M20 House Rules

[PenDragon]

Having read my way through Chapter 10, and gotten what I hope to be a fair grasp of the casting rules, a somewhat radical hack has come to mind: Completely removing Attributes and Skills. Bear with me. Spheres represent the sum total of all concerted efforts to enforce the Mage's Will on reality, everything from Gregorian Chants and Voodoo ritual to extreme fitness, and social manipulation. Therefore it should be able to model just about any roll.

The Hack would work thusly. In place of Attributes and Skills a Mage instead has practices (as presented on Page 572). Practices rate 1 - 5 dots, and describe the Mage's talent with a specific branch of her Art. When a Mage wants to perform an action, any action, she uses her Spheres and rolls Arete + Practice. This would, almost unavoidably, result in the abandonment of most of the other systems. All conflicts would be reduced to Arete + Practice vs Arete + Practice (Within reason of course, using Martial Arts to defend against a physical application of Dominance makes perfect sense, High Ritual Magic wouldn't be so reasonable an option).

A Sample Character Might Look Like This:

Sam The Street Samurai
Tradition: Akashic Brotherhood
Arete: 2
Willpower: 6
Spheres: Mind 2, Life 2, Forces 1, Matter 2, Spirit 1
Practices: Craftworks 1, Dominion 2, Martial Arts 3, Yoga 1

Weapons, Armor, Equipment, etc. all become modifiers. A Samurai with a Katana naturally is better at Martial Arts, conversely facing a suit of Full Plate Armor would penalize the Samurai's rolls (as his Paradigm indicates this is an effective defense). The same full plate would offer little help against a ray gun, or physic onslaught.

Obviously Practices shouldn't be limited to the short list in chapter 10, some of the Secondary Abilities fit quite nicely, and I'd need to figure how to handle sleepers and sleepwalkers (probably allow them access to more mundane Practices, limited to one or two dots). Probably also needs to be an allowance for working within the established Consensus (+1 Die and always Coincidental)

Perhaps this has been proposed before, even covered in a book, I don't know. But my fondness for dice light gameplay, and simplified systems draws me towards it.

[theoutlander523]

I think your house rule it's in fact canon in 3º edition, or at least optional. (You target with Dexterity + the appropriate skill (Occult, Energy Weapons...whatever) and you don't evade curses, because they aren't "energy based attacks"). The old "dodge magick" was just as you described it, an awful and preposterous rule that was added in a very old book: "the Book of Shadows".

Should have made this an option. It's the one thing that truly irks me about M20.

[falco1029]

The old Totem rules basically worked like WtA Totems: Totems have a minimum background rating, granting traits and/or powers, as well as a ban; and you could improve it with more points.

The new Totem rules work very differently, as pointed out in M20, to stress a different relationship. They're more narrative based, with a small set bonus to 1 Ability, Cosmology, and Lore.

Yeah, that. I liked the older way better, when you basically made a spirit fragment of the totem that stayed with you, rather than something more far off and out of the way. And of course I liked the more flexible benefits, too. The new way just seems stifling to me.

[Heavy Arms]

The old Totem rules basically worked like WtA Totems: Totems have a minimum background rating, granting traits and/or powers, as well as a ban; and you could improve it with more points.

The new Totem rules work very differently, as pointed out in M20, to stress a different relationship. They're more narrative based, with a small set bonus to 1 Ability, Cosmology, and Lore.

[Dataweaver]

Please elaborate: how do they differ?

[falco1029]

Not exactly a houserule so much as a backpeddle, I plan to entirely ignore the Totem background in M20 in favor of the older one. I do not like the new one one bit.

[Captain Aeon]

I'm still using my "Coincidental, Hidden, Vulgar" variant of Paradox. Basically, in this version, there's no such thing as "vulgar without witnesses." Coincidental magick is just that -- either something that could happen by the odds, or magick that's wrapped in the local paradigm and thus "possible" by Consensus. Vulgar magick is the impossible, witnessed by Sleepers, who go, "that's impossible!" Hidden is everything in between -- magick that isn't seen by Sleepers. It might be Copperfielding, that wrench in the backpack that wasn't there before, levitating your car out in BFE when no one's around, active telepathy between mages (and/or Night-Folk/Sleepwalkers), etc. It has the same base difficulty as vulgar without witnesses, but doesn't cause auto-paradox -- you only get Paradox on a failure or botch. To compensate, Vulgar magick is even more dangerous based on how many people saw you. A mage automatically gets extra paradox for every factor of ten in people who witnessed your impossibility -- one for 1-9, two for 10+, three for 100+, four for 1000+, and a maximum of five for 10,000+ (after that, the law of diminishing returns shows some mercy on the mage). Failures double this number, and botches start with the doubled nunber and add two for each botch die as usual. It's bad.

