- Pronouns
- They/Them
You keep spelling Knights of Saint George wrong.
It's because he's British. He can't help it.
Oh sorry, he can't heulp it. Need to add those u's.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
It's because he's British. He can't help it.
Oh sorry, he can't heulp it. Need to add those u's.
You keep spelling Knights of Saint George wrong.
... no, because "Also, the Knights of St George, the Hunter group in the book, are probably one of the coolest Hunter Conspiracies out there because they're psychic FBI agents who are semi-public." is just plain wrong. They're not in Slashers and they're not psychic FBI agents.
Now, if I were instead to have said "Also, the Knights of St George, the Hunter group in Witchfinders, are probably one of the coolest Hunter Conspiracies out there because they're Abyss-worshipping heretical Anglicans. Also, they're one of the best bits of Witchfinders, which has a lot of issues whenever it tries to interact with Mage, but its own Witch system is actually what I'd recommend people use in non-Mage games".
The Witch system is actually really good - the Source thing for it based on its spell trees and how each tree has its own regen mechanics inspired some of my stuff for the Mysteries hack for Mage, where sorcerers resemble Witches more than classic mages.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I suppose I was asking for that one.
This advice needs to be passed around more, because not using Mages for Hunter is paramount to having a functioning game instead of having your Cheiron operative undergo implant rejection, your VALKYRIE operative's chip explode and your Aegis Kai Doru agent's stuff fall apart.
You've mentioned this system about two times before; due to the law of threes, you are now compelled to inform the thread of it.
In essence, Mage is restructured so that Mages are not the most common form of magician. The most common forms of magician are Sleepwalkers, Sorcerers and Proximi. Mages are rare and scary with their freeform magic, because Sorcerers and Proxmi use more classical trees of Mysteries and are balanced at around the Changeling tier.
Mysteries are a core thing for it. This is a major concept for the magician stuff. Essentially, a Mystery is a fragment of Supernal Truth. It is true at an objective level. By initiating into a Mystery, you accept at a soul level that it's true. You fundamentally know it at such a level that you find it harder to accept that the sky is pink than that your Mystery is false. So, for example, there might be a Mystery about the secret name of the owls, and by initiating into it you learn that name, know that owls truly have this name, and so you can learn themed bits of owl-related magic such as turning yourself into an owl by speaking that name. For each Mystery you initiate into, you add Resonance within the scope of your Mystery into your Mage Sight. You also can carry Mana in your pattern, heal yourself with Mana, and carry out oblations by engaging in sustained ritual behaviour in line with your Mystery.
Mysteries are made up of a classic Contract-style chain of spells, balanced as mage spells. Essentially, they're chains of themed rotes. The name of owls might have a hearing enhancer, something that makes you move faster, a slow-fall effect, something to let you possess owls, and something to let you turn into an owl. They can't have 5-dot effects. Mastering a Mystery gives you the Mystery's direct-pattern-attack and its Mage Armour.
The human mind has to build up a praxis to make coherent sense of these supernal truths. Characters basically have to build a coherent "story" about how the world works from their Mysteries. That means that as you learn more Mysteries, it becomes more and more of a narrowing-down thing because each new Mystery has to be fit into your praxis. If you learn two contradictory mysteries and can't make them work, you'll go Mad. Likewise, if you learn a Blasphemy (an Abyssal Mystery) you've just internalised at a soul level one of the anti-truths of the Abyss. And you can't ever unlearn it. Sucks to be you. Likewise, Prelacies involve accepting at a soul-deep level "The Exarchs are the lords of Reality".
(If Mysteries sound like someone decided to flip Unknown Armies to make it about gnostic truth, that's because it's basically it. As a design feature, I want magic users to be incentivised to be weirder, and to regain mana you have to basically use your Mysteries to build up charges. I really liked that bit of the Witch rules.)
The Pokemon-esque magician evolution tree goes:
Sleepwalker
|
Sorcerer/Proximus
|
Mage
|
Archmaster
|
Sorcerer/Proximus
|
Mage
|
Archmaster
A Sleepwalker is someone lacking the Quiescence. Sleepwalkers are the minor template of magicians, and while they do not know any Mysteries themselves they can invoke Mysteries that they find - for example, Hallows and Artefacts (which are both forms of Mystery that happen to be solid objects). Hence, when a Sleepwalker uses magic, they're the kind of magical character who's reliant on a relic or on carrying out their spells at a ritual location.
