Addicted to Mystery: What do you want to see in the Fallen World Chronicles?

[Satchel]

I forgot if this was mentioned how are the familiar rules changed?Also are all the types in the game from the start.

Familiars can now be either Rank 1 or Rank 2, for starters, and if I recall correctly there's at least rules for spirit, ghost, and goetic familiars.

[thenate]

Please don't get overly formulaic as an approach to balance the arcana. That way lies madness... (well, lameness, anyhow.)

It stands to reason that any physical damage from manipulating a mind (or, for that matter, destiny, soul or spirit) should be a bit harder to accomplish than with something more related to a life or physical form because it's not a direct mystical assault.

Spirit guy wiggles fingers and shreds the guy's spirit. Mind shreds his mind. Fate damages his destiny. Okay, those all seem reasonable. Why should each of these have the option to deal physical damage?

Fate's the easiest to figure out: cursed to take harm. Alright. Making that happen right-the-heck now seems like it should require a lot of reach. (Making it cause aggravated, though?) Slap that on to one of the curse effects, and it works.

It makes sense for a spirit wiz to go all "Spirits, attack this guy." That's not, however, direct. Less so even than Fate. I can see an effect to flag a target as irritating to spirits and tangible to those in Twilight (or even Shadow); Reach could upgrade that into a general summons and command to come beat on the guy. Still doesn't give a good explanation for aggravated damage, and Wards would block the effect. (which is perfectly fine, as it happens) It also has the problem that it's getting really conceptually complex, to the point that it's 2-3 different combined spells in the current system. Especially if you let it Rouse Spirit on everything around them. Can't think of a better excuse for a direct and instant spirit harm effect, though, unless you roll back the whole humans are not really spiritual beings.

Mind could command a target to harm self. Mind should obviously be able to wound sanity and will. Rather than give it direct aggravated damage, when even lethal is a bit of a stretch, why not make its direct pattern attack deal willpower and buff up into a thing that deals permanent willpower damage, applies a breaking point, assigns a real derangement* and/or knocks the target into a coma. Nobody wants that, it certainly fits Mind, and it keeps the harm limited to mostly metaphysical things.
(*As in, the target now requires therapy to recover, not merely a Condition that fakes it for the duration. Yes, I've forgotten the name these are now supposed to use in 2nd Ed.)


I'd also prefer it if Death finds it easier to impose harm on things, whether by allowing reach to add physical damage to multiple other types of harmful effects and possibly by making a few extra optional reach benefits like Resistant Wounds or the ability to cross the threshold and target Twilight.

I'd even consider making one of Death's perks/attainments that you can add physical (or ephemeral) harm to any kind of direct destructive effect. That way, learning about Death helps you destroy, and even something non-physical like Mind can slay swiftly. (I favor such things for each arcana, of course. A mental attack that happens to also ruin a guy's luck, or a lightning blast that renders a subject cursed by the spirits could be interesting stuff, too. Imposing an immediate fate to die could be a Death attack adds bad luck or a bad luck effect that calls on Death itself.)

This would mostly just formalize certain conjunctional effect choices, but would also reward appropriate combinations. You want to kill better, learn Death. Even if your primary arcana is something else, a student of Death would become more deadly than without.

Apologies if I mentioned this previously. I don't think so, but it's possible, as I've been kicking this notion around for years. This is just tarted up for the new edition.

[Axelgear]

Personally, I'd like it if Fate got a spell that did allow you to hurt people with coincidences. Call it The Bumbler's Inadvisable Chase. If cast on a character chasing the Acanthus, they take one point of Bashing damage the first round, two the next, four the turn after that, and, if they still haven't gotten the message, a subsequent means arrives to deal seven lethal damage.

Garry "Faolan" Maple is an Acanthus, fleeing from a Seer thug. The guy's mortal, but Garry's newly Awakened and, importantly, unarmed. He threatens the guy, saying "Look, if you follow me, you'll be sorry!", squints, and places the hex. The guy follows anyway and, as they duck down an alley, he trips and crashes into a pile of construction gear. Unwilling to give up, he moves to follow and a cleaner's bucket of water falls on his head. Pulling himself to his feet, the thug carries on until he reaches the end of the alleyway and sees Garry across the street, before promptly being hit in the side of the skull by a glass bottle full of urine thrown from the side of a speeding truck.

The thug unwisely decides to tempt Fate, forces himself to his feet, and staggers towards Garry, where he is promptly hit by an eighteen-wheeler and threatens the Acanthus no more.

Okay, maybe not a spell that's useful in all situations but... Fun!

[Mrmdubois]

I do not like the idea of a spell where damage scales up over time.

