Announcement

**proindrakenzol** · 05-10-2021, 01:38 PM

Let me start by saying that I like the Legacy, its thematics are solid and most of the mechanics just need a little tweaking to bring them in line with the way Legacies and some of the spells work as published.

Originally posted by Seraph Kitty View Post

Doctors Without Borders

Keeping Away Death
The Legacy was created early in the 21^st Century by an EMT who Awakened to Pandemonium. Their Shadow Name and most personal details have vanished from record, but the story goes that they spent several years seeking out a variety of healing Legacies where they could elevate their work through the sublime, but had philosophical differences with the ones they encountered; their encounters with Quiescence only deepened their resolve to cut through the limitations of the Fallen World. They had long thought of medicine as a battle against Death; now their war included the Lie.

The 21^st Century started January 1, 2001, to have a Legacy propagate far enough in fewer than 20 years that its founder's details have vanished from the records is unlikely. Even if you pushed the Legacy creation back to the first EMTs, that still puts you in the 1970s, it's unlikely that no one would know who the Legacy founder was.

They were eventually able to found their own Legacy, drawing on the symbols of service, perpetual conflict, and the endless pursuit of skill, but this accomplishment was short-lived; the mage was hunted down by the Seers before they had a chance to induct anyone else, with most traces of their work erased. Rumors persist that they may have hidden away a soulstone, or at least a copy of their research notes, leaving a trail someone else could yet follow, but for the time being, this Legacy remains lost – and unfinished.
Presuming someone can recover enough information to revive this Legacy, they will need to complete the work of fully connecting to Supernal Truths and carving a channel to them in the Fallen World, realizing the deeper mysteries of symbolism which made this Legacy possible. These must be fully explored before a member can form the Third Attainment, and induct others.

If rumors persist about this person that directly conflicts with most of their details being lost, at the very least the Adamantine Arrow would have records on them, especially if they fell in combat to the Seers.

Origins

Parentage: Mastigos, Adamantine Arrow
Background: This Legacy draws prospective mages with a deep interest in medicine – particularly the modern profession, as opposed to traditional or occult practices. The Doctors are very entwined with the culture around emergency responders, unlicensed free clinics, and humanitarian aid. It can also become a calling for those motivated by altruistic service, or, considering the target painted around the Legacy, those who want to piss off the Seers.

This also conflicts with the above, if it's an Adamantine Arrow Legacy then that means it's established within the Arrow, which it can't be if it's a one off Legacy whose secrets are only maybe findable in a lost soul stone.

You're missing "Nicknames" and "Appearance," but if this isn't an established Legacy that makes sense.

Doctrine

Initiation: Though not yet codified in a tradition, the Doctors require an initiate demonstrate a working knowledge of medicine, but more importantly that they show unflinching resolve and strict ethics in the midst of a crisis. They are far more likely to train a prospective mage who lacks medical skills but shows proper dedication, while black-listing a medical expert with an ulterior motive or who crumbles under pressure.

Personally, I prefer the prerequisites for the Legacy here in Doctrine rather than down in Attainments, it makes sense to me that the minimum requirements would come before the Initiation. Also, the current initiation would be "find and study the soul stone" if you want to go with that route.

Organization: As this Legacy was snuffed out before it had a chance to start, there is no organization yet to speak of. However, the trail that has been blazed regarding its magic speaks to an organization deeply enmeshed in Sleeper medical services as experts to call in to various crisis zones. There are rumors that some Libertines (or perhaps Thearchs) were working on creating a licensed NGO as a front while the Founder was developing it’s magic. Like the Legacy itself, there may still be some surviving framework that an aspiring member could build off of.
Theory: The Doctors draw heavily on philosophies regarding the pursuit of excellence, and honing one’s craft toward enlightenment through perpetual service. Third-hand rumors of the Legacy sometimes cite concepts of Kung Fu, Arete, or Unconscious Competence: that mastery of a skill means continually using it, continually teaching it; every life saved a momentary but precious victory, in an effort that will never end.
For this Legacy to be finished, it must be bound to Supernal Truths which have enough purchase in the Fallen World to form the final Attainments. An aspirant must derive the theory of Consuming Something to Take Its Power (as channeled through discovering pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and transplants) and the symbol of Sympathy Between an Expert and the Work they are needed to accomplish.

I'm skeptical there would be third-hand rumors of a Legacy that died before it was truly born, but if those are the influences you want for this Legacy they should show up under the Prerequisite skill list.

Magic

Ruling Arcana: Life
Yantras: Tools related to the mortal practice of medicine (+1)
Oblations: the Doctors draw down the Supernal through the symbols of conflict and compassion. The mage may gain one Mana per scene through Oblation by immediately treating a Sleeper who is in mortal danger, ahead of any other priority. They may gain back additional Mana by spending a full scene debriefing, counseling, and caring for a patient who is in active recovery (up to a maximum of their Life dots each day).
Additional Benefits: Legacy members may purchase adaptations of the Adamantine Hand and Techne merits, related to the practice of medicine. Someone aspiring to revive the Legacy must still have appropriate Status with the Adamantine Arrow and/or Free Council to learn these and incorporate them into the Legacy’s traditions.

Instead of Additional Benefits, just list the yantras you want in the yantras section with enumerated bonuses, and try to include a mix of tool, location, and action yantras.

Oblations also have specific rules, it's a Gnosis + Composure roll (not a fixed amount of Mana per action) and the Legacy adherent can gain up to their dots in the Legacy's Ruling Arcanum in Mana per day, basically just turn the oblations into a list: "treating a Sleeper in mortal danger or spending a scene debriefing, counseling, and caring for a patient in active recovery." Oblations can be bent, but this is a straightforward, very orthodox Legacy (in style) and a departure from the rules in this instance doesn't really make sense, imo.

