[oWoD] Mage beginners tips?

[Ice&Fire]

For my first old World of Darkness game I ended up playing a mage. Being new to Mage and the storyteller system, does anyone have some good tips for beginners, or would people like to share their favourite spheres/special magical tricks?

[Lost Wanderer]

I've got to say, a lot depends on your Storyteller and who your character is working with. If your Storyteller says Nodes generate 2 Quintessence a week per level and it takes Prime 3 to do anything with Tass, you're going to be doing things differently than if the ST says Nodes pump out 10 Quintessence a week per level and it only takes Prime 1 to use Tass. What Tradition are you? Are you in Technocratic or Traditionalist territory? Does the Avatar Storm exist, and if so, how dangerous is it and are Stromwardens common? How many rotes do you get to start with?

One basic thing: put at least two background dots in Avatar. Seriously. There's a reason Mages get 7 background points instead of 5; so they can have at least two in Avatar.

[Ice&Fire]

I've got to say, a lot depends on your Storyteller and who your character is working with. If your Storyteller says Nodes generate 2 Quintessence a week per level and it takes Prime 3 to do anything with Tass, you're going to be doing things differently than if the ST says Nodes pump out 10 Quintessence a week per level and it only takes Prime 1 to use Tass. What Tradition are you? Are you in Technocratic or Traditionalist territory? Does the Avatar Storm exist, and if so, how dangerous is it and are Stromwardens common? How many rotes do you get to start with?

One basic thing: put at least two background dots in Avatar. Seriously. There's a reason Mages get 7 background points instead of 5; so they can have at least two in Avatar.

I'm not sure about the nodes and tass, though I think it might be Prime 3 for Tass. My character is Order of Hermes, and i have 3 dots in Avatar, and since our characters started as mortals we aren't too sure of who has power in 1920's Chicago.

[nyjastul69]

This resource may help. I'm not sure how balanced it is, as I haven't checked out all the rotes yet. The ones I have looked at seem mostly okay. If nothing else it can help get the creative juices flowing.

http://gaming.geoectomy.net/findrotes.php

[dragonfan6490]

1. Take the Forces sphere.
2. Throw Lightning Bolts and Fireballs left and right
3. ???
4. Profit...sort of :smallbiggrin:

[Steveotep]

Read up on Paradox and how much it hurts. Think up coincidental effects for common things you want to do.

"I didn't Fireball him, the gas main exploded."
"I know it looks like Lightning emerged from my fingertips, but it was just a cable from the electricity pylon."
"Automatic pistols jam all the time."

Mages are both more powerfull and squishier than any other supernatural, just like the Wizard in D&D, but you have to be subtle about it. The Mind Sphere is the easiest to use without becoming a Paradox magnet.

[Haven]

I'd suggest poking around here (http://hem.bredband.net/arenamontanus/mage.html) a little bit. It's easy to get lost in that site, though, but it should also give you quite a bit of inspiration.

[Cyrano]

Arete: YOU WANT. Avatar: YOU WANT. Three of each should be good. Yes, that takes a lot of your freebies for Arete. Suck it up.

I like having Prime - lets ya do stuff with the very fundamental block of magic, which is helpful for getting, you know, anywhere near the amount of Quintessence necessary to do the fun stuff. Of course, depending on your ST. Plus, though, when it's time to pull out the stops, the capabilities of Prime to do aggravated damage is nice with the unfortunate offset of being a generator of Paradox, in the same way Star Trek matter/anti-matter reactors are a generator of electricity.

Subtlety in the normal course of things, though, is KEY, so whatever you're best at "finding" (making up) ways of being believable at, take some of that.

I used to love OoH but I'm bad at making Forces believable - on the other hand, forces is ridiculously powerful in a lot of ways, too.

