Mage Class (Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition) for D&D 3.5

[ColorBlindNinja]

After messing around with the Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, one of my players expressed dissatisfaction with the rules in their current state. Since we both are familiar with D&D 3.5, and I thought an adaption might be in order.

My idea was to basically use the Wizard's chassis (with 6 skill points & any class skills, no bonus feats, and more weapon/armor proficiencies). I was thinking of keeping the magic system more or less unchanged from M20.

Other ideas included:

- The Mage starts with 1 Aretes and gains another every odd level (max 10).

- The Mage starts with 6 dots in any Spheres of their choosing, and cannot have more dots a single sphere than their Aretes.

- The Mage gains 2 dots for any Sphere(s) they wish at every new level gained.

- Pre-epic, the Mage cannot exceed 5 dots in any one Sphere.

- The Mage's magick is an SLA, and can't be altered by feats that normally work on SLAs.

- The player may pick any stat (sans Con) as their primary casting stat.

- Saving throws for the Mage's magic is equal to 10 + Aretes + primary casting stat.

- No spell per day limits.

- Caster level = character level.

- Every success the Mage gains when they roll their Aretes to use magick, either increases the spell's damage by one dice step or increases its duration.

Damage Example (d4/d6/d8/d10/d12/d20)
Duration Example (1/round-1/min-1/10 min-1/hour-1/day)


Thoughts?

[Cosi]

I was thinking of keeping the magic system more or less unchanged from M20.

You mean "horribly broken"? I don't understand how you think creating a class that gets access to Mage powers in D&D is a good plan on any level at all. A Mage starting character has enough power to destroy cities if she is played by someone with a basic knowledge of physics. The Mage magic system isn't even balanced in Mage, where everyone gets to use it. Why on earth would you think it could possibly be balanced as one option among many?

Certainly, you could make a system that was "like Mage" but with rules that were less dumb. But the first part of doing that would be making the magic system less dumb.

[Anymage]

I haven't looked at PF Spheres of Power, but from what I hear they're closer to your idea. It might be easier to backport the idea than to try forcing the storyteller system and the D20 engine to gel.

Trying to make M:tA (any version) compatible with D&D sounds like a logistical nightmare. As mentioned before, there's the simple difference in rule engines. There's the fact that white wolf splats are designed to interact primarily with same splat characters, while D&D expects much broader interaction amongst different character types. You'll have to find a good rationale for paradox in a world where wizards flying around chucking fireballs at each other is very much part of the setting conceit. And ultimately, you'll have to deal with the way that most things in D&D are designed to be modular. Freeform, at-will casting is nifty when it's one of the core conceits of the whole game line, but sounds like a logistical nightmare to make that workable and balanced at a D&D table.

[ColorBlindNinja]

You mean "horribly broken"? I don't understand how you think creating a class that gets access to Mage powers in D&D is a good plan on any level at all. A Mage starting character has enough power to destroy cities if she is played by someone with a basic knowledge of physics.

I'm curious how they'd do that.

The Mage magic system isn't even balanced in Mage, where everyone gets to use it. Why on earth would you think it could possibly be balanced as one option among many?

I harbor no illusions that it'd be balance in any way shape or form.

Certainly, you could make a system that was "like Mage" but with rules that were less dumb. But the first part of doing that would be making the magic system less dumb.

Any suggestions for how I might go about doing that?

EDIT:

I haven't looked at PF Spheres of Power, but from what I hear they're closer to your idea. It might be easier to backport the idea than to try forcing the storyteller system and the D20 engine to gel.

That might be worth a look.

Trying to make M:tA (any version) compatible with D&D sounds like a logistical nightmare. As mentioned before, there's the simple difference in rule engines. There's the fact that white wolf splats are designed to interact primarily with same splat characters, while D&D expects much broader interaction amongst different character types. You'll have to find a good rationale for paradox in a world where wizards flying around chucking fireballs at each other is very much part of the setting conceit. And ultimately, you'll have to deal with the way that most things in D&D are designed to be modular. Freeform, at-will casting is nifty when it's one of the core conceits of the whole game line, but sounds like a logistical nightmare to make that workable and balanced at a D&D table.

