Mage Character Generation

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Mage Character Generation - you are here Mage Charts House Rules General Mage Help Mage House Rules

Application

Please use a new Bg section for each of the following. SEE +bghelp

A few things mage staff expects in applications are:

1. A rather decent background. I don't expect a novel, but I do expect more at least a page and a half. If nothing else
having become a mage would warrant a rather good chunk of a background. App'ing a super requires a better background
then a normal mortal, as there is much more to go into.
2. A detailed bit on your Avatar. It helps out when we need to know such info for Seekings and so on.
3. Your Paradigm, what is it? See M20th Anniversary pg 568-572, and the write-ups for your tradition
4. What about your Resonance?
5. For any other current restrictions for the sphere please review the note to applications in the Mage room in the Sphere Information Room.

Mage Factions

Open: Traditions, Disparates, Technocracy,

Closed: Marauder, and Nephandi


Tradition Names

See house rule on Tradition names. Make sure you choose the appropriate one at chargen

Arcane

Arcane is extremely difficult to monitor in MUs. Arcane will remain a buyable background in chargen. However, Personal Arcane will only apply in regards to NPCs. Personal Arcane and Venue Arcane will not stack. Only venue Arcane will be in effect in regards to PCs.
In regards to other backgrounds, Personal Arcane affects the levels you can buy when it comes to Allies, Influence and Contacts, and fame..

Deduct your arcane rating from 6.

That is the highest that:
Allies, Influence & Contacts can go to.

Deduct 2 from that.
That's as High as your fame can get to.

So, if you have Arcane 3?

You can have a Maximum Allies score of 3, maximum fame of 1. All clear? I'm sure you can see the
reasoning behind it.. all those Backgrounds rely on people knowing who you are. With arcane?
They can't recall specific details about you.

Instruments: The Tool of Focus

Called 'Foci' in revised.

'Mages don’t choose their tools based on convenience, but rather upon what they believe they
need to do in order to alter reality.

House Rule: You must start play with 8 "instruments.

In M20, you must choose an personalize, or personalize and Unique instrument for your Affinity Sphere. Otherwise, instruments are not tied to your other spheres.

Foci

Foci: plural of form of Focus.

This is how you set and see for Focus Instruments.

To see your current foci: +foci -- If you see nothing you are either not a mage, or haven't followed the steps below. Will also display the longer version on your choosen Paradigm (if it is displayed on your sheet as abbreviations), will also display the practice(s) you've choosen to use from what your paradigm(s) allow. For more info and charts Paradigms, Practices, Instruments


You are required to pick 7 tools. One of these is your "primary" tool. It is the one you learned magick with first, and is the one you rely on the most. This is, by default, a personalized Focus that is tied to your Affinity Sphere, granting you a -1 to your arete rolls involving that sphere ONLY. It is also the Focus you will drop last. You may choose to make your Primary Focus "unique" as well, in which case it will grant a -2 to rolls involving your Affinity Sphere ONLY

Aside from your Primary Focus, in M20 foci are no longer tied to spheres.


FOCI SETUP

If you need help while going through this process, please ask Staff.

To start setting up for Foci type: +foci/setup

To see your foci template: +foci -- and at any time while going through these steps to see your work

To define/describe your Foci: +foci/desc <primary or a number from 1-6>=<desc> -- do for each of the 7 foci (primary,1,2,3,4,5,6)

Example: +foci/desc primary=bamboo flute handcarved as I awoke
Example: +foci/desc primary=Mentor Sasha's tea pot
Example: +foci/desc 1=artwork
Example: +foci/desc 3=Fashion
Example: +foci/desc 6=Household Tools

To set your primary Focus as Unique: +foci/unique --Sets your primary instrument as personalized and Unique, make sure the desc fits

A Mage needs to pick at least 1 paradigm, 1 practice, and seven instruments. NOTE: Please choose only instruments and practices that are listed on those pages. The Practices page cross-references well with instruments. Also, do not use a Practice as a instrument/tool/focus.

To set your practice(s): +foci/practice <blah> Not yet coded, supply in your approval job after staff let you into "More Info" room.
Please see Practices for a chart that lists which Paradigms are associated with which practices.

Example: +foci/practice Craftwork
Example: +foci/practice Alchemy, Chaos Magick, Craftwork, Crazy Wisdom, Faith

In the end your +foci should look similiar to the example below. If you need to make more notes for yourself, please use +notes (+help +notes).
<br 

+---------------------------< Random's Instruments >----------------------------+

                 (Those Marked with * Are no longer required)          


Affinity Sphere: Prime

Primary Focus - Light and lasers (Personalized -1)

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Focus 1: Computers and IT Gear

Focus 2: Devices and Machines

Focus 3: Elements

Focus 4: Energy

Focus 5: Gadgets and Inventions

Focus 6: Laboratories and Lab Gear

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 Grace period ends on Oct 15, 2023 
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Your paradigm: A Mechanistic Cosmos

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 Your Practices:

 Hypertech, Craftwork, Weird Science
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

To drop a focus: Please submit a +magereq. (Example: +magereg <your name>:dropping foci=I'd like to drop my 6th focus, artwork.)

Standard Instruments

Standard instruments offer no benefit or penalty to die rolls. You might incur a penalty if you work without one, or receive
a bonus if you use one in an especially significant manner These are also considered "tradition foci". Things such as magic circles, sex, martial arts, concentration or candles. They are non-specific items in which any representation of them will do. Think "ritual items".
There can be found in M20 Anniversary core book for each tradition.

Personalized Instruments

Personal instruments offer -1 to arete rolls. For your character’s affinity Sphere, choose one personal instrument that fits his
practice and that Sphere. Personal foci are specific tools that the mage acquires during the
process of learning a sphere. If a candlestick holder held a significant place in learning a sphere, it would be
considered personal. It has to mean something to the mage. The ruling between standard and personal is storyteller discretion.

