Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
Only associate with other supernaturals to avoid paradox?
White Wolf's World of Darkness
No, I was actually going, "would any of the groups that are actual groups be something this could fit into?" Because, seriously, I don't think it even fits the Hollow Ones, and they're the most inclusive group I'm aware of.
...Would the Celestial Chorus accept someone who goes with being a D&D Cleric?
Well first define what you mean by "Dungeons and Dragons Wizard".
The important question is whether or not they think that D&D is real.
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Someone who has access to their entire spell list. Even just the level 1 and 0 ones the weakest ones have, although by the time you account for the kinds of esoteric effects in there, the level of power needed probably would make level 3 or even 4 available.
Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
With all do respect you should be shilling every update!
For all your Awakening music needs
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
All of them to a minimum of three dots and frequently to five; if you include wish in the scope of "D&D wizard", then you need all spheres to five.
Obviously, for a high level one, but if you look up a little from your post, you'll see I'm fine with any level of Wizard. Do you really need them that high just to handle level one?
One of those people who are generally fairly recent but very enthusiastic roleplayers who are not LARPers but pretends to cast spells with an arm gesture and saying the name of the spell to illustrate an idea they're talking about who has one of the cantrips actually happen while doing so.
Define what you mean from an in-character perspective.
Then they start looking at their books, and immediately get how to do the other cantrips, and get vague ideas that will turn out to be things that can expand into the actual spells after long periods contemplating them with pencil and paper to take notes and drawings when looking at the descriptions of the more powerful ones.
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
The thing about paradigms is, you have to actually believe 'this is how magic works'. This theoretical mage must fundamentally believe that the process of magic is governed by the rules of a game.
This is basically one of the easiest Marauders to come up with.
Remember, 1-dot spheres are almost exclusively sensory-you can't use them to affect others. What you can do with them is incredibly powerful-a mage with Forces, Time, and Life 1, for example, could be an expert sniper who can perfectly compensate for bullet drop, travel time, their hands shaking, and their own heartbeat, but will do exactly nothing in emulating a D&D wizard, because the game does not incentivize D&D wizarding.
2-dot spheres are also incredibly minor changes-Forces 2 effects are reliant on amplifying what's already there, for example. So something like Dancing Lights would technically require Forces 3, although you could cheat it in a merely low-light situation. Even something like Acid Splash is Matter 2, minimum, and if you want actual timely damage out of it it might be Life/Matter 3 direct damage.
The funny thing is that despite having all these spheres, the D&D wizard mage would met an Actual Fight Mage and kind of get his face kicked in because direct magic attack tends to be vulgar and risky compared to the example I gave of a mage using a spell no higher than 1 dot to put a .50 caliber round into someone's eyeball from 2 kilometers away.
Yes, and I'm well aware. The game is explicitly set up so that being a D&D style magic user is an absolutely terrible idea. Although the problem with having to develop that Paradigm in the first place is one I'm not sure how to work around, and my example was literally off the top of my head. The question wasn't if it was a good idea or a survivable build, it was what it would take. What surprised me about the first answer was the idea that even the lowest levels of power required all of the Spheres at at least Three. I fully expected it to take three or four of them at three with none at zero, but the only answer to my actual question implies that the only way to achieve even a minimum power version of it requires levels of power that most version of the setting would find noticeable on a global level. I didn't think they were that different, even though I knew that type of thing would be massively inefficient with the levels of power needed for it.
So do they believe that the D&D books are records of a magic system or that the books are the source of a magic system?
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
But on the other hand, what if they did, and the vast majority of people just blew them off as 'Obviously faked'?
ManusDomine will talk about his ideal magic system and pretend his opinion has any relevance
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Now ManusDomine will talk about his ideal magic system and pretend his opinion has any relevance:
Right, Mage - The Awakening is a fucking awesome game and this is an objective fact. You may think otherwise, but you're wrong.
But more importantly, it's a game that I have a lot of ideas about that are only sort of reflected in the game material, so I will try to expound on my ideal magic system for Mage - The Awakening.
I like a version of the setting where there are vanishingly few actual mages, most are Sleepwalkers, Proximi and even stranger sorts of people, they may have embers or specks of Supernal knowledge, perhaps one is something like a parapsychic from Cthulhutech, having grown up with the ability to levitate, attact and repel objects, but also knowing that he is doomed to slowly go mad, as he forces his mind through the patterns of eldritch mathematics that he uses to re-model the world, while another is born, knowing herself to be a hero blessed with great power but also the hero's curse. I want the Exarchs to be a constant element, whenever you open your True Eyes; the seraphic eyes of The Eye burning visibly within every camera, every window and every eye just like the swords of The General hang over the heads of young soldiers sent to die and the crown of The Father sits upon the brow of all ministers of faith. I want mages to see a maddening kaleidoscope of eldritch sigils and occult symbolism whenever their mage sight is activated, and I want them to ruin the Fallen World with their hubris when they pull down idealized Supernal Law to shake the pillars of the fragile Fallen World.
