I created these for my group and found them VERY useful.
Mage Arcana - A file that explains in simple terms what can be done with each arcana at each level. Aims at new players and avoids rule-speak.
Mage Cheat Sheet - Helps the Storyteller run the game, including quick references to common spellcasting modifiers, improvised spell charts and other things.
Enjoy!
Those are nice. I did something similar, trying to summarize key points to a single page each (with a small but readable font and some formatting errors from cutting and pasting them here):
Houseruled Morality Chart said:
Morality and Wisdom “An it harm none, do as thou wilt”
10 Mortal Sin: Selfish Thoughts
Awakened Sin: Spending mana or other expendable magical resources purely for purposes of vanity or convenience, risking Paradox for same. Failure to plan for the consequences of a magical act, barring extraordinary consequences no one could foresee.
9 Mortal Sin: Minor Selfish Acts (Withholding charity, refusing forgiveness for spite.)
Awakened Sin: Turning down a plea specifically for magical assistance for selfish or trivial reasons. Depriving someone of magical knowledge for personal gain, selfishness, spite, or trivial prejudice.
8 Mortal Sin: Injury to another (accidental or otherwise.)
Awakened Sin: Magical injury to Another (accidental or otherwise, includes intentional embarrassment and humiliation.)
7 Mortal Sin: Petty Theft
Awakened Sin: Using Magic to create or transform for Material Gain Beyond Needs; Stealing mana out of combat.
6 Mortal Sin: Grand Theft
Awakened Sin: Magical coercion (taking control of someone’s will) for personal or material gain beyond need.
5 Mortal Sin: Intentional, Mass Property Damage (Arson)
Awakened Sin: Destroying or vandalizing a Hallow, natural Demesne, Artifact, repository of magical knowledge, or other place or thing of magical importance. Objects that are specifically intended for use to commit an equal or lower morality sin do not count, but knowledge itself should never be destroyed.
4 Mortal Sin: Impassioned Crime (Manslaughter)
Awakened Sin: Forcing or banishing someone to a realm of existence that is not their natural realm against their will, Accidental Killing with Magic.
3 Mortal Sin: Planned Crime (Murder, Premeditated Rape)
Awakened Sin: Magically coercing someone to violate their moral code, or coercion for carnal pleasure and lust; Intentionally causing permanent or lasting injury with magic, in terms of someone’s ability to function normally (destroying someone’s vocal cords, permanently blinding someone, permanently crippling someone, lasting transformation into a lesser being or inanimate object against someone’s will.)
2 Mortal Sin: Casual/Callous Crime
Awakened Sin: Severing another’s soul or helping someone to sever their soul; Using magic to commit planned murder or execution, or magic that would destroy someone’s pattern outright.
1 Mortal Sin: Utter Perversion, Heinous Acts
Awakened Sin: Stealing or Destroying a Soul; Selling or trading your soul or another’s; Preventing the Awakening of a Sleeper.
Magical Proficiency Cheat Sheet
Any Mage
Unseen Sense and Mage Sight
You know when and in which direction something magical or supernatural happens in your presence, with a Wits + Composure check. Determining resonance or conducting further analysis requires an Intelligence + Occult check and an active Mage Sight spell.
Uncloaking the Nimbus
A mage can voluntarily reveal his magical aura for a brief instant, adding the successes from a reflexive Composure + Occult roll to an Intimidation or Expression check once per scene.
Scourging
Mana Scourging: You convert health to mana by taking a bashing wound for each point of mana gained. Paradox Scourging: You can turn Paradox successes caused by your spells into bashing wounds. Scourging of either kind can only be healed naturally.
Pattern Restoration
You can heal one point of personal bashing or lethal damage for three mana, unless it is damage from Scourging.
Counterspell
With active mage sight, you can counter any spell as long as you have at least one dot in each Arcanum of the spell, along with all other requirements under Counterspelling (p. 123).
Arcana Spell Modifiers
Fate – Altering Fates
Through conditional modifiers, Fate-only spells can have an indefinite duration on a living target.
Fate 2 - Conditional Duration
A spell can be set to expire when a certain condition is met.
Fate 2 + Time 2 - Conditional Trigger
A prepared spell’s effect goes off when a certain condition is met.
Fate 2 – Target Exemption
The mage can exempt whole groups from spell effects. (“Everyone except my enemies.”) He can also exempt individuals from being targeted by his spells with a -2 penalty per person.
Fate 4 – Unfettered
The mage can reflexively cast instant countermagic against effects that would harm or impede his fate (Geas, mind control, ill Fate, soul tampering and soul attacks.)
Fate 5 – Unto the Seventh Generation
The mage can sacrifice a willpower dot to create an oath or Geas that is generational.
Prime 2 – Veiled Spell
You can hide a spell from Unseen Sense (Automatic) or Mage Sight (Contested.)
Prime 2 + Space 2 – Sense the Threads
A mage with these arcana can sense when someone scrutinizes, dispels or modifies his spells.
Space 2 – Sympathetic Spells
A mage with Space 2 can cast spells beyond normal sensory range by establishing a sympathetic connection to a target.
