Happy to help, I know it took me so long to get it across in my head and going step by step before it would click. Figured the video of the same might help others!
Been read over RPG for the pass 30 years of my life. All of the books I got my hands on required reading them over a few times. Best thing about WOD is, more or less, it is Our own world, just a few shades darker. In one way or another, we all come from a shelter life. When you start of as a fresh newly created characters that know really nothing about the Dark World they live in. " Just like the players," everything is a shocking new wonder. Have fun with the game.
I just started the second edition of mage last week and it is easier to understand! Also, our storyteller is doing a god machine chronicle which all of the players agreed but it is based two thousand years in the future the world has been invaded and most of the mage orders don't exist anymore. In other words, magic is pure imagination. I mean mages can learn or have rotes but mostly just figuring it out on our own. Also, it is kinda like a post-apocalyptic game. Honestly, I made my mage a crafter of things I mean a lot of things. Having matter and prime help a lot with it.
I'm late to this party, but thank you my group just started playing this game and this has helped me understand that act of spell casting in the game. great stuff!
Absolutely! Come on by our Discord sometime, even if you're not watching our game. It's a great resource if you have questions, and we love hearing about other games.
It definitely can be! Don't get overwhelmed though, it's all basic addition and subtraction, so it's not far off from calculating some bonuses from D&D 3.5e or PF1. Once you've done it a couple times, it'll get faster, and you only really need to do this when you're unsure if the Mage could cast the spell. If it's easy simple stuff, don't bother calculating it, and just keep the story moving. Same as nobody does a Computer check to Google something or a Drive check for going to the library.
Thanks for the vid, as much as it helped me a lot with understanding the rules of MtAw I still don't get how inferior arcana works. Can you explain it on how it works?
I promise that you're PROBABLY putting way too much thought into it. Inferior Arcana is (in the fluff of things) the Arcana that just doesn't really click with your Path. Obrimos are all about endless cycles, so the idea of things of moving on and becoming something else or ending is kind of weird, so their Inferior Arcana is Death, as an example. So what does an Inferior Arcana mean for gameplay? It means you cannot start play with a dot in your Inferior Arcana. It means you require a mentor/teacher to go above 2 dots in your Inferior Arcana and have to pay using standard Experience and NO Arcane Experience. That's it! There's some other things that come up with Signs of Sorcery about ANTI-Demesne but that belongs in a whole other video.
Great video, very helpful. I played a fair amount of Mage: The Awakening first edition. I'm trying to learn the new system from Onyx path, and this video was very helpful, because spellcasting changed a lot, but I'm definitely starting to see the merits of this new system now. One quick question about using reaches to alter spell factors, if anybody can help me. The benefits of moving from the standard to advanced tables are obvious. But what would be the benefit of changing the primary spell factor itself? If I can already alter the scale, range, duration, and potency of my spells, in what sort of situation would it be worth investing one of my limited reaches to change which factor is considered "primary"?
Great question @Deadnight! You get free steps in the primary factor of a spell, which is either Potency or Duration, based on your Arcana. So if you are wanting to cast say a healing spell, that you want to happen over the course of a month, you might want to take the bonus steps in Duration for free instead of Potency. You could take a -2 to buff the potency up a little bit, while the free steps (at advanced duration) would rocket the duration from 1 hour to 1 month. Also keep in mind that you have limited FREE reach, but you can overreach fairly easily and will do so frequently. It generates Paradox, but that's what Mana and a Dedicated Magical Tool is for!
@@OccultistsAnonymous Ah! There's a lot to learn, and I'm trying to scroll through the pdf while I wait for my physical copy to arrive from drivethrough rpg. I must have overlooked that detail about free steps, that's tremendously helpful, thanks again!
It is a teeny, tiny section that's written a little weirdly in 'Step Four', on p. 326. It's also on p.113 but that section is written even weirder. Very easy to miss.
Could make an updated guide that goes through the process with Spells example? I am still confused about how to do spellcasting even when looking at the back of the book. Especially with Primary Spell Factors and the special reach effects underneath the Rotes. How do those work?
Haven't played a session yet but created a Worksheet with excel, You have to place something (we use little plastic gem tokens at our table) in each catagory of spell, yantra's, paradox, basically one big sheet with everything so everyone can visualize the spell factors your trying to create. Not sure if it will help other tables to try to do something like that but I can't wait to try it out and see if by the end of the night people are pumping out spells fairly quickly.
A pretty good plan! You could use a d20 or d6 to help represent the values as well, so you don't have beads rolling around. I'm setting to to play in Roll20 and trying to develop some tools there for keeping track.