I do however agree that Fate can do damage via coincidences.

[Menace]

Damage is an abstract term, it can represent a lot of things. Atacking someone with Mind is greatly different than using forces.

For Mind it's easy - you atack the enemy with so many horrific visions/memories, assaut their senses etc.

Other arcana can also be justified. And there's the bit that all existance is made from all of the arcana and you just affect that part of it. If you pull out one element, the thing breaks.

[Kat]

How significant changes I should expect in fluff in comparison to 1ed Awakening? I'm unsure if I should wait for 2nd edition or already try to adapt nMage to my personalized WoD

[Freemind]

For Mind it's easy - you atack the enemy with so many horrific visions/memories, assaut their senses etc.

Even easier: make him think a room has burst into flame and that there is only one exit: the fire escape outside his third story window. Except that fire escape actually doesn't exist either, and he just jumped several stories to serious harm. Or make someone see a "monster" approaching and have them run away into an "empty" street... right in front of a semi. Or have a cop see a gun and think that your target is drawing it on him.

Thank you Dresden Files for showing my players ways to kill with Mind without direct damage, and to make others take the blame.

[Mrmdubois]

Even easier: make him think a room has burst into flame and that there is only one exit: the fire escape outside his third story window. Except that fire escape actually doesn't exist either, and he just jumped several stories to serious harm. Or make someone see a "monster" approaching and have them run away into an "empty" street... right in front of a semi. Or have a cop see a gun and think that your target is drawing it on him.

Thank you Dresden Files for showing my players ways to kill with Mind without direct damage, and to make others take the blame.

Yeah...those situations really made Psychic Assault look kind of lame by comparison. I never liked that spell anyways though.

[Dataweaver]

Yeah; but those wouldn’t be direct damage spells; they’d be spells that place Conditions on the target, and/or manipulate him into taking action that’s harmful to him. The spell didn’t injure him; the fall from the window or the collision with the semi did.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that Mind can’t be used to set up situations that cause physical injury; only that it’s not particularly suited to directly inflicting physical damage. That said, Menace is right about damage being an abstract thing: a psychic assault that inflicts damage by pummeling someone’s mind with mental energies is reasonable (though arguably boring, considering the alternatives). Conversely, I wouldn’t expect that same psychic assault to do anything if used to, say, break down a door: if the target doesn’t have a mind, there’s no way to use Mind on it; the best you can do is to manipulate something that does have a Mind to affect it.

[thenate]

Yeah; but those wouldn’t be direct damage spells; they’d be spells that place Conditions on the target, and/or manipulate him into taking action that’s harmful to him. The spell didn’t injure him; the fall from the window or the collision with the semi did.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that Mind can’t be used to set up situations that cause physical injury; only that it’s not particularly suited to directly inflicting physical damage.

Just so. I used the word "direct" for this very reason. I edited out a more wordy description of the indirect ways to harm a person through Mind, since that seemed superfluous. Clearly 'twasn't.

Making a guy jump out a window is indirect damage. Making him get hit by a bus? Still indirect. Even causing a body to convulse and tear itself apart via Mind is indirect damage, since the damage is caused by the target's body under the control of the attacked mind. "Spirits, get'im" is yet another indirect damage approach. (which, rereading, I edited poorly and described as "direct".) Creating a numenal attack could be argued as a direct damage effect using Spirit, or not, if the caster is using Spirit to create an effect which then deals damage.

That said, Menace is right about damage being an abstract thing: a psychic assault that inflicts damage by pummeling someone’s mind with mental energies is reasonable (though arguably boring, considering the alternatives). Conversely, I wouldn’t expect that same psychic assault to do anything if used to, say, break down a door: if the target doesn’t have a mind, there’s no way to use Mind on it; the best you can do is to manipulate something that does have a Mind to affect it.

The mind of a person is not on the health track.
Of course 'health levels' is an abstraction, but it is not so abstract as to represent the state of a character's mind as well as body. (Why shouldn't Mental Projection cause Wounds?) The body affects the mind in the cases of wound penalties and poisons, but the abstraction goes only so far. Integrity, sanity, and Willpower are clear mechanical ties to the concept of mental health in the system. Arguably, these are more severe things to have injured.
None of that means that Mind can't deal direct damage to a body, I just think that using Mind to harm the things that are actually within its purview should be dramatically easier than the things that aren't.


Fate should require more of a caster who wants to define the details of their effects. That means it should allow it, too. Fate works when given vague parameters. Specifications like "physical damage" or "right now" are the sorts of things that should require extra Reach. Even fixing the amount of physical damage could be as well.