Personalize and Unique Instruments

Unique instruments offer -2 to arete rolls. Unique foci are literally unique items. They are either handcraft, personally-invented
or individualized. They may also be items created to used in one ritual only. (Want to make a special candle for that life ritual?)
"Used-only-once-ever items" need ST approval as these can't/won't be set with the +foci/unique. +Foci/unique is meant for permanent
unique foci.

Sanctum / Sancti

HR on Sanctum

Resources 0 - 1 Characters can only buy up to Sanctum 2. This may be raised if your
character ever raises their resources post chargen.

Primary Sphere

"Affinity Spheres: The Sphere most often associated with the group’s training and specialization. In the Council’s
old days, each Tradition held a seat based on that Sphere; given recent, intervening events, however, this may not be
true anymore. Training in the 21st century is more eclectic and personalized than it used to be, so the secondary
Spheres are also available as Affinity Spheres. In any case, a new character gets only one of these Spheres as his
Affinity Sphere." M20 Anniversary pg 147

Chargen doesn't currently allow Tradition mages to choose their primary sphere we are working to correct this, but
to be honest chargen code is a beast, it may take awhile
When you are done with your character and use +char-submit, add a note to the job that is opened for you and
state what you'd like your primary sphere to be. You will have the default free dot of sphere moved to your choosen
primary sphere. A +note will be added to you.

Affinity Sphere Choices

In M20th, some traditions may be allowed another affinity sphere that is not listed there.
If you want a different affinity sphere than the default, contact staff to have this set and noted for you.

Akashayana: Mind(default) or Life
Celestial Chorus: Prime (default); Forces or Spirit
Sahajiya: Time(default); Life or Mind
Khavadi: Spirit (default); Force, Life, or Matter
Chakravant: Entropy(default); Life or Spirit.
Order of Hermes: Forces provides the core of Hermetic training. Certain Houses favor Life, Matter,
Mind, and Spirit as secondary pursuits, but Forces is always essential.
Society of Ether: Matter(default); Forces or Prime
Verbenae: Life (default); Mind, Matter, Entropy, Forces
Mercurial Elites: Correspondence (default) as Data; Forces