This allows for more of a 1st edition "katanas on rooftops" feel (at least by the art), where magick is fantastic and everywhere, but using it in front of mundanes is an absolute last resort. It also makes the Traditions' position considerably less precarious...which also has the side effect of making the Traditions' devotion to the Sleepers more tenuous. While a lot of Trad mages are still the good guys, there are quite a few (especially Hermetics) who are perfectly happy as secret masters, free to work their magick as they Will, Consensus be damned. Meanwhile, the Technocracy is both a beneficiary and a victim of this effect, able to deploy hypertech freely away from the Masses, but the RDs can do the same with their impossible atavisms. (In my default campaign, this is a result of the Reckoning, which went down differently than Revised canon. Yes, it does have epic, far-reaching consequences when the Awakened realize that Paradox transformed underneath them...)

[Morimaruvik]

Even with an XP cost for Backgrounds staying in M20, it isn't a "must use" rule fairly explicitly.

Oh, totally. Which is why I don't feel bad at all for dropping it. It's not like dropping, say, Paradox.

[Lian]

Even with an XP cost for Backgrounds staying in M20, it isn't a "must use" rule fairly explicitly. Certification can be a by narrative Background instead of an XP purchased on. Getting a Certification is then only as hard as it is in universe.

ok I find "Hunting Liscence" a bit too low a priority for it to be statted

[Heavy Arms]

Even with an XP cost for Backgrounds staying in M20, it isn't a "must use" rule fairly explicitly. Certification can be a by narrative Background instead of an XP purchased on. Getting a Certification is then only as hard as it is in universe.

[Lian]

I'm dropping the necessity of Certification for some things, mainly weapons. Mainly because I don't see the necessity in making a guy from New York invest two dots of background to legally own a pistol when the character from just across the border in Pennsylvania gets the same thing for free. I get that it models reality more closely (unless your ST is clueless about American firearms law and makes everyone have a "permit"), but it's the kind of small thing that will piss off some of my players, and I expect we'll be touching up character sheets to be "M20-compliant" soon.

Yeah 3xp to be able to go hunting or fishing is kind of crazy

[Dataweaver]

Seems reasonable, though I would be very careful not to let those modifiers run out of hand. The power gamer in me would promptly attempt to stack as many positives as possible, then the thematic gamer would slap the power gamer...and attempt to stack as many themes as possible.

That's not an oversight; that's the intended behavior: the goal is to have a fairly stable set of difficulties (4, 5, or 6, depending on vulgarity), but with high-Sphere requirements and/or troublesome circumstances translating to the mage putting a lot more effort into performing the Effect.

[Aleph]

I think your house rule it's in fact canon in 3º edition, or at least optional. (You target with Dexterity + the appropriate skill (Occult, Energy Weapons...whatever) and you don't evade curses, because they aren't "energy based attacks"). The old "dodge magick" was just as you described it, an awful and preposterous rule that was added in a very old book: "the Book of Shadows".

Don't know how you dodge a lightning bolt with ease.

Neither do I, but if you can dodge bullets, even at point blank range...

[theoutlander523]

House rule I'm using will be aiming the spell with an actual roll like Perception + Occult or such for Fireball and not Arete. Don't know how you dodge a lightning bolt with ease. Either way, makes Forces almost useless in magic since a single success will beat a Mage. That's such a stupid rule, I don't know why they even added it. Not playing NWoD, why am I rolling to do damage and not to hit?

Better question is how do you DODGE a freaking curse?

"Well I felt that damn mage tossing a curse at me so I side step it and dodge the thing! Teach that punk nerd to mess with me!"

[Morimaruvik]

I'm dropping the necessity of Certification for some things, mainly weapons. Mainly because I don't see the necessity in making a guy from New York invest two dots of background to legally own a pistol when the character from just across the border in Pennsylvania gets the same thing for free. I get that it models reality more closely (unless your ST is clueless about American firearms law and makes everyone have a "permit"), but it's the kind of small thing that will piss off some of my players, and I expect we'll be touching up character sheets to be "M20-compliant" soon.