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Why not run a plane-hopping adventure using all the new planes of existence, Emanation Realms, and Irises in Mage 2e?
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Goddamn Moros.
Would Doctor Thrax from C&C Generals: Zero Hour be a Moros with Life or a Thyrsus with Matter?
Let us break Fate 2's Exceptional Luck and show just how badly it and Fate's entire "hex"/"boon" subsystem need to be revised by the upcoming errata and/or FAQ. We can use it to gain tremendous bonuses to important rolls as a reflexive action, costing 0 Mana and 0 Willpower.
According to DaveB in recent Veeky Forums threads:
1. Fate 1's Quantum Flux should not work on spellcasting: 2. Fate 2's Exceptional Luck costs Mana in order for it to grant a bonus beyond +5: 3. If you are casting magic under time constraints and/or pressure and fail, you take a cumulative -1 penalty on subsequent attempts. If you are under neither time constraints nor pressure, you must use the "down and dirty spellcasting" rules, which prevents you from using Yantra bonuses or spell factors: , , , and Page 111 of Mage 2e says, "The penalties to spellcasting can exceed the normal –5 penalty cap to dice pools. In cases where the penalty would reduce the dice pool beyond 0 — and thereby a chance die — by an additional –5 even after including bonuses from Yantras, the spell is too complex for the mage to cast and it automatically fails." This should not be an issue if the final pool is -5.
As per page 115, an exceptional success on a spellcasting roll can recharge 1 Willpower, refund all Mana spent on the spell, and regain 1 Mana on top of that.
The rule concerning spell stacking in page 118 concerns "multiple spells [affecting] the same aspect of the character," which does not prevent a single spell from buffing the dice pool for the same spell about to be recast.
Page 119 tells us that "a mage can draw upon one Yantra as a reflexive action when casting a spell."
According to page 134, a single hex/boon can have its Potency split up to cover multiple effects. However, this is still a single hex, just like the example with "a Potency 4 hex allows the mage to levy a penalty on the subject's next two actions, as well as apply the Blinded and Leg Wrack Tilts" shows us. Likewise, "boons that affect the same skill do not combine their effects (only the highest bonus counts)," but this should not be a problem if we are relying on only one boon and are not actually trying to stack numerical bonuses together.
Page 213 states that a Willpower point can be spent once per action.
This trick requires a minimum of Gnosis 3 and Fate 2, and a Rote for Fate 2's Exceptional Luck. Since we are pushing this to the limit, however, let us assume a 0 XP mage with Gnosis 3, Fate 3, a Rote for Fate 2's Exceptional Luck, 5 dots in that Rote's Skill (let us call this the Rote Skill from henceforth), and an Order specialty in the Rote Skill.
Let us get to work during a scene with time constraints and/or pressure.
Step #1: Cast Exceptional Luck with a Mudra Yantra. Two Reaches for casting it as a reflexive action for 1 Mana, and two Reaches to have it affect spellcasting. -4 spell factor for +2 Potency.
Dice pool: Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mudra 6 - spell factors 4 = 8, for a ~96% chance of success.
Result: Potency 5 Exceptional Luck lasting for a turn. Allocated to 9-again or chance-die-to-regular-die to the next dice roll, a +2 dice bonus to the next two actions using Rote Skill, Informed (Rote Skill), and Steadfast.
Step #2: Cast Exceptional Luck with a Mudra Yantra. Two Reaches for casting it as a reflexive action for 1 Mana, and two Reaches to have it affect spellcasting. Spend Willpower. -22 spell factor for +11 Potency, spending 1 Mana for that as well.
Dice pool: Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mudra 6 + previous Exceptional Luck 2 + Willpower 3 - spell factors 22 = -5. This becomes a regular die roll with the previous Exceptional Luck's boon, which then becomes an automatic success as Steadfast resolves itself, which then becomes an exceptional success as Informed (Rote Skill) resolves itself.
The exceptional success restores 1 Willpower, waives the Mana costs for this casting, and replenishes 1 Mana, which means that the character has recouped all Mana and Willpower expenditures.
Result: Potency 14 Exceptional Luck lasting for a turn. This can be allocated to whatever we wish, although thanks to having spent 2 Reaches, it always affects spellcasting rolls.
Dismiss the previous Exceptional Luck as a reflexive action.
So, as a reflexive action costing 0 Mana and 0 Willpower, we have managed to throw up a Potency 14 Exceptional Luck, which we can use to gain all manner of dice bonuses and Conditions, lasting for a turn.
Since we spent +2 Reach, this does apply to spellcasting, meaning we can perform the same trick with a Rote for an automatic exceptional success despite taking -30 or so of spell factors. (Sadly, it will have to be a spell that does not cost Mana, as we are at our Mana/turn limit.)
However, as a variant, we can perform this trick as a self-repeating (though not infinite) loop. Suppose the scene we are in is under time constraints and/or pressure, but with enough leeway to give us several turns of preparation time. What can we do in a span of two turns (six seconds)?
Step #1 (turn one): Cast Exceptional Luck with a Mudra Yantra. Two Reaches for casting it as a reflexive action for 1 Mana, and two Reaches to have it affect spellcasting. -4 spell factor for +2 Potency.
