Arwen:
So... I'm trying to put a sheet together, and... wow, the magic system seems -really- complicated. :)
Anybody have any useful advice? General principles, specific awesome things to consider? So far from the thread I have "Hallow is very useful." :)
As an Obrimos mage, your home turf is Forces and Prime
You have two ways of casting spells: rotes and improvised spells.
Most of your spells are improvised. They Use Gnosis + Arcanum, which makes it useful to have a Gnosis of 3 or 4.
There is a 2 dot limit on the Death Arcanum for starting Obrimos (inferior Arcanum).
Rotes: If you as an Obrimos cast a spell that isn't Forces or Prime, you have to pay one mana for doing so. Learning a rote saves you the mana.
You should also learn rotes from Forces and Prime if
1.) You plan on using that spell often AND
2.) It's the kind of spell where it is desirable to have lots of successes AND
3.) You have a dice pool for that rote that is clearly better than Gnosis + Arcanum (because you could simply improvise it otherwise). As a Free Council mage, all your rote dice pools that include Crafts, Persuasion and Science are +1.
Two spells worth considering are a mage armor spell (there's one 2 dot spell for each Arcanum, Prime works differently than the others) and a Mage sight spell (there's a 1 dot mage sight for each Arcanum). Mage armor spells are usually cast as long-term, always-on spells (see later).
Three traps when learning spells:
- Vulgar spells can cause you trouble with fellow mages and can cause Paradox (a magical fumble).
- Some spells cost mana. This isn't a big problem, but your battery isn't infinite (use Hallows and Oblations to recharge)
- some spells are extended (read: slow). Even at Gnosis 4, they take at least an hour to cast (3 hours at Gnosis 1 and 2). Example: Space 3 Portal (=Teleportation) is a cool spell, but it is not usually a combat spell, because the enemy might interrupt your Ritual before you manage to teleport them up that tree.
Space 2 allows long distance casting ("sympathetic casting", p. 114), Fate 2 gives you Conditional casting (p. 150), Time 2 gives you Temporal Sympathy (p. 259, which means casting spells into the past or future), Death allows you to deal with the world of ghosts (dead people), Spirit allows you to see the world of spirits (strange beings modeled on concepts like tree or sloth).
Unless otherwise noted, your standard range for spells (without space) is what you can see, which is usually enough (most of my characters do not have sympathetic magic).
Don't worry about inventing your own spells yet. The given spells cover a lot of ground, and most Storytellers handwave minor effects (like an Acanthus Time mage knowing the time without looking at her watch).
Legacies are powerful, but the kind of things that works best if you have all those extra books. They give you a third arcanum that doesn't require mana for casting and one or two paradox-free spell-like powers. They also add a whole new level of complicatedness.
I've decided against my character being in a legacy in this game. I couldn't be bothered with being a member in yet another group of people (Mastigos and Silver Ladder is enough for me). You don't really need that extra power to be powerful enough anyway and, of course, Hansel and Gretel or Red Riding Hood show us that telling a good story has little to do with power.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:40, Sun 30 Jan 2022.