[Mage: the Awakening] Legacy of the Stone Assembly

Usually, I find the solution to that problem is to be either a Moros and pick up a Forces Legacy, or to be an Obrimos and pick up a Matter Legacy, and then use rotes to tide you over until you reach Gnosis 3. I do see how paths can be a character concept hindrance, but having these guidelines helps focus some character concepts as well.

I've seen some of the problems of paths too, usually when people want the Matter arcanum as a ruling, but don't like the zombies at dawn part of Death. One worked towards Mind, became a Uncrowned King, and eventually got over his hangups with Death (although zombies never entered the equation). The other picked up Mind for Aura Perception/Two Thoughts One Mind, and eventually joined a rocking GM-made Legacy for Moros with Time that uses a form of object postcognition as the first attainment, and has death optional attainment to sculpt ectoplasm and interact with Twilight. The second attainment can rewind or fast forward objects through time (grape juice to wine, nails to rust, and broken windows to... repaired windows), and the death attainment lets you draw objects out of Twilight back into reality. There is yet to be a third attainment, but be assured it'll probably be a fairly broken vulgar Time/Matter effect; various noises has made to the effect of speed excavation with a Time lock and a Matter Disintegration of everything else. I dare not imagine what shenanigans Death will add to the mix.

Speaking of Legacies, I know you've replaced Path requirements with Arcana requirements, but how are gaining new ruling Arcana? I've never been a fan of having some nice well-imagined legacy give one character a new ruling arcana, while it might offer someone else less punch because the primary arcana already is a ruling arcana for that character.

Last question: are order Legacies still in? Because everyone loves the Eleventh Question.

Solarious said:

Speaking of Legacies, I know you've replaced Path requirements with Arcana requirements, but how are gaining new ruling Arcana? I've never been a fan of having some nice well-imagined legacy give one character a new ruling arcana, while it might offer someone else less punch because the primary arcana already is a ruling arcana for that character.

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A mage with a legacy still treats the legacy's primary arcanum as ruling. This means that most mages can manage to get three ruling arcana without too much trouble, so I suppose it makes the average character advance a bit faster, especially at higher levels of the arcana.

Solarious said:

Last question: are order Legacies still in? Because everyone loves the Eleventh Question.

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What kind of a monster would I be if I didn't allow the Eleventh Question? Order legacies are definitely still in.

Gah.

I guess I should read about legacies. I didn't understand a word of the past three posts, and I feel like I'm missing out on something important.

Shayuri said:

Gah.

I guess I should read about legacies. I didn't understand a word of the past three posts, and I feel like I'm missing out on something important.

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Legacies are pretty cool, but completely optional. Also called "soul-shaping," legacies are a process by which a mage shares a tiny portion of his soul (experience) with his mentor in exchange for a small increase in power. The student gains magical abilities, called attainments, which have no chance for paradox and usually don't even require a roll. In many cases, the mage also gains an additional ruling arcanum.

You can start the game with a legacy, or you can seek out someone in game to instruct you in a legacy. If you've played D&D 3rd edition, I'd compare them to Prestige classes: you can tweak and improve a character with them, but you can also make yourself crazy spending hours on end (and a bunch of money on books) hunting down the perfect one.

Ahh ok


Well, definitely not something I want to deal with at starting.

My character is definitely shaping up to be a newbie mage...and young too. Recent high school grad, probably a junior member of the cabal...

If that's okay, of course.

A newly created Mage would have to spend six of his seven merit points just to raise his Gnosis to three, which is one of the minimum requirements to join an existing Legacy. So it's not likely that any of us will be starting out in one right away, so I wouldn't worry too much about them unless you're trying to plan ahead for a specific Legacy.

Solarious said:

Speaking of Legacies, I know you've replaced Path requirements with Arcana requirements, but how are gaining new ruling Arcana? I've never been a fan of having some nice well-imagined legacy give one character a new ruling arcana, while it might offer someone else less punch because the primary arcana already is a ruling arcana for that character.