Logically, I don't think paradox would be a thing in a D&D world.

[Cosi]

I'm curious how they'd do that.

2 dots Matter gives you the power to turn "stuff" into "other stuff" as long as you don't alter "shape, temperature, or basic state". A block of solid-state pure hydrogen the same temperature as the floor is, of course, the same "shape, temperature, and basic state" as the floor, but it is way the hell off the pressure/temperature curve for pure hydrogen and will return to that curve rather violently. I don't know if you can actually blow up an entire city as a starting character, but you can get close.

Any suggestions for how I might go about doing that?

Well, you'd have to start out with figuring out what it is about Mage that appeals to you, and then you'd basically have to write a magic system that lets you do that from square one. Mage doesn't work very well, and your options are to either ignore that, or (basically) re-write the entire thing.

[ColorBlindNinja]

2 dots Matter gives you the power to turn "stuff" into "other stuff" as long as you don't alter "shape, temperature, or basic state". A block of solid-state pure hydrogen the same temperature as the floor is, of course, the same "shape, temperature, and basic state" as the floor, but it is way the hell off the pressure/temperature curve for pure hydrogen and will return to that curve rather violently. I don't know if you can actually blow up an entire city as a starting character, but you can get close.

Interesting, I'll have to remember that. I have two immediate questions:

1. Wouldn't that count as vulgar, and thus give the Mage that did that paradox?

2. How big of an explosion are we talking about?

Well, you'd have to start out with figuring out what it is about Mage that appeals to you, and then you'd basically have to write a magic system that lets you do that from square one. Mage doesn't work very well, and your options are to either ignore that, or (basically) re-write the entire thing.

I was hoping to keep the magic as close to Mage the Ascension as possible, honestly rewriting the rules into something less abusive sounds like an obscene amount of work.

[johnbragg]

Interesting, I'll have to remember that. I have two immediate questions:

1. Wouldn't that count as vulgar, and thus give the Mage that did that paradox?

Didn't you say that paradox wouldn't really be a factor in a D&D verse?

2. How big of an explosion are we talking about?

If hydrogen correcting to its normal temperature-and-pressure doesn't give you a big enough bang, make it plutonium instead

I was hoping to keep the magic as close to Mage the Ascension as possible, honestly rewriting the rules into something less abusive sounds like an obscene amount of work.

I don't know much about Spheres of Power, but I don't ever remember seeing someone talk bad about it.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Didn't you say that paradox wouldn't really be a factor in a D&D verse?

It wouldn't, I was thinking about doing that in Mage the Ascension.

If hydrogen correcting to its normal temperature-and-pressure doesn't give you a big enough bang, make it plutonium instead

I fear I might have to take a physics class now...

Edit: Can you create antimatter with Matter 2?

I don't know much about Spheres of Power, but I don't ever remember seeing someone talk bad about it.

I've heard people say the spells you can make are either useless or broken.

[johnbragg]

CBN: Wouldn't converting stuff to hydrogen (or plutonium) give you paradox?
ME: Didn't you say that paradox wouldn't be a factor in a D&D verse?
CBN: It wouldn't, I was thinking about doing that in Mage the Ascension.

Fair enough. It would give you paradox, if there is anything left of you to give paradox to. (Mundanes will have no reason to doubt the official story about a gas leak explosion for hydrogen, or nuclear terrorism for plutonium)

ME: I haven't heard anyone talk bad about Spheres of Power
CBN: I've heard people say the spells you can make are either useless or broken.

Again, fair enough. Although that's probably the trick with any magic system. (PArt of the reason 5E is as restrictive as it is, is that it's the Goldilocks update of 3E--no CoDzillas and batman-wizards, no Fighters and Monks who are bad at melee combat.)

[johnbragg]

Edit: Can you create antimatter with Matter 2?

From a theorycrafting white room perspective, that's an interesting question.

From a real-game perspective, the real question is--can you create antimatter and survive the atomization of the planet.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Fair enough. It would give you paradox, if there is anything left of you to give paradox to. (Mundanes will have no reason to doubt the official story about a gas leak explosion for hydrogen, or nuclear terrorism for plutonium)

The easiest away around this is to grab something like a clock, and claim it's a bomb.

