Hello once again!
Legacies is currently ranked in first place on last week’s poll, with roughly two-thirds of the vote. Unfortunately, we’ve hit a particularly busy time behind the scenes, with multiple books requiring sustained attention, so I don’t have time to take the couple of hours necessary to explain the new Legacy mechanics for you. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.
We had a pretty good run of weekly updates, and I want to keep the ball rolling. Fortunately, this kind of crunch time has been prepared for: Previous blogs haven’t covered everything about their topics, and we have lots more examples to show you.
The first draft of the Acanthus Path writeup from the new edition seemed to go down a treat, and the other Paths were by far the most-requested spoiler at GenCon. The next Path in alphabetical order would be the Mastigos, so I’ve put it up on Google Drive.
Before you read, I must stress once again that these are first drafts. We tinkered a bit with the Path formatting since we showed you the Acanthus, and added the Art notes for the signiature characters. We have three more passes at this material – once by me in redlines, then a second go at it by the writer, then me again – before the book goes to editorial and art direction. It can and will change between this draft and the finished corebook.
The author of Mastigos, like all the Paths, was “Mage Freelancing Quarterback” Malcolm Sheppard.
And here’s the link.
…
But wait! That’s not all!
We’ve got to the point (now you know about the Paradox and Yantras systems) that I can happily show you spells. As we’re having a Mastigos-themed blog, here’s a Mind spell.
Terrorize (Mind ••••)
Practice: Unraveling
Primary Spell Factor: Duration
Suggested Rote Skills: Intimidation, Expression, Medicine
The mage’s generates an overwhelming sense of fear and dread in her victim, draining his strength and will to live. The victim may resist this spell’s effect with his Resolve. The victim suffers from the Insensate Tilt for the duration of the spell, or until resolved by being attacked.
+ 1 Reach The mage inflicts the Broken Condition instead.
Comments
33 responses to “(Pan)Demonic”
Thanks for the new info.
However, a minor quibble. Shouldn’t the victim of the Terrorize spell resist its effect with Composure rather than Resolve, similar to how Composure is used as the resistance Trait for Vampire’s Nightmare discipline. As per the WOD core, Composure is the ability to actually be unfazed in threatening situations and even “pivotal to resisting supernatural forms of emotional control.” (p. 51).
Yeah, you’re probably right about that one.
Yea, open development!
Oddly, while I agree for the base effect, Resolve does sound a better fit for “Broken.” Ah, choices.
Not collapsing into a gibbering wreck is Composure. Maintaining your will to fight is Resolve. It could be either.
Personally I’m of the opinion that Resolve has been criminally underused to defend against supernatural powers so far, though, so it is nice to see another spell that uses it for defense.
I always believed that the Resolve vs. Composure distinctions were often artificial, and probably were first used as means to have two attributes for game balance purposes.
In any event, I like Strill’s idea below that the spell should be defended as a Contested Action, possibly with the victim rolling Resolve + Composure or Composure + [Power Trait]. This is how most of the relevant Vampire Disciplines in B&S (Majesty, Dominate and Nightmare) deal with this type of emotional or mind control attack.
Resolve is for resisting direct control. Things like Dominate, where someone is overriding your will.
Composure is for resisting emotional manipulation. Things like Presence, where you are trying not to succumb to the emotions being foisted upon you.
I fully understand that, and it is why I earlier suggested that Composure would be the more appropriate resistance trait for Terrorize.
Nevertheless, I always felt the there was never an actual need for two “mental” resistance attributes, and it more often than not led to confusion.
Terrorize seems like it should be resisted by Composure instead of Resolve since it is manipulating the targets emotions.
My body was not ready for this.
On a somewhat related matter, when Terrorize is resisted with Resolve (or Composure, whichever it turns out), does that mean that the spell’s Potency has to exceed the target’s Resolve in order for the spell to work?
It shouldn’t, unless they’ve changed how dice mechanics work; resisting with an attribute removes dice from the spellcasting roll.
Why is it resisted rather than being contested? It’s all-or-nothing isn’t it?
I also think it would be convenient if the resistance stat were listed in the header.
All spellcasting effects are now all or nothing though. Every single one. That can’t be the criteria anymore.
long time reader, first time poster.
I like how short spells are now – everything is so much simpler with the reach system and new paradox rules. Things are just… smoother (?).
thanks for spoilin’ us!
Gonna have to echo the others. Established rules for 2e (I love being able to call it 2e now) would suggest this is a Composure + Powerstat situation, since it’s all-or-nothing, so successes don’t matter too much.
Unless all spells are resisted because of the primary spell factor? That would seem a little weird to me, but it would fit with the established rules.
All spells are all or nothing under the new rules. Nothing scales with number of successes anymore. You just need the one.
Now that I’ve read the write-up, gotta say I love it. I never liked the Mastigos as portrayed before. Now they resonate with my life in a way other Paths do not (though Thyrsus is still my favorite).
I’m more than a little curious as to the decision to keep the term Goetia for internal, conjured demons. It always bothered me a bit. Goetia in reality is a method of invocation (utilizing external forces). Goetia in Mage is a form of evocation, which is entirely the opposite. I don’t mind appropriating terms and saying “this is the truth, untainted by the Lie”, but I’m not seeing any relation between “real” Goetia and Mage Goetia other than the label “demons”.
Not trying to criticism so much as understand the thematic and metaphysical rationale here, as a real life student of occult writings (I own a copy of the Ars Goetia).