And most importantly, I want mages to be fucking ridiculously Sodom-and-Gomorrah powerful when they truly want something done, and I want their backlashes to not have a single personal repercussion at all. Their paradoxes tear at the world and leave gaping cracks that the unreality of the Abyss invades through; watch, young mage as the immutable laws of mathematics twist and turn to the whims of Gulmoth, watch young mage as history rewrites itself at the movements of the Anunnaki and even biology and physics are made to dance at the frantic clawing of the Acamoth, desperately fighting to escape the stifling prison of the Fallen World.
To accomplish this, my desires for a magic system is that a mage can't actually fail his casting. Instead, he envisions a general idea of what he wants, puts together some factors that will signify difficulty in some way and then he simply declares that it happens. What he does then is the usual roll to control his spell, if he fails such a roll, the spell goes out of control, while a Dramatic Failure causes the spell to do all sorts of wonky stuff that it's not supposed to do. This process should involve a ridiculously small dice pool unless it is boosted by symbolic resonance, built around a Shadow Name and a persona so that a mage who is actually pretentious enough to call himself Azathoth will have to surround himself with mad fluting and lose himself to the stupor of ecstasy in order to control his spells as he reaches high to pull down the Supernal.
Mind you, I don't want this to be a paradigm-thing, I already have Ascension for all my magical solipsistic needs. Instead, it is symbolism, literally pseudo-divine smoke and mirrors to create an anchor for the Supernal and make the casting easier.
Paradox should not be directly harmful to the mage, but to the Fallen World around them. A Havoc is redundant, because spells going out of control is like, a basic feature of the system now, so instead Havoc fills your spell with twisted power, maximizing it's strength at the cost of any sort of finesse so a fireball that would incinerate a vampire instead levels a house. Most paradoxes are Anomalies, which twist the Fallen World and causes all sorts of weird stuff to happen such as gravity deciding that today is actually opposite day and ENJOY FALLING UPWARDS MOTHERFUCKERS or language going "this consistency thing is pretty cool but what if we did this instead" and suddenly everyone speaks Aklo, while Manifestations mean that Anumerus shows up and you have to deal with the horrors of Abyssal mathematics or some wacky shit like that.
This leaves Branding and Bedlam behind, but I always though those were boring so I'm okay with that.
Thoughts?
Right, Mage - The Awakening is a fucking awesome game and this is an objective fact. You may think otherwise, but you're wrong.
But more importantly, it's a game that I have a lot of ideas about that are only sort of reflected in the game material, so I will try to expound on my ideal magic system for Mage - The Awakening.
I like a version of the setting where there are vanishingly few actual mages, most are Sleepwalkers, Proximi and even stranger sorts of people, they may have embers or specks of Supernal knowledge, perhaps one is something like a parapsychic from Cthulhutech, having grown up with the ability to levitate, attact and repel objects, but also knowing that he is doomed to slowly go mad, as he forces his mind through the patterns of eldritch mathematics that he uses to re-model the world, while another is born, knowing herself to be a hero blessed with great power but also the hero's curse. I want the Exarchs to be a constant element, whenever you open your True Eyes; the seraphic eyes of The Eye burning visibly within every camera, every window and every eye just like the swords of The General hang over the heads of young soldiers sent to die and the crown of The Father sits upon the brow of all ministers of faith. I want mages to see a maddening kaleidoscope of eldritch sigils and occult symbolism whenever their mage sight is activated, and I want them to ruin the Fallen World with their hubris when they pull down idealized Supernal Law to shake the pillars of the fragile Fallen World.
And most importantly, I want mages to be fucking ridiculously Sodom-and-Gomorrah powerful when they truly want something done, and I want their backlashes to not have a single personal repercussion at all. Their paradoxes tear at the world and leave gaping cracks that the unreality of the Abyss invades through; watch, young mage as the immutable laws of mathematics twist and turn to the whims of Gulmoth, watch young mage as history rewrites itself at the movements of the Anunnaki and even biology and physics are made to dance at the frantic clawing of the Acamoth, desperately fighting to escape the stifling prison of the Fallen World.
To accomplish this, my desires for a magic system is that a mage can't actually fail his casting. Instead, he envisions a general idea of what he wants, puts together some factors that will signify difficulty in some way and then he simply declares that it happens. What he does then is the usual roll to control his spell, if he fails such a roll, the spell goes out of control, while a Dramatic Failure causes the spell to do all sorts of wonky stuff that it's not supposed to do. This process should involve a ridiculously small dice pool unless it is boosted by symbolic resonance, built around a Shadow Name and a persona so that a mage who is actually pretentious enough to call himself Azathoth will have to surround himself with mad fluting and lose himself to the stupor of ecstasy in order to control his spells as he reaches high to pull down the Supernal.
Mind you, I don't want this to be a paradigm-thing, I already have Ascension for all my magical solipsistic needs. Instead, it is symbolism, literally pseudo-divine smoke and mirrors to create an anchor for the Supernal and make the casting easier.
