The Basics of our Version of Mage (Patreon)

Some people expressed an interest in the rules for our homebrew “fifth edition” of Mage: The Ascension, so here are the basic details! This isn’t intended to teach you the entire system, and some familiarity with Mage and Vampire would be required to use this system yourself.

Required Reading

This version of Mage is heavily based on the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition corebook. All the stats and resolution of basic (IE: Non-Magic) rolls are found there.

The spell effects are all taken directly from the Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary corebook.

The character creation rules are mostly duplicated from the rules for creating mortal characters in the V5 Companion. This one is free! Thank goodness for that.

Philosophy

The essential goals of this version of this homebrew version of Mage were

• To simplify the core concepts to the extent that they could function as a streaming game
• To introduce a system using the “hunger dice” from V5 in a Mage setting
• To pare down the character creation enough that I could persuade people to play with me.

Character Creation

Most of the character creation is lifted from the V5 companion, with a few changes.

Firstly, you’ll have to decide what your player’s starting Arete rating is going to be. This is their power stat, and their score in a given sphere of magic is determined by this. I recommend 2 for a game where the Mages are just getting started. As my player’s characters  are more experienced, they began with an Arete of 3. I’d advise against any higher than this, as the powers get extremely fucky above the 4th level and you should build up some experience with Mage first before letting the players blow up all your shit.

Secondly, you’ll assign the “Spheres”, or magical abilities, that the character will have. I used Arete x 2, so my players were able to distribute 6 dots among their spheres, with a maximum of 3 in any given sphere.

Spellcasting

Casting spells in this version of Mage is similar to other types of rolls: you build a dicepool and roll against a difficulty (number of successes required) set by the Storyteller.

The default difficulty of the roll is the highest sphere used in the effect; an effect using Life 3 would therefore have a difficulty of 3. Vulgar (obviously supernatural) Magic adds 1 to the difficulty. Vulgar magic in front of non-magical witnesses adds 2.

A magical roll always involves the Arete rating as half of the dice pool. For fully improvised magic (an “Oh Shit” roll), they only roll their arete. For a prepared effect using a focus, they will also use an associated skill. For example, a Hermetic mage preparing the various magical runes and circles required of their magic would use Occult + Arete, where a member of the Society of Ether might use Technology + Arete.

By default, an effect is cast at touch range and has a scale of 1 (one damage dealt/healed etc). Players can add “Reaches”, to increase this. Each reach replaces a die in the magical pool with a Paradox die of a different colour. A player can add reaches up to the total number of dice in their pool, but this becomes progressively riskier.

Paradox

If a ten is rolled on a Paradox die, add 1 to the Permanent paradox pool. This will be included as a Paradox die in all magical effects, without granting a Reach.

If a ten is rolled on a Paradox die as part of a crit (2 tens or more) it's a Paradox crit. The ST describes how the spell worked too hard, and the player's permanent Paradox discharges into a Paradox Backlash.

If a 1 is rolled on a Paradox die and the total roll fails, the spell fails and Permanent paradox discharges into a Paradox Backlash.

Paradox Backlash ranges in severity based on the size of your pool. At lower levels it could be willpower or superficial health damage. At medium levels (3 - 7) it's a temporary effect such as a second head, a paradox spirit that fucks with you, or taking damage every time a player at the table swears. At high levels, the effect can be a powerful paradox spirit that attacks you, aggravated health and willpower damage or being shunted into a Paradox dimension.

Conclusion

That’s about all you need to know to run my version of Mage! Let me know if you decide to run a game with this system, I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. The magic seems complicated at first, but in practise it’s pretty fast-moving and simple once you get used to it.

Have fun!