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"You'd be much less scarier if you dragged chains around my house in the dead of the night or something"

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Aaaah!
Well, they're not that rare. They are used when you want to adjust difficulty with factors tangent to the task's actual difficulty, which is actually pretty much interchangeable with changing the Difficulty of the roll. Examples include wound penalties, flurries, poisons, externalities like sleep deprivation or migraines on a task that demands focus... Bonuses go on a similar route, particularly with merits and weapon traits like burst fire.


Given that, I see no problem tackling those effects mostly interchangeably with magick as well....

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Nothing too special about it, one of the more common types of magic that is used in action is mitigating penalties and granting bonuses.

An effect that mitigates the penalties of splitting actions (without allowing you to do more of them) is no different, and since it works within constraints of mundane behaviour it is usually easy to pass off as coincidental.


For example: in my current game 2 mages are accomplished martial artists. In combat they move efficiently and precisely, and can rather easily tackle multiple fighters at once. They work a forces/life...

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That's why I pulled faith as a possible resource. If all you have is the set of ideals it ushers, and those are well founded, you just got yourself a religion.

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Big question:
How are you going to play up the federation thing?

Are they an active character, that interact with the world, or are they an ominously absent entity, reaching the character just through his enlightenment? If the latter, I'd play that GFL as, basically, heaven.

A perfect order to usher a world of chaos to prosperity, and your mage is an agent of that ideal. A mage working off hypertech/mad science, plus faith would fit smoothly.

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She-Ra is an okay source to show relics of the First Age, particularly. The rest is too informed rather than shown to be very inspirational.
The story is a bit more mature (murderous coups, a royal inheritance and duty, sacred or honor-bound), but Seirei no Moribito is great to show how a solar fights (Balsa's a monster of a fighter). Katanagatari is just as good if he has the patience for the series' pace. Your kid will be seeing those before you realize

Meitantei Konan might serve to play with investigators and detectives.

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That's mostly by design XD



If you are more worried about cross-splat compatibility, I'd say you can be a bit more lenient with the paradox side of things (like only gaining it once for a persistent effect despite benefiting several times over), but it wasn't my experience that this is a big deal. I've been through a couple games as a mage amongst werewolves: one was a support character in combat, at best doing things like untying hostages during the chaos or getaway driving, the other was a very combative front liner. I could reliably get 1 extra action per round, rarely...

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Mages are not geared to do that so easily. Roll magick = get as many extra actions is the straightforward method. Gaming the rules of the world (like the extra actions setup I proposed) is roundabout but incredibly safe and extended.

Getting effects without actually casting them each time will always be roundabout, especially with vulgar effects.
Something like "burn Q get A" would, at best, be part of an ongoing effect of outlandish proportions, demanding a dozen successes just on the quality of the effect, and whenever you burn any amount of Q to get more actions...

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That said, I have a suggestion for you: the game already has a "natural" system of multiple actions.
Enhancing THAT is so much subtler you will probably be able to pull it off as coincidental most of the time, while actually adding actions would be devilishly vulgar.

Sphere-wise they're identical. At my table we usually work extra actions coincidentally with magick that cancels flurry penalties. WIth 5 successes plus duration you get to cancel 5 dice of penalties. More than enough to do 2 actions per turn with little to no hindrance.

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I don't think Life 3 is enough to create actual extra actions. I'd add Mind 1 to it. Your body is faster that much, and you can process it. This is the kind of effect that demands quintessence for its sheer power, though I wouldn't charge 1:1.

Forces is in a similar situation, but with 2 you're working only with what you already have. Might need 3 and draw from a source (quintessence's the top-of-mind candidate as usual).

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John Wick as a whole is cool for modern action. I was going to say grounded, but they're clearly evolving into a western brand of wuxia over each film. And it is glourious.

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Calling mages "mortal without their magic" doesn't mean much from this practical standpoint either. Other night folk have an advantage in this sense, but mostly it stems from having ready and easy access to advantages inherent to their form.

A mage can be set up such that, in a similar fashion, he simply won't be defenseless in an ambush. It might take active effort in having these powers up, but most mages prone to do so already integrate these into their lifestyles.
Most mages that can truly be caught unprepared are those that wouldn't prepare anyway. Probably a...

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On to houserules.
1) Craft's just 4 abilities: general purpose, artifacts, geomancy and first age. The couple charms made to facilitate having 450 crafts are gone.
2) Time spent "adventuring" serves as training time.
3) Charms that are obviously just essence-gated upgrades of previous charms are rolled into the text of such charms.
3.1) We don't charge xp for charm repurchases when those are gated by essence. You'll buy each ox body, but your fate-shifting solar arete will just up itself at E4.

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Can't open the books atm, but "Trivial Opponents" take withering damage straight into their health boxes. Trivial opponents are not "they're irrelevant" types, those the book just recommend you don't spend more than a roll into resolving. They are an important element in that combat, just not a big deal.

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You brought up a "narrative first perspective" as in direct accordance to not caring for optimization, painting the two things as a dichotomy, or somehow mutually exclusive.
Your reply to me contradicts your own words.

But if you do agree with me, that there's nothing stopping anyone from building both an interesting and a powerful character, and the people who do not do that are acting out of their own biases, there's no need to continue this particular discussion....

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Ah, the age old false dichotomy of optimization vs narrative attractiveness....

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Extreme kink covers this stuff. It's an easy 5 pointer, since it's criminal. There's overlap with dark secret, but I wouldn't give both, as that'd be rewarding the character sheet twice for the exact same thing.

Her father's association sounds more like a Dark Secret. It's the reveal that will be a problem.

I don't think the language merits are granular enough for this kind of differentiation. Just give her the language and play it as janky. If it's so bad you need it to be significantly troublesome you can give it a 1 point of Cultural Other. People have trouble communicating...

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It's my experience that it is easier to play than it appears. I barely had to filter more than chargen to get quick adventures running for absolute newbies....

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You are absolutely correct, no one is obligated to participate. And exercising that right already constitutes a way to tell the main group they are fucking up. It's effectiveness is debatable.

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It's less ridiculous than you think, because you are presuming that'd be a primary or definitive solution, and it doesn't have to be to exist.

You can't escape from that problem. Social categorizations are inevitable, and that fluke is a natural side effect.

One of the workarounds for that problem is exactly having the affected parties make themselves heard. It's literally the only way to raise the issue when other parties are already participating in the aggravating behavior....