Ask a simple question, Awakened edition

[galivet]

My opinion is that Time is the most tightly constrained Arcana, with very few options for Creative Thaumaturgy. I think it's very hard to devise a new Time spell that does not overlap so heavily with one of the published spells that you really ought to just use the published spell. And those spells tend to be tightly locked down with explicit restrictions and much of the functionality consigned to expensive Reach options. I think that the developers wanted making significant changes to the past to be difficult and prone to paradox in comparison to directly changing the present.

EDIT: To clarify, that is to say that I don't think you can Creative Thaumaturgy "basically Rewrite History but it's intrinsically Lasting and has some of the Reach options build in."

Anyone who sees this post as throwing down the gauntlet on Time Creative Thaumaturgy, I'd love to see what original and distinctive Time spells you can post in the appropriate thread. There's a relative dearth of Time spells there.

[KaiserAfini]

My opinion is that Time is the most tightly constrained Arcana, with very few options for Creative Thaumaturgy. I think it's very hard to devise a new Time spell that does not overlap so heavily with one of the published spells that you really ought to just use the published spell. And those spells tend to be tightly locked down with explicit restrictions and much of the functionality consigned to expensive Reach options. I think that the developers wanted making significant changes to the past to be difficult and prone to paradox in comparison to directly changing the present.

EDIT: To clarify, that is to say that I don't think you can Creative Thaumaturgy "basically Rewrite History but it's intrinsically Lasting and has some of the Reach options build in."

Anyone who sees this post as throwing down the gauntlet on Time Creative Thaumaturgy, I'd love to see what original and distinctive Time spells you can post in the appropriate thread. There's a relative dearth of Time spells there.

I find Forces is the most difficult for me, by a wide margin, its domain is very locked down. I have been trying to make a Forces and Space Mastigos Legacy of the Mysterium as a personal challenge and coming up with spells that don't already exist has been quite the ordeal, much less ones mixed with Space. Current ideas are to tie them to an Emanation, such as one inspired by The Music of Eric Zann or The Fauna of Mirrors.

Time is much more intuitive for me to work with and I have posted a few spells there, including:

* Temporal invisibility by falsifying your presence in the present, creating an afterimage in a loop animation
* Decrease healing time to gain werewolf like recovery
* Perfect your combat instincts with minor divinations to dodge due to perfect positioning (always in Dodge rather than defending while its active)
* Speeding up any independent process by days/months/years (synthesizing medicine, fermentation, etc)
* Creating a zero weight storage of infinite capacity (stutters the content to the future and discerns what you want to store/retrieve via Fate)
* Creating an illusory disguise by simulating an older version of yourself (or younger via temporal sympathy), which accounts for any specific parameter (scarred from a difficult life, aged gracefully, etc)

Some ideas I have been toying with:

* Possess someone in the past with conjunctional Mind 4
* Make someone do actions in a loop with Ruling (they always think they need to repeat what they just did and are oblivious to the times they did it before)
* Make someone's perceptions be stuck at the time you cast the spell (everyone is "frozen" even as the battle rages on and they have no idea they have been attacked)
* Increase bleed out time for lethal and aggravated damage (place this in a lunargent bullet with Weaving and any werewolf will go splat long before they can do anything about it)
* Make bad things not get better, an inverted Veil of Moments called Time Salts All Wounds, preventing Conditions from ending or wounds from naturally healing
* Gaining dots in Anonimity and/or Alternate Identity by Veiling your own past
* Déjà Fu (inspired by the Discworld martial art of the same name), a Patterning which allows you to roll for actions that happen in a splintered timeline. When the spell ends, they all resolve in the present one (building a fort, attacking multiple times a target, etc)
* Create an absolute shield with a Patterning that shifts any incoming attacks (non sensory or sympathetic spells) to "dummy" splinters in the timeline (the presents your actions didn't choose to be canon).
* Use a Weaving to gain circular aging, connecting your current age to your prime. That way time attacks actually work in your favor since you can't be aged to death and would be sent to your healed prime instead. It also means areas with shattered or unstable time can't turn you to dust.
* Some kind of temporal bungee jumping or time teleportation from the casting point and the present/future, using an anchored temporal stutter. Inspired by the mission A Crack in the Slab from Dishonored 2, but at the moment its still a very nebulous idea.
* An Unmaking that renders the targets stuck looping into the next (or last depending on the caster's preference) [Potency] turns for the duration, everything resetting after each loop elapses (mana, damage, but not memories). Inspired by how Dr Strange defeated Dormammu in the MCU.
* An insidious variation of prophecy that falsifies a contest, trapping the unknowing target in a vision of it where the foe is implacable, yet just tough enough that victory seems at hand and they exhaust themselves fighting the apparition only they can see. Inspired by phase 1 of Lady Butterfly in Sekiro and Batman's Agamemnon Contingency for Wonder Woman.

