Casting Magick

Step 1: Effect

Based on your character’s abilities and needs, decide what you want to do and how you want to do it. This is called the Effect: the thing you want to accomplish with your magick.

• What Effect are you trying to accomplish?
• Which Spheres are you using?

Step 2: Ability

Based on your mage’s focus, and Spheres, figure out if you can create the Effect you desire, and if so, how your character will make it happen in story terms.

• How does your character focus belief and practice into making it happen?
• Which tools and/ or rituals are you using?
• How long does it take?
• How many targets does it affect?
• How long does it last?
• Is what you’re doing vulgar or coincidental?
• Are any allies assisting you?
• Do you have any mundane skills that might help?

Step 3: Roll

Roll one die for every dot in your Arete Trait. The difficulty depends on the Effect you’re trying to use; whether its vulgar or coincidental, and whether or not someone is watching you.

If you’re trying to hit a target with an attack (sword, gun, fireball, etc.) then roll the appropriate attack roll after successfully creating the desired Effect. (See Combat).

See Magickal Reference Charts for more information about difficulty.

• Roll your Arete/Enlightenment versus appropriate difficulty (minimum difficulty is 3):
• Add or subtract modifiers (maximum net modifier of -3/+3 per Magickal Difficulty Modifiers)
• If you need to hit your target, roll appropriate combat Traits.
• Spend Quintessence and/or Willpower (if desired).
• Check the number of your successes.
• Do you need to roll more successes?
• Repeat for extended rituals/rolls.

Step 4: Results

The number of successes that you roll determines whether or not you succeed. If you fall short of your goal, you may roll again on subsequent turns in order to gain more successes. (See Rituals, Rolls, and Extended Successes)

• What sorts of results did your magick have? (Damage, Duration, apparent effects, etc.)
• Did someone dodge, soak, resist, or use countermagick against your Effect? If so, remove the successes they rolled from your own successes.
• Did you succeed? If so, determine its results. (Take Paradox if required.)
• Did you fail? If so, Effect fizzles. (Take Paradox if required.)
• Did you botch? If so, take Paradox as described by the Paradox Points Generated chart.
• Did you get more than five points of Paradox? If so, the Storyteller should ask for a roll for backlash.

Range

A typical Effect affects one target within the caster’s clear sensory range without the use of Correspondence. If the spell is not targeted, such as an explosion or a storm, it reaches everyone within the area of effect.

A target on the fringes of the mage’s sensory range (under cover, far away, obscured by fog or forest) increases the difficulty of the mage’s Arete roll by +1. A mage utilizing Correspondence can drastically expand their perception, often allowing them to ignore this penalty.

If a target is entirely obscured, such as behind a barrier, or otherwise beyond reach of the caster’s normal senses, Correspondence must be used in order to reach him. A song might affect someone who can’t see the singer, for example, but it won’t reach someone who cannot hear it unless the mage uses Correspondence to connect the song to it’s intended target. Consult the Correspondence Sphere Ranges chart for more information.

Rituals, Rolls, and Extended Successes

A ritual is defined as any Effect that requires multiple rolls. Any Magickal Effect may become a Ritual as the Storyteller permits. Some Effects are “instant” and cannot be extended into a ritual, such as glaring at someone and making them burst into flames.

Maximum Rolls

The maximum number of rolls you can take when performing a ritual is equal to your Permanent Willpower + Arete ratings. A houngan with a Willpower of 7 and and Arete of 4 could make 11 rolls in the course of his ritual to court Shango’s blessing before he has given everything he has to give.

Note that the number of rolls is independent of the number of hours your mage spends performing the ritual. See Rituals and Stamina for more about how long your mage can keep this ritual up.

Failed Rolls

If you fail a roll, that is, you get no successes that turn, then you may still continue rolling in subsequent turns as a ritual if the Storyteller allows. Each failed roll, however, adds +1 to the difficulty of those subsequent rolls. Fail one roll, it’s +1; fail two rolls, and it’s +2… and so it goes until you either complete the Effect, fail completely, or botch a roll.