(An interesting effect: Fate deals damage contingently, but builds that up over time: Basically, the effect creates wounds, but they are not applied to the target until a condition is met, and then only to the desired level. If you want to cripple but not kill, the effect wouldn't overshoot. That could be one of Fate's big advantages.The damage could be set to take effect at an appropriate time, left in Fate's hands, or called on immediately. This is food for thought. It would need to be hammered on to make it workable without a lot of book keeping.)
(Limiting the damage to either single or full health levels would limit the amounts of housekeeping...)


Higher reach requirements make a thing trickier to do, but certainly do not remove the option.

If the base damage effect of these indirect/ephemeral arcana are appropriate to their themes and require Reach to add any physical damage, you get a logically-consistent Reach "penalty" for indirect damage and underscore the different strengths of each arcanum.

e.g. Let's say Death has a direct physical damage effect with simple Reach option to make it damage to/from Twilight along with the standard Reach options to make it do more severe damage. Spirit could have a direct damage effect that can only harm ephemera on the same side of the Gauntlet, with a Reach option to push it across the Gauntlet and another to make it affect physical forms. Whatever type of target it affects, it would have the normal damage severity Reach options.
Result: Fits the arcana, and you still don't muck with masters of anything.

[Seidmadr]

It makes sense for a spirit wiz to go all "Spirits, attack this guy." That's not, however, direct. Less so even than Fate. I can see an effect to flag a target as irritating to spirits and tangible to those in Twilight (or even Shadow); Reach could upgrade that into a general summons and command to come beat on the guy. Still doesn't give a good explanation for aggravated damage, and Wards would block the effect. (which is perfectly fine, as it happens) It also has the problem that it's getting really conceptually complex, to the point that it's 2-3 different combined spells in the current system. Especially if you let it Rouse Spirit on everything around them. Can't think of a better excuse for a direct and instant spirit harm effect, though, unless you roll back the whole humans are not really spiritual beings.

I always thought of a possible attack against mortals with spirit was to just throw a bolt of really nastily charged Ephemera. Approximately the way spirits do Blast.
Simple and boring, yes, but sometimes you just need a hammer.


And regarding Fate? We have a great example of attacking someone with Fate... In Demon. Death by Improbability (or is it implausibility?), is a great way to look at it.


Also, I wonder... Say, if someone uses Forces 4 to attack someone, does the spell do 4 damage of the chosen type, no matter the successes, or does the Forces dots act as a weapon modifier? Or how will this work?

[Thorbes]

4 damage no matter the successes. Of course if you have a decent dice pool, why not up it a little bit adding Potency Factors?

[GhanjRho]

4 damage no matter the successes. Of course if you have a decent dice pool, why not up it a little bit adding Potency Factors?

Assuming that the spell factor tables hold from 1E:
Lets assume Omar Obrimos is Gnosis 3, Forces 4, and has a 3 die Yantra for this spell. That's a total dice pool of 10, which lets us take 5 increments of penalties. All applied to potency, that's an end damage of 9L. Off a chance die, but still. Even assuming we only take it down to 6 dice (a good, reasonably safe number), that's still a 6L attack that ignores armor and defense, is perfectly concealable, and costs the mage nothing.

[Freemind]

Assuming that the spell factor tables hold from 1E:
Lets assume Omar Obrimos is Gnosis 3, Forces 4, and has a 3 die Yantra for this spell. That's a total dice pool of 10, which lets us take 5 increments of penalties. All applied to potency, that's an end damage of 9L. Off a chance die, but still. Even assuming we only take it down to 6 dice (a good, reasonably safe number), that's still a 6L attack that ignores armor and defense, is perfectly concealable, and costs the mage nothing.

You still need to hit the target, and you may risk paradox, which is more significant in the 2e. Plus, we don't know whether armor can be ignored, thrown spells can be dodged, and if sensory spells can be resisted in 2e. But currently the evidence seems to point to all of those being active means to resist damage.

[PenDragon]

How significant changes I should expect in fluff in comparison to 1ed Awakening? I'm unsure if I should wait for 2nd edition or already try to adapt nMage to my personalized WoD

Fluff wise the book looks largely to be a condensation of the many ideas spread across the nMage books, especially the more recent ones. The supernal is no longer presented as a far off realm, it's an symbolic overlay omnipresent in reality. Which, to 99% of Mages, makes no real difference. The Free Councils are reframed as a separate entity from the Diamond Orders, composed of all the disparate traditions of the fallen world (I'm kinda getting an Ascension tradition alliance vibe). Paradox is a much more insidious force, retooled to fuck the whole world instead of just the Mage. Those are, from what I can tell, the most major changes spoiled so far.