Mage House Rules

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Mage Ghouls

This is one of those things that most ST's look at and shake their head about. When a Vampire Ghouls a Mage. Lets be straight up. THe world is vast, but even in that vastness there is ~going~ to be a meeting at some point, somewhere along the way between a Vampire and a Mage. It is nigh unavoidable. As an ST I pride myself on nearly always never saying no. I want to make the game fun and challenging with a serious emphasis on fun. As such I have given this serious thought and finally put it to written form. 

Being a Mage that is ghouled is a nasty business. Powerful in the short term but nasty. To start Vampire the Masquerade only touches on a portion of just WHAT a blood bond does. Mage the Ascension expounds upon it. Vitae binds the spirit of the individual as the blood is a mystical component given the nature of the Vampiric curse. However with a Mage who is highly spiritual as all Mages are, it also has the dual cut of addicting the Avatar potentially. And this is cumulative over the mages lifetime.

Basically it works like this: It takes a number of separate drinks (IE separate days) to addict an Avatar as it has points in it's rating. Thus a 1 point Avatar is addicted in 1 drink. A 5 point is addicted in 5 drinks. Up until the Avatar is addicted a Mage Ghoul is pure unaging God Material ubber twink stuff of GM's nightmares as they have the best of both worlds of Ghouls and Mage. They can progress as a Mage and as a Ghoul without hinderance. Once that last drink that addicts the Avatar is taken the ballgame changes in a way that truly sucks for a Mage. The following occurs:

While the Avatar is Addicted:

All progression as a Mage stops. They cannot gain any further Arete. They cannot progress further in any Sphere. They cannot meditate at a Node to gain Quintessence. They can ONLY gain Quintessence through Vampiric Vitae. They now focus solely on advancement of Ghoul powers (IE DIsciplines); they don't lost Sphere Magic at this time. 

Given the nature of forum/online play the timetable for the next is truncated

Once a Mage is fully bound to a given Vampire, the timetable starts. At a rate of one per month a Ghouled Mage begins to lose Avatar points until that reaches Zero. After that Arete starts to drop at 1 point per month until it too reaches Zero. IE Jon-boy has an Avatar of 3 and Arete of 4. He has 7 months before things are non-reverseable. As long as the Mage has at least 1 point of Arete there is a hope. Once the final point is gone, the Mages Avatar is lost permanently in this life and they become a normal Ghoul, losing all spheres up to that point.

Worse still is the fact that while a Mage is a ghoul they are a neon beacon to Demons, Nephandi and worse

All is not lost. Should a Mage become somehow wise in this, prior to losing that last point, they can be purged, coming off of the blood and removing the addiction from their Avatars. It's not easy, nor pleasant and forever and always from this point on, once cured, if they come across Vampiric Vitae they must roll a WP check at Difficulty 10 to not fall under its sway again. 

Have Fun. *Evil Grin*

Leveling the field:

We will be using the 'leveling the field' rules as presented in M20. This means that for all effect rolls the dice pool is as follows: Arete Score+ Occult Score. This will give starting characters that chance to produce some spectacular results but also runs that risk that is inherent with more dice. This puts Mage effects more on par with the powers and effects as seen by other supernaturals in the World of Darkness.

As always you are not locked into HAVING to use all of your potential dice pool. That is up to you. 

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Improving:

Improving items is one of those things that can very easily break a game. Why? Because it's vague as crap even in Mage 20. So here is how it works in so far as OUR World of Darkness goes. A device is anything that is man made that can be used to do things. As such it can be improved, non-magically.. to a certain extent. To improve something a character must have knowledge of that device. IE Gunsmithing for guns, Automotive for cars etc. No, simply having firearms or drive is not going to cut it, those mean you know how to use the device and how it will or should perform. 

To improve a device a character must have at least a score of 4 in the pre-requisite knowledge. A player then rolls Int+(Knowledge) vs Difficulty of 8. This will most likely be an extended roll, meaning over several rounds. This reflects the amount of time it takes to modify and improve the given device. Each success counts as a 2% improvement to the devices particular trait, up to a maximum of 20%. Each such trait can be improved in such a manner but each trait can only be improved once in such a way so no stacking. 

