Archmastery, reworked

[Dataweaver]

Agreed. But that sheer power is already addressed by the reduction in required successes. Under the proposed rules in the first post here, an Archmaster can attempt what would be a god-like feat for anyone else as if it was merely a mighty feat; and I'm thinking of revising the numbers from 1, three, six, 10, 15 to one, two, five, 10, 20, so that the simplest of Godlike Feats get downgraded to simple feats for a sphere 10 archmaster.

“what additional things can an archmaster do, that a master can't?” should not be primarily about scale. That's what the number of successes is for. That's the reason why I'm having so much trouble coming up with sphere 6 Effects. It's not that I can't think of things that archmages can do that would require pure power; it's that I'm having trouble thinking of things that differ in kind rather than in degree. Granting impossible properties to matter is a difference in kind; omnipresence is a difference in degree.

Also, there's a difference between Arete 10 Archmaster and Oracle. As potent as the archmaster is, he's still in the realm where he has game stats. An oracle, by contrast, is on par with those higher-ranked spirits that are so powerful that they aren't even given game stats; they have an automatic “I win” button against anyone other than their peers; and since their peers are never playable, any such conflicts (should they ever arise) are entirely up to the Storyteller to resolve.

[Kakost]

Agreed. But that sheer power is already addressed by the reduction in required successes. Under the proposed rules in the first post here, and art Master can attempt what would be a god-like feat for anyone else as if it was merely a mighty feat; and I'm thinking of revising the numbers from 1, three, six, 10, 15 to one, two, five, 10, 20, so that the simplest of Godlike Feats get downgraded to simple feats for a sphere 10 archmaster.

“what additional things can an archmaster do, that a master can't?” should not be primarily about scale. That's what the number of successes is for. That's the reason why I'm having so much trouble coming up with sphere 6 Effects. It's not that I can't think of things that archmages can do that would require pure power; it's that I'm having trouble thinking of things that differ in kind rather than in degree. Granting impossible properties to matter is a difference in kind; omnipresence is a difference in degree.

Also, there's a difference between Arete 10 Archmaster and Oracle. As potent as the archmaster is, he's still in the realm where he has game stats. An oracle, by contrast, is on par with those higher-ranked spirits that are so powerful that they aren't even given game stats; they have an automatic “I win” button against anyone other than their peers; and since their peers are never playable, any such conflicts (should they ever arise) are entirely up to the Storyteller to resolve.

I took care never to create new levels based on a simple scale of degree, but rather to make each lvl unique.

For this reason, I've always hated the Sphere of Forces. Not because I dont like Forces magik, I think it's an awesome Sphere with plenty of uses, but rather because I also felt that it was horribly written. Basically, Forces 4 just do what Forces 2 does, except that it's "more". And the same for Forces 5/3.

I mean, what's the different between a small sound wave and a hurricane? You shouldnt have to go from Forces 2 to 4 to have one, instead it should be a matter of successes.

Which is why, for my games, Forces 2 and 3 deal with kinetics, thermal, light and electromagnetic, while Forces 4 and 5 deal with gravity and nuclear (which the older mages call "magic fire" instead).

Omnipresence is NOT however just a matter of scale. It's the culmination of the understanding about Correspondence - that space is an illusion, and that everything is contained in a single point. And thus, the archmage becomes the embodiment of that concept - for all the practical purposes, the Mage ceases to exist in the "common space" alltogheter.
Have you ever seen an animation called "Flatland"? It is based on a book from a mathmatician, about a 2 dimensional world. It's on Youtube, check it out. Basically, it's a bidimensional world, where the inhabitants are geometrical figures.

However, outside of that world, there's a 3 dimensional world, upon which the 3 dimensional world can, apparently, "disappear" out of flatland and "appear" any where else.

The protagonist, a 3 dimensional hexagon if memory serves (but Im not entirely sure), is stroke with the "revelation" of the 3 dimensionality of the universe by a 3 dimensional being, thus finally believing in the "heresy of the 3 dimensions".

Before that he has a dream about "line land", of a world with a single dimension of lenght, and upon which the inhabitants were dots.

