Game Effects of Quintessence
- You can spend Quintessence to reduce the difficulty of a magick casting roll. Each point spent reduces that difficulty by 1, to a maximum reduction of -3.
- That said, the amount of Quintessence you can spend at one time is limited by your mage’s Avatar Trait. A character with
Avatar 2, for example, may spend or absorb only two Quintessence points within a single turn. - The amount of Quintessence a mage can store is limited to her Avatar background rating, unless she possesses at least one dot in the Prime sphere.
- Your mage can also use Quintessence to counter Paradox or fuel countermagick. See Prime 5 and Countermagick for details.
- A mage can absorb Quintessence through her Avatar; through Prime Sphere spells or Procedures; or through Tass or some Wonder that recharges Quintessence, like a battery or energy drink.
- Channeling Quintessence through the Avatar requires meditation at a Node; channeling more than your Avatar rating through that Node requires Prime 1. To absorb Quintessence energy from the materialized Quintessence of Tass requires Prime 3. A Master can absorb Quintessence from anywhere by using a vulgar Prime 5 Effect. The number of Quintessence points that can be absorbed this way depend upon the success on the magick casting roll – see Base Damage or Duration.
- The Quintessence absorbed by your mage’s Avatar essentially becomes personal Quintessence and cannot be taken away from her – only spent by her. Your Avatar Background rating reflects the maximum amount of personal Quintessence you can store.
- In most cases, Quintessence remains invisible except to mages with the Prime Sphere. Characters with Awareness or other metaphysical perception abilities might feel Quintessence being shunted around, but they won’t be able to see it the way a Prime-skilled mage could. When respectable amounts of Quintessence (three points or more) get shifted around, lights tend to dim, breezes blow, and the area’s temperature might rise or fall several degrees. Folks feel ripples even if they have no idea what’s actually going on.
- Large or violent reality shifts that move around 10 points of Quintessence or more do become visible to mortal eyes. Bright lights, ribbons of color, explosions, sudden freezes, and so forth mark such disruptions. Effects at that level tear the fabric of the Tapestry, and so they’re always considered vulgar magick.
Game Effects of Paradox
- Each time a mage employs vulgar magick, he gets at least one point of Paradox. For details, see Step 4 Results.
- Large amounts of Paradox energy can backlash on the mage, with hideous results – warped spells, explosions, insanity, and so forth. See The Paradox Effect in Chapter Ten (Mage20 pp. 547-553) for the grisly details.
- Your mage’s Paradox rating becomes his Paradox pool. When things go horribly wrong with her magick, the Storyteller rolls one die per point in that pool in order to see what happens. Thus, you’ll want to keep that Trait as low as possible; the higher the pool, the worse its effects.
- A mage who builds up a bit of Paradox energy can bleed it off by avoiding magick for a little while. For details, see Shedding Paradox.
- If your mage accumulates 20 points or more without a backlash, she may drop into an intense Quiet, disappear through a crack in reality (possibly to return as a warped Marauder version of the person she once was), or simply explode.
- Certain modifications can give a character a permanent Paradox rating. For details, see the Enhancements Background entry, the Permanent Paradox entry in Chapter Ten (Mage20 pp. 547-548), and The Toybox in Appendix II.
- Mages who store up large amounts of Paradox energy become walking blights upon reality. They manifest odd quirks of Resonance, display disturbing Paradox Flaws, and simply don’t feel right to other people. Although very few creatures will understand the nature of the problem, they’ll instinctually avoid a ’Doxy wizard, if only out of self-preservation.
The Paradox Backlash
Staving Off Disaster
Generally, a mage can feel a Paradox backlash coming. The built-up energies within her frame tingle beneath her skin, vibrate in her bones, or beat inside her head like an impending migraine headache. When a backlash threatens to cut loose (in game terms, when the Storyteller rolls the dice), that character can “will it not to happen… YET.” The player spends a point of Willpower, the Effect automatically fails, and the backlash hovers until the end of that scene.
From that point onward, the mage is on borrowed time. Every additional point of Paradox she gathers adds one die to the coming backlash. A mage that decides to delay the backlash will discharge all of her temporary Paradox points at the end of that scene. (The permanent ones still count towards the backlash dice pool.)
Nullifying Paradox
Masters of the Prime sphere are capable of wiping out Paradox using the energies of creation. Store-wise, the magus invests some personal Quintessence (possibly adding a bit more energy from external sources too) into a symbol or Periapt keyed to a magickal working or consecrated to his body and personal Resonance.
Game-wise, the player pools his Quintessence, then uses a Prime 5 Effect to channel that Quintessence and nullify the Paradox at a one-to-one ratio.
Shedding Paradox
A mage with no more than 5 points of Paradox may “shed” away one point each week they forgo overt magick usage (anything greater than using Rank 1 perceptions).
A storyteller may allow a character with up to 10 points of Paradox to go “cold turkey”. If this is the case, each month they go without utilizing any magick will shed one point of Paradox.