Dice pool: Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mudra 6 - spell factor 4 = 8.
Result: Potency 5 Exceptional Luck lasting for a turn. Allocated to 9-again or chance-die-to-regular-die to the next dice roll, a +2 dice bonus to the next two actions using Rote Skill, Informed (Rote Skill), and Steadfast.
Step #2 (turn one): Cast Exceptional Luck with a Mudra Yantra. Two Reaches for casting it as a reflexive action for 1 Mana, and two Reaches to have it affect spellcasting. Spend Willpower. -22 spell factor for +10 Potency and +1 Duration (two turns), spending 1 Mana.
Dice pool: Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mudra 6 + previous Exceptional Luck 2 + Willpower 3 - spell factors 22 = -5. Automatic exceptional success, recharge Willpower/Mana.
Result: Potency 13 Exceptional Luck lasting for two turns. Allocated to 9-again or chance-die-to-regular-die to the next dice roll, a +10 dice bonus to the next twelve actions using Rote Skill, Informed (Rote Skill), and Steadfast.
Dismiss the previous Exceptional Luck as a reflexive action.
Step #3 (turn one): A no-Mana instant action.
Step #4 (turn two): Cast Exceptional Luck with a Mudra Yantra. Two Reaches for casting it as a reflexive action for 1 Mana, and two Reaches to have it affect spellcasting. Spend Willpower. -30 spell factor for +14 Potency and +1 Duration (two turns), spending 1 Mana.
Dice Pool: Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mudra 6 + previous Exceptional Luck 10 + Willpower 3 - spell factors 30 = -5. Automatic exceptional success, recharge Willpower/Mana.
Result: Potency 17 Exceptional Luck lasting for two turns. Allocated to 9-again or chance-die-to-regular-die to the next dice roll, a +14 dice bonus to the next twelve actions using Rote Skill, Informed (Rote Skill), and Steadfast.
Dismiss the previous Exceptional Luck as a reflexive action.
Step #5 (turn two): Cast Exceptional Luck with a Mudra Yantra. One Reach for instant action casting, two Reaches to have it affect spellcasting, and one Reach for Advanced Duration. Spend Willpower. -34 spell factor for +17 Potency, spending 1 Mana.
Dice Pool: Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mudra 6 + previous Exceptional Luck 14 + Willpower 3 - spell factors 34 = -5. Automatic exceptional success, recharge Willpower/Mana.
Result: Potency 20 Exceptional Luck lasting for an *hour*. This can be allocated to whatever pleases us, and remember, it affects spellcasting.
Dismiss the previous Exceptional Luck as a reflexive action.
With a few more turns for preparation time, we can push this higher and higher until we can hit Potency somewhere in the mid-20s.
Exceptional Luck and the "hex"/"boon" subsystem need to be revised as part of the errata and/or FAQ.
>Trying to run Vanilla flavor VtM
>Drafting shit-tons of vampires and mortals with zig zagging agendas
>Resisting the urge to shit things up with wizards and woofmen
What's the appropriate degree of Lupines and Magi to include in a Vampite chronicle before it becomes crossover shit. One-and-dones to keep them on their toes?
I guess that asking a question about converting Command and Conquer characters to CofD was pretty pointless, huh?
Help me! I'm drowning in jargon!
>Wisdom represents the control a mage has over her magic.
Can you boost dice pools related to Wisdom with Prime?
No
Why?
Because it doesn't fit under its purview?
Moros, probably even without Life. You don't need it to create poisonous chemical agents.
>Prime
>Purview: Magic, the Supernal World, Nimbus, truth, Yantras, Mana, Hallows, tass, resonance, revelation
>Purview: Magic
I'd say Thyrsus would be more thematic.
P.S. This latter multi-turn variant is also ideal for recharging Mana and Willpower; a character can go from low Mana and no Willpower to full Mana and full Willpower.
"Disease" falls squarely within the purview of Life. There are multiple ways to go about this: a Thyrsus with a Matter Legacy who crafts biological warfare materials, a Thyrsus with a Prime Legacy or an Obrimos with a Life Legacy who imbues items with Life disiease spells, or a Moros with a Life Legacy who compliments disease with the "enervation" purview of Death and the alchemy of Matter.
Seeing how Fate's boons (e.g. via Exceptional Luck) can directly boost rolls to prevent Wisdom degeneration and rolls to help contain Paradox, and how Time 2's Veil of Moments somehow staves off Paradox Conditions, it does not seem unthinkable that Prime could be used to affect Wisdom- and Paradox-related rolls.
Prime certainly needs all the help it can get in making the most of its purview elements (of which "truths" is probably the most powerful), given its relatively underwhelming state.
Wisdom isn't Magic.
Plus Prime can't control Magic like other spells can.
If it could, it could hijack someone's spells with Ruling, and modify them with Patterning.
Wisdom is control over Magic, so technically Ruling or Patterning of Prime should be able to affect Wisdom. But I -think- that there was a caveat that you can't save yourself from Wisdom degeneration via magical means, like you could in 1e. So if I'm not mistaken, we're shit outta luck.
Wisdom is your own control over your Magic.
You can have the strongest, greatest, most intricate spell in the world, and fuck up horribly because you're the most unWise person alive.
