World of Darkness/Mage/Spellcasting

Creative Thaumaturgy

The Wise aren’t limited to the example spells described with the ten Arcana starting on p. 128. Within the bounds of their power, mages can conjure nearly any effect they can imagine. This section provides step by step guidelines for creating your own spells.

Step One: Declare Intent

First and foremost, decide exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with your spell. Don’t focus on how the magic will do what you want for now, just focus on what you want it to do.

Step Two:

Determine Arcanum and Practice

Using the descriptions of the ten Arcana beginning on p. 128 and the descriptions of the thirteen Practices beginning on p. 123, determine which Arcanum and which Practice the spell falls under. Depending on the intent of the spell, this might be obvious, or there might be several ways you could

go about accomplishing your intent. Don’t worry about

whether the effect seems “too powerful” for its dot level or

“unbalanced” compared to a similar effect under a different

Arcanum; part of the fun of playing Mage is coming up with

clever, unexpectedly-useful applications of magic.

Step Three:

Determine Effect and Cost

The effects of a spell can be incredibly broad, and it’s impossible to categorize every conceivable thing a mage might want

to do with a spell, but this section will highlight some of the

more common effects, how to adjudicate them, and what they

should cost.

Don’t think of this section as a “menu”; any individual spell

should have a single, clear effect. If you start designing a spell

that deals damage and grants bonus dice and imposes a Condition, you’re probably creating a combined spell (see p. 118),

not a single spell.

All Mana costs are cumulative. A mage attempting a feat that

requires Mana above her Gnosis-derived spending limit may take

as many turns as needed before the action to spend the required

Mana. If she is interrupted or changes her mind part-way through,

Mana spent is still lost.

Damage

A spell can deal damage directly, as in the case of a thunderbolt

or an enervating touch, or indirectly, as in the case of rotting

out a support beam to drop a house on someone.

• Direct damage spells can use many Practices depending

on Arcanum, but always inflict damage equal to Potency.

• ••• spells inflict bashing damage, while •••• spells inflict

lethal damage.

• A lethal damage spell may be upgraded to aggravated

damage for the cost of a point of Mana and one Reach.

Spells that deal damage indirectly aren’t subject to these limits:

A spell that causes a roaring bonfire to spread and consume the

victim inflicts the standard damage for exposure to fire.

Healing

Healing spells are usually Perfecting (•••) or Patterning

(••••) spells. A Ruling (••) spell can boost a subject’s natural

healing time.

• A Ruling spell can halve the subject’s normal recovery

time for its Duration, or quarter it with a Reach.

• Perfecting spells heal bashing damage, repair inanimate

objects, or heal lethal damage with a Reach.

'''126 chapter four: magic

'''The Beat Goes On…

At this point, you may be wondering what’s stopping you from loading up on Condition-causing

spells in a relatively safe environment, resolving

them all, and earning Beats by the bucketload?

The honest answer is “nothing, mages do it all

the time.” Mastigos force their apprentices to

face terrifying fears in order to better themselves.

Thyrsus challenge their own bodies with horrible

diseases. The only limits are the rule that a character may only earn one Beat per scene from

resolving Conditions, and the limits of her own

Wisdom (see p. 87). Remember, though, that

letting a Condition-causing spell’s Duration expire

doesn’t resolve the Condition.

• Patterning spells heal lethal damage. If an inanimate object

is completely destroyed rather than merely broken, it may

require a Patterning spell to fix.

• A Patterning healing spell can repair aggravated damage instead of lethal at the cost of one point of Mana and a Reach.

Conditions &amp; Tilts

As pre-packaged blocks of rules already designed to fit into a

lot of different systems, Conditions are an excellent source of

inspiration for long-lasting spells.

Because the effects of Conditions and Tilts are so broad, it’s

difficult to assign hard-and-fast rules for Practices that inflict them.

Use the Practice descriptions and the following list as a guideline:

• Compelling (•) spells can’t create Conditions out of whole

cloth, but can intensify phenomena that already exist to inflict

Conditions. A Compelling spell can make someone who’s already nervous Spooked, for example, but can’t make someone

who’s uninterested in the mage romantically Swooning.

• Ruling (••) spells can create most non-Persistent, mundane Conditions. Supernatural Conditions, such as the

Soulless Condition and its sequelae or Manifestation

Conditions, generally require a Weaving (•••) spell.

• Creating a Persistent Condition is almost always a Patterning (••••) or Unraveling (••••) effect.

• Spells most often inflict Conditions that harm, hinder, or

inconvenience characters. Spells can mimic the effects of a

helpful Condition, but using magic to gain a benefit ''and

''a Beat is double-dipping. Beneficial Conditions created

by magic don’t grant Beats unless they’re the result of an

exceptional success.

• Tilts are usually created by applying a Reach to an attack

spell, but if you want to create one on its own, it’s usually

a Fraying (•••) or Patterning (••••) spell.

Conditions created with magic only last as long as the Duration factor of the spell. If the target resolves the Condition

before the Duration expires, the spell ends early and the target

gains a Beat as normal. (It’s the Storyteller’s call whether the Beat

is normal or Arcane.) If the Duration runs out, the Condition

goes away; but that doesn’t count as resolving the Condition.

