Attributes and Abilities

A measure of sheer physical might, this Trait reflects your ability to move obstacles, lift things, and deal out damage with your fists and feet alone. High-Strength characters tend to be muscular and massive; that said, wiry folks can be surprisingly, even deceptively, strong.

A vital attribute for conjurers, dancers, martial artists, and street survivors, this Trait measures agility, coordination, reflexes, and physical grace. High-Dexterity individuals seem poised and flexible even at rest, whereas low-Dexterity folks trip — figuratively and literally — over their own feet.

Reflecting toughness, endurance, and your tolerance for pain, disease, and fatigue, Stamina is a helpful Trait for mages on the go. Although the stereotypical tough customer is a massive human tank, wiry folks can be amazingly resilient.

Rooted in the Greek word for grace and favor, Charisma reflects the indefinable it that makes some folks stand out in a crowd. Game-wise, this Trait measures your presence and appeal. You might not be pretty if you have a high Charisma, but by all the gods, people notice you!

Life’s filled with players and pawns. A high-Manipulation character knows how to work their end of that spectrum for maximum effect. Whereas Charisma measures presence and Appearance reflects looks, Manipulation describes social cunning and innate psychology. We manipulate each other all the time, but no one likes to actually see the strings attached. As a result, a botched roll with this Trait can be disastrous.

Never underestimate the power of a pretty face! This Trait captures the appeal of sheer physical beauty... or the painful lack of it. Appearances can be deceiving, of course, especially among mages. Still, we’re hard-wired to respond well to a cute butt or a captivating grin.

Magick demands clarity, so a high-Perception mage excels. This Trait measures your attention to detail, spatial awareness, sensual acuity, and that indefinable instinct that picks up the cues your conscious mind has not yet noticed. A reflection of intuition and awareness, the Perception Trait reveals clues more than it analyzes causes; that scent of roses nearby might be a rosebush, perfume, or a love spell’s lingering Resonance — Perception alone won’t tell you which one it is.

Perhaps the most vital tool a mage can possess, this Trait reflects your ability to process information, retain impressions, envision possibilities, and think not merely outside the box but perhaps without a box at all. A low-Intelligence character might not be exactly stupid, but they’re blind to the complexities of life; one with a high Intelligence score, on the other hand, can wrap their head around sophisticated concepts and slippery facts. Despite preconceptions, you don’t need schooling to be smart. Still, it takes brains to tackle advanced education and study, so characters with such backgrounds ought to have a respectable Intelligence.

Even the deepest minds can be oblivious to change. Survival, however, often demands sharp wits. A reflection of mental reflexes, this Trait determines your ability to react to sudden perils, subtle cues, and the twisted logic that often fills a mage’s world. Combat Initiative (see Initiative and Movement) depends upon a character’s Wits; without them, a great thinker might soon become dead meat.

You sense things coming long before anyone else does. A combination of keen instincts and sharp thinking, this Ability helps you size up situations and respond accordingly. Beast-folk, survivors, bright courtiers and battle-honed veterans have high Alertness ratings.

Also known as Artistic Expression, this Talent reflects your ability with a visual or performing art: drawing, singing, acting, writing, painting, dance, sculpture, and so forth. Given such talents, you can work within your chosen medium to produce works of startling power. Depending on your idiom, you might create realistic renderings, engaging exaggerations, or wildly avant-garde experimental art. Higher levels reflect your ability to impress your audience; in art, that means striking a chord of Truth in people even when your work isn’t remotely realistic.

As with other related general Abilities, each specialty reflects a different medium or field of artistic endeavor. Each type of art — dance, painting, etc. — must be purchased as a separate specialty. However, because the principles of art are related even when the techniques differ, you can purchase additional specialties for only 4 points, assuming you have at least 4 dots in Art and 1 specialty already in place. See The Well-Skilled Craftsman for further details.

Fitness is your passion. While other folks sit on the sidelines, you’re running races, scoring touchdowns, biking to and from work, and developing prowess with intense practice. Folks don’t usually picture wizards hanging around the gym, but you’re an exception to that stereotype. “A sound mind in a sound body” is your motto. What good is it to be a master of reality, after all, if your reality involves a fat ass and flabby gut?

Like Art, Athletics has many different specialties — running, climbing, swimming, and so forth. And like Art, Crafts, and other broad categories, you can buy specialties to reflect different athletic pursuits. (The Well-Skilled Craftsman option applies here as well.)

You’ve got uncanny perceptions. While alert folks spot everyday clues, your instincts cue in on the so-called supernatural side of life. Perhaps you’ve simply got that feeling about things — some people do, even if they’re not Awakened as such. More likely, you’ve spent enough time around the magical world to sense its effects in your presence.

At lower levels, this Talent grants a nebulous perception of uncanny phenomena; higher ratings in the Trait reveal auras, expose the secretive Night-Folk, and open your eyes to the spiritual Periphery. In game terms, you can use Perception + Awareness to spot paranormal effects, detect magick, recognize Resonance Echoes, and so forth, assuming they’re within close proximity of you. The more successes you roll, the more detailed your impressions become.

For a reference chart of aura colors and textures, see Casting Magick.

You kick ass. Maybe you grew up hard and mean, or maybe you’re schooled in basic self-defense. Either way, your fists and feet are weapons — probably not deadly, but a lot more effective than random swings from unskilled brutes. Not only do you know how to fight, but you’re naturally good at it. You’ve got the skill, will, and training to hurt someone using nothing more than human cunning and animal ferocity.

(For armed fighting, see the Melee Skill, and for refined unarmed techniques, see the Martial Arts Skill. Both appear below.)

An innate sense of emotional energies, this Talent provides you with insight — perhaps more insight than you might want — into how the people around you feel. Ideally, this helps you understand them better and perhaps allows you to calm, rouse, or otherwise adjust their emotional state. On the flipside, it might leave you vulnerable to their passions (a common fault among Ecstatic mages), or it could leave them vulnerable to your machinations. Combined with Mind-based Effects, Empathy can be a potent tool — or weapon — in the hands of an Awakened character. For details, see Mundane Skills and Magickal Effects in Casting Magick.

Life is your canvas, and you excel at making impressions upon it. Through theatrical flair and audience psychology, you can rouse emotions, shift opinions, and grab the spotlight in social situations. Although this Trait can be used to handle any social situation, it’s best used to make general impressions. For specific artistic endeavors, see Art, above.

You scare people — perhaps not through overt threats (although, of course, that works too), but by the simple virtue of your presence. When you choose to, you can dominate most situations. Maybe you understand the unconscious cues of social alpha-ism or have a way with cutting words. Or perhaps you’re simply big enough, mean enough or don’t-give-a-fuck enough to inspire submission. Whatever your secret might be, this Talent gives you an edge when staring down other people, beasts, and possibly other entities as well.

A more refined sort of control, this Talent helps you inspire other folks to follow your lead. It might involve commanding presence, assertive words, clear determination, or simply the Right Stuff when said stuff is needed. When you bark, folks hop — not always with compliance, but with, at the very least, a grudging admission that you seem to know what you’re doing... even when you don’t.

The underworld is your home, and you know it pretty well. Folks who normally don’t talk to no one will open up to you. Probably raised in or around the streets, you understand the codes and cues outside the law. In addition to some minor tricks of the trade (jimmying locks, fencing goods, swiping stuff when no one’s looking), you know how to move and speak and otherwise fit in where cops and angels fear to tread.

You’re good at winning people’s trust and then turning it to your advantage — and also good at spotting folks who try to do the same thing to you. (This second element, incidentally, replaces the old Ability Sense Deception.) Perhaps you use your powers for good... but probably not. A trade secret for sneaks, gossips, grifters, and frauds, this Talent helps you get around social barriers, figure out what people want, and then appeal to their desires. It doesn’t have to involve outright lying, but let’s just say you’re really good at lawyering the truth.

You know how to create and repair things with your hands. Pursuing a particular trade (and perhaps a number of other ones too), you’ve begun to master the techniques involved in carpentry, mechanics, leatherwork, metallurgy, or any other handicraft you could name.

When purchasing this Skill, you must define a specialty for your character even if you don’t have the usual 4 dots in the Trait; this specialty defines a type of Craft you pursue, and you get the bonus once you achieve at least 4 dots in that field. If you want your character to have several Crafts, they should be purchased separately. A mechanic who’s also good with ceramics, woodworking, and home repair, for example, would have several different Crafts specialties to reflect their ability with each one.

Cars? You know cars. Maybe trucks too, if you’re good enough. This Skill reflects the everyday complexities of automobile handling: the higher your rating, the better you are behind the wheel. A single dot represents basic operation of an automatic transmission car. Higher levels open up a wider range of vehicles at your command. Typical driving doesn’t demand a roll, but if you find yourself in a race, a chase, or some other challenging circumstance, you’d best hope that you have a few dots in this Skill. The results otherwise could be... messy.

For game rules that deal with driving and so forth, see Vehicle Systems in The Technological World.

Social graces are your forté. Through a blend of cultured manners and people skills, you know how to make a good impression. Given the elaborate gamesmanship and baroque expectations found at certain levels of society (and the local customs of cultures other than your own), this can grant an extremely valuable edge in negotiations, seductions, and other forms of diplomacy. And because social rules often exclude everyone except “the right sort of people,” this Skill provides a passkey to many important engagements.

Guns are your thing. You might not be an expert marksman, but you’re at least familiar with the basics of shooting, cleaning, and maintaining firearms. A character with at least 2 dots in Firearms knows zir way around a range, ammunition types, and the pros and cons of various makes and models.

Because your average shooting range doesn’t carry plasma cannons, this Skill doesn’t cover energy-projector weapons. (For those chops, see Energy Weapons in the Secondary Skills section, below.) With the proper training and experience, however, specialties for the Firearms Skill can cover heavy weapons: machine guns, bazookas, rocket launchers, and so on; see The Well-Skilled Craftsman, above.

The many refinements of hand-to-hand combat have produced thousands of martial art styles, from brutal Greek pankration to sublime t’ai chi. You pursue one or more of these disciplines, so your fighting techniques are more effective than simple punches and kicks.

In game terms, the Martial Arts Skill reflects hard-won expertise in some combat form. Because of the intense training, specific techniques, applied philosophies, and discipline involved, this Skill must be learned through practice and taught by a teacher who’s skilled in the same martial arts form you pursue. A savate teacher, after all, can’t teach you drunken-monkey kung fu.