Anyway, after the revelation, the Pentagon asks Sphere, the 3 dimensional being who revealed to him the existance of the 3 dimensions, if it wouldnt be possible than that there could be 4 dimensions, or even more. And Sphere answers him that yes, some heretics have had such an absurd idea, but they are already being "dealt with".
By the way, it also contain several social criticisms, with the believers of the 3 dimensions being persecuted in the Flatland world, just like the believers of the 4th dimension being persecuted on Spaceland.

Check this animation, it is insane.

Anyway, a Corresp. Archmage exists basically as someone living in a 4th dimension outside of space. The entirety of the Tellurian thus fits in his hands (metaphorically speaking).

It's also like DC Comics. You have trickster gnomes like the Batmite and the one enemy of Superman, who can do ANYTHING on our dimension because they're from the 5th dimension. So, to them, our entire universe is like a piece of paper.

Likewise, Darkseid comes from the 6th dimension. What superman fights against is merely a 3 dimensional projection of a 6th dimension being, much like our shadows are 2 dimensional projections of ourselves.

Anyway, this means that the Archmaster is out of reach... Because he is outside of the entire Universe!

But he can still reach ANYWHERE within it.

Imagine that our universe is a 2 dimensional flatland.

Now, someone from 3 dimensions can look down upon it, and reach any where within it, just like we can make a scratch any where in a piece of paper; we just dont see everything at once simply because we can only focus on a thing at a time, but it's all there.

Now, imagine a 2 dimensional "wall". Just a line in a piece of paper. It keeps 2 dimensional beings away, but it's useless against a 3 dimensional being.

That's what "omnipresence" means, it actually means existing in an above dimension outside our own.

[Aleph]

Alternately, start suggesting Sphere 6 Effects that you think would count as Standard Feats.

That's a good sugestion, albeit I think some *actual* spheres at 5 may fail to provide. Forces being the most evident. Actually, one thing I liked from Revised it's that 4-5 Forces actually provided "new things to do" (to deal with exotic Forces). But even for other Spheres it's hard: How does a 1 success Time 5 Rote looks like?

In a very general sense, to break basic rules of magick I would allow. And some of those Breaches may be rather "basic", perhaps not 1 success but close. Like: Being able to use *multiple actions* (Time?) with your magick instead of just your body and mind. That would be a very basic one, and not at all OP (well, yeah, it's OP, but not "World Ending" OP I mean. It's just more Arete rolls per second)

Regardless, just suggesting random effects it's not going to come up with a "Sphere": MotA already does that, in some sphere levels.

One problem that I have with MotA it's that for a book that says "there's no Rotes for powers this grand" many of it's "Sphere levels" look suspiciously like a Rote (like the one that's just opening portals trough time, while the previous level already covered time travel, and the previous was just a more limited version of time travel. Even if Time 5 wasn't able to travel to the "actual past", as was the case in Revised and 1e, that at most deserves one Sphere level and not 3).

A general "cosmovision" may be more "Spherical".

Heck, MotA also does that on some levels. For all that I'm not a supporter of that book, one has to give credit where credit it's due. One that I actually like: Entropy 8 Oblivion manipulation - as far as "resurrection" rotes go, the one proposed at that level it's the only one that actually deals with the issue of the Soul being actually lost and destroyed. And it's not the only thing that the Sphere does, allowing to breach into the Underworld ignoring normal rules and "bring it back to life", manipulating the Maelstrom and the Tempest - these are all things that one could argue to do with combination of lower level Spheres, but it's still an interesting idea insofar as Entropy was supposedly related to these cosmic forces and the Dark Umbra

Maybe the direct manipulation of certain cosmic forces, that are only indirectly manipulated on lower levels could pave the way for the 6th dot. Avatar/Soul Mastery on Spirit 6 it's a good one (Spirit 5 it's rather rudimentary at that), and maybe creating Wonders with Dynamic magick (artificial mages) could be a Rote of that + Prime 5 rather than an Arch-Prime thing (healing an "incomplete" Gilgul - when you just lost some dots of Avatar - could be a "simple feat", or relatively simple. Maybe "simple" only for an Arch-Guy that uses the OP rule :P). Mastery over Paradox it's the one thing Prime 6 could be doing, expanding on what Prime 5 already hinted at towards a completely broken level, and one could expand the concept of Paradox beyond dots in a wheel (albeit "shaping" these would be the "simple feat": like, moving temporary Paradox from your wheel into that of another mage) towards the whole gamut of "Reality Pushing Back".

