Character Creation: Mage the Awakening 2e

This is the awkward GM Corbin and since Chronicles of Darkness spans multiple game lines I’m gonna create a mage The Awakening character in this episode but in future episodes this character will turn into a Promethean changeling demon and so on until I get to cover all the

Game lines and this is who’s gonna help me today this is Theo so if you’ve watched this channel before you’ll know that I’ve been creating a character for Theo for quite some time his name is Polonius Dewberry he was created as a mortal character originally but now we

Are going to update this Mortal character into being a mage oh and he’s hot in the mushroom now thank you to our patrons for supporting the channel Echo B the Bohemian cookie T Stephen A Joshua s and Brian a thank you so much the Mage template consists of the following the

Path which is the type of Mage you are the order which is which faction of Mages you are a part of a nimbus which is your magical fingerprints a dedicated magical tool which can be used to cast spells six dots of Arcana which determine what spells you have access to

Each level of akarna also gives you access to practices for Creative spell casting entertainments that give you additional special abilities one gnosis which is your power stat an obsession which is an additional aspiration for getting Arcane beats Arcane beats are special XP that you can only use for

Buying certain things like gnosis and Arcana there are three rote spells that you have which are spells that you have memorized and they get an additional power that we’ll talk about later one Praxis spell which is a spell that you have additional Mastery of I’ll go into

The mechanics of that later you get one extra dot of a resistance attribute and if you are part of an order you get a DOT of a cult a DOT of order status and the high speech Merit for free now there’s likely a lot of things that I’m

Missing in this template I am going based off of the quick character creation rules in the book right now I’ll make Corrections later on if I find any but just know that the attainments that that you get for increasing your Arcane Beats to a certain point aren’t listed in the character creation quick

Start rules you actually have to go to the attainment section to see that you get this stuff for free I hope you got all that Theo because it’s quite complex and I’m not going to repeat it okay I’ll I might repeat some of it but

I hope you got all of that even though Polonius is a mage he still keeps his virtue and vice unlike werewolves and vampires this is because Mages are still mostly human unlike Mortals Mages have wisdom instead of Integrity wisdom is essentially this sort of not morality system but essentially is like how often

Do you go and use magic to solve all your problems as well as do you start looking at humans less as people and more as test subjects it can really depend on your interpretation of it but know that when you commit an act of hubris which is sort of like casting a

Spell to kill someone or hurt someone permanently that’s going to start lowering your wisdom until you get to about zero wisdom and you are going to be uncontrollably sending out spells and not being able to control yourself when you want to not cast spells essentially wisdom also determines how

Long paradoxes lasts and if you are containing Paradox you will roll your wisdom value as sort of a dice pool to soak Paradox and turn it into damage against yourself instead of letting it seek seep out into the world based on the pull from patreon I did a coin flip

And it looks like that Polonius is going to be a mustigos I think it’s kind of weird that Theo’s boxer character is a mind Mage that’s going to be a little bit hard to do but we’ll go with it for the order we went with the poll from

YouTube and it was eons ago and it ended up being a free Council character let’s talk about Theo’s Nimbus this will show up if people look at his spells with their Mage site Theo’s Nimbus he’s chosen will be the smell of leather boxing gloves and blood stains so if

Someone looks at a spell he casts they’ll see blood stains and smell the smell of leather now Theo’s dedicated magic tool is going to be his leather boxing gloves which will match one of the materials mystigos use for their tools unlike other Splats each star of

Arcana gives you access to a lot of abilities I think it’s about seven or nine abilities or seven or nine spells as well as your attainments and your practices which basically practices are just sort of like a blank check for types of magical powers that fall under

A category for instance a DOT one will give you the ability to essentially get information and gleam information from anything for the most part Theo however is going to go all in with his space Arcana with three dots he’s going to put two dots into Prime and one

Dot into mind rotes are not the same as a rote roll to put it simply roads are memorized spell for the sake of video link let’s just leave it at that the mechanical benefit is that you can apply the Rope quality when casting the road spell from a grimoire rather than memory