You can touch that Magic, fuck with it, hang it up in a time-bubble to throw at someone later, or wind it up into a ball and throw it back into the Supernal.
But you can't use your influence over Magic to enhance your control over it. Because Wisdom isn't Magic.
Also it'd be overpowered as fuck and defeat the purpose of Wisdom.
>Also it'd be overpowered as fuck and defeat the purpose of Wisdom.
Which is exactly what Fate 2's Exception Luck can already accomplish through a simple boon.
>Grant a dice bonus equal to Potency on certain actions (usually a single Skill) for a number of rolls equal to the Potency of the spell during its Duration. Multiple boons cannot grant their bonus to the same action; only the highest bonus counts. The subject’s player chooses which of his rolls are affected by this boon before rolling the dice.
Checking for Degeneration isn't an action. It's a roll.
There is a point to be made here regarding Informed specifically applying to "Skill rolls." However:
1. There is no actual definition of "Skill roll" anywhere in the Chronicles of Darkness core rulebook or Mage 2e. As far as I can tell, if a roll brings in a Skill in some fashion, then it is a Skill roll.
2. We are spending +2 Reach to force the boon to affect spellcasting anyway.
3. Fate's hexes/boons allow you to craft custom Conditions, so you could feasibly craft a Condition that duplicates Informed but applies to a single Arcanum (page 289 gives an example of a Condition that grants a -5 to +5 modifier to an Arcanum, which means that directly Arcanum-modifying Conditions are possible). After all, the third bullet point of boons says, "Grant a number of beneficial Conditions (such as Charmed, Informed, Inspired, or Steadfast)," which means those Conditions do not comprise an exhaustive list.
I will concede that halfway. It seems the RAW here is murky. On one hand:
>Note that the dice pool depends on the action; it doesn’t depend on the mage’s Wisdom.
On the other hand, since an Act of Hubris itself is an action that can involve its own dice roll (e.g. firing a gun or casting a spell), it could be said that the degeneration is a separate and discrete process, which is not an action.
The first reading treats degeneration as an action eligible for a Fate boon's raw bonus option, while the second does not.
However, what *does* work regardless of the above is using a Fate boon to gain the Steadfast Condition.
>STEADFAST
>Your character is confident and resolved. When you’ve failed a roll, you may choose to resolve this Condition to instead treat the action as if you’d rolled a single success. If the roll is a chance die, you may choose to resolve this Condition and roll a single regular die instead.
>Resolution: Your character’s confidence carries him through and the worst is avoided; the Condition is resolved as described above.
>Beat: n/a
This does not require an action, and so should work with a degeneration roll or a roll to contain Paradox.
Also:
4. The Shadow Name Merit in page 104 of Mage 2e specifically mentions "mundane skill rolls," which means there can be magical skill rolls.
Yep... That'd do it.
However thankfully it's also available to Mind and other such condition-granting Arcana, if you're inclined to permit it...
And to ice off this disgusting cheesecake, in doing do, you get an Arcane beat from having tested the limits of your hubris.
Page 126 tells us:
>Ruling (••) spells can create most non-Persistent, mundane Conditions.
Likewise, one of the options in page 115 for an exceptional success on spellcasting is:
>A Condition which will give Arcane Beats when resolved, on either the mage or her subject.
Thus, it behooves any mage to prepare for Acts of Hubris by casting a spell in such a way to grant them the Steadfast condition.
Since Acts of Hubris can be mundane, "self-mutilating acts" risk degeneration at Wisdom 4-7, and there is no scene-based limit on the amount of Arcane Experiences that can be gained from risking degeneration; a mage could make themselves Steadfast, mutilate their own bodies/minds/destinies (mutilating destinies is mentioned in page 20), risk degeneration, automatically succeed, reap an Arcane Beat from it, heal up, and repeat the process.
This is surely not working as intended, is it?
Also, if the spell to create the Steadfast Condition was an exceptional success, you gain a Beat from that the first time during the scene you resolve it anyway.
Acts of Hubris are merely riskless learning experiences for a canny mage.
>you may choose to resolve this Condition to instead treat the action as if you’d rolled a single success
>treat the action
>action
I thought that in this very same post you admitted that:
>degeneration is a separate and discrete process, which is not an action
We are running into even murkier RAW in that case, because the trigger for Steadfast is "When you've failed a roll," which does not require an action, yet it then goes on to talk about "the action" as if all rolls stem from an action.
I truly would not know what would occur if Steadfast was to be applied to a roll whose status as "an action" is ambiguous.
Read that post you're quoting again. Two different interpretations.
Further reading into "actions" tells me that some rolls provoke "reflexive actions" even without explicitly stating such. Page 21 of the core Chronicles of Darkness rulebook says:
>reflexive action — An instinctual task that takes no appreciable time, such as reacting to surprise or noticing something out of the corner of your eye. Performing a reflexive action does not prevent a character from performing another action within a turn.
>Resistance — Characters can resist others’ attempts to socially sway them, physically grapple them or even mentally dominate them. Whenever applying such resistance requires a character’s full attention, it is performed as a contested action, but more often it is a reflexive action, allowing the target to also perform an action that turn.
