[nWoD] I've got a M:tA question.

[TroubleBrewing]

I'm currently involved with a Mage: The Awakening game, and I happened upon an interesting exploit last session.

My character is an Obrimos focusing on the Prime arcana. He's got the rote "Supernal Dispellation", and the party was in the midst of a battle with a mage who had about a dozen spells cast upon himself.

I remembered reading about shaping spells, and for no die pool penalty, you can make a spell cover a 2-cubic yard area..

If I cast the spell over the enemy mage in a 2-cubic yard area, does Supernal Dispellation affect all of the spells he has active, or just one?

[DeadManSleeping]

Ask your ST. In this sort of situation, he has every right to say either "No, the spell's not supposed to do that. Maybe if you were using a higher-level effect." or "Sure, but you only get one roll, and all the target spells' potencies add up." The wording in the rulebooks is ambiguous enough that you could technically argue it however, but it's the ST's job to ensure that the encounter and game run in a smooth fashion, and that generally entails not letting players do stuff the book didn't intend for them to do, even if the wording technically allows it.

So, if your ST didn't let you do that, he was right, end of story.

[TroubleBrewing]

See, he actually let me do this. I felt bad because it kind of took the wind out of his sails for that fight. It was supposed to be against this mage with about a dozen spells on him, and I just dispelled him and then we basically beat him to death with our fists.

If it's up to him, then I guess it works.

[DeadManSleeping]

Well, hopefully he has a way of balancing encounters against that sort of thing in the future. As horrible as the balance in any WW game is, (cheap) huge dispellings like that fall VERY far outside what M:tA was intended to handle. Don't be surprised if he wants to reverse the ruling later on.

[Yuki Akuma]

How was that enemy mage able to cast anything at all with so many spells cast on him? The penalties must have been horrendous.

[TroubleBrewing]

They were. It was sort of the point of the fight... He had a ton of buffs, boosts, and other sundry effects going on himself and was planning on killing us the good ol' fashioned way, but my well-timed liberal rules interpretation and passionate explanation for why this works (Namely that Prime 5 gets crapped on compared to Time, Mind, Space, and Fate [Which is what the other 4 members of the party have mastered...], so he should just let me have this one) made what looked like what was going to be an ugly fight into a merciless stomping on our part.

[Selrahc]

They were. It was sort of the point of the fight... He had a ton of buffs, boosts, and other sundry effects going on himself and was planning on killing us the good ol' fashioned way, but my well-timed liberal rules interpretation and passionate explanation for why this works (Namely that Prime 5 gets crapped on compared to Time, Mind, Space, and Fate [Which is what the other 4 members of the party have mastered...], so he should just let me have this one) made what looked like what was going to be an ugly fight into a merciless stomping on our part.

Living beings only have a limited tolerance for magic spells. Stamina+3 IIRC. Casting more spells than that on a target at once starts to give dice penalties on a 1 for 1 basis.

With dozens of active buffs on him, the enemy should have been utterly incapable of any action.

I'd assume "dozens" is just hyperbole though. 8 powerful buffs would make a foe very tough.

[Yuki Akuma]

Additionally, Mages can only keep a certain number of spells active at once before taking penalties - I think it's equal to Gnosis.

Casting lots and lots of spells on yourself is not a great idea.

[The Glyphstone]

Is the Stam+3 rule in the NWoD core book? All I can find in M:tA is the Spell Tolerance rule, where active spells on a mage in excess of his unaugmented Stamina apply a -1 dice penalty to all spellcasting pools, but not actions in general.

[TroubleBrewing]

It's only a penalty to spellcasting. "Dozens" was hyberbole. I'm still not sure how many he had on. At least 3 in excess of his tolerance, but I'm not sure how many more.