Attainments

First Attainment: Instant Assessment
Prerequisites: Life 2, Wits 3, Medicine 2, and a Medicine specialty in Diagnosis
The first problem any doctor faces is diagnosing the problem. As their first Attainment, initiates of the Doctors Without Borders master assessing the scene fast so they can act fast. This mimics the effects of the “Analyze Life” spell, but honed to become a foundational aspect of the doctor’s soul.
As a Reflexive action, they may immediately Know a single target’s pattern, learning their exact injuries, physical Tilts and Conditions, illnesses, allergies, their overall health, and precise biological factors they need to administer medicine - including innate health risks and any drugs that might aversely interact.
This still does not grant any insight into supernatural beings or effects; the mage must uncover those Mysteries without the aide of their Legacy, but they may recognize unusual biological side effects that suggest a supernatural cause. Likewise, it does not provide any information about corpses, the undead, or constructs.

This should either require a scene long ritual to activate and then be on for an amount of time based on the Doctor's Life dots on the Advanced Scale Duration chart (practically speaking "always on") or require an Instant Action to activate.

Optional (Space 1): Epidemiology
Doctors may add the secondary effect of also learning the exact cause of any medical condition they assess (as per “Correspondence”): such as the weapon that caused the injury, a toxin in the environment, or a disease vector. If the source is within sensory range, the mage immediately knows its location; otherwise, they learn what caused it, but no other context clues.

This is a cool application of this power, I like it.

Second Attainment: Stabilize
Prerequisites: Life 2, a Medicine Specialty in Emergency Care, Tolerance For Biology, and Professional Training 1
Once the doctor is on scene, they guarantee their patients will make it to care – even if they don’t have the skills (or time), themselves. As an Instant Action, they can stabilize a person they touch, stopping them from bleeding out, ending a seizure, waking them from unconsciousness, or reducing their heart rate, breathing, and adrenal system to their average rates. Furthermore, if they continue to touch the target each turn, they may alter their biological processes even further, as per “Body Control”, to keep those in critical condition stable enough to reach proper treatment. They may choose up to 2 effects, such as:

Reducing the amount of oxygen they need to function
Slowing their heart rate, doubling the interval at which a toxin affects them
Reducing their awareness of pain
Keeping them sedate
Alter their metabolism to double the interval for fatigue and deprivation, or halve the interval to process intoxicants

Was weakening this power intentional? Per Body Control you get the benefits of each of the listed effects and you get them a number of times equal to the spell's potency. Using Legacy Attainment factor rules the potency of this Attainment on a size 5 (or smaller) individual would be 1 + Life dots/2 (rounded down), reduce this by 1 for a size 6 individual.

[Edit]This is also Duration primary, so the duration would be based on the Mage's Life dots, not a single round.[/Edit]

So at Life 2, you'd get all of these effects (again, size 5 individual):

1/4 the normal amount of oxygen needed.
quadruple the interval at which toxins affect them.
subsist on 1/4 the food and go 4x as long before checking for deprivation or fatigue.
+2 Initiative.
change their scent.
1/4 the healing time for Bashing damage (~3 minutes).

Optional (Space 2): Clear a Path
By gaining this attainment, the doctor begins to live up to the rest of the Legacy’s symbolism: without borders. As an Instant Action, the mage can break through any obstruction, as long as it constitutes a path, as per “Break Boundary”. For example, this lets them cross a locked door, but not a wall. This ability has Potency 2 and/or allows a Clash of Wills for the purposes of any supernatural barrier. The mage may bring up to one other target with them - letting them get in, and get back out with the patient. Reality is distorted to make this appear to be a mundane breach to any witnesses, arranging convenient ways for the obstruction to remain for others.

The Attainment has Potency equal to Space dots, not Potency 2.

Third Attainment: Booster Shot
Prerequisites: Life3, a Medicine Specialty in Epidemics,
With a touch, the Doctor can temporarily boost any target’s resistance to disease and poison, as an Instant Action. This grants a +3 to all rolls to resist Toxins for the next 24 hours, and they may immediately roll to resist in addition to their regularly scheduled intervals. While only a temporary measure, the doctors rely on this Attainment to help slow epidemics, particularly when medicine is sparse, and give the afflicted time to get full medical attention.

This Attainment should grant a bonus equal to the Mage's Life dots, not +3.

Optional (Space 3): Quarantine
Containment is the most critical part of pandemic response. While the Doctors Without Borders do still need to rely on protective and isolation equipment, this Attainment allows them to immediately seal off a source of infection, until proper protection can be put in place. This works similarly to “Ban” with Life in conjunction, creating a barrier that is impermeable to microbes around a single target, in an area as large as a 3’ radius, or as tight as the subjects skin. It cannot affect microbes inside of a body – targets remain infected, but also keep their biome of healthy bacteria. As it is permeable (and invisible) to all other objects, this barrier also serves as effective sterilization. The Ban lasts only 2 turns, requiring the Doctor actively maintain it until permanent protections are put in place, and requires touch range.

Ban is Duration Primary, so it would last (lower of Space or Life) turns, but this Attainment would work better with Advanced Duration and a Scene of prep time, as the Mage actively sterilizes and demarcates the small quarantine area, meaning the quarantine will last a Week/Month/Year. Also, Area doesn't really use touch or require a subject, without sensory range or being aimed it just centers itself on where the Mage is standing.

Also, Quarantine is the name of a different Space spell, so it might cause some confusion for players.