Resisting something seems to always use an action, so every single ability that provokes a resistance roll is forcing the target to use a reflexive action, even if the ability itself does not mention a reflexive action.
Whether or not this applies to degeneration rolls is still vague, and whether or not the Steadfast Condition can only be triggered by an "action" is even more nebulous.
Stemming from all of this, I have an inkling that it might just be possible to create an infinite loop using a Rote for Fate 2's Exceptional Luck and a Rote for Mind 3's Enhance Skill. Such would entail constantly raising the Potency for both Exceptional Luck and Enhance Skill while skirting around any Mana costs through exceptional successes, in such a way as to gain arbitrarily high bonuses from Exceptional Luck while boosting a single Skill arbitrarily high as well.
Fate truly seems like the least carefully-written out of the Arcana.
Is it just me, or is Mind 3 absurdly broken because of Summon Goetia?
Fighting some werewolves? Summon Father Wolf from the Temenos, and watch as hilarity ensues!
Dealing with some mortal Hunters? Summon Yukari Yakumo, and get her to send them to Gensokyo! Even if she's only Rank 3, that's still enough for Influence (Boundaries) 3, which is still enough for her to do the ridiculous bullshit she's capable of in Touhou canon.
And that's leaving aside things like summoning Iron Man and getting him to build you some power armor, or summoning Darth Vader and getting him to build you a lightsaber or some sentient robots.
Anything related to ghosts, Goetia, or spirits in Mage 2e is far more "mother may I?" than any other spell, because you are limited to working with whatever the ST gives you. I have covered this with respect to the Spirit Arcanum here: Mind 3's Goetic Summons is an analogue for Spirit 3's Spirit Summons, with arguably greater restrictions. Goetia natively dwell in the Astral Realms as per pages 247-249 of Mage 2e, and unlike spirits, they have no easy means of reaching the Fallen World. It is a very rare occurrence to simply have Goetia in the vicinity in Twilight, so a Mind mage will have to turn to summoning Goetia from "a place from which she could meditate into the Astral."
Even if a mage is in such a place, they have to spend +1 Reach for Goetia from their own mind (which is limited in the Goetia it can produce), and +2 Reach for Goetia from the general "collective consciousness." This costs Mana unlike Spirit Summons, and the precise statistics of any given Goetia are purely up for the ST to decide; even if you do receive a Goetia of character from popular culture, there is no guarantee it will have appreciable raw numbers to back itself up.
The +1/+2/+3 Reach option for Goetic Summons is unclear on how it interacts with Astral Adept, seeing how it specifically calls for "a place," but even if it did work with that Merit, 3 Experiences is a large price in a game wherein Arcana cost only 4 Experiences and Gnosis is priced at merely 5.
It's "balanced" by the rules for mundane powered armor utterly lacking. It was discussed at length last thread.
Also Father Wolf from the temenos (or, probably, Dreamtime) would probably side with the werewolves. You're a lot better off summoning the Loyal Guard-Dog goetia.
In 1e, goetia summons were harder than relevant spirit equivalents and you couldn't have them affecting the real world for the most part without conjunctional Spirit 3 to weave them an ephemeral body.
In 2e -- not so much.
touhoufag is the mage of Mage; he bends reality over his knee like a toy but when the creators of reality notice they shut down everything
>In 1e, goetia summons were harder than relevant spirit equivalents and you couldn't have them affecting the real world for the most part without conjunctional Spirit 3 to weave them an ephemeral body.
This was not the case. Page 51 of 1e Summoners page gave the Mind Arcanum (the single most overpowered Arcanum of 1e by a wide stretch) a copy of all Spirit spells for the purpose of Astral entities: "Lastly, while Astral summonings may be, mechanically, identical to spirits, they are not affected by the Spirit Arcanum. Instead, a mage who wishes to control, bind, or otherwise influence such an entity substitutes the Mind Arcanum at an equivalent dot level."
>In 2e -- not so much.
Now *this* is rather murky territory. A large portion of the spells of Spirit contain an "Add Death X or Mind X to affect ghosts or Goetia respectively" provision, which seems to imply that such ghost/Goetia-affecting spells require Spirit and either Death or Mind.
However, ghosts fall well within Death's purview, and Mind likewise has "Goetia" as a purview element, so why would Death and Mind *not* be able to cast ghost/Goetia-specific versions of various Spirit spells? Indeed, they do have some spells for exactly such things.
Truly, this is confusing. The most sensible interpretation I can come up with is that Spirit contains many "Add Death X or Mind X" upgrades so as to allow a Spirit mage to cast spells that simultaneously affect ghosts, Goetia, and spirits so as to be kinder on the action economy and on spell control slots.
Didn't you need shrines of resonant objects to summon Archetypes and the like?
I might be misremembering things.
I will have to sleep very soon.
Depending on how daimons (from pages 92-96 of 1e Astral Realms) are translated into Mage 2e, they could quite possibly be the best option for Goetic Summons. They dwell in the Oneiros, and they have duplicates of the mage's own Arcana and can use them... but not to affect anything outside of Astral Space.
If Mage 2e lets a daimon summoned into the Fallen World use its Arcana to affect the Fallen World, then a mage could summon their own daimon to gain their very own spellcasting partner with their own actions each turn. If not, then too bad.