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Here's a neat little house rule that I've run across that addresses this problem:

We invented the concept of the "Key Arcanum". A Key Arcanum is what happens when a mage gains a double affinity to one of his Arcana, such as a Moros joining the Bokor (Death) or a Mastigos being taught Subtle One magic (Mind).

What are the benefits of having a key arcanum? One extra die for each improvised casting, two extra dice for rotes, and one less die of paradox for each spell using the key arcanum.

That way, joining a legacy gives you access to a third Ruling Arcanum or it transforms one of your Ruling into a Key Arcanum.

Annalist said:

We invented the concept of the "Key Arcanum". A Key Arcanum is what happens when a mage gains a double affinity to one of his Arcana, such as a Moros joining the Bokor (Death) or a Mastigos being taught Subtle One magic (Mind).

What are the benefits of having a key arcanum? One extra die for each improvised casting, two extra dice for rotes, and one less die of paradox for each spell using the key arcanum.

That way, joining a legacy gives you access to a third Ruling Arcanum or it transforms one of your Ruling into a Key Arcanum.

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That house rule addresses the imbalance from choosing a legacy that doesn't grant you a new ruling arcanum, but I think it favors specialist mages over mages who want to spread out and dip their toes in a number of arcana. My own preference is for the Cabal to spread out and have a wide toolbox, rather than specializing deeply, so I'm going to pass on that for now.

It's a good rule, though, and later experience might make me rethink it.

I ordered a copy of Mage: The Awakening that shipped from amazon today. They're very good about getting it to me within 3 or 4 business days even on their cheapest super saver shipping speed. So I hope to have it early next week.

In the mean time, I couldn't think of any other way to nail down Sandra in game terms other than to make her as if she was going to be an Ascension character and hope that I could get some guidance for translating her into an Awakening character.

Next on my to do list is to develop her training and mentor.

[sblock=Character Sheet]
Nature - Visionary
Essence - Primordeal
Demeanor - Rebel
Tradition - Dreamspeakers
Concept - The weird girl at the new age section of the bookstore that actually got magic to work.

Attributes
Strength 2
Dexterity 2
Stamina 2
Charisma 3
Manipulation 2
Appearance 3
Perception 3
Intelligence 3
Wits 4

Abilities
Alertness 2
Athletics 2
Awareness 2
Expression 1
Streetwise 2
Drive 1
Etiquette 2
Meditation 2
Academics 1
Cosmology 3
Enigmas 2
Investigation 2
Occult 3
Accounting 2 (I don't think this fit under any of the default selections, so I just added it under knowledges if that's cool)

Spheres
Life 3
Spirit 3

Backgrounds
Avatar 3
Dream 3
Library 2
Resources 1
Mentor 2

Arete 3
Willpower 5

Resonance
Dynamic 1 - Energetic

3 freebie points unspent (converted into experience points?)

Sandra's Paradigm
Sandra works magic by practicing the techniques she read about in various new age books and others that her mentor taught. Her methods are a mix of various techniques suggested from a range of different new age sources.

Spirit magic usually involves meditation or sleeping and utilizing techniques to induce astral projection to contact or travel to the Umbra. Unlike Mind, which projects a mage's conscious to dream realms or the dreams of people asleep, Sandra uses astral projection and meditation to physically leave the mundane world and pierce the gauntlet.

Sandra draws heavily on Wicca practices for her Life magic and Spirit magic that doesn't involve travel to the Umbra. She uses atheme, candles, sacred circles, a book of shadows, and other tools and rituals often associated with the religion. However, she is not a true practitioner of Wicca and to those that are, she would probably look like a poser or an amature.