In return, this Skill grants access to a variety of special combat maneuvers described in the Combat section of Dramatic Systems. An accomplished martial artist can also use their practice to focus magickal Effects: powerful strikes, healing techniques, Mind-based powers, and so on. (See the Martial Arts entries in Dramatic Dramatic Systems and The Book of Magick.) And because martial arts involve scientific applications, and are very much a part of accepted reality, Technocrats often use them too. If it’s good enough for Agent Smith, after all, then any good Technocrat can employ such arts!

In real life, most martial artists pursue many different styles. Rather than buy this Skill separately for every different form your character knows, you may choose the Well-Skilled Craftsman option to reflect a different style of combat. Someone with lots of dots and specialties also has lots of options when it comes to kicking ass.

As suggested above under the Optional Rule: Minimum Abilities, a mage who uses martial arts as the practice and/or instrument of zir magickal focus should have at least 1 dot in Martial Arts for every dot ze has in the highest Sphere ze uses for martial arts-based Effects. Otherwise, the Effect-Ranks ze can focus through zir martial arts are limited to the dots ze has in this Ability; a mage with Martial Arts 1, therefore, could not focus Rank 2-5 Effects through zir martial arts. As noted earlier, The Book of Magick contains details about focus, Sphere Ranks, and Effects.

Ground, center, breathe, and relax. This Skill helps you sweep aside the clutter of everyday existence and find a spot within yourself that offers calm. Depending on your preferred style, your background, and the purpose for which you practice meditation, this could involve simple quiet time, elaborate postures and breath control, religious devotion, and even ecstatic dance or prayer.

In game terms, the Meditation Skill can help your character make up for lost sleep, hibernate, gain artistic or mystical insights, unravel patterns or enigmas, or refresh your Quintessence rating.

A character with Meditation often has at least 1 dot in the Esoterica Knowledge. Many forms of magick, or feats like astral travel, also use meditation as an instrument of focus — see Focus and the Arts in The Book of Magick for details.

Weapons are extensions of your own limbs, and you know how to use them with brutal efficiency. When fists and feet just aren’t enough to get the job done, this Skill literally gives you the fighting edge... or the blunt instrument, if need be. Melee grants your character a working knowledge of weaponry and its practical effects in combat. Certain groups, like gangs or martial arts fellowships, prize skill at arms; if you wanna hang with such people, this Trait is essential to your credibility... and perhaps your survival, too.

Certain weapon maneuvers (like tangling someone up in a chain) may be used only with certain weapons or with weapons-based martial arts. As with other fighting skills, the Well-Skilled Craftsman option may apply.

It ain’t glamorous, but if you’re a mage, you need to learn how to track things down. This Skill helps you locate sources of information — public libraries, private archives, Internet searches, occult collections, verbal lore, and so forth — and then skim them for the information you seek. You might not find exactly what you’re looking for; some things can be found only in special places. Still, a successful Research roll can help you get on the right track, even if specific facts remain elusive... at least for now.

A vital proficiency for folks who want or need to get around without being noticed, this Skill helps you move in silence, take advantage of your environment, and spot potential hazards before they blow your cover. Other characters have a chance to notice you, of course (see the Dramatic Feats chart), but a high rating in this Skill can beat most mundane forms of observation.

In the modern consumer age, most folks have forgotten how to survive without a store close by. Not you, though. A combination of learned knowledge and animal instinct helps you locate sources of food, water, shelter, and relative safety. You can probably find your way through the wilderness or urban wastelands, puzzling out the local hazards long enough to keep you alive... at least for now.

Very basic survival skills apply to almost any environment; advanced tasks, however — or extremely harsh or alien environments — demand specific Survival specialties. A bit of backpacking experience, for example, won’t help you much in Death Valley or downtown Mumbai. A variant on this Skill, Urban Survival, gives you the expertise to live off the streets, dive Dumpsters, and figure out where — and where not — to grab a nap in the cities and suburbs of this World of Darkness.

For rules about survival situations, see Environmental Hazards in Dramatic Systems.

In our high-tech world, this Skill often comes in handy. A catch-all group of familiar tech affinities, Technology reflects a working knowledge of typical developed-world gadgets. Most urbanized characters have at least 1 dot in Technology but seldom more than 3. This Ability covers simple operations and repairs; for advanced forms of technology and hypertech, see Crafts above, or Computer and Secondary Skills below.

For game systems that deal with mundane tech, see Inventing, Modifying, and Improving Technology in The Technological World.

Despite the failings of the American school system, mages cannot afford to be ignorant. Whether they’re self-taught, unusually accomplished, or schooled in some system beyond the typical public education found in the U.S., most Awakened folks display an unusual degree of scholastic achievement.

This Knowledge reflects your overall academic understanding — language skills, math, history, and so forth. As with Crafts, you should choose a specialty to reflect your greatest area of expertise. (The Well-Skilled Craftsman option applies.) Even outside that specialty, however, your Academics rating reflects your general competence for scholastic subjects. And though every mage ought to have at least 1 dot in this Trait, many groups (especially Hermetics, Etherites, Solificati, and the various branches of the Technocracy) advocate much higher levels of education and knowledge.

For scientific fields, see Science. For languages, see Language in Merits and Flaws.

One of the cornerstones of the world as we know it now, the computer was still a pretty strange device in 1993; by 2013, however, most industrial-world folks under 50 years old (and many people far older than that) know their way around basic home and office computer systems. Computers are also far easier to use in 2015 than they were in 1993, and so the degree to which your character understands and employs a computer — and the degree to which such understanding is common knowledge — will depend a lot on your Mage chronicle’s timeframe. Basic proficiency with computers is a lot more typical in 2015, after all, than it was in the early ‘90s!

This Knowledge reflects your understanding of Information Technology; a single dot involves basic computer use (whatever that looks like in your chronicle), whereas higher ratings show a deeper understanding of hardware, software, interface, the Internet, and IT culture in general. Certain tasks (like advanced programming or repair) and systems (especially the arcane tech employed by technomancers) demand at least 3 or 4 dots in this Trait before your character can even begin to understand them.

As a general rule for mages who employ computers as instruments of focus, assume that a mage cannot channel a Sphere Effect through a computer unless they have at least as many dots in Computer as they have in that Sphere. If Max, for example, has only 1 dot in Computer, then he cannot use Sphere Effects of Rank 2 or higher through a computer because he simply doesn’t understand computers well enough to do so. For details about Spheres, their Ranks, and their Effects, see The Book of Magick.

Known by Technocrats and many hypertech mystics as Subdimensions, this trait reflects a working knowledge of the puzzling Otherworlds beyond the Earthly plane. With it, you stand a decent chance of finding your way around out there without getting yourself killed. (Without it, you’re seriously screwed.) The specific way in which you view the Otherworlds will depend a lot on what you expect to see there; this Knowledge simply gives you the tools to navigate paths, spot hazards, deal with entities, and recognize opportunities or threats when you run across them.

For an overview of the Otherworlds, see The Worlds Beyond. For game systems, see The Otherworlds in Dramatic Systems.

You can wrap your head around concepts that give other people headaches. Puzzles, riddles, artistic themes, uncanny entities, arcane secrets, bizarre methods of communication — you might not understand the specifics just yet, but you can hash out enough comprehension to get by. Especially in a mage’s world, many things transcend rational explanation... and that realm of strangeness is where the Enigmas Knowledge takes you. Whether you need to make jumps of logic, wade into metaphysical currents, spot clues in apparent chaos, or figure out what’s being said waaaaaaaay between the lines (or totally outside them), this Trait is essential.

Esoteric knowledge comes in many forms: astrology, angelography, fortune-telling, yoga, herbalism, demonology, the lore of stones, even the secret code languages of occult societies. For centuries, such mysteries were the province of selected initiates; these days, it’s relatively easy to find the basics in any decent bookstore or website. Even so, the deeper levels remain obscure to all but the most devoted students of the art. Anyone can take a yoga class in the modern world, but the more arcane applications of that art demand years of practice, study, and devotion.

Game-wise, Esoterica reflects your pursuit of an esoteric discipline which suggests the practices and instruments for your magickal focus. The Trait’s overall rating reflects your general knowledge of arcane subjects, whereas each specialty reflects your expertise within a certain field. Unlike the Occult Knowledge — which reflects an understanding of “secret history” and shadow-cultures — Esoterica represents the practical application of unusual fields. Occult can teach your character who Aleister Crowley was, while Esoterica helps zir understand what Crowley did... and to use those principles zirself. In short, this Knowledge sums up a lot of previous editions’ Abilities into a single united Trait.

Because esoteric disciplines are often interrelated, you can use the Well-Skilled Craftsman option to purchase a new specialty for only 4 experience points, assuming that you already have at least 4 dots in the Esoterica Knowledge, an existing specialty, and a story-based reason to learn that discipline. Say, for example, your character has 4 dots in Esoterica, with a specialty in Herbalism; if ze gets some time to study yoga, ze can spend 4 experience points and then add a specialty in Yoga to that Knowledge... after which time ze can use yoga as a focus tool (assuming that it fits zir magickal paradigm), and count 10s as 2 successes on mundane or magick-casting rolls that employ that practice.

Given an opportunity to study and practice an art, any character can learn Esoterica. Although such disciplines don’t give magickal powers to unAwakened characters, the Knowledge lets them use mundane applications — teaching yoga classes, doing horoscopes, deciphering alchemical texts and so forth — and count 10s as 2 successes if and when they do so. Understanding the principles of bakemono-jutsu — the ninja “ghost technique” — won’t make you invisible, for instance, but a specialty in that esoteric technique would let you count 10s as 2 successes on your Stealth roll. Even though they can’t employ mystic powers, non-mages can be far more knowledgeable about such subjects than mages are. Such mentors may teach a mage this Knowledge or allow zir to add another specialty to zir existing expertise. Let’s say that Dante needs to learn demonology; he goes to the best teacher he can find — an unAwakened monk named Brother Silence — and studies his ass off. In time, Dante understands the names and rituals associated with Infernal powers and can put them to practical use. In such cases, the student may indeed surpass the master, thanks to the Awakened understanding that unlocks the greatest potential of the art.

Again, an Esoterica practice must fit the character’s belief system if you want to use it as a focus; a computer mage will have a hard time wedging zir study of herbalism into a technomagickal hacking routine! This rule, however, helps flesh out your character’s belief system and gives you a practical use for the arcane disciplines that any mage worth that name understands.

For details about various paradigms, practices, and instruments associated with esoteric practices, see Focus and the Arts in The Book of Magick.