Fourth Attainment: Expert Consultant
Prerequisites: Life 4, Medicine 4, Professional Training 2, and a Merit reflecting leadership (such as Inspiring or Small Unit Tactics)
In the Latin, “Doctor” means “one knowledgeable enough to teach”; when a Legacy member is called in to an emergency zone, their personal skill is usually not as valuable as their ability to train numerous others to handle the crisis.
The member must use this attainment as a Ritual, requiring a casting time based on their Gnosis. At its conclusion, up to 8 targets increase their Intelligence or Dexterity by 2 (up to their trait maximum), for the next 24 hours; if the member has Mind ••• they may choose to increase dots of Medicine instead, but only for targets who already have at least one dot. If the caster has the Techne’ merit, this ritual is covert, and may incorporated into a mundane medical briefing.

Okay, several points here:

Medical Doctors are not "Doctors" in the Latin sense, "doctor" (in that sense) refers to someone with a PhD/DPhil.
Ritual time Legacy Attainments take a scene, regardless of the user's Gnosis.
Honing the Form is Duration Primary, with Advanced Duration this is lasting for a Month at Life 4 and a Year at Life 5.
I'm not sure where you're getting 8 targets, Advanced Targets is 5 targets at factor 1 and 10 targets at factor 2.
Increasing Intelligence is a Mind effect, not Life.
The Mage has Life dots/2 factors to move around (barring archmastery), so potency 3 and 5 targets or potency 2 and 10 targets. You could force exactly one factor into potency and allow Scale to scale up with Arcanum, or vice versa, but you're still not getting 8 targets.
Covert isn't a thing in 2e, Techne isn't an appropriate Merit for an Arrow Legacy, and I would nix the Mind 3 Medicine boost effect, if you want to keep a Mind 3 option you can allow the boosting of Intelligence or Wits instead of Dexterity.
Why not Mend with instant cast as the Legacy Attainment?

Optional (Space 4): On the Scene
Now truly without borders, the doctor is able to quickly arrive at any crisis they are called to (imitating “Teleport”). This attainment must be used as a Ritual, requiring a casting time based on their Gnosis rating, and requires either a live video feed or a Sympathetic connection to the target location (the ability has Potency 4 for the purpose of overcoming Withstand). The mage teleports to the scene, bringing up to 4 companions with them. Though free from the Lie, this is an obviously supernatural effect, likely to traumatize any Sleeper witnesses – and attract problematic attention. The mage can mitigate some of this by making it look like they’re already in route when called, choosing out-of-sight locations, or drugging anyone they take with them, distorting their sense of how long it takes.

Ritual Legacy Attainments take a Scene.
Potency is equal to the Mage's dots in Space, not 4.
Scale: Area is probably better than Scale: Targets, also the secondary factor is 1 + Space/2, not a fixed value.
You don't have enough reach for remote viewing, remote viewing requires 1 reach for sensory range + 1 for remote.
Due to the above you have to use Sympathetic range (which is fine, this is a Space Attainment), meaning this Attainment will require 1 Mana and a sympathy yantra.
It's "en route" not "in route".

Fifth Attainment: Transplant
Prerequisites: Life 5, Medicine 5, a Medicine Specialty in Surgery
Though many mages join this Legacy with the dream of sealing wounds free from the Lie, by the time they have reached the pinnacle of its mysteries, they have become such master physicians that they are far more concerned with breaking the limitations of medicine, rather than replicating surgery with slightly more ease. For its most powerful Attainment, the Doctors Without Borders turn instead to ensuring that anyone who needs a transplant will get it.
This ability works similarly to “Transforming Life”, but is used to transform the pattern of organs to make them perfectly suited to surgically implant in a specific target. An organ from any species can be used, with transformations being applied to enlarge it, alter its genetic compatibility, and to integrate with the target’s immune system.
However, the mage must personally, and with significant effort, capture and sacrifice the creature as part of this ritual. Raising the creature, purchasing it, using magic to obtain it, or even capturing animals to “save for later” all ruin the sacrament: a creature must have been caught through mundane means within 24 hours of the ritual.
This offering, however, allows the Attainment to make the transformations Indefinite. The doctors usually incorporate Supernal Veil when they use this ability, to decrease any attention to their patients.

The spell is Transform Life.
"Transforming the pattern" would be a Patterning spell, Transform Life is Weaving, instead you're "granting the quality of being compatible with a specific person" to the organ.
The sacrifice requirement doesn't make any sense given the nature of this Legacy, it'd make far more sense to just allow this Attainment to make the change to the organ Lasting.
Having to use Supernal Veil sort of defeats the point of the Attainment, since you're introducing the need for a spell.
Since this is a fifth attainment, why not just use Shapechanging with 2 reach for Lasting (even though the spell isn't normally Lasting, this is a reasonable rule-bend for an Attainment) and limit the transformation to organs?

Optional (Space 5): Seamless Surgery
Doctors who reach this Attainment do so to perfect their skills in surgery beyond what the Lie allows. The effects imitate “Co-Location”, weaving together the Space outside and inside their patients, allowing them to perform complex surgeries without any of the risks or limitations of cutting them open. This effect requires some kind of live feed of the target area (such as through ultrasound). As a matter of best practice, the Doctors seal the ability to move between spaces with a Key as they use this ability, allowing only their most trusted collaborators to use it. The effect lasts, at most, for 30 seconds at a time (giving more than enough time for a skilled surgeon to act without penalty), but is created as an instant action, and may include two internal spaces at once if necessary.

The time limit should be based on the user's Space dots, not a fixed value (I know that 30 seconds is the value for Space 5, but in theory their Space dots could go higher).

