Please feel free to propose ideas. especially if they are simple ideas that everybody can agree on.

1) I do not like "One Quintessence per attack" when using the Light Sword Prime effect. I prefer it being one Quintessence per scene for enchanted melee weapons/bodies, per weapon. I am fine with one Quintessence per blast or so. Got better idea?

2)When it comes to conflicting Rotes and Rote sources and what Spheres do what, please consider M20 Core to be the official way things work unless I rule otherwise. All book conflicts bow to Core book, this includes "How Do You Do That?".

It is time I fulfill my promise of going through some houserules for the spheres. First I will address the optional technocratic sphere variants.

Dimensional Science: this is so close to spirit I do not mind the differences that it has, like different Gauntlet difficulty ratings for some Effects. This is pretty much technomagic Spirit, just a bit different. Fully accepted in my game, however most players will never learn it. it requires a full and solid background with the Technocracy or a thorough education on the theories of Dimensional Science from some rogue Technocrat (almost always a Void Engineer). In fact I am restricting knowledge of the Sphere higher than 2 dots to require some training and/or research from appropriate sources (this is broader than you may think. for example: though uncommon, by definition there would be spirits of Dimensional Science theory in the Astral Umbra).

Primal Utility: I have to admit I like some of the ideas presented with this variant sphere, but I don't want people having to worry about all the differences. So my jury rigged solution is to just incorporate a few of my favorite differences into the host sphere (Prime), but are only generally available to those of a proper Technocratic background (see above for examples).

Primal Utility: Exploit Primal Venture (Rank 1).

Data: Cool idea, but not really how i view everything working and coming together. It could potentially intrude on the domain of forces more than I am comfortable with. However I do encourage any technomancers to use this as inspiration to create effects to combine Correspondence and Forces. these can really mess with communication devices and information.

Here we shall address the optional rules presented in "How do You DO That?" book, and a few other topics. I am skimming the book right now for things that catch my eye. Please ask about specific situations here or in PMs.

1)A bit of Spirit? (page 16): No.

2) Yes some effects can be made permament, this will always requires lots of successes, and sometimes this will require Quintessence to be spent.

3) I do require the optional rules for Life effects on Fera to include Spirit as well (except basic healing of all damage types) if the effect directly alters the creature on a Pattern level. For example, this would not be required for a disease you created to infect a Fera, but would be to transform a Garou into a frog. Otherwise they can just change back quickly. I am requiring the Spirit to essentially help lock in the changes for a period of time.

4) Similarly, I am using the standby of needing Life and Matter to affect a true Cainite on a similar Pattern level. Some magic affecting purely Vitae (ie magical vampire blood) might skip this, but will likely require Prime. I will try to be lenient on this, but Cainites are notoriously static in a number of ways. Rules 3 and 4 supersede anything in the books about requiring spheres to materially affect Vampires and Fera when appropriate.

5) Any results of excessive shapechanging and gender switching on the psyche for PC's only is a pure reflection of roleplaying and a willingness to accept new flaws and/or buy merits. I reserve the right to judge how this affects NPCs based on the nature of the effect and mentality of the NPC at the time. Suggestions are always welcome.

6) Permanent Modifications, page 22 suggests paying one half the xp to get better Attributes. I am completely replacing this rule with something I forget the source of. When you permanently raise any attribute via pure magic, this is fine and logical by how the magic works. However you still need to pay it off with experience, but you also continue to grow past this. So one half of all experience you earn after the magic is done goes towards paying off your new experience debt, until the effect is fully paid for. You are also welcome to channel more of the exp into the debt if you want to, but at least half must go towards it. This applies equally to physical, social and mental attributes.

7) Anywhere in the book that says something like "to control with psychic power, add Mind X." or whatever is silly and utterly redundant. Your casting these effects via Arete, Spheres and Paradigm and Foci is inherently psychic anyway. Your will goes into the spell no matter how you look at it. ignore all of these suggestions or requirements.

8) Dude, Do You Even Know What You're Doing? page 28 is a collection of suggestions and guidelines, not hardrules. I will enforce or ignore this at my whim.

