notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Death exists, but as a variant sphere that is only common among the Hollow Ones. Fate is still the Euthanos favored sphere.
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White Wolf's World of Darkness
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
First off, it's hard to come up with a Paradigm with just some Sphere dots like that. You can flip through any of the Trad/Conv Books' sample character section and see characters with wildly different Paradigms but similarly arrayed when it comes to their Spheres.
Except the Euthanatos are about Fate and Death hand-in-hand. In fact the initiating to join them involves the candidate going through a physical death. They are all about the Cycle of Life, Death and Rebirth. Death is a HUGE facet in their beliefs.
You can't just cut out a key component of a group's philosophy and expect them to behave the same.
Indeed. The Rev Ed TB makes a bit of a deal over an Euthanatos that chooses to be a pacifist, renouncing the 'Good Death' they deliver upon the wicked, choosing to serve the Wheel in her own way without murdering people.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
...and they can have that without the Death sphere? I mean, the Death sphere doesn't even exist in canon and they somehow manage. And I didn't say anything about their beliefs?
But the spheres inform the paradigm? I mean, you can't have a paradigm of 'made pacts with spirits' without Spirit. Well, you can, but it'd be weird.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Incidentally, besides Intruders, of course, what nMage books would you recommend for getting a feel for Mage life overall, in a (somewhat) timeless way? Like, in the sense that, the stuff I'm looking for is stuff that isn't about 'What's going on in 2001 with Mages' but more 'Stuff that Mages throughout the ages would deal with', if that makes any sense. So, the nature of magic, the nature of Awakening, how they learn and grow and deal with stuff, that sort of thing.
Edit: Because yes, if polls are any indication, a lot of people want me to run a Mage Quest at some point. I admit, upon reflection (at work while trying to imagine plot arcs and challenges), ES's headcanon has grown on me somewhat, or at least his way of viewing things might be interesting if used right. Hrm.
Edit: Because yes, if polls are any indication, a lot of people want me to run a Mage Quest at some point. I admit, upon reflection (at work while trying to imagine plot arcs and challenges), ES's headcanon has grown on me somewhat, or at least his way of viewing things might be interesting if used right. Hrm.
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AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
You were the one bringing up the Death and Fate Spheres, implying this was a homebrew using MtAw with MtAs. Because Entropy is not just fate but inevitability, decay, death.
Not really. To begin, just because a Mage has dots in Spirits does not mean they share or have similar Paradigms. Technomancers, like the VA and SoE, will see Spirit in far, far different light than Dreamspeakers. To say nothing of the Technocracy and Dimensional Science. Not every Mage with Spirit will see 'spirits' in the same way, much less use the Spirit Sphere in the same way.
Further within the Euthanatos, like all the other Mage groups, there are different sects with their own beliefs and teachings. And even mages with in the same group with similar Sphere spreads do not turn out the same. For example in the Euthanatos TB, there's several sample characters with similar spreads but are different. One, a typical modern day assassin type has four of their six Sphere dots in the same spread (Entropy 2, Mind 2) as a journalist is likewise on a quest to eliminate evil but instead of just killing bad people, they're out to kill what they see as the root of that bad, evil ideas and their spread among sleepers. The Assassin using Mind and Entropy as you'd expect him to do so, augmenting his ability to kill people. The Journalist on the other hand favors curses and sympathetic magic to locate those that spew out evil ideas and thoughts and remove their ability to spread it. And the journalist in turn shares a 4 out of 6 spread with a Gambler concept that far more different from her.
Yes, the initial Sphere spread does help define the character and their Paradigm but it is not the only factor. It's difficult to come up with a Paradigm for a character solely based on the Sphere spread. In fact when I'm creating a Mage character or help someone with character creation, the Sphere spread is one of the last things I do. In fact I tend to draw their Paradigm more from the character concept and the backstory I create from that concept. After all the character's character is a major factor in their belief which in turn will help inform what their Spheres will likely be.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
But that's not paradigm. That's what they do with magic, not how they do it.
And I corrected myself? And having Entropy instead of Fate is moronic. It's like having a variant of Matter that can only make things worse until high levels as core. So I changed it. Because it's moronic.
And it's harder to come up with a paradigm with just Tradition, which is the other option.