Paradox should not be directly harmful to the mage, but to the Fallen World around them. A Havoc is redundant, because spells going out of control is like, a basic feature of the system now, so instead Havoc fills your spell with twisted power, maximizing it's strength at the cost of any sort of finesse so a fireball that would incinerate a vampire instead levels a house. Most paradoxes are Anomalies, which twist the Fallen World and causes all sorts of weird stuff to happen such as gravity deciding that today is actually opposite day and ENJOY FALLING UPWARDS MOTHERFUCKERS or language going "this consistency thing is pretty cool but what if we did this instead" and suddenly everyone speaks Aklo, while Manifestations mean that Anumerus shows up and you have to deal with the horrors of Abyssal mathematics or some wacky shit like that.
This leaves Branding and Bedlam behind, but I always though those were boring so I'm okay with that.
Thoughts?
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Well, I do like the idea of making Shadow Names the lens through which Mages invoke their power - it helps make that element of Awakening a bit more substantial than its usual purpose of anti-scry-and-die precautions, and I've always liked stories where protagonists have to balance an assumed persona against their "real" self, and may or may not lose sight of either of those as time goes on. Likewise, bringing features like "this world is Fallen, that is not how it was meant to be, and the powers you bring forth scream and claw and struggle to tear down the Lie they have been drawn down into" and "the Exarchs gaze upon the hell they have wrought with cold, pitiless eyes, leaving the few who can see them feeling suffocated by these omnipresent overseers" into the foreground is also a damn good idea, since it helps provide flavor AND gives nMage a more solidified, easy-to-grasp setting.
The Orders' actions (and persistence) make more sense when there are literal eyes wreathed in flame glaring out at you from every window, and thus you can't really ignore the fact that you're in a sham reality forged by megalomaniacal wizard-tyrants to trap mankind's souls. Whether you rise up against them or bow down at their feet, the Exarchs and their eons-old crime help define how the characters react to and behave within the setting, instead of being this invisible, mostly-intellectual presence.
Mind you, this is the kind of setting which works best as either a quest or a novel, since having Mages be crazy rare and crazy powerful, while quite appropriate for the world you're building, means you can't do the standard four/five-person gaming group without the entire framework exploding.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
OK, at first level you only need:
- Spirit 3 (Summon Monster I, Disrupt Undead against non-corporeal varieties of undead)
- Entropy at least 2 (True Strike)
- Matter 3 (Acid Splash)
- Forces 3 (Light, Burning Hands)
- Mind at least 2 (Charm Person)
- Life at least 2 (Sleep)
- Prime 1 (Detect Magic)
- Correspondence 1 (Alarm)
All of this is, of course, completely neglecting item creation and metamagic feats.
Well it was one ancient vampire that also ate younger ones and it was more in Bangladesh then India who fought other ancient but not as ancient ones. And well prior to the nukes the barrior betwen reality and nightmare realms broke down and a giant storm had been created to allow the vampires to fight for 3 days and nights straight. The explanation was a freak superstorm and flooding because basically no one was alive to see the orbital mirrors that shone like 4 suns. And it was never noted if the anti spirit nuke was visible to regular scientists listening for it.Hunter: First Contact describes the possibility.
By time of Hunter's Hunted's 2 oWod's Special Affairs division rips off nWod's VASCU and scouts for psychics.
Both Worlds of Darkness now share Psychic FBI Agents
We know Task Force Valkyrie has infiltrated Secret Service - it's a start?
What do ignorant masses assume it really was?
I would have loved the cover up for that failing but public lacking context.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Shows like that are counter-reliable: they help more than they hinder the masquerade.
Legend of Ruina
Growing eyes on the inside
I imagine those sorts of shows would still be around, you'd just have a lot more variables on actual intent of the show. Some might actively avoid any rumors too substantial because they're trying to avoid anything too clearly supernatural for one reason or another. Some get canceled quickly and suddenly when the camera crew wanders off into the Hedge or some other horrible fate. Some are patsies of the various organizations intent on enforcing the Masquerade, being used to cover up and conceal operations.
There are a lot of possibilities for those shows, and Network Zero is just one of them.
NonSequtur
a body
Well like, the stereotypical wizard with wands and staves and weird spell components is a Hermetic.
If you wanted actual Vancian Magic you could probably spin it either as something along Hermetic/Awakening mage lines, where the knowledge literally burns itself out of your mind after you cast the spell, or you could look more directly to the Dying Earth setting and make it some weird techomystic thing.
If you wanted actual Vancian Magic you could probably spin it either as something along Hermetic/Awakening mage lines, where the knowledge literally burns itself out of your mind after you cast the spell, or you could look more directly to the Dying Earth setting and make it some weird techomystic thing.
Yes, that's an important thing to remember. Do you want your D&D Wizard to be a D&D Wizard as they're meant to be, or one as they're commonly depicted and played? Because in the former case, you've got someone who requires exceptional intelligence to painfully and laboriously memorise complex arcane sigils and formulae which literally burn out of their mind when they use them (resulting in a Hermetic even less flexible than usual - and less flexible than most Technocrats too). In the latter case, you've got essentially a purple-paradigm caster on crack who can do basically anything with a focus of "I say some mystic words or chant a bit".
Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
Orbital mirrors are incredibly obvious and ought be noticed to anyone on subcontinent?
Especially when it burns with light of 4 suns?
+ Billion people dwell within clear visual range of this?
Hours of that orbital attack should be seen by everyone monitoring space?