TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
None, Mage didn't use a morality trait.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
None, Mage didn't use a morality trait.
dragonx99
Actually Satan
Which doesn't keep it from having the mechanical effects that MJ just pointed out above you.
That's a weak argument, considering the copious use of Flaws as a mechanic.
My computer doesn't have emotions, yet it can run Skyrim.
If you just want your agents to be video game NPCs, then cutting out their emotions and replacing them with scripts is perfectly fine.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
The very first part of the device, the first bit that actually introduces it to us, is 'This is the device where we scoop out what makes you human.' It is the primary purpose, to have an excuse for why your enemies are interchangeable unfeeling drones. It also has benefits, but at a thematic level the first is much more important then the second.
It establishes them as bad guys who kidnap people who never agreed to join, extracts from them everything that makes them independent beings turning them into unknowing incomplete sleeper agents. Then, over years pulls them the rest of the way in until everything that made them human or relatable is cut away, leaving only the unfeeling computer and dead machinery. Ultimately, it establishes that those within Iteration X as the greatest victims of Iteration X, that they may be beyond saving, but that you must stop this evil organization to save future victims from recruitment. It's the 'these are techno zombies' bit.
it's also completely within the realm of presentation and roleplaying. I know non-mechanical effect are strange to many people, but how do you put it... Ah, like this.
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Yes, these non-mechanical effects which are not reflected in the characters chapter, which are not reflected in the opening fiction, and which are not reflected in the rules text, despite the fact that they have explicit support for how these implants alter the character's mind, and could very well have added one sentence saying "the characters are actually emotionally dead and attempts to appeal to their emotions or empathy are at +3 difficulty, Iteration X considers this a benefit" or something. Oh and aren't reflected in the other 1E Technocracy books, where nobody seems to notice that all of Iteration X are techno zombies. Or all of 2E, which explicitly notes that Iterators are people too, and that isn't some ItX propaganda.
Like, this is you hypocritically complaining about the Technocracy supporters taking single lines out of context and ignoring everything else while being the only one actually doing that.
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The fluff text actually says: All Cyphers have a secondary computer brain surgically implanted within their skulls. To make room, parts of the frontal lobe and limbic system are removed—these regions merely deal with emotional control, expression, long-term plans and complex moral judgements.
and then it goes on about the circuitry and stuff.
and then it goes on about the circuitry and stuff.
Yes, and given that Iterators are not hyper-crazed disinhibited sexmurder machines like limbic system damage tends to do, the DEI has to actually emulate the replaced components to a degree. Book of Madness Revised implied that the weakness in DEIs is that they let ItX tell you right up-front "this is moral because we say so" and you'll agree that it's moral, which is definitely a flaw but certainly not to the degree of "EVERYONE IS AN EMOTIONALLY NEUTERED CYBORG."
Linkhyrule Homebrew: Mage the Ascension Errata
So, @MJ12 Commando, @EarthScorpion - I'm running an oMage campaign, and I've basically attempted to hack together a homebrew set of "errata" for the core - I started with incorporating were Trainings/Talents (because they're cool) and rolling Arete/Enlightenment + Sphere (because it bugs me that getting better at a Sphere doesn't actually make you any better at using it), but then kind of saw a bunch more cool ideas in the Kerisgame write-up and went a little hog-wild. I had to do a bit of statistics to balance things out, so the result is a little questionable. Mind looking through this hash I've made of the RAW and seeing if anything really borked stands out?
Mage the Ascension: "Errata"
Attributes
Attributes use a six-stat condensation: Physique, Endurance, Cognition, Reaction, Persuasion, and Poise. This is essentially the Kerisgame writeup, except that I've broken off a bit of Endurance and Persuasion to be its own thing: Poise is a blend of mental resilience to trauma and ability to keep one's feet in a social situation. This also results in a nice reflection of the original nine-stat lineup, where we have physical, mental, and social attributes, one active and one passive.
