Fixes for Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade magic?

[pawsplay]

I disagree with you. I'm not making them fundamentally inflexible in their abilities. They certainly may make an effort to create a spark in the powder room. However, they'll almost certainly not succeed at it without a great deal of work and drama.

Unfortunately, that just makes very little sense. That's like trying to run a Star Trek game and disabling the transporter every other session through some contrivance.

 

[Umbran]

Unfortunately, that just makes very little sense. That's like trying to run a Star Trek game and disabling the transporter every other session through some contrivance.

Maybe your Storyteller for Mage and mine had different tacks.

Let us consider - you're talking about making a spark, in a place you cannot normally see, maybe a quarter mile or more away. You expect this to be routine, like Star Trek transporters should be routine?

In Mage terms, there are actually two different ways to think of this working:

1) I want to make a spark in the powder room. This is relatively easy, but what you do is make a spark - sparks are not assured of setting off the entire powder store, or even part of it.

2) I want to blow up the opposing ship. The spark is the coincidence that keeps this from being vulgar magic. Blowing up a ship a quarter mile away with one working should not be in the least bit easy.

 

[humble minion]

Unfortunately, that just makes very little sense. That's like trying to run a Star Trek game and disabling the transporter every other session through some contrivance.

Agreed. The sheer flexibility of Mage-style magic makes these quick type of solutions very easy to come up with, and very hard to defend against, and very very lethal in ship to ship combat. If you start having to make excuses every combat as to why the perfect, system-supported tool for the job just happens not to work this time round, then you've got to ask yourself if you're using the right system.

Entropy or Matter to rot or destroy a ship's hull. (Life could achieve the same effect by supercharging the woodworms). The 'spark in the gunpowder' Forces gambit. Or, for that matter, using Forces to prevent any sparks at all on the other ship, rendering all their gunpowder weapons useless. Matter to turn gunpowder to sand (or merely wet it) would have the same effect.

How do you WANT ship to ship combat to run? What do you envisage the PCs doing in battle scenes?

 

[Umbran]

If you start having to make excuses every combat as to why the perfect, system-supported tool for the job just happens not to work this time round, then you've got to ask yourself if you're using the right system.

You don't have to make excuses - you just have to remember that Mage has never been light on the modifiers. Some things that are easy to conceive of in terms of the dot-value of powers become rather difficult to pull off when you count up what's required to put them into practice.

Entropy or Matter to rot or destroy a ship's hull.

You have the issue that either the object is very large (an entire ship) or small (one piece of wood in the hull, so not so effective).

(Life could achieve the same effect by supercharging the woodworms).

You'd have to stretch a bit to make that one not vulgar.

The 'spark in the gunpowder' Forces gambit.

Handled above - either this is a small working (easy, but unlikely to have the desired result) or large (and therefore difficult)

Or, for that matter, using Forces to prevent any sparks at all on the other ship, rendering all their gunpowder weapons useless.

This one is more subtle and creative - and interestingly more likely to succeed, I'd think. While in theory the system allows for massive, cinematic effects, the practical matter is that the Universe resists large changes, but tends to allow smaller ones.

Matter to turn gunpowder to sand (or merely wet it) would have the same effect.

Turning stuff they'd already verified was gunpowder into sand would be Vulgar. Transforming casks they'd not opened yet might not be, but they'll still get shots off with ready supplies. Wetting gunpowder would be simpler - but it would require creation of matter (water) which calls for higher sphere ratings than transmutation of matter. And, as Mage deals with patterns, you can't transform some of the gunpowder to wet the rest without making the working notably more difficult.

There's one simple question we are not addressing here - how advanced are these mages?

In M:tA rules, a starting mage has maybe Arete 3, and rolls a whole whopping 3 dice to work magic, and most magics need multiple successes to make effective. Most workings are difficult for these guys - they have to be rituals, or at least extended castings for several rounds to pull off. And, they probably have 3 dots in one sphere, 2 dots in a second, and one dot in a third sphere - they may not have the sphere combinations to pull most of these off to start.

More advanced magi are, of course, rather more terrifying

 

[humble minion]

You don't have to make excuses - you just have to remember that Mage has never been light on the modifiers. Some things that are easy to conceive of in terms of the dot-value of powers become rather difficult to pull off when you count up what's required to put them into practice.

All good points, but remember that (as I understand it from Pielorinho's earlier post in the thread) as long as the PCs stick to magic that the locals believe will work, there's no problem with vulgar effects in Sorceror's Crusade - there's still a lot of belief in the supernatural in the world, and the Technocratic paradigm hasn't completely locked magic down with Paradox yet. Casual magic, he called it. And if we're driving without the Paradox seatbelt on, particularly if the PCs are on board a ship with a crew who believe they can perform magic (seems a reasonable assumption!) then things can get very hairy indeed...

 

[Umbran]

All good points, but remember that (as I understand it from Pielorinho's earlier post in the thread) as long as the PCs stick to magic that the locals believe will work, there's no problem with vulgar effects in Sorceror's Crusade - there's still a lot of belief in the supernatural in the world, and the Technocratic paradigm hasn't completely locked magic down with Paradox yet.