Mage Specific Merits

Merit Cost Description
Avatar Companion 7 From lifetime to lifetime, you share a bit of your Avatar with a companion who follows you through incarnations, recalling more about their details than you do. Although he’s not as powerful as you are, and lacks the metaphysical prowess of the Merits: Twin Soul or Shattered Avatar (above), this companion knows a great deal about your reincarnated self… quite a bit more about it than then you do. This loyal (if not always agreeable) character literally follows you for life, typically ending his life when you do; in the meantime, he provides insights, advice, information about previous life times, and whatever other forms of aid he can possibly offer. Like the Merit: Guardian Angel, the Avatar Companion is essentially a walking boost from your Storyteller, subject to her whims but acting in your best interests… for the most part, anyway.
Unless it’s purchased in addition to the Background: Allies, your companion isn’t anything special; he could be a person or animal, but not a vampire, a werebeast, or some other Night-Folk entity. Your Avatar Companion could also be a Ward, the focus of True Love, or perhaps an embodiment of a Manifest Avatar. Treat him badly enough, and he might become an Enemy. (See all appropriate entries for details.) As with all other character-based Traits, this companion has his own personality, desires, and so on. He may be loyal, but he’s not suicidal, and isn’t likely to be thrilled if the mage decides to abuse his loyalty! Ref: M20 BOS, 79
Circumspect Avatar 2 You’ve never seen your Avatar, and probably doubt that such a thing exists. Sure, you have a shadow, and a reflection, or maybe a little dog who’s followed you around since you were a kid and seems no older even though he should have died of old age years ago, but an Avatar? Nah – that’s a buncha New Age hippie crap! You have yet to encounter any such thing, you don’t go on “seekings” or whatever they’re called, and you get your metaphysical insights the same way any normal person does: through everyday events in the everyday world. Essentially, this Merit grants a “silent” Avatar – one that, for whatever reason, does not hound or guide your character but merely drops hints, cues, and clues that the mage either figures out or doesn’t figure out on her own. Seekings and Epiphanies take place in the physical realm, typically as puzzles and dilemmas that happen to be related to issues that the mage needs to sort through in order to advance to the next level of understanding. During such situations, the Avatar may indeed appear (possibly even manifest – see the Merit: Manifest Avatar), but only as some apparently mundane person, creature or thing, not as an obviously paranormal entity. You could, for instance, get a call from your mother that sends you into an introspective mood which, in turn, leads you to figure out an important riddle from your past; Mom, of course, denies even having called you. Huh. So who could that call have been from, anyway? Or did you, perhaps, just imagine it after all? Ref: M20 BOS, 67
Cyclic Magic 3 The strength or weakness of your Arts is tied to some periodic cycle – the phases of the moon, night or day, your menstrual periods, the rise and fall of the stock market, and so forth. At the peak of your cycle, your magick flows most easily; at its nadir, you find it challenging to work with your magick at all.
System-wise, this Trait is both a Merit and a Flaw, granting bonuses at one point in the cycle and penalties on its opposite point. At the highest point, you reduce your casting difficulties by -3 for one hour, while at the lowest point you increase them by +3 for one hour. On either end of that cycle, you subtract or add -1 /+1 to your casting difficulties for each hour on both sides – the surge and the ebb – of that cycle: -2 or + 2 for the two hours on each side of the peak or nadir, -1 or +1 on the two hours on the side of those two hours, and no modifiers during the rest of the time in between. If, for example, Victoria Ashley-Croft bani Flambeau has a peak at midnight and a low at noon, her player would receive a peak modifier of -3 difficulty at midnight, -2 difficulty at 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, a -1 difficulty at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, and no modifiers otherwise, aside from the reverse modifiers (+3 at noon, +2 at 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM, and +1 at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM) at the opposite end of that cycle. Naturally, you’ll need to decide just what this cycle is when you select this Trait, and then determine what the highest and lowest points of that cycle would be. This Merit must also be tied into your focus – intrinsically connected to the beliefs you hold and the practices you follow. Your choice of instruments is often tied to such cycles too; cycle-bound instruments include celestial alignments, crossroads and crossing-days, formulae and mathematics, group rites, money and wealth, music (peaks and lulls in a song, movements in a symphony, etc.), numbers and numerology, and offerings and sacrifices (“when the stars are right”). A stockbroker will be watching the peaks and ebbs on Wall Street, while a witch pays attention to the cycles of the moon or her blood. By observing your cycles, you’ll have a good idea about the best and worst times to use your Arts. And by observing you, your allies and enemies may be able to figure those things out too Ref: M20 BOS, 69
Deathwalker 4 The Underworld welcomes you. While most Umbral travelers are more or less barred from the Shadowlands and Low Umbra unless they possess special magicks (or have died), you can step sideways into the Dead Lands with a simple application of Spirit 3. When you do so, your aura assumes the pale tone of death, and you become essentially indistinguish able from a ghost unless some knowledgeable entity makes a successful Perception + Occult roll (difficulty 7) to see you for what you really are. If the Avatar Storm is still raging in your chronicle, you can pass into the Low Umbra without suffering the Storm’s effects.
This sort of “gift” often leaves macabre traces on the mortals it favors. Hence, this Merit is well-suited for the Flaws: Echoes, Uncanny, and Primal Marks. Thanks to their innate ties to the Dead Lands, Deathwalkers, as a rule, view the Otherworlds through the Vidare Mortem, suffer from Morbidity Quiets, and tend to have a rather fatalistic view of life. Ref: M20 BOS, 74
Dual Affiliation 7 You’ve been initiated and trained in two different Awakened groups. Perhaps you were a Verbena who gravitated toward the Virtual Adepts, or a Man in Black who sought refuge among the Templars. Whatever your history and affiliations might be, you’re intimately familiar with both groups, have connections (not nec essarily friends) in both groups, and may use and understand the practices, tools and beliefs (in short, the focus) of either group. Ref: M20 BOS, 80