Note in the xp section that I haven't changed the relative costs of Attributes. This, and the somewhat broadened abilities provided by Talents/Trainings in practice, is intended to free up more xp for the heart of the game, the Spheres. I haven't touched the Paradox rules at all, so using magic is still dangerous - but if you're at all good at paradigm construction, it should be possible to throw out effects pretty casually, and I want to enable that with the mechanics.
Abilities
Abilities has adapted the Talents/Training idea, replacing five-dot Abilities + a specialty dot with two three-dot Traits. However, the intended role of the two have been flipped: Trainings are now the "base" skill pool, with Talents representing particular narrow specialties.
As a general rule, you should have one "occupational" Training per major rank - representing mastery of fieldwork and bureaucracy versus mastery of leadership and ... well, different kinds of bureaucracy, for example - and one "personality" Training per major paradigm shift - representing major hobbies, passions, and priorities.
To somewhat reflect the greater value of Trainings, I've increased their relative xp cost. The intention is that you should be able to use some primary "occupation" for about half your rolls, and two or three fallback options on each side of the split - and at that point, you should have a skill for any scenario that's not completely outside your specialty. They're not quite as valuable as Attributes, but they're getting close. I'm basically fine with this, for the above reasons - less resolution outside of magic means more focus on the magic.
Spheres, Magic, and General Rolling
As mentioned above, casting uses Panopticon Quest's Arete/Enlightenment + Sphere rolls. Unfortunately, checking the statistics of this dicepool reveals that just setting the base difficulty, before epic feats and whatnot, to the Sphere level of the effect, means that I can't use the pre-written difficulties and Devices according to their naive adaptations. Playing with anydice a little, I found that setting the base difficulty to (Sphere - 1) and letting everyone double 10s whenever they show up works at TN 7. In order to keep things simple, the latter two rules apply to everything.
(As a side note, specialties for four-dot Traits still exist; they just add one extra dice to relevant rolls.)
Fast-casting difficulties are not a thing, because buying Rotes with xp is going to be rather rare in this game; instead, you get a difficulty break if you do buy the Rote and you can already cast the effect. Extra dice from augment skills and extra success from augment magic are not capped. Unlike in Creation, where this could a create a rather nasty Elder Problem, '99 and the Ascension War keeping whatever's left of the Elders busy means that this mostly just balances out, I think?
Extended Rituals (and Wards)
Any time you want to cast a ritual, separate the difficulty of the effect into internal penalties and external penalties. You have to beat (and subtract!) internal penalties from every roll you make, but you can build up successes to beat external ones. In general, external penalties represent the difficulty of the task - trying to find someone in a massive search space, or building a massive and complex construction project - while internal penalties represent the difficulty of the casting - finicky rituals, distraction during casting, working a material that resists alteration (like Primium and lesser derivatives). Wards can count as either, depending on context.
... Okay, looking back on that, that's kind of ridiculously complicated and I don't think the thing I was trying to express actually needed it. This bit can probably be simplified. The takeaway is that "battering" is external, "where the hell is it" is internal, and "my wifi sucks" is internal if you're trying to brute force something through it and external if you're trying to fix it.
Enhancements and Devices
Shamelessly cribbed MJ's notes and merged his ideas, with a bit of my own flavor.
Both Device/Wonder and Enhancement are double-cost. Device is as written, which appears to be "two background points for Devices per dot, plus one." Enhancement has approximately double that effectiveness: halve the costs of all Devices bought as augmentations before checking against your Enhancement rating (round down). Your first two dots (eight to ten points) of cyberware do not grant permanent Paradox, instead granting the Paradox Flaw attached to all cybernetic enhancement. Your first dot (four to six points) of implanted bioware do not grant permanent Paradox either, under a lesser version of the cybernetic flaw that does only one additional aggravated damage - because it should totally be possible for a Life mage to give you fatal allergies, and that should totally be easier if you really do have alien tissue in you.
As a miscellaneous piece of errata, both the exomuscle and the exoskeleton have double their listed cost. Meanwhile, buying an ADEI is free: the rather minor benefits it provides are more than paid for by their incursion of the cybernetic Paradox Flaw.