Entropy was always fun - controlling chance may not give you exactly what you need in every situation, but it does HELP in every situation, and it's pretty easy to make Coincidental (although beware of the Domino effect, which again depends on your ST. In case you don't know, that's the effect were making 20 coincidental magical effects in 2 rounds becomes so unlikely that coincidences become vulgar again - once every gas main in a 20 block radius spontaneously explodes, having a jet crash on your vampire foe ceases to be a likely occurrence.)

Anyway, it depends on how you wanna play. Matter and Forces or Correspondence and Forces work to make a pretty damn nasty Mage at the expense of not having so many chances to work subtly (at least not that I found.) Mind and Entropy gives you the capability to be super subtle but generally can't match the pure ridiculous power of Forces, especially when you're fighting Technocratic beasties with resistance to magical Effects but not to fireballs being thrown at them. If you're set on OoH, I'd probably do something like, Iunno. Forces 3, Prime 1, Correspondence 2, 3 if my concept didn't require an enormous amount of backgrounds or skills and I could burn all my freebies on magical goodies.

[nyjastul69]

I'd suggest poking around here (http://hem.bredband.net/arenamontanus/mage.html) a little bit. It's easy to get lost in that site, though, but it should also give you quite a bit of inspiration.


I'm currently GMing a 2e Mage game. TYVM for that link. My google fu is weak and I've never come across that one.

[truemane]

More than any other oWoD game, Mage depends on what the ST wants and what the ST does and how the ST thinks things work. There's almost no way to help you make a Mage without some idea of what's happening on the other end of things.

There are the mechanical considerations, first of all. Do you need 1 Prime to use magic at all? How privileged an observer is 'reality' in terms of adjudicating 'Vulgar Magic without Witnesses'? Paradox Backlashes and so many other things are (intentionally or unintentionally) vague in the core books that the ST is effectively making up his or her own game every time.

But, at heart, Mage is supposed to be all about the Paradigm. What makes magic, in your character's opinion? What causes it? A beginning character shouldn't think of themselves as a Mage. They shouldn't really be aware that they're altering reality by will alone. An early Mage (Arete 1- 5 or so) thinks that he has come across a set of rules that are different from the rules of reality everyone else uses, but his rules are just as restrictive and just as complicated.

And that paradigm is supposed to control and define everything he does. If he's a Akashic Brother, for example, and has learned some arcane exercises and breathing techniques that allow him to increase the kinetic energy of his punches (Forces), then that's great.

But then he shouldn’t be able to shoot fireballs. Because that's not a part of his paradigm. Learning that all the rules are equally arbitrary should come later, as part of the character's enlightenment.

But that's the part that's left out of most Mage games. And without that aspect it tends to become a geek show. A thinly veiled game of supers with a well-developed philosophical backdrop. At least in my experience. Like playing Vampire without the Humanity rules.

Anyway, tl;dr - Forces, Matter, Life, Prime all at 2. Then you can transmute one to the other or create them from nothing or return them to nothing. At which point you don't even have to fight the big bad Methuselah, you can just turn him into a lawn ornament. A flamingo maybe. Or a gnome.

[Lost Wanderer]

I'm not sure about the nodes and tass, though I think it might be Prime 3 for Tass. My character is Order of Hermes, and i have 3 dots in Avatar, and since our characters started as mortals we aren't too sure of who has power in 1920's Chicago.

1920s, ok. As stated above, spend 7 freebies on at least one more point in Arete. I mean, you need at least Arete 2 to really be doing magic at all. And yeah, it kinda hurts, but starting with Arete 3 is fantastic, even if you don't really have the spheres to take advantage of it right off that bat.

The Technocracy is pretty strong in this time period, which is difficult. The Virtual Adepts haven't even left yet, so the Union has all the computers that exist and aren't steampunk Etherite Son of Ether (this is the 1920s; yay sexism!) monstrosities. Of course, their best stuff is so far from the Consensus that it's tough to get to work at all outside a Sanctum.

