User Profile

[Ambrosia]

Hrrrm.

This scenario #2 is a toughie for my character. if I understand it right, the security guards notice you before you are at the Private Box. Hrm.
She has no magick like Mind, that could help. Life'd be good at pumping your stats to run like hell or fight like crazy*, but the latter part is..really, really not good to keep attention away - And Life's not high enough to put all of those guards out at once harmlessy in an instant.

So the best course of action would be to use Correspondence2/Life 1 to 'tag' the guards, flee, mix with the audience/crowd ASAP and...

[Ambrosia]

Newp, no penalties. The difficulty is always based on the single highest sphere used, so it makes no idfference if you use one, two, or all nine level 2 spheres for something....

[Ambrosia]

True. it should have been under a heading of 'Using concentration/psionics as a tool'...

[Ambrosia]

Oh man, this never got replies? Aw
That said, I can't quite find soundtracks for those specific characters impromptu, but I have general songs for Mage.

Let's get this thread kicking! Mage Music!

And this one fits Iteration X so very, very, very perfectly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-J5tTw_hD8

I guess this would fit the CoX type of musician - or with loose appliance of the lyrics, the Traditions in general:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZosIWc_NyPQ

Threat Null....if they ever made it through:
https://www.yo...

[Ambrosia]

I'm in agreement. With HDYDT, you need to cheerry-pick things you like and other things you simply ignore.

That said, I've already stated in another threat that I see *one* good logical reason of allowing a flavor of 'psionic' pyromancers in the way that HDYDT describes - and that is that the chracter substitutes usage of complex tools with mere concentration, hence the Willpower roll.
They do not need to chant, gesture, dance, or perform anything aside of simply concentrate. The Willpower roll *is* their roll for using their tool, same as a dancer would roll athletics or the...

[Ambrosia]

That's a good (and needed) rule!

Alright, let's see...
She would get to the receiving smuggler first (High streetwise and already hanging in bad parts of town helps with this), observe him for a while, take him out (Nonlethally, preferrably but not necessarily. Life does wonders for making people fall asleep.), and impersonate him through shapeshifting - taking the money when the courier arrives.

Then walk away with it with the Technocracy none the wiser until it is too late.

EDIT:
To add, the beauty of this is that the Technocracy will at some...

[Ambrosia]

If we are making this completely freeform and paradigm-free....


...I use Correspondence, Forces and Matter to judge the weight of the cash, and then use Correspondence and Matter to place-swap the money for something of equal weight and roughly the same volume.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

EDIT:
I am trying to think of a second scenario, but quite frankly, without any general constraints presented for the thread (or at least constraints per scenario),

It's hard to think of something that isn't easily solved by simply going "I use Sphere...

[Ambrosia]

There's an important thing, Leonardo: An evil, murdering, abusive, a*holish Mage is not necessarily a Nephandus. Not even most Infernalists are necessarily Nephandi.

They are just evil Mages. A Nephandus is like an evil Mage, squared times ten. They are the worst of the worst.
So, there needs to be a reason for the character to actually fall for the Nephandi, after a lifetime of bad treatment and treason - I mean, she'd probably be extra suspicious of them, not less. Also, people can only voluntarily walk the cauls - no trickery, no force.

What I'm saying is basically...

[Ambrosia]

I would also argue in favor of Spirit 3 being usable to bring others across the gauntlet.
However, unlike with Spirit 4 and its ability to open up an actual portal though, you need to cast an effect and roll Arete for each individual to push/pull them across the Gauntlet, and you take Paradox each time.

[Ambrosia]

Yeah. Without the Revised/Split-Succeses rule it works - but that rule, as 'optional' as M20 initially states it to be, gets used in so many examples and howtos, it's kind of..schitzophrenic in that regard. An 'optional' rule that gets used in most of the example effect rolls.

I prefer to go for the 'total successes' default myself, and using *that*, the Ritual rules are okay. And if a mage is really in a pinch, they hopefully have lots of Quintessence to go for the +1-diff-per-roll extended per-turn casting instead....

[Ambrosia]

Personally I have a dislike for this rule, as IMO how long the rituals take should highly depend on the nature of the ritual, the process involved, and the Epicness of the resulting work - I would much rather make the time each roll takes more dependant on the levels of spheres involved, than successes needed.

