Creating Magical Effects
STEPS
When you decide to work magic (or whatever your mage calls it), you need to go through a simple process to determine the results. Follow these steps:
Determine the Effect
Figure out what you want to do, whether it’s hurling a ball of flame, causing people around you to fail to notice your presence or making dice fall as you dictate.
Decide Upon Your Method
Each mage’s paradigm- his means of looking at magic-influences the casting of an Effect. If you’re a Hermetic mage, you probably use Enochian chants, the names of powerful angels and spirits, geometric sigils or glyphs. If you’re a Virtual Adept, you might reprogram a computer to project energy or re-code the surrounding universe itself. Figure out how your mage justifies the Effect in order to determine what focus and what Ability you use with the spell. Mages don’t just crank out spells. They work, chant, pray and invoke to make the magic happen.
Check Your Knowledge
Do you know how to accomplish what you want to do? Look at your character’s Spheres and determine what knowledge will help complete the feat. If you have the appropriate rote, you’re fine. If not, you may not be able to work the Effect. If you use the optional rule for fast-casting, you can try to cast the rote even if you don’t know it. If you use the optional rule for dynamic magic, you can try to build an Effect that does what you want, even if there is no rote for it. However, if you don’t have the necessary Sphere requirements, you can’t perform the magic. The base assumption is that you cannot perform a given spell unless your Spheres and rotes explicitly list the ability to do so.
== Calculate Difficulty == The base difficulty for a magical Effect is the Effect’s Sphere level in Traits if it’s coincidental, plus one if it’s vulgar, plus another one if it happens in view of Sleepers who wouldn’t believe that it’s possible. Add modifiers based on the circumstances,as shown in the following chart.
Perform the Effect
You cast the Effect by making a Static Challenge. Generally, no Narrator is required as long as your Effect conforms to the rules presented here. You simply make the challenge against anyone handy. (Just be sure to tell the other person what you’re doing so that she doesn’t get the wrong idea.) If you win the challenge, your Effect succeeds. Work out the result as described for your rote or Sphere and continue. If you lose, your Effect fails. If you tie, you must check your Arete Traits against the Effect’s static difficulty, which you computed before. You win if you have more Traits or equal Traits. Note that if you lose the test, you can retest with an appropriate Ability for your focus (see the list of foci and Abilities on p. 178, which you picked when you decided upon your method. Also, you can over bid with your Arete if you have twice as many Arete Traits as the Effect’s Trait difficulty. However, your opponent can overbid if the reverse is true.
Wound modifiers do not affect your Static Arete Challenge. Therefore, you do not come into the challenge Traits down or lose on ties automatically simply for being wounded. However, you cannot perform an Effect if you are unconscious and have not somehow maintained your thinking process magically.
Suffer Paradox
Once you’ve finished the Effect, you will take Paradox. Typically, Paradox causes a small amount of damage, but the Paradox Judge may decide upon another Effect as well. See the section on Paradox later in this chapter.
MODIFIERS
| Cause, Status, or Trait | Modifier |
|---|---|
| Already Maintainang An Effect | +1 per two Effects Maintained |
| Spending Quintessence | -1 per Quintessence Trait Spent (Max -3, limited by Spending) |
| Domino Effect | +1 per Effect (Max +3) |
| Opposed Resonance Trait | +1 |
| Assisting Resonance Trait | -1 |
| Using specialty focus | -1 |
| Using non-required focus | -1 |
| Spending Extra Time | -1 |
| In or near a Node | -1 |
| Surpassing a necessary focus | +3 |
| Cause, Status, or Trait | Modifier |
|---|---|
| Conjuctional Effect | +1 per additional Sphere beyond the highest (Conjuctional Rule) |
| Fast-casting | +1 (Fast-casting rule) |
| Distracted | +1 |
| In conflict with Avatar | +1 |
| Possess item with the subject's Resonance | -1 |
PERMUTATIONS
Magic isn’t as simple as all that, of course. Besides the basic Arete Challenge and the modifiers, you can influence your outcome in a couple of ways and incur a couple of potential difficulties.
Abilities Enhancing Magic
When you roleplay a focus properly, you can claim its benefits to your character. For instance, if you actually take the time to speak some mystical words, flourish your hands and grasp your mystic amulet, you may well represent your mage’s use of Linguistics: Emhian, and you’re certainly putting that knowledge to work.
If you spend a full turn on the roleplaying of your focus before you cast an Effect, that focus’ Ability helps with the result. The list of sample foci gives some ideas for appropriate Abilities for each focus. When you meet this requirement, you can use that Ability for one retest on the Arete Challenge as long as you have any levels left.
Using Quintessence
As noted on the difficulty chart, using Quintessence allows you to make difficult Effects much easier. Each Trait of Quintessence that you channel, up to a maximum of your Avatar rating, lowers the difficulty of the Effect by one Trait. At best, you can have a net difficulty of three Traits lower than the base difficulty, to a minimum difficulty of two Traits.
Spending Extra Time
Should you choose to spend extra time, you can help to guarantee success in casting Effects. Taking a full extra turn to cast gives you a + 1 Trait modifier on the resolution of the Arete Test. You can stack this modifier with the use of a focus Ability. Therefore, if you take three turns total (one turn for extra time, one turn for the focus, one for the base Effect), you can cast with a +1Trait bonus and an Ability retest.
Interruptions
If you're interrupted while casting an Effect - say, you're wounded while you're working your focus - you have two choices. You can either cast the Effect immediately and lose any bonuses from the extended casting, or you can take the penalty for being distracted and continue. Therefore, if you are trying to gain the 1 Ability bonus and casting an Effect, but you are wounded later in the same turn, you can decide to release the Effect without penalty but without gaining the retest. Similarly, you could continue to cast the Effect and gain a bonus for taking extra time, which would cancel the distraction penalty.
Countermagic
Sometimes you just can't let the enemy get the drop on you, and you have to find a way to fight or cancel his spell. That's where countermagic comes in. A mage works countermagic by using his own powers to cancel or wash out his enemy's Effect. Doing so counts as your action for the turn, so you can't do it if you've already acted. The three basic types of countermagic are sphere countermagic, anti-magic and unweaving.
Sphere Countermagic
This occurs when you have the Spheres necessary to know what the opponent is doing. You pit your Arete against the enemy's. In such a case, you make an Arete Test, at the same difficulty as the opponent (although you take your modifiers for distractions and Resonance into effect). If you win, the spell is canceled. If you have Apprentice-level (or better) Prime and your Arete is higher than the opponent's, the Effect can be reflected back upon him, so he might be hit by his own fire bolt or wounding spell.
Anti-Magic
This uses Quintessence to strengthen the Patterns of reality against an Effect. You spend Quintessence to raise the difficulty of the opponent’s Effect. You can spend Quintessence up to the limit of your Avatar Background, as usual.
Unweaving
This tries to tear apart a n existing spell. You make a challenge against the difficulty of the original spell (although your difficulty might still be modified by distractions or Resonance). You must have the Spheres necessary to have cast the Effect, and you must have at least the Apprentice-level Prime Sphere. If you win, the spell loses one grade of success. Unweaving can degrade the duration of a spell. If the spell has no grades of effect left (i.e., it’s down to a simple Effect),then an unweaving destroys it