Clues of a more mundane nature are yours to unravel. Whether you specialize in crime scenes, information retrieval, political intrigues, or other mysteries, you know what to look for, where to look for it, and how to piece it together once those pieces start becoming obvious. Your training might be informal (like, say, a taste for detective novels), but it features basic — and possibly advanced — criminology techniques as well as logistical guesswork, potential sources of information, deductive methodology, and well-honed instincts that turn raw data into potential conclusions.

You might not be the Law, but you understand how it works. The ins and outs of cop-shops, police procedures, ranks and files, end-arounds, and other essential components of your local justice system are yours to know. Different regions, of course, have very different police systems; your grasp of New Orleans law enforcement won’t help much in Tokyo. Still, modern police departments have certain elements in common, and this Knowledge can help you suss them out even if you have to beat a much higher Difficulty rating in order to do so.

When folks get broken, you know more or less how to fix them. 1 or 2 dots in this Ability reflect basic First Aid skills, whereas higher ratings represent advanced training and experience. (Note that said training and experience might not be formal and licensed training and experience...) With Medicine, you’ve learned enough about human and humanoid bodies to treat, harm, and potentially diagnose their injuries and illnesses. Healing magicks often depend upon such understanding, and an angry mage with this Trait can be extremely dangerous!

For details about injury and healing, see Health and Injury. For information about medicine as a magickal practice, see Medicine Work in Focus and the Arts.

Aren’t mages occult by their very nature? Yes and no. This Knowledge represents a generalized comprehension of the mystic world as most Sleepers understand it; in short, then, such knowledge is often misleading, incomplete, or flat-out wrong. A decent rating in this Trait (3 dots or higher) helps you sort the truth from the bullshit... but by then, you’ve also begun to understand how deep the occult rabbit-hole really goes.

“Occult” means hidden for very good reasons, and even the most skillful occultists often don’t know nearly as much as they think they do. Being a mage does not automatically confer accurate understanding of other practices — in fact, it often muddies the waters even more! Still, this Ability grants you a decent overview of mystic practices, philosophies, lore, history, arcane cultures, and so-called secrets. Of course, they’re all secrets by definition... or at least that’s the theory, anyway.

Political power can seem like magic. With a few words in the right person’s ear or a form filled out the proper way, you can make people disappear, change identities, incite scandals, and make or unmake kings. For certain mages — especially Technocrats, Hermetics, Ecstatics, and Virtual Adepts — such power is more effective than obvious spells; in a global era, the ability to throw lightning bolts pales in comparison to the clout to stage a riot... or a coup.

Literally the “art of cities,” this Knowledge helps your character work the reins of power — government agencies, law enforcement bureaus, celebrity culture, and so on. In game terms, this Trait combines a number of separate Knowledges from previous editions (Power-Brokering, Covert Culture, etc.) into a unified understanding of civil influence. As with several other Knowledges, you can use the Well-Skilled Craftsman option to purchase several specialties once you reach 4 dots in the Trait. Each specialty reflects a different sphere of influence.

For coincidental Mind-based Effects, you could also use Politics as a focus instrument, assuming that you’re willing to let that Effect take a bit of time. A clever mage, for instance, could implant an otherwise ridiculous idea in the minds of a few influential parties and then let that idea spread through political channels over time. This sort of thing cannot be done abruptly, though; political influence is a subtle tool, and vulgar Effects weaken its influence.

Unlike stealth or violence, the Politics Trait demands a certain amount of patience and finesse. You can’t just charm a district attorney and then walk away from a murder rap — there are too many people and procedures involved in law enforcement situations. Still, this Knowledge helps your character know who those people are and which strings can make them dance. Though it’s not a glamorous skill, it might be among the most potent tools in the modern world.

For game systems involving social influence, see Social Occasions and Intrigue in Dramatic Feats. For magickal practices that employ political clout, see the The Art of Desire and Dominion practices, the Management and Human Resources option, and their associated instruments, all in Focus and the Arts.

A small word for vast ideas, science essentially means “to know.” In game terms, this Trait reflects an understanding of scientific principles, research, history, and applications. Every Technocrat or technomancer must have a few dots in this Ability, and most have quite a few of them. In the modern world, the majority of people have at least 1 dot in Science; even if you believe in God or magick, you can still accept science as a valid approach to reality. (Really? Yep — see the sidebar SCIENCE!!!)

The Science Trait covers a rudimentary understanding of common principles, plus a given focus of specialization. High ratings reflect increasing knowledge about the various sciences, with deepening understanding of your specialization. As with Crafts, you define one specialty for your character’s primary Science and then purchase different specialties to reflect different sciences. Also, as with Crafts, your Storyteller may allow the Well-Skilled Craftsman option that lets you buy multiple Sciences for fewer points. This way, a well-trained scientist can master a variety of fields.

For science- and tech-based practices see Alchemy, Art of Desire, Cybernetics, Hypertech, Reality Hacking, and Weird Science under Practice: The Shape of Focus in Focus and the Arts.

You have a natural affinity for animals, so much so that you seem to be part animal yourself. Perhaps you’ve learned ancestral techniques of animal communion. Maybe you’re a shapeshifter with the heart of a beast. Wherever your Talent comes from, you connect with animals on a level that often seems downright... primal.

On a practical level, this Talent helps you puzzle out hierarchies, read moods or states of health, communicate through vocalizations and body language, and come to understandings on an animal level. This doesn’t mean an animal will necessarily like you, but you can respect one another as peers. Intelligent animals tend to be easier to commune with than primitive ones; it’s far simpler to bond with, say, a wolf than with a shark. Hence, Animal Kinship Difficulties are lower with smart or trusting beasts than with alien, hostile, or simple-minded ones.

Successes on an Animal Kinship roll can also help you lower the Difficulty of a Riding roll or let you pass as “just another animal” if you’ve shapeshifted into beast form. With a Training specialty, you can train certain kinds of animals too; each beast type (horses, raptors, big cats, etc.) requires its own specialty, though the Well-Skilled Craftsman option may give you a break when buying several specialties. Even then, though, this is a Talent, not a power. You can get on an animal’s good side easily enough, but if you push that relationship too far, your friend is history.

Through theatrical flair, audience appraisal, and raw audacity, you’re good at getting away with blatant acts of magick. Typically, this involves using tried-and-true dodges: “We’re shooting a movie,” “It’s all an illusion,” “Haven’t you ever seen a flash-mob before?” — that sort of thing. As you might expect, such claims typically require props to lend credibility to your claims (a “camera crew,” stage magic gear, a pack of willing conspirators, etc.). If and when you have the goods to back up your dodge, however, you can pull reality over people’s eyes more often than you would be able to do otherwise.

A potentially problematic Talent, this Trait comes with several caveats. As mentioned above, a mage who wants to use it must be able to back up her claims with evidence. Despite common preconceptions, most people aren’t stupid, and — especially in the age of YouTube, cell phones, and wireless Internet access — the ability to look up “famous stage magicians” and “reality TV shows filming in my area” is literally within the grasp of the average bystander. Blatancy works best when you play to your location’s dominant belief system, have the props (physical and social) to back up your claims, and get the hell out of Dodge before folks start asking too many questions.

In story terms, this Trait gives your character an edge if ze employs a credible explanation while doing something that should not be possible but looks as though it could be. It does not work when that character does things for which no reasonable explanation exists. You could, for example, explain a suddenly healed wound with, “Look! It was just make-up,” or “Head wounds just bleed a lot;” you could not, however, conjure a dragon and then shout, “Cool special effects, huh?” In order to employ this Talent at all, you must have something that passes for a rational explanation by the standards of your audience and then avoid pushing the envelope too far.

In game terms, a successful Manipulation + Blatancy roll — combined with a reasonable explanation for the magickal deed in question — may allow a player to turn a normally vulgar magickal Effect into a coincidental one.

These days, this sort of thing is a lot easier for Technocrats, Ecstatics, martial artists, trusted clergy, and stage magicians than it is for garden-variety mages. And in regions with mystical cultures, it’s far more likely that a trusted local will get away with Blatancy than it is to assume that some newcomer with fancy words will accomplish the same thing. Folks in traditional cultures are not morons either. If some stupid white man shows up and starts thinking he can play Cargo Cult with the natives, he’s gonna get his ass kicked.

That said, a charismatic speaker who knows zir audience can get away with amazing amounts of nonsense. People truly will fall for ridiculous ideas if and when the speaker plays to their fears, hopes, prejudice, and faith. In real life, folks accept blatant absurdities as truth all the time. A clever player/character can manipulate the locals if and when ze puts some imagination and sweat equity behind this Trait. Smart roleplaying, combined with advance preparation, ought to pay off under most circumstances.

As a general guide to the potential Difficulty or success required with a Blatancy roll, you may use the Blatancy Effects chart. On that chart, Difficulty offers a base Difficulty for the roll, Successes Needed suggests a minimum number of successes before the roll succeeds. Effect gives a guideline for the size or scope of the magickal act in question; larger or more obvious acts of magick would demand a higher Difficulty and/or more successes rolled. Finally, Explanation offers the type of rationale a character might give; the lamer the explanation, the higher the Difficulty and the more successes you’d need to get away with using it. Generally, you’d use either Effect or Explanation to determine the roll’s Difficulty; if you’re compounding them — say, a Blatant Effect with a Lame Explanation — add +1 or more to the Difficulty. That said, the chart provides a guideline only. The Storyteller may also ignore the chart if they feel it does not suit the chronicle or circumstances.

Ultimately, the Storyteller is the final arbiter regarding the effects of a Blatancy attempt. If the explanation sucks, if the props do not support the claim, if the people are clearly being played for fools, then the roll will not succeed, period.

You specialize in sharing the good times. This doesn’t have to involve drinking and debauchery... but it usually does anyway. Wherever you happen to be, you can probably spark a party and get the majority of folks to go along with you — possibly over their usual edges and into something new and wild. Typically associated with the Cult of Ecstacy, this Talent can break shackles of propriety and bust inhibitions into little pieces.

Food’s your thing. You’re good at preparing it, pulling meals together from odds and ends, and noting when something’s not quite right. What good is this sort of talent for a mage? Ask any decent witch! A gifted cook can whip up an impressive meal on the go (perhaps even working some Life, Matter, Mind, or Time magicks into the mix to spoil or sweeten the food); spot tainted or poisoned chow; discern unusual ingredients (griffin, horse-meat, Soylent Green...); or create nutritious meals from whatever’s close at hand — a vital skill in the wilderness or certain Realms!

