Removing the Gnosis Requirement for Legacy Attainments

[proindrakenzol]

I've been thinking about waiving the Gnosis requirements for obtaining Legacy Attainments (but not the Gnosis 2 requirement for joining, the Gnosis requirement for creating your own is irrelevant for my group).

The reason is that I'd like the players to be able to use the higher level Legacy Attainments in play, the Attainments are flavorful to the characters, fun, and I spent a lot of time designing the Legacies. It also makes it easier to have mentors without having a lot of high Gnosis Mages.

The potential cons I've identified are that it makes Mages more powerful more quickly by giving them access to more powerful roll/paradox/quiescence/hubris free abilities. However, they would have access to these abilities as spells (for the most part, some are unique attainments) and the abilities are inherently limited, plus they'd still have to meet the skill and Arcanum requirements.

Are there any potential downsides I'm missing? Am I about to engage in bad-wrong fun?

[KaiserAfini]

Sounds good to me, but it does mean an increase of abilities that cannot be neutralized normally. It also means additional weight to them, since Attainments are free of spell control. So an abundance of high tier Bokors, for example, means more zombie helpers and more considerations given to the value they deliver to Consilia. Which can be pretty interesting.

But to compensate for the faster unlock speed, I would likely add some trials. Summoning guides, finding Legacy related Verges, Artifacts, grimmoires, visiting their Astral realms, etc.

[Mrmdubois]

Doooooo it.

[Heavy Arms]

I guess my big thought is how Legacy heavy do you want things to be. If Legacies are something that lots of mages in your setting might never pick, this isn't a great idea. If pretty much everybody has a Legacy and those that don't join are seen as the outliers, this makes more sense to explain that being the case.

So if the goal is to make Legacies more present, yeah, go for it.

It's not like there's some decent compromise to suggest. You'd still need to be at least Gnosis 5 to get all the Attainments, and that's if you max your Legacy Ruling Arcana first.

[Prometheus]

I don't think we are even in a homebrew territory, as the Strange Attainments sidebar states that the only set requirement to learn Attainments is the usual knowledge of the Legacy's Ruling Arcanum. So go wild. As Heavy Arms already said, you will have to be at least Gnosis 5 to gain the fifth Attainment anyway (or Gnosis 6, if you would also want to utilize an Optional Arcanum).

[proindrakenzol]

Thank you everyone for the responses.

Sounds good to me, but it does mean an increase of abilities that cannot be neutralized normally. It also means additional weight to them, since Attainments are free of spell control. So an abundance of high tier Bokors, for example, means more zombie helpers and more considerations given to the value they deliver to Consilia. Which can be pretty interesting.

But to compensate for the faster unlock speed, I would likely add some trials. Summoning guides, finding Legacy related Verges, Artifacts, grimmoires, visiting their Astral realms, etc.

I really like the trials idea, and like the idea of the Legacy being a more prominent portion of every Mage's power set.

I guess my big thought is how Legacy heavy do you want things to be. If Legacies are something that lots of mages in your setting might never pick, this isn't a great idea. If pretty much everybody has a Legacy and those that don't join are seen as the outliers, this makes more sense to explain that being the case.

So if the goal is to make Legacies more present, yeah, go for it.

It's not like there's some decent compromise to suggest. You'd still need to be at least Gnosis 5 to get all the Attainments, and that's if you max your Legacy Ruling Arcana first.

There is only one Mage in the entire Consillium currently without a Legacy, and it's a Player Character whose player has only played three sessions so far, so yes, Legacies are pretty prominent.

[KaiserAfini]

Another thing that comes to mind is that phenomena like Ansho, which end your normal spells, could probably not affect them. Attainments issue from the mage's soul rather than the Supernal, after all.

So in that specific scenario, an Awakening Gambit could shield certain contingencies with hung spell until needed, a Wave Man would be invaluable if someone ran into combat within one and a Wraith of Epochs would be the only one who could figure out what sort of deal that reclusive master bartered with werewolves within the Ansho. So if the nature of that Mystery create a necessity for Legacy experts, then that means a certain level of prestige comes with which one you join. With higher mastery members being more common, these types of settings could lend themselves to all sorts of interesting political dynamics.

[BlueWinds]

What I've usually done, and convinced STs to try in games I play, is to append this to the Gnosis requirement for learning each attainment: "or complete an Obsession related to the Legacy / Attainment in question."

Ties legacy advancement to story, rather than XP, and makes the growth feel very organic - you tend to learn new attainments with story beats rather than time / general experience. But yes, by all means, remove the Gnosis requirements. They're silly high at the higher end of things.

[Heavy Arms]

Given the flat XP costs these days... the "silly high," seems a bit much. It's, at best, a 15 XP reduction in requirements (not that the 15 XP wouldn't be getting you lots of goodness too). It's not the insanity of 1e when XP was still scaling and getting high Gnosis in play was only for people playing the same character for extremely long games.