Convention/Tradition Bonuses
This is something I introduced because it seemed kind of weird that all Backgrounds cost the same for all factions, when their applicable resources and specialties are so totally different. Every Convention or Tradition now gets four dots worth of faction-appropriate Background or Merit for free.
Technocratic Union: Resources (Enlightenment + 1)
NWO: Master of Red Tape
Progenitor: Enhancement 2, to be spent on Convention-appropriate augs. (Gengineering counts.)
Iteration X: Enhancement 2, to be spent on Convention-appropriate augs, and a free ADEI.
Syndicate: Four additional dots of Resources (stacks with Technocracy faction bonus)
Void Engineer: Node 4
Traditions: Chantry (Enlightenment)
Akashic Brotherhood: Do 2, Martial Arts 1
Celestial Chorus: Revelation 4 - Dream, renamed and refluffed
Cult of Ecstasy: Wonder 2, to be spent on a Tradition-appropriate drug stash.
Dreamspeakers: Mentor 4
Euthanatos: Destiny 4
Order of Hermes: Library 4
Sons of Ether: Wonder 2, to be spent on Tradition-appropriate Artifacts. Steampunk is recommended.
Verbena: Sanctum 4
Virtual Adepts: Wonder 2, to be spent on a custom ADEI or similar digital interface.
Experience Points
Last, but most certainly not least: experience points. These are running on a tiered system, preserving some of the effects of the quadratic system (encouraging breadth over depth, making mastery rare) without quite making building up the experience for the last few dots quite so intensely frustrating (particularly in short-ish campaigns.)
In general, the first half (round up) of a trait cost some base value; the second half cost double that. In other words, for everything except Trainings and Talents, the first three dots cost X points and the last two cost 2X points. T/Ts cost X for the first two and 2X for the last one. Willpower just starts at 5 dots for simplicity (can you even be a Mage with Willpower less than 5?). Certain Backgrounds that can go over 5 just keep gaining factors in the same way: 6-8 are 3X points and 9-10 are 4X points.
The base values for traits are essentially canonical, with few modifications:
Talents: 2xp
Trainings: 3xp
Attributes: 4xp
Sphere (sp): 7xp
Sphere (etc): 8xp
Arete/Enlightenment: 12xp (*)
Background: 3xp
Merit (if applicable): 2xp
(*) Arete and Enlightenment are a little special. Track your experience since your last Seeking: you need to have earned enough experience to be able to buy your next dot of Arete before undergoing a Seeking. However, you are not actually charged for this dot, and are free to spend your experience elsewhere. This is just to provide a mechanical reason to not sprint through your first five dots in as many sessions. The sixth dot does not actually "cost" any more experience beyond the usual triple-base, but should absolutely have the greatest roleplaying requirement.
Mage the Ascension: "Errata"
Attributes
Attributes use a six-stat condensation: Physique, Endurance, Cognition, Reaction, Persuasion, and Poise. This is essentially the Kerisgame writeup, except that I've broken off a bit of Endurance and Persuasion to be its own thing: Poise is a blend of mental resilience to trauma and ability to keep one's feet in a social situation. This also results in a nice reflection of the original nine-stat lineup, where we have physical, mental, and social attributes, one active and one passive.
Note in the xp section that I haven't changed the relative costs of Attributes. This, and the somewhat broadened abilities provided by Talents/Trainings in practice, is intended to free up more xp for the heart of the game, the Spheres. I haven't touched the Paradox rules at all, so using magic is still dangerous - but if you're at all good at paradigm construction, it should be possible to throw out effects pretty casually, and I want to enable that with the mechanics.
Abilities
Abilities has adapted the Talents/Training idea, replacing five-dot Abilities + a specialty dot with two three-dot Traits. However, the intended role of the two have been flipped: Trainings are now the "base" skill pool, with Talents representing particular narrow specialties.
As a general rule, you should have one "occupational" Training per major rank - representing mastery of fieldwork and bureaucracy versus mastery of leadership and ... well, different kinds of bureaucracy, for example - and one "personality" Training per major paradigm shift - representing major hobbies, passions, and priorities.
