Mage Optional Rules

This page will eventually become a full-fledged reference for what Optional Rules (marked as such through M20, HDYDT, and BoS) we use and which we don't. We aren't done with that work, though, by any means! Here's the start, though.

Approved Without Modifications

• Resonance, Merits, and Flaws, pg. 256.
• Resonance, pg. 333.
• Thresholds, pg. 387.
• Verbenae and the Old Roads, pg. 481.
• Wild Talent, pg. 527.

Modified, or at ST Discretion

• Raising or Buying Backgrounds with Experience Points, pg. 336. This is always at ST discretion.

Not Player Relevant

• Sanity Sinks, pg. 242. This is considered player irrelevant because we don't allow marauder PCs and how we handle them will remain behind the scenes.

Rejected

• Minimum Abilities, pg. 276. We generally reject the Minimum Abilities optional rule; magic is an act of will, and except to the extent that a character's paradigm suffers for not performing well on mundane tasks, magic is not governed by it. The one exception is where a mundane ability is used as a focus but is entirely untrained; penalties for using untrained abilities may bleed over into the magic.
• Cinematic Damage, pg. 412. We are generally not running a hyper-combat game (at least, on the Mage side), and characters who can take incredible amounts of damage are very rare (reflected by the Too Tough To Die merit rather than this optional rule).
• The Peaceful Way, pg. 428. We don't use Do, so this entire rule is moot.
• Powers of True Faith, pg. 645. We do not presently use True Faith on this game, and consider its powers redundant with Arete and various sorcerous powers attained by clergy and religious paradigms.
• Significant Instruments, pg. 588. The spirit of this rule is already covered well (see Localized Reality, pg. 614, and much of the adjacent text for a dozen pages). The actual mechanics they proposed are broken and terrible. If you believe that your magick ought to be coincidental because it conforms well to some sort of mass expectation despite being Definitely Magick, talk to staff, who will make final determination about what difficulty modifiers, if any, get applied.