9) Locked Quirks of Physics page 31 is not required most of the time. If you want to alter the gravity of an object or person while they run off to parts unknown and still have the affect stick, then all you need is the spheres for the basic effect.

10) Corresponding with stuff like number 8 above, requiring basic skills and knowledge to even do certain effects you have the spheres for is not always required. this is very often a judgement call for me. Player input is definitely respected here. However, it is always helpful to have the skills for it anyways, since you can roll the skill to help you with the casting of the effect. In fact, your skills might provide new ways to use spheres not previously considered if we can find them.

11) Under Conjuring Sunlight on pages 32 and 33, it mentions stuff about a Storyteller option allowing a scientific approach to produce real sunlight. and a method for a spiritual mage via Spirit 5. I am allowing both groups to use both effects, as always, paradigm applies.

12) The entire Psychic and Spiritual Elementalism section page 35-37 is essentially bunk. The flavor is already built in to existing effects. your mental energy to create things is essentially prime at work, sometimes spirit in odd examples. Forces is enough to manipulate the path of flames. etc

13) Summoning Elemental Entities page 36 is a suggestion and a way to make it easier, but not required.

14) Harvesting Quintessence Through Sacrifice page 49 works. However usually best reserved for true emergencies.

15) Many very simple effects that are very basic and/or well below the power you command (ie much lower abilities than your sphere rank) often don't require a roll or a complicated roll unless it is dramatically appropriate. Lighting a single candle is usually pretty easy. Most Rank 1 sensory magic does not even require any roll unless you are doing something very big or hard with it. Having a sword coming at your face counts as hard.

16) I am going to be very lax with multiple independent sensory effects affecting you at the same time that are beneficial. It is usually better though to cast a few broader effects if you really need to see lots of things at the same time. More than a few effects though and i might require you to flip between the effects one or two at a time. This is commentary on the rules presented on page 53.

17) Aura's under the condition track I am making less clear and more roleplay intensive and descriptive (emotional is pretty much as normal) as on page 53. I don't want everybody suddenly being able to identify every mage/vamp/garou in a 500 ft radius automatically. Plus this helps avoid making everybody remember to cast aura cleansing magic every hour or whatever. those magics are still very useful, but not absolutely essential.

18) Time viewing magick I am running loose and quick. It will be often influenced by paradigm and general expectations but still have at least a grain of truth if you succeed on the roll. consider using entropy to help you sort visions.

19) To avoid making 200 more subpoints, I will just say the entire Martial Arts section is a suggestion and guidelines, not hard rules unless they are clearly laid out in another section or in the Core book or my other rules.

20) As an explicit break with the normal rules I do NOT require people to have a Correspondence rating at least as high as the highest other sphere in a conjunctional effect. A conjunctional Correspondence only requires what the effect would normally require from the sphere rating.

21) I do allow going back in time, but this is seriously risky and if you plan on going back further than a few turns or so, plan on casting the effect to include the rest of the players at the scene or your character will effectively be written off into an alternate timeline.

23) I find the ability to affect other "Night Folk" with Mind magics to not be as hard as is suggested in this book. I will be fast and loose for most non essential Night Folk. Just be careful about getting caught. Even raven claws can hurt.

24) Optional Rule: Allies, Totems and Self Possession on page 124 is allowed.



EDIT: 25) Any of the Prime effects that allow the spending of Quintessence to inflict aggravated damage only cost one Quintessence if you are enhancing a weapon or body part. This will last for roughly a scene. Longer duration effects might require more Quintessence. Similarly, if you are creating pure bolts of prime but only want to make a single attack mechanically with all the fluff bolts, I will only require one point of Quintessence (more though if you want multiple attacks to do separate damage).
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:45, Tue 09 Apr 2019.

Sorry for the long wait, but here I shall present the altered magic item crafting rules. The aim is to make them easier overall. I reserve the right to make exceptions to these, but will usually only do so in the most grandiose cases, unless you are doing something really weird in relation to your surroundings (like making some sort of life related wonder in the middle of the lands of the dead aka shadowlands).