To somewhat reflect the greater value of Trainings, I've increased their relative xp cost. The intention is that you should be able to use some primary "occupation" for about half your rolls, and two or three fallback options on each side of the split - and at that point, you should have a skill for any scenario that's not completely outside your specialty. They're not quite as valuable as Attributes, but they're getting close. I'm basically fine with this, for the above reasons - less resolution outside of magic means more focus on the magic.
Spheres, Magic, and General Rolling
As mentioned above, casting uses Panopticon Quest's Arete/Enlightenment + Sphere rolls. Unfortunately, checking the statistics of this dicepool reveals that just setting the base difficulty, before epic feats and whatnot, to the Sphere level of the effect, means that I can't use the pre-written difficulties and Devices according to their naive adaptations. Playing with anydice a little, I found that setting the base difficulty to (Sphere - 1) and letting everyone double 10s whenever they show up works at TN 7. In order to keep things simple, the latter two rules apply to everything.
(As a side note, specialties for four-dot Traits still exist; they just add one extra dice to relevant rolls.)
Fast-casting difficulties are not a thing, because buying Rotes with xp is going to be rather rare in this game; instead, you get a difficulty break if you do buy the Rote and you can already cast the effect. Extra dice from augment skills and extra success from augment magic are not capped. Unlike in Creation, where this could a create a rather nasty Elder Problem, '99 and the Ascension War keeping whatever's left of the Elders busy means that this mostly just balances out, I think?
Extended Rituals (and Wards)
Any time you want to cast a ritual, separate the difficulty of the effect into internal penalties and external penalties. You have to beat (and subtract!) internal penalties from every roll you make, but you can build up successes to beat external ones. In general, external penalties represent the difficulty of the task - trying to find someone in a massive search space, or building a massive and complex construction project - while internal penalties represent the difficulty of the casting - finicky rituals, distraction during casting, working a material that resists alteration (like Primium and lesser derivatives). Wards can count as either, depending on context.
In fact, that deserves a little elaboration. As written, anybody who can average better than two successes on Enlightenment + Corr can eventually watch Senex in his bathtub (assuming he doesn't put up active wards that murder you for trying, but that's not the problem here), but it takes a whopping five successes just to make a magic sniper rifle - because wards count as external penalties that negate final successes, but Corr table difficulties count as internal penalties that increase target number in core.
So! I'm going to split wards into three general categories:shields, which are just ablative barriers between point A and point B, bans, which try to keep various magic out of an area (or concept, or away from a piece of Data, or whatever) but don't fail if they're bypassed, and cloaks, which try to keep an area from being found in the first place. The first two are generally of the form Corr 3/(Sphere) 2 when they're not just outright Matter; the latter are generally pure Corr (or alternate Spheres.) Cloaks are always an internal penalty; if Senex has set up a ten-success cloak on his location, then at minimum you're going to need to get ten successes to scry him, even if you have his blood or whatever. (If he wasn't over Enlightenment 5 this might not actually be true, since it's possible that having his blood would deny him his focus for his ward.) Shields, meanwhile, are always an external penalty - knock down the wall and you're through.
Bans, on the other hand, vary. Directly casting their targeted magic through a ban turns it into an internal penalty; the interior of the space rejects your effect and you have to force it through with every roll. However, scrying - or more importantly, Chaining - through a ban is an external penalty. If you take the time to set up a Correspondence link first, then you can ignore a ban entirely. Think with portals.
Successes required by a Correspondence table now fit right in as bans. If you're trying to directly cast over a really crappy sympathetic link, it's an internal penalty; if you're trying to Chain it, it's an external penalty and you can build up successes.
So! I'm going to split wards into three general categories:shields, which are just ablative barriers between point A and point B, bans, which try to keep various magic out of an area (or concept, or away from a piece of Data, or whatever) but don't fail if they're bypassed, and cloaks, which try to keep an area from being found in the first place. The first two are generally of the form Corr 3/(Sphere) 2 when they're not just outright Matter; the latter are generally pure Corr (or alternate Spheres.) Cloaks are always an internal penalty; if Senex has set up a ten-success cloak on his location, then at minimum you're going to need to get ten successes to scry him, even if you have his blood or whatever. (If he wasn't over Enlightenment 5 this might not actually be true, since it's possible that having his blood would deny him his focus for his ward.) Shields, meanwhile, are always an external penalty - knock down the wall and you're through.