When a Sleepwalker initiates into a Mystery and internalises it, they become a major template as a Sorcerer. A Sorcerer is someone who knows a Supernal Truth at a soul-deep level. They're essentially your common urban fantasy magic-users Type 1, where people learn themed magic around a specific power. Sorcerers build themselves a piecemeal praxis from what they learn, so they're often diverse. Many "failed" Awakenings produce Sorcerers when the person doesn't make it to the Watchtower, but they do internalise a Supernal Truth while they're there.
(As a special note, if the first Mystery a Sleepwalker learns is a Blasphemy, they go back to Sleep and become an Abyssal Sorcerer who's mainlining the Abyss, can't learn any non-Blasphemies, and are generally a horrible threat and menace)
Proxmi, by contrast, are born that way. They're living bloodline Mysteries, each one built around a supernal Truth. They're common urban fantasy magic-users Type-2, where you're part of a special bloodline with a themed power. Proximi are born initiated into their bloodline Mystery, or are born as Sleepwalkers and come into it at a certain age. Since they all know their Bloodline Mystery, their praxis is pre-constrained since any new Mysteries they learn have to be compliant with their bloodline stuff. They're made to run things like Nasuverse magi.
(The Harper family from Intruders are probably Abyssal Proximi in this model. And Proximi bloodlines born knowing a Prelacy are the slaves of the Exarchs from birth.)
Mages are those who have Awakened at a Watchtower, through metaphysical similarity to the Oracle. They're arguably an unnatural form of half-archmaster - before the Fall, one who learned enough supernal truth became an archmaster directly from being a sorcerer or proximus. They're freaky and weird because they're living Mysteries, a creature not quite Supernal and not quite Fallen. And when I say "they're a living Mystery", that means, yes, other magicians can use them as a thing to carry out an oblation to. The Arcana are essentially super-Mysteries that allow freeform magic.
(one implication of this is that there's very little difference metaphysically between a mage and an ochema. The only difference is that the mage is "As Below, so Above" while the ochema is "As Above, so Below".)
Archmasters are much as they are normally. In fact, they're probably rarer, because standard mages take some of their role - and standard mages tend to be brought into the Pax Arcana once they're at a certain level of power.
So what does this all mean? It means that magician society:
- Is mostly made up of Sorcerers and Proximi, with Mages being rare bulls in a china shop
- Has it so cabals and Proximi families are the power blocks on Consilia, rather than individual mages being lone nuclear powers.
- Isn't totally curb-stomping other splats and you can run a game of "the vampire court vs the Consilium" without players laughing, tracking down Elysium by hunting down the Death/Vampiric/Hungry resonance in the city, and then opening Time 2, Space 2 scrying portals to 1pm inside the Elysium
- Doesn't have the problem that Mage Sight is so broad and the freeform 1 and 2 dot powers so flexible that you can't run simple murder mysteries.
- Much more accurately resembles normal urban fantasy story magic societies, so you can actually run a lot of stories that are locked off by canon mages.
- Is built in a much more solid way the need to track down Supernal lore, because rather than just Arcane XP, every new Mystery you learn is a brand new power. And you need to do that, because if you teach them too widely then the Abyss corrodes them and they weaken and die (while oblations strengthen them).
- Still lets you run classic mage games, but it makes it a lot harder to accidentally kill non-optimised players - and it also makes it a lot easier to track an individual sorcerer or proximus' capacities since they know a few themed mysteries, rather than so many effects from just a few Arcana.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
So reading that... I'm guessing that Taylor in Imago is actually a Sorcerer, rather than a Mage? Hence your not-quite-rebuttals every time someone says 'Taylor is a Mage' in that thread.
That would explain why she seems much more... Limited, power-wise, than the general interpretation of Mage I've seen in this thread.
Hmm. The Locker could have been a failed awakening, I suppose, but in that case Taylor would have had to internalize some sort of occult truth in there before the 'failure'... I'd make some guess at what that truth could be, but honestly I don't have any idea.
That would explain why she seems much more... Limited, power-wise, than the general interpretation of Mage I've seen in this thread.
Hmm. The Locker could have been a failed awakening, I suppose, but in that case Taylor would have had to internalize some sort of occult truth in there before the 'failure'... I'd make some guess at what that truth could be, but honestly I don't have any idea.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hrm, interesting. It seems like something that would be fun to play around in, though I also just like vanilla Mage (or at least, vanilla Mage with changes...which means I guess I'm the same as you, tweaking and modifying things.)
But that's actually really well thought out, all things considered.