But on the other hand: no Avatar Storm! You can enter and leave the Umbra with impunity, there's barely a Technocratic presence there and all magic is Coincidental. It's great fun. Just watch for werewolves, though. You do need Spirit 3 to get yourself across, and Spirit 4 to take others with you, though. Although a 4 point "Astral Portal" stationary Wonder would probably be ok. If it were mobile, it'd need to be Wonder 5 though. Also, Aleister Crowley was still active at this point, and his work was a boon for the Traditions, especially the Hermetics. Maybe he's even the reason you got into magic.

Merits and Flaws are worth looking at. There are the standard Lucky for re-rolls and Charmed Existence to ignore one botch per roll. Circumspect Avatar makes Seekings anywhere from less of a pain to nonexistent. If you want to get borderline cheesy there's Self-Confident: you know how you can spend Willpower for a free success? With Self-Confident, if you would have succeeded anyway, you get the Willpower back because your success proves your own awesomeness to yourself and maintains your sense of self and personal satisfaction.

All that said, truemame is right, its the paradigm that's important. What is your character's magical style, his beliefs about magic? Why did he choose the Order, and which House is he in? Why did he pick that House? Things to keep in mind: There are a lot of stogy old immortal guys with very strong views hanging around. Do you try to please them by studying an old style in one of the old Houses, regard them as ancient history and join a modernized house like Thig or Luxor, or not really care about such things and do magic the Hermetic way because it's what feels right? And remember, belief is all important: if your character doesn't think he can do something with magic, he can't. Or if the only way he believes it works is a long and complex ritual, he cannot quick cast it.

[mostlyharmful]

Spirit magic.. all the way. The most versatile sphere by about a billion miles and almost all of it is explicitly listed as coincidental so long as the effects are all in the umbra. Building items, wards, magical locations? check. transport, stealth, infomation retreval? check. Offense, defense, wealth generation? check. minions, contingent effects, untility? check.

There's not really anything you can't do with enough thought, cosmological knowledge and the spirit sphere. And you don't really even NEED more than a 3 for most of that, 4 lets you build permenant effects sure but 2 and 3 gives you access to every spirit out there.... There's a spirit to solve every problem:smallamused:

[nyjastul69]

Spirit magic.. all the way. The most versatile sphere by about a billion miles and almost all of it is explicitly listed as coincidental so long as the effects are all in the umbra. Building items, wards, magical locations? check. transport, stealth, infomation retreval? check. Offense, defense, wealth generation? check. minions, contingent effects, untility? check.

There's not really anything you can't do with enough thought, cosmological knowledge and the spirit sphere. And you don't really even NEED more than a 3 for most of that, 4 lets you build permenant effects sure but 2 and 3 gives you access to every spirit out there.... There's a spirit to solve every problem:smallamused:

Maybe in the games you have played. Prime is without question the singular most important sphere. It is what manipulates all other magicks. Spirit is only as great as you say if, and only if the majority of the campaign is played in the umbra, that's not a guarantee. Also as others have said Arete is the singular most important trait as it defines how many dice one rolls. Quintessence notwistanding, a 5 dot effect isn't going to be very effective with 2 dots in Arete. It's all about your Arete score and lowering the DC through quintessence.

I'm not sure any magick used in the umbra is vulgar. The least vulgar magick outside of the umbra is Mind, not Spirit. By least vulgar I mean most likely to be considered coincidental.

Only Paradox knows for sure however.

[mostlyharmful]

Maybe in the games you have played. Prime is without question the singular most important sphere. It is what manipulates all other magicks. Spirit is only as great as you say if, and only if the majority of the campaign is played in the umbra, that's not a guarantee. Also as others have said Arete is the singular most important trait as it defines how many dice one rolls. Quintessence notwistanding, a 5 dot effect isn't going to be very effective with 2 dots in Arete. It's all about your Arete score and lowering the DC through quintessence.

I'm not sure any magick used in the umbra is vulgar. The least vulgar magick outside of the umbra is Mind, not Spirit. By least vulgar I mean most likely to be considered coincidental.

