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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Cornuthaum said:
The 1 mana/day version is the sort of shielding and potency you'd expect from anyone, which will most likely (unless you are a high-gnosis master) be within 1-3 successes.

When you ritualcast your armor up to something like 15 potency, you are basically saying "THIS IS MY WAR FORM AND I AM GOING TO MAKE WAR ON YOU" to anyone who looks at it.


But yeah, mechanically you are better off just Ritualcasting it so it has months of duration rather than spending precioussssss mana every day. This is, ultimately, a weakness of mechanics and intent running into each other (the 1 mana/day version is the one that Mages are meant to use in their morning shave/toothbrush/counter-gribbly/breakfast routine, yet the ritualcast once-a-month version is infinitely better, as long as you can take one day a month to ritualcast that, until you hit higher gnosis where you can do it in an afternoon.)
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No, because it's actually less work and less Mana to do the extended casting, and so it's what everyone who can will be expected to do, because only a utter moron wastes Mana. Mages go to war with each other over sources of it.
 
TheLastOne said:
No, because it's actually less work and less Mana to do the extended casting, and so it's what everyone who can will be expected to do, because only a utter moron wastes Mana. Mages go to war with each other over sources of it.
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I know. It is a point of design failure, because the intent (use the 1 mana option during your daily routine) does not match up with the reality (ritualcast it once a month)
 
EarthScorpion said:
(nMage is at least better for it than oMage because in the case of the buffing spells, the dots you can add are capped by your Arcana. In oMage, you'd get people just sitting in a safe paradigmic space and turning themselves into fighting machines, and the downside of the Paradox doesn't come up because you've got all your effects stacked already)
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Hey, you had a limit. Arete x Willpower. So a starting mage with WP 10 and Arete 3 with Life 3 and some other combat-relevant sphere (like Westin's Entropy 3) could, say, throw 3 successes to duration, 9 successes to bring down attack, dodge, and soak difficulties to TN3, another 3 successes to regenerate 1 HL/round, and then throw 15 successes at, say, getting +5 to every physical attribute.

Note that in 2E, you would get all of 1 paradox for this if you prepped it beforehand.

Eat that werewolves. :V
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Hey, you had a limit. Arete x Willpower. So a starting mage with WP 10 and Arete 3 with Life 3 and some other combat-relevant sphere (like Westin's Entropy 3) could, say, throw 3 successes to duration, 9 successes to bring down attack, dodge, and soak difficulties to TN3, another 3 successes to regenerate 1 HL/round, and then throw 15 successes at, say, getting +5 to every physical attribute.

Note that in 2E, you would get all of 1 paradox for this if you prepped it beforehand.

Eat that werewolves. :V
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Most Storytellers would ignore RAW and start giving you more paradox or make disbelief wipe out that spell if you pulled it, but yeah, RAW never worked.
 
TheLastOne said:
Most Storytellers would ignore RAW and start giving you more paradox or make disbelief wipe out that spell if you pulled it, but yeah, RAW never worked.
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Well, even in extended rolls you don't get that much paradox. More, but look, as a mage if you can't bust out the ability to throw down 15d pools at TN3 and soak damage better than some armored vehicles once in a while you might as well play Sorcerer. :V

I think Revised would make that 3 paradox + 1 per extra roll or something, which would mean you're taking an actually reasonable amount of paradox to do it unless you have a huge cult behind you and an assistant to get extra dice and successes.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Well, even in extended rolls you don't get that much paradox. More, but look, as a mage if you can't bust out the ability to throw down 15d pools at TN3 and soak damage better than some armored vehicles once in a while you might as well play Sorcerer. :V

I think Revised would make that 3 paradox + 1 per extra roll or something, which would mean you're taking an actually reasonable amount of paradox to do it unless you have a huge cult behind you and an assistant to get extra dice and successes.
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You can still technically do it paradox free by having an appropriate ritual space where your paradigm reigns, or by casting it in the Umbra. I don't remember there being any double dipping rules for paradox which would hit you when you moved from a more permissive area to a less permissive one.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Well, even in extended rolls you don't get that much paradox. More, but look, as a mage if you can't bust out the ability to throw down 15d pools at TN3 and soak damage better than some armored vehicles once in a while you might as well play Sorcerer. :V

