Post by David Price on May 2, 2008 17:23:25 GMT -8
It was recently pointed out to me that a lot of the things we had been running in Mage were 1) not as the book and 2) not written down anywhere, leading to some confusion. This prompted me to 1) go back and read the relevant book sections instead of just winging it and 2) come up with some proposed house rules for the sections where the book is either unclear or blatantly silly.
I tossed some house rules over to Lillian, and some of them she agreed with me on and I'll be posting those in a House Rules thread that I'll be starting shortly. Several of them, however, were of the "We should toss that to the players to see what they think" variety, and that's what this thread is for. I'm not going to make polls for each of these yet, if people feel that's necessary I will, but for now I was just hoping to see what people thought about them.
Book rule for stunning- if you take more damage than your stamina, you're stunned. No check involved. You lose your next action, whether it's in this or the next round.
Proposed house rule for stunning- if you take more damage than your stamina, you can make a stamina roll diff 8 to still have an action, or you can spend a willpower to ignore the stun.
Book rule for Beginner's Luck (Entropy 2 rote)- Can only be used for actions that you have 2 dice or fewer for.
Proposed house rule for Beginner's Luck - Can only be used for actions that you have 4 dice or fewer for. (2 dice is a crappy limitation, you generally get more than that from starting stats)
Book rule for Countermagic - If magic happens, you get a Perception+Awareness check to notice it. If you have Etheric Senses (Prime 1) on, you can make a counterspell check if you have all the spheres involved in the casting, rolling your Arete at diff 8. If you have Prime 1 and score more successes than the caster, the effect can be reflected back on them. If you only have Prime and not the spheres for the effect, your counterspell successes can be used as well as quintessence spent to raise the difficulty of the spell.
Before I get into the proposed house rule of this one... wha? If you need Prime 1 to identify the effect, what's the point of requiring Prime 1 to reflect it? And seriously, Prime 1 effect has to be on to identify the spell before you can counterspell? And raising the difficulty of the spell after it's been cast? How's _that_ supposed to work?
Proposed House Rule (otherwise known as the "screw that, I'm making my own"):
For starters, for the Perception+Awareness roll, 1 success identifies that magic is being used. I propose that 3 successes should identify the strongest resonance of the magic being used (which is either the strongest resonance of the mage, or the most appropriate resonance of the mage for the spell, depending) as well as what spheres are being used in the effect, and 4 successes would identify the actual effect.
If mages who have noticed magic ARE: 1) being targeted by the spell, 2) able to identify the effect by Perc+Awareness, OR 3) have Etheric Senses on, you can attempt to counterspell.
If you have all the spheres involved of the actual effect (ignoring incidental side-requirements of spheres- I'll get to this later), you can counterspell at diff 8. If you have all the spheres involved at the level necessary to cast the spell in the first place, you can counterspell at diff 6.
Incidental side-requirements of spheres- if somebody is using Corr magic to target an effect a long ways away, and doing a Life effect at the location, I don't think it should be necessary for the counterspeller to need Corr magic to counter the Life effect.
I tossed some house rules over to Lillian, and some of them she agreed with me on and I'll be posting those in a House Rules thread that I'll be starting shortly. Several of them, however, were of the "We should toss that to the players to see what they think" variety, and that's what this thread is for. I'm not going to make polls for each of these yet, if people feel that's necessary I will, but for now I was just hoping to see what people thought about them.
Book rule for stunning- if you take more damage than your stamina, you're stunned. No check involved. You lose your next action, whether it's in this or the next round.
Proposed house rule for stunning- if you take more damage than your stamina, you can make a stamina roll diff 8 to still have an action, or you can spend a willpower to ignore the stun.
Book rule for Beginner's Luck (Entropy 2 rote)- Can only be used for actions that you have 2 dice or fewer for.
Proposed house rule for Beginner's Luck - Can only be used for actions that you have 4 dice or fewer for. (2 dice is a crappy limitation, you generally get more than that from starting stats)
Book rule for Countermagic - If magic happens, you get a Perception+Awareness check to notice it. If you have Etheric Senses (Prime 1) on, you can make a counterspell check if you have all the spheres involved in the casting, rolling your Arete at diff 8. If you have Prime 1 and score more successes than the caster, the effect can be reflected back on them. If you only have Prime and not the spheres for the effect, your counterspell successes can be used as well as quintessence spent to raise the difficulty of the spell.
Before I get into the proposed house rule of this one... wha? If you need Prime 1 to identify the effect, what's the point of requiring Prime 1 to reflect it? And seriously, Prime 1 effect has to be on to identify the spell before you can counterspell? And raising the difficulty of the spell after it's been cast? How's _that_ supposed to work?
Proposed House Rule (otherwise known as the "screw that, I'm making my own"):
For starters, for the Perception+Awareness roll, 1 success identifies that magic is being used. I propose that 3 successes should identify the strongest resonance of the magic being used (which is either the strongest resonance of the mage, or the most appropriate resonance of the mage for the spell, depending) as well as what spheres are being used in the effect, and 4 successes would identify the actual effect.
If mages who have noticed magic ARE: 1) being targeted by the spell, 2) able to identify the effect by Perc+Awareness, OR 3) have Etheric Senses on, you can attempt to counterspell.
If you have all the spheres involved of the actual effect (ignoring incidental side-requirements of spheres- I'll get to this later), you can counterspell at diff 8. If you have all the spheres involved at the level necessary to cast the spell in the first place, you can counterspell at diff 6.
Incidental side-requirements of spheres- if somebody is using Corr magic to target an effect a long ways away, and doing a Life effect at the location, I don't think it should be necessary for the counterspeller to need Corr magic to counter the Life effect.