The live feed is unnecessary, they are physically touching the patient and basically the spaces they're targeting, even if you think sensory range is necessary (it isn't) "the other side of this wound" is still sensory range.

This Attainment also feels very off-theme for the rest of the Space Attainments, which all involve much more macro applications.

The spell Pocket Dimension with Advanced Duration probably fits the best, allowing the Mage to completely sequester someone in suspended animation for a year at a time (this can be fixed, because barring Indefinite, that's as high as the chart goes).

**Seraph Kitty** · 05-11-2021, 09:15 PM

Originally posted by proindrakenzol View Post

Attainment Feedback

This is a lot of good advice; I do really appreciate the feedback.
I do have to say, I find the line-by-line quoting to grate on my nerves a good bit, especially to give the same two critiques 10 times. It put me in a kind of defensive mindset, which made it harder for me to process your advice. I would have much preferred if you pointed it out just once, and maybe the source of the error, and let me generalize that to all the other places I made the same mistake. I think it's just a difference in communication style; I wanted to say that, and then drop it. Because I really do appreciate your analysis.

It looks like most of my mechanical mis-alignments come from misreading pg 198, which is super annoying, because I spent something like 8 hours on this last week, and read that section, like, a dozen times. I thought spell factors were fixed based on the Attainment rating.... but that's just Reach... And I also somehow missed that Legacy attainments always take a scene as a ritual. So, I'm just embarrassed how much calculation I did from that misread. But it is actually my first time statting a Legacy, and I was really excited about getting the ideas; I was bound to miss a few things.

That said I did also deliberately fudge the mechanics in a few places where it felt like it reinforced the themes I wanted it to.
I don't know, I feel like Legacies get to bend the rules a little bit, because they're tied down by narrower purviews and mystic drawbacks. I tried to keep all these as powerful as the Legacy guidelines state, but there's not necessarily permission, per RAW, to use the tweaks that I did... so your mileage probably will vary. But I'll walk through my choices a bit more transparently, and any of you can decide if it's close enough for you, or if you'd rather pull it back within the guidelines more strictly.

My overall intent for this Legacy was to integrate magic into mundane medical treatment, in a way that enhanced the skill and broke some of its limitations. Although the starting Attainments have a strong EMT vibe, this Legacy would stay relevant through a lifelong career that develops into surgery, teaching, and leading humanitarian medical efforts. Much like the Sleeper organization that it steals its name from, this Legacy is meant to be known experts in the medical field, called in to lend expertise and tools to the places that need them most. Using the attainments to their best effect still requires using mundane medical practices, tools, and teams; the abilities are more about Getting to Where You're Needed, Responding with Supernatural Speed and Efficiency, and Getting Patients Access to the Long-Term (Mundane) Care they Need
So here's how that informed some of my Attainment choices:

First Attainment: Instant Assessment (Life 2) & Epidemiology (Space 1)

After fixing my spell factors misread, the RAW guidelines would be: an Instant Action, Duration based on Life dots. Which works well enough, I guess.

Personally, I feel that Attainments based on 1 dot spells should get a little extra ooph. Benefits like 'free from lie', 'Legacy Wisdom', and such don't really apply to these. For a lot of them, I don't feel like there's enough distinction (or benefit) to having an attainment as opposed to a Praxis/Rote. And if you're going to choose a place to break the rules for something awesome, one dot spells won't get too out of hand. So I deliberately fudged it.

While medical diagnosis is always helpful if you're going to, you know, do medicine, this attainment is really designed for triage. It's supposed to let a character show up to a scene and 1) instantly determine who needs treatment first from several wounded, and b) start treatment at the same time as assessing someone. I bumped it's cost to Life 2, such that it's effectively like spending 2 Reach on Casting time. It's a thing that feels awesome, and breaks the rules a little, but I don't feel like it's horribly out of hand.

It might be served by a rewording such that it has an "always on" ability of noticing how urgent everyone's medical needs are, and then letting them to a full Analyze Life spell at the same time as taking a mundane Skill action with medicine. Maybe. But that makes it a little more complicated, and a Reflexive casting time makes it Feel Awesome without actually having game breaking mechanics, imo. But maybe there's something I'm forgetting that would make this over the top.

Second Attainment: Stabilize (Life 2) & Clear a Path (Space 2)
proindrakenzol: " Was weakening this power intentional? Per Body Control you get the benefits of each of the listed effects "

Ahhh, spit. Another misread. That should be fixed.

One thing I was deliberately considering is that these effects are going to be short lived. The reach is going to instant cast, so even with spell factors scaling with Life Dots... 10 turns and potency 3 means you still have to cast it twice to heal a single point of Bashing, even as a Master. So I decided to break up effects into what would be "lasting" (stop them from bleeding out, set their vitals to their average rating) and which effects the mage would have to stay by their side and actively treat them to see anything useful out of. Which, yeah, they should be getting a much wider range of simultaneous effects if they're doing that.

Third Attainment: Booster Shot (Life 3) & Quarantine (Space 3)

This Attainment is where we really see that the Legacy is not meant to be a substitution for actual medical skill, or equipment; what lets it shine is that it pushes past some of the limits of mundane medicine instead. It's a Legacy meant to synergize with Sleeper efforts, showing up with the actual Médecins Sans Frontières, to, like, Ebola outbreaks, and doing the stuff that isn't quite possible, to let everything which is possible reach it's full effect.

