Hmm… not a GM but I’ll chime in on this anyway. In the case of something so horrendously outside the realm of the natural world, I accept that there should be a greater chance of paradox. Using arcane tools seems silly in most instances but it allows mages to channel such vulgar things more safely. Rotes do the same but are not silly IMO because they are traditionally codified spells essentially. As the bashing damage from paradox is resistant to healing, it can add up and be a burden in a bad situation so the more vulgar spells you use, the worse off you are. That’ll keep some people from using them unless extremely necessary (e.g. my thyrsus). Rolling Comp Resolve for mitigation as you explained it actually sounds pretty good. Making the damage lethal is too soft unless it’s resistant as well… in which case it seems too high a penalty. But as GM you could always decide situations call for modifiers to the paradox roll when appropriate to make the likelihood of not rolling a chance die higher.

As a PC (albeit a PC, though a werewolf PC and one saved by the mages in this case) I have to agree having an arcane tool mitigate Paradox is silly but I think it’s there to make arcane tools useful. That’s not necessarily a justification but probably the rationale behind it.

I can see both sides of the damage argument (bumping it up to lethal but resistant lethal may be too much even though supernatural damage should be tough).

By big issue with Paradox is that sometimes there’s no good rhyme or reason behind what’s vulgar versus what is covert. Actually, they can be completely inconsistent.

For example, Honing Form, which only affect the mage himself, raising one of his attributes, is vulgar BUT Supreme Honing, which raises more than one of the mage’s physical attributes is covert. WTF?!?!

And why the heck would the matter mage spell Shape Liquid be covert? The mage can use it to mold any liquid or mist into a particular shape, including to create a corridor through rain so the mage doesn’t get wet. Yeah, that’s not going to be noticed.

And matter mages can use Repair Object to “mend even the most badly damaged objects” to “perfect functionality.” Yeah, that’s a covert spell. At the minimum I’d make it GM’s discretion depending upon how visibly broken an item is. I could justify covert for something technical or mechanical where it could be passed off as a temporary glitch that is working again but a shattered vase? Or a smashed telephone? That should be vulgar.

I really don’t know what the game designers were thinking when they created some of these spells.

But my biggest pet peeve about Mage the Awakening is that once mages get to a certain level of power, they’re better than all other supernatural creatures. There’s no balance between the various World of Darkness games in that respect. Heck, mages can CREATE spirits. That’s just wrong.

1. I have no problem with this. In fact, I am adding this to my house rules.

2. Paradox is RESISTANT, and therefore if you wind up taking lethal damage due to paradox and it knocks you out, you will bleed to death. There’d be no way to save the character. . . you’d have to make it unresistant lethal to be fair.

3. If the bigger the dice pool = the more chance of paradox, you’re going to discourage mages from taking Rote Spells. There would be no point in getting the rote, because your chance of paradox would increase, not decrease. Unless you were specifically making rotes immune to this rule, which may then encourage mages to take rotes.

Ok second attempt at posting. I think res and comp to absorb paradox. For any that you fail, you CAN roll again to absorb as resist lethal. For any you still fail, you can rol a third time for resist aggravated. So, I agree with Caitlyn that it should give you a chance of dying. It adds more fear, which is fun,and makes the rewards sweeter, maybe more chances for the gnosis only xp thing, which would increase paradox pool in the future. So, to balance out the resilience of the wolves, the mages would wind up being more like glass canons that after a little while would fracture, splinter, crack and break over time with too many or to long of a fight. As for 1’s adding to paradox, if you do the above would not do this as it could potentially be devastating on a regular basis. I like making new characters, but not every week. Lol. So, no 1’s adding, but have the potential for lethal and maybe even aggravated.

Unless I’m turning a tree into a swarm of wasps, I don’t need to worry much about glass cannon issues. Those of you bending time & fate to your whims or creating fire tornados in suburban neighborhoods on sunny days might have more cause for concern. Mostly it would mean for me that your actions would make my healing of you less effective. Which would possibly lead me to start using vulgar magic and shapeshifting into a rabid wombat more often. 🙂

I like your idea, Dave. Maybe non-magical healing could be enough to sustain life but the mage would essentially be in a coma or close for a period of time.

It makes sense that there should be a limit to the amount of power a human being can channel through their body without penalty. Small spells, routine spells, etc. would be fine but when you’re significantly warping reality — there should be penalties.

The TV show The Vampire Diaries does that fairly well. Normal spells are fine but can eventually tire a witch. Kick up to a significant power level and the witch ends up with a bloody nose and is severely drained. When they try to channel major power, the witch potentially can burn out his or her body (the show uses the term “witch” correctly in that it’s not gender specific), which is a natural way of capping extremes — you can really do something outrageous if you want, but you might survive it, so make sure you mean it.

Adding a spell’s dots in Arcana would make sense. I’d do it on a minus one basis, though, so a 1 dot Arcana spell wouldn’t cause Paradox. Since most of those are detection and protection spells anyway, it wouldn’t hurt anything and would make sense.

A 2-dot Arcana spell would have one Paradox die, 3 dots would be 2 Paradox dice, etc. In this case, I wouldn’t mind a magical implement or something to shave off one Paradox die because it would keep the relatively simple spells (2-3 dot Arcana’s) low on Paradox but wouldn’t offset the risks of high Arcana spells too much.

Spells that require dots in multiple Arcanas would stack, of course. So that awesome, overly powerful spell that requires 4 dots of matter and 3 of mind would still be rolling 5 Paradox dice at the minimum (the -1 would only apply once if multiple Arcanas are involved because you’re stepping up the power and they’d still potentially get -1 for a magical implement).

BTW, if you are using magical implements to offset anything and a mage is fighting a mage or someone aware of this rule, the NPC should actively be trying to destroy the other mage’s magical implement if they have a chance.

I’d even consider stealing a page from Champions and if a magical implement is too hard to detect, it doesn’t help you as much.

(In Champions you can use a focus to make powers attached to that focus cheaper but you get the best discount for foci that are obvious and can be taken away easily, like a magic wand as opposed to ones that are obvious but hard to take like armor. Ones that aren’t obvious and hard to remove, like the gem in Doctor Spectrum’s chest, do the least for you.)