I do not recall such a stipulation from 1e Summoners.
Let us revisit an old spell: Space 3's Ban. DaveB has confirmed here that Ban is *supposed* to be able to perfectly entrap any target without world-walking abilities, no Withstand allowed.
>Ban (Space •••)
>Practice: Weaving
>Primary Factor: Duration
>Suggested Rote Skills: Intimidation, Science, Stealth
>By means of this spell, the mage inverts an area of space, such that nothing inside the space can get out and nothing outside the space can get in. Try to step in and you find yourself on the far side, carried in a single step. Try to get out and you’re just stepping right back in again. Magic that manipulates space, like a teleportation power or the ability to step from one world to another, provokes a Clash of Wills to allow ingress or egress.
>Even light and air can’t pass through: From the outside, the space appears to “lens” as the observer approaches it, as light jumps directly across the Ban. From inside, it’s an island of light in a vast sea of darkness.
>Add Any Arcanum ••: Either exclude one or more phenomena under the Arcanum’s purview from the spell (for example, to let air or light through) or create a Ban that only prohibits phenomena under that Arcanum’s purview.
>Since We Know You’re Thinking It…
>The average adult human being at rest consumes about one cubic foot of breathable air every four minutes. Have fun.
However, is there anything stopping the spell from simply bisecting someone in half, no Withstand allowed either? That probably should not be the case.
>It's "balanced" by the rules for mundane powered armor utterly lacking. It was discussed at length last thread.
There were rules for it in 1e's Armory: Reloaded book. I don't think they'd be very difficult to port. Judging by the tables in the corebooks, you just add on a point of the relevant armor type (Ballistic for modern armors, General for archaic armors) to the 1e stuff for a 2e statblock.
So, a suit of power armor using 2e rules would be Rating 5/9, Strength 2, Defense -3, Speed -5, Cost N/A, completely negates all damage from small arms fire (Damage + AP less than eight), -2 to Initiative, -4 to Brawl and Weaponry rolls, -3 penalty to all actions if using a suit not personally tailored for the character.
Why is this general getting so rulesy in the past 8 days?
Because 2hu
>However, is there anything stopping the spell from simply bisecting someone in half, no Withstand allowed either? That probably should not be the case.
Supernal magical logic: you can't target half of an object. Each person is their own Supernal "thing" in their own right, not just a collection of molecules.
>Depending on how daimons (from pages 92-96 of 1e Astral Realms) are translated into Mage 2e, they could quite possibly be the best option for Goetic Summons.
Or you could summon Yukari Yakumo, and she uses Influence (Boundaries) 3 to control the boundary between Past and Present to turn back time, to control the boundary between Reality and Fantasy to send people to Gensokyo (or any other fictional realm, for that matter) or to turn a series of events the Mage has experienced into just a dream they had, between Life and Death to bring the dead back to life, et cetera. Sure, it might cost her three Essence each time she does, but given how OP her conceptual abilities are, that's probably more than worth it for whatever Mage that summoned her.
Because a new edition of Mage came out, and it's always been easily the most mechanically involved WoD game around.
Autism mostly.
Based on some comments from the last thread:
The ultimate problem with "If the ST is good and/or a real man, they will know to reject this thing" is that sometimes you just don't know until it's too late. Normally this can be resolved in a session or two, but sometimes these problems don't show up until well into the campaign. Players fall ass backwards into busted builds, the ST didn't eyeball the wording of that one rule so well. The social net can be a great balancing tool for a game, but when it fails, it can fail spectacularly, especially in less socially tight/healthy groups.
OPP games assume a strong social net as a second balancing filter. That's how it's been since nearly the very beginnng. It's not going to change. 90% of the time, it works. But that doesn't make the people who notice certain rules imbalances invalid. It doesn't mean that the rules have to be hyperspecific either. Rules are blueprints. Even the most detailed blueprint may have errors that can be smoothed out through the skill of the builder, but should make as precise blueprints as they can, because the builder could be a hardened construction worker or a weekend warrior trying to build a grill.
You're affecting space , not objects, so that logic doesn't work.
"Space" in the Supernal sense is not the same as "Space" in the sense that Fallen Physics treats it. Supernal Space isn't a medium, its the measurement of the relationship between things. A being in the Supernal sense is a symbol, and you can't use a Space symbol to "bisect" a Matter or Life symbol.
Even if we assume you were able to manipulate the effect to bisect something, which as says can't be done trivially, ban describes its boundary as a warp, rather than a forcefield. It stretches space impossibly thin around the boundary rather than severing it.
Resultingly, bisecting an object with this would never do any permanent damage intrinsically, though would nonetheless probably do horrible fucking things to a person.
However, we gain some clues with its nature as an 'inversion' of space. Depending on the object and how much of it is in or out, this will probably force the object to one side of the ban as it manifests, if it is a notionally 'mobile' object. The floor for instance, is still fine even after you remove the ban.
So what's distance then - Matter?
No, "Distance" is a relationship, and thus covered by Space.
But you can't create a "distance" within an object/being because said object/being is, from the Supernal's perspective, an object in and of itself; changing it into two separate objects that could have "distance" between them would require Matter or Life.