Removing a condition with magic is always at least a Ruling (••) spell, but otherwise follows the same guidelines as

creating one.

Bonuses/Penalties

Spells that grant bonus dots to traits can belong to nearly

any Practice, depending on what the Trait represents. Obvious

examples include Perfecting for directly increasing the Attributes

and Skills of a target, but a Ruling spell to make a corpse rise

up and serve you can be modeled as a spell that grants you

Retainer dots.

• Increasing a Merit is typically a Ruling (••) spell. Attributes

and Skills can be increased by a Perfecting (•••) spell. Gaining a Skill that has no dots is a Patterning (••••) spell.

• Spells that grant or increase equipment bonuses count

as Trait bonuses. This also applies to spells that simply

increase a dice pool.

• A spell can grant a total number of Trait dots equal to its

Potency. Advantages, such as Gnosis or a vampire’s Blood

Potency, cannot be granted by spells, nor can supernatural

abilities like Arcana or Disciplines.

• Any spell that increases a Trait beyond the target’s natural maximum costs a point of Mana. Remember that

high-Gnosis mages and other supernatural creatures may

have Trait maximums higher than 5. The “Trait maximum” for an equipment bonus is always +5.

• Trait dots granted by magic last only as long as the spell’s

Duration, and are not subject to the Sanctity of Merits

rule.

Dice Effects

• A Ruling (••) spell can grant the 9-Again rule to a dice

pool of relevant actions, or 8-Again with one Reach.

• A Perfecting (•••) spell can grant the rote action quality

at the cost of one point of Mana.

• The spell affects one roll per point of Potency. If the spell’s

Duration expires before the Potency is used up, any excess

Potency is lost.

Protection

Most commonly with the Practice of Shielding (••), a spell

may grant protection from forces under the Arcanum’s purview.

These spells usually provide blanket immunity to natural or

mundane phenomena, while protecting against a number of

'''creative thaumaturgy 127

'''“I Turn Him Into a Frog!”

You may have noticed with this system that it’s

much easier for a mage to incapacitate an enemy by, say, putting him to sleep or charming

him into ignoring the caster than by fighting him.

That’s intentional — but what about when it comes

to directly killing someone with magic? Surely a

Master of Death can snuff out a life with a glance,

and if an Adept of Life can’t turn someone into a

frog, what good is she?

Patterning (••••) spells can transform a living

target into something harmless (or even inanimate), but such magic is never Lasting. It can be

pushed up to Indefinite Duration, but there’s always a chance the spell can be broken.

Certain Unmaking (•••••) spells can slay a target with a single casting, or neutralize them permanently, but even then, the spell is always Withstood

by the target’s relevant Resistance Attribute.

supernatural attacks equal to the spell’s Potency. Such attacks

must win a Clash of Wills to affect the target.

Hiding

Veiling (••) spells render the target undetectable to certain

phenomena or types of beings. This stealth is fully effective

against ordinary senses, and provokes a Clash of Wills against

mystical detection attempts.

Narrative Effects

This is a catch-all category for spell effects that influence the

fiction of the game but don’t interact directly with the mechanics.

Things like walking through walls, shaping clay into a statue, or

transmuting one substance into another fall under this category.

• Most narrative effects will care less for Potency than for

Scale, Range, and other spell factors. However, if the effect

could have varying degrees of success (consider trying to

calm a hurricane: There’s a whole range of possibilities

between “nothing happens” and “a dead calm”), the Storyteller should establish Potency requirements. The guidelines for determining the number of successes required

on an extended action provide a good rule of thumb.

• Making a spell Lasting always costs +2 Reach, but you

should think carefully before allowing it — only spells

without any way to revert them should have the option.

Step Four:

Determine Withstand Trait

Spells that directly target a subject’s body, mind, or soul are

usually Withstood (see p. 114) by one of the subject’s Resistance

Attributes. Spells that cross the Gauntlet are Withstood by the

local Gauntlet Strength. Other spells might be Withstood by

more esoteric values.

Look at the intended subject of your spell. Is it something

that could “fight back” against the magic, or is there something

that seems like it would require the mage to put more effort

than usual into the spell? If so, that’s the value that Withstands

it. Living (or undead) subjects usually Withstand spells with

Stamina (for physical transformations or afflictions), Resolve

(for attempted mind control or other mental effects), or Composure (for emotional manipulation or effects that target sanity,

perception, or the soul). Ephemeral entities Withstand spells

with their Rank.

Supernatural beings like mages, vampires, or demons ''do not

''add their Supernatural Tolerance trait to Withstand a spell.

Spells are only resisted or contested if some supernatural

power would interfere with the mage’s ability to form an Imago,

such as Countermagic (p. 192).

Spells that inflict direct damage with the Practices of Fraying

and Unraveling are never Withstood; the subject’s Stamina is

already factored in by virtue of the subject’s Health.

Step Five: Primary Factor

Determine which Factor is the Primary Factor. This is either

Potency or Duration, with the rule of thumb of “whichever

Factor you immediately think of when you think of a more

powerful version of the spell.” The Primary Factor of a given

spell effect is always the same; you can’t make a creative thaumaturgy spell that’s identical to another spell except with a

different Primary Factor.

Step Six: Cast the Spell

At this point you’re done creating your new spell; refer to the

spellcasting rules on p. 111 to cast it.