Besides keeping herself and others in good health, she often uses Life magic to alter her features. She has found the ability to be extremely useful in various situations. (this would be the aspect of magic she is most likely to abuse and develop hubris)

Final Note/Question
I'm hoping that Spirt 3, Life 3 would allow Sandra the ability to "ghost" through solid objects like doors or walls. It makes sense to me that this effect would be a combination of spirit and life, though I could see an argument made for correspondence or matter. Would she be allowed to do this?[/sblock]

Okay, you need to look at that big blue shiny book again. See the cover? Turn that so you see the back with the blurb. Eye scarring, isn't that shiny? Now, open the book. See the golden pictures with the broken throne (that's the Throne of the Dethroned Queen, but I degress) and the snazzy occult themes? Turn the page. You'll see a Carmilla ad. Ignore that and turn one more page into the book.

You'll see that it's the back page of a Mage the Awakening character sheet. It tells you stats and distributed by points and derived statistics at the bottom in fine print (it's on the front of it)! Useful doesn't even begin to describe it.

I'll let you research/decipher/wait for someone who owns nWoD Core to tell you more about skills and stats. I'll try to instruct you on the wavy fingers part of mage: the arcana and the practices.

Speaking of the arcana, let's talk Spirit magic. Umbra is now the Shadow Realm, and it's an evil, evil, evil place. Think basically the metaphorical truths of the world, all of them, and then make them manifest. You'll have spirits of living creatures plant and animal, you'll have spirits of elements and nature (from straight water and fire spirits to vacuum and crushing underwater pressure), spirits of objects we create (so knives, cars, bikes, hammers, etc), spirits of conceptual thoughts and emotions (which include hope, love, pain, terror, murder, etc), and they all exemplify whatever they represent. They all fight for the Essence they desire, sometimes preying on others like them, and resources are limited. It's a Darwinian horror show out there. They don't have real emotions, ethics, or morality, so they will try to manipulate things in the material world to best reflect what they want, and thus generate of the kind of essence they want. And if they're ambitious (or desperate enough), they'll slip through, anchor themselves on this side of the Gauntlet, and possess someone as a meat-puppet for the purposes of staying and manipulating the world even further.

And you can't really get rid of them easily: as long as they have essence, they'll piece themselves back together in the Shadow Realm sooner or later. And they remember things. And they hold grudges. And they gossip amongst each other. The only real way to control them is to let them know you're bigger, and stomp down on them when they get out of line. Best just to keep them out of the material and try to clean up spillovers when they occur: wrangling them into submission is a Werewolf's job, the poor sods.

And trying to separate the material and the Shadow is always a bad idea, since it's a natural part of the world, and doing so will simply turn the place into a ghost of what it once was, drained of all literal and metaphorical vitality.

As for your 'ghost' spell, I think it would be more of a Death spell, which has the Twilight in it's purview, rather than a Spirit spell, which must reigns over the Shadow. Thinking on it, I would say a Death 3, Weaving, instant, transitory duration, vulgar spell, costing 1 mana.

Funny you should pick Dreamspeakers as a tradition; they're reimagined as a Legacy in nMage that melds together Mind and Spirit magics towards the mastery of the Astral Realms (which is in itself another wall of text topic in itself) through shamanistic lenses. They're a Thyrsus (that's life and spirit, which you have also chosen) legacy, and associated with the Free Council as well, both of which they share their wisdom with.

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I've started on an image of my character... a medical forensics examiner (mutable point) who is inducted into the Guardians of the Veil, but doesn't fit in as well as hoped. Mentored by a member of the Faceless, whom he never finds out what his name nor his actual appearance, face, or personality is (although he has suspicions). Understands the purpose and the necessity of the Veil and other distasteful aspects of the Guardians, but feels they try too hard to cover up too much purely for the reason of covering it up. Disliked for being a Guardian in the first place (and can't be trusted in another Order 'cause he could be a mole), and shunned by fellow Guardians because of his interest/contacts in the Eleventh Question, he's a hot potato who ended up in Boston's newest cabal because no one else really wants him and the new cabal either can't afford to or straight out can't say no.