You’ve got a knack for smoothing things over, making friends, and getting people to see past their differences. When you need to, you can also back up your guile with spine. A combination of ingratiating people skills, social psychology, knowledge of the situation, and innate timing allows you to gain people’s respect and then maneuver them to your desired point of view. A good diplomat can be transparent about zir motives and yet still have people doing what ze wants them to do while believing it’s their idea to do so. As an adjunct to Mind-based magicks, this Talent can become a huge (and occasionally fearsome) edge in group dynamics.

Often mistaken for a mere martial art, Do is the devotion to a way of life. A time-honored secret of the Akashic Brotherhood (who began to hide its practice when Do was abused by lesser souls), the art is occasionally taught to non-Brothers in the interest of keeping Do alive.

Although it’s reflected by a unique collection of combat maneuvers and magickal techniques, the Way is far more than a simple series of advantages. In story terms, Do is a highly disciplined state of being. Diet, philosophy, meditation, internal and external reflection, and a refined sense of one’s place in the cosmos all characterize the study of Do; a character who does not pursue each element of that study cannot master the art’s benefits. The Storyteller should make sure that a practitioner of Do acts accordingly. If the character behaves with selfish excess, ze loses zir ability to access Do. In many regards, Do is much more than a few dots on a character sheet. To the mages who pursue it, Do invests, guides, and enhances everything they do.

The five ranks of Do are often associated with five stages of understanding. Ranging from the humble yet efficient insect stage through the various forms of animal, these levels reflect the growing comprehension of innate potential within a student’s thick head. Especially within this distraction-prone age, few students attain the fifth rank... and though it might be possible for someone outside the Akashayana to reach such mastery, that idea seems like a joke to those who understand the essence of Do.

In game terms, Do is more of a way of being than a learned Skill. Even so, it can be taught only by an Akashic mage, and it requires total devotion from the student. The Storyteller may consider Do to be an exclusively Akashic Ability — it’s been that way for thousands of years, after all. A beginning Akashic character may put no more than 2 dots into Do; all other dots must be earned through in-game experience. (The Storyteller can waive this rule for a “masters-level” chronicle.) A non-Akashic character cannot start the game with any dots in Do — again, those dots must be earned through experience.

In order to purchase dots in the Do Talent, a character must also have at least 2 dots of an appropriate “limb” Ability for each dot in Do. If Samuel “Green Tiger” Nakamura, for example, has 3 dots in Do, then he must also have at least 6 dots in Abilities related to the “Eight Limbs of Do.” For details about extensive rewards of the art, see the entry for Do in Combat. For lesser forms of martial arts, see the Martial Arts entry above.

People don’t usually fly. You do. Whether it’s because you’ve got (or can grow) wings and you know how to use them or else you’re simply practiced in the fine art of aerial maneuvers, you’re at home in the air as well as on the ground.

Unlike the Jetpack Skill, this Talent reflects a knack for unassisted flying. To possess it, a character must have either wings or the innate (or magickal) power of flight. Really small or precarious flying methods (brooms, carpets, levitation discs, etc.) can count as Flying methods too; such control involves more instinct and comfort than technological expertise. For climbs, plunges, take-offs, landings, fancy moves, chases, aerial combat, or other airborne feats, this Talent comes in handy when you take to the sky.

There’s both an art and a science to a good rite. You’ve studied not only the techniques and trappings of ritual practices but also the symbolic, psychological, and metaphysical principles behind the big show. In general, this Talent reflects a familiarity with rituals appropriate to your spiritual or magickal pursuits; a Catholic priest understands the various Church ceremonies, whereas an Eleusinian priestess knows her way around Greek mystery rites. Beyond that knowledge, though, you understand not only the rituals of your chosen practice but also possess a gift for staging rituals in general.

Game-wise, the High Ritual Talent allows you to plan and execute rituals. A successful roll (typically Manipulation or Charisma + High Ritual) lets your character perform or support anything from a wedding feast to a mystic rite. This roll’s Difficulty depends upon your character’s familiarity with the practice in question: simple rites in zir cultural tradition would be easy, and elaborate rituals in a foreign practice would be pretty damned hard. A successful High Ritual roll might reduce the difficulty of a magickal working, whereas a blown one might add to the Difficulty instead. (See below.)

Certain Effects that would probably be considered vulgar magick might be considered coincidental if performed during a successful and appropriate ritual. An Awakened evangelist, for example, could effectively lay on hands or drive out demons during a potent Christian rite — such a setting encourages belief in such events. Although this sort of thing should not be taken for granted, a skillful ritualist can expand the bounds of possibility and evoke apparent miracles. Note that this Talent does not “stack” with the Blatancy Talent. A character with both must choose one or the other, not use both at one time.

For the rules about modifying magick rolls with Abilities, see Mundane Skills and Magickal Effects in Casting Magick. For details about rituals and belief, see Coincidental Magick vs. Vulgar Magick, and Rituals, Rolls, and Extended Successes, also in Casting Magick.

You’re really good at relaying information, teaching material, and helping other folks understand potentially complex principles. It’s not so much that you’re an expert on the subject at hand (though you might be), but that you’ve got a knack for taking your subject and making it easier to comprehend. A very useful Talent for mentors, professors and, of course, instructors for any given course of study, this Ability helps your character share zir expertise with other characters.

In game terms, you can use Instruction to train other characters in any Skill or Knowledge that your character possesses. (At the Storyteller’s discretion, Talents might be teachable too, assuming that the student already has at least 1 dot in the Trait in question; this way, the instructor helps that character refine a knack ze already has.) You cannot raise another character’s Trait higher than the level your own character has achieved, or teach something your own character doesn’t already have. Let’s say that Legacy Brown wants to teach Spider Chase some medical skills. Legacy has Medicine 3, so she could teach Spider up to 3 dots in Medicine before hitting the limits of her own knowledge. For each month of tutoring, Legacy’s player rolls her Manipulation + Instruction against a Difficulty of 11, minus Spider’s Intelligence rating; if Spider has Intelligence 4, that Difficulty would be 7 (11 - 4). For each success rolled, Spider’s player gets to spend an experience point; if Legacy gets 4 successes, Spider spends 4 points toward Medicine. This way, a skillful teacher can speed up the learning process for new Abilities.

As an alternate rule, the Storyteller may decide to allow each success to save 1 experience point from the cost of learning or raising an Ability; in this case, Spider’s player would save 4 points when buying and raising the Medicine Knowledge. For this option, the instructor’s player rolls only once, not once per month. This way, you can teach Abilities faster and cheaper in a chronicle where time is of the essence. This option, however, should not be combined with the normal rule. Choose one or the other, not both.

In story terms, this Talent reflects a teacher with an engaging and memorable style. Even if you don’t get into the point-spending element of education, your character is one of those teachers that students recall years or even decades after they’ve spent time under xyr instruction.

You can plot and plan effectively. You understand how to manipulate others through trickery and artifice, and you are expert at exposing a target’s vulnerabilities. Note that Intrigue is not Subterfuge; the latter involves fieldwork and actual sabotage, while Intrigue operates more on a theoretical and consequential level. Subterfuge is the art of planting a forged letter; Intrigue is the art of knowing whose handwriting to forge for maximum effect.

Also known as Instinct, this Talent represents a primal sort of perception that runs beneath your conscious mind. Essentially, you possess an animal-like awareness of your surroundings and circumstances. Though it’s not mind-reading per se, your Intuition helps you spot cues about people’s moods and intentions, notice when “something’s not quite right,” and recognize patterns and connections that your conscious mind might otherwise have missed. Combat vets, street survivors, primal folks, and animal-favoring shapechangers tend to develop such instincts as a survival skill; even then, though, such awareness comes more from innate talent than from practiced techniques. In situations where your character might pick up on subconscious clues or subtle giveaways, add your Intuition to a Mental Attribute to see whether or not that character’s instincts kick in.

Most folks float through dreams with no sense of control. Not you. When you choose to assert yourself in the dreamlands, you may shift the tone of a dream, change locations, confront nightmares head-on, or even construct dreams of your choosing. Cosmologically, you know how to tap into the essence of Maya and turn it in your favor. With practice, you might create a Demesne Background that suits your temperament.

In game terms, this Talent lets you manipulate your surroundings in a dream (Perception + Lucid Dreaming, Difficulty 6); shape new structures (Difficulty 8); or take complete control over that dream and your place in it (Difficulty 9).

You can use this Talent to direct conscious meditations, too (Difficulties 5, 7, and 8, respectively), which can help you gain insights, unravel riddles, and achieve a state of calm or resolution. If you’re meditating or dreaming about a particular enigma, then your successes — after you wake up — count as if they were successes on an Enigmas roll. Jennifer Rollins, as an example, meditates about a puzzle she wants to solve, and so her successes with a Lucid Dreaming roll count as successes used to solve that puzzle; once she leaves the trance, she understands how those pieces fit together.

For the Demesne Background, see that entry. For game systems involved in riddles, puzzles, and enigmas, see Art and Science and Social Occasions and Intrigue in Dramatic Feats.

A skilled imitator, you can mimic voices or sounds; the higher your rating, the greater your ability. The human larynx is quite flexible, capable of a wide vocal range. (A touch of magick can make that range even wider if you augment your natural abilities with Life 2 or 3.) At the lower levels, you can imitate accents or the voices of specific people, while higher levels help you fake an impressive range of sonic phenomena.

An acute perception for what people want makes you a master wheeler-dealer. Combined with social savvy and the ability to say “No” when you need to do so, this perception lets you bring other folks around to your point of view, helps them strike bargains, and puzzle out the potential agendas that drive them to — and away from — the bargaining table.

Language is your playground. In a brave new age, you coin brave new words. Why? Because language is the gatekeeper of status and initiation. Obfuscatory miscourse is keycode. Disinfotech relegates the bleaters to Sidelinedia. Coprosperity sails on neochop, and so you bait the beespeakers and decompartmentalize linguiblocks. What the hell are you saying, anyway? Whatever the hell you want it to mean!

Essentially, this Talent helps you spin and juggle buzzwords, either existing or original. Beyond the roleplaying fun you can have with this Trait, Newspeak provides a verbal arsenal for social entanglements. By pairing Social Attributes with this Ability, you can excite, incite or inspire your audience (Charisma + Newspeak); dazzle, befuddle or intimidate opponents (Manipulation + Newspeak); or blast holes in Preconceptionsville by pairing beauty with brains (Appearance + Newspeak). Intelligence + Newspeak may help you decipher or deconstruct someone else’s wordstorm, while Perception or Wits might help you keep track of a slogan-spitting raconteur... or beat xem at xyr own game!

