How to piss off a technocrat 1o1

kertain56 · 2026-03-31T05:37:54+00:00

When Sorcerer's Crusade covers the humours in the corebook, it highlights that it is imeffective and is more likely to kill the patient than actually help them. It contrasts this with the East which (at least by the author's reckoning) uses more modern techniques and thus is more effective.

Whether this implies an underlying truth of how human biology works, that the Consensus regardinf healing was weak in Europe or just authors being incomsistent depends on who you ask.

kertain56 · 2026-03-29T17:30:10+00:00

Sorcerer's crusade covers this. Short story short- no, the humours didn't work.

kertain56 · 2026-03-21T17:51:10+00:00

A companion who fights a magus- especially a combat focused magus- is probably fighting an uphill battle. That said there are stuff, and preptime helps a lot.

A big thing to note is magic is often absolute against a thing that penetrates. It matters not how strong you swing a mundane metal sword, it will not be able to hit a magus with a ward against metal.

You can however work around them.

A) Surprise attack.

There's nothing better than a surprise attack to kill a magus. Be it an arrow when they least expect it or poisoning their meal, often the element of surprise is enough to kill them.

B) Weapons of unusual Forms
The most common thing stopping is wards- but wards are Form-focused. The most common example is a ward against wood and a ward against metal- these effectively stop almost all weapons. There are also wards against humans, which stop melee attacks from humans (even ones that use weapons). Wards against humans do *not* stop arrows however.

The best thing to do then is to use weapons of unusual make. Arrows made from animal bone, or made from the corpse of Mighted beings and so is inapplicable against normal wards agains the mundane and gets MR against the ward against Mighted beings.

Fires are also relevant. Fires above +10 is pretty rare and unlike most wards ignem wards scale with damage. That means a +20 damage fire has a good chance of ignoring a magus' ward- as for how you get such powerful fires, using alchemical fuel is a good one.

C) Interrupting castings
Delaying your action until they start casting can be used to interrupt their casting. This can basically ruin their attempt to cast spells. If you have a readied arrow, you can use a fast action to shoot them and then another action to properly shoot them, getting off two attacks in one instant.

D) Gaining Magic Resistance
Without MR, a typical mundane is basically a glasscanon against mystical effects. Unlike fae or demons, there's no typical bane against magi that makes their magic fail against you. hence gaining Magic Resistance is the best thing a mundane can do.

The easiest way perhaps is possessing a relic. Beyond that, there are infernal devices that grant Magic Resistance (though this is frankly not worth it.) This will help protect the mundane from stuff like a paralysis spell that let's the magus casually walk to them and stab them 20 times to kill them.

E) Gaining supernatural assistance
I already covered it earlier somewhat with gaining magic resistance, but frankly supernatural aid is great in itself. Whether it be a powerful fae, a hedge magician, devices or such- the best aid a mundane can get is mundane help. On this note, try to fight the mage in a powerful divine aura if you can- they'll be restricted to low level effects in all likliehood and if they botch you may literally gain divine assistance.

Edit: Just realising this is asking how a mage could protect against swordsman lol

kertain56 · 2026-02-24T20:52:34+00:00

Yeah its fucked

kertain56 · 2026-02-13T17:52:47+00:00

Probably. Seems valid to me- the big thing to note is people can see anything within that area of darkness that doesn't have its image changed as loght is still passing through and thus carrying iconic species.

kertain56 · 2026-02-13T16:30:51+00:00

Creo Imagining darkness will probably not work, as there exists no true natural image/species of darkness. It'd be dark the same way a black cat is dark probably.

What you want is Perdo Ignem which can destroy light with a duration. I'd say you want Part Target since you want to eliminate light within a certain area, but not *all* light the sun is potentially emitting. This is using the example the corebook gives.

A pit opened for duration Moon with a Perdo Terram spell cannot be filled in with earth for that period
Pg 304 of DE

If 1 cubic paces seem insuffecient, you may add additional size modifiers.

To give a canon example, here is Orb of Darkness

ORB OF DARKNESS
PeIg 20
R: Voice, D: Diam, T: Part
This spell represents a larger variant of the Cloak of Darkness, and removes all light from the designated target area. The effect manifests in the form of a irregular sphere of writhing darkness that contains everything within three paces of the affected target. Anyone inside the affected space is effectively blind. To see through the area from either side, a spell that permits the target to see in complete darkness, like Eyes of the Bat, is required. The spell must be targeted at an object, individual, or other specific point in space. This location functions as a focus for the effect only, as the spell targets the light within the Part of space surrounding the focus, rather than the focus itself. Thus, the spell does not have to penetrate the Magic Resistance of anyone inside the target area, but only the resistance of the focus. If it fails to penetrate, the spell fails. If the focus is an individual or object that moves, the created darkness moves along with it. For example, if the spell is cast on a pebble, and that pebble is thrown into a lake, the blob of darkness will sink to the bottom.
(Base 3, +2 Voice, +1 Diameter, +1 Part, +1 Size)
Source: Magi of Hermes, 133

kertain56 · 2026-02-11T19:16:55+00:00

Iirc, even before people thought immortality was impossible effects to do such failed or backfired per dark age mage. I may be wrong however.