If it's purely based on successes, the Optional Divided Successes Rule makes everything you want to do a day-long ordeal (Hello Revised!), and pushing your stats by a few more points takes just as astoundingly long as tearing a huge, permanent hole between worlds. Which, in...

[Ambrosia]

My main gripe with the 'Vampires get +3/+5 against mind attacks' rule in M20 is quite simple;
They don't get that +3/+5 against Changelings. Or mind-based shifter gifts. Or Dominate or other Vampire mind-influencing attacks. Or anything else.
Only against True Magick. Because 'Vampires are not your bitches'. Right. Nice reason.
Probably sounds logical on some planet out there.

[Ambrosia]

Area-Of-Effect rules have always been rather vague in mage. You won't find any hard rules like with most other effect properties.

The standard rules either say 'As many people as you have successes' or 'one extra target per extra success' if you use the split-successes rule.
And then we get into things like Forces 4/5 which can cause big area damage, wards that grow X feet per success in radius, etc. etc.

Quite frankly, go with what seems appropriate for the magic in question. For example, I'd argue that an effect that uses sound to affect the mind is *perfect*...

[Ambrosia]

M:tA Revised core - Page 280

And of course individual Tradition points of view:
Akashic Brotherhood Revised - Page 32
Celestial Chorus Revised - Page 19
Dreamspeakers Revised - Page 24
Euthanatos Revised - Page 30
Hollow Ones Revised - Page 84
Order of Hermes - Ah, yeeeeah. Let's not go there.
Virtual Edepts - Page 38

And the reasons vary between Vampires being seen as something against the natural order, Vampires being a danger to Mankind, Vampires and Mages being suspicious of each other, Vampires and Mages being dangerous to...

[Ambrosia]

V:TM Revised - Page 278
V:20th - Page 381...

[Ambrosia]

Pretty much! It always depends on the kind of reality zonne and culture you are in.
Heck, depending on just how prominent a subculture is, it can depend on the city block.

This thread's like an amalgam of 'Mythic Threads', 'Aspects of mythic Threads' (Or, if you want, Application of Mythic Threads) and 'Coincidence through Clichés/Tropes'. Have fun with it!...

[Ambrosia]

- Yelling the names of your attacks makes them more powerful and works as a focus. Simply combine with a stylish posture.

- The opposite of above 'if a car crashes, it will explode', the chance of cars and motorbikes being able to pull off insane stunts and remaining intact grows with the absurdity of the stunt.

- No matter how beaten and supposedly defeated somebody ends up, if they quip something along the lines of 'Oh? Is that all you can do?', they can rise up again and go on a devastating counterattack with their wounds turning out to be only superficial. They were...

[Ambrosia]

At times, damage to the pattern cannot be healed with magick.
For example, when you use the Heart's Blood rote to exchange health levels for Quintessence - essentially tearing at your pattern and turning it into said quintessence - it is explicitely stated that you cannot heal the damage with magick - only with time and mundane means.

So you can simply go along that road if you want; The lethal damage from pattern bleeding is the same kind of damage as with Heart's blood - parts of the pattern tearing - and can also only healed by time. Which means that mage is now permanently...

[Ambrosia]

Except where it suddenly can.

Like the aformentioned more potent version of Heart's Blood in the Verbena Revised book. Or like the Void Engineers being able to drop the Gauntlet to Zero, with their Dimensional Science sphere. Which is nothing but paradigm. While the Mystic paradigm's can't, with Spirit. At least in M20.
All the Technocracy-specific spheres simply boil down to their paradigms being different from the Mystic paradigms, and suddenly allowing for different mechanics, advantages and disadvantages, even down to how specific types of Wonders get created. Heck, it all...

[Ambrosia]

Official M20 rules from the Book Of Secrets are, that a Grimoire can help you raise an ability (or several), A sphere (or several), or Arete. Or a combination of those.

What it does is, indeed, cut down the costs.

Abilities: Half cost, though usually Grimoires focus on knowledges and esoteric specialties, rarely Talents or the like.
Sphere: Current Rating x7, minus the grimoire's level in XP Grimoire's level is the Sphere limit.
Affinity: Current Rating x6, minus the grimoire's level in XP. Grimoire's level is the Sphere limit.
Arete: As usual, but no...