(Ideally, this Talent should be roleplayed out. Relegating it to a simple roll of dice is no fun at all.)

Your quick eyes spot things other people miss. Darting your gaze across a place or situation, you can catch a quick appraisal that would take most people a while to observe. Generally combined with Perception, this Talent helps your character scope out potential targets, threats, clues, faces, escape routes, and other vital details. Ze might not always know just what it is ze sees, and ze has to actually think about scanning an area in order to use this Ability. Given time for a fast glance or two, however, ze’ll probably snag enough material to work with once ze’s got the chance to process what ze’s seen.

Dude! Where’d you find that? You’re pretty good at spotting goodies in the oddest places. A skilled scavenger, you can discover all kinds of unlikely stuff. Granted, said stuff has to be there first... but then, if you’re a mage, this Talent provides a wonderful excuse for coincidental magick. Even without magick, though, the toss-out nature of consumer culture often puts the odds in your favor.

Given time and motivation, you know how to toss a room or comb the woods. You’ve honed an eye for clues, mastered the classic hiding spaces (and puzzled out some new ones), and learned how to follow your instincts. If there’s something to be found, you’re likely to find it... and if you combine this Talent with Sphere 1 Effects, there’s not much that can hide from you for long.

You’re good at being bad. A master of attraction, you can draw people into engagements they might otherwise ignore or avoid. We’re not talking about simple chemistry here, although you can certainly augment your chemistry with a little Life or Mind magick. This Talent reflects the combination of carnal allure and emotional manipulation that can wind people around your fingers (or other parts of your anatomy...) whenever you want their attention.

Seduction isn’t always sexual. It does, however, play off the target’s desires. Note that you don’t have to be gorgeous to use this Ability; many seducers, in fact, seem unremarkable until they put this gift to work. For game systems associated with social machinations, see the Social Occasions and Intrigue entry in Dramatic Feats.

You know how to look good. And although you’ve got an eye for fashion, this Talent’s not so much about what you wear as how you wear it. Style helps you make good impressions based on clothes, bearing, behavior, and appearance... and while it’s most obvious on pretty people, it can have striking effects on those who otherwise look plain.

Dazzling feats of athletic grace are yours to perform. Despite the limitations of physics and biology, you defy gravity and make it look easy. Naturally, there’s intense practice and dedication involved in such discipline — it didn’t come easily, and you must hone such skills with constant exercise. Still, your flexible precision seems downright magical and, especially if you add in Life, Time, and Correspondence Spheres, might be literally inhuman!

You can shoot humanity’s most venerable long-distance weapon: the bow. Beyond its obvious practical applications, this Skill can become a meditative art as well — and is practiced as such by Zen archers and other enthusiasts. Because bows launch wooden shafts, they make good weapons against vampires... and because they’re almost silent, bows offer efficient gear for assassins and spies as well.

For details about bows and crossbows, see Combat.

Bodies are the original machines, and technology invents new machines to go along with them. You understand the connections between organic and mechanical systems and can work the places where they interface. An absolutely essential Skill for the cyborgs and cybernetic engineers of Iteration X, the Progenitors, the Virtual Adepts, and certain Etherite factions, Biotech gives you hands-on training and experience with cybernetic technology. Naturally, you need various Science Knowledges in order to design, invent, and install such technology; with this Skill, though, you’ve got practical applications to back up all that information.

For rules about cybernetic gear, see the Enhancement Background, and The Toybox. For biotech as a technomagickal focus, see the Cybernetics and Hypertech practices in Focus and the Arts.

Either through training, meditation or grim necessity, you can get around without sight even under extreme conditions. Each dot in Blind Fighting reduces, by -1 per dot, your penalty for performing actions while visually blinded. (It does not, of course, give you a bonus for fighting in the dark, although it certainly gives you an edge if your opponents are blind as well.) This Skill does not give you the ability to see in darkness, nor does it add to Correspondence Effects; it does, however, reflect an extraordinary perception of your body and immediate surroundings even when you cannot see.

For the Flaw related to visual impairment, see Impediment.

The phrase “sheer surface” means less to you than it means to most folks. You can scale walls, trees, mountains, and other surfaces so long as you’ve got something to hold onto. Although this Skill does not grant superhuman abilities, it’s really amazing what a skilled climber can do, even without gear.

You know how to make things go BOOM, usually without blowing yourself to bits in the process. This perilous specialty becomes especially important in the new millennium, when Improvised Explosive Devices are weapons of choice and opportunity. Such a Skill confers a working familiarity with explosive chemistry and tech, an understanding of common designs, a knack for figuring blast patterns and effects, and — at its higher levels — the expertise to defuse many explosive devices too. What it does not do is provide foolproof explosive technology. Once things explode, chaos always takes over.

Looking like someone else is your specialty. This might involve impersonating an existing person, concealing your own identity, or creating a whole new persona independent of yourself. Even without Life or Mind magick, your expertise can fool casual observers... and, at the higher levels, fool almost anyone. Add Life and/or Mind to this Skill, and your disguise skills can become damn near perfect. (For more details, see Impersonating Other Beings in The Book of Tricks.)

With or without makeup and such, the art of disguise depends upon an ineffable quality that allows a person to slip into another personality. A truly magnificent disguise-artist can change personas with a few shifts of physicality, though most folks need make-up and clothes to complete the illusion. Disguise means “remove appearances,” and so the core of this Skill involves changing the way you come across — not simply gluing on a mustache, but appearing to become an entirely different person.

You’re good at giving people the slip. With enough cover to work with (crowds, underbrush, rooms filled with boxes, etc.), you can shake pursuit, hide from observation, trick pursuers, and blend in with the landscape. Cleverly employed, Elusion can help you puzzle out new surroundings (Intelligence + Elusion), confuse your pursuers (Manipulation + Elusion), spot traps and hiding places (Perception + Elusion), duck quickly behind cover (Dexterity + Elusion), and trick antagonists into following false leads or falling into hazards (Wits + Elusion). And, of course, you also know what to look for if someone else is trying to hide from you... (Again, Perception + Elusion.)

In itself, this Skill is not magickal — it’s all about knowing how to use your surroundings to your advantage. Certain magickal Effects, however, can bend light and sound (the Forces Sphere), shift probability (Entropy), influence bystanders (Mind), or spot “perfect moments” (Time) that take your mundane skill to the next level, often without so much as rippling the Consensus.

When the only things standing between innocent bystanders and a raging Reality Deviant are you, your blaster, and the ability to use it, this becomes a must-have Skill. Laser guns, particle-beam accelerators, plasma hand-cannons, ectoplasmic disruptors, and other advanced weaponry demand advanced handling; any ape can fire a revolver, but only specially trained personnel know how to employ hypertech weaponry.

This Ability reflects a basic understanding of energy weapon technology (or at least the ability to turn it on, point it in the right direction, and not blow your own hand off with it), and the essential skills involved in handling, maintaining, adjusting, loading, and storing the tools of Technocratic security. For a small selection of energy weapons, see The Toybox.

Through a combination of tricks, misdirection, muscular control and really flexible joints, you can shuck most forms of physical restraint. Ropes, chains, holds, and death-traps slow you down, but... given time and perhaps a hidden lockpick or two... you’ve figured out how to foil most of them. This Skill does not confer any supernatural ability, although you can use it to justify magickal escapes if your “audience” knows that you’ve studied escapist techniques.

For the misnamed talent of being “double-jointed,” see the Hyperflexible Merit.

You’re quick. They’re dead. A roll of Dexterity + Fast-Draw (3 successes or more) lets you pull a weapon and have it ready to use. The roll’s Difficulty depends on where you’d been keeping that weapon stored — a hidden ankle-knife is harder to draw than a pistol in an open holster! This Skill works with any weapon, and can “explain” why that gun in your hand just appeared from nowhere. With the Storyteller’s approval, you can add the dots in this Skill to your Initiative roll when either you or your opponent is trying to get in the very first shot. (It does not, however, add to that roll after the initial turn.)

Weaving a blizzard of words, you dazzle folks with brilliant bullshittery. A surprisingly effective tactic (assuming that your target has a Wits rating of 3 or less; brighter folks are less easily bamboozled), this Skill lets you overwhelm a person’s ability to understand or deflect your agenda. You’re so distracting, convincing, or downright puzzling that people are inclined to believe you... at least until they’ve had a chance to think about what you’re saying. Deployed by a pundit, debater, salesman or crook, Fast-Talk can be a devastating weapon.

The Art of the Blade, Fencing reflects expertise with an array of European sword-and-dagger-fighting techniques, while Kenjutsu reflects Japanese samurai swordsmanship. Other cultural forms of bladed martial arts, such as Chinese wushu weapon techniques, can be considered as “fencing” for the purposes of dice pools and maneuvers; just change the name to whatever art is appropriate for that character.

At its lowest levels, such knowledge is purely sporting; an accomplished fencer or kendoka, though, can be deadly in true hand-to-hand combat. As with most martial arts, a dedicated study of swordsmanship includes philosophy, meditation, vigorous exercise, and a refinement of mind, body, and soul... which makes it an excellent magickal focus technique. In game terms, this Skill lets a character use an array of specialized combat maneuvers; see Expanded Combat Systems: Advanced Weapon Techniques in Combat.

Whether or not you actually possess accurate gifts of prophecy, you often have folks believing that you do. Scanning anything from cards to entrails to scripture verses, you can convincingly predict future events, read a person, or otherwise get someone to believe in your incredible prescience. This makes an excellent instrument for Mind-, Entropy- or Time-based magicks, although its believability (and thus, its ability to be considered coincidental) will depend upon both your audience and your own beliefs. A true believer will easily accept an accurate Tarot reading, but a skeptic might prove far harder to convince.

A Technocratic variation, Assessment Analysis, does exactly the same thing but with a very different explanation. Instead of using symbolic or religious trappings, such Analysis involves psychological cues, deductive reasoning, body language, and other methods to read a person’s inner landscape, predict potential behaviors, or estimate the probabilities of future events. This lets Assessment Specialists size people up at a glance, determine accurate calculations, or strip away deceptions to perceive the truth beneath them. In the modern world, this sort of thing tends to be coincidental, so long as the Specialist can point out cues or clues that might lead to a rational conclusion.