Again, fair enough. Although that's probably the trick with any magic system. (PArt of the reason 5E is as restrictive as it is, is that it's the Goldilocks update of 3E--no CoDzillas and batman-wizards, no Fighters and Monks who are bad at melee combat.)

I hear open ended magic systems are really really prone to abuse.

From a theorycrafting white room perspective, that's an interesting question.

From a real-game perspective, the real question is--can you create antimatter and survive the atomization of the planet.

Well, I guess it depends on how much antimatter we're talking about. A few dots in the Correspondence Sphere wouldn't hurt, either.
EDIT: So that you're no where near the ensuing explosion.

[Anymage]

I hear open ended magic systems are really really prone to abuse.

A'la carte magic systems are prone to abuse, because the players can min-max to either perfectly suit their current situation, or can optimize for one element for a rather spectacular effect. Still, when you compare SoP to the sheer open-ended nuttiness of Mage spheres, you're really talking night and day. Mage spheres are literally "if you can justify it within these broad guidelines we give, roll for it".

[ColorBlindNinja]

A'la carte magic systems are prone to abuse, because the players can min-max to either perfectly suit their current situation, or can optimize for one element for a rather spectacular effect. Still, when you compare SoP to the sheer open-ended nuttiness of Mage spheres, you're really talking night and day. Mage spheres are literally "if you can justify it within these broad guidelines we give, roll for it".

Naturally, the more opened the system, the more prone to abuse it's going to be.

[Cosi]

1. Wouldn't that count as vulgar, and thus give the Mage that did that paradox?

Maybe? Stuff does explode, sometimes quite impressively. Could you get people to believe that whatever building you blew up blew up for normal reasons? Who the hell knows!

2. How big of an explosion are we talking about?

I don't have nearly enough physics to say. I think it's something like (volume of stuff) * (energy emitted when hydrogen changes phase), with whatever unit conversions have to happen, but I don't know what the numbers are.

I was hoping to keep the magic as close to Mage the Ascension as possible, honestly rewriting the rules into something less abusive sounds like an obscene amount of work.

I mean, fair, but the problems with Mage that aren't "the magic does things that are ridiculous" are kind of minor by comparison.

If hydrogen correcting to its normal temperature-and-pressure doesn't give you a big enough bang, make it plutonium instead

Actually, I think you can't do that at least in M20. You can't make radioactive stuff with just Matter.

I don't know much about Spheres of Power, but I don't ever remember seeing someone talk bad about it.

There are problems with Spheres of Power.

I fear I might have to take a physics class now...

Yep. Mage (particularly the physical spheres) heavily rewards knowing stuff about science, because it allows you to screw with science in ways that are specific enough to look minor to laymen, but allow you to do crazy nonsense if you know how science works.

Edit: Can you create antimatter with Matter 2?

Maybe? It depends on how you read all the various inputs. Is anti-matter matter? I assume physicists have some answer to that question. Of course, that may or may not be relevant depending on how Matter spells out the restrictions on what you can do.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Maybe? Stuff does explode, sometimes quite impressively. Could you get people to believe that whatever building you blew up blew up for normal reasons? Who the hell knows!

I say just pretend it's a bomb of some sort.

I don't have nearly enough physics to say. I think it's something like (volume of stuff) * (energy emitted when hydrogen changes phase), with whatever unit conversions have to happen, but I don't know what the numbers are.

I'd like to research that, but I fear I'll end up on a government watch list.

I mean, fair, but the problems with Mage that aren't "the magic does things that are ridiculous" are kind of minor by comparison.

True, but D&D already has a bunch ridiculous stuff that magic can do as it is.

Actually, I think you can't do that at least in M20. You can't make radioactive stuff with just Matter.

I don't recall the details, but I believe you are correct.

There are problems with Spheres of Power.

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look at it.

Yep. Mage (particularly the physical spheres) heavily rewards knowing stuff about science, because it allows you to screw with science in ways that are specific enough to look minor to laymen, but allow you to do crazy nonsense if you know how science works.

Ah well, I went into I.T.