I think Revised would make that 3 paradox + 1 per extra roll or something, which would mean you're taking an actually reasonable amount of paradox to do it unless you have a huge cult behind you and an assistant to get extra dice and successes.
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Revised would make that 0 if it remains coincidental but considering how that looks it would be at least 3 , if without witnesses or a whoping 4 if with witnesses Now you added a point of paradox per extended roll, but in the end you only got those extra ones if you failed that roll in the end so it averaged out to 3.5
On the other hand if you botched that roll, which happens based on the individual casting roll not the whole ritual , you first get a raised difficult of one and if you once again roll a botch on your big ritual you get a whooping 8 dox+1 per roll

Note 2nd and m20 would in that case give out a simple 3 paradox if I remember it right.
 
I'm starting to read Grimoire of Grimoires, because why not, I want to distract myself from actually updating my Quest, I suppose! And I will say, all I can see when I read the entry on Ancient Lands Awakening is "Wank, wank, wank." Written again and again, The Shining style.

It's everything @MJ12 Commando complained about the Free Council doing to the other Orders. At least, I think it was him that was talking about that a while back.


*****

On a slightly more positive note, it is fun to sometimes imagine/make up books that might exist, like I have several volumes/etc that I might have exist in a world of Changeling, even though it's one without Grimoires.
 
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So, there was the text of a new spell spoiled on the OP forums, the new appearances of Ban and Ward.
Ban (Space •••)
Practice: Weaving
Primary Factor: Duration
Suggested Rote Skills: Intimidation, Science, Stealth
In the quest for self-knowledge, it is sometimes useful to cut oneself off from the outer world so that one can understand that the world is contained within. By means of this spell, the mage inverts an area of space, such that nothing inside the space can get out and nothing inside 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 someone trapped by the Ban.
Even light and air can't pass though: from the outside the space appears featureless black. 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.
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Ward (Space ••)
Practice: Shielding
Primary Factor: Potency

Suggested Rote Skills: Athletics, Subterfuge, Weaponry
Space is mutable, until a magician wills otherwise. This spell locks an area down, preventing the space within from being manipulated. The Ward protects against one attempt to cast a Space spell (or similar non-Supernal magic) on a subject within the warded area per point of Potency, provoking a Clash of Wills. The mage is aware when one of her wards is attacked.

+2 Reach: An attempted spell only counts against the Ward's Potency if its caster wins the Clash of Wills.
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I'm a bit conflicted on the new writing of Ban in particular; while I'm glad that Space seems capable of doing more by itself, without conjuctional Arcana, it also seems that the spell has become even more "all-or-nothing". I don't know. Thoughts from people more mechanically-minded than me?
 
So, I'm catching up on the spoilers for 2ed Awakening, since I had read only the most recent ones. I found what seems to be a pretty useful document, which to contains dev forum posts as well as the open development blog posts. Going through it, while some of the stuff makes me really happy, like the removing of the wierd exceptions on what forces the eponimous Arcanum can command, slaving everything to the Practices, or the stuff on Yantras, which expands on the often forgotten stuff in the 1e corebook on the use of symbols by mages in their magic, but others make me....leery.
• Spells aren't vulgar or covert any more. Sleepers witnessing obvious magic and suffering an Integrity Breaking Point for it as per GMC still cause or increase a risk of Paradox, but you can happily cast once-vulgar spells in your sanctum with inpunity.
• Instead, the magic rules define a grey area between "what the character can cast" and "what the character can cast comfortably". Pushing your limits risks Paradox, even if the spell is covert in the current edition.
• That grey area does not map to anything in the current edition exactly, but as a rule of thumb, whenever the spell descriptions say "with +1 Arcana dots you can", substitute "with 2 extra Paradox dice you can". Some spells you used to be able to cast will now be vulgar, but you can push a bit further, too.
• You can cast indefinite spells on living patterns.
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I'm ambivalent in particular on the "unless there are Sleepers watching, or you are being cocky/desperate/irresponsable, your fireball doesn't cause Paradox" thing. I mean, I'm happy that Arcana like Forces are more viable, given that a lot of their effects were always vulgar, all the time (even with the paper tiger that 1e Paradox could be), but on the other hand, I don't know, doesn't it lose part of the horror of 1st edition, at least in part?
And the nulla osta on indefinite spells on living patterns removes one of the big limitation of Supernal magic, and one that I didn't mind, and found created opportunity for stories, which I fear may be less viable in the 2ed magic paradigm. In a later post DaveB says that, in light of how they are doing thing like spell control, relinquishing spells, spell factors and stacking, the ban was found unneccessary, but still, I worry.
 
