[nWoD] Mage Sight

[Drakevarg]

Seeing as how my campaign has three mages in it, understanding how the various Mage Sights work is an obvious requirement. However, while some are obvious (Death lets you detect how much death has happened around a person, Fate lets you notice important occurances), others are less so.

In particular, what does Pulse of the Living World do? What is "mystic vital animation", and how does it mean more than just "Mage Sight, but coming in through the side door"? It's apparently not detecting life, since there's a different rote that does that. If it just detects magic life, I don't see how that would be any more helpful than just detecting magic in general.

Could the Playground please describe to me what exactly the different Mage Sights are supposed to do?

[Longes]

All mage sights were born equal, but some are more equal than others.
In particular:

Prime is one of the best - you see all Awakened magic, and can analyze it. In addition, you see auras and can analyze it.
Space allows you to see space anomalies and magic, whether Awakened in nature or not.
Time, Fate, Spirit, Mind, Death - see space.

Basically - Prime sees magic in general, other arcanas see disruptions, whether magical or not.

[Drakevarg]

I generally got that much, but Pulse of the Living World is still really, really vague. Like the writers didn't really know what to do with it.

[SiuiS]

Seeing as how my campaign has three mages in it, understanding how the various Mage Sights work is an obvious requirement. However, while some are obvious (Death lets you detect how much death has happened around a person, Fate lets you notice important occurances), others are less so.

In particular, what does Pulse of the Living World do? What is "mystic vital animation", and how does it mean more than just "Mage Sight, but coming in through the side door"? It's apparently not detecting life, since there's a different rote that does that. If it just detects magic life, I don't see how that would be any more helpful than just detecting magic in general.

Could the Playground please describe to me what exactly the different Mage Sights are supposed to do?

Pulse of the living world sees vitality. How healthy you are. If your chi is impeded. If the feng shui of an area promotes health or illness. You could see i someone was stressed enough to affect their body.

Aaaand... Left my book at a friends, so can't verify yet. Sorry.

[Drakevarg]

Pulse of the living world sees vitality. How healthy you are. If your chi is impeded. If the feng shui of an area promotes health or illness. You could see i someone was stressed enough to affect their body.

Aaaand... Left my book at a friends, so can't verify yet. Sorry.

That's sort of what I thought, but Healer's Trance seems to do that, so paired with Sense Life that kind of leaves Pulse of the Living World the odd man out.

Looking at the other Mage Sights, it's more-or-less obvious what they do, and it's fairly consistent with what Longes says. The Life version just seems out-of-place in its vagueness.

[Selrahc]

I generally got that much, but Pulse of the Living World is still really, really vague. Like the writers didn't really know what to do with it.

My interpretation:
If a mage with Life Mage sight had his eyes gouged out, he would be able to see everything around him that was alive with his life sight. The rest of the world would be unseen.

A mage with eyes, will just have the living sections of the world seem more vibrant. Lifeforms that have been created or altered with magic will be even more apparent. I might grant somebody a dice bonus on looking for a living thing in a non-living environment with this power(although Sense life would give them a much more accurate set of info).

[Longes]

The thing about the Mage Sight, is that it allows you to see disruptions. Prime sees magical anomalies, Life - life related anomalies, Death - death related anomalies, etc. For magi Prime is the most useful, because most of the anomalies produced by magi are magic. However, Prime sight won't see vampire's mind control - Mind will.
So, Life would pick various magical mutations, possibly ghouls.
EDIT: Life would probably also pick changes in the Pattern acquired during life, like cancer, radiation induced mutations, horrible experiments, etc.

[SiuiS]

That's sort of what I thought, but Healer's Trance seems to do that, so paired with Sense Life that kind of leaves Pulse of the Living World the odd man out.

Looking at the other Mage Sights, it's more-or-less obvious what they do, and it's fairly consistent with what Longes says. The Life version just seems out-of-place in its vagueness.

Is that the life mage sight? Spirit has a magesight which does very little useful stuff, and like, three other spells wich are also magesight-style spells that do core competencies much better, for example.

Healer's trance shows you more game statistics. Pulse of the living world is radar; it shows you blips. Based on those blips, you can use a different more specific spell to analyze if you want to.


The thing about the Mage Sight, is that it allows you to see disruptions. Prime sees magical anomalies, Life - life related anomalies, Death - death related anomalies, etc. For magi Prime is the most useful, because most of the anomalies produced by magi are magic. However, Prime sight won't see vampire's mind control - Mind will.
So, Life would pick various magical mutations, possibly ghouls.
EDIT: Life would probably also pick changes in the Pattern acquired during life, like cancer, radiation induced mutations, horrible experiments, etc.

Anamoaly needs to be clarified to not always be bad.
A guy who has a brush with an angel and feels stronger and mroe robust is also an anomaly. I suppose view the world as a tapestry, places where it is bunched up show just as well as places where it is spread thin. Deviations from standard, along with standard.