Sleepers are pretty good at quarantine protocols (I mean in actual medical facilities, not, you know, recruiting the public to voluntarily help). Instead the major limits are not realizing someone is infectious to get up a quarantine before others are exposed, and running out of medicine. This Attainment lets the mage be a patch to cover those gaps, and thereby improve the entire response. Instant Assessment lets them tell someone's infectious; then they can instantly bubble them so they don't spread the infection before getting to a quarantine tent. So it has to be Instant Cast; the short duration is a minor consideration.

Similarly, the Life Attainment does not do anywhere near enough to control an epidemic (life threatening diseases are at least Toxicity 7), what it does is give people a fighting chance until more medicine / vaccines arrive. Reach goes into Instant Cast and Advanced Duration... and it should be fixed for spell factors to scale with Life Dots.

Fourth Attainment: Expert Consultant (Life 4) & On the Scene (Space 4)
proindrakenzol: " I'm not sure where you're getting 8 targets [...] Increasing Intelligence is a Mind effect, not Life [...] Covert isn't a thing in 2e [...] You don't have enough reach for remote viewing, remote viewing requires 1 reach for sensory range + 1 for remote. [...] Techne isn't an appropriate Merit for an Arrow Legacy "

This Attainment continues to reinforce that you get much more done if you continue to rely on Sleepers and mundane skill as much as you can, and enhance what's possible with magic. You can get waaaay more done with a large team of Sleeper doctors than a single mage trying to handle everything, and with far less attrition. By the time someone has Gnosis 6 and 4 dots in Medicine, they should be leading teams, not just being a spunky EMT. Which is to say, I looked at Knit and Mend as Attainments, but they weren't ambitious enough for this Legacy. In the heat of conflict with supernatural forces, you can can use instant healing magic as a rote instead. But the Doctors Without Borders should be evacuating Sleepers (possibly to an emergency room on the other side of the world), and showing up in a crisis zone to make the dozen or so volunteers competent enough to spread out and save lives.

With Honing the Form, I deliberately fudged the mechanics again... twice. Intelligence is not supposed under the purview of this spell. I decided to lean on the "atypical" quality a little harder than some STs might be comfortable with. The whole Legacy's theme is "medicine" and Dex and Int are the two attributes you use with that, so those are the attributes I let this boost, with a justification that Perfecting neural connections could improve someone's "capacity for problem solving" - though clearly not memory or knowledge. [Actually, looking at medicine again, I'm probably remembering the 1E core that listed First Aid as Dex and Treating in Hospital Conditions as Int.] But you loose the options for Strength and Stamina. It was a choice that deliberately broke the rules; you're welcome to make a different one.

The other deliberate choice was allowing a Reach to make Scale the primary factor (which at Life 4 is 8 targets; but that needs to be fixed to be scaling). You then get to bump Potency and Duration up by one step as secondary factors, and apply the second Reach to Duration. The idea is that if you're assisting with a crisis zone, there's probably a pretty large team, but daily briefings; more targets is more valuable than longer duration. RAW might not let you do that, but it's a creative use of Reach, it hits the themes I was aiming for, and is actually equivalent mechanics... it's just a trade off you don't normally get to make.

I didn't know the teleportation spell could be area of effect instead of number of targets. That is probably a better way of doing that. Then you don't have to worry about if a stretcher is a separate target and whatnot.

As for Reach, the text of the spell (178) says "By default, the subject's current location and destination must both be within sensory range, but the mage may employ the Sympathetic Range Attainment on one of them". I read that to mean that a Reach doesn't have to be spent for sensory range; maybe that's a generous interpretation, but IIRC, there's a few other spells that also assume sensory range, because Touch doesn't make any sense. So, the Reach bumps it to remote viewing; and yes, using Sympathy as an alternative would require Mana and yantra; I got lazy and didn't specify that, but it should be added in. Remote range is really the bit that makes this spell valuable... if you're being called in to a medical crisis, remote viewing is highly likely to be available... sympathetic connections, not so much. So, I didn't think this fudged the mechanics, based on the spell's wording.... if I did, yeah, it's too much to grant an extra reach. And I don't quite want to make this the fifth attainment. So I might have to rework it.

As for the reference to "covert"; I always assume that spending an hour to chant and using purely symbolic mnemonics counts as "doing obvious magic in front of Sleepers". Covert might not be an official term in 2E, and certainly not one every spell needs to detail, but there are still echoes of the concept. Even if the Attainment is Free From the Lie, I would ordinarily still rule that as an obvious supernatural event (for breaking points - and drawing dangerous attention). So I felt a clarifying distinction should be used; 'Covert' is still a convenient shorthand in my mind, even if it's dated.

Fifth Attainment: Transplant (Life 5) & Seamless Surgery (Space 5)
proindrakenzol: "why not just use Shapechanging [...] it'd make far more sense to just allow this Attainment to make the change to the organ Lasting [...]"the other side of this wound" is still sensory range "

This attainment, for me, really seals the answer to "what's the best use of medical magic to overcome the lie?" Always having an organ that can be donated. No waiting lists, no tissue rejection... But that's only valuable if it lasts. Checking up on patients every year... is doable, but why settle? But, unfortunately, Regeneration cannot be boosted enough to work, otherwise that would have been the way to go. But altering an organ's pattern and then doing surgery actually fits much better with the way this Legacy continues to lean on mundane techniques.

To me, Transform Life read as more fitting than Shapechanging. It's text already states "the mage can transform life by giving it features normally exhibited by other organisms" (pg 150), and has some pretty fantabulous effects; like, already way more than this Legacy needs. I figure if it can give a person tentacles and gills, it can make a rat kidney viable for a human. I guess Shapechanging works too, but my concern was squeezing in enough Reach to make it last.