1) in general, you don't need to make the item to imbue it with power. and also in general, it doesn't have to be of the finest craftsmanship to be enchanted. any sufficiently normal example will suffice for most items (fetishes and talens are exceptions if the spirit is to go willingly usually).

2) i will be flexible about group creation. it is hard to put down set rules for this, cause i intend this to work in relation to what the group wants. and this will be a game with all the different characters with usually different paradigms and having spent years, or centuries using those paradigms and thus set in their ways. only items that utilize overlaps between the paradigms involved will get the full benefits of group effort on the magical side of things.
for example: christian related paradigms and tech based ones can be both well featured in a cross shaped piece of tech that does things that christians generally want to happen, like healing or voluntary conversion.

3) the normal rules call for at least 5 quintessence to be invested per overall "dot" (not background points) of the wonder. i am changing this to 2 per "dot". node and tass access can be finicky, so this should help create items, especially the temporary kind. I know this may seem cheap, but this fits what i now know what i want to do. as usual, Fetishes, Talens, and Periapts do not abide by this rule. However under the rules for creating Periapts, they still have a static amount of Quintessence needed. I am changing this to 5 points of Tass/Quintessence of similar energy, vs the normal 10.

4) the normal rules seem to call for an Energy Roll and a separate extended Investment roll. I am melding these together. you instead will do one extended arete roll (or more if lots of appropriate assistants, see #2). the difficulty will be 4 successes per "dot" (it used to be two separate rolls for 3 successes per "dot" per separate extended roll) of the intended item, independent of how many effects it will have, per category (see #5).

5) there is nothing stopping you from making/owning from backgrounds an item that is both an artifact and periapt, maybe also a talisman. the only thing is that you will need to do the item crafting rules per category you intend. want to make a fetish/artifact? you will need to do the spirit binding/convincing and the artifcat imbueing separately, following the procedure required each time. and yes it is possible to imbue a familiar, sometimes. depends on the agreement and the nature of the imbuing and the familiar.

6) almost anything in the crafting a wonder rules that says you need 5 dots in a sphere instead requires 4. i will only call for 5 dots in a sphere in a creation specific circumstance (not including whatever powers you are inserting into the item/person/etc, those will still need the appropriate spheres).

7) Trinket creation (referencing page 161, Book of Secrets, M20 edition) normally calls for twice the number of successes to bind the effect, based on the exact number of successes required for the effect to be imbued. i am calling for base number of successes plus 2.

This concludes what I am want to do. Suggestions are always encouraged. The rules for item crafting can be found in the Book of Secrets, starting page 151. Some additional rules for how they operate and some background cost info starts on page 139.

Gods and Monsters book rules in relation to familiars:

As previously stated, I am going with either a) building your familiar with Forged by Dragon's Fire (Revised Edition) or if you don't have that book or don't want to bother with nitty details b) we can do a freeform creation of a familiar but you will have less control of how it ends up and might be weaker than what the other book might give you.

With the brand new book Gods and Monsters, if you want a) a normal-ish familiar follow the above rules but feel free to look at the additional merits, flaws, and special advantages in this new book. If you find something that goes with what you want, talk to me (yes i know most of you do not have this book probably yet, if ever), but any conflicts will default to the Forged by Dragon's Fire book. if you want b) a pure spirit familiar, in the intagible mostly on the other side of the umbra sense, then talk to me. these will be rare and hard to access without regular use of spirit magic and will REQUIRE at least prime 3 and spirit 2 to maintain the relationship for any length of time.


EDIT #1: ACK! I am so sorry I meant to say long ago that Forged by Dragon's Fire's rules on familiar creation that limit the charms/special powers by type I think can be safely ignored, as long as you have a logic to it (even if that involves heavy reflavoring of something). Your GM/ST can be very scatterbrained and he apologies for this.

EDIT #2: as was suggested to me, you can also maintain a spirit familiar with Spirit 4 and Prime 2 minimums. As always, sometimes you can achieve a similar or same effect with different sphere combos (or different ranks in the same spheres as in this case).
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:31, Sun 14 Apr 2019.