Scientific Mystic/Techgnosi 3 Scientific Mystic lets a technomancer (Son of Ether, Virtual Adept, a tech-based Orphan or even a rouge Technocrat) - study metaphysical principles from mystic-paradigm mages for no extra cost if that technomancer has the focus Wierd Science (Mage 20, pg 584). That technomancer can also choose traditionally "mystic" tools as up to half of their required instruments.
Techgnosi allows the same in reverse for a mystic mage. They can use technology for up to half of their required foci.
Ref: M20 BOS, pg 45
Shamanic Authority *** **TBR** ref: Spirit Ways, The 104
Shattered Avatar 5 Your Avatar has been broken into pieces by some past-life trauma. As a result, the part within you is incomplete… but that situation can be rectified. If and when you locate the missing pieces of your Avatar, you could make that inner spirit stronger. In gamespeak, this Merit allows you to increase your Avatar Background after character creation – a thing that cannot, ordinarily, be done.
HOUSE RULE: We have a system to increasing Avatar rating post-chargen. Taking this merit means you can start raising Avatar rating immediately after chargen rather than waiting till you hit Arete 5.
As with Twin Souls, above, this Merit provides plenty of dramatic story hooks. The missing pieces of your Avatar might be incarnated in other people; trapped in spiritual prisons (Paradox Realms, demonic hells, soul snares, enchanted gems, and so forth); embedded in a tree in a garden that’s warded by five dragons, and so on. The quest for your soul-fragments can be an epic part of your chronicle, with puzzles, twists, reversals, betrayals, and battles for which your soul is literally the prize.
This sort of thing might be hard to reconcile with your beliefs if, for example, you happen to be a Technocrat. Still, until you unite the missing bits of your Avatar, there’ll be an essential part of you that feels incomplete.
The Storyteller should determine exactly what it was that shattered your Avatar, and what you need to do in order to reunite the various bits into one spirit again. Whether or not she shares that information with you is up to her – it might be something you’ll discover over the course of the game. With each piece restored, you add one dot to your Avatar Background rating, unless that Avatar was embodied in another mage; in that case, his Avatar rating gets added to your own if you manage to kill him… and if he kills you first, then your Avatar gets added to his own. (There can, apparently, be only one.)
No matter how many pieces are involved, however, the Avatar Background maxes out at 5 dots. Although this Merit allows you to raise your Trait’s rating, it does not allow you to raise it above that level. Ref: M20 BOS, 77
Sphere Natural 6 For a single element of magick – the Sphere of your choice – you enjoy an innate proficiency. The powers of that Sphere come to you more easily than usual, and you advance faster in that field of knowledge than you do in other Spheres. System-wise, you pay 70% of the usual experience cost, rounded up, when advancing in that Sphere. Naturally, such advancement costs even less when you’re raising your Affinity Sphere.
Rank Cost /Affinity Sphere Cost
New Sphere: 7 pts.
2 6 /5 pts.
3 11 /10 pts.
4 17 /15 pts.
5 23 /20 pts.
The Mage 20 version of this Merit costs more than the ver sion presented in previous editions because the cost of improving Spheres with experience has gone down, and so the benefits involved in this Merit have gone up. You may select this Merit only once, for a single Sphere, and that Sphere should have some intrinsic connection to your mage’s concept, backstory, and magickal focus. This is, after all, an Art that comes naturally to you, and so that predisposition should come through in many different aspects of your character’s personality. Ref: M20 BOS, 79
Twin Souls 3 To you, the term soulmate is literally true. Your Avatar has a twin that has been embodied within another mortal body. That other person (typically a human being, but potentially an animal) shares your Nature and Essence, and possibly your Demeanor as well. Even so, your “twin” can be a very different person – different gender, different ethnicity, different culture, and again possibly even a “higher” animal like a wolf, bear, hawk, bison, and so forth. That person might live on the other side of the world, and may not even know that you exist. If soul-twins meet in person, though, both feel an unmistakable connection to one another. This connection, however, might not necessarily translate to goodwill. Blood-siblings often clash, and soulmates can clash as well.
If that twin is also a mage (many twin Avatars are not yet Awakened), then both mages have the same Avatar rating. You can both share Quintessence and cast spells together if you happen to be physically touching (or, in the Umbra, ephemerally touching). In this case, the character with the highest Arete rating and Sphere Ranks is the one whose Traits get used to cast those Effects. Both mages, when they’re within arm’s reach, also get an amount of bonus Quintessence points that’s equal to their Avatar rating; if Ryan Summers and his twin Sylvia Jane have three dots in Avatar, they each get an additional three points of Quintessence when they’re close enough to touch one another.Shared souls, however, also share equally in any Paradox gathered by their magicks, with each twin separately getting the full amount of Paradox. If Ryan and Sylvia cast an Effect that earns 10 points of Paradox, then both Ryan and Sylvia get 10 Paradox points each.
Whether or not your twin is a mage, you can use magick to keep track of them once you’ve met your twin. A single dot of Correspondence will let you know where your soulmate is, a single dot in Life will let you know their current state of health, and a single dot in Mind allows you to share thoughts with one another. A twin’s death, however, is a shattering event; if your twin dies, you must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 8) or else suffer the psychic shock of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Until that twin’s Avatar reincarnates (which might not happen in your own lifetime), and is met in person once again, you cannot use the shared powers you had once enjoyed. Ref: M20 BOS, 74
Umbral Affinity 4 Game-wise, your character suffers no ill effects from first- and second-degree Acclimation (see M20th Core - Chapter Nine, pp.482-483), and all other stages affect her at one stage less than usual. Beyond that, the character does not need to worry about Disembodiment until six full moon-cycles (roughly six months) have passed. In general, the character feels at home in most strange Umbral Realms, and she might be recognized as a natural traveler who has an innate right to be there. M20th Ann, 644