Maybe? It depends on how you read all the various inputs. Is anti-matter matter? I assume physicists have some answer to that question. Of course, that may or may not be relevant depending on how Matter spells out the restrictions on what you can do.

I'd assume that antimatter is matter. I'll Google that later.

[aimlessPolymath]

I'll just hop in quickly with some back-of-the-Wolfram-Alpha calculations. There's no scratch paper near me, so I might drop a zero in either direction.

Spoiler

Show

First off, let's start with a cubic meter of hydrogen. There might be more or less, which will be multiplied commensurately.
Some notes:
-Standard Temperature and pressure.


A block of solid hydrogen has a density of 0.088 g/cm³.
There are 10⁶ cubic centimeters here, so it's 88,000 g of hydrogen.
Conveniently, hydrogen has an atomic weight of about 1, so this is also 88k moles of hydrogen atoms. That's a lot.
How much energy do you get out?

Well, we're about to have 44k hydrogen molecules, each containing two hydrogen atoms.
They would like, ideally, to each occupy some amount of space; the amount is determined by the equation
PV = nRT, the ideal gas law.
P is pressure- one atmosphere.
V is volume. We're about to find how much.
n is number of molecules- 44k moles.
R is a conversion factor. Here, I'm using 0.0826 L * atm/mol * K)
T is temperature- 298 Kelvin, or therabouts.
A quick calculation later, and we obtain about one million liters of air.

How much energy does it take to fill up all that area?
The work done by gas as it expands against a constant pressure is given by P* (delta)V. Delta V is about a million liters of air, or a thousand cubic meters- the original cubic meter doesn't really register at this point. P is one atmosphere (atm), which is about 100 Joules/liter.
We end up with about one hundred million N*m, or joules.

We do subtract the heat of fusion and the heat of vaporization- the energy needed to break the bonds between the hydrogen molecules. That works out to about 1000 joules per mole, taking about 44M joules out of our final calculation.

66 megajoules, just off the expansion of the gas.
That's actually not very much! It's about 0.015 kilotons of TNT. For reference, here's half a ton of TNT.

We can do better.
Hydrogen is flammable.
We have 44k moles of hydrogen. If all of them go through the listed reaction (assuming there's enough oxygen), then we end up with
44k * 286 kJ = about 12 * 10^9 joules.

How much oxygen is actually available is left as an exercise to the reader.

That's a lot more- about 2.8 tons of TNT.
That's a lot of damage. For reference, take this -, and scale up the distances by about a factor of 13 (at least).
It's also about a magnitude 3.5 earthquake, but on the surface.

A reminder: This is per cubic meter. Also, I'm not going to bother to chart how the pressure develops over time, but it's unlikely to stay at 1 atm for long- the pressure-based energy may be a bit higher.

Um.

On topic, I'm actually not clear on how M:tA works, but I'm wary of freeform casting. How are freeform spells normally resolved there? (and more generally, how are actions resolved?)

[JeenLeen]

By wizard chassis, do you mean they cast from the wizard spell list but use Arete to boost spells?
Or would it all be free-form spellcrafting like in Mage? If the latter, I see a problem in knowing how many damage dice to roll with offensive spells. What would be the base for a Forces 2 amplification of damage or a Forces 3/Prime 2 fireball?

I'll also chime in that Arete 5-7 is probably closer to a level 20 D&D character than 8-10. 8-10 are really the godlike beings in Mage, with spells ranging from literally making you immortal to you can destroy the multiverse with a thought. (In Mage canon, there are a handful of mages with Spheres at or near 10, and they are basically forbidden from interacting with the rest of the world, with the non-Nephandi ones keeping the Nephandi one from destroying everything.)
However, your note that Spheres can't raise above 5 pre-epic does basically contain that, but maybe that's fine. But, as is, a level 25 guy could have 10 ranks in a Sphere, and that is way better than any craziness Epic Spellcasting can dish out.