Bans, on the other hand, vary. Directly casting their targeted magic through a ban turns it into an internal penalty; the interior of the space rejects your effect and you have to force it through with every roll. However, scrying - or more importantly, Chaining - through a ban is an external penalty. If you take the time to set up a Correspondence link first, then you can ignore a ban entirely. Think with portals.
Successes required by a Correspondence table now fit right in as bans. If you're trying to directly cast over a really crappy sympathetic link, it's an internal penalty; if you're trying to Chain it, it's an external penalty and you can build up successes.
Enhancements and Devices
Shamelessly cribbed MJ's notes and merged his ideas, with a bit of my own flavor.
Both Device/Wonder and Enhancement are double-cost. Device is as written, which appears to be "two background points for Devices per dot, plus one." Enhancement has approximately double that effectiveness: halve the costs of all Devices bought as augmentations before checking against your Enhancement rating (round down). Your first two dots (eight to ten points) of cyberware do not grant permanent Paradox, instead granting the Paradox Flaw attached to all cybernetic enhancement. Your first dot (four to six points) of implanted bioware do not grant permanent Paradox either, under a lesser version of the cybernetic flaw that does only one additional aggravated damage - because it should totally be possible for a Life mage to give you fatal allergies, and that should totally be easier if you really do have alien tissue in you.
As a miscellaneous piece of errata, both the exomuscle and the exoskeleton have double their listed cost. Meanwhile, buying an ADEI is free: the rather minor benefits it provides are more than paid for by their incursion of the cybernetic Paradox Flaw.
Convention/Tradition Bonuses
This is something I introduced because it seemed kind of weird that all Backgrounds cost the same for all factions, when their applicable resources and specialties are so totally different. Every Convention or Tradition now gets four dots worth of faction-appropriate Background or Merit for free.
Technocratic Union: Resources (Enlightenment + 1)
NWO: Master of Red Tape
Progenitor: Enhancement 2, to be spent on Convention-appropriate augs. (Gengineering counts.)
Iteration X: Enhancement 2, to be spent on Convention-appropriate augs, and a free ADEI.
Syndicate: Four additional dots of Resources (stacks with Technocracy faction bonus)
Void Engineer: Node 4
Traditions: Chantry (Enlightenment)
Akashic Brotherhood: Do 2, Martial Arts 1
Celestial Chorus: Revelation 4 - Dream, renamed and refluffed
Cult of Ecstasy: Wonder 2, to be spent on a Tradition-appropriate drug stash.
Dreamspeakers: Mentor 4
Euthanatos: Destiny 4
Order of Hermes: Library 4
Sons of Ether: Wonder 2, to be spent on Tradition-appropriate Artifacts. Steampunk is recommended.
Verbena: Sanctum 4
Virtual Adepts: Wonder 2, to be spent on a custom ADEI or similar digital interface.
Experience Points
Last, but most certainly not least: experience points. These are running on a tiered system, preserving some of the effects of the quadratic system (encouraging breadth over depth, making mastery rare) without quite making building up the experience for the last few dots quite so intensely frustrating (particularly in short-ish campaigns.)
In general, the first half (round up) of a trait cost some base value; the second half cost double that. In other words, for everything except Trainings and Talents, the first three dots cost X points and the last two cost 2X points. T/Ts cost X for the first two and 2X for the last one. Willpower just starts at 5 dots for simplicity (can you even be a Mage with Willpower less than 5?). Certain Backgrounds that can go over 5 just keep gaining factors in the same way: 6-8 are 3X points and 9-10 are 4X points.
