So i have been looking through the 20th anniversary rules for mage, and have found a few things i am unsure about.
1) slinging attack spells that roll arete to attack rather than a combination of dexterity and melee/guns etc.
how exactly is this supposed to work?
from my reading I am understanding that it works as an attack roll in exactly the same way that the ability roll would have if the mage was using a gun as an instrument. Ie, you roll successes and the target dodges but if you have at least 2 successes remaining then the damage from the effect is dealt.
a) does the dodge roll reduce the damage caused in this case? I cannot find anything in the rules to suggest it does, but I have heard people interpret it this way. My reading is that arete simply replaces the attribute plus talent role, and if it hits then the spell deals it's full damage. Am i wrong in this?
b) elsewhere it is said that arete may only be rolled once in a turn. Is this an exception where an extra arete roll is made as an attack roll? Is the same roll used as is used for the effect (meaning a more powerful blast is also harder to dodge)? Is it simply a single roll with the dodge directly reducing the effects successes?
c) If you roll to hit with arete should you use the damage chart to determine your number of successes to hit? Because arete pools tend to be so low it is really easy to dodge lightning bolts where each dice of arete only gives a single success, as you are comparing a single stat to the total of two stats. Doubling the arete successes as per the damage table would redress this imbalance.
It seems to me that it is already beneficial to use weapons and martial arts as magical instruments in combat because of the way magic enhancing violence works. Mages relying on mystical arts such as flinging fireballs already pay a tax in terms of the action economy (with their use of their instrument and effect roll counting as separate actions), and likely suffer +1 difficulty due to fast casting. Making their effects ridiculously easy to dodge as well just seems punitive.
2) how do area effect spells work in terms of the successes needed? I am currently leaning towards simply using the base successes chart (meaning it would take 5 successes to cast an effect large enough to affect a mob, 10 successes to cover a building, and 20 successes to affect a city (along with the necessary sphere ratings). Because damage is a function of the base successes, the bigger the area covered by an explosion the more damaging it is, which seems intuitive. Am i going about this the right way? Is there anything I have missed? Does anybody have a better solution to creating explosions and area affect spells?
1) slinging attack spells that roll arete to attack rather than a combination of dexterity and melee/guns etc.
how exactly is this supposed to work?
from my reading I am understanding that it works as an attack roll in exactly the same way that the ability roll would have if the mage was using a gun as an instrument. Ie, you roll successes and the target dodges but if you have at least 2 successes remaining then the damage from the effect is dealt.
a) does the dodge roll reduce the damage caused in this case? I cannot find anything in the rules to suggest it does, but I have heard people interpret it this way. My reading is that arete simply replaces the attribute plus talent role, and if it hits then the spell deals it's full damage. Am i wrong in this?
b) elsewhere it is said that arete may only be rolled once in a turn. Is this an exception where an extra arete roll is made as an attack roll? Is the same roll used as is used for the effect (meaning a more powerful blast is also harder to dodge)? Is it simply a single roll with the dodge directly reducing the effects successes?
c) If you roll to hit with arete should you use the damage chart to determine your number of successes to hit? Because arete pools tend to be so low it is really easy to dodge lightning bolts where each dice of arete only gives a single success, as you are comparing a single stat to the total of two stats. Doubling the arete successes as per the damage table would redress this imbalance.
It seems to me that it is already beneficial to use weapons and martial arts as magical instruments in combat because of the way magic enhancing violence works. Mages relying on mystical arts such as flinging fireballs already pay a tax in terms of the action economy (with their use of their instrument and effect roll counting as separate actions), and likely suffer +1 difficulty due to fast casting. Making their effects ridiculously easy to dodge as well just seems punitive.
2) how do area effect spells work in terms of the successes needed? I am currently leaning towards simply using the base successes chart (meaning it would take 5 successes to cast an effect large enough to affect a mob, 10 successes to cover a building, and 20 successes to affect a city (along with the necessary sphere ratings). Because damage is a function of the base successes, the bigger the area covered by an explosion the more damaging it is, which seems intuitive. Am i going about this the right way? Is there anything I have missed? Does anybody have a better solution to creating explosions and area affect spells?
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