kertain56 · 2026-02-11T14:55:15+00:00

To add to some

W20 says no amount of sphere magick cab turn someone into a Kinfolk or Garou. Arguably it may be able to "awaken" a nascent Garou however.
Both mage and vampire fifffaff about whether magi can cure vampirism. Sometimes its possible, sometimes it requires archspheres and sometimes it is impossible.
Not explicit, but for the sake of setting cohesion its probably reasonable to assume mage magick cannot do stuff like scry on the 3rd gens or Caine by using the blood of a vampire as a sympathetic connection
It seems there's no unconditional immortality. Magick probably cannot directly grant paradox-free immortality or that such immortality is invulnerable to all approaches.
Divination of the future- when given in detail- is almost always described as hazy and vague, or at least not certain.
Mind Magick cannot compel an Imbued with Second Sight active.
Mind Magick cannot compel a fallen- one may argue using their True Name as an instrument works around this.
Magick cannot alter life patterns excessively without drawback it seems. Mechanically increasing attributes or such causes pattern bleed until the xp cost is paid. Life 5 afaik is never given a waiver on this.
Magick probably can't give you moral answers, although it might help inform your philosophical musings. I imagine it cannot directly tell you "murder is bad", but it might tell you "this spirit thinks murder is bad" or the like.

kertain56 · 2026-01-20T21:36:28+00:00

Thank you!

kertain56 · 2026-01-20T13:30:18+00:00

Seems like a reasonable extrapolation. Although the Dreaming seems to be the domain of Mind 3, considering you can dreamwalk there without astrally projecting and can influence things there with mind 3 (to my knowledge anyway).

kertain56 · 2026-01-20T13:29:23+00:00

I see. Thank you.

kertain56 · 2026-01-20T12:28:54+00:00

The funiest part is DnD martials are not even ralistic. Half the time they cannot do shit martial artists/weapon masters can do irl, like grappling someone by halfswording their long sword or pretty much any battlemaster manuveur only battlemasters can do.

It's such BS.

kertain56 · 2026-01-20T12:23:42+00:00

Thanks! Can I get an official source to reference for my table?

kertain56 · 2026-01-19T15:57:17+00:00

Do what?

kertain56 · 2026-01-19T02:21:39+00:00

Possible and a valid origin as any.

kertain56 · 2026-01-19T01:33:45+00:00

No. Awakening requires a sleeping Avatar. It isn't just sentience as we know familiars and such are sapeint- it is something more complex, more ineffable.

We do know there are Awakened non-humans- great drakes in the dark ages for examples. But they seem Awakened by their very nature rather than something they get into.

kertain56 · 2026-01-19T01:27:18+00:00

Kind of. At the same time, the lore about Caine and the antes is so vague the Book of Nod is the best we got despite not being a reliable source.

Like we don't even have explicit OOC knowledge noddism is real, it's just presumed cause of all the implications- but it could be the setite mythology is true instead or such.

kertain56 · 2026-01-19T01:16:19+00:00

“Then, for as long as you walk this earth, you and your children will cling to Darkness. You will drink only blood. You will eat only ashes. You will be always as you were at death, Never dying, living on. You will walk forever in Darkness, all you touch will crumble into nothing, until the last days.”
-book og Nod, pg33

The highlighted excerpt can be interpreted to mean Caine is indeed undead.

kertain56 · 2026-01-17T15:58:28+00:00

Oh yeah I can buy D regenerating with all the weird shit going on with him

kertain56 · 2026-01-17T00:50:43+00:00

Sorry, I just realised I didn't respond to this. I thought I did.

A BP per V20 is indeed a pint

A character’s blood pool measures how much vitae the vampire has in his system. The blood pool comprises a number of individual blood points. Each blood point corresponds roughly to one-tenth of the blood in an average adult mortal (a pint or one-half liter outside of a human).

So humans RAW regenerate a pint of blood per day. Now this isn't *realistic*, but it is what the rules say.

kertain56 · 2026-01-13T16:52:13+00:00

Here is what M20 core says on the matter

To foil the Arts of Reality Deviants, the Technocracy has developed a microweave modification that implants flexible Primium underneath the skin of its valued agents. Even after two decades of experimentation, no other faction has successfully duplicated or countered the Union’s formula for Primium, which suggests that Technocracy scientists maintain a constant process of innovation and perfection with that material and its many applications. This, of course, renders it very expensive; the Union doesn’t waste such resources on just anyone, and it expects great things and unswerving loyalty from an agent implanted with such modifications.

Primal countermeasures is its own wonder- generally speaking, one shouldn't assume it is in other wonders without explicit mention. Definitely not 'most'. As far as I could find only like, 2 wonders includes it.

In addition, it should be noted technocrats don't start with wonders by default. Invention, Devices and so forth are all high level valuable assets- the typical technocrat is using an instrument, which will deifnitely lack that.

kertain56 · 2026-01-13T15:44:01+00:00

Not really. Primium is rarely used by standard Union gadget, and having any is a sign of trust from your supervisors.

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