Post by EBST on Sept 6, 2016 23:31:13 GMT
Mage the Ascension. Some people look at it and it are cool with character concept and creation but then look at their first effect they want to do and it's like a Greek translating Russian into German for an English speaker to translate. They get brain lock. This will hopefully dispel the mysticism, no pun intended, around how to do that.
First off? Breathe. It's not hard. It's actually rather easy once you understand it. Each effect or spell that you want your Mage to try is made up of one or more combinations of spheres. The complexity of the effect will determine the rank (1-5) of the sphere needed. This determines the difficulty. Then it's all about rolling dice. For our World of Darkness we use your Arete rating + your occult rating for your dice pool. This gives you a greater chance to pull off big effects, but on the other end, the more dice you roll, there is that increased chance of failure as well.
Each sphere that your character learns, will have a foci that is appropriate for his or her paradigm. Each such foci allows a -1 to the difficulty (maximum of -3).
Each point of Quintessence that your character spends on an effect, lowers the difficulty by -1 (maximum of -3).
*No difficulty can go below a 3 at any point and modifiers can only go +3/-3 and no more.
The difficulty is determined by your highest sphere level used (ie Correspondence 3) and whether the effect is coincidental +3 ( it is perceived as being common and accepted), Vulgar +4( No way! People can't do that!), or Vulgar with witnesses +5 (a sleeper that is NOT another supernatural or supernatural lackey sees it.)
What does this all mean?
Myra is irritated at Vampire. She is not powerful enough to do serious harm to him, nor was the slight that bad but she wants him to know her ire. So she decides to curse him. A Vampire is dead, despite all appearances so requires Matter 3 to affect. Her curse is to take the form of nightmares, or daymares in the case of Vampires as they sleep in the daytime. She also wants the Daymare to inflict damage, but not kill. So Mind 3 is required. Finally as the Vampire is out of line of sight, it requires correspondence 2.
Her highest rank is 3 in the spheres she is using. As there is nothing 'seen or perceived' the effect is Coincidental, so the difficulty is a base of 6. She is using a foci for Matter and another for Mind, each giving her a -1 difficulty. She could use a point of Quintessence and lower it another -1, but that is not necessary as it is currently a 4 difficulty. This is not a complicated effect so it requires 3 successes.
First off? Breathe. It's not hard. It's actually rather easy once you understand it. Each effect or spell that you want your Mage to try is made up of one or more combinations of spheres. The complexity of the effect will determine the rank (1-5) of the sphere needed. This determines the difficulty. Then it's all about rolling dice. For our World of Darkness we use your Arete rating + your occult rating for your dice pool. This gives you a greater chance to pull off big effects, but on the other end, the more dice you roll, there is that increased chance of failure as well.
Each sphere that your character learns, will have a foci that is appropriate for his or her paradigm. Each such foci allows a -1 to the difficulty (maximum of -3).
Each point of Quintessence that your character spends on an effect, lowers the difficulty by -1 (maximum of -3).
*No difficulty can go below a 3 at any point and modifiers can only go +3/-3 and no more.
The difficulty is determined by your highest sphere level used (ie Correspondence 3) and whether the effect is coincidental +3 ( it is perceived as being common and accepted), Vulgar +4( No way! People can't do that!), or Vulgar with witnesses +5 (a sleeper that is NOT another supernatural or supernatural lackey sees it.)
What does this all mean?
Myra is irritated at Vampire. She is not powerful enough to do serious harm to him, nor was the slight that bad but she wants him to know her ire. So she decides to curse him. A Vampire is dead, despite all appearances so requires Matter 3 to affect. Her curse is to take the form of nightmares, or daymares in the case of Vampires as they sleep in the daytime. She also wants the Daymare to inflict damage, but not kill. So Mind 3 is required. Finally as the Vampire is out of line of sight, it requires correspondence 2.
Her highest rank is 3 in the spheres she is using. As there is nothing 'seen or perceived' the effect is Coincidental, so the difficulty is a base of 6. She is using a foci for Matter and another for Mind, each giving her a -1 difficulty. She could use a point of Quintessence and lower it another -1, but that is not necessary as it is currently a 4 difficulty. This is not a complicated effect so it requires 3 successes.