If the difficulty reaches 9 and you fail another roll and acquire a new penalty, then new penalties become thresholds: a +1 difficulty adds one more success to the total you need, a +2 difficulty adds two more successes, and so on. By that point, your mage is risking disaster, so it’s probably best to stop the process and regroup than it is to press forward.

Botched Rolls

If you botch during a ritual, you may spend one turn, a temporary Willpower point, and one previously rolled success in order to keep the whole thing from blowing up in your face.

At this point, your mage is holding the ritual together through sheer determination. You can either stop there, or keep going with a +1 increase to your difficulty. A second botch, however, spells immediate disaster. See Rituals and Paradox.

Interference

If an outside party disrupts a ritual – say, by attacking the rite or distracting the caster – then the mage in charge of that ritual must make a Willpower roll, difficulty 8, or else botch the entire deal. If she successfully keeps things together, the ritual proceeds as if there had been a botch rolled; a second turn of interference brings the hammer down and the ritual to a crashing halt.

Rituals and Paradox

Magickal rituals stir up a lot of reality. And so, every roll after the first one adds one point of Paradox to the caster’s total. If the ritual concludes successfully, then those extra points of Paradox go away. If the caster botches the ritual, however, then the Paradox backlash adds those additional points of Paradox onto the Paradox the mage would suffer to begin with.

Dodging and Resistance

Generally, a successful Arete roll equals a successful Attack. Immediate effect, however, isn’t always the case.

Dodging a Physical Attack

Any physical attack (fireball, mystic blade, plasma bolt, etc.) directed at an essentially solid target (car, person, spirit, etc.) can be dodged if that target is capable of dodging the attack in question. As detailed in

As detailed under the Combat section, a Dexterity + Athletics (or Acrobatics) roll, difficulty 6, subtracts successes from an incoming attack. If the attacker still has more successes than the target, remaining successes determine how much damage is done… and if the attacker winds up with only one success left over, then there’s no damage at all.

Really obvious attacks – lightning bolts, clouds of deadly gas, and so forth – are easy to see coming. Invisible ones – flesh-eating spirits, silent curses, Entropic ripples that collapse a bridge, that sort of thing – may be detected with a successful Perception + Awareness roll, difficulty 8.

Soaking Damage from Magickal Attacks

Magickal attacks that unleash physical force – blades, bolts, storms, etc. – can be soaked like any other physical damage. The usual rules, presented in Soaking, apply when soaking damage.

All-out Reality-fucking, however, is hard to endure. Vulgar attacks of pure reality-alteration power (curses, transmutations, possession, etc.) cannot be soaked unless the target has countermagick or some other specific protection against the Effect in question.

Mental attacks can be resisted, as shown above, but they cannot be soaked except by Willpower. And so, a Mind-based blast of psychic trauma hurts… a LOT.

Resisting Psychic Assaults

Mind-control spells, mental commands, Social Conditioning, and so forth can be resisted by an unwilling target if she’s aware that she’s under attack. In such cases, a Willpower roll, difficulty 6, acts as the dodge for that assault, subtracting successes from the aggressor’s roll. If the character isn’t aware of that attack, however, she suffers the full Effect… which is the primary reason that Mind-savvy mages prefer to be subtle (“You have beautiful eyes…”) rather than overt (“You are in my power…”).

