Awakening Second Edition FAQ Thread

[Strill]

Why is Birth Spirit a Making practice and not a Compelling practice? The description says that it transforms dormant essence into a living spirit, but, as I understand, that's what would've happened anyway if you'd just left the essence alone. Spirits spontaneously generate from essence, if I understand correctly. I don't see why it would take a Making-level practice to accomplish what would've happened on its own, given sufficient time.

For Birth Spirit to be a Making practice, I'd expect it to create a spirit without needing any essence whatsoever.

-----------------------------------

Isn't Essence Fountain + Familiar an infinite mana engine? You give your familiar essence with Essence Fountain, then draw it into yourself, converting it to mana as per the description of the Familiar Condition (p.260). If a master of Spirit can generate unlimited mana, doesn't that have setting implications? Like, why should mana ever be in short supply if the Concilium can just get together to create reams of it it out of nothing? I was happy that you put restrictions on Create Truth so you can't just spam Hallows everywhere without consequences, but Essence Fountain seems to accomplish the same thing more simply.

[Kirby Jerusalem]

Does the spell Exorcist's Eye give you any special ability to understand First Tongue and be understood by spirits?

[Dave Brookshaw]

Does the spell Exorcist's Eye give you any special ability to understand First Tongue and be understood by spirits?

It literally says that it does.

[Kirby Jerusalem]

It literally says that it does.

Alright, alright. My initial reading was that the spell could have just been for getting around things like Twilight or slumber or whatever and that it didn't necessary extend to language. Kind of like how the 2-dot Spirit Attainment works...which now that I read it, could also provide the same. So yeah, drastically misunderstood the point. Thanks for the clarification!

[JPS]

Suppose I want to explore someone's Fate. Would it be a series of Fate Knowing/Unveiling spells or would it be a Mystery ?

[Tambov]

Can a celebrity, after Awakening, use their stage persona as a Shadow Name?

[Earth Seraph Edna]

Mage: The Awakening 2e, page 117: "Sometimes characters desire to cast spells or create effects that should be easy and require little risk or effort from the mage. Often these spells are effects that the mage creates on a regular basis, and the risk of failure is small and has little to no impact on the drama of the story. Determining spell factor penalties and Yantra bonuses for these kinds of spells is cumbersome. In these cases, just have players roll Gnosis + Arcanum. Success on the roll equals a successful casting. If the player wanted to affect multiple subjects, or create a large effect with the spellcasting, then the number of success may determine the number of subjects or the size of an area affected by the spell effect. For example, if a mage wanted to revive all the dead roses in a garden, she could roll Gnosis + Life and each success would equal a 5 meter radius of revived roses."

Mage: The Awakening 2e, page 214: "Successive Attempts: When you fail a roll, you may be able to try again. If time is not an issue and your character is under no pressure to perform, you may make successive attempts with your full dice pool. In the far more likely situation that time is short and the situation is tense, each subsequent attempt has a cumulative –1 die penalty — so the third time a character tries to break down the door that’s keeping her inside a burning building, her roll has a –2 die penalty. Successive attempts do not apply to extended actions."

According to DaveB in these off-site posts, whenever mages are under neither time constraints nor pressure, they must use the "down and dirty spellcasting rules" (preventing them from using all Yantra bonuses, also preventing them from modifying spell factors). Additionally, even if they are under neither time constraints not pressure, they take the cumulative penalties for attempts as if they were under time constrains or pressure anyway.

Is this true? If so, is it meant to be an errata to the way spellcasting works in general?

[Earth Seraph Edna]

Please forgive me if I have already posted something that has already been covered in this thread..

1. Page 112 claims that Praxes and Rotes cost 1 XP each, regardless of dot level. The table on page 83 gives the absurd price of 1 XP per dot level. Which is correct?

2. If page 112 is correct (Rotes cost 1 XP regardless of dot level), then do mages receive six Rotes to start with, or six DOTS of rotes?

3. How does Fate 4's Chaos Mastery actually work? Do you cast it on yourself and then shoot out "useful patterns" against any subject within sensory range. How much lethal damage does each instance of "The mage deals lethal damage as a direct-attack spell. This effect is not Withstood" deal? Can the damage option be focus-fired on a single target?

4. If Fate 2 alone can directly create Conditions such as Insane, Informed, Inspired, or Steadfast at the drop of a hat, Fate 4 can explicitly "manipulate brain chemistry" or "manipulate a subject's body," and Fate 5 can grant Supernatural Merits such as Biokinesis or Psychokinesis, then would it take a Fate 3 Weaving spell to directly increase Mental/Social Attributes or a Fate 4 Patterning spell? What of directly increasing Physical Attributes? For reference, page 126 states, "Increasing a Skill or Merit is typically a Ruling (••) spell. Attributes can be increased by a Perfecting (•••) spell."

5. Can the minutes of Active Mage Sight usage be split up, possibly into turns at a time, or do they have to be contiguous?

6. How do free Reaches for combined spells from page 118 work? Suppose I have Fate 3, and I wish to combine Fate 1's Serendipity and Fate 2's Shifting the Odds. Do I have 3 free Reaches for Serendipity and 2 free Reaches for Shifting the Odds (and I must pay for instant action casting and sensory range for both, leaving me with one free Reach for Serendipity), or do I have only 2 free Reaches altogether (which pay for instant action casting and sensory range in unison, thus leaving with me nothing for Serendipity)?

[Dave Brookshaw]

If the situation is important enough to not use Down and Dirty spellcasting, then you should keep the penalty for failing and retrying. This came up when you were positing spells gaming the system to have the maximum possible spell factors and yantra bonuses summing to 1 die, under the reasoning that they would succeed 8/10ths of the time.

That suggests "pressure to perform" to me. I would say that any spell that uses the full spellcasting rules would count as pressure to perform, and will errata the book accordingly.

And with that.

FAQ gathering is now closed until the book is errata'd, as this has turned into precisely what I didn't want it to be - a forum for people to complain about rules, argue with one another, and extend the (closed) errata thread in function.

[Dave Brookshaw]

Please forgive me if I have already posted something that has already been covered in this thread..

Every single one has been asked multiple times.

[Earth Seraph Edna]

If the situation is important enough to not use Down and Dirty spellcasting, then you should keep the penalty for failing and retrying. This came up when you were positing spells gaming the system to have the maximum possible spell factors and yantra bonuses summing to 1 die, under the reasoning that they would succeed 8/10ths of the time.

That suggests "pressure to perform" to me. I would say that any spell that uses the full spellcasting rules would count as pressure to perform, and will errata the book accordingly.

And with that.

FAQ gathering is now closed until the book is errata'd, as this has turned into precisely what I didn't want it to be - a forum for people to complain about rules, argue with one another, and extend the (closed) errata thread in function.

If the "down and dirty spellcasting" rules are deactivated, then a mage with Gnosis 3 + Fate 3 + Mantra 2 + Mudra 6 + Dedicated Tool 1 - spell factors 10 = 5 dice still has a non-negligible chance of succeeding sooner or later anyway.

5 dice: 83.19% chance of success
4 dice: 75.99% chance of success
3 dice: 65.7% chance of success
2 dice: 51% chance of success
1 die: 30% chance of success

The chances of failing all five of those are ~0.21%, almost comically low.