Games of nerve and chance are your specialties. Even without the aid of Entropy Arts (which can add a devastating edge to this Skill), you’re good at gauging odds, bluffing rivals, spotting cheats, hedging bets, faking people out, and employing the mind-games and slight-of-hand essential to card games, betting, and apparently random luck.

Shooting guns is easy. Knowing how guns work is a bit more complicated. This Skill reflects a practical knowledge of weapon manufacture, modification, design and repair. The various levels cover expanding categories of firearms expertise. Given time, tools, and enough dots in this Skill, you can fix guns, craft firearms and unique ammo from scratch, and even use Matter and Forces Effects to alter or supercharge mundane firearms in surprising ways.

It’s worth noting that modern mass-produced firearms are far easier to modify than antique or archaic weapons are. Attempts to modify or repair older-model mass-produced weaponry (pre-Vietnam), or small-run models of more recent vintage, will add +1 or +2 to the Difficulty of Gunsmith rolls, while firearms from before the twentieth century add between +1 to +3 to the Difficulties of such attempts, depending upon the complexity of the attempted modification. Shoddy weapons, of course, will be harder to repair or modify; for more details, see Inventing, Modifying, and Improving Technology in The Technological World.

Military-grade weaponry is a world apart from commercial-grade firearms. Your training, however, allows you to employ serious gear: machine-guns, rocket-launchers, Stinger missiles, and other high-impact forms of portable destruction. Because such weapons tend to be finicky, you know how to field-repair them as well. Perhaps you even have your own YouTube channel, for thrilling the armchair-testosterone set. (“Now that is what I am talking about... And, as always, have nice day!”)

The baroque complexity of starship controls is enough to give most folks a headache. Not you. Rigorous training and practice have taught you how to maneuver the weird craft that operate beyond the mundane realm. Although you probably need a support crew to help you (starships are complicated!), you’re got practical knowledge regarding the various screens, buttons, keys, and monitors involved in navigating and steering such advanced vehicles.

Despite some cosmetic similarities to the Pilot Skill below, Helmsman works with a very different sort of vehicle. And because this Skill deals with spacecraft, very few characters — other than Void Engineers and certain Etherites — know that it exists... and even fewer have studied its techniques. On a related note, there are some pretty significant differences between the standardized controls of Technocratic-fleet vessels and the more... um, elegant designs of unique Etherite craft. In game terms, the Storyteller should impose a penalty, typically -1 to -3, on a helmsman who’s trying to puzzle out an unfamiliar set of controls. Oh, the consequences of a botched roll can be downright ugly. In (Ether)space, no one can hear you die.

You score food old-school style: by tracking, trapping, spotting, stalking, killing, gutting, skinning, and packing it out yourself. Some folks think you’re a testosterone sadist, and they might even be right. As far as you see it, though, you’re keeping an essential skill alive. Especially among mages who spend time in the wilderness or Otherworlds, this Skill means the difference between being a live magus and a dead child of the supermarket age!

Like Art, Crafts, and other broad-set Abilities, Hunting covers a field of related expertise. Each type of expertise demands a given specialty. Unlike the Survival Skill, this secondary Ability deals specifically with predatory skill-sets. You could use its specialties to follow a target without being spotted (Shadowing), spot traces of your chosen prey (Tracking), dismantle a dead body without spoiling the meat (Dressing the Kill), and perform other feats that go beyond mere survival. These specialties replace an array of secondary Abilities from earlier editions of Mage. To be skilled with those disciplines, simply purchase those specialties. At the Storyteller’s discretion, the Well-Skilled Craftsman option may apply.

There’s mundane technology, and then there’s the stuff that technomages command. This latter tech is not, of course, “magick” — perish the thought! Still, its principles transcend the limited understanding of the Masses and their convenient little world. The advanced principles employed by the Technocracy, Virtual Adepts, various mad scientists, and even the technomancers of other, more traditional pursuits all range outside everyday sciences. These arcane technologies — nanotech, Trinary computing, extradimensional travel, and so on — seem mysterious even to many of the rank-and-file who employ them. You, however, understand how such things work... and through such understanding, you can modify existing Devices, create your own, or employ machines created by other technomancer mages.

At Ranks 1 and 2, a character with this Skill understands only the principles behind their own group’s Devices; an Etherite, for example, can puzzle out the workings of a colleague’s contraptions, but they would wind up stymied by, say, an Iteration X Device. At Rank 3 and above, however, that same mag... er, scientist could decipher the odd perversions of scientific truth behind such alien Devices — and, by extension, could use or even modify them. In game terms, this means that a successful Hypertech roll would allow a technomancer to employ a tool or Device that would not normally work for them due to its secure or unconventional design. If you’re running a Technocratic operative, this is a pretty big deal; the warped confections of mad scientists begin to make a practical kind of sense... which means, of course, that you can now convert those insane Devices to more sensible purposes.

Your Hypertech rating cannot be higher than your rating in the Technology Skill. If you don’t understand the basics, after all, how will you wrap your head around the big stuff? As with the Computer Knowledge, your ability to focus Sphere Effects through hypertech may be limited to the dots in your Hypertech Trait. For details about technomagickal practices, see the Cybernetics, Hypertech, and Weird Science entries, and their associated paradigms and instruments, in the Practice: The Shape of Focus section of Focus and the Arts.

Using mundane psychological techniques (as opposed to Mind-based magicks), you can place someone in a trance and then rummage around a bit inside xyr head. Though it’s not nearly as effective as people seem to believe it is, such mesmerism is quite potent under the proper circumstances.

Mesmerism typically demands a setting that encourages a subject to surrender xyrself to the hypnotist’s control; traditionally hypnotic settings, tools, and techniques include religious rituals, quiet clinics, repetitious music, dramatic contrasts of light and darkness, and — believe it or not — television screens. Drawing the subject into a receptive state of mind, the hypnotist gets xem to lower xyr defenses and let zir in. If the subject resists, the hypnotist will probably need to resort to Mind magicks rather than simple mesmerism.

System-wise, the player makes a resisted roll that pits zir Charisma + Hypnotism against zir subject’s Intelligence (for a willing subject) or Intelligence + Willpower (for an unwilling subject). The number of successes reflects the depth of the trance, with 1 to 3 successes indicating a mild trance and 4 or more successes revealing a fairly deep one. For each success rolled, the hypnotist adds 1 additional die to zir second roll; 3 successes, for example, would add 3 more dice to that second roll’s dice pool.

Next, the hypnotist player rolls a second time against a Difficulty of the subject’s Willpower; for each success, ze manages to uncover one piece of information; instill 1 “trigger phrase”; inspire one idea, behavior or memory that the subject will think is xyr own; “command” 1 simple activity; or reduce the Difficulty a related Mind-based spell by -1. This process, in turn, takes roughly 1 minute of in-game time per task involved. (It would, for instance, take 4 minutes to instill 4 triggers or memories.) Contrary to popular perception, short sessions of hypnotic influence cannot drive a person to commit things xe wouldn’t do otherwise. Extended influence, on the other hand, can be surprisingly efficacious.

Hypnotism is a psychological art, not an exact science. Its effects are unpredictable — not even “experts” can fully control another person’s mind without hardcore Mind-magick. Ultimately, the Storyteller decides how much influence our mesmerist exerts upon zir subject. That said, a skilled hypnotist can do some pretty impressive things with a willing subject... especially if ze’s adept with the Mind Sphere as well.

The tricky art of personal flight devices is yours to enjoy. With this Skill, you know how to control body-mounted flying gadgets. Like most tech-based Abilities, your success depends a lot on your familiarity, or lack of it, with the specific kind of tech involved. A Man in Black would have as hard a time with a Son of Ether’s jetpack as an Etherite would have with standard-issue NWO gear. Once you’ve logged some flight-time with a device, however, you’re on your way.

With a bit of luck and a lot of skill, you can rig a gadget, make temporary repairs, or cobble together something vaguely workable from a pile of spare parts. Naturally, you’ll need the appropriate Traits as well — stuff like Hypertech, Computer, Energy Weapons, and so forth. You can’t rig something you don’t understand. A brilliant technician, though, can make gear jump through hoops long enough to get through an immediate crisis.

Clever technomancers can also use Jury-Rigging as part of their focus if they’ve got something to work with and enough time to make things happen. (See Mundane Skills and Magickal Effects in Casting Magick.) That said, this is a Skill, not a Sphere; it can’t do something blatantly impossible on its own. Whether or not a Jury-Rigged device is vulgar magick depends on just how outlandish it seems. An armored suit made out of forged steel and weapon-parts? Okay. A flying car composed of Frisbees and dog treats? Um, no.

For game-system details about this sort of thing, see Inventing, Modifying, and Improving Technology in The Technological World.

Things get weird when you leave Earth’s gravity. Although there’s no such thing as true “zero-G,” the radically altered gravitational forces found in strange Realms, spacecraft or Etherspace demand specialized training and experience. Without the Microgravity Operations Skill, a character in such environments cannot use dice from any Physical Ability; sure, ze’s still strong or dexterous, but that martial arts training won’t do zir a damn bit of good when the physics upon which those arts depend have been replaced by microgravity.

A rare skill-set outside the ranks of Technocratic Void Engineers, Microgravity Operations teaches you how to move and act in altered gravity. Each dot in this Skill allows your character to use a dot in zir other Physical Abilities. Let’s say that the guy mentioned above has 4 dots in Martial Arts; ze could use 1 of them at Microgravity 1, 2 at Microgravity 2, and so on. Without such training, a person bounces and floats with very little control of personal physics; with this Skill, that same person knows how to use that environment to zir advantage.

“Look! Over there!” Okay, you’re usually more subtle than that. Still, you’re good at distracting folks from what you’re actually trying to do. An essential skill for magicians, pickpockets, seducers, and other people who prefer to redirect attention, this Ability helps you steer someone’s concentration elsewhere.

In a fight, this Skill also helps you set someone up for an unpleasant surprise. Each success in a Dexterity + Misdirection roll (Difficulty [5 + the target’s Wits]) lowers the Difficulty of your next strike. Essentially, you throw a fake-out, your opponent responds, and you clock xem. Similar applications of this Skill let you set up distractions and then do something else when your target’s back is turned... in game terms, reducing the Difficulty of your next roll if you succeed with a Misdirection attempt. Naturally, this sort of trick stops working if you rely upon it too often. Each subsequent attempt with the same target (or group of targets) raises your Misdirection Difficulty by +2. Dude — they’re on to you! Time to try a different tactic...