Example: Rose wants to modify her glock. She has weaponsmithing 4 so she can do this. She wants to modify its range (how far it can shoot) and it's difficulty. Damage is determined by the bullet type and not the weapon itself. A glock is difficulty 6 and a normal range of 20 yards. She spends several days researching and modifying her glock, testing and researching until she gets what she wants. The weapon now has a difficulty of 5 to attack with and shoots 24 yards. These two stats can no longer be modified for this weapon.

Note: A character with Weaponsmithing 5 can reduce the difficulty of her improvement roll by 1. 

This type of improvement can be done for anything that is man made. It just takes time, research, tools and a proper workspace to accomplish. 




 

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Enchanted Weapons & Gear

Once characters reach this point in power it is real easy to have things get imbalanced. Enchanting that rifle for extra attack dice at lower difficulty; that bladed weapon that is extra sharp; that weapon that does aggravated instead of bashing or lethal. The combinations are nearly as limitless as the players imaginations. It also can turn into a situation of 'Monty Haul' fairly quick and turn even relatively weak PC's into near gods. Properly balanced, they add flavor to a gameworld. Without balance? Well, no one wants to play with Robbie if every time there is a combat he pulls out his 'Auto-kill Magic gemjaw' and obliterates the target with one blow. It does not make for a good story and means to compensate the ST has to do a number of things which are righteously unfair to the other PC's. To that end we head off the big nasty before it gets to that point. 

These are wonders and nearly anything can be a wonder. Armor, weapons, a broach, a ring etc., 

So what exactly IS a wonder? A wonder is an item that is permanently enchanted. That is something that holds its enchantment past its initial use. Examples would be a sword that is unnaturally sharp or swift; a piece of armor that adds a few levels of soak dice to its wearer or extra health levels. 

A wonder is not something that is temporary ie that clip of bullets that add damage when they strike or that leather coat that is unnaturally tough for a scene or two. 

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Rotes

Rotes come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. Given time, creativity, thought and of course a reason, a character can think up almost any effect imaginable that is within the limits of their sphere(s) ranks(s). One character might call a rote 'Twitch', while another might call it 'winds of the Yama Kings.' There are no limits to the amount of rotes one can have and/or create. 

Fast Casting. As the name implies this is literally something that you just think of on the fly for a situation that arises in a given instant. In time it may become a full rote for that character.

Rote. This is an effect that the character has used and gone back to so often that it is old hat. Much like a cook or baker that has done a recipe so many times that they don't need to even look at it to fix it anymore. As this is so old hat, the character does this quicker than fast casting, so their initiative is modified by +1.

Signature Rote. This is a Rote that the character not only goes to so often, but has designed, redesigned, worth with and tweaked over the course of their existence as Awakened. It is almost an intrinsic flavor to who they are. This stacks with the Rote benefits, gaining a +1 to initiative, but also carries two additional bonuses: -1 to difficulty, making it easier to cast; +1 success, providing the initial arete roll succeeds. As always no effect can fall below a difficulty of 3 to cast.

A signature Rote carries with it an individual Mages Resonance flavors as they have worked with and used this spell so much. This means that unless they take pains to mask that, anyone observing the effect after the fact would know that 'Master Wu' of the Wu Lung cast living flesh. It is much like a fingerprint for a Mage. There is one additional limitation for Mages who have Signature Rotes, in that being Signature, they are limited to how many they may have. The limit is reflected in their Avatar Rating. A Mage may purchase one Signature Rote for 10 XP per rating dot of their Avatar. So a character with an Avatar rating of 5 could have 5 Signature Rotes. 

While overall the creativity and choice are up to the player, the ST and Setting GM retain the right to make the final call on a given Signature Rote. IE effects that alter the game world in a significant way might be disallowed. Examples being: Caine never was, God never cursed Caine, Gaia was never a deity, the entirety of WTA loses the ability to shift or step sideways etc.,