Good explanation, helps to hear it more than just read it for me. Question, some of the spells mention orders and attribute/skill rolls. Is that used instead of or in addition to? and do you know what page that would be listed on. First time making a character in this system and so want to be sure of things.
Ah! This likely means that you are looking at the first edition of Mage: The Awakening. The second edition does away with that system for a singular spellcasting system as described in this video. If you've got more questions, feel free to join the OA community Discord: yeetinto.space
I love the ideas, the setting and many mechanical aspects of the Awakening 2e, but man, jumping through so many hoops just to cast a single spell is exhausting. It probably gets easier with experience, but sticking to it is a challenge. I'm saying that as a person who started with Mage the Ascension 2e. It had even more convoluted rules for magic, that's why I eventually abandoned it. Also, wrapping one's head about magic in the Awakening is one thing, but making your players do the same is another.
It's not much different than performing an attack in some more combat oriented games where your base stats aren't changing frequently, you're just worrying about the handful of yantra (many of which are the same ones that Mage uses all the time) or the same repetitive Reach effects. AND many spells won't even use all these steps or need to be rolled.
@@OccultistsAnonymous true, that's why I dislike some overly crunchy combat-oriented games, too. My belief that a thing that is a major focus of a game must be designed elegantly and without undie complexity, so that it would be easy to do it frequently.
There's about 80+ Episodes of our live game as well you could watch. I ran the game for complete newbies, so we go over spell casting then as well. Besides that, is there something you're confused by?
Hi, thanks for the video. Could you or someone help me solve a question about Mage Sight? Would a mage using AMS Prime (Active Mage Sight) be able to tell that a person in the crowd is a mage or at least that the being is a supernatural being? If so, I can deduce that it could do the same for werewolves with AMS Spirit and vampires with AMS Death, right? Or would he need to use FMS (Focused Mage Sight) and do a reveal or scrutiny? If that's the case, would he take this information as superficial or would he have to scrutinize the Mystery in depth? Or is none of that possible and the mage can only identify another mage using the Supernal Vision spell?
Hey Eriel! I highly suggest join the OA Discord (www.yeetinto.space), it's a great resource for these kind of questions. Based on my understanding of the rules, Prime AMS would not reveal a supernatural being. There's some hints that might help, like you might see that this perfectly normal looking human has some Supernal Symbols suggesting they'd make an excellent Yantra for a Spirit spell, right? AMS with Spirit would give much better information BUT AMS never gives complete answers, you always need to Scrutiny and Revelation to get real answers. If you're thinking about a lot of crossovers to other splats, I HIGHLY recommend picking up the Player's Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (www.drivethrurpg.com/product/361809/Players-Guide-to-the-Contagion-Chronicle?affiliate_id=723048). It's got great suggestion for playing with characters across different splats and an entire chapter dedicated to how the different Arcana work with the different splats!
Ah, yes, it's just a breakdown if the various spell factors that are listed in the book. The handout itself is just in our Roll20 game. It's the same tables from the Spellcasting Appendix in the rule book.
Oh yeah, we love Discord! We've got our own little Occultists Anonymous Discord running as well if you care up join the conversation. discord.gg/vVWXMsD
This is second edition! It's not necessarily simple but once you understand the steps, it is pretty easy. Also you gotta blame Onyx Path, not White Wolf. :D
I spell system they have worked out for NWOD is way better than the old. The add befit I found was you can meta game it to unbelievable levels that I use to piss lot of people. It was all about Area of Affect. A "master" of Force can create a Gravity Field with a pull the can reach out to the very edge of our solar system. It only take about five years to build a character to do this. Depending on the time of the character's awakening, the character at the age of 17 to 25 years old could create our current solar system. It takes around three hours to write it all out to show the math. I upset more than a few creationist religious people at the factory I worked at. And a few physic students dam near yelling," It is Not that Simple to build a solar system !"
Thank you so much for making this. Even with the 2nd edition, actually getting this basic information across can be hell.
Happy to help, I know it took me so long to get it across in my head and going step by step before it would click. Figured the video of the same might help others!
You just Quoted my ST his words xD
Been read over RPG for the pass 30 years of my life. All of the books I got my hands on required reading them over a few times.
Best thing about WOD is, more or less, it is Our own world, just a few shades darker. In one way or another, we all come from a shelter life. When you start of as a fresh newly created characters that know really nothing about the Dark World they live in. " Just like the players," everything is a shocking new wonder.
Have fun with the game.
