Potent Nimbus and high Gnosis

[lbeaumanior]

Greetings,

Does the Potent Nimbus merit keep counting after you have a Gnosis larger than 6?

Essentially, the part that goes Determine your Nimbus Tilt as if your Gnosis were raised by twice dots in this Merit, seems to become obsolete after Gnosis 6, given that the maximum Gnosis is 10, or does a hypothetical Gnosis 10, Potent Nimbus 2 character, treat their Gnosis as if was 14 for Tilt purposes?

Thanks.

[Isator Levi]

I don't think there's anything particularly broken to such a character providing such severe effects from the Nimbus. Well, I mean, going strictly by the numbers (even just for a few turns), maybe it's a bit broken, but I think that's probably on the table anyway in the event that a Gnosis 10 character shows up. You could do worse than the idea that flaring their Nimbus adds three dice to one Attribute, subtracts them from another, and +1 and 8-again to a Skill.

I think it helps that there's a lot of latitude with designing Nimbus Tilts. The numbers can be distributed as one wishes in a manner that fits the imagery one ascribes to it. One could even come up with a Tilt that applies plus or minus 1 to most of the Attributes, if they want the idea of a Nimbus that is potent but spread out to encompass multiple sensations.

As far as justification goes, I read the Merit description as focusing on being a modifier to the numbers that calculate the Tilt itself, rather than the Gnosis directly. The effect of the Merit is being applied to the Nimbus, not the Gnosis.

There's precedent elsewhere for effects that add to an effective Gnosis going beyond 10 as well. The spell Blink of an Eye allows a person to have Potency added to their Gnosis for purposes of calculating ritual casting times, with additions above ten continuing to reduce the time beyond what an unaided mage at the height of power could get.