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Will and Magic
February 26, 2026 at 03:59 PM
Title case fix: "Will and magic" → "Will and Magic"
"Will" is what the Fable franchise calls magic. It has been part of the series since the original 2004 game. Every Fable title builds its combat around three pillars: Strength (melee), Skill (ranged), and Will (magic). The reboot keeps this structure. Will is the third combat discipline, and it feeds directly into the style weaving system that lets you switch between all three mid-combo.
Ralph Fulton, Playground Games' founder and general manager, has been clear that players are free to lean into Will as their primary combat style or ignore it almost entirely. There are no class restrictions. You pick what you want to use, and the game does not lock you out of anything.
Associate Game Director Craig Littler described the design goal during the Developer Direct in January 2026: "That was super important to us, the ability to go from striking with a sword, seamlessly into casting a fireball, seamlessly into using the bow to take out a ranged enemy." Will is not a separate combat mode you switch into. It is part of the same fluid chain as melee and ranged attacks.
Will Kennedy, the game's Associate Game Director, added context about how melee fits into this picture: "Melee is at the heart of our Close Quarters combat. You'll use light and heavy combos, often knocking enemies off balance and executing stylish finishers." Will spells slot into those same sequences. You can stagger an enemy with a melee combo, then finish them with a fireball, or open with a crowd control spell and follow up with sword strikes.
Playground Games has shown or mentioned several Will abilities across trailers, Developer Direct footage, and press interviews. The confirmed list so far:
Fireballs. The most frequently shown spell. Littler referenced it directly during the Developer Direct demo.
Lightning. Shown briefly in combat footage.
Polymorph. Turns enemies into chickens. You can then kick the chickens around. This is classic Fable.
Repelling gusts of wind that push enemies away.
Area-of-effect attacks that hit multiple enemies at once.
There are almost certainly more spells than this. What has been shown publicly is just a fraction. But Playground Games has not released a full spell list, and the names of individual abilities beyond "fireball" and "lightning" have not been confirmed.
Fulton drew an explicit distinction between two categories of Will usage. "You can opt for big damage spells, you can opt for tactical crowd control spells," he told press during a preview event. This suggests the magic system is designed around two broad approaches: raw killing power on one end, and battlefield manipulation on the other.
The polymorph chicken spell is a clear example of crowd control. Turning an enemy into a chicken removes it from the fight temporarily. The wind gust pushes groups back, giving you breathing room. On the damage side, fireballs and AoE attacks are built to destroy. Whether individual spells can be upgraded or specialized further along these lines has not been detailed.
This split matters because of how style weaving works. You are never locked into one approach. Hit something with a sword, freeze a group with a control spell, switch to a bow, then back to a big damage fireball. The transitions happen with no frame delay, according to Fulton, so Will spells can be woven into melee and ranged chains naturally.
Will is mapped to the player's active ability set. You configure which spells you want available before combat. The exact number of active ability slots has not been confirmed, but the system works alongside melee and ranged abilities in the same loadout. There are no class restrictions on what you can equip.
In practice, the Developer Direct footage showed the player character casting fireballs immediately after a melee swing, then following up with a ranged bow shot. The transitions were seamless. Fulton described the goal as being able to "strike with a sword and then hurl a fireball in a smooth movement," and the footage backed this up. Will spells appear to have distinct wind-up animations but no rigid cooldown bars were visible in the interface shown.
Each enemy type has unique weaknesses, so certain spells may be more effective against certain creatures. Hobbes attack in large groups, making AoE spells practical. Balverines are fast and aggressive, so crowd control might be needed to slow them down before finishing them with Strength attacks.
Kennedy's description of melee as being "at the heart" of close quarters combat matters for Will users too. Magic does not replace the need to engage enemies up close. The design encourages weaving spells into melee chains rather than standing at range and casting. You might knock an enemy off balance with a heavy sword attack, cast a fireball to finish them, then dodge away and pick off a distant target with a bow. The rhythm moves between all three pillars constantly.
This distinguishes Fable's magic from systems in games like Skyrim where you can commit fully to ranged spellcasting. Will is built to be part of a flow, not a standalone approach. You can lean heavily into it, but the combat design pushes you toward mixing styles.
The polymorph spell deserves its own section because it is so characteristically Fable. When you cast it on an enemy, that enemy turns into a chicken. The chicken is alive. It runs around clucking. And you can kick it.
Chickens have been a running joke in Fable since the original game. Kicking chickens in front of NPCs earns you the "Chicken Chaser" reputation tag. The Cockatrice boss is a fire-breathing chicken. The polymorph spell ties the franchise's chicken obsession directly into the combat system.
Whether all enemies can be polymorphed or just certain types (perhaps not bosses) has not been specified. In most games with similar mechanics, boss enemies are immune. Playground Games has not addressed this directly.
Several aspects of the Will system remain unknown. No mana system or resource cost has been shown. Whether spells deplete a bar, use cooldowns, or have some other limiting mechanic is unclear from the footage released so far. Spell progression, meaning how you unlock new spells and whether you can upgrade them, also has not been detailed. The full number of available spells is unknown.
Previous Fable games used an experience point system where combat actions in each pillar earned XP toward that pillar's abilities. Whether this reboot uses a similar approach, or something entirely new, is an open question.
In the original Fable (2004), Will spells included Enflame, Lightning, Summon, Slow Time, Force Push, Battle Charge, and more. You could specialize heavily in Will and become a mage-type hero. Fable 2 simplified the system with area-effect "Will lines" including Inferno, Shock, Blades, Vortex, and Time Control. Fable 3 streamlined it further with gauntlet-based casting.
The reboot seems to be pulling from the original game's broader spell variety more than the sequels' simplified approaches, but the developers have not drawn direct comparisons to any specific previous entry.