Only Paradox knows for sure however.

actually spirit's at it's most valueable when the campaign NEVER goes into the Umbra, because it can summon and bind and all without leaving the material it's all coincidental, because it doesn't require quintessence there's no need for prime and because there's a spirit for everything there's a spirit solution to everything, and you can only get a sphere rating of equal to or below your Arete so yes, it is indeed the single most important thing.

[Set]

In my experience, Spirit and Entropy are the two 'best' Spheres.

But you can do quite a bit with Forces. As already mentioned, do your best to figure out where in your 1920's setting there will be energy that could be 'accidentally' unleashed.

Electrical appliances existed by this point, so causing wires to fall upon someone, or some mechanical device to explode or electrocute a nearby person would be a credible thing to happen.

Automobiles also existed, and had lovely cannisters of explosive fuel that could blow up on someone who annoys your Force mage.

Every firearm is a bomb waiting to happen, and, with the proper rationalizations, and judicious use (not twice in the same encounter, for instance, that way lieth the Paradox smackdown), your Force mage should be able to blow guns out of the hands of opponents (possibly taking the hands with them).

The bulky batteries of the time are also convenient sources of explosive potential. The key is to not use the same trick once with the same group of witnesses. If no one survives an encounter, it's perfectly fine to recycle every trick you used to blow them up, since there will be no 'strange stories' to make your life inconvenient. (Once stories start spreading that guns blow up when pointed at you, Paradox may come a-knocking, so either avoid leaving witnesses to spread such stories, or mix up your techniques so that there's never one particular 'coincidence' that gets a little 'too convenient to be believable.')

Carry a gun of your own, and feel free to arrange for your bullets to 'conveniently' hit something in the surrounding area that then explodes or ruptures and sprays steam all over the target area. Fling those bullets wildly, don't even bother aiming, because it's not important that you shoot the target, but just that your bullets provide an excuse for how that steam pipe got punctured.

You can also just flat out enhance the kinetic impact of your bullets, and make it seem like your hard-boiled investigator into the mysterious is a crack shot, whose bullets always seem to find their mark. The fact that his bullets are doing extra dice of damage because he's empowering them with the impact of shotgun slugs is a fiddly little detail that nobody but a coroner would be likely to find unusual. People get shot, sometimes they die. Tsk. As long as your bullets aren't trailing lightning or exploding like fireballs, it's hardly going to send up any red flags that the guy you shot in the face died from it.

[Oracle_Hunter]

oWoD Mage is borked like AD&D is borked - the rules don't really tell you how the game is played.

As you've likely gathered from the other posts, the rules for magic in Mage aren't rules at all - there is no way to apply them in a principled manner.

So, the very first thing you need is to sit down with your ST and to reach a mutual understanding on how magic works. Everything from "how many people can I affect at one time?" to "what counts as Coincidental?" Be sure to ask about Countermagic and Unweaving Effects, and duration in general.

Next, talk about how he wants to handle advancement. By RAW, you can't increase your Arete without undergoing a Seeking - a solo adventure within your own head. Is he doing this? Or will he let you spend XP as normal?

If you don't have this kind of discussion now, you and your ST are going to be having it every time you try to cast a spell.

That said, some general truths
(1) You need Prime 2 to "conjure" things.

(2) To conjure a specific thing, you also need one of the following
- Force 3 lets you "conjure" fireballs
- Life 2 lets you "conjure" plants and small animals
- Matter 2 lets you "conjure" simple objects

(3) Correspondence is used for Scrying and Teleportation. It can also be used to make Wards.

(4) 1 rank in a Sphere lets you detect things. Life 1 lets you detect life, Mind 1 lets you detect minds. Force 1 grants you the ability to see in any spectra (like infravision) - this can be very helpful.

(5) Mind 1 is ridiculously useful by RAW - you can grant yourself anything from Photographic Memory to Multi-Tasking.

[Lost Wanderer]

(Once stories start spreading that guns blow up when pointed at you, Paradox may come a-knocking, so either avoid leaving witnesses to spread such stories, or mix up your techniques so that there's never one particular 'coincidence' that gets a little 'too convenient to be believable.')