Hope those help inspire some ideas, Time is one of my favorite Arcana. If you have any ideas for the Forces and Space Legacy, please let me know.

[Sleepwalker]

In the chronicle I'm working on I'd like to have a prominent Consilium mastigos, maybe a herald, be possessed by something goetic. Would a goetic daimon or demon be capable of potentially possessing a careless mastigos in this way? What chain of events would or could lead to that happening? And finally, how long could the goetic entity hope to keep this up and could they use supernal magic while possessing their dreamer? They'd be trying to pass as non-goetic, as if nothing had changed if that's at all possible or explainable.

[KaiserAfini]

In the chronicle I'm working on I'd like to have a prominent Consilium mastigos, maybe a herald, be possessed by something goetic. Would a goetic daimon or demon be capable of potentially possessing a careless mastigos in this way? What chain of events would or could lead to that happening? And finally, how long could the goetic entity hope to keep this up and could they use supernal magic while possessing their dreamer? They'd be trying to pass as non-goetic, as if nothing had changed if that's at all possible or explainable.

Technically they cannot, since goetia don't have Manifestations, save for either a certain property of a Mystery (such as New York) or if a mage goes out of their way to allow them to (with a Weaving of Mind and Spirit/Death). So a very ambitious Clavicularius or Bene Asmodai would probably do it.

Another option is for the goetia to stealthfully enter the mage's Oneiros when they enter/exit it (or should a Mind mage open the path for them). From there they could engage in carefully and stealthily modifying the mage's mind to align with the goetia's goals (since the native goetia and especially the Daimon would normally not abide by its actions), rendering them into a copy or unknowing lackey of it.

[Neos01]

In the chronicle I'm working on I'd like to have a prominent Consilium mastigos, maybe a herald, be possessed by something goetic. Would a goetic daimon or demon be capable of potentially possessing a careless mastigos in this way? What chain of events would or could lead to that happening? And finally, how long could the goetic entity hope to keep this up and could they use supernal magic while possessing their dreamer? They'd be trying to pass as non-goetic, as if nothing had changed if that's at all possible or explainable.

You could use a Goetia that is a familiar of another mage.
As kaiser has said, a mind mage can force manifestation on a goetia.
Also this mage could use the familiar senses to cast his spell remotely, maintaining the facade

[galivet]

If I did this in a story, the Mastigos would have done it to himself and the mystery would be about what he was trying to achieve in doing so (probably an attempt at drastic mental self-reinvention).

"Natural" goetia outside of the Astral are extremely uncommon and largely impotent. Mind Twilight is basically there for symmetry.

[Sleepwalker]

I like both Kaiser and Galivet's ideas enough that I think I want to use them together.

A mastigos dislikes something about himself, obsessively so. He finds himself wanting to be more like another person so he goes into that person's oneiros and spirits away a goetic entity of theirs back to his own astral. Is that an idea that makes sense, even if it's destined to end in tragedy? The person he stole the goetia from would start to experience changes based on its loss, right? And the mastigos would start to be changed in the opposite direction? Would the mastigos's native goetia be hostile to the implant? Would the transplanted goetia be aware of what's happening and what's been done to it?

I've wanted to run Mage for a long time but this is my first time doing it and I'm trying to make sure my ideas gel with how things work in the system and setting.

[Satchel]

"Natural" goetia outside of the Astral are extremely uncommon and largely impotent. Mind Twilight is basically there for symmetry.

Numina still function and are the only thing goetia can spend their Numina slots on; likewise, Influences may be limited, but a goetia is guaranteed to have an Influence commensurate with its Rank.

[KaiserAfini]

Is it possible to use Time alone to slow down the speed at which a Mystery is contaminated by a mage's Nimbus ? Either on the investigator or examined subject ? Much like Veil of Moments, the idea is to arrest or slow down the speed at which it happens.