I just started the second edition of mage last week and it is easier to understand! Also, our storyteller is doing a god machine chronicle which all of the players agreed but it is based two thousand years in the future the world has been invaded and most of the mage orders don't exist anymore. In other words, magic is pure imagination. I mean mages can learn or have rotes but mostly just figuring it out on our own. Also, it is kinda like a post-apocalyptic game. Honestly, I made my mage a crafter of things I mean a lot of things. Having matter and prime help a lot with it.
you have a *favorite*? Harrumph.
No but seriously thank you for making this. Every person who makes useful videos about 2e MTAw is a saint.
I'm allowed to have favorites! :D
Amazing video mate, you just stream lined the magic casting system in a really fun way mate, thank u so much!!!!
I'm late to this party, but thank you my group just started playing this game and this has helped me understand that act of spell casting in the game. great stuff!
Absolutely! Come on by our Discord sometime, even if you're not watching our game. It's a great resource if you have questions, and we love hearing about other games.
WHOA! It's A LOT!
It definitely can be! Don't get overwhelmed though, it's all basic addition and subtraction, so it's not far off from calculating some bonuses from D&D 3.5e or PF1. Once you've done it a couple times, it'll get faster, and you only really need to do this when you're unsure if the Mage could cast the spell. If it's easy simple stuff, don't bother calculating it, and just keep the story moving. Same as nobody does a Computer check to Google something or a Drive check for going to the library.
phenominal video, though it could come across as complete gibbrish to someone who never played mage
It actually comes after the Session Zero video that covers Mage and quite a few of these terms.
Thanks for the vid, as much as it helped me a lot with understanding the rules of MtAw I still don't get how inferior arcana works. Can you explain it on how it works?
I promise that you're PROBABLY putting way too much thought into it. Inferior Arcana is (in the fluff of things) the Arcana that just doesn't really click with your Path. Obrimos are all about endless cycles, so the idea of things of moving on and becoming something else or ending is kind of weird, so their Inferior Arcana is Death, as an example.
So what does an Inferior Arcana mean for gameplay? It means you cannot start play with a dot in your Inferior Arcana. It means you require a mentor/teacher to go above 2 dots in your Inferior Arcana and have to pay using standard Experience and NO Arcane Experience.
That's it! There's some other things that come up with Signs of Sorcery about ANTI-Demesne but that belongs in a whole other video.
Great video, very helpful. I played a fair amount of Mage: The Awakening first edition. I'm trying to learn the new system from Onyx path, and this video was very helpful, because spellcasting changed a lot, but I'm definitely starting to see the merits of this new system now.
One quick question about using reaches to alter spell factors, if anybody can help me. The benefits of moving from the standard to advanced tables are obvious. But what would be the benefit of changing the primary spell factor itself?
If I can already alter the scale, range, duration, and potency of my spells, in what sort of situation would it be worth investing one of my limited reaches to change which factor is considered "primary"?
Great question @Deadnight! You get free steps in the primary factor of a spell, which is either Potency or Duration, based on your Arcana. So if you are wanting to cast say a healing spell, that you want to happen over the course of a month, you might want to take the bonus steps in Duration for free instead of Potency. You could take a -2 to buff the potency up a little bit, while the free steps (at advanced duration) would rocket the duration from 1 hour to 1 month.
Also keep in mind that you have limited FREE reach, but you can overreach fairly easily and will do so frequently. It generates Paradox, but that's what Mana and a Dedicated Magical Tool is for!
@@OccultistsAnonymous Ah! There's a lot to learn, and I'm trying to scroll through the pdf while I wait for my physical copy to arrive from drivethrough rpg. I must have overlooked that detail about free steps, that's tremendously helpful, thanks again!
It is a teeny, tiny section that's written a little weirdly in 'Step Four', on p. 326. It's also on p.113 but that section is written even weirder. Very easy to miss.
Could make an updated guide that goes through the process with Spells example? I am still confused about how to do spellcasting even when looking at the back of the book.
Especially with Primary Spell Factors and the special reach effects underneath the Rotes.
How do those work?
Nope! There's a better resource, come by the Discord. (www.yeetinto.space) where I and the OA community can answer your questions directly.
Haven't played a session yet but created a Worksheet with excel, You have to place something (we use little plastic gem tokens at our table) in each catagory of spell, yantra's, paradox, basically one big sheet with everything so everyone can visualize the spell factors your trying to create. Not sure if it will help other tables to try to do something like that but I can't wait to try it out and see if by the end of the night people are pumping out spells fairly quickly.
A pretty good plan! You could use a d20 or d6 to help represent the values as well, so you don't have beads rolling around. I'm setting to to play in Roll20 and trying to develop some tools there for keeping track.
Good explanation, helps to hear it more than just read it for me. Question, some of the spells mention orders and attribute/skill rolls. Is that used instead of or in addition to? and do you know what page that would be listed on. First time making a character in this system and so want to be sure of things.