Or if you designed it yourself it gains the real quality Additionally you can use dots in the associated skill as a yantra bonus to spell casting that wrote you are considered to have five dots in the highest Arcanum used for determining how much free reach the Caster has with the rote spell

It makes a Caster’s number Nimbus harder to identify as well and does not require a point of Mana to cast from an inferior or common Arcana the benefit however doesn’t stack with Praxis spells a Praxis spell is a spell that the Caster has sort of looked at and has a

Innate understanding of it this isn’t the same as memorizing it this is more along the lines of you know really well how to cast a fireball because you know the intricate connection of a Fireballs like underlying code or whatever so a Praxis spell that is a spell that

Gets an exceptional success with three successes instead of five successes and it doesn’t require a point of Mana to cast if it’s from an inferior or common Arcana so this is a little bit better than a wrote only in some cases in my mind wrote is probably a lot better than

Praxis Mage fans correct me in the comments below mental scan is a mind-one ability that Theo has which allows him to quickly read the thoughts and emotional states of others this comes in the form of asking the Storyteller questions about the character that he’s mind reading from

You can also use a reach to get Snippets and ideas that the subject is currently thinking of on their surface thoughts Polonius has supernovale Prime 2 which allows him to hide his spell sort of Ward them from detection peripheral Mage site won’t recognize that they exist but

Active Mage site will with a an appropriate Clash of Wills as well warp is a three dot space spell that basically allows you to do bashing damage against a Target Additionally you can use it to give the arm or leg rack tilt if you use a reach

Words of truth is a prime 2 spell that allows a mage to essentially turn the words that they say that are true into Universal truths that other people will identify so if you say for instance the sky is blue the people across from you will understand yes this is a universal

Truth and I can’t do anything about it or for instance if the Mage said something like the police are behind that wall and the Mage knows this those people would also be like okay the police are behind this wall we believe him whether or not we’re going to act on

This information is up to us we can reject it and say hey even though they’re there we’re still gonna do what we’re gonna do however if the Mage spends a reach they can also make it so that they are compelled to have a reaction this reaction will either give

Them the inspired condition if they decide to go with what the Mage says or give them the guilty condition if they decide to go against it now this doesn’t work with stuff that is opinion in base or that is um not true so you can’t say two plus

Two equals fish because that’s not true and therefore the magic won’t work at gnosis one Theo’s character has the following limitations most of this isn’t going to matter at character creation but know that yantras are essentially components of a spell which are limited to two of and they help you cast a spell

Better so you get extra dice for your dice pool when using yantras depending on which yantras you use a and Paradox is how big are Paradox dice pool starts out when we invoke it this is going to be one at start and the Arcana maximum

Is why we can only have space at three dots instead of say four or five an obsession is essentially an extra aspiration that Mages get to generate more Arcane Beats from which are used to purchase certain traits such as gnosis Arcana and Legacy attainments in this

Case a Theo is going to choose that his obsession is going to be with the undead so that he is going to be more likely to go out and look at Undead things even if it goes against what the group is going to be trying to do this is sort of

Supposed to be a detriment to Mages but sort of ends up acting a little bit like a fourth aspiration as far as the attainments go all one dot Arcana gain the attainment counter spell which allows you to counter spell other spells of that same Arcana type or abilities

That are similar because Theo has two dots of prime he gains the additional attainment Universal counter spell which allows him to counterspell any spell that he doesn’t know what Arcana it has at two dots base Arcana Theo is able to cast spells at range at a Target they

Cannot see so long as he has sympathetic connection to it sort of like a voodoo doll you need to have that a little bit of connection to the person so that you’re able to identify they’re the person you’re trying to Target such as an object or a familial connection to

Them I’m rambling now so at two dots of Arcana uh Theo is also able to have for instance space armor because he has two dots of space armor uh space armor allows him to apply his space Arcana to his defense stat as well as apply his defense against Firearms he also if he

Does a Dodge action he can actually redirect the attack at someone else or the opponent I believe because he has two dots of prime he gets Prime armor which allows him to reduce holy magical spells holy with a W not holy with an H this means that if someone fires a bolt