I didn't say that? I said 'someone who's paradigm is 'I talk to spirits and get them to help me' is going to have spirit or else their character will be weird. Maybe work on your reading comprehension a bit?
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
The vast majority of what the nMage Death sphere does (mostly relating to ghosts, zombies, raising the dead, etc.) is actually stuff that a Euthanatos member not only doesn't need to do, but would probably actively abhor.
A run of the mill Euthanatos doesn't need the Death sphere, he just needs a sphere that lets him kill people. Which is most of them.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
*something something asshole spider-god from Asura's Wrath something something*
No, Entropy is like taking a dot of Death and a dot of Fate every time you buy a single Sphere dot. Level one is Sense Fate and Fortune, level two is Affect Propability and level three is Affect Predictable Patterns, neither of this is about making things worse. Whereas level Four is Affect Living Patterns and level five is Affect Thought, which humorously means that you got it wrong and it becomes about fucking people up at level four.
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Eh, not really. Quite a lot of nDeath lives in oSpirit rather than Entropy.
I mean, that's why my oDeath fansphere is really like you took some bits of Entropy, and glued them to "the bits of Spirit to do with ghosts".
The Euthanatos paradigm is about ending more than the dead.
Like, fundamentally, the bedrock of their paradigm is that fate and karma are a thing, and people can accumulate good or bad karma, which can taint or bless their lives. So you guide people to good acts and you prevent them from doing bad acts. By any means necessary. The stereotypical Euthanatos isn't a necromancer-type.
Death is not necessary or even desirable for that. What you primarily need are the spheres which let you figure out whether someone is on the path of good or ill, i.e. Time and Fate.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah I fucked up and remembered the "raise a zombie" Rote from Sorcerer's Crusade as Entropy 2/Prime 2 instead of Matter 2/Prime 2. Entropy covers breakdowns, decay, chance, rot, change and fate. We can see a few of these in Awakening's Death, just like there is a little Classic Forces in Death.
So Death in NWoD has inherited the "absence of energy" parts of Forces, the "deathy stuff" parts of Spirit and the "things break down" of Entropy. Also a little "sacrifice stuff and TAKE THEIR PRIMAL ESSENCE FOR YOURSELF" parts of Prime.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
The character is a demigod and servant of the Eight Goddesses of Fate, who oversee the facets of all cause and effect and once a long time ago personally worked it as it filtered in the Outer Chaos and rewove it into reality. As their chosen one, it is your duty to ensure the continuation of fate; what the other Euthanatos view as 'bad karma' you see clearly as tanglings in the threads or choking an area of the chaotic but life-giving streams of essence which flow into all creation.
In this darkened age, the Technocracy has choked the whole world of needed essence, binding the world so heavily that it slowly suffocates.
You use the movements of the stars (which are reflections of the tapestry off the firmament), and lesser reflections within the pseudo-chaos of motion to predict and understand the way the world acts and flows. It may be possible to draw on the archetypes hidden in the constellations, but you haven't learned to do so very well yet.
Additonally, you have learned to ask aid from the spider-gods who weave the Tapestry in reworking the simpler or more random aspects of fate, though they are capricious, overworked, and often insane. Fortunately, being overworked, they have a great desire for entertainment, and acting in a suitably dramatic fashion means that they will aid you in small, subtle ways. If impelled to act in larger ways, they may become irate and punish you instead.
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No @Quantumboost, this is in fact the description of a newly Exalted Sidereal with the addition of eight extra Maidens. Not a Euthanatos, go back to the Exalted thread with you!
On another, more serious note, this is a pretty cool paradigm, but it lacks EXCEEDINGLY PRODIGIOUS MARTIAL ARTS. So, in times of need he/she/they can totally enter secret martial arts forms that emulate the constellations and turnings of the planets and stars and unleash deadly strikes and kicks that move with the certainty of Fate.
(Paradox backlashes take the form of assholish golden dudes attempting to force you to teach them, and internet nerds complaining about how you are "broken".
)
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
A very simple way of understanding how nMage treats its Sleepers is to consider the scene in the Matrix where Morpheus explains that everyone who does not know about the Matrix is fundamentally a slave to it, and so must be considered a hostile asset, even if they don't know it.
They can just pop Chaos-Repelling Pattern, and watch as every spell not rooted in the paradigm of Creation instantly becomes vulgar.