There are Supernal symbols for specific cells, though. So you can do it with Space 3 Life 2. Make a place impassable for nerve cells and watch your enemies rip out their nervous systems.
>Make a place impassable for nerve cells and watch your enemies rip out their nervous systems.
So could you use Death to animate the dissociated cells afterwards?
Actually I would include Life considering that Thrax undergoes repeated facial surgery in order to stay hidden. Life would make this easier.
It wouldn't make their nerve cells jump right out of their body. It'd just make them hit the barrier and stop moving, push back against the other tissues in the body, and then cause the entire body part in question to go up in agony and force them to recoil away from barrier.
Well, you can remove limbs simply by inflicting the Arm Wrack or Leg Wrack tilts with an attack that does Lethal or Aggravated damage, and all of the Arcana are capable of that.
The new mage the awakening seems really complex. Is it still simpler than mage the ascension?
Neurosurgery is simpler than mage the ascension
What if you drooped the person through the barrier vertically with Space?
>Five uninterrupted posts in a row
>Quibbling that the book doesn't define "skill rolls"
>Arguing what constitutes "an action" in game terms
No, he shouldn't get a blog at all. That would be silly.
Is a game really "lacking" when the thing in question is unnecessary?
The problem--and my argument--is that many of these aren't actually meaningful imbalances as far as the designers are concerned. Devoting your entire character life to chaining Beats through self-mutilation is not something that is going to happen in a story.
That's the problem I have. These are extreme cases that require intentionally breaking the game. There are very few things in WoD that are stumbling into power builds, and all of those are easily fixed. None of these will come up. Why worry about them when there isn't infinite time and infinite money and infinite effort to devote to things? Everything Touhou has said is something that's already been said (especially by him), and is at the outlandish end of the spectrum. It's not something that a group is going to notice, and even if they do they probably won't use these "exploits" in the same way that your average Elder Scrolls playthrough isn't going to do buggy Alchemy or Enchanting loops.
>That would be silly.
Yes on second thoughts, lets not go to tumblr, tis a silly place.
Funny story, actually, despite everyone characterizing me as an SJW tumblrtard, the only reason I have a Tumblr in the first place is because it's not blocked by filters, so I could post links to it. I originally used Blog spot.
Frankly a Wikidot might be more appropriate. I'm sure Ads would love to be able to crossreference things.
But you are a self admitted SJW. So I mean....
It's more... concise I guess? Like everything is nice and consistent compared to 1e. But its way more complicated just in terms of "What is the least amount of factors I need to consider to do a thing".
So I'm thinking I want to run a Mage 2e game about the PCs being tasked to craft a bitchin construct to duke it out with some kind of Seer equivalent in the Astral realms. IE something that is more than JUST a golem, ideally utilising several arcana assembled separately, like say imbued items hooked up to a ghost inside of a group ritual cast golem shell or something.
How does everyone think, in general, the 'crafting' rules have held up in 2e?
Imbue Item seems... simpler now at least. Matter is much the same as ever. But I've never really had a good chance to see how a good 1e Mage BUILT things. Obviously a master of spirit could just create a suitable spirit, but can that spirit be made into the "solve all problems, punch all godzillas" toolbox needed?
>Is a game really "lacking" when the thing in question is unnecessary?
Is it? Again, Arrows canonically create magitech combat bodies for their fallen heroes to inhabit.
Free Council explicitly blends magic and technology as long as it works, and, in 1e, had eternal batteries (although they were poorly worded). So does Pantechnicon, if for a more sinister purpose.
Why should this implication of Mages having magic not be explored?
(Besides, "I can be Iron Man now!" is totally a thing a Free Council nerd somewhere would realize upon awakening as a Mage, purely from a character perspective.)
>Arrows canonically create magitech combat bodies for their fallen heroes to inhabit.
EVEN IN DEATH I STILL SERVE!
>There are very few things in WoD that are stumbling into power builds,
So many mage builds, for a start. Anyone with fighting style against someone without a fighting style. Combat Marksmanship.
>taking a fighting style is stumbling onto power build
You don't understand the argument, so you should probably not get involved.
>(Besides, "I can be Iron Man now!" is totally a thing a Free Council nerd somewhere would realize upon awakening as a Mage, purely from a character perspective.)
This can even be construed as an extension of the "humanity is magical" principle. Humanity created an idea, a Mage used his magic to back it up by calling the Supernal to do stuff in line with that idea.
As Below, So Above!
Besides, Mages could do all sorts of awesome life-changing shit WITHOUT it being for a combat purpose:
● Hone yourself up to Mind 5+ and think up a new drug or meta-material to weaken the hold of the Raptor and the Chancellor on the material world by a fraction of a degree;
● Use Alter Integrity several hundred/thousand times (yes, it is a major investment, good thing that Mages are oftentimes Obsessed about something) on a bundle of string long enough to reach the cosmos, then build a space elevator around it;
● Hone your linguistics skill to a superhuman degree and develop a meme-language you cannot intentionally lie in;
And more besides.
Yes, I posit that we, in fact, -need- guidelines about developing new stuff as a function of Supernal power. Not all Mages are content to scooby-doo around — some of them would seek Mysteries inherent in the deep workings of the Fallen World instead, and this is the part of Awakening that most fascinates me.