You’re good at making contacts and working them for all they’re worth. While these networks won’t actually act on your behalf (certain Backgrounds cover that sort of thing), they’re real lifesavers when you’re trying to assemble data (Perception + Networking), get something done (Manipulation + Networking), or win someone over (Charisma or Appearance + Networking) through your various contacts. Simple tasks have lower Difficulties, while obscure or difficult tasks demand much better rolls — or, in story terms, a more thorough and dedicated network.

Networking demands time, access, and attention. Although cell phones and laptops can link you to your contacts in most tech-enabled locations, you still need to spend time reaching out and maintaining your network. Occasionally, they’ll ask you for favors too — you get nothing for nothing, after all! The nice thing, though, about extensive networks is that the people in them have a greater ability to help one another when need be.

Most folks, when confronted with the complex control panels of conventional aircraft, don’t have the slightest idea where to start. You do. Training and experience allow you to fly, land, and control most types of Sleepertech flying machines; the higher your rating, the more sophisticated the craft.

Versed in the practice of clinical psychology, you can help folks deal with mental and emotional ailments. Also known as Psychoanalysis, this Trait takes time and trust to deploy — you can’t cure phobias during a firefight! Given the space and opportunity to work your craft, though, you can win someone’s confidence and then help xem sort out the traumas in xyr head.

For each session of focused psychoanalysis, roll Intelligence + Psychoanalysis, with a Difficulty of the subject’s [Intelligence + 3]. If xe’s resisting your efforts, use Manipulation or Charisma + Psychoanalysis, with a Difficulty of xyr [Willpower + 3] (max 10). Each success counts toward at least a temporary resolution of an illness or neurosis. Simple quirks are easy to fix (5 to 10 successes), while severe mental illness can be much harder (20 successes or more).

On the shadow-side, the same techniques can be used to instill mental quirks and illnesses — false memories, induced phobias, that sort of thing. This application assumes that the subject is resisting you subconsciously (Willpower + 3), but can still be quite effective if your patient trusts you. The Satanic ritual abuse panic of the ‘80s and ‘90s came largely from dishonest psychologists “leading” their patients to “discover” things that had never actually happened. Corrupters, seducers, and “conversion specialists” study psychoanalysis for that very reason.

Whether you’re trying to help or harm someone, Mind magick obviously helps with this sort of thing. (Again, see Mundane Skills and Magickal Effects in Casting Magick, as well as the Uncanny Influence section of The Book of Tricks) Thus, “miracle cures” can be explained by your reputation as a skilled psychotherapist.

You know how to saddle, care for, and ride some sort of animal. Through a combination of techniques and bonding, you stand a decent chance of getting where you want to go without being thrown off, trampled, or possibly eaten by your ride.

Certain beasts, of course, are harder to ride than others. For truly dangerous or exotic mounts (tigers, griffins, giant owls, etc.), you’ll probably need Riding 3 or better in order to stay in the saddle at all. Under challenging circumstances (combat, hard gallops, stunts, flying, and so on), you may need to make a Dexterity + Riding roll. Charisma + Riding helps you bond with your mount, and Intelligence + Riding lets you know how to take care of it, maintain riding gear, and puzzle out someone else’s riding techniques. To reflect an unusually keen bond with animals, see the Animal Kinship Talent.

Locks are for morons. In our high-tech era, anything worth keeping is guarded by advanced security systems. As a specialist in such systems, you can analyze, install, access, and — when necessary — subvert or disable them. A common vocation among Technocratic operatives and their enemies, this Skill handles networks that turn a sneak-thief’s world upside-down.

In game terms, this Ability lets you set up, maintain, and infiltrate elaborate security installations: video cameras, laser-triggers, pressure-sensitive plates, and so on. Obviously, such tasks demand time and focus, plus the occasional bit of magick or Enlightened procedure. Given the intricate technology involved in security networks, other Abilities in Mage 20, (Computer, Hypertech, Technology, and so forth) often come into play as well; the Security Skill could tell you where to place the cameras, but it won’t help you hack their monitoring network! Appropriate task rolls include Perception + Security (to scope out the system), Intelligence + Security (to install or disable a system), Wits + Security (to spot hidden cameras or tricks), or even Dexterity + Security (to perform the famous Hollywood dodge-the-laser-sensors-with-fancy-moves stunt).

For rule systems related to security networks, see the Computer Systems presented in The Technological World.

Through a combination of concentration and skill, you can scan and retain large amounts of information in very short periods of time. Speed-Reading utilizes a number of tricks that help you process things you read quickly. Although complex works demand more time and focus than simple ones do, this skill comes in handy when you’ve got research to do and not much time with which to do it.

Although this is a valuable talent for Technocrats, Hermetic mages, Virtual Adepts, and other folks who need to absorb huge chunks of data, it’s a hazardous trick to employ when you’re reading about advanced magickal or scientific matters. Both advanced science and ritual magick, after all, depend upon precise reading in order to get the proper results. Speed-Reading techniques depend upon mnemonic shortcuts, and “shortcuts” and “magick” tend to make poor bedfellows. The Storyteller might inflict a penalty upon rites or procedures whose details have been learned through Speed-Reading, with potentially horrific results if the attempt fails. The moral behind this principle: Don’t try summoning Elder Gods with a ritual you skimmed in your hurry to get through the book!

You don’t sink — you swim. Under normal circumstances, you can move roughly [8 yards + your Dexterity rating] in a turn. By focusing solely upon your speed, you can move up to [12 yards + your Dexterity rating]; and by throwing everything you have behind the strokes, you can roll your Stamina + Swimming (Difficulty 7) to add 3 more yards to your movement that turn. Each turn demands a separate roll, though, and you can do this for only 1 turn per point of Stamina you possess. After that... well, sinking might become an option...

Call it “enhanced interrogation” if you like. We all know what you really do: You hurt people. Maybe you’re “just following orders,” or you realize that ticking bombs sometimes require blunt instruments. Perhaps you just plain enjoy it, even if you can’t even admit that to yourself. Whatever means you use to justify this skill, you excel at causing mental, physical, and perhaps spiritual distress. This might be part of a religious duty, military service, mystic practice, or god-given prerogative. Then again, you could simply be a sick fuck. Whether said distress involves brutal trauma, exquisite agony, or “simple” emotional manipulation, your skills bring people — perhaps even yourself — to, and perhaps over, the edge of what was once considered endurance.

Even when it’s done for “the right reasons,” torture presents an extremely dicey proposition, especially for an interactive entertainment. Still, it would be dishonest to pretend that certain magicians and operatives don’t practice excruciation as part of their calling. Many mystic practices include ordeals, self-torment, and even mutilation. Meanwhile, the dreaded techniques of object lessons and secured intelligence feature torture as just another part of the gig. In game terms, this Skill might involve a blackout; if not, the scene should not be treated lightly, or with disrespect toward the feelings of other players. Whatever the context, torture scenes certainly count as mature content. For more on the subject, see Triggers, Limits, and Boundaries in Telling the Story, the Dramatic Feats chart in Dramatic Feats, and Ordeals and Exertion in Focus and the Arts.

You know a certain area like the back of your hand. In game terms, choose a particular region (no larger than a city) that your character has a reason to know about. Successful Area Knowledge rolls help you get around, spot shortcuts, and grasp customs, clues, and trivia in ways no outsider could understand.

(Note: The Well-Skilled Craftsman option does not apply to Area Knowledge. To learn a place, you must spend time there.)

You’ve studied what people believe, how they believe it, why they believe what they do, and — perhaps most importantly — where people tend to hold certain beliefs. Why is this important? Because, when reality is your stock-in-trade, knowing why, how, and where people believe certain things gives you a massive edge when you’re trying to suit or change those beliefs.

As a Trait, this Knowledge covers general religious, political, economic, and philosophical belief systems throughout the modern mortal world. The higher your rating is, the more extensive and yet specific your understanding becomes. A single dot confers basic information (“Many United States citizens tend to be moderately capitalist, with a modern Christian cultural background and a heavy reliance upon mass-media impressions”), whereas higher ratings reflect increasingly detailed and specific knowledge (“The San Francisco region comprises extremes of both right- and left-wing American political ideologies, with the dominant religious belief systems encompassing the modern and traditional beliefs of its large Chinese, Indian, and Japanese cultures; traditional and modified Native American belief systems; Mexican Catholicism; moderate Evangelical Protestant Christianity; moderate U.S. Catholicism; postmodern NeoPaganism; and diverse New Age syntheses of pan-cultural magical thinking...”). This sort of understanding can be extremely helpful when you’re crafting coincidental magick, appealing to local traditions, cultivating good impressions, or shifting people’s beliefs in your favor.

The Belief Systems Knowledge also helps a mage understand the “reality zones” phenomenon and to turn it to their advantage. See Reality Zones for further details.

“They” are not merely the projections of a delusional mind. You know damn well that secret power-players manipulate the world, and you’re on to their schemes. In the World of Darkness, paranoia is a survival technique, and so this Knowledge gives you clues to the conspiracies that may or may not be eating that world from the inside-out. Naturally, such information makes you a target... and though you may indeed be paranoid, They probably are out to get you... especially if you’re working for Them too.

In the corridors of Awakened and Enlightened power, you know your way around. Alliances, rivalries, histories, influential players, status and weaknesses... they’re your bread and butter. With such expertise, you’re able to accomplish things that leave lesser mages scratching their heads.

This Knowledge comes in two forms: Chantry Politics covers the internal workings of a mystic stronghold, while Construct Politics reveals the inner workings of Technocratic installations. The higher your rating, the more you know. Certain levels of this Knowledge, however, are off-limits to characters under a certain rank. Low-level mages or Technocrats won’t have the security clearance necessary to access high-level secrets (that is, C-Politics higher than 3), and members of rival factions probably won’t be able to find out much about the other guys at all unless they’re skilled infiltrators walking a very dangerous line.

Regardless of the character’s rank or affiliation, C-Politics just gives you data and rumors, not the ability to act on what you think you know. Putting that knowledge to good use requires Traits like Diplomacy, Subterfuge, Allies, Patron, and Spies.

In the alphabet soup of international intrigue (CIA, NSA, ICPO, etc.), you’ve got a backstage pass at the shadow-plays. Probably thanks to hard-won experience, you can spot cues, identify agents, play connect-the-dots between government agencies, and rattle off covert operations as if they were football games. In order to put such knowledge to use, of course, you’ll need other skills to back up the things you know. Still, even James Bond needs to know who to trick, seduce, take orders from, and shoot on sight.