Crowley disagreed with your interpretation of the Ars Goetia, and Awakening follows from his translation.
I agree with others that have said this spell seems like it should be contested instead of resisted, but I do like the flavor of it.
As a bit of an aside, please don’t make Mind the most powerful Arcana to an uncontested extent again. I mean, in 1e it covers skills, mental/social attributes, emotions, thoughts, memories, illusions, perception in general, the Astral, TWILIGHT (Never understood that), Wisdom, Willpower, mind control, and indeed even aggravated damage (That’s always annoyed me the most; Mind is the most powerful ATTACK arcana, period, in 1st edition, in addition to having the most overall utility otherwise).
I get that most of it (Not all) makes sense under Mind’s purview, but it makes Mind incredibly powerful, and some of it could easily be justified as being split up (Skills into Mind AND Life, depending on type, for instance), or could be put at higher levels (I see bypassing a Wisdom check as Mastery, for instance).
If nothing else, don’t make Mind Fraying/Unraveling spells as powerful this time around, and don’t give Mind the Twilight stronghold style spell (That should have always been a Death spell), and I’ll be happy.
Didn’t mean to go off on that much of a tangent there, it got away from me.
With regards to the Mastigos entry itself, I found it very evocative, and I like the idea that they’re formed from Crisis above anything else, and finding a way through it.
On Falco’s point there are there plans to rebalance some of the Arcana effects?
My personal pet hate was the space effects that required secondary arcana to be effective.
Specificly Apportation.
The ability to whisk small items through space but only if you went to the trouble of learning the Mastigos inferior Arcanum too an apprentice level.
The tendency of iconic Space spells to need secondary Arcana was noticed very early on in second edition’s design, and fixed.
Yay!
Apporated thank you hug incoming from the Mastigos community.
Spotted a typo in the fifth paragraph under The Mastigos Awakening:
“He’s careening toward Pandemonium. The Iron Gauntlet opens its hand when the world narrows to a choice: self-destruction of Awakening.”
I think that should be “or”, not “of”.
So with Primary Factor kicking you up the spell factor chart by Arcanum dots automatically, is there any special considerations if you want a lower duration than your Arcanum dots would generate? If you want the advanced factor chart for that spell, you’d be looking at a month, right? If I only want a day, or a scene, do I just declare that? Or is that handled by actively dropping the spell?
After this preview I think a line of Pathbooks should really be in order.
I mean… this makes the Mastigos really shine, maybe more than the Acanthi prev did for them. Also, seeing Arctos after all this time brings a tear to my eyes. Look at him, all grown up! Really, the new write-up makes his character have sense. Before, I didn’t really understand how and why he was a Mastigos at all. Now, it all comes together. He was a privileged brat, who grew up alone, embraced his being sort of a dick and chose to be an outsider. That came to bite him in the ass. His outsider persona was a ploy to be at the center of whoever attention, his own true fault who he never rejected in spite of all costs. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it. Maybe I’m just forgetting his original depiction, which I recally as fairly bland.
Spotted another typo. In “The Iron Maze: Pandemonium in the Lie”, it says, “Warlocks know that the Supernal lies within, so one never truly leaves Pandemonium, but becomes aware of its presence the Lie.” That should be “aware of its presence in the Lie”.
Also, for Baphomet, the third of the Three Warlocks, it says, “She became a Master of Mind and Space, but her body began to fail her. She abandoned it to become her goetic demon, and live in the minds of Templars, priests, Satanists and occultists.” You probably want to make those “S/he” and “him/her”, in keeping with the rest of the description of the character.
I’m an editor/proofreader, you see (and if you’re looking to hire, please contact me).
He’s clearly stated and stressed that these are first drafts. Typos and grammatical errors are par for the course, and nitpicking them in the comments section is a little obnoxious.
That wasn’t my intention at all. Typos can remain even after editing, and I wanted to make sure you caught these ones.
meh. I know it’s traditional, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the bombastic style splat writeups take, particularly in Mage. I don’t really know what I’d prefer, though. something that focused less on what “kind” of person was in the splat, I guess, and more on how being a member of that splat changed a person. there was a really cool writeup on forum.rpg.net that eschewed the Path stereotyping and instead asked, “what can all Acanthus/many Acanthus/most Acanthus/Moros/Mastigos/Obrimos/Thyrsus do for free in terms of having their Primary Arcana between 1 and 3, and what would being able to do those things whenever you wanted do to a person?” it’s here, for the curious: http://goo.gl/SIYnb7
I do love the new and more game-ified approach to spellcasting, though. that something can be highly concrete and clear and concise and usable like that and still present a permutation, with such economy of space and language. one of the things I found constantly irritating in Awakening 1.0 was the apparent need to stick little “this Order uses this rote with this pool!” bits in after every spell writeup. we can imagine our own rotes, damn it, and they might use any number of skills! just give us mechanics! no need to go pigeonholing everything.
Love it. I continue to be a huge fan Malcolm’s work in MtAw in particular, and the WoD in general.
Ah the Mastigos Huzzah.
I’m interested by how heavily the write up seems to favour the control and manipulation of mental demons.
Does this mean that the stigma assocated with Goetia in first edition is a thing of the past?
Or does the Mastigos facination with it just add to their sinister allure?
Its a very nice write up and my imaginary hat is off to the author.
I particularly like the use of obession and sympathetic bonds as chains or cords its a very evocative connection between the ruling arcana.
After reading that Mastigos preview? Yep, I agree totally. Rustin Cohle is Mastigos as fuck.