>So does Pantechnicon,
No they don't
They don't exist
It's Panopticon
>Pan = All
>Opti = Seeing
>Con = Group/Association
They're literally the All-Seeing Eye.
...
Pantechnicon and Panopticon are two different things. Pantechnicon is the -second- Matter ministry, which uses technology in furtherance of the Lie.
>Free Council explicitly blends magic and technology as long as it works
youtube.com
Because Lets face it, Aperture Science could be very easily converted into a Mage Group without much trouble.
Look, I get that it is perfectly viable for that kind of thing to exist in the setting. I would not want it to be focused on in the core book. I don't like magical power armour. I don't want the Technocracy or Sons of Ether or Void Engineers. I don't want Mage to be Genius.
I feel that when you start getting into "I created this robot with magic and now it's out there roboting the fuck out of things because it's not Supernal" is when you start getting into Mage: The Ascension. I already have to just mentally ignore the fact that Mages should have come up with germ theory a billion years ago.
Taking the option that says "you become good at THING" and being good at THING is not stumbling into a power build. I'm talking about "Oh, wait, I just realized that unleashes a plague of soullessness because the developers didn't realize how these two powers could be used. We should probably say that doesn't work".
>string long enough to reach the cosmos, then build a space elevator around it;
Until a sleeper notices it and the entire thing implodes, or the spell becomes vulgar because you're doing something insane with it.
>Mind 5 Drug Development
That's how you get assassins, user. Or Ochementa.
>or the spell becomes vulgar because you're doing something insane with it.
Or Luna eats it.
>is not stumbling into a power build
It is when you can accidentally break the game without trying. nWoD mage is absolutely lousy with that sort of thing. Normally you have to try to make a power build.
Or the cable doesn't actually lead to space.
Of course, assuming space is an actual thing and you don't run into a crystal sphere or something.
What are you considering breaking the game?
But enough of that, how do we make combustible Lemons? Life+Forces?
>. I already have to just mentally ignore the fact that Mages should have come up with germ theory a billion years ago.
I had a kinda-hacky solution in a game set in 1341 that I ran.
It basically boiled down to "The Tower implicitly protects the Mage from obtaining information via Knowing and Unveiling that he cannot understand or may hurt his mind". (A part of the back story of the party Thyrsus was that he developed a Knowing spell that willingly rescinded this protection, allowing him to learn the sum total of the information encoded in a living pattern, even if he immediately forgot a huge chunk of it — also triggering an automatic breaking point. He almost went insane when trying to read the structure of a common ant and suddenly understanding its full cellular composition and getting several terabytes of ant DNA crammed into his mind)
But this is not an official solution, is rather inelegant, and can be twisted into super-massive research ANYWAY if your mind is strong enough. Especially in 2e where Mages can't breaking-point.
> Look, I get that it is perfectly viable for that kind of thing to exist in the setting. I would not want it to be focused on in the core book
I am not saying that it should be analyzed in-depth in the core-book — I realize that word-count constraints are a thing. But it would make a cool thing to add to Signs of Sorcery, or Free Council 2E or whatever.
>I don't like magical power armour.
Do you like normal enchanted magical armor? Enhanced items and the such? I am not quibbling, just generally curious.
> I don't want the Technocracy or Sons of Ether or Void Engineers.
What about Imagineers, Cryptologoi (the idea of the meme-language came from there, desu) or Threnodists?
Starting level characters requiring GM shields to stop them turning the entire WoD Happy for several days, would be a good start. Rendering skills more or less useless by way of Mind is fairly plebeian, but considering you buff your rotes at the same time, it's a fairly easy way to get pseudo ultimate pools.
Maybe it's just shitty design and not game breaking, but you're constantly running into things that make you wonder if they really expected that.
Just life. They combust into thousands of bees.
But yeah, forces would be the easy shoe in. Of course, if it was more of a soul sucking, or flesh amortising lemon, it'd be death. You'd trip balls before your pattern unraveled if you used prime. Hey, that'd be neat. Have a mana channeling spell imbued on it so the next sleeper that eats one dies because their pattern gets overloaded with mana they're not designed to take.
You could always just take a regular lemon and brute force a fire spirit or something into it, with spirit.
Way too many moving parts.
It's simple.
Germs are part of the Lie. The reality of disease is way more mystical. Same with most scientific truths revealed through Knowing.
>Don't like Magic Power Armour
Not that user, but Mage is urban fantasy. Power armour iron man style kinda crosses the theme boundary.
And these all acts of Hubris. Sour, yellow hubris.
>Until a sleeper notices it and the entire thing implodes, or the spell becomes vulgar because you're doing something insane with it.
But Alter Integrity is Lasting. It won't implode the same way Life-healed wounds won't.
>Or Luna eats it.
That's why you would need a Spirit master to run politics. Still doesn't invalidate the core concept.
>Of course, assuming space is an actual thing and you don't run into a crystal sphere or something.
You can theoretically teleport to Mars with Space 3 and a Curiosity marsian landscape photo as a sympathy yantra.
>Not that user, but Mage is urban fantasy. Power armour iron man style kinda crosses the theme boundary.
And magitech dreadnoughts don't?
Magic doesn't work outside of Earth's atmosphere.