BlueBiscuit said:
So, I'm catching up on the spoilers for 2ed Awakening, since I had read only the most recent ones. I found what seems to be a pretty useful document, which to contains dev forum posts as well as the open development blog posts. Going through it, while some of the stuff makes me really happy, like the removing of the wierd exceptions on what forces the eponimous Arcanum can command, slaving everything to the Practices, or the stuff on Yantras, which expands on the often forgotten stuff in the 1e corebook on the use of symbols by mages in their magic, but others make me....leery.

I'm ambivalent in particular on the "unless there are Sleepers watching, or you are being cocky/desperate/irresponsable, your fireball doesn't cause Paradox" thing. I mean, I'm happy that Arcana like Forces are more viable, given that a lot of their effects were always vulgar, all the time (even with the paper tiger that 1e Paradox could be), but on the other hand, I don't know, doesn't it lose part of the horror of 1st edition, at least in part?
And the nulla osta on indefinite spells on living patterns removes one of the big limitation of Supernal magic, and one that I didn't mind, and found created opportunity for stories, which I fear may be less viable in the 2ed magic paradigm. In a later post DaveB says that, in light of how they are doing thing like spell control, relinquishing spells, spell factors and stacking, the ban was found unneccessary, but still, I worry.
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Now your magic drives people insane, possible causing you to lose wisdom because you drove someone insane. Remember in 2e a Breaking Point is like violating morality was in 1e. Casting magic where you might be caught now turns your witnesses into more broken, more cynical, crueler and madder versions of themselves.
 
Sleeper witnesses will still slowly degrade even indefinite spells on living patterns, and the spells still come off your spell control slots, which are less in 2nd ed than 1st. (Balanced by the fact that things like Mage Sight and Mage Armor aren't spells).

You can relinquish a spell from your control with a Willpower point instead of a Willpower dot if you want to, but it runs the risk of the spell going haywire over time.
 
davebrookshaw said:
You can relinquish a spell from your control with a Willpower point instead of a Willpower dot if you want to, but it runs the risk of the spell going haywire over time.
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Well if there's a chance of it going out of control, the obvious thing to do is only use this sort of thing in situations where you don't care about that.

On that note, can we get a general time period of how long it takes to go out of control, some specific effects of an out of control spell, and perhaps let us know if it's possible to make it go out of control even faster?
 
davebrookshaw said:
Sleeper witnesses will still slowly degrade even indefinite spells on living patterns, and the spells still come off your spell control slots, which are less in 2nd ed than 1st. (Balanced by the fact that things like Mage Sight and Mage Armor aren't spells).

You can relinquish a spell from your control with a Willpower point instead of a Willpower dot if you want to, but it runs the risk of the spell going haywire over time.
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Does the Unraveling effect caused by Sleeper witnesses affect non-obvious spells too?
 
Ugh, if there's one thing I dearly hope is fixed in Awakening 2e is Imbueing Items. I'm re-reading the core right now, alongside Tome of the Mysteries, and I'm still confused. It looks far too abusable too, once you reach high enough Gnosis.

Incidentally, my Awakening home game is on hiatus for the next month, while two of players are away on vacation. I still however have a Mage itch that needs scratching, so I was thinking on maybe starting a quest.
 
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Let's play: Mock the fuck out of history in Nwod.

"Unlike the United States, Europe has traditionally had a more comfortable relationship between the religious and secular."
--In Mysteriem Order book, on European Mages and European (as a whole) History. :V

Herp de derpity doo.

More earnestly, this was the sentence that made me quit for the night because holy shit, WW, holy shit.
 
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