TBH, I don't know enough about the rules for making something Lasting. I mean, I wanted to for this Attainment, obviously, and it'd be way easier than what I drafted. But it's supposed to be a rare exception, and I wasn't sure how to calculate the factors I needed. In fact, I was assuming you had to boost a spell to indefinite anyway before adding Lasting to it. I guess that doesn't line up with the handful of spells that have Lasting as a Reach effect...? but like I said, I just didn't know how to calculate it, and frankly it seemed like a huge stretch to allow. Like, way more of a stretch than the other ways I bent the rules.

So what I did was... +1 Reach to make Duration primary; +1 Reach for Advanced duration; +1 Reach & +1 Mana to make it Indefinite... which is all of the Reach. And it's still beyond the scope of spell factors: even Life 5 only gets up to a year. So I added a sacrament of significant effort to justify the additional step.

And sure, supernal veil is a weird bit to mention - and unnecessary if you can make it Lasting. But again, I was assuming that I could only stretch for Indefinite, so it would be an effect that still pings Mage Sight. Even if it can't be dispelled, it risks attracting attention from, say, Seers. Since you're already doing an involved ritual and surgery, best practices would be to learn how to veil that. But maybe leaving it as "indefinite, noticeable to mage sight, but can't be dispelled" has enough potential as a plot hook and a terrible consequence to leave it as is, and remove the reference.

But if the community's advice is that 2 Reach, 1 Mana can make it Lasting without worrying about the rest of that, then of course that's a better way to go.

The (not very) subtle creepy thing this Attainment allows (if you're full of Hubris and still made it this far), is that, as long as you can find an organ which does the effect you want, you can try some TCG thaumatech style bullshit. One of the reasons to use Weaving to make an organ compatible with humans, instead of Patterning to just make it a human organ, is that you might be able to keep some of the remarkable non-human qualities it has. Like a cat's ultra-efficient liver; there's a lot of remarkable, creepy biology that a character could try to exploit. And if your Storyteller is a fool, they might like you replicate published thaumatech - but that generally relies on re-interpretations about how other templates which, which fit for hunter, but not for mage.

With Co-Location, the cool, mind-blowing effect behind this (which I figured should probably require remote viewing), is that it's supposed to work without a wound. Without anything. They just do internal surgery while leaving the body perfectly intact. Like, damn, am I right? So, I thought that might, you know, require a little more Reaching than just Touch or Sensory range. The effect fits with the first part of the Attainment (being about surgery), and the overall theme of the Legacy (break the limitations of mundane medicine), and, I thought, was a pretty clever interpretation of Space magic. I'm keeping it.

Background and Rumors

After drafting the Attainments, I realized this is something the Seers would hunt down with extreme prejudice. So I decided to make it more of a "plot hook" Legacy, and leave many of it's details vague and adaptable for a ST to weave into their specific chronicle. But I agree that I didn't present that well enough with this draft, and there's too much inconsistency with the what's known vs lost. I'll probably redraft this at some point soon, and edit the OP.

Additional Benefits

Having unique merits, or removing the prerequisites for them, was another thing I saw here and there in 1E. I know there's not really a structure for that in 2E, but it doesn't seem entirely out of place. For this Legacy in particular, it seemed appropriate that members would invest in learning how to use mundane actions as yantras to cast as they worked, and how to embedded yantras in Sleeper communities, tools, and technique - both Adamantine Hand and Techne well for it, in my opinion.

And as far as I could find, there's no restriction which prevents you from taking Status in multiple Orders. An Arrow who wanted their legacy to embed with Sleeper medical efforts would absolutely build up enough goodwill with the Free Council to learn Techne. So, presuming an aspiring founder can do that, they can incorporate those merits into the Legacy for others to follow more easily.
I might add Free Council to the Parentage... But it can only associate with one Order, the Arrows fit best.

Yantras and Oblations
proindrakenzol: " try to include a mix of tool, location, and action yantras "

Yeah, I fell flat on detailing Yantras; it's not a thing I'm good at coming up with. Your suggestions for different types help a lot.

Oblations are... it says an hour long meditation; I didn't see anything in Legacies which changed that. So prioritizing a Sleeper in a conflict wouldn't work for that. I think I was tying to adapt something akin to Vows, which, after glancing back through that section in SOS, I'll just do the right way instead.
"(optional) Vow: the Doctors frequently promise to prioritize the safety of injured civilians above all else."

Theory and the weird Sacrament thing

I have a lore assumption which is not canon, so I probably should have spelled that out in the OP. I like to emphasize that Legacies are ways of discovering Supernal Truths and anchoring them to the Fallen. They aren't arbitrary; a mage can't just choose their favorite spells, even in a narrow theme, and bind them as Legacy Attainments. They have to discover an underlying mystery, already deeply entrenched in the Fallen, which is both a revelation of the sublime and often extraordinarily inconvenient. They have unusual drawbacks, and aren't entirely optimized, because even the founder doesn't have full control over what symbols they're bound to.

So I bound this Legacy to a Truth which underlies most of modern medicine: sacrificing and consuming something to claim its power. Whether its organ transplants, or grinding plants down to their unique chemistry for pharmaceuticals, or exposing someone to dead forms of a virus to teach their immune system, or experimenting with isolating and replicating genes from other species - a lot of medicine draws on expressions of this Truth - if a bit abstractly. So, I included the idea that in order to codify some of this magic as Attainments, the founder has to understand that truth and more deliberately express it.

