Spellcasters usually draw on the chi energy of the world around them to power their supernatural effects. However, it is possible to put extra energy into a spellcasting effort by expending your own personal mystic energy. Sorcerers can spend points of their Magic secondary attribute during combat to increase their Sorcery Action Values.
For each point of Magic that you expend, you may increase your Sorcery Action Value by 1: this applies to one task check only. You may expend multiple Magic points on one check.
Some spell effects require the expenditure of Magic points; these do not count as Desperate Efforts in determining Action Value. If such a spell is to benefit somebody else, that person can pay the Magic point cost.
Obviously, you cannot spend more Magic points than you have. If you somehow acquire a reserve of Magic points, you still cannot expend more points on any single stunt that your Magic attribute rating. You always use your current full Magic attribute to calculate the result of spells and other effects, not your current remaining Magic points.
Magic points return to normal at the beginning of each game session.
Yuan Guo is really PO now, so on his next shot against his rival, he decides to spend a Magic point to increase the Action Value of a Blast attempt, he adds 1 to his Action Value, so that it goes from 15 to 16. This roll is a +2, for an Action Result of 18. That oughta singe his opponent's robe! He is still at his normal Magic rating of 7, but has only six more Magic points to spend this session.
Action Value and Effect
When the effect of a given Sorcery effect is based on the Action Value of the sorcerer that is always the final Action Value, after modifiers for juncture, circumstances, desperate efforts, snapshots and such. Normally, this is the same as the sorcerer's skill, so the game master need not write down the Action Value of every ward and protection circle in a sorcerer's tower, but in some special circumstances (a demonologist's summoning circle), a higher modified Action Value may apply because he worked hard to produce some impressive AV modifiers.
Boosting Magic
Sometimes, an effect is based more on your Magic rating than on youyr Sorcery. In such cases, you can use a desperate effort to temporatily (for one spell only) boost your Sorcery rather than your Sorcery.