[Mage: the Awakening] Legacy of the Stone Assembly

Annalist said:

Doesn't High Speech give a +2 bonus? (p. 117) Or is there errata I don't know about?

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Bah! Right you are!

Here's a diagram of the floor you're currently on, the ground floor. More diagrams to follow as your characters go to those floors. Let me know if anything's unclear--I know it's pretty rough.

Not to direct you guys too much, but those of you with Spirit 2 or greater can cast Spirit Tongue on those without ranks in Spirit, if you like. In most cases, you can upgrade a "self" spell to touch with 1 more dot in the Arcanum. You can also take a dice pool penalty to increase the range, number of targets, area affected, etc. Check out the attached flowchart for more concise information on that.

Incidentally, this is the reference I use for adjudicating spells. It's faster than flipping through the book.

Oh hey, forgot about that. Hee.

Also: Thorn has 3 dice in Wits, not 2. No big deal in this case...just for accuracy's sake.

..

Of course, I didn't take any rotes to do that, so my dice pool to do it would be really bad, and it'd cost mana.

I think I should have put Empathy instead of expression. So, if you are going to let us change our sheets around, I'll change it for next time. (Joseph is really unlucky so far though... I don't think he's had two successes yet.)

Its a good thing he doesn't want us in the cellar, as there is no way to get there from the map...

Shayuri said:

Also: Thorn has 3 dice in Wits, not 2. No big deal in this case...just for accuracy's sake.

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She's taking a -1 "unskilled" penalty, since she has no ranks in Empathy. One of the fiddlier rules in WoD, in my opinion, but it does tend to make skill ranks more valuable, which I think is a positive result.

magic_gathering2001 said:

I think I should have put Empathy instead of expression. So, if you are going to let us change our sheets around, I'll change it for next time. (Joseph is really unlucky so far though... I don't think he's had two successes yet.)

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I'm thinking that when the Cormant House scene is over, everyone will have a chance to move things around their sheets and finalize their character. Sound good?

Its a good thing he doesn't want us in the cellar, as there is no way to get there from the map...

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You can get in there, if you want to. The house was built in the late 19th century, so the cellar is accessed from outside the house.

Hella_Tellah said:

I'm thinking that when the Cormant House scene is over, everyone will have a chance to move things around their sheets and finalize their character. Sound good?

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Yeah, sounds good to me. I wasn't sure how it was going to work, so I just thought I'd ask now.

Hella_Tellah said:

You can get in there, if you want to. The house was built in the late 19th century, so the cellar is accessed from outside the house.

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<feels dumb> Wow, I completely forgot about that.

Hella_Tellah said:

It would be Gnosis (2) + Spirit (2) = 4. Since she's in safe territory to act mage-y, she can feel free to use High Speech and add a +1 onto it, for 5. Neither Spirit nor Death is ruling for you, so it will cost 1 point of mana.

It's my impression that mages can weave a related spell into a spell they're casting with 1 extra dot in the primary Arcanum, but I can't recall where, if at all, that's noted in the rules. I might be making that up.

*Blows on his conch shell to summon Solarious and his rules knowledge*

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I found the relevant section on pages 128-129 of the core book. A mage that wishes to combine spells together must have 1 additional dot in each of the Arcana used, takes a -2 to the casting pool per spell over 1, and rolls the lowest pool out of all of the spells being combined. Additionally, she must meet a minimum Gnosis requirement:
2 spells = 3 gnosis
3 spells = 6 gnosis
4 spells = 9 gnosis
Unfortunately, this means that: A) I've been doing it wrong in other games for a while now, and B) Thorn must cast both spells separately, which would cost her 2 mana altogether.

Hella_Tellah said:

Hella_Tellah said:

It would be Gnosis (2) + Spirit (2) = 4. Since she's in safe territory to act mage-y, she can feel free to use High Speech and add a +1 onto it, for 5. Neither Spirit nor Death is ruling for you, so it will cost 1 point of mana.

It's my impression that mages can weave a related spell into a spell they're casting with 1 extra dot in the primary Arcanum, but I can't recall where, if at all, that's noted in the rules. I might be making that up.

*Blows on his conch shell to summon Solarious and his rules knowledge*

Click to expand...

I found the relevant section on pages 128-129 of the core book. A mage that wishes to combine spells together must have 1 additional dot in each of the Arcana used, takes a -2 to the casting pool per spell over 1, and rolls the lowest pool out of all of the spells being combined. Additionally, she must meet a minimum Gnosis requirement:
2 spells = 3 gnosis
3 spells = 6 gnosis
4 spells = 9 gnosis
Unfortunately, this means that: A) I've been doing it wrong in other games for a while now, and B) Thorn must cast both spells separately, which would cost her 2 mana altogether.

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You blow the horn, I'll answer. And take my attention away from my research paper which I really should be doing, but hey, this is what breaks are for.

When combining spells, there are approximately two ways you could go around about it. The first is a combined spell - the kind you just found in the Core. A combined spell is basically two spells smooshed together in one casting, either to squeeze off more spells in a single casting, or for spell control/spell tolerance purposes. A combined spell, despite being two spells in reality, it is counted as one, so you can have both a mage armor and a mage sight in a single tolerance slot, and still have the little things like Fate spells to smooth your path along, or buff spells to obscenely twink out your dice pools, and so on and so forth. These things are very carefully considered by mages who place themselves regularly in dangerous situations, especially Guardians of the Veil and Adamatine Arrow orders. They have the Gnosis and Arcana limits you listed above. If neither spell is a rote nor come from a ruling arcana, it would probably cost 2 mana.

Now, there is a second kind of method to mangling spells together - Conjunctional spells. Where combined spells need no harmony of purpose between the spells being cast together, Conjunctional spells must have a combined purpose that supplements each other in some way. For example, consider the Forces 3 'Autonomous Servant' spell (Core 167). It's base spell is Forces 3, and you can cast it that way if you want to manipulate something too dangerous for yourself to go within sight. However, with Mind 1, you can incorporate 'Two Thoughts, One Mind' so you can do two tasks at once without compromising either. Adding Mind 5 instead allows you to forget the servant completely while it goes about it's task. Adding Space 2 lets you send it out of sensory range and/or monitor it as it works. Keep in mind none of these effects/spells have anything to do with each other, but they all work together to achieve something, which makes it conjunctional. None of these effects have a specific Gnosis requirement, nor additional Arcana requirements.

However, there are limits to conjunctional spells without adding more dots. Take Portal Key for example. It's a simple Space 4 Patterning practice, but I don't believe you can combine it with the actual Portal spell, a Space 3 Weaving practice, without Space 5 (although it isn't really a big deal: take 1 extra turn and lock the portal with an instant spell that works with a single success). At which point, you'll throw up an instant portal with extended duration factors and Key it all in the same breath. I'm sure some people will disagree with me.

So really, it's a case-by-case thing. There are storytellers who allow some people to whip up a conjunctional mage sight of all their arcana once (but that was the once in the middle of a big action scene where you had to escape from an Astral oubliette before you starved/dehydrated to death IFRL). My proposed spell, which is a Mind2/Space2 concentration duration version of Sense Consciousness and Spatial Map, would be conjunctional (by my interpretation of the rules).

It's something that has a lot of loopholes and maybes. Balancing spells is an art, not an exact science. But as my favorite writer of MtAwk once said: balance it mechanically out of the game, but balance it with role-playing considerations in game.

So for a conjunctional mind 1/prime 1, I could get both vision effects? Or would it be prime 2/mind 1, or mind 2/prime 1, or mind 2/prime 2?