My understanding is that's the opposite of how it works. The Domino Effect is a purely local phenomena; its coincidences stacking up in short order that's the problem. And you would want your foes to worry that things might start exploding for inadequately explained reasons around you, because then the explosions count as coincidental longer, and even when they hit vulgar, since your foes know to expect weird explosions when you're around, they won't count as witnesses.


"how many people can I affect at one time?"

Pretty sure that info on that is listed. You need to spend successes to increase your number of targets. Zero is self, 1 is another thing, 2 is two other things, 3 is four other things and it goes up from there. Same with distances and duration. More successes spent in that area = longer lasting and father reaching. I'm pretty sure zero is a duration of seconds, 1 is a scene and 2 is a day. All this info is handily compiled on two pages at the end of the magic section in Mage 2nd Revised. Which was the only version to have such a compilation.

Re: "conjuration", you do need the Prime to actually make the things, but if you're literally grabbing something that's currently in one place and bringing it to where you are (such as the magic staff currently sitting in your car trunk that you really need now), that's pure Correspondence. Vulgar as hell in most cases, but just Correspondence. Also, depending on your STs interpretation, you could probably throw fire and electricity around without resorting to creating it wholesale by using Forces 2 alone to change the type of energy of say, a bullet, and directing it toward your target. Again, probably vulgar... unless it's an Etherite or House Thig Hermetic with a Tesla Coil gun. I mean, it looks like a gun and sparks with electricity, right? Totally believable that it could shoot electricity. Such are the wonders of modern science! (Now, that would be less likely to work today, but electricity was pretty magical-seeming back then, you never knew what they were going to do with it next. Just stay away from physics professors and electrical engineers.)

As for the Spirit sphere, it is very useful and very versatile if you are well-versed in how the spirit world works. And yes, it is always coincidental in the Umbra, but all magic that doesn't involve healing aggravated damage is always coincidental in the Umbra, so that's not really special. Also, summoning spirits into the material? Vulgar. Very vulgar, unless you've got a room full of Spiritualists, a ritual circle and a lot of props. Anything it does has no Paradox related effects on you, but getting it there in the first place certainly might.

[NeoVid]

Arete 3 and Mind 1 are pretty much auto-picks for anyone. Being able to make yourself superhumanly intelligent and charming, as well as being able to take extra full actions in a turn, is unmatchably good for 1 dot in anything.

It's almost impossible to get Paradox from using Mind, as well.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Re: "conjuration", you do need the Prime to actually make the things, but if you're literally grabbing something that's currently in one place and bringing it to where you are (such as the magic staff currently sitting in your car trunk that you really need now), that's pure Correspondence. Vulgar as hell in most cases, but just Correspondence. Also, depending on your STs interpretation, you could probably throw fire and electricity around without resorting to creating it wholesale by using Forces 2 alone to change the type of energy of say, a bullet, and directing it toward your target. Again, probably vulgar... unless it's an Etherite or House Thig Hermetic with a Tesla Coil gun. I mean, it looks like a gun and sparks with electricity, right? Totally believable that it could shoot electricity. Such are the wonders of modern science! (Now, that would be less likely to work today, but electricity was pretty magical-seeming back then, you never knew what they were going to do with it next. Just stay away from physics professors and electrical engineers.)
Force 2 only controls minor forces, not transmutes them. If you happen to have some sort of massive battery pack, I guess you could make a Tesla gun. Do remember that Force effects do +1 die of damage, so this might actually be useful.

Also: for Correspondence you do need sufficient Matter/Life to "comprehend" whatever you're yanking.

EDIT:

Arete 3 and Mind 1 are pretty much auto-picks for anyone. Being able to make yourself superhumanly intelligent and charming, as well as being able to take extra full actions in a turn, is unmatchably good for 1 dot in anything.
Mind 5 is required to actually boost your Mental stats - and some Social stats, I suppose.