I wanted to make an announcement to clarify a few things about how I calculate threshold for certain effects (since someone asked me about it and I figured it might be helpful to know.)
1: Combo Effects.
There's a lot of room for interpretation in Mage when it comes to casting. I've played with STs who don't allow characters to cast rotes with more than one intended effect, and while I can see the logic behind that, I also think that there are enough examples of complicated/combination type rotes in the books that it doesn't make sense to disallow it. What I'm talking about here is, say, scanning an area for both life patterns and spirits. Or using Life magic to give yourself claws and a strength stat boost. Anything that might normally be calculated as a distinct effect of its own.
My compromise here, in acknowledgment that it should at least be a little more difficult, is to add 1 to the threshold for each additional, distinct effect that the mage wishes to add to their casting roll. Most of you, I think, have noticed that I do that, but may not have known exactly what my reasoning was. So I wanted to clarify that it isn't about the number of spheres a character uses - an effect could incorporate a whole host of different spheres without changing the threshold. It's about the intended results.
Obviously, this is an extremely subjective issue. The same effect could be interpreted differently by different people, and by no means do I think that I should be an authority on whether or not something should be considered a "combo" effect. I've never added a specific ruling about this precisely because it's so subjective. And I don't really intend to? But if I'm running a scene or witnessing a roll, assume that I'm going to take that into account when calculating the threshold. If another ST runs their scenes differently, that's fine. It's not something I'm hugely concerned about. This is just what seemed fair and logical to me. In keeping with that, I did add a brief note about it to the top of the casting guide, but it should be considered less of a rule and more of a guideline.
2: Time/Corr/Gauntlet Thresholds.
I've actually gone back and forth with these, so a number of you may have been asked to roll these effects differently at different times. I'm sure that has caused some confusion, so I want to apologize for that.
From now on this is how I'm going to interpret these:
The listed successes on these charts will be added to the effect's usual threshold. So attempting to attack a spirit across the gauntlet in deep wilderness would be (targets) + 2 (gauntlet) + 1 (attack.)
I did go through a phase where I used the listed thresholds as the total amount needed to pull off the effect (excluding targeting and duration) which... isn't necessarily wrong, since it's never actually explained in any way, but I've since reconsidered that because it makes the math kind of confusing, especially when calculating more complicated effects. I think ultimately it makes the most sense to handle these the same way we handle targeting and duration.
Which... might be how everyone was already doing it, and maybe the only person who couldn't make up their mind was me. ^^ In any case, this is how I will be doing it from now on.
1: Combo Effects.
There's a lot of room for interpretation in Mage when it comes to casting. I've played with STs who don't allow characters to cast rotes with more than one intended effect, and while I can see the logic behind that, I also think that there are enough examples of complicated/combination type rotes in the books that it doesn't make sense to disallow it. What I'm talking about here is, say, scanning an area for both life patterns and spirits. Or using Life magic to give yourself claws and a strength stat boost. Anything that might normally be calculated as a distinct effect of its own.
My compromise here, in acknowledgment that it should at least be a little more difficult, is to add 1 to the threshold for each additional, distinct effect that the mage wishes to add to their casting roll. Most of you, I think, have noticed that I do that, but may not have known exactly what my reasoning was. So I wanted to clarify that it isn't about the number of spheres a character uses - an effect could incorporate a whole host of different spheres without changing the threshold. It's about the intended results.
Obviously, this is an extremely subjective issue. The same effect could be interpreted differently by different people, and by no means do I think that I should be an authority on whether or not something should be considered a "combo" effect. I've never added a specific ruling about this precisely because it's so subjective. And I don't really intend to? But if I'm running a scene or witnessing a roll, assume that I'm going to take that into account when calculating the threshold. If another ST runs their scenes differently, that's fine. It's not something I'm hugely concerned about. This is just what seemed fair and logical to me. In keeping with that, I did add a brief note about it to the top of the casting guide, but it should be considered less of a rule and more of a guideline.
2: Time/Corr/Gauntlet Thresholds.
I've actually gone back and forth with these, so a number of you may have been asked to roll these effects differently at different times. I'm sure that has caused some confusion, so I want to apologize for that.
From now on this is how I'm going to interpret these:
The listed successes on these charts will be added to the effect's usual threshold. So attempting to attack a spirit across the gauntlet in deep wilderness would be (targets) + 2 (gauntlet) + 1 (attack.)
I did go through a phase where I used the listed thresholds as the total amount needed to pull off the effect (excluding targeting and duration) which... isn't necessarily wrong, since it's never actually explained in any way, but I've since reconsidered that because it makes the math kind of confusing, especially when calculating more complicated effects. I think ultimately it makes the most sense to handle these the same way we handle targeting and duration.
Which... might be how everyone was already doing it, and maybe the only person who couldn't make up their mind was me. ^^ In any case, this is how I will be doing it from now on.