Why would the golden dudes need you to teach them?(Paradox backlashes take the form of assholish golden dudes attempting to force you to teach them, and internet nerds complaining about how you are "broken".
They can just pop Chaos-Repelling Pattern, and watch as every spell not rooted in the paradigm of Creation instantly becomes vulgar.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Heeeh, that gets said a lot, but it's not really how Chaos-Repelling Pattern works. For instance, even though its entire deal is to let you wade knee-deep in the Wyld with not a care, it doesn't prevent the raksha from hurling firebolts at you. It just keeps reality from deciding everyone in this general vicinity is a crab-person now.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
"The presence of the Lawgivers wards away chaos. This Charm surrounds the character with a mystic pattern of Essence—what the Fair Folk call an "island of Creation" or a "dead waypoint." The character's immediate vicinity—out to (her Essence) in yards—functions according to the laws of Creation, even if the character is in the Wyld, Malfeas or some stranger location."
Chaos-Repelling Pattern is specifically not just an anti-Wyld measure. It ensures that everything within range follows the laws of Creation – so if a Raksha uses their funky essence-powers to create a firebolt and toss it at you, it will ensure that the firebolt operates within the laws of Creation, which happily include essence being used to burn stuff.
Within the context of oMage, this very intuitively translates to imposing Creation as a paradigm and tossing two fingers up at Consensus Reality – which, to use your own phrasing, sees very little difference between all the Sleepers deciding that homeopathy sounds like bunkum, and all the Sleepers deciding that everyone is a crab-person.
So a Mage who uses magic kung-fu techniques is going to be a-okay, because those fall within the laws of Creation. On the other hand, a Mage who tries to call on the innate power of something's True Name is going to suffer Paradox, because True Names don't have that kind of power in Creation. Similarly, a Technocrat who tries to operate a nuclear-powered laser cannon is going to run into trouble, because Creation's idea of nuclear physics is the cancerous glowing heart of a giant demon-god bound outside the universe by his own flayed skin and broken bones.
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And unless they are a master, non ritually cast damage spells are bad, and you can PD half of the spheres away
Well, either that, or:
- It lets through all "coincidental in Creation magic", because that magic is working by the laws of Creation
- All vulgar-in-Creation magic means there's a roll-off between the Solar and the Mage for "local reality works this way", as the two powers clash. If the mage wins, their spell has full effect; if the Exalt wins, the spell just doesn't work at all.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
The former is what I'm going for, yes. Chaos-Repelling Pattern imposes a veto vote over the local Consensus – the world around them accepts the paradigm of Creation, regardless of what anyone/everyone thinks. That means Magic Kung Fu spells are a-okay, Christian sacraments and quantum entanglement are not. The elements are Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Wood – Chinese spells predicted on Metal can go to hell, and Technocratic atomic theory can follow on its heels.
I don't really see a justification for a roll-off, to be honest. Even on a non-gameability level.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, maybe for balance? I mean, what you're saying sounds immensely powerful in the sense that it serves as broad-spectrum anti-magic, basically. I mean, not for everything, but the paradigm of Creation is somewhat narrow (compared to anything goes oMage, at least.)
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It was a joke based on how I was obviously making fun of Sidereals and the fact that Solars can learn Sidereal Martial Arts with a teacher.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Within a few yards, it swaps the Consensus from "our world" to "wuxia world". If anything, it's most powerful as a tool for facilitating magic by your allies than disrupting magic by your enemies, given that many things which would be vulgar in Creation would already be vulgar in our world, and far more things that would be vulgar in our world would be perfectly normal in Creation.
Because roll-offs are what happens when two powers clash in Exalted, and CRP is not a defence. The mage is saying "Reality works this way", CRP is saying "no, reality works that way", and when they disagree, one of them loses.
It's the same I would call for if Abyssals had a power saying "reality around me works by Underworld rules" and they walked into range of a Solar with CRP up.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Also, amusingly it would mean that someone like Antoinette Sylia from Panopticon Quest with her awesome singlular wonder of a set of powered armor would be perfectly fine in there because singular wonders of epic potency is totally coincidental in Creation.
It would also mean the world would be in the shocking situation that the MA-40-U would be the safest suit of Iteration X power armour in the world - a sentence never before uttered in the history of mankind.