Ah! This likely means that you are looking at the first edition of Mage: The Awakening. The second edition does away with that system for a singular spellcasting system as described in this video. If you've got more questions, feel free to join the OA community Discord: yeetinto.space
Thanks!!!
Of course! I figured my own players might need a reference, so others might as well.
I love the ideas, the setting and many mechanical aspects of the Awakening 2e, but man, jumping through so many hoops just to cast a single spell is exhausting.
It probably gets easier with experience, but sticking to it is a challenge. I'm saying that as a person who started with Mage the Ascension 2e. It had even more convoluted rules for magic, that's why I eventually abandoned it.
Also, wrapping one's head about magic in the Awakening is one thing, but making your players do the same is another.
It's not much different than performing an attack in some more combat oriented games where your base stats aren't changing frequently, you're just worrying about the handful of yantra (many of which are the same ones that Mage uses all the time) or the same repetitive Reach effects. AND many spells won't even use all these steps or need to be rolled.
@@OccultistsAnonymous true, that's why I dislike some overly crunchy combat-oriented games, too.
My belief that a thing that is a major focus of a game must be designed elegantly and without undie complexity, so that it would be easy to do it frequently.
I am still confused by the spellcasting. Could you do a video with an example spell?
There's about 80+ Episodes of our live game as well you could watch. I ran the game for complete newbies, so we go over spell casting then as well.
Besides that, is there something you're confused by?
Hi, thanks for the video.
Could you or someone help me solve a question about Mage Sight?
Would a mage using AMS Prime (Active Mage Sight) be able to tell that a person in the crowd is a mage or at least that the being is a supernatural being? If so, I can deduce that it could do the same for werewolves with AMS Spirit and vampires with AMS Death, right? Or would he need to use FMS (Focused Mage Sight) and do a reveal or scrutiny? If that's the case, would he take this information as superficial or would he have to scrutinize the Mystery in depth? Or is none of that possible and the mage can only identify another mage using the Supernal Vision spell?
Hey Eriel! I highly suggest join the OA Discord (www.yeetinto.space), it's a great resource for these kind of questions. Based on my understanding of the rules, Prime AMS would not reveal a supernatural being. There's some hints that might help, like you might see that this perfectly normal looking human has some Supernal Symbols suggesting they'd make an excellent Yantra for a Spirit spell, right? AMS with Spirit would give much better information BUT AMS never gives complete answers, you always need to Scrutiny and Revelation to get real answers.
If you're thinking about a lot of crossovers to other splats, I HIGHLY recommend picking up the Player's Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (www.drivethrurpg.com/product/361809/Players-Guide-to-the-Contagion-Chronicle?affiliate_id=723048). It's got great suggestion for playing with characters across different splats and an entire chapter dedicated to how the different Arcana work with the different splats!
Is there anyway you can post a copy of the handouts you give out in your occultist anonymous game?
Which handout are you referring to?
@@OccultistsAnonymous I think in episode 2 or 3 you mention a handout you're going to give your players to help with spellcasting I may be mistaken.
Ah, yes, it's just a breakdown if the various spell factors that are listed in the book. The handout itself is just in our Roll20 game. It's the same tables from the Spellcasting Appendix in the rule book.
Since there is no G+ anymore. Where do you discuss your Mage game? Are you at the big purple?
Oh yeah, we love Discord! We've got our own little Occultists Anonymous Discord running as well if you care up join the conversation. discord.gg/vVWXMsD
So what the heck is the dice pool formula?
Gnosis + Arcana - Spell Factor penalties + Yantra bonuses + Miscellaneous bonuses.
Yantra bonus cannot be more than (Spell Factor penalties + 5).
I just got the book and I have one major problem with it : wtf did they smoke when choosing the fonts? I can’t read shit
Are you talking about 1e or 2e? The second edition is much more readable! :D
They made a second edition and its different again and not easier. Man white wolf what you doing to me...
This is second edition! It's not necessarily simple but once you understand the steps, it is pretty easy. Also you gotta blame Onyx Path, not White Wolf. :D
I spell system they have worked out for NWOD is way better than the old.
The add befit I found was you can meta game it to unbelievable levels that I use to piss lot of people. It was all about Area of Affect.
A "master" of Force can create a Gravity Field with a pull the can reach out to the very edge of our solar system. It only take about five years to build a character to do this. Depending on the time of the character's awakening, the character at the age of 17 to 25 years old could create our current solar system.
It takes around three hours to write it all out to show the math. I upset more than a few creationist religious people at the factory I worked at. And a few physic students dam near yelling," It is Not that Simple to build a solar system !"