I'd think creating Antimatter would probably be Matter 5, the same rank where you can create mythical metals. I think I've heard of DMs ruling that radioactive materials are also Matter 5, since their existence was originally supertech. For a parallel idea: in the middle ages, folk might have heard of mythril, but just because knowledge of it was common-place doesn't mean that it wasn't still Matter 5 to create it.
But, unless (as one person noted it might be) noted explicitly in the M20 rulebook, probably best to discuss with the DM.
I've also heard the idea that, if what you make is damaging, the amount you make is dependent on the damage you would deal. So a hugely successful roll on 'transmute air to acid' makes a lot of acid, while a small roll makes a little bit. Similar application could happen to a hydrogen or antimatter bomb.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Monte Cook already did a d20 conversion of Mage - and the rest.

It takes most of what you expect from M:TA and scale it for d20.

My experience in running it? The Mage wins.
A 5th level Mage was able to interrupt the turn order to heal an ally as they were killed - their werewolf took enough damage to kill them utterly, but the mage had enough points to interrupt and instantly heal all the damage as it was happening, while remote viewing the fight from a safe bunker.

We put some restrictions in place to manage it and keep the power level under control, which mainly worked - limits on how many points can be spent on one spell at a time, how much can be regenerated by magic, and so on.
I'd also recommend you keep a close eye on the number of schools / gnoses/ whatever they're called (it's been about 10 years since we played it) that your mage has access to - too many, and they are the ultimate power in the universe, only challenged by another mage of equal or higher power.

The mage is very much player-intelligence limited. The smarter the player, the more awesome stuff they can do. Average or duller players will struggle with the amount of choice.

[Urist Mcmage]

I think that your best bet if you ported M20 Mages into D&D would be to run an all mage party. Mages are really broken. I mean really broken. Check out this link for a couple of ideas of what they can do even at low levels. You know how a min-maxed spell-to-power erudite or a optimized artificer is tier 0? In D&D tier terms, the mage would be tier -20.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I'll just hop in quickly with some back-of-the-Wolfram-Alpha calculations. There's no scratch paper near me, so I might drop a zero in either direction.

Spoiler

Show

First off, let's start with a cubic meter of hydrogen. There might be more or less, which will be multiplied commensurately.
Some notes:
-Standard Temperature and pressure.


A block of solid hydrogen has a density of 0.088 g/cm³.
There are 10⁶ cubic centimeters here, so it's 88,000 g of hydrogen.
Conveniently, hydrogen has an atomic weight of about 1, so this is also 88k moles of hydrogen atoms. That's a lot.
How much energy do you get out?

Well, we're about to have 44k hydrogen molecules, each containing two hydrogen atoms.
They would like, ideally, to each occupy some amount of space; the amount is determined by the equation
PV = nRT, the ideal gas law.
P is pressure- one atmosphere.
V is volume. We're about to find how much.
n is number of molecules- 44k moles.
R is a conversion factor. Here, I'm using 0.0826 L * atm/mol * K)
T is temperature- 298 Kelvin, or therabouts.
A quick calculation later, and we obtain about one million liters of air.

How much energy does it take to fill up all that area?
The work done by gas as it expands against a constant pressure is given by P* (delta)V. Delta V is about a million liters of air, or a thousand cubic meters- the original cubic meter doesn't really register at this point. P is one atmosphere (atm), which is about 100 Joules/liter.
We end up with about one hundred million N*m, or joules.

We do subtract the heat of fusion and the heat of vaporization- the energy needed to break the bonds between the hydrogen molecules. That works out to about 1000 joules per mole, taking about 44M joules out of our final calculation.

66 megajoules, just off the expansion of the gas.
That's actually not very much! It's about 0.015 kilotons of TNT. For reference, here's half a ton of TNT.

We can do better.
Hydrogen is flammable.
We have 44k moles of hydrogen. If all of them go through the listed reaction (assuming there's enough oxygen), then we end up with
44k * 286 kJ = about 12 * 10^9 joules.

How much oxygen is actually available is left as an exercise to the reader.

That's a lot more- about 2.8 tons of TNT.
That's a lot of damage. For reference, take this -, and scale up the distances by about a factor of 13 (at least).
It's also about a magnitude 3.5 earthquake, but on the surface.