>But Alter Integrity is Lasting
You're making a length of string into something with a supernatural level of resilience. You're off the reservation as far as effects are concerned.
>Core Concept
Your character is not the first one to have thought of this. It's just as likely you have a seer notice that someone, in the future, is about to seriously fuck with things and do something to stop it. Or you DO accomplish it, and the paradox eats you.
>theoretically teleport to Mars
From a distance PoV, yes, you could travel very far distances. But that's the 3d way of looking at it. Hell, Mars might as well be a spirit realm we can only just perceive through our head meat spheres, it's not actually physically out there.
A golem with a soul bound into it might work. If you ran the power armour as some sort of Eldar Exarch sort of suit, it might fly. Iron Man, not so much.
That's Shadowrun.
Also
>implying atmosphere is a thing
So bring some Atmosphere with yourself or co-locate there instead of teleporting. Would necessitate Space 4, but hardly a problem.
Where do you take that from? Is it a specifically 2e thing? Because one of 1e sample spells specifically had a chance to teleport things to the cosmos.
I don't mind magically enchanted armour, or even using magic to enhance technology. It's when you start getting into overt obvious territory that it becomes too much for me. Like the other user said, I want to keep my Urbfan strictly urban fantasy.
I agree that it would be fitting in Signs of Sorcery, along with better Alchemy rules.
Rendering the entire WoD Happy for a few days is basically impossible, and definitely impossible to "stumble into". It requires you go very much out of your way and abuse a system to perform. That Mind can enhance skills is pretty clearly intended. I'm pretty sure it's also intended that it can enhance Rotes, though I wouldn't allow that in my game. Creating an infinite feedback loop so that your Rote is getting +40 dice from your skill is also not "stumbling into" something game breaking, it requires you to very explicitly go out of your way.
Which, honestly, I'm fine with. Most of the time those won't even be feasible in a real game because of narrative time constraints, and if for some reason you do decide to join a game to play a character who will ignore the actual game just to fiddle with some particular spell, chances are you'll just get ignored by the plot because you're not being involved. It's on par with "what if I want to play a Mage that doesn't go after Mysteries?"
It's not just Shadowrun. Dave has said spells don't work off world.
>Hell, Mars might as well be a spirit realm we can only just perceive through our head meat spheres, it's not actually physically out there.
That was how it was in oMage. In nMage, as far as I know, Mars is physically there.
Players are wandering into a nest of spooky spider spirits next session. I've never ran anything involving spirits before. What sort of things can the spirits reasonably do? What about in terms of attacking?
>Rendering the entire WoD Happy for a few days is basically impossible, and definitely impossible to "stumble into"
Not even slightly impossible. Spell factors are broken as fuck. A starting level mage with a few rotes and mind 3, space 2, could do it.
The traditional retort would be that something big and nasty from the magic world turns up at your hovel and kicks your ass, but the problem is still there, systemically.
>clearly intended
Not having 20 in a given stat and skill, giving you a rote skill pool that'd put an master to shame, isn't.
>explicitly go out of your way
You cast the spell as a ritual, then you cast the other spell as a ritual. Using the spell as explicitly described in one of the most basic methods gets it.
That's the problem with rituals as well. Shifting the potency to an exponential curve on hits helps a lot.
>pretty sure it's intended you can't enhance Rotes
You'd think that, but that would imply that WW could find their asses with both hands. We eventually home ruled a 'magic can't beget magic' rule. You can't affect your magic pools/supernal soul's efficiency with magic, for the most part. So no snowballing mind/life and rotes.
>chances are you'll just get ignored by the plot
Shitty GMing, particularly considering most of it isn't that hard. We accidentally a building downtown once before we looked at the ritual rules.
We were planning on faking an assassination of a vampire, so we figure (using what we had, arcanum wise, being a starter level party), we could turn the water in the fire suppression system to petrol, and then levitate a molotov cocktail in through a window. Fire starts, the water sprays, and whoops, it's all petrol and the office catches fire. Of course, even a starting level matter mage doing a full ritual ends up with enough power to turn every drop of water in the block into petrol. So we accidentally a downtown office block. And that crossed Arson off the list of crimes we hadn't yet committed.
I take it from Dave flat out stating it.
Whatever you do, keep them confined to powers equivalent to those the vampires have (unless being OP relative to the vampires is the entire point).
Just about anything, really. Domains are really goddamn broad as far as the GM's concerned.
They're spider spirits, so in addition to force, finesse, and resistance stats, they'll have domains relevant for spider spirits.
Maybe they weave astral webs, that ensnare thoughts? Maybe they drain mana out of people? Maybe they cocoon smaller spirits and turn them into other spider spirit eggs? Maybe they have magic spirit eyes and only go after people with certain types of auras. Maybe they want to kidnap your spirit mage and use her to force open a locus so that they can go places?
Imbue Item has become totally useless, since you cannot make items better than what you can cast as a usual spell, AND they always at least take 1 mana per use, which is too much in the 2e paradigm unless the item does something you cannot due to not having a rote or the Arcana needed or something.
Crafting rules are now ultimately a lot, lot, LOT less useful than 1e. Of course, in 1e they were at times hilariously broken, but now they are well... Mostly not worth the expenditure.