The base values for traits are essentially canonical, with few modifications:
Talents: 2xp
Trainings: 3xp
Attributes: 4xp
Sphere (sp): 7xp
Sphere (etc): 8xp
Arete/Enlightenment: 12xp (*)
Background: 3xp
Merit (if applicable): 2xp
(*) Arete and Enlightenment are a little special. Track your experience since your last Seeking: you need to have earned enough experience to be able to buy your next dot of Arete before undergoing a Seeking. However, you are not actually charged for this dot, and are free to spend your experience elsewhere. This is just to provide a mechanical reason to not sprint through your first five dots in as many sessions. The sixth dot does not actually "cost" any more experience beyond the usual triple-base, but should absolutely have the greatest roleplaying requirement.
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... Something I somehow managed to fail to mention in that longpost: experience points are worth more, so you're not supposed to get as many. Basically halve the guidelines - something like 4-6xp a session.
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SoE and VA should have Wonder, not Enhancement-not all Etherites or Adepts are transhumanists, and Aiden Pearce should be an entirely valid VA concept, while Science Adventurer Batman is a decent Etherite concept.
Fair enough, I'll change that.
Anything else? Have I miraculously solved your problems with Enhancement?
I was thinking about making Device/Wonder normal-cost without actually changing its power, because man, paying two Background dots for Primium knuckles, say, just makes me sad. But then again it does come with its own free casting and a PE pool, so it's probably worth it - additional thoughts here?(I'd prefer too much critique to too little in general, if that helps. This is basically my first major foray into homebrew if you don't count a TMA and an SMA over in Exalted, so.)
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Well, that's pretty silly. I mean, performing Gilgul on all your Mages seems rather counterproductive for a Mage-led organization.
But remember that they are in severe denial about being Mages.Well, that's pretty silly. I mean, performing Gilgul on all your Mages seems rather counterproductive for a Mage-led organization.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Fair enough, I'll change that.
Anything else? Have I miraculously solved your problems with Enhancement?
(I'd prefer too much critique to too little in general, if that helps. This is basically my first major foray into homebrew if you don't count a TMA and an SMA over in Exalted, so.)
Why do Akashics have Allies?
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
... what?
It's supposed to represent that they're relatively close-knit, and that the way they don't really classify people by way of life means that it's pretty easy to end up with friends in high places on accident.
Mind you, this is what I got out of about five minutes of scrutinizing their page for something I could give them that wasn't Dream, so.
Step 1:
Turn Do into a background. Step 2. Give the Akashics Do 2 and like, 2 dots of something else. Do really shouldn't be an Ability since it's basically going "my martial arts are superer than yours."
Doesn't Do have a crapload of requirements for every dot, though?
Anyway, Do 2 + Martial Arts 1 is what I'm leaning towards here.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Canonically yes, but they're amazingly easy to qualify for if you aren't going for Shonen Protagonist levels of monofocus on punchmans.
Like, looking at the character sheet for MJ's cyborg, he actually qualifies for Do 4. You can qualify for Do 5 entirely by accident just taking Abilities that are useful for any Mage. This is stuff like Stealth or Melee or Athletics or basic social skills or "how the fuck does the Umbra work".
Literally the only reason why not everybody ends up picking up Do as their punchmans skill is because the AkBros have it as proprietary somehow.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
I would look at Blessing or Totem, since those are the Tradition wildcard backgrounds. Blessing represent something invested in you, so Do as a blessing would be what kind of martial strength you've cultivated and reinvested in yourself. Totem is for a relationship, usually with a spirit, but nothing says it can be with a more abstract Taoist principle. It means the world works with you, but your behavior is ritually constrained, which can also work well.
@MJ12 Commando - I guess if I had one thing I'd like for you to double-check, it'd be the rules on Wards, since they're kind of what keep the universe from falling apart into MAD and/or a barrage of nukes without making Correspondence scrying nearly useless.
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Isn't that literally the same thing that Werewolves get?
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Yep, but it's also a mage background, usually reserved for spiritualists and mediums. You either have to be a Dreamspeaker or take a merit to take it usually. I don't really see it as a major problem, though.
I wonder if a Werewolf would be less or more likely to attack a Mage with the same Totem as them.