But that's actually really well thought out, all things considered.
Interesting, so how does Legacies fit into all of this?
Jon Chung
=][=
They remain a capital-M Mage thing. It's not necessary to have them for Sorcerers and Proximi because of the way Praxis works - there is no need for a Z-splat to increase character customization options in a similar way, you're doing that already as part of your base template. Go forth, learn a cool Mystery, change your worldview (if you can), repeat (getting increasingly eccentric in the process).
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I'm not sure. She seemed to me like she was that unlucky mage who decided to buy up Mind/Spirit/Correspondence (or Space) and found out later that these spheres, although powerful, tend to be better when you have at least one sphere which gives you things like "the ability to not get shot and to do damage back." And then she doubled down on esoteric but somewhat difficult to apply spheres like Prime because lol.
I mean in terms of magical-ness, she's pretty impressive what with all the teleportation and mind-fuckery. Imago Taylor is just not actually a Fite Mage, which makes her perspective distinctly different from someone like the Panopticon crew or Westin.
Jon Chung
=][=
Space 2 (Apport, Spatial Map), Mind 1 (Sense Consciousness), Matter 1, a crate or three of white phosphorous grenades and an unmarked van do wonderful things.
Very, very true, but she doesn't have matter. Like MJ said, the powerful, esoteric spheres are really much better if you have even one low level direct, weaker sphere to make a base attack they can enhance.
Jon Chung
=][=
Note that Matter isn't actively used, it's used here because you require it as a conjunctional Arcanum to Apport grenades on top of people you can 'see' with Sense Consciousness on your Spatial Map from inside your van. Judging by what she does, she's got Space and Mind at at least 2-3, so that is the only thing she's missing. If she wants to, say, kill everyone in the city she doesn't like who isn't passively immune to being blown up by surprise explosives, it's only 9XP away!
Or she could get Mind 4 and acquire Psychic Domination, but that's more expensive.
- Location
- Quezon City, Philippines
Thanks.
Now I have the idea to make a Slasher that targets Changelings, and make the players believe that the ones responsible are the True Fae. Oh hey, Huntsmen are Slashers.
*fondly remembers his own Mastigos murder blender of a Grammaton Cleric.*
I don't have access to the books at the moment, but IIRC Space and Mind 2-3 means she can just send Mind Bullets via scry, possibly over a large area?
She also has pretty mediocre attributes and merits, presumably, being a teenage girl and not Captain Sparta, which also hurts because even in nMage I find that magery tends to enhance what's already there, versus being a replacement for it.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Eh, I'm not hugely into Mage, so I'll defer to your expertise on that. I was under the impression that Mages had a pretty easy time fucking with Sleepers heads though, and honestly the only power that doesn't seem like it links back to Taylor suppressing and projecting her emotions thematically is teleportation, so I could easily see it all being based off of a single, somewhat esoteric, mystery.
Jon Chung
=][=
Sure, but you need to roll seven successes to one-shot a guy with Psychic Sword, and if you want to throw in area factors your pool gets hit. Teleporting a grenade (or C4, or... you get the picture) takes one success, has no area casting penalties and you can get more ammunition the same way you deliver it, heh.
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Wow, suddenly Changeling2 is much less shit than it was.
Huntsmen as Slashers( Human or otherwise) working for the True Fae( directly or indirectly) is a great idea and I will now proceed to steal it.
Adamantine Arrows 4lyfe
A lot of the things Taylor is doing is fairly standard magic, it's just that she doesn't have the skills an experienced mage would have to back them up. My experience in mage is that this is basically how being a starting character goes-you have a few neat tricks but you don't realize how to integrate them together and you don't have the skills and physical prowess to back it up.
Because Taylor hasn't started using her Mind to make herself SUPER MOTIVATED to WORK OUT ALL THE TIME she hasn't built up the physical ability to use her Space/Mind ability to judge distances perfectly and plan rapidly to do super parkour, etc.
so the Mortal Remains chapter for Beast is out and Cheiron uses them to make super Viagra. Beautiful.
Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
Beasts are finally good for something now!
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Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Capitalism ho!
- Pronouns
- They/Them
What do Changelings get made into? Though really, it being just one thing would be bizarre, honestly.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Exceptionally high quality art supplies.
The users all say that they feel inspired by the amazing quality, and they frequently find themselves producing more creative and better quality works of art using Cheiron Corp supplies then they could ever dream of otherwise.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I assume the thematic point is that you're taking something amazing and getting something rather petty out the other end?