I don't recall the details of SC's paradox rules (it is called "scourge" in SC, no?), but I don't expect it is quite as easy as all that. By my recollection, some control on vulgar powers still exists - if you hip out the big guns, unpredictable things happen. They may not harm you, but they don't necessarily help, either.

As I recall, the basic rule isn't "stick to magic that the locals believe will work". It is "stick to an explanation that the locals will believe". In that time period, ideas about what actions will cause what results were a little less stringent, and some folks will accept some magic, you don't get to wave your hand on your boat, and have the other boat explode without having some explanation.

And, honestly, the paradox wasn't what I was thinking of - I was thinking merely about gaining successes. More vulgar magic typically has higher target numbers.

 

[Rel]

you don't get to wave your hand on your boat, and have the other boat explode without having some explanation.

Why not? I mean mishaps involving the use of cannon were hardly uncommon in the era. Most were fired by simply thrusting a burning piece of rope match through the touch hole and that is an activity fraught with opportunity for disaster, to put it mildly.

Now I'll grant that after 2 or 3 ships go the way of a Mythbusters finale a few of the sailors on board will start to get a bit suspicious. But we're also talking about a group of people who were among the most superstitious on the planet. If anybody is apt to believe in magic or luck, it's those guys.

 

[Umbran]

Why not? I mean mishaps involving the use of cannon were hardly uncommon in the era.

That's exactly why not. Mishaps were common. Or, more specifically, certain types of mishaps were common. Mishaps with a single cannon that brought down an entire ship were not common - if they were, ship-to-ship combat using cannon would be too risky to undertake except in very important cases.

At its root, the game does depend on consensual reality - how hard a magical task is depends in part on what people believe. If people don't believe that ships sink themselves often, then having the ship sink itself is going to be difficult to pull off.

So, the better tactic to take would probably be to do magics that make normal attacks much more effective - charm cannon balls to hit masts more frequently, for instance - rather than to try outright direct magical assault on the other ship.

The game is made to support big, flashy magic. You can look at the rules, and imagine all sorts of epic mojo that'd make Gandalf quiver under his bushy eyebrows. But just because you can, doesn't mean you should. That is a central question of the game, really: You have the raw ability to do truly cosmic stuff - how do you choose to use that power?

The game also supports more subtle workings. In my experience, you pull out the action-movie style stuff when you have to, because the situation is dire and you're in deep kimchi if you don't. Your workaday magic fits more, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, because they are subtle and quick to anger."

 

[Pielorinho]

Curses, my reply was eaten.

There's no coincidental magic here, but there is an absolute need for spellcasters to go through the motions--and if the effect they're trying for isn't something that most folks think can be done with magic (which is highly subjective and something I'll decide with zero player input, since the characters themselves can't be sure of this), it's more difficult to do. And "going through the motions" doesn't mean whispering a prayer under your breath or fingering your wand beneath your robe (stop that!), it means calling out a prayer in a ringing voice, or pointing the wand dramatically at a target and using it to draw a burning rune in the air.

Folks who still think I'm wrong about this approach, I'm curious: what's your specific analysis? That is, describe an instant-ship-killer spell in specifics, telling what spheres at what level it'd require, what a mage (any mage) might look like in using tools to create the effect, what the target difficulty would be, including all relevant modifiers, and how many successes would be required.

The more I read, the less worried I am that ship-killer effects exist, especially if I yoink the connection-based countermagick for ships carrying Order of Reason connection items.

 

[Umbran]

There's no coincidental magic here, but there is an absolute need for spellcasters to go through the motions--and if the effect they're trying for isn't something that most folks think can be done with magic (which is highly subjective and something I'll decide with zero player input, since the characters themselves can't be sure of this), it's more difficult to do.

Okay, so not exactly the same as what I'm used to, but similar. You have to fit the dominant paradigm, or things get tougher.

And "going through the motions" doesn't mean whispering a prayer under your breath or fingering your wand beneath your robe (stop that!), it means calling out a prayer in a ringing voice, or pointing the wand dramatically at a target and using it to draw a burning rune in the air.

And the game is set at the beginning of the Ascension War, right? So, is drawing flaming runes in the air in the wrong place and time going to get one burned at the stake yet? If yes, you can add that to reasons why the PCs ought to be a little reticent to do so.

Folks who still think I'm wrong about this approach, I'm curious: what's your specific analysis? That is, describe an instant-ship-killer spell in specifics, telling what spheres at what level it'd require, what a mage (any mage) might look like in using tools to create the effect, what the target difficulty would be, including all relevant modifiers, and how many successes would be required.

I don't think your approach is wrong - I am not sure you need a whole lot of modification to make instant ship-killing difficult. It shouldn't be impossible, just difficult and dramatic when they do pull out the stops to make it happen. I think the game (admitting my incomplete understanding) already gives the GM the latitude such that it comes out that way.