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View Full Version : [M:tA] knowing rotes



JeenLeen
2010-05-07, 09:32 AM
In oWoD Mage: The Ascension:

How have your groups handled a character's knowledge of how to manipulate the Spheres? I guess I'll give how my GM and group is handling it and ask for comparison.

Depending on our paradigm, and sometimes on Tradition or presence of a mentor, one of our abilities is linked to our focus. For example, a Hermetic would need Occult to have studied the different spellbooks or know the runes or whatever he needs to do a rote. A Son of Ether would need Science and possibly Technology, whereas a Virtual Adept could probably get away with just Computers. My current character focuses on ancestor worship and spirits, so he uses Culture to know the spirits or ancestors to pray to and the proper conduct to use towards them.

We all have at least 2 dots in our 'magic' ability, so the DM has said that we know pretty much how to do any basic thing. If we wanted, let's say, to transmute some matter into a inchworm (Matter 2/Life 5), or anything else incredibly bizarre, we may have to roll our ability to see if we know how to.

The GM told me that Hermetics are further limited in that their House largely determines their paradigm and thus that might make there be some spells they simply do not know. (House Xaos Ex Miscellania being an exception to this.) None of us have made a Hermetic yet, though.

Thoughts, comments, or comparison?

NOTE: There's a houserule that you don't become able to stop using foci until Arete 6. Other than that, the Spheres, Arete, and other metaphysical mechanics work like the core book.

satorian
2010-05-07, 12:34 PM
It doesn't seem like an awful rule to limit the power of oWoD mages, who I guess wouldn't be harmed too much by having their power limited. It would, however, take away the fun for me. The reason Mage is my favorite game is the absolute freedom of imagination it both required and inspired. Rotes, for us, were just cultural. They were examples of what might be done, but any mage in the world knew that anything could be done. It kinda went along with the whole reality-is-what-I-think-it-is thing. The groups I played with, unless there was a character reason not to (like my forces akashic who thought he was a jedi and carried around a taped up flashlight he called a lightsaber), usually preferred to ignore foci as quickly as possible.

Oh, also, does this rule slow down the game? Seems kind of annoying to have an extra roll every time you try to do something. Once you succeed the first time, do you always know that rote?

JeenLeen
2010-05-07, 01:37 PM
Oh, also, does this rule slow down the game? Seems kind of annoying to have an extra roll every time you try to do something. Once you succeed the first time, do you always know that rote?

We'd only have to roll once to make sure we know a very rare rote, so it doesn't slow the game down. Probably the worst that could happen is if the party thought of a very strange solution to a puzzle. If they figured they could do it with their magick, but hadn't yet figured out how to do it (i.e, failed their roll), it'd take some time to research it (such as for a Hermetic) or build/program it (SoE/VAdept).

It doesn't come up often. My character has decent Culture, so it's assumed he knows a lot of spirits that he can pray to. A Dreamspeaker who just prays to spirits or a Chorister who prays to God could ask anything.

The flavour it adds is a self-limiting necessity of the paradigm. If a Hermetic believes his spells work because of the the correct intonation of words or scribing of runes, he needs to know those correct usages to do the magic. Even a Chorister probably couldn't do a magic effect he felt was contrary to the will of God.

The way the Storyteller is interupting it is that mages know that everything that can be done can be done with the Spheres, but they only believe magic really works or should work according to their paradigm. My Akaishi thinks that for some reason spirits respond to the machines technomancers make, but he doesn't believe there's any truth to SoE or Technocracy magick.