.
• In BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, several enemies can use “Heartbleed,” an attack that sucks away your RP.
• Bravely Default has Soul Crush, one of the Valkyrie's abilities, which destroys an enemy's MP equal to 10% of the damage a normal attack would do. Of course, since the enemies never seem to run out of MP for their spells and other abilities anyway, this isn't very useful.
• The second boss of Breath of Death VII, The Grim Reaper, can deal damage to your party's MP reserves.
• In Chrono Trigger, the MP Buster technique sets a party member's MP to zero. One particular example involves the decoy Flea in Magus's Castle; the party member that strikes the decoy is subject to MP Buster, but you have to attack it to call Flea out.
• Disgaea:
  • This is Fubuki's passive ability in Disgaea 2.
  • Later, an evility possessed by the Reaper class in Disgaea 3 and Disgaea 4.
• Templars in Dragon Age: Origins can drain an enemy mage's mana with each of their attacks after learning the "Righteous Strike" passive talent. Mages themselves can learn "Mana Clash", which has the double whammy of completely draining enemy mages' mana and dealing damage proportional to the amount of mana lost. It's so powerful it can kill most boss-level magic-users with one or two hits even Gaxkang.
• Some abilities do this in the Dragon Quest series. "Strange Dance" for example.
• In EarthBound (1994), some enemies have a move that can reduce your PP. The PSI Magnet techniques outright steal PP from their targets.
  "The Mad Duck made something spin around!"
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The series in general has both Magicka draining spells as well as Magicka absorbing spells, which transfer the stolen Magicka to your own pool.
  • In Daggerfall, a gameplay quirk relating to Magicka absorption means that if you absorb Magicka over your own capacity, you can die.
  • Skyrim:
    • Shock elemental Destruction spells deal damage to the target's Magicka as well as Health, making them ideal for combating other spellcasters.
    • The "Equilibrium" spell converts your Health into Magicka. This is very exploitable, as it allows nigh-infinite grinding of the Restoration skill if the caster is also casting a healing spell at the same time.
• In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Tuaparang psy grenades pretty much do this. If you're lucky, you might get one of your own to use against them.
• Kingdom Hearts
  • In Kingdom Hearts and II, Sephiroth's Heartless Angel attack, in addition to bringing your HP to 1, also zeroes your MP, forcing you to recover using items or stop him from completing the attack in the first place.
  • In the Updated Re-release of Chain of Memories, Marluxia's third form has Whirlwind to the Void, an attack that scatters Sora's cards across the battlefield, leaving him unable to do any attacks until he recovers them (and better hope he doesn't use Circle Reject immediately after, or else those cards are gone for good). In Birth By Sleep the Mysterious Figure also has this ability, and it is just as debilitating (possibly even more so because he'll continue attacking relentlessly while you're still trying to rebuild your command deck).
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Glowing floating skulls drain magic from Link upon contact. Link has no items that are usable outside the overworld map, so all his extra-super powers require mana to use. In addition, the skulls do just enough damage that if you have full life to use the sword beam, you can't anymore. They can be killed and give a lot of XP for early dungeon enemies, but they require a lot of hits, even with the highest attack power.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Certain baddies in the dungeons drain magic from your meter when they hit you.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: There are tentacle-hands that would grab you and drain your magic (which would gradually regrow), as well as floating skulls that, when touched, prevent you from using any items. Which, of course, are the only thing that can kill them.
• Some enemies in Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis game do this.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance and the X-Men Legends series have enemies whose presence drains away characters' EP.
• Certain monsters in Might and Magic have a chance of removing a character's spell points when attacking (it is actually referred to as drain if you look into the files, but the monster doesn't get the spell points).
• Persona
  • Persona 2: The Great Father has a trick where he randomly switches from damaging your health to damaging your SP instead. While this does spare your HP for a few turns, it actually creates more issues because SP is how you use all skills, and endgame Personas already cost a ton of SP to use.
  • Treasure Chests in Persona 4 sometimes contains traps which halves your SP.
  • In Persona 3 Reload, the fight against Takaya was updated to give the boss a new Desperation Attack: Paradise of Quietus. In addition to dealing heavy Almighty damage and inflicting Fear, the attack reduces the SP of everyone hit to 1.
• Flower Fuzzies in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door suck out a few of your FP and can use them for a lightning attack.
• Radiant Arc: Seperus and Zardon specialize in skills that damage the party's MP, making them hard to deal with unless the party has SP regenerating accessories.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth has Jimmy the Bard use the Brown Note attack, which actually fills up your mana meter every time you are struck, while blocking the attack won't boost the meter. Getting hit too much causes mana overload, which has the player character soil themselves and the mana meter completely empties. If you can get the timing down for blocking, you can allow yourself to be hit a few times and essentially get free mana from the attack while blocking the rest of it.
• Many abilities in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time do this in addition to causing normal damage, the reason being that you can be knocked out if you run out of magic points just the same as you can be knocked out for running out of Hit Points.
• Tales Series games have the Weak/Waste status, which caused your TP/CG/EG to either slowly drain or take more than usual to use attacks.
• Titan Quest has a few skills pertaining to this, along with some rare and very useful weapon bonuses that drain a portion of an enemies energy with each strike. Very useful when fighting powerful mooks. Stacking these effects from multiple items makes the energy burn deal absurd amounts of damage.
• In Wandering Hamster, one ability Bob the Hamster can acquire early on deals damage to both the enemy's hit points and mana.
• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: There is a Dark offensive spell that can remove a portion of the target's mana, which can be dangerous since mana doesn't regenerate in battle and if you run out, you will be either a sitting duck or you'll have to use your hitpoints to attack.