Like I said, it's not RAW, but I feel like it fits with the flavor of a lot of Legacies, particularly those in 1E - like Tamers of Rivers and Wraiths of Epochs.
I think it adds meaning to Legacies in general, adds some verisimilitude as to why mages don't just make "super legacies", and adds some horror to the entire process of creating and joining them. A mage starts off with grandiose intent, and discovers they are limited by which expressions of the supernal are allowed in the prison of the Fallen World.
So I get if it feels a little jarring to have those symbols in the Theory, and the sacrament for the fifth attainment, particularly since I didn't share that context in the OP. But that's just way I add terrible things to my chronicles. If you like the rest of this write up but your mileage varies on the theory part, you're welcome to exclude it.

*Post-Script: I said a variant of YMMV a lot through here... sorry if it's repetitive; I wrote this in sections throughout the day. But where I have it included is meant to be my final word on the topic. They're my preferences, and I don't care to debate them; but I respect other people's preferences, and have no problem with anyone editing this for their own use.

**proindrakenzol** · 05-11-2021, 10:41 PM

Obviously it's your game and you can do what you want.

re: first Attainment and more oomph: the main oomph with the First Attainment is going to be the extra Ruling Arcanum, the benefit of the first Attainment being small is entirely in line with that, you also immediately qualify for the second Attainment. Making the first Attainment require two dots in the Arcana is standard, not an extra special thing, that's how all the published Legacies work and they only assign one reach. If you want the ability to be for triage make it Instant cast with limited duration, in the scenario you're describing it being Reflexive would make no practical difference and this way it fits within the rules.

re: quarantine: Ban is cast on a stationary space, so I guess it works if you're escorting someone physically and making tiny quarantine bubbles the whole way to the quarantine tent.

re: Expert Consultant: Primary factor is either Potency or Duration, you cannot (per the rules as written) change the primary factor to Scale; gaining the ability to boost Int is just too far outside Life's purview, and adding the ability to also boost Medicine if you have Mind is basically combining 3 Attainments into 1. If you want something that can be "gifted" to other people then I think granting a condition like Steadfast (triggering the release of dopamine while giving a speech about how "they've done this a million times" or something) would be the way to go.

Also, I did make a Healer Legacy a while ago, I just haven't posted it here, yet.

re: Transplant: a Legacy being able to make a Lasting effect that normally isn't Lasting is, in my opinion, a perfectly reasonable power boost as long as it's set up to have the correct amount of reach (i.e. two for making it Lasting).

re: Co-location: Just so I understand: you didn't like Mend or Knit as Attainments because they were too small scale in their effects at that level, and you want Ban to be instant and short duration because humans are good at setting up quarantine, but for this fifth attainment being able to do internal surgery (something humans are pretty good at and constantly improving) a little easier on a single person is exactly what you want?

re: Additional Benefits: you just put the yantras you want them to be able to use in the yantras section. I'm also not sure how Adamant Hand, a combat specific yantra, has anything to do with this Legacy. Unique Merits or special access to Merits is fine, it's just the Merits you've chosen do not make sense because for Techne you should just give the Legacy all the yantras that would be associated with Techne (modern medicine) or Techne (field medicine) as part of the Legacy.

re: Orders: it can be associated with multiple Orders, the 11Q in the MtAw2e book are associated with both the Mysterium and the Guardians.

re: weird sacrament thing: I still think it's weird and athematic. If the Legacy had instance of that sort of sacrifice being necessary throughout it'd make sense, but it doesn't. If you want to build a theme you have to build it within the first two or three Attainments, sticking it in the final Attainment makes it feel like it comes out of nowhere.

re: Seers hating this Legacy: I don't think they'd target this Legacy over any other Legacy focused on helping Sleepers.

**21C Hermit** · 05-11-2021, 11:14 PM

Right now I have neither the time nor frame of mind to post something detailed, but;
1) That picture is badass,
2) I’ll probably pick up that headcanon idea of how Legacies are formed, coexisting with “I just hammered together my praxes in a coherent theme” perspective, and
3) I can see Seers serving the Raptor specifically trying to kill off the Legacy’s members, and those serving the Chancellor trying to subvert/corrupt it. As opposed to trucking with all the Seers, that is.

**Isator Levi** · 05-12-2021, 04:54 PM

Originally posted by 21C Hermit View Post

3) I can see Seers serving the Raptor specifically trying to kill off the Legacy’s members

What makes you think that?

**21C Hermit** · 05-12-2021, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by Isator Levi View Post

What makes you think that?

I think the Exarch of Life wouldn’t be so nice to people who are using Life to make people’s lives better, even if the whole thing doesn’t directly challenge the might-makes-right thing the Raptor has going on.

That, and the first writeup above specifically mentioned Seers gunning for the Doctors, so I worked from “Which group of Seers would antagonize these guys” rather than “What group would the Seers of the Raptor antagonize,” so there’s that too.

**TempleBuilder** · 05-12-2021, 06:03 PM

Originally posted by Isator Levi View Post

What makes you think that?

Raptor is about Darwinism, Social or otherwise. Only the strongest should survive. Doctors make it so the “weak” can survive. This legacy focuses on helping the weakest of all (sleepers) survive when they would otherwise perish, thus subverting the natural order, and the Raptor’s will, and so on... Plus it draws on one of the strongest tools sleepers have to fight the natural order, science and medicine. The main ideal is compassion! That’s completely against the Raptors symbolism!

...Sorry for putting words in someone else’s mouth, but I thought I knew the answer.

**Isator Levi** · 05-12-2021, 07:27 PM

Originally posted by 21C Hermit View Post

I think the Exarch of Life wouldn’t be so nice to people who are using Life to make people’s lives better, even if the whole thing doesn’t directly challenge the might-makes-right thing the Raptor has going on.

Originally posted by TempleBuilder View Post

Raptor is about Darwinism, Social or otherwise. Only the strongest should survive. Doctors make it so the “weak” can survive.