A reminder: This is per cubic meter. Also, I'm not going to bother to chart how the pressure develops over time, but it's unlikely to stay at 1 atm for long- the pressure-based energy may be a bit higher.

Thanks for crunching the numbers.

Um.

On topic, I'm actually not clear on how M:tA works, but I'm wary of freeform casting. How are freeform spells normally resolved there? (and more generally, how are actions resolved?)

You basically roll a number of dice based on your character's skill at magic. You can cast at will.

By wizard chassis, do you mean they cast from the wizard spell list but use Arete to boost spells?
Or would it all be free-form spellcrafting like in Mage?

The latter.

If the latter, I see a problem in knowing how many damage dice to roll with offensive spells. What would be the base for a Forces 2 amplification of damage or a Forces 3/Prime 2 fireball?

My main idea is that you'd start at d4 damage per caster level, and each addition success would raise the dice by one step.

I'll also chime in that Arete 5-7 is probably closer to a level 20 D&D character than 8-10. 8-10 are really the godlike beings in Mage, with spells ranging from literally making you immortal to you can destroy the multiverse with a thought.

Even with only 5 dots max in their Spheres?

(In Mage canon, there are a handful of mages with Spheres at or near 10, and they are basically forbidden from interacting with the rest of the world, with the non-Nephandi ones keeping the Nephandi one from destroying everything.)
However, your note that Spheres can't raise above 5 pre-epic does basically contain that, but maybe that's fine. But, as is, a level 25 guy could have 10 ranks in a Sphere, and that is way better than any craziness Epic Spellcasting can dish out.

Epic spellcasting is pretty insane, what did you have in mind that would trump that?

I'd think creating Antimatter would probably be Matter 5, the same rank where you can create mythical metals. I think I've heard of DMs ruling that radioactive materials are also Matter 5, since their existence was originally supertech. For a parallel idea: in the middle ages, folk might have heard of mythril, but just because knowledge of it was common-place doesn't mean that it wasn't still Matter 5 to create it.
But, unless (as one person noted it might be) noted explicitly in the M20 rulebook, probably best to discuss with the DM.
I've also heard the idea that, if what you make is damaging, the amount you make is dependent on the damage you would deal. So a hugely successful roll on 'transmute air to acid' makes a lot of acid, while a small roll makes a little bit. Similar application could happen to a hydrogen or antimatter bomb.

I'm positive that you need more than Matter 2 for radioactive materials. As for antimatter? Yeah, it's basically the GMs call.

Monte Cook already did a d20 conversion of Mage - and the rest.

It takes most of what you expect from M:TA and scale it for d20.

My experience in running it? The Mage wins.
A 5th level Mage was able to interrupt the turn order to heal an ally as they were killed - their werewolf took enough damage to kill them utterly, but the mage had enough points to interrupt and instantly heal all the damage as it was happening, while remote viewing the fight from a safe bunker.

We put some restrictions in place to manage it and keep the power level under control, which mainly worked - limits on how many points can be spent on one spell at a time, how much can be regenerated by magic, and so on.
I'd also recommend you keep a close eye on the number of schools / gnoses/ whatever they're called (it's been about 10 years since we played it) that your mage has access to - too many, and they are the ultimate power in the universe, only challenged by another mage of equal or higher power.

The mage is very much player-intelligence limited. The smarter the player, the more awesome stuff they can do. Average or duller players will struggle with the amount of choice.

From what I saw of the fluff, it doesn't resemble Mage the Ascension at all. Is the crunch comparable?

I think that your best bet if you ported M20 Mages into D&D would be to run an all mage party. Mages are really broken. I mean really broken. Check out this link for a couple of ideas of what they can do even at low levels. You know how a min-maxed spell-to-power erudite or a optimized artificer is tier 0? In D&D tier terms, the mage would be tier -20.

I'll take a look at the link, but I will say that I'm a tad skeptical that Mages would be tier -20.

Edit: That link seems to be talking about New World of Darkness, are Mages in NWoD comparable to the Mage the Accession ones?