Mage Specific Flaws

Merit Cost Description
Anachronism 1 - 3 Time has passed you by… or maybe it simply hasn’t caught up with you yet. Your beliefs, personality, mannerisms, fashion, and expectations are radically out of step with your surroundings. This could be a deliberate affection on your part (“The Old Days were better than today” /“Why wait for the future to arrive when you can become the future?”), a Time Sphere-related temporal hiccup or Paradox Flaw, the result of paranormal longevity or back-tracking time travel, the manifestation of an especially assertive past (or future) life… hell, even you might not know quite why you’re like this, but you are, and the rest of the world can’t help but notice.
The value of this Flaw depends upon the amount of trouble you get into as a result of your anachronisms:
• (1 point) You seem a little weird, and potentially offen-sive (“Why are they not sitting in the back of the bus? Aren’t there laws about that sort of thing?”), displaying quirks from a recognizably different past or future that isn’t radically behind or ahead of the current age. Add +1 to the difficulty of understanding current technology and modes of behavior.
• (2 points) You’re a relic of a distinctly earlier age, or the harbinger of a seriously advanced one. The things you say, wear, expect, and believe are disturbingly out of touch with your surroundings, and can present significant problems… especially if and when you hold forth on silly little things like politics, social mores, sexuality, and the law. Current technology puzzles you, either because it’s inexplicably advanced or staggeringly primitive. Add +2 to the difficulty of all efforts to understand your current era, including social rolls based upon getting along with people in this age.
• (3 points) You hail from a time so distant that the current era seems as alien to you as you seem to people of this era. Hell, you might not even speak English (a common trait of folks who existed before the expansion of British and American influence in the 1800s), or speak your language with an accent and idioms that essentially turn it into another language entirely (think Shakespeare, or Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange). Your expectations regarding technology and social mores are wildly divergent, and you could easily get yourself into serious trouble. Add +3 to the appropriate rolls, and you may be unable to process certain things (driving, politics, current computer tech, etc.) at all.
Assuming you have a chance to acclimate to your surround-ings, this Flaw can be bought down with experience points. Until that time, your companions will have a lot of explaining to do on your behalf! Ref: M20 BOS, 81
Apprentice 1 - 5 Most metaphysical societies, the Technocracy included, employ a mentor /apprentice system. When you mentor an apprentice, you’re responsible for someone (whatever his formal title might be) who makes your life difficult. You can’t just kick this person to the curb, but must instead provide discipline, guidance, training, and quite often a support system (room, board, research space, and so forth) so that the newbie can become a successful member of your sect. An apprentice, however, is not a houseplant; even the most cooperative apprentices demand time and attention, and their deeds – good and otherwise – reflect upon your own social status. The more troublesome ones, by extension, can drive a mentor toward curmudgeonly solitude. As a Flaw, this Trait reflects the range of potential appretices and the effect they have upon your life:
• (1 point) A cooperative and dedicated ideal student who takes up very little of your space and time, reflects well upon you, and seems eager to learn from you while being reluctant to argue very much.
• (2 points) A typical student who needs a fair amount of hand-holding; makes occasional mistakes of protocol and discipline; and takes up a fair amount of time, space and patience. Even so, this person remains attentive and more or less respectful, providing plenty of reasons for you to be proud of him.
• (3 points) A rather clueless student whose presence consumes a significant amount of time and attention. This apprentice can be clumsy, obnoxious, thick-witted, and occasionally problematic in social situations and training exercises. He’s got promise, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get him to realize his potential.
• (4 points) A seriously challenging student whose behav-ior and dedication leave a great deal to be desired. This apprentice may have talent, but the burdens begin to outweigh the potential benefits of his instruction.
• (5 points) An obstinate, haughty, disrespectful ass whose presence is more trouble than it’s worth. Dangerous to himself and everyone around him (yourself included), he’s a disgrace to the society you share. Why are you training this person, again? There might be a light at the end of the tunnel someday, but it’s gonna take a lot of work and sacrifice before this apprentice amounts to anything more than a waste of your time. Read More ->Ref: M20 BOS, 81
Bard's Tongue, The
**Restricted** 		1 A curse has rendered you unable to lie. It may even compel you to speak the truth when you struggle to remain silent. Worse still, you tend to say things that later turn out to be true even if you hadn’t known anything about them at the time. (“Don’t try and score food from that guy over there – he’s got a gun and is having a really bad day.”) You often get a certain “look” when the urge to speak truth comes up, and folks who know you have begun to recognize the signs of a forthcoming “honesty blast” before you even open your mouth.
Life and Mage chronicles are both filled with times when it’s best to keep a lid on the truth. And so, in order to avoid saying speaking the proverbial inconvenient truth (or worse), you need to spend a Willpower point to keep your mouth shut about it. Repressing that truth may also cost you one health level in bashing damage if the truth you’re clamping down on is one of those “things that really must be said” which isn’t a smart thing to say under the circumstances. (“Yeah, Agent Courage, everybody knows you work every angle with every group – that’s not exactly a ‘secret,’ now is it?”) Ref: M20 BOS, 82
Beast Within 5 *restricted* You’ve got a truly infernal temper: one so violent it feels like a volcano in your soul. As with a werewolf or vampire, you’re subject to the dreaded frenzy that turns you into an engine of hot rage. Under intense stress, you risk losing every shred of enlightenment you possess. Driven to such extremity, you let loose with the most immediately destructive powers at your command, and “vulgarity” be damned! Everyone in your vicinity becomes a target, and the consequences matter to you only when this inner storm has passed.
System-wise, this Flaw sends you into deadly rages as per the Berserker /Stress Atavism Trait featured in Mage 20, p. 644. Instead of rolling your Willpower to avoid the frenzy, however, you roll your Avatar rating plus one die, with your Willpower as the difficulty of that roll. If, as an example, young Vyper Trabia suffers from the Beast Within Flaw, with an Avatar of 4 and a Willpower of 5, Vyper’s player rolls five dice against a difficulty of 5 when that Akashic hothead is under ferocious stress. A failure on that roll sends Vyper into a berserk rage. Yeah, this probably happens pretty often. Vyper’s friends don’t stick around for long when things go poorly.
(If you employ the optional Resonance Trait, you could substitute your highest Resonance, plus one die, as the dice pool for your rage. The roll’s difficulty is still your Willpower Trait, and your Resonance plus that extra die should at least equal, if not exceed, your Avatar Trait. In this case, the Resonance in question must be something capriciously unstable – Wild, Primal, Ferocious, and so forth – instead of calm and centered energy.
Considering that the Avatar could be seen as your inner Beast, a character with the Pattern Essence cannot take this Flaw. It’s best suited for Dynamic Essences, although a Questing or Primordial Avatar could attain frightening rages too. A berserk mage cannot employ rituals or employ complicated tools; only the most direct methods of attack – magickal or otherwise – will do. Although mages rarely suffer from such grotesque lapses of self-control, an Awakened Ghoul (as in that Merit), a cyborg, a Victor, a Shapechanger Kin (again, as per the Merit), or an animalistic shape-changer could possess such inhuman monstrousness.