That's not quite how the books portray the Raptor. He's about the subordination of free will to instinct, predatory relationships and placid lifestyles and the idea that everybody is constrained by natural laws and biological functions (I expect she's big into evolutionary psychology).

The description of Seer Stewards even states that they need to prevent Sleepers from being too threatened, because otherwise desperation might drive them to Awaken. I can expect quite a few of the Raptor's followers to think that some degree of medicine and emergency services and even the occasional miraculous healing are good for the Lie, because even the most distant expectation that other people might save you from a disaster lessens the incentive to experience that as a confrontation with the Lie.

We know that a common form for the Supernal Journey is people being shunted from their bodies while on the brink of death. We know that most Awakenings fail. I expect that many Seers have gathered credible evidence that plenty of Lucid in the emergency room pull away from what they're experiencing as a result of either being saved or subconsciously thinking they're likely to be saved. The Raptor might have a "sink or swim" ethos, but when you don't want people to swim you can occasionally throw them a life preserver.

Heh, the notion that Diamond records show that the proportion of mages who Awakened from near-death experiences was higher before the advent of modern medicine amuses me.

More substantially, I'm kind of wary of the idea of Seers having pursued a paramedic Legacy specifically because they were healers because I find it a tad Captain Planet evil in a manner contrary to what makes them compelling to me. And I don't think it even really needs get that much into some abstract ideological offence; I'd say it can be enough that a Legacy founder was murdered by a Pylon of Seers just because the opportunity presented itself. Even that the opportunity presented itself because the medic's actions entailed putting oneself out there more than is typical of Legacies in a way that's easy to notice.

Suddenly I'm imagining a Seer who orchestrated the murder being an actual doctor in a hospital whose work entails carefully balancing recovery and worsening, for reasons of preserving the Sleeper habitat and issuing reminders of the nature of biology. From that position one could notice that a higher proportion of those being brought in by some of the emergency responders are not merely surviving, but coming in with injuries far lesser than reported. The tetrarchy isn't constantly murdering the opposition, but when one is right in your wheelhouse, well, waste not.

Hmm, now I'm thinking about how you can also get the point that disease and injury can be the kind of thing that makes people feel really confined to and constrained by their bodies, and that a person who lives and carries the reminder of those facts to other people can be a stronger example than the one who dies. Cancer in remission is a good thing to the Seers when it means people know how beholden they are to chemical balances in their flesh and live with the fear that their bodies will betray them.

I have this picture now of a sect of followers of the Raptor who promote transhumanism to get some people really in their heads about the idea that their bodies are cages from which they must desperately try to escape, and then sabotaging lines of research that might be comforting to people dedicated to transhumanism.

The point is that the Lie has layers, it's not all just constant cruelty and misery.

**21C Hermit** · 05-12-2021, 07:33 PM

Originally posted by Isator Levi View Post

Too long for mobile quoting.[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]

Ooh, good point. Nice and insidious.

Maybe that’s the modern understanding and incarnation of the Raptor that the current worshippers of the Raptor follow, with the ‘bestial’ and more brutish ones faded out.

**Seraph Kitty** · 05-12-2021, 08:51 PM

Those are some really insightful point; I like it. Particularly "the opportunity presented itself" definitely fits with what I had in mind. If you're whole goal is to do more magic alongside Sleepers, the Seers are going to notice.
The root of my reasons for this Legacy being target were along the lines of "what magic could be vs what the lie reduces it to". I think it was Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that came out strongly with lines like "why aren't you curing cancer? why isn't there limitless free energy?" The Arcana offer so many ways to just fundamentally improve the world, but Quiescence robs most of them. The... flagrancy of using magic to help people, deliberately building a Legacy that tries to do some pretty obvious magic, I just see as an offense to the Wardens of the Lie.

You highlight a lot of the really good nuance that exists with Seer motivations, and the push and pull between reinforcing tyranny and suffering vs making people too comfortable to resist the lie. It's something Mage does really well, particularly in 2E. And which I did not have in mind for this write up

**Isator Levi** · 05-13-2021, 04:10 AM

I think your choice of Path is good, because the motives described very much feel like a Mastigos attitude towards applications of Life.

One looks at the description of the Thyrsus experience of Gnosis and might come away with the conclusion that most of the people with the strongest facility for using Life have a certain attitude of "diseases are living things too".

**thenate** · 05-18-2021, 09:59 PM

The bonus for Life Active Mage Sight already diagnoses at a glance. You could punch that up a little. I'm thinking something akin to:

Doctors develop a keen connection to the patterns of Life and Death. The attainment hones that to the point where they can detect the supernal symbols and interplay, even concealed. Where Mage Sight is generally limited to direct sight, the doctors can perceive the supernal patterns related to a subject's health if they can perceive that living subject at all. Full medical analysis can be performed from this information. If mystical concealment is in play, use Life ranks as automatic successes.

Successfully Revealing the Mystery of a patient's illness with Life-based Focused Mage Sight grants the Doctor the Informed condition respecting their health & care in addition to the normal effects.

Those situations where Life ebbs shine with a certain immediacy. Use Life ranks on the advanced Duration chart to determine the timeframe in which a subject's death triggers peripheral Mage Sight. Someone bleeding out in the next day would trigger this for anyone with Life 2, while someone with Life 5 could detect conditions that will kill within a year just by hearing them breathe, touching them, or seeing them. The sense of urgency is also conveyed as an impression of relative time left, but this wouldn't reveal the cause.

(The mage would need to cast or activate Mage Sight to get the full analysis, but to do triage they could simply walk through a tent city at a swift walk, assigning codes.)

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