Roguelikes

• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has weapons of antimagic, which sap the MP of players hit by them. As monsters don't have MP, they instead suffer from increasing chances of spell failure. Certain other enemies, like ghost moths, can drain MP from a distance.
• NetHack has the anti-magic trap, which drain spell power from the target and reduces their maximum power if their power is empty. Those who have magic resistance take damage as normal instead of losing power.
• Tales of Maj'Eyal has Mana Clash, the final talent in the Anti-Magic category. Mana Clash destroys stored arcane energies and inflicts a proportional amount of arcane damage to the target.

Shoot-'em-ups

• In Star Control, the Chenjesu ship, the Broodhome, has a special attack which involves launching a DOGI — a De-energizing Offensive Guided Interceptor. If the enemy ship touches the DOGI, some of their battery is siphoned away.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Heroes of Might and Magic:
  • In the third game, Wraiths will burn 2 spell points per Wraith in the stack from the enemy hero at the start of their turn.
  • Imps in the fifth game have the Mana Destroyer ability, which burns a large amount of mana from the opponent at the start of combat. Their upgraded forms instead have a Mana Drain effect, with Familiars giving it to your hero and Vermin distributing it among friendly spellcasters.
• In Rondo of Swords, equipping and setting the skill Mana Break will allow the user to deplete an enemy's MP gauge in addition to physical damage. This ability becomes useful later on, especially against Mephreyu.
• In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Sasha's CO Power drains her opponent's CO Gauge, which is required to perform a CO Power.
• In Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return, the High Roller's pulse guns can be upgraded to deplete small amounts of the target's Energy with every shot. Sola's Reactor Shot affection perk makes the Arch Angel deplete a huge chunk of the target's Energy when she shoots them in the back.

Non-Video Game Examples

Fan Works

• Destiny Intertwined: Magic can be used to drain another being's magical reserves, which will render them temporarily unable to use elemental abilities or spellcasting. This is typically done to enforce safety measures or to neutralize potentially dangerous individuals.

Literature

• The Black Company: A spear with the "return magic drained as damage" version of this effect appears. Thanks to the series' inversion of Squishy Wizard it's arguably the most powerful artifact in the setting.
• Mistborn has Chromium Mistings, known as "Leechers" for their ability to harmlessly and instantly dissolve any allomancy-capable metals within another allomancer's system.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: Certain Charms can do this, i.e. the Abyssals' Splinter of The Void. It can be upgraded into Mana Drain.
  • Essence-Igniting Nerve Strike from Fire Dragon Style is a very mean bad-touch effect that deals damage equal to your enemy's Personal Essence pool, maxing out at twice your Essence stat. This can be very mean, especially since it bypasses armour, but becomes hilariously unhelpful against Alchemicals, who typically don't have much of a Personal Essence pool because of how their Charms work^note they have to manually install them, and most of them require a commitment of Personal Essence to run. A combat-specced Alchemical likely has no personal motes whatsoever and does everything with his peripheral pool.
  • Cecelyne's Stone-Flayer Touch destroys Essence in equal amount to health damage inflicted. It also hurts gods and demons, even if they are dematerialized.
• In Magic: The Gathering:
  • Any ability that destroys and/or taps lands is effectively this trope; a particularly good example of this is Roiling Terrain, which destroys a land, then deals damage based on how many lands have been destroyed in total (while also punishing the use of fetch-lands, but that's a topic for another trope).
  • Closer to the true meaning of this trope, there's Mana Short, among others.
  • In Agents of Artifice, Paldor's manablade can sever mages' mana bonds, cutting them off from the source of their magic (and causing intense pain).
  • There's also the now-obsolete rule of "Mana Burn", where if you have unused mana at the end of your turn (i.e. you tapped lands but didn't cast anything with them), you take damage to your life equal to the amount of mana unused, as it "burns" you. Since the rules allow you to tap land as you need it, the mana burn rule rarely, if ever, comes up. The rule was dropped in the 2010 Core Set release for being unnecessary 99% of the time^note Especially since any card that could potentially weaponize mana burn explicitly forbid it and annoying the remaining 1%.

Western Animation

• Somewhat lampshaded in the South Park episode focusing on World of Warcraft. The weapon the kids are given to stop the trolling player killing everyone is called Sword of A Thousand Truths, which possesses a powerful mana burn that Stan uses to weaken the player enough so the kids can end his reign of terror.

---