Blood Magick 5 Your Arts demand blood… specifically, your own blood. And while many practices employ small amounts of ritual cutting or bloodletting, this degree of sacrifice demands an injurious amount of vital fluid each time you cast a spell.
With this Flaw (mislabeled as a Merit in the sourcebook Sorcerer, Revised Edition), you must suffer one unsoakable health level in bashing damage whenever you employ an Effect. Story-wise, you cut yourself, slash designs in your skin, or otherwise hurt yourself enough to shed the required amount of blood. This sort of thing can, of course, add up quickly if you’re throwing lots of magick around without giving yourself a chance to heal, as bashing damage soon leads to lethal damage. Meanwhile, your bloodletting looks pretty gross and obvious (often vulgarly so), and tends to make a mess as well. Your companions might appreciate the results of your magick, but may well object to the methods you employ… especially since blood magick has a rather unsavory rep among all but the most primal of practices. Ref: M20 BOS, 92
Bound 5 Mentor always told you not to make bargains with strange entities. But did you listen? Nope. Now you’re in deep to someone whose power dwarfs your own, and your prospects for getting out of bondage are laughable at best. Haunted by thoughts of the payment to come, you live on borrowed time and realize that the worst is yet to come…
Sometimes known, with minor variations, as Faust’s Bargain, Bound puts your character in the Faust-like position of getting something interesting in return for something sig-nificant – her life, her soul, a thousand years of servitude, or a similarly awful fate that no one in their right mind would want to risk. Still, occultists are infamous for short-term thinking, and literal devil’s deals are common currency in the magickal world. The specifics of that deal are for you and your Storyteller to arrange.
Like the Flaw: Dark Fate, this debt throws a fore-boding air over your character’s part of the chronicle. In this case, though, your doom may be averted if you can wrangle a way out of this pact. In the meantime, your creditor will call in occasional favors – nothing large enough to pay off the debt (unless that entity needs a significant service and agrees to write off the larger obligation), but deeds that can spark new stories or complicate existing ones. Despite tradition, this debt doesn’t have to be a soul-pact owed to a devil – a promise to your god(s) or their immediate emissaries can be just as terrible as one owed to Old Scratch! Ref: M20 BOS,92
Branded 3 - 5 You’ve been found guilty by a Traditions Tribunal, who Branded your Avatar with a sigil that indicates your crime. Folks who can see that sigil recognize that you’re a criminal of some sort, and the worse the Brand, the more severe your crime and the more appropriate their reaction will be. Those reactions won’t always be negative; considering the sort of people who’d be favorably inclined toward a known criminal, though, do you really want the goodwill of such people?
• (3 points) A temporary Brand for a Low Crime, which fades after one to three months. At the end of that period, this Flaw goes away. This Brand raises the difficulty of your social rolls by +1 for “average” Tradition mages and +2 for especially law-biding ones.
• (4 points) A lasting Brand for a Low Crime. This Brand lasts for a year or more, and marks you as a rather notorious offender. The difficulty of your social rolls rises by +2 among most mages who can recognize the Brand’s significance, and +3 among mages who take such offenses and punishments seriously.
• (5 points) A lasting Brand for a High Crime, which will not fade for at least nine years and may be essentially permanent. The Brand raises the difficulty of your social rolls by +3 for any character who cares at all about Tradition justice and the people who incur its punishment. Certain parties will target you for additional punishment, and others will consider you to be prime meat for their recruiting efforts.
For details about Tradition crimes and punishments, see Chapter Four’s entries regarding Crimes and Punishments in the section Among the Traditions, pp. 213-219 (M20th). Ref: M20 BOS, 89
Casts No Shadow / Reflection 1 - 2 According to certain legends, witches cast no shadow. And while that isn’t true of most mages, it’s somehow true for you. Maybe you suffer from a lingering Paradox Flaw, manifest your own cultural fears, or made a bargain that cost you your shadow or reflection. In any case, your shadow and /or reflection are absent from your presence. For one point, you’re missing one of those things, for two points you lack them both, and although most folks won’t notice this consciously, they do tend to feel uneasy in your presence even if they’re not sure why. (Techno-logical machines record this phenomenon, too.) Add +1 to the difficulty of all your Social-Trait rolls under most circumstances, and +2 to the difficulty if a witness makes a perception-based roll (difficulty 7) and figures out why you seem so weird.Ref: M20 BOS, 82
Crucial Component 2 - 5 Your metaphysical practice demands specialized instru-ments. It’s not simply that you need fuel for your hypermodded Porsche 911 Turbo S – you need your own specially prepared blend of fuels, or the car won’t go. A simple rowan wand will not suffice – your spells demand a hand-carved branch cut from an unscarred rowan tree at high midnight on Samhain Eve. In game terms, at least one of the instruments in your magickal focus must be specifically created, harvested or modified to work with your magicks. No lesser tool will suffice.
How hard is it to procure or employ this specialized com-ponent? That depends on the value of the Flaw:
• (2 points) Easy to procure and /or employ (sunlight, yoga postures, motor oil, strong emotions, a book 88 The Book of Secretscommonly found in the New Age section at your local bookstore, etc.).
• (3 points) Challenging to procure, employ, or replace (open flames, the Kurmasana posture, professional racing oil, genuine sorrow, an out-of-print occult text, and so on).
• (4 points) Pretty damned hard to obtain, employ, and replace (liquid fire, the Vrschikasana pose, alchemically formulated oil, deep-core grief, a genuine Roman text of De Daemonum Socrates by Apuleius, and other rare and precious instruments).
• (5 points) Unique, obscure, forbidden, cumbersome, or some combination of those four (a bottle of alchemically distilled sunfire, an impossibly complex yoga posture invented by the practitioner, personally formulated and distilled hypertech lubricating oil, the heartfelt scream of a grieving mother, a woodcut-illustrated Renaissance Grimoire of Honorius inscribed on flayed human skin, and similarly rarified instruments).
When used, the chosen instrument functions as a Personalized Instrument (M20 Ann, pp. 503 and 587) – possibly a Unique Personalized one in the case of a five-point component. Ref: M20 BOS, 87
Cursed 1 - 5 Ref: M20 Ann, 646
Demented Eidolon 3 *Techno and Technomancers only* There’s someone in your head, and it’s not you. Despite your commitment to logic and reason, a mad heretic rants through the inside of your skull, insisting that what you do is magick, not science. This rough voice drives you toward Su-perstitionism and Reality Deviance. Not that you would ever consider such insanity. No, really – seriously, never.
A Flaw for Technocratic operatives and other techno-mancers who refuse to view what they do as “magic,” this Trait pits your conscious-self against an Avatar hell-bent on reclaiming the identity of mage. The Eidolon (Technocrat-ese for Essence) invested within your Genius (Avatar) whips that paragon of Enlightenment into Deviant directions. While most Technocratic Geniuses behave themselves for the most part, this one assumes a flagrantly supernatural mien and batters at the fortress of Reason (and Social Processing) that protects you from Deviant thoughts. It may even be entertaining to have a different player assume the role of your Genius, especially during a Seek… I mean, during one of those meditative interludes which allow you to process the enigmas of Enlightenment. Ideally, this Flaw compliments a Genius (Avatar) Trait rated at 3 or higher, and it goes well (from a “dramatic roleplaying” standpoint, anyway!) with Backgrounds like Past Lives, Destiny, and Legend, Merits like Twin Soul and Avatar Companion, and Flaws like Throwback, and – as one may imagine – Dark Fate. Ref: M20 BOS, 89