In addition, can Fate apply boons to Focused Mage Sight ? If so what Practice would be required? I would guess it would be treated as any other spellcasting action.

Lastly, can either Fate or Mind affect a Clash of Wills ? I am trying to figure out what Arcana could help with Focused Sight besides Prime and those seem to be the most likely.

[galivet]

I would not permit any magic specifically to prevent Nimbus contamination of a Mystery; it just doesn't make sense to me based on what the mechanics are trying to model. That said,

The boon may also affect spellcasting rolls and other powers at the cost of +2 Reach.

I have historically taken "and other powers" to include occasions where no spell is cast per se but Gnosis or Arcanum rating appears in a dice pool.

I don't immediately see how Mind or Prime could help with Clash of Wills. I'd also be nervous about allowing any spells that directly influence Clash of Wills resolution. Like... you might get into an infinitely recursive situation where two spells that both impact Clash of Wills effectiveness have a Clash of Wills with each other. Also Clash of Wills has an important role in handling conflicts between Splats, and being able to influence that mechanic via more spellcasting seems wrong. Like double-dipping. Sorry I can't provide anything more specific than FUD; my knee-jerk "no" is strong here.

EDIT: I would permit homebrew Merits that impact Nimbus contamination and Clash of Wills rolls.

[galivet]

Oh, another work-around: As a player I have used time travel to Scrutinize a mystery several times in the same Turn (Scrutinize, travel back, Scrutinize, travel back, etc...). This would mitigate nimbus contamination as the Mystery is "fresh" for each Scrutiny role but the character retains the knowledge of the Mystery represented by its reduced Opacity. There's a natural limit to this enforced by Potency spell factors and then Reach limits; the character has to spend at least a turn casting Shifting Sands and so each successive attempt requires traveling back one turn further to arrive at the Mystery in its "fresh" state.

EDIT: Kind of like in that move Groundhog Day where Bill Murray gets better and better at playing the piano by taking piano lessons during the day he lives over and over and over. For the piano teacher, it's always the first piano lesson she's given Bill, but from Bill's perspective he's seen her hundreds of times.

[KaiserAfini]

Ah, I see the confusion. In the Clash of Wills, I was considering only Fate and Mind. It stemmed from thinking about the Gift of Strength's Unchained Facet. It grants the werewolf the ability to break all restraints and bindings. So not only are they able to escape a pocket dimension, they gain rote property on the Clash of Wills. I was trying to figure out how a mage who needed to detain that target would prepare for that. The simplest answers seemed to enhance the effect of Willpower via Mind or apply a boon.

Regarding Opacity, Prime seemed to focus the bulk of spells that help with Opacity. But in Mage there is never only one way to do anything, so I thought it was an interesting problemsolving exercise to consider how other Paths do it.

The first solution is to just throw a lot of mana at the problem, but again that returns to Prime.

Another one is to suspend or increase the time for the Nimbus to bleed out into the Mystery, summon its uncorrupted version from the past or travel to the past.

The third solution is based on how activating Focused Mage Sight requires directed will, amounts to hallucinating answers and interpreting them. All could be streamlimed or enhanced with Mind.

Lastly, Fate could make the mage be looking at the right symbol at the best time to gain knowledge.

I am curious what alternatives there are to Prime when dealing with a high Opacity Mystery.

[Redzone]

Is there possible to a spell to counter the effects of attainments? More precisely: a fraying Prime spell could reduce a Mage Armor rating, or spells are not intended to interact with attainments?

[Tessie]

Is there possible to a spell to counter the effects of attainments? More precisely: a fraying Prime spell could reduce a Mage Armor rating, or spells are not intended to interact with attainments?

Spells can interact with Attainments, but not because they are Attainments. If they interact, it's because they interact with the effects of the Attainments. As such a generic counter to Attainments could not work, but a spell which grants a supernatural Armour Piercing quality to a source of damage would definitely work against Mage Armour.

[rwknoll]

Dumb question time! What happens if you cast a spell like Divination with advanced duration? Do you get to ask a new set of questions again at a later time based on your ritual casting interval? Or could you choose to structure the Imago in such a way that you can ask your questions later rather than at the time of casting? Or would it be both, if the duration is long enough (say, a day or a month)?