A world full of secrets is a world filled with codes. You understand how they work, know the principles for crafting and cracking them, and have the kind of mind that curves along the proper corners when hacking various codes. A background in mathematics and historical encryption comes with this Skill, although other Abilities — Enigmas, Esoterica (Alchemy, Bibliomancy, Secret Code Languages, etc.), Science (Mathematics), and so forth — provide invaluable assistance for such tasks. Mages are really good at rendering simple things into obscure gibberish, so this is a valuable skill, though not an especially common one.

With this Knowledge, you can create codes that can be broken only by someone who exceeds your Cryptography rating with their own Intelligence + Cryptography dice pool. (Someone with a dice pool of at least 4 dice could beat Cryptography 3, for example, but not Cryptography 4.) You can also try to unravel codes with your own Intelligence + Cryptography rolls. In both cases, the Difficulty depends upon the complexity of the code and the obscurity of the elements involved. If the code demands some knowledge that the would-be cracker does not have, of course, the code remains unbreakable. Japanese cryptographers, for instance, couldn’t have deciphered the Navajo code-talker messages because they didn’t even know that the Navajo language existed. Even without such knowledge, though, a good roll can help you puzzle out the foundation of a code even if you can’t read its contents, which is often half the battle.

For rules dealing with codes and decryption, see Social Occasions and Intrigue in Dramatic Feats.

You’re a walking travel guide, even in places you’ve never visited before. A combination of prior knowledge and innate savvy helps you spot cultural sweet spots and pitfalls before you (or your companions) trip over your own ignorance.

Unlike the Etiquette Skill, this Knowledge is less about making friends than it is about figuring out how cultures work as a whole. With it, you can grasp foreign manners, catch subtle cues, unravel complex social roles, and draw conclusions about the importance of gender, politics, ethnicity, and — perhaps most importantly — the cultural expectations of the people in question. In a chronicle that employs reality zones, this can be a subtle but important weapon in the global Ascension War. For details, again see Reality Zones in The Book of Magick.

Money is the ultimate human magic trick, and you know how it works. Trade, trends, investments, markets, and risks provide you with mental stimulation, Awakened/Enlightened power, economic fortitude, and — most likely — plenty of money (in game terms, the Resources Background).

An essential Trait for Syndicate Technocrats, this Knowledge enriches wizards, Adepts, mad scientists, and sharp-witted witches everywhere and provides a key component of the Ars Cupiditae — a venerable form magick based upon desire. (See Art of Desire/Hypereconomics in Focus and the Arts.)

Those who forget history are doomed to be stupid mages. You’re not one of them. A pursuit of historical knowledge includes not only the usual facts and figures but — especially in recent years — an exploration of the cultural trends behind the big events, the role of “little people” (marginalized populations, commoners, women, etc.), and other things that old-school historians didn’t think were worth recording but which turned out to be vitally important. Hermetics, Technocrats, and historical recreationists and reclamationists take history very seriously; some of the older ones may even have experienced “historical events” in person.

You know more about the Night-Folk than they’d appreciate you knowing. Sure, your understanding gets filtered through the lens of your own group’s perspective, but it’s more than the average person... or mage... comprehends. For mystic mages, such knowledge is considered Lore: the hidden secrets of vampires, werecreatures, and the like. Among Technocrats, it’s known as RD Data: information about the clandestine affairs of Reality Deviants whose very existence presents a threat to the Consensus.

Different Lore categories include: Spirits, Fae, Werecreatures, Vampires, Ghosts, Hunters, Demons, Mages (naturally...), and potentially others as well. Each Lore/RD Data category counts as a separate Lore specialty; knowing about Sabbat Cainites won’t teach you anything about Seelie Fae Kith. The Well-Skilled Craftsman option may help you assemble a formidable amount of information about various groups within those categories. Even then, however, your knowledge will be full of holes, misconceptions, prejudices, and lies. These secretive beings don’t even have accurate appraisals of themselves, so an outsider (especially a Technocratic one) has obvious disadvantages in that regard as well.

Another thing — despite their long rivalries, different mage factions don’t often have accurate data about one another. A Verbena runecaster might recognize “one of those fucking soulless Technocratic bastards,” but they’re not likely to know the difference between a Progenitor Gengineer and a Syndicate “magic man”... or to care much about it, either, unless they’ve got a specialty in Technocracy Lore.

Mass media is mass reality... and you know how to shape both. The fine art and science of crafting public perception is yours to employ. You know who to call, what to tell them, which strings to pull, and probably how to make a tasty profit off the end result. Although this Trait does not necessarily grant access to high-placed media figures (see the Influence Background for those kinds of connections), you understand the Mass Media Machine and can guide it to your best advantage.

The Dominion, Art of Desire, and Reality Hacking practices often depend upon an understanding of media (see those entries in Focus and the Arts), and media can even function as an instrument of certain types of magick — see the Mass Media entry for details.

Drugs are your specialty: street drugs, herbal compounds, experimental medications, psychoactives, hypertech concoctions, and the like. You understand the effects of various chemicals on the human animal and perhaps on other animals as well. A specialty of shamans, witches, Progenitors, Ecstatics, alchemists, and other mages who employ pharmaceutical compounds, this Knowledge allows you — with the proper tools, of course — to measure, recognize, analyze, counter, or dose someone with a range of chemicals. As usual, higher ratings reflect greater expertise. You’ll never know everything, of course, but you’re rarely flying blind.

A venerable, if underhanded, magickal tool, the variation Knowledge of Poisons allows you to alter the natural chemistry of living things in... shall we say, unfortunate ways. Witches, alchemists, assassins, and other shady types are infamous for their expertise with such compounds, and though you might not want to advertise that information, you’re experienced with such compounds too.

For rules dealing with poisons and intoxication, see Drugs, Poisons, and Disease in Combat.

When it’s time to set up puppets and get them dancing, this Ability reflects your ability to consolidate connections, facilitate access, introduce power-players to one another, and then lay foundations for the type of influence that gets things done. An “offstage” ability (like Research and Networking), Power-Brokering allows you to set up and manipulate networks of authority and then sit in the center of them and employ the folks who owe you favors. Is this magick? Oh, hell yes. Members of the Syndicate, NWO, Solificati, Virtual Adepts, and Celestial Chorus swear by this type of “enchantment,” as do the most efficient and influential Nephandi. Even Ecstatics, witches and shamans employ these sorts of connections among their related peers. Faces and titles may differ, but social power is universal.

Especially when combined with Mind spells, Power-Brokering lets you “make a few calls” to bring influential parties together and point them at common goals. Social-based rolls create those connections — typically composed of Manipulation + Power-Brokering, although Charisma, Appearance, Intelligence, Perception, and perhaps even — within some cultures — Strength could be combined with Power-Brokering as well. In conjunction with Backgrounds like Allies, Influence, Resources, and Spies, or Abilities like Etiquette, Cultural Savvy, Media, Politics, Subterfuge, and similar Traits, you can forge potent connections without ever resorting to Spheres; if you do nudge things a bit with True Magick, the results can be astounding... just ask the Technocracy... and the Nephandi...

For suggestions about the metaphysical applications of such influence, see the Focus and the Arts Instrument entries for Mass Media and Management and Human Resources, as well as Influence From a Distance and The Social Element in Uncanny Influence.

From your lips to the world’s ears. You know how to influence public opinion on a mass scale, often by bending an inflammatory truth just enough to boil the blood of John and Jane Q. Public. Given a few days, some resources, and the right venue, you can make your chosen party look as good or bad as possible. Obviously, this demands media access (computers, social media, TV network connections, etc.); assuming you have it, though, you can craft messages that lodge and burn in the public consciousness.

Like other “offstage” Abilities, this Trait requires time and patience to employ. In game terms, you decide the message you want to send, the instruments you want to employ when delivering that message, the methods you plan to use in order to get that message across, and the effect you want it to have once it’s out there. A Manipulation + Propaganda roll sends that message out to the court of public opinion; the better you roll, the stronger that idea takes hold. That roll’s Difficulty depends on your target, the message, and the general public’s receptivity to the idea. Claiming that the first dark-skinned American president is a malignant foreign infiltrator appears to be a very easy task; convincing the general public that their favorite news sources are owned by an Arabian prince is far more challenging. To many Technocratic Operatives, this Trait makes a perfect venue for large-scale coincidental Mind Procedures. Note, however, that such propaganda, even in Awakened hands, is effective but not perfect. The pervasive and contradictory nature of mass-media culture assures a certain degree of skepticism in even the most gullible audiences.

For potential applications of this Trait, again see Influence From a Distance and The Social Element in Uncanny Influence.

You understand religious structures, doctrines and histories... not necessarily from a believer’s standpoint (although many theologians are believers by default) but from an informed perspective. At the upper levels (three dots or more), most people with this Trait tend to notice the common threads between different creeds; that, however, is not a universal tendency — plenty of dedicated theologians remain locked, with intense devotion, into a single religious belief.

For mages in particular, an understanding of local and cultural theology can be invaluable when influencing beliefs or turning them to your advantage (as described in Reality Zones, exploring and exploiting paradigms (see Belief: The Core of Focus, Common Mage Paradigms, in Focus and the Arts, and The Paradigm Ward in Summoning, Binding, Bargaining, and Warding), and seeking Mythic Threads and other potential tools of coincidence, in Magick — The Art of Reality and Casting Magick.

Perhaps the biggest hot-button topic of the new millennium, unconventional warfare is as old as war itself. Originally referred to as the Knowledge Terrorism, this field of expertise deals with the techniques of mass terror, the instruments of fear, the underworlds associated with unconventional warfare, and the most efficacious methods for “sending a message” or catching the people who do.

Combined with Traits like Computer, Demolitions, Intimidation, Security, Politics, Media, Covert Culture, and so forth, this Knowledge can reflect the practical as well as the organizational, ideological, and social aspects of terrorism. Theology or Occult may let a character recognize the religious or mystic aims of terrorism, while Expression and Cultural Savvy unlock the potentially artistic side of mass murder.

You’re a master and a scholar of decadent pleasures. Sex, drugs, booze, and other thrills both common and forbidden are your specialty. You might be a vice cop or Interpol agent tasked with cleaning such places up; a criminal rooted in those undergrounds; a wizard with a shady past; or a sensation-seeker of the first and final order. Perhaps you’re a sex-worker, a drug-mule, or some other street-level professional... or a tourist in places the guide books never mention. Regardless of the source of your information, you know how to find dens of iniquity, chase your favorite dragons, and get what you want or need without getting killed in the process... that is, of course, assuming that you “get lucky” and stay that way.