On terms of Scope, while I think that a level where mages can deal with stuff that would require "infinite successes" (like omnipresence, or eternity) it's enticing. It may be better to leave that to Ascencion. And everything "low key" about that can be handled with unreasonable amounts of successes, that may come easier with the application of the rule proposed on the OP.

A question on that end Dataweaver : If an Effect uses more than one Sphere, should the beneffit apply?. I'm thinking that if the Arch-Sphere it's the ruling sphere it should, but if it's not then it shouldn't (or maybe at half potency?, is it *bad* if an ArchSphere user want's to incorporate one dot into everything :P?. It may be too exploitative, but at least for an Exemplar I think it would be thematic also)

*I want to say that I realy like the point that reducing something to one success, and lowered difficulties below the normal -3 does allows for a much widder gamut on what archmasters can do with Automatic Success rule. That's a very cool thing.

[Dataweaver]

First, the benefit that I had in mind only applies to archphere levels. My gut is telling me to just go with the highest one, because I don't like the idea of players trying to manipulate the system by attempting to incorporate as many of them as possible. Just leave it as a matter of “use whichever ones make sense”.

[Kakost]

I tried to do exactly that, not just simply adding random effects to Arch Spheres. So, here was my reasoning with a few examples:

Space and Time are illusions. Thus, at the Arch Master level on either, you finally gets to see BEYOND the illusion. One magic theory is that all space actually exists in a single point; likewise, for time is that all time is simultaneous.
Therefore, the archmasters in those become able to "stepsides" beyound/above the "illusions" of space and time. That's what "Omnipresence" means. I think everybody got too caught off into the semantics of the word. So maybe instead, just call it something like "Stepping away from Time/Space". Because the Mage literally removes himself from the Space-Time continuum for the duration of the effect, as if he were a 3d entity looking at the entire universe as a 2d flat piece of paper. So, to call it "Omnipresence" is factually wrong, because the Mage is in fact "non present"; this name would come from the fact the Mage can intervene ANYWHERE in the 3 dimensional space - because he'll be literally in a "higher dimension" or some such, looking at the universe from "above", thus giving the impression that the Mage is everywhere.

In fact, this "higher dimension" could be some sort of "Hyper Space" or some such. Comicbooks and Sci Fi fans out there, this is your new playground.

And just the same for time, with the arch master looking at time from a sort of "Hyper Time" dimension.

For Entropy, this is a Sphere that deals with chance and probability. So, all 5 levels deal with manipulating chance.
So, it felt naturally to me that the Archmastery should enable changes that would be absolutely impossible no matter the odds. A 6 sized dice could be made to always roll a 6 an infinite amount of times by lesser effects, however no matter how many times you roll it, it will never give a result of 7 - but such trivial barriers are meaningless for an archmage.
The example of "Ressurection" was just an example of something that goes against the natural entropy and that is impossible to reverse no matter the circumstances or odds, but the usefulness doesnt stop there. Curing vampirism would be another example, but any other impossible results are also valid (maybe I can think on more examples later on).

Likewise, Matter 6 allows creation of impossible things. As do Forces 6.

By the way, 2 deranged archmasters could try using Forces 6 to create an "unstopabble Force" and collide it with an "immovable object" made with Matter 6, just for the sake of Science... Lets hope this doesnt destroy the universe thou.

So, Forces 6 and Matter 6 are also levels that defy all physics.

Life 6 could use an overahaul I admit. Ill think about it.

Prime 6 is basically as Aleph said. Objects turned into Nodes, "artificial Mages" and Paradox manipulation.

For Mind, instead of touching individual minds, you change the very basic fundaments of the thoughts, which is why I went for manipulating the Collective Inconcious.

And for Spirit yes, I agree with Aleph, direct Avatar manipulation. Extract past lives, imprint your Spheres into your Avatar, so that if you reencarnate, you get your full powers upon awakening again, changing the Avatar's essence, healing Marauders and Nefandi etc etc etc.
In second edition, Senex appear to have done that, he literally "healed" a Nefandus, the reencarnation of his former student that he killed in her previous life when she turned nefandus.

Did I miss something?