Of electricity at him he can reduce the damage but if say someone is using a werewolf claw to slice through them it doesn’t apply at three dots of an Arcanum Theo is able to summon a creature from the supernal based on that Arcanum since its space I believe it’s

Demons I think it’s from pandemonium uh correct me if I’m wrong in the comments below for merits for free because Theo is part of an order he gets to have the high speech Merit which basically allows him to use the high speech ability as a yantra high speech is sort of like this

Alien language that Mages know and then Theo also gets for free order status one for the free Council this is because he’s part of the free Council and it’s sort of like your normal status as far as I can tell because Polonius has free Council status one he can take the

Techni Merit however that’s pronounced I don’t really understand this Merit but here I’m gonna read it off your character uses libertine practices in order to use cultural magical Styles science and art forms as magical tools pick a focus for your character such as computer networking your character

Treats the focus as an order tool for the free Council so long as she includes it during spell casting and may further treat the presence of sleepers engaging in a focus as a separate order tool as long as the spell is not obvious if all Mages casting a spell under the teamwork

Rules have this Merit representing the same Focus the leader spell casting role gains 8 again this Merit may be bought multiple times to represent different fields of study I was going to say Theo’s um order tool in this case would be essentially I think boxing but boxing

Would be very hard to make things not obvious but if he’s punching someone and then doing a touch spell that would make sense as far as as an order tool I believe so we’re going to go with that the shadow name Merit is a lot more easy to understand

Essentially Mages have their mundane Persona and their magical Persona when someone is trying to look for their magical Persona while the Mage is in the mundane Persona it is more difficult to try and scry for them and track them it adds the amount of dots you have in your

Shadow name as a penalty against the scrying or the investigation role so I wanted to cover what creative thermaturgy is it’s a very big deal and it’s very hard and complex to explain sometimes but essentially what it is is If your player wants to cast a spell and

It’s not listed they can do it so long as it is covered under one of these categories for instance at the one dot rating you have compelling which is you can sort of nudge people to do things that they would already be likely to do or nudge fate into something that is

Likely to happen so someone forgetting their wallet is more likely to happen than them taking all the money out of their bank account and leaving on the ground for you um knowing is something that’s more like oh I want to know more about this effect uh unveiling is trying to reveal

Something that’s hidden so basically any of those types of knowledge uh uncovering spells and abilities are covered by one dot uh that’s all you need and whereas some other Splats they have prophetic powers that are higher level but they would be covered under a one dot level for mage at Apprentice

Which is two dots of a narcana you have ruling which is you can make control phenomenon more so than just compelling it to do something it would do so this is like putting water to go the wrong way up a hill and stuff like that or command people to do things

Shielding is your warding effects veiling is the opposite of unveiling so you’re hiding things and then at discipline you have your first damaging spells you have frame spells which will always do bashing damage depending on which type of Arcana you’re using then you have perfecting spells which is

Strengthening and bolstering your uh an ability or an object or whatever under the purview of your Arcana and then weaving is essentially sort of like rip it says altering nearly any property of a Target without transforming it so it’s like mending or you could even make it

So like a crack forms or something akin to that or you could turn something from a liquid to a solid or vice versa and technically you can enchant weapons and rewrite Time by a few seconds which is kind of interesting and but these are your creative abilities that you have

Access to once you get to five dots of an Arcana which requires a very high gnosis or not very but higher than what you have at starting level you could do stuff like unmake things and create things out of thin air so you’re disintegrating people all around and all

That so Theo are you ready for your mange character uh it looks like he was a little bit tired I’m sorry I’m not going to be covering the weaknesses the pros and cons of Mages in this video that’s just because Mages are just so complex and a

Lot of their weaknesses are hidden in the spells that they can cast so I’ll do that in a future video I promise you that’s gonna come not next time but probably like in a few weeks um luckily Mage is done for the moment for character creation I’m going to be

Covering either Promethean changeling or demon which are uh Splats that I’m more familiar with so I can talk about it a lot better and thank you so much for watching if you’d like to support the channel you can do so on patreon there’s probably a plug Midway through the film through the video

Um thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a good one