Magickal Violence

Examples of Magickal Violence

• Violence as a Focus: Employing the Stone-Shattering Fist Strike (a Life 3 / Matter 3 / Entropy 1 Effect that uses Entropy to spot weak spots) would have the player declare he is using martial arts as his focus, and roll Arete. Let’s assume he scores 4 successes. He then rolls Dexterity + Martial Arts to reflect the punch itself, scoring 2 successes. The damage comes from the Effect, netting 8 health levels of damage, amplified to Aggravated by the Life sphere.
• Violence Enhances Magick: If a player were to ignite their gloves with a mysterious vial and a lighter, they would first roll Manipulation + Intimidation. Three successes later, the player then uses their Mind 2 Effect “Surrender or die”. The Arete roll is normally difficulty 5, but has been reduced by 2 due to the successes from the glove ignition (Arete rolls cannot be reduced below difficulty 3, that is why it is 3 instead of 2). The player scores 6 successes, and his target succumbs to the dread his Effect induced.
• Magick Enhances Violence: The player opts to cast a coincidental Entropy 1 Effect to spot a weakness in his target’s defense. she rolls her Arete roll, netting 3 successes, reducing the next attack action’s difficulty by 3. Her punch is rolled with Dexterity + Brawl at a reduced difficulty of 3. She scores 6 successes, so the resulting attack deals Strength base damage, with a dice pool of 5 rolled against difficulty 6 (Resolution) for a maximum potential damage of Strength + 5.

Violence Enhances Magick

In this case, the mage commits an act of violence that assists an act of magick: the Infernalist stabs the sacrifice, the mad scientist activates the Doomsday Device, the shapechanger slashes the throat of a wolf and bathes herself in its blood in order to transform into a wolf herself. The act still provides a focus, but the magick follows the act.

In game terms, the attack is rolled normally, and each Success on that roll lowers the difficulty of the subsequent Arete roll by -1 (up to a max. modifier of -3).

Unless the magick and attack involve a single activity (such as throwing a punch or firing a gun) an attack used to focus and enhance magick needs to be performed before the spell is cast. These require separate actions and can only be performed in the same round utilizing action splitting or multiple actions through an effect such as Time 3.

Magick Enhances Violence

By throwing a little extra power (or a LOT of extra power) behind a normal gunshot, punch, or dodge, the character can enhance its effectiveness. The player declares what she’s doing; takes an action to cast the Effect; notes the number of successes; and then reduces the difficulty of the subsequent action roll by -1 for each success (up to a max. modifier of -3).

Magick-Enhanced violence is most often Coincidental. If it looks impossible, then it’s vulgar.

Countermagick

Magick-using characters can utilize their knowledge of the spheres to dodge or impair the outcome of an incoming Effect.

Countermagick is an defensive action and requires a full action to perform, potentially requiring aborting their planned action. A mage must have at least one dot in at least one of the spheres being used to create the attack. The mage makes an Arete roll at difficulty 7. For each success she scores, one success is deducted from the attacker’s successes. If the incoming Effect’s results were based on the Magickal Feats chart, then the incoming spell is less effective than it would have otherwise been (see Degrees of Success). If that attack depended upon a certain number of successes, the assault may fizzle completely.

Innate Countermagick

Certain characters or materials possess innate countermagick. The Technocratic material known as Primium automatically provides a countermagick roll. A character or device with innate countermagick does not require an action to deploy it, as it is intrinsic to who or what they are.

Protective or Offensive Countermagick (Optional)

Typically, countermagick only deals with attacks directed at the mage in question. However, a skillful mage can attempt to intercept an attack aimed at an ally. Doing so incurs all of the requirements of normal countermagick, with the addition of:

• At least one dot in the Prime sphere.
• One point of Quintessence.
• +1 difficulty to the Arete roll.
• The mage may attempt to reflect the assault back towards the attacker, doing so raises the difficulty by +2 instead of +1. If the mage opts for this, each success over the attacker’s original roll acts as a success for sending it back towards them. For example, 4 successes scored against a 2 success attack inflicts 2 successes worth of damage or effect of the spell upon the attacker.

Anti-Magick (Optional)

A common tactic amongst Technocrats uses the Prime sphere (or Primal Utility) to harden reality against a reality deviant’s magick. Mystic mages can employ the same strategy, though it is much less common.

Doing so requires a full action. The mage rolls her Prime rank as a dice pool at difficulty 8. Each success adds +1 difficulty to a mage attempting to cast an Effect. For each success, the mage deploying anti-magick must expend 1 point of Quintessence.