[Lapak]

Let’s not talk about the stuff that would destroy the world or get dismissed out of hand at any reasonable table. Let’s talk about at-will effects a Mage with 3 dots in a Sphere and no specialized knowledge can do at will and (in a D&D setting, Paradox-free:)

- Matter can turn all an enemy’s clothes and armor to lead and their weapons to cotton wool. Or abruptly shift all the ground under them, dropping them into a pit that seals itself above them.

- Time can have unlimited Time Stops at 3 dots by hyper-accelerating themselves, with the ability to affect the world around them. Or they can anti-Time Stop an enemy by putting a bubble of slow time around them. And freeze missiles or projectile spells in flight using the same method. Or (with life and matter dips) rewind time that has already happened, complete with undoing injury and death.

- Life can just kill you. Or if they are feeling lazy, transform the nice bacteria living in your gut into the deadliest disease they know.

- Correspondence at 3 gives all the major scry-and-die components (and their countermeasures) including divination and teleports. Oh, and minor detail: it lets you do any of your other tricks at an arbitrary distance, so you don’t actually need to do the ‘teleport in’ part of scry-and-die.

These are all book-explicit 3 dot effects that don’t require rulings about antimatter or particular cleverness to use. In Ascension, they’re restrained by Paradox, but in D&D? Yikes.

EDIT: and these are all single-Sphere effects, it gets worse when you start mixing mid-tier spheres. :-)

[johnbragg]

These are all book-explicit 3 dot effects that don’t require rulings about antimatter or particular cleverness to use. In Ascension, they’re restrained by Paradox, but in D&D? Yikes.

Just to clarify, OP is thinking of using the d20/D&D wizard chassis, but the MtA setting. So Paradox *is* a limiting factor.

It's not White Wolf Mages running around Greyhawk or Eberron or Krynn, it's Mage: The Ascension (or maybe The Awakening, or maybe The Anniversary) run with d20 resolution mechanics.

(I had the same confusion at the beginning.)

[ColorBlindNinja]

Let’s not talk about the stuff that would destroy the world or get dismissed out of hand at any reasonable table. Let’s talk about at-will effects a Mage with 3 dots in a Sphere and no specialized knowledge can do at will and (in a D&D setting, Paradox-free:)

OK.

- Matter can turn all an enemy’s clothes and armor to lead and their weapons to cotton wool. Or abruptly shift all the ground under them, dropping them into a pit that seals itself above them.

These sort of effects allow saving throws in D&D. Would it be unreasonable to allow them in this case?

- Time can have unlimited Time Stops at 3 dots by hyper-accelerating themselves, with the ability to affect the world around them. Or they can anti-Time Stop an enemy by putting a bubble of slow time around them. And freeze missiles or projectile spells in flight using the same method. Or (with life and matter dips) rewind time that has already happened, complete with undoing injury and death.

Forced Dream is a 3rd level power that allows you to effectively rewind time, and slowing enemies would probably allow a saving throw.
The only issue I see with stopping missiles in midair, is you'd probably need to read an action to do that.

- Life can just kill you. Or if they are feeling lazy, transform the nice bacteria living in your gut into the deadliest disease they know.

Which D&D spells can already do, more or less.

- Correspondence at 3 gives all the major scry-and-die components (and their countermeasures) including divination and teleports. Oh, and minor detail: it lets you do any of your other tricks at Ann arbitrary distance, so you don’t actually need to do the ‘teleport in’ part of scry-and-die.

This is probably the most broken trick you've mentioned; that would be exceedingly powerful.

These are all book-explicit 3 dot effects that don’t require rulings about antimatter or particular cleverness to use. In Ascension, they’re restrained by Paradox, but in D&D? Yikes.

That last bit involving Correspondence 3 can by done from the comfort of your sanctum, which makes all your magic coincidental. At least in M20, I'm not sure about older versions of Mage.

Edit:

Just to clarify, OP is thinking of using the d20/D&D wizard chassis, but the MtA setting. So Paradox *is* a limiting factor.

It's not White Wolf Mages running around Greyhawk or Eberron or Krynn, it's Mage: The Ascension (or maybe The Awakening, or maybe The Anniversary) run with d20 resolution mechanics.

(I had the same confusion at the beginning.)

I was mostly thinking of setting this in a D&D setting, with D&D monsters, classes, ect. Sorry for the confusion.

