Resisting Presence Attacks

Protective Spells (06.08.02)

A question came up during last week's session regarding the use of protective spells and the assumption that they were in place of not. At the time, it certainly seemed that Wang would have had some mental protections in place, this is not the case with our regular, relative inexperienced, mage characters.

If you want your mage to cast some sort of protection upon themselves, I will need some description of the ritual used, the number of successes, and how you want to divide the successes vs. duration. Unless this is happening as a role-playing moment involving other characters, please shoot me this information outside of game time. Protections can be cast just moments before an encounter, if you wish.

Note that these "hanging" spells have some considerations. A mage may only have two spells going before they suffer an increase in difficulty on other casts. For example, if Siobhan has her Forces 2 Deflect Bullets spell and a Matter 2 Prevent me from Getting Transformed into a Popsicle spell going at the same time, her Life 4 Transmute Bad Guy to Frog spell will have its difficulty raised by one. The difficulty penalty raises by one for every spell going past the first two.

Also note that magical protections may not serve as proof against vampiric attacks. This depends a lot on the relative strengths of the battling mages and vampires, but also the spheres vs. disciplines used. It has been shown in game, for example, that Forces cannot detect Vampires using Obfuscate 2, Unseen Presence. Detecting a vampire cloaked in this manner would require some level of Mind. It would also depend on the power of the detecting mage vs. the power of the hiding vampire.

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Resisting Presence Attacks (01.07.02)

As stated in the Vampire core book  (pp 170, 171), a character can resist the affects of a Presence attack for one turn by spending a Willpower point, and making a successful Willpower roll versus a difficulty of eight. The character can continue to resist for another turn by spending another Willpower point. For those Presence attacks without a duration, the affected character must continue to spend points until they can no longer see the attacker before gaining control of themselves. Presence attacks with a duration will re-assert themselves once the target stops spending or runs out of Willpower, regardless of line of sight to the attacker. Vampires three generations lower than the attacker have an easier time resisting the effects of a presence attack. They may spend one Willpower point to ignore the effects for an entire scene, and do not need a Willpower roll. This is a little different from what we discussed on Saturday, but I'd rather keep as true to the book as possible.

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Time Effects (01.07.02)

When writing descriptions to the rotes Danny had written for Simon, I went through the Mage book exploring these Effects. A couple of elements came up. First, the slowing or speeding up of time requires a few more successes than previously believed. A mage may double or half the speed of a target for every two successes on the cast. If Simon rolls three successes, he will double his speed for the next turn. He may continue the roll to gain more successes to further double his speed again, or extend the length of time it will affect him. If Simon wants to slow a target, it will require four successes: one for the success of a spell, one to affect something other than the caster, two to halve the speed of the target. This spell can be built up to affect multiple targets.

Simon's looping of time also has some consequences that we haven't discussed. In the absence of Mind magic, only Simon remains aware of the divergent time stream caused by looping time around him. Like anything else, how much he can affect as a result of this loop depends on the number of successes rolled. Taking an example from last session, this means that Portia is completely unaware that see was ever attacked by the group. Likewise, the group (other than Simon) is unaware that they ever tried to attack Portia or the results of that attack. In game terms, picture the front seat of the suburban just moments before the attack. Emerson's all ready to fire the explosive and Simon leans over with a knowing look saying, "Don't do it." Now, this doesn't prevent Simon from explaining what happened later, but as of that moment, the group doesn't know what's up.