Devil's Mark 1 A pact or some other metaphysical occurrence has left you with what old-school witch-hunters consider a “devil’s mark”: a minor but noticeable deformation that remains insensate to pain and yet allows a creature to draw your Quintessence out through your body in physical form. Despite preconceptions, the origins of this mark might not have come from a pact with some infernal entity. That fact doesn’t keep people – Sleepers and otherwise – from looking askance at you if and when this mark can be seen, especially since there’s often something disconcerting about the way it appears – a third nipple, a red or black growth, a vaguely demonic face or sigil embedded in your flesh, and so forth.
Thankfully, you don’t have to worry too much about witch-hunters in the technologically industrialized world. (Other regions are a different story; even rural areas of so-called advanced nations still hold people who will harm or kill someone who’s “different.”) The mark’s disconcerting appearance, though, may lead you to cover it up anyway. Folks who do believe old-fashioned ideas about “witches” will not take kindly to that devilish brand, so it could become a real problem under the wrong circumstances. On the plus side, however, you actually can nurture a Familiar (as in the Background Trait of that name) on the mark, and do so without physical discomfort. Of course, the idea of a talking, midnight-blue winged tarantula taking hits of Quintessence off your body may be uncomfortable in its own right. Ref: M20 BOS, 83
Echoes 1 - 5 REf: M20 Ann, 646-647
Faithless 5 Magick, according to your beliefs, does not come from you – it comes from your god, and you’ve broken faith with him. Until you can shake this crisis of faith, perhaps atoning for your perceived misdeeds, your Spheres remain stuck at Rank 1 – potent enough to perceive the presence of Divinity around you, limited enough to remind you that you have failed.
This Flaw (which is more likely to be “awarded” to you through the course of the game than it is to be something you purchased during character creation, though of course you can start off a new character in such a crisis) represents the power of faith in your character’s life – a power so strong that it can interfere with your abilities as a mage. Ironically, the strength of that faith denies you the ability to use magick when you feel that your faith is lacking. From a game-system standpoint, you are denying yourself the ability to access your magick because you believe that your magick comes from a source you have betrayed. Your mage believes that his god is cutting him off from magick, though… and, considering that the player is pretty much the “god” of a gaming character, in a meta sort of way, that’s true.
Although a character with this Flaw can pursue any sort of spiritual focus, his paradigm and practice must be oriented toward religious devotion. You could be a shaman or a priest, a Goddess-bound witch, a spiritual scientist, even an Infernalist whose hell-spawned powers flow from a damnation pact. Obviously, this Flaw means nothing to an atheist, or to someone with nebulously casual beliefs. Only a mage who believes deeply in some greater power can believe that she has so much to lose from a sudden lack of faith. In order to discard this Flaw, the player must pay a five-point “fine” in order to buy off the Trait itself, and roleplay out a “dark night of the soul” sort of Seeking in which he faces his sins and rededicates himself to his divine Path. The character, meanwhile, must first undergo an atonement that suits his belief system and the “sin” that invoked this punishment. Maybe he needs to take strict vows within a re-ligious order… or take on even stricter ones if he had already broken his previous set of vows. Did he violate a taboo? Then he must undergo ritual purification, often by way of fasting, marathons of prayer, and some traditionally torturous ordeals. A mage who has sworn never to kill, and yet who has killed someone, may be forced to make significant restitutions to the murdered person’s family. Traditional atonements in-clude pilgrimages, vision quests, oaths of poverty, appalling mortifications (self-torture, radical fasting, mutilation, and so forth), and other difficult paths back to the favor of one’s god. Regardless of the creed and specific atonements, however, the mage must spend endless hours in intensive prayer. A faithless soul, after all, must find his way back to the presence of his god… typically on his knees. Ref: M20 BOS, 93
Faulty Enhancements 2 - 5 Well, crap. The warranty on your cybernetic gear has expired (assuming, of course, that it ever had such assurances in the first place), and now you’re stuck with malfunctioning hardware that has literally gotten under your skin. Does your BCI keep crashing? Do your legs keep seizing up? Is your bioware constantly trying to eject your iron? Whatever the problem might be, this Flaw gets rated by the amount of misery it causes you:
• (2 points) You suffer constant disorientation and pain.
• (3 points) The malfunctions keep you in such severe discomfort that you need to take specialized medication,or employ other forms of pain relief, at least once a day. Failure to do so costs you one die from all dice pools until the problem is rectified.
• (4 points) Your Enhancements fail you at critical times (generally on a botched roll), crash or freeze up, and must then be repaired by a technician who understands the gear you’ve got.
• (5 points) That shitty gear consistently conks out when you need it most. Roll one die against difficulty 7 whenever you employ cybertech in some important way (lifting heavy things with bionic arms, sensor-scanning for enemies, deflecting incoming enemy spells, and so forth). If you succeed, then the Enhancements function normally; if you fail, they fail and must be rebooted; if you botch, they lock up or shut down until a skilled technician manages to repair them. Ref: M20 BOS, 88
Locked Vidare 1 Mages view the Otherworldly Penumbra through a meta-physical perspective called the Vidare. Most of them can alter that perspective by changing their point of view. Not you. For you, the Periphery remains “locked” into a single perspective: the glittering clarity of the Vidare Astral, the primal luminosity of the Vidare Spiritus, or the rotting deathscape of the Vidare Mortem. Essentially, your metaphysical perspective is frozen in place. This is literally the way you view the world around you, and that view never really changes. (For details about the Vidare and the impressions they present, see Mage 20 Ann, pp. 82, 89, 94-95, 98-99, and 474.)
In addition to shaping the way your Storyteller describes the Vidare to you, and guiding your reaction to what you perceive, this Flaw also influences your personality, your sense of fashion, your philosophical and metaphysical paradigms, your magickal focus, and so on. When you perceive things in a certain way, after all, that perspective tends to color most aspects of your life. Ref: M20 BOS, 85
Paranormal Prohibition 1 - 8 Also known as Geasa and Magical Prohibition or Imperative, this Flaw represents a thing you either must do, or are forbidden from doing, on pain of awful consequences. Generally, this imperative comes from an oath you swore, a curse that was inflicted upon you, or a legacy that follows your family lineage. Faerie grudges, infernal pacts, godly inheritances, ancient proph-ecies, Fortean quirks of physics… any one of them can inflict such a burden upon you. So long as you never cross that line, you should be okay – and may, in fact, possess some blessing (a Merit or Background Trait) that’s linked to this Flaw. Ah, but life has a way of pushing us to do things we don’t want to do, and that’s especially true in the case of people who have a curse or geas upon their heads!
The value of this Flaw is based on your chances of vio-lating the prohibition, and the consequences that occur if /when you do:
• (1 point) You break the prohibition only with an easily avoided circumstance (never kill a cat, go to London, or have sex with a married person), or find it easy to fulfill your imperative (you must shave all your hair off, walk outside every day, or wear blue clothing).
• (2 points) Your prohibition is easy to break (never tell a lie, leave your home town, or have sex with anyone), or your imperative is challenging to fulfill (you must always cover your head, walk at least three miles every day, or go barefoot at all times).
• (3 points) It’s very hard to not break your prohibition (never speak, have a home of your own, or fall in love or lust with anyone), or to honor your imperative (you must blindfold yourself every day even though you can see, walk everywhere you go, or remain naked at all times).
• (+1 point) Inconvenient consequences – you botch your next three rolls, suffer a migraine, develop a rash for several days, etc.
• (+2 points) Annoying consequences – you lose your voice for a day, lose a die from all your pools for a week due to constant pain, add +2 to all your social rolls with members of your faction until you can atone from breaking your oath, and so forth.
• (+3 points) Painful consequences – until you can atone, you go blind or mute, lose one dot from an Attribute, lose an Ally, Mentor, or Familiar, take the Flaw: Oathbreaker (below), or suffer a similarly awful fate.
• (+4 points) Crippling consequences – until you atone, your Avatar abandons you, you lose a total of three dots from various Attributes, you take the Flaws: Oathbreaker, Deranged or both, or else endure a related punishment.
• (+5 points) Fatal consequences – either you’re gonna die soon, you’ll be whisked off to an Otherworldly punishment Realm, or both. Atonement, if it’s even possible, will be very harsh, so do NOT break this oath or forsake this imperative!
This Flaw makes an excellent companion to numerous Backgrounds (Familiar, Legend, Past Life, Totem, Wonder, and potentially others at the Storyteller’s discretion) and Merits (pretty much anything, really, depending on how you define the source of that Merit). Although this does not reduce the cost of that Trait (despite the description of this Flaw in Mage Revised, which employed a complex and potentially abusive rule system that’s not found in other World of Darkness games),a Prohibition /Imperative can represent vows, obligations, and /or legacies associated with the beneficial Trait.
Your Prohibition /Imperative must be tied in with your character’s backstory, and probably has a connection to all three elements of her magickal focus (paradigm, practice, and instruments). The conditions must be something that could conceivably present an obstacle for your character (no prohibitions, for example, against having sex with Voormas, or imperatives to get out of bed in the morning), and your Story-teller will, of course, make a point of throwing said obstacles in your path at various points during the chronicle....
Although it’s rather unusual, a technomancer could have a metaphysical pact or prohibition too. She may, for instance, need to work on a Mac, employ only steamtech, or invent all of her own technology to avoid suffering some paranormal malaise. Thus, this Flaw is not always “mystical” in nature, even if the line separating mysticism from paranormal phenomena is more a matter of semantics than of metaphysical principles. Ref: M20 BOS, 83
Permanent Paradox Flaw 2/4/6 Following a nasty brush with Paradox, you’re got a Flaw that just won’t go away. System-wise, select a trivial (two points), minor (four points), or significant (six points) Paradox Flaw as described on Mage 20, p. 551. That Flaw is now part of your character’s life until you buy off this Flaw, preferably with ex-perience earned through some extraordinary adventure that’s related to the Paradox Flaw in question and the mishap that created that Flaw in the first place. REf: M20 BOS, 89
Primal Marks 3 You’ve been marked by some god, spirit, myth, or other metaphysical entity… and the mark is not a pleasant one. Maybe you share Papa Ghede’s nasal voice and crude sense of humor, or Coyote’s grotesquely huge cock, or Christ’s bleeding stigmata. Essentially, this Flaw is the flipside of the Merit: Mark of Favor; in your case, though, the mark complicates your life, twists your body, and alerts people who understand the significance of that mark. In certain circles – say, being marked by Satan while living in a deeply religious region – a Primal Mark can be a life-threatening affair. Such marks can also indicate the profound displeasure of the entity in question, like the Mark of Cain (in a non-vampiric sense, anyway) which set the First Murderer apart while sparing his life for a long-enduring punishment. But even if the entity in question likes you, this particular mark is more of a burden than a blessing. Ref: M20 BOS, 90
Prone to Quiet 4 - 5 **BANNED** This flaw is banned because it has all too often been used as cover for player inactivity and thus avoiding any consequences the flaw implies. This flaw may be applied by staff if a story warrants it. In an effort to avert the inevitable stresses of Awakened life, you tend to drop into metaphysical Quiets (as per Mage 20, pp. 554-561) more easily than most other mages do. The easier you fall into them, the more this Flaw is worth:
• (4 points) Quiet is your default Paradox backlash, and so a backlash of five points or more automatically sends you into Quiet.
• (5 points) Quiet is your default backlash, and you can fall into it even without a Paradox discharge. Roll your Intelligence + Enigmas dice pool when you’re faced with an unusually stressful situation; if you succeed, then you’re able to puzzle your way out of the fall – and if not, well, then, welcome back to Quietville… (The roll’s difficulty ranges from 6 to 10, depending upon the severity of the stress and whether or not you’ve dealt with this particular kind of stress before.)
Although it’s most often noticed in Virtual Adepts and other Netizens, who tend to set off into the Digital Web in order to escape physical unpleasantness, any mage can suffer from this Flaw. Ref: M20 BOS, 91
Sphere Inept 6 A particular element of Reality eludes you. No matter how devoted you might be to mastering its complexities, this field of magick remains a challenge. Essentially, this is the reverse of the Merit: Sphere Natural, described above; one Sphere costs 130% more (rounded up) to learn than the other Spheres cost.
RankCost /Affinity Sphere Cost
New Sphere 13 pts
2 11 /9 pts.
3 21 /19 pts.
4 32 /28 pts.
5 42 /37 pts.
Again, this Flaw can apply to only one Sphere (fortunately!), and comes through in your practice and backstory. Someone who’s inept at understanding, say, Time will have a very wonky relationship with schedules and timing. "Ref: M20 BOS, 94
Strangeness 1 Your metaphysical prowess occasionally warps reality in your presence, even when you don’t want it to do so. Weird stuff happens when you’re not expecting such phenomena, and those quirks of strangeness seem to be rooted in the sort of magick you pursue. A specialist in Entropy could suffer twists of probability and decay; a Life-attuned healer discovers odd growths and mutations in the life-forms around him, while a Forces-gifted mage bends the physics in his general vicinity. These phenomena ebb and flow without your guidance or control. Perversely, the more skilled you become in magick, the stronger these tides of weirdness become. System-wise, the Storyteller determines, once or twice per game session, to roll your Arete against difficulty 6. If the roll succeeds, the Storyteller throws in some random occurrence that’s based on a Sphere you possess – most often, on your Affinity Sphere. Grass could grow suddenly, mirrors could crack, psychic impressions could inform you of the sexual habits of the person standing next to you in the elevator – that sort of thing. If the roll fails, then nothing unusual occurs. If the roll botches, however, then a Paradox backlash expels one point of Paradox in your current pool for each dot you have in your Affinity Sphere; or all of your current Paradox, if you have fewer points than that in your Paradox pool. Ref: M20 BOS, 85
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