[Lapak]

Just to clarify, OP is thinking of using the d20/D&D wizard chassis, but the MtA setting. So Paradox *is* a limiting factor.

It's not White Wolf Mages running around Greyhawk or Eberron or Krynn, it's Mage: The Ascension (or maybe The Awakening, or maybe The Anniversary) run with d20 resolution mechanics.

(I had the same confusion at the beginning.)

Ah. I have no idea how that would work, but it IS much more reasonable. Most of my examples above would be crazy Vulgar, but not all of them - the Life transmutation of bacteria could easily be coincidental. The desire to make your magic coincidental is the big limiting factor in Mage, so that would help.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Ah. I have no idea how that would work, but it IS much more reasonable. Most of my examples above would be crazy Vulgar, but not all of them - the Life transmutation of bacteria could easily be coincidental. The desire to make your magic coincidental is the big limiting factor in Mage, so that would help.

I was actually thinking of doing both d20 Mages in Mage the Ascension, and Mages in a D&D setting.

[Lapak]

These sort of effects allow saving throws in D&D. Would it be unreasonable to allow them in this case?

It would be reasonable! Now that I understand what you're doing. You'd have to figure out appropriately-scaling saves, and decide on the spot what save is targeted, but that's all possible. This is way more reasonable than what I thought you were doing, though I'll admit I don't entirely grasp the point if you're keeping the magic system.

Forced Dream is a 3rd level power that allows you to effectively rewind time, and slowing enemies would probably allow a saving throw.
The only issue I see with stopping missiles in midair, is you'd probably need to read an action to do that.

It also lets you see backward and forward in time, and the rewind doesn't have to be prepared in advance, so any attack you survive can potentially be undone.

The 'stopping missiles' example is actually stopping bullets, so I'm thinking it's meant to be a very, very fast action. Effectively Immediate in 3.5 terms. Which makes sense in the Time sphere anyway. :)

As for the rest of it, if I were a player in your game I'd move as much as possible to less-direct or self-targeted effects to dodge the saving throw issue, because the flexibility is there to do it and it makes sense when you want to stay coincidental anyway. The enemy gets a save against me slowing him, but not against me speeding myself up, etc.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It would be reasonable! Now that I understand what you're doing. You'd have to figure out appropriately-scaling saves, and decide on the spot what save is targeted, but that's all possible. This is way more reasonable than what I thought you were doing, though I'll admit I don't entirely grasp the point if you're keeping the magic system.

Saving throws are pretty integral to D&D, that's why I wanted to have them. Not every bit of Magick the Mage uses would require one, but in most of the examples you cited, they probably would.

EDIT: My assumption was that making saving throws was a property of D&D characters, rather than a part of the Mage's Magick.

My idea for save DC was basically 10 + the Mage's Aretes + their casting stat.

It also lets you see backward and forward in time, and the rewind doesn't have to be prepared in advance, so any attack you survive can potentially be undone.

True, but Forced Dream isn't that hard to manifest just before combat.

EDIT: You can augment it to last 1/min per manifester level, too.

The 'stopping missiles' example is actually stopping bullets, so I'm thinking it's meant to be a very, very fast action. Effectively Immediate in 3.5 terms. Which makes sense in the Time sphere anyway. :)

Ah, OK.

As for the rest of it, if I were a player in your game I'd move as much as possible to less-direct or self-targeted effects to dodge the saving throw issue, because the flexibility is there to do it and it makes sense when you want to stay coincidental anyway. The enemy gets a save against me slowing him, but not against me speeding myself up, etc.

So, mostly buffing and battlefield control.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

From what I saw of the fluff, it doesn't resemble Mage the Ascension at all. Is the crunch comparable?

Totally - while the fluff is all a bit Shadowrun (some apocalyptic magical Event has taken place, you play magical creatures in the new reality), the crunch and abilities of the different character types are directly comparable to WoD.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Totally - while the fluff is all a bit Shadowrun (some apocalyptic magical Event has taken place, you play magical creatures in the new reality), the crunch and abilities of the different character types are directly comparable to WoD.

Interesting, I'll take a closer look.