Magick and Violence

Beyond the usual fisticuffs and fireworks, a mage can use zir Arts to enhance zir combat abilities. The obvious “toss a fireball and burn them up” avenue gets explored in The Book of Magick. On a more subtle level, though, the Awakened can plant coincidences that intensify the effects of a kick or gunshot; drop walls on top of their enemies; whip up storms of dust that cover an escape or blind an enemy; empty an attacker’s ammunition clip (“Gee, I guess you hadn’t counted your shots, dude...”); or employ any other option a mage could imagine and perform.

Beyond such tricks, there’s the simple fact that plenty of mages focus their Arts through weapons, gadgets, and martial techniques. A Bata’a mage could use capoeira as her instrument for Forces, Life, or Time attacks. Iteration X is notorious for channeling devastating Forces Sphere Effects through their hypertech. An Akashic Brother can put Entropy (spotting weak points), Forces (kinetic impact), Life (body knowledge), and other Spheres to work behind a single punch or kick. Combat and violence are intrinsic parts of many mystic practices — which explains everything from howling Norse berserkers to the implacable aura held by agents of authority.

The Magickal Fighting Tactics section in Combat Tactics and Circumstances features several possibilities for the Awakened warrior. In more general game terms, magick and violence can fit together in three different yet related ways:

Violence as a Focus

Weapons, force, or martial arts can provide a focus for mystic or technological Arts, as shown in the Focus and the Arts section of The Book of Magick. In this case, the weapon or activity provides the “gun and trigger” of the spell. The mage fires a gun, throws a punch, makes a dodge, or takes whatever action is necessary to employ the focus.

To reflect this activity, the player makes 2 rolls: an Arete (or Enlightenment) roll to see if the magick succeeds, and an appropriate Attribute + Ability roll to see if the attack hits its target. If the magick is the attack and the attack provides the magick, then in game terms, this is a single action — the mage is firing a gun as the act that casts the Effect, and although there are 2 rolls, it counts as only 1 action. For many willworkers, especially Technocrats, that tool or action allows the character to do what ze does. A Man in Black cannot snap his fingers and fire bullets — he needs his gun to focus that attack. No weapon, no Effect.

• If the Arete roll fails, then there’s no magickal Effect; a punch might land, but a gun will not fire.
• If the Arete roll botches, then the attack goes wrong, and Paradox results. (See The Book of Magick.)
• If the Arete roll succeeds, then the magick works as planned.

Assuming the attack is successful, the Effect goes off within the same turn. Unlike in previous editions of Mage, there is no delay between turns if the Effect is focused through the attack in question.

In most cases, however, that attack still needs to hit its target — the punch must land, the gunshot must nail the opponent, etc. Thus, the Attribute + Ability roll determines whether or not the attack hits its intended destination. If not, then the shot goes wild, the punch misses, and so on. The magick has worked, but the attack has not. Cyborg X344 fires zir plasma disruptor cannon, but the witch in zir sights ducks aside.

Dodged magickal Effects can still demolish the environment, however. That’s why fights between mages tend to cause lots of collateral damage. For details about such damage, see Bustin’ Stuff and the Environmental Hazards section.

If a weapon is being used as a focus instrument, then the damage from that magickal Effect reflects the damage of that weapon. For attacks in which the magick enhances the damage of an attack — say, by making the sword burst into flames — see Magick Enhances Violence, below.

If an opponent successfully applies countermagick against an attack, then the magickal element of that attack lessens or disappears. Even so, the non-magickal element (the fist, the bullet, etc.) can still cause harm. For details, see Countermagick in Casting Magick, Step by Step.

Violence Enhances Magick

In this case, the mage commits an act of violence that assists an act of magick: the Infernalist stabs the sacrifice, the mad scientist activates the Doomsday Device, the shapechanger slashes the throat of a wolf and bathes zirself in its blood in order to transform into a wolf zirself. The act still provides a focus, but the magick follows the act.

In game terms, the player rolls zir attack normally. Each success on that roll lowers the Difficulty of the subsequent Arete roll by -1, up to a maximum modifier of -3.

Unless the magick and the act involve a single activity (as in firing a gun or throwing a punch) an attack used to focus and enhance magick needs to be performed before that spell is cast. If the player wants to use both the attack and the magick in the same turn — say, an Infernalist who wants to open a gate at the moment of sacrifice — then ze needs to either divide up zir dice pool between them (as detailed under Multiple Actions in The Book of Rules), or else use Time 3 to get extra actions within the same turn.

Magick Enhances Violence

By throwing a little extra power (or a LOT of extra power) behind a normal gunshot, punch or dodge, the character can enhance its effectiveness. In this case, the player declares what ze’s doing; takes an action to cast the Effect; notes the number of successes; and then reduces the Difficulty of the attack itself by -1 for each success, up to a maximum modifier of -3 Difficulty.

So long as the enhancement looks like something you could do without magick, this sort of thing is almost always coincidental. If it looks impossible, then it’s vulgar. A gunshot that ignites the car’s gas tank? Sure. A sword that bursts into flame? No.

In all three cases, the activity can provide the focus for the Effect. The option you choose depends on what your mage is doing and what you hope to accomplish by doing it. For more details, see Mundane Skills and Magickal Effects in Casting Magick, Step by Step, plus Focus and the Arts and the various capabilities of Sphere-based magick.

Fast-Casting in a Fight

In many cases, a mage in the heat of combat is fast-casting — that is, making stuff up in the heat of that moment. Rules-wise, a fast-casting character adds +1 to zir usual Difficulty, including the Difficulty of any Effect cast in a single turn during a fight. Rituals that involve preparation before a fight, however, do not suffer this fast-casting penalty. (See the Magickal Difficulty Modifiers chart, Casting Magick.)

This rule does not apply to mages who use the Martial Arts practice (including Do) or employ weapons as an instrument of focus. Such mages are assumed to have both training and experience with integrating magick, combat, and the reflexes involved in both.