Enlightened grimoure rote rules

[Tamuz]

I am intrigued by the rules for learning rotes in the appendix of the enlightened grimoure.
Rules for learning votes, and enough of a mechanical boost to make learning them desirable is a big plus for me. I am a little concerned that they may be overpowered however - adding sphere level to arete potentially doubles the number of dice available to throw at magic when a rote is used. Is this too much?

[Jefepato]

I'm not sure how balanced these rules are, but I did note the following:
- It's really bizarre for 1 XP to be worth more rote points than one freebie point. Obviously there's no fixed exchange rate, but one freebie point is normally worth quite a bit more than 1 XP.
- I really hate the rule where, if you want to upgrade a rote you've already purchased, you need to pay half the original cost in addition to the difference. It seems needlessly punitive.
- Ditto the rule where it costs extra rote points if you don't share all of paradigm, practice, and instruments with whoever made the rote. If the effect is within a mage's abilities, they would presumably be able to develop some variant on the rote by themselves given time, so why make a big deal out of whether or not the person who inspired you to learn the rote has exactly the same magical style you do?

[Nonsense]

No it was not in revised.
It was a HR.
Vulgar magick is dangerous but powerful, so the extra die reflects that. And it is more tempting to use vulgar magick.

The sample Effects by spheres in the revised core are too broad to make good rotes.
Our rotes are quite narrow in scope. Each PC started with a couple of rotes (in dependence on various traits such as Mentor, Familiar, Intelligence).

Then we used the Legacy rotes from Malcolm on top.

[PhillyCuriosity]

I used bonus dice in revised.
One for a focus
One for a rote
One if going vulgar
Two for an unique focus

Max three additional dice.

It worked fine.

Additional dice for vulgar? Was this in Revised?
How did you define a "rote"? I think part of the problem with the rote rule is that there aren't consistent rules on what makes a rote.

[Nonsense]

I used bonus dice in revised.
One for a focus
One for a rote
One if going vulgar
Two for an unique focus

Max three additional dice.

It worked fine.

[PhillyCuriosity]

I at first thought this would be too powerful but the question for me came down to "who are the antagonists?". If the answer is Technocrats or the Nephandi, those strike me as much more prone to using rotes than Traditionalists (with some exceptions) so the dice pools you're effectively going up against also double. Mage's then become much more potent against other Night Folk without access to sphere magic. I think you could moderate the power by saying "successes on the extra dice do not count towards botches" and given a botch, the entire dice pool is used to calculate the backlash.

The system does go a long way in solving the question of "what's a rote" which I don't think the system has addressed well and is certainly an avenue to explore. Note, the system of adding sphere to arete is mentioned in the Rev. Storyteller's Handbook as an alternative system.

[Flinty]

Imo yes, it's far too much. I'd personally recommend adding a single die, which is still very powerful If you're a starting mage at Arete 3 it'll be 33% boost in power and cut down the possibilities of botches alot.