Time 2 – Temporal Sympathy
Establish sympathy through a time relationship rather than a spatial one.
Time 2 – Prepared Spells
The caster can have spells cast in advance and release them later with a personal trigger.
Dot One - Initiate
· The Practice of Knowing – Gaining knowledge about and understanding of the phenomena.
· The Practice of Compelling – Minor manipulation of phenomena, to activate existing phenomena or impart directions in certain cases.
· The Practice of Unveiling – Arcane perception of the phenomena (Mage Sight and other perception spells.)
Dot Two - Apprentice
· The Practice of Ruling – Exert basic command and control of the phenomena.
· The Practice of Veiling – Conceal, camouflage or hide phenomena.
· The Practice of Shielding – Use the phenomena to protect against attacks.
· Advanced Dot One applications.
Dot Three – Disciple
· The Practice of Weaving – Alter the capabilities of functions of the phenomena.
· The Practice of Fraying – Use the phenomena to injure a target.
· The Practice of Perfecting – Fortify, bolster, or improve phenomena.
· Advanced Dot One and Two applications.
Dot Four – Adept
· The Practice of Patterning – Transform phenomena or replace capabilities.
· The Practice of Unraveling – Significantly injure a target or negatively transform.
· Advanced Dot One, Two, and Three Applications.
Dot Five – Master
· The Practice of Making – Create phenomena.
· The Practice of Unmaking – Destroy or mutilate a target phenomenon.
· Advanced Dot One, Two, Three, and Four applications.
Special Arcana Considerations:
Forces: You can begin to influence heat, light and sound with the first dot, and create these at the third dot.
Electricity and fire can be influenced starting with the second dot in this Arcanum and be created with the fourth dot.
Kinetic energy can be repelled or focused broadly at the second dot, be more finely controlled with the third dot, be used to alter vectors and velocities at the fourth dot, and have total kinetic control at the fifth dot. Magnetism is influenced at dot three, created at dot four and mastered at dot five.
Life: Manipulation of life is divided into three categories – base life, median life, and advanced life. Base life covers insects, plants, fungi, bacteria, and other microbes. It can be controlled or transformed with the second dot. Median life covers non-sentient mammals, reptiles, birds and fish. It can be controlled or transformed with the third dot. Advanced life covers humans, werewolves, and other sentient animals. It can be controlled or transformed starting with the fourth dot. Manipulations involving a mage’s own pattern or restoration (healing) are sometimes one or several dots lower than normal.
Some things I'd recommend trying:
1) It can be tough to introduce so many concepts at once to a group of new players, and it can be difficult to give them an overarching common goal. One plot hook that I like to get things started is having the players themselves be Awakened as part of a "rare" and auspicious (or to some, suspicious) event of simultaneous Awakenings across a city or region, with everyone interested in studying, using, exploiting, or channeling that group of new mages toward their goals or what they perceive the character's destiny to be, all while the players try to work out what happened and who to trust. Give them a mentor figure and have some in-game, in-character magical tutorials.
For instance, I've had a group of mortals awaken as part of a dark ritualistic experiment by a left-handed legacy; a group that was on a city rail car disappear into a verge that was created when a powerful artifact had been transported along the same route earlier, and they wind up Awakened and in the Shadow; and a group awaken because a long-imprisoned foe of the Pentacle mages deep below the city is trying to break free of his cage and is sending out magical shockwaves.
2) Mentor characters can be important for newer players. Consider giving them one as a group by awarding a merit point to each player to be invested in a mentor character. The mentor should be knowledgeable and helpful, but odd and perhaps seemingly unreliable (in terms of being unavailable at inopportune moments.) The trick is to test the level of trust the characters have without making the NPC useless as a mentor because no one trusts him. This keeps the character from just being a "Dumbledore" clone.
3) Absolutely roleplay some of the more interesting magical lessons, but leave the textbook stuff to 'training montages' rather than fully roleplaying them out. Tests of resourcefulness are fun little training exercises where you can have a mentor pop up and give advice or explain what they could have done better. I've had situations where I've had the leader of the Guardians of the Veil insist on testing new mages in an area to make sure they aren't loose cannons that will violate the Lex Magica, do lots of vulgar magic or become crazed killers with such challenges as "get to the top of this office building undetected and without killing any of the guards to retrieve X and pass the test."
One formula I like:
a) Start with a dramatic Awakening scene, perhaps have some "wild magic" happen before they learn to cast spells themselves (by having them roll for generic improvised magic when stressed or in danger and the ST determines the result and form the magic takes based on the character's path, virtue/vice, nimbus and arcana.)
b) Characters survive and a mentor character appears, but there's little time for introduction, enemies of the mentor character, or individuals looking to exploit or eliminate the new mages (Banishers or Seers, etc) have also sensed the mass Awakening and are on their way!
c) Escape, and some brief explanations and little lessons about magic.
d) "training montage"... give the players an overview of what they can do and how the magical world works.
e) On to face the next challenge, stand up to whoever is after them, investigate how they all awakened at once, or to get introduced to the larger mage community in the area.
