Post by xaria on Jan 28, 2020 7:10:39 GMT -6
Focus and the Arts
Belief makes the mage. Belief in something – gods, science, spirits, technology, one’s own place in the universe, perhaps simply the conviction that one’s Will is enough to move the world – is utterly essential if you want to change reality. Faithless folks cannot use True Magick, for such Arts and Sciences depend upon belief. That belief provides the core of focus: that lens through which a mage does what he does. Chapters One, Two, and Six have already covered the importance of focus and of the three components – paradigm, practice, and instruments – that comprise it. In previous Mage editions, that term – and its awkward plural, foci – had been used to describe the tools through which a mage works. Practice had been called style, and paradigm was simply left for the player to determine. Really, though, all three pieces are connected. The tools, after all, are just extensions of the practice, and that practice draws upon belief. Belief inspires, practice directs, and instruments put thatEach Mage character begins play with a focus made up of a paradigm, a practice, and at least seven instruments that channel that belief through that practice. As he or she progresses through the game, your character can choose to alter or discard instruments, change practices, modify one practice to accommodate another one, and perhaps even eventually recognize that she doesn’t need the tools at all. Even then, however, your character believes in something. Without that conviction, she’s just another Sleepwalker, going through motions she doesn’t truly understand.
Certain mages never manage to separate the instruments from those convictions. It takes a certain kind of worldview, especially in our era, to realize that you don’t need technology to accomplish miracles. When a mage’s belief in technology provides the Path to Enlightenment, that belief is almost impossible to shake… and most folks wouldn’t want to shake it, even if they could. There’s comfort in technology, after all, even if that technology involves books and bones, not computers and cars.
Working Without Focus
Because mages are vessels of Will, they can sometimes will things to happen without using tools or a practice. Working through determination alone, a mage can surpass her focus and conjure Effects without channeling belief through practice or tools.Working this way doesn’t happen without cost. Gamewise, the player spends one Willpower point and suffers a +3 difficulty to his roll. Essentially, that mage throws every ounce of self-conviction he has into the spell, using Will alone to focus his intents.
Because of their reliance upon scientific methods and tools, technomancers cannot perform this trick at all unless and until they completely transcend the need for instruments. A Virtual Adept might believe he’s got the will to hack Reality without gear, but until he accepts that concept as an integral part of his reality, he just can’t manage it. In all cases, the modifier for using an instrument cannot bring the total difficulty above +3 or below -3. Reality has a certain degree of flexibility, yes, but it cannot be stretched too far.
Working With Unfamiliar Instruments
Every so often, a mage finds herself working outside the paradigm. Maybe she’s learning a new practice or adding new tools to the practice she already employs – working with joss sticks and hell-money, for example, if her shamanic Path began in Kenya or Arizona. She might be using someone else’s laboratory or workshop, adopting desperate measures (like grabbing a Black Suit’s weapon during a firefight), or using instruments and rituals that she hasn’t had time to familiarize herself with just yet. (“The drums don’t really speak to me until we’ve spent some quality time getting attuned to each other’s vibrations.”) In such situations, your mage is working with an unfamiliar instrument or practice… which is often better than using nothing at all, but
it’s not as effective as your established bag of tricks.
In game terms, this unfamiliarity manifests as an increase to your difficulty until you’ve had some time to adjust to the instruments or rituals in question. At the earlier stages, a totally unfamiliar instrument (like a jetpack ganked from some crazy Etherite) or ritual (like joining a Lakota fancy-dance when you normally focus through the Five Rhythms movement practice) adds +2 to your difficulty. Later, when you’ve had some experience with the tools or practice in question (you’ve spent some time on the gun range with that blaster pistol or learned how to call the corners in your new Wiccan community) but have not yet fully adopted that practice, the modifier drops to +1. Both modifiers appear on the Magickal Difficulty Modifiers chart.
Changing Tools and Practices
Story-wise, a character can modify or alter his practice and its associated tools by going through a major change of life. It’s fairly easy to modify your existing practice – to, for example, go from being a primitivist Pagan to adding computers and modifying the Old Ways into a technopagan practice. Radical conversions – say, going from Pagan witchcraft to Sunni Islam – are more difficult, demanding intense roleplaying and deep story arcs.As described in Chapter Six under Changing Focus and Allegiance, (p. 339), such monumental paradigm shifts have various game and story complications. Although a character does not lose Arete, he must return to at least seven instruments (several of which may combine his old practice with his new one). For several in-game months, he’ll be working at half of his previous Sphere levels too… after all, he’s learning an entirely new way of dealing with those principles, even if he does still understand them. Chapter Six covers the details about that mage’s return to his previous levels of accomplishment; for now, just remember that your character is reorienting his deepest-held beliefs.
Growing Beyond the Tools
When it comes to moving beyond the tools of a given practice, mystic mages have a major advantage over tech-based ones. Despite the occasionally cumbersome nature of cauldrons and rites, a mystic worldview is generally more flexible than a scientific one. The mystic may eventually recognize that magick flows from his Will and a connection to the universe at large; ascientist, however – even a crazy one – still remains convinced that her tools and theories provide the bridge between Will and Effect. (See the sidebar SCIENCE!!! in Chapter Six, p.
290.) Overcoming that conviction is sometimes possible, but it’s difficult to do.
In game terms, a mystic character can begin discarding the instruments of her practice when she reaches Arete 3. From that point onward, she may discard one instrument per point of Arete beyond the third – two at Arete 4, three at Arete 5, and so forth. By Arete 9, she can use tools but no longer needs to do so – see Arete, Focus, and Instruments in Chapter Six, (p. 329).
Technomancers, by definition, find it difficult to do that – they do, after all, see “via technology.” A mystically oriented technomancer cannot discard instruments until Arete 6. From then on, however, she realizes that her understanding transcends her need for technology, and she can set aside two tools per dot in Arete instead of one.
Technocrats receive so much indoctrination that they never break through their preconceptions that way. Unless he leaves the Technocracy to pursue a different Path, a Technocrat remains
convinced that his faction’s perception of reality is the only one that truly works… and that perspective demands instruments of science, even if those instruments aren’t always obvious. At Arete 10, a Technocrat becomes part of the Machine – a focus for the Will of technology instead of the other way around.