Additional explanation is in this font, when it helps drive the concepts home.
Focused Mage Sight
The final, and most mechanically complex, aspect of Mage Sight is Focused Mage Sight. By plunging deep into her Path’s Supernal World, a mage can dissect nearly any supernatural phenomenon she comes across. Arcana While Active Mage Sight allows a mage to observe the effects of multiple Arcana at once, Focused Mage Sight requires the mage give all her attention to one Arcanum (as the default).
Digging Deeper - Focused Mage Sight is where the mage concentrates her awareness on a particular subject. The hallucinations and sensory artifacts deepen and become more obvious, which mages describe as seeing into the Supernal World. It allows the mage to peel back the layers of resonance and meaning and go deeper and deeper into a subject for truths and meaning.
Focused Mage Sight allows a mage to scrutinize a subject through the lens of the chosen Arcana. Unlike Peripheral or Active Mage Sight, Focused Mage Sight requires that the mage put all her attention on one target — a person, object, or location (roughly the size of a small room). Instead of seeing the subject in the context of the Supernal, she sees the Supernal as filtered through the subject. Magic pours through the subject, shaped by its Fallen-World constraints and correspondences; and by examining that interaction, the mage can learn much about it. Using this principle, a mage can release Mana into the world and watch the patterns it forms, gleaning additional information from them.
Sources of Power - Mana and other sources of magical power are now visible, and the Nimbus of other mages are visible all the time. Supernatural powers including attainments are visible, where only their effects were if covered by the Arcana earlier (for example, a Fire Spirit using its Influence to start a fire will show up under Forces in Active Sight, and both Spirit and Forces in Focused Sight).
Focused Mage Sight has its dangers, however. Looking so deeply into the Supernal isn’t a passive, casual observation. The mage is undertaking the magical equivalent of a thorough, persistent, and even invasive investigation, pouring magical energy into the area, and anything with the ability to sense magic (including other mages in the area) can notice this.
Catching Notice - Otherworldly beings might observe her inquiry, and some of them would prefer to remain unseen. Sometimes when you peer into the Supernal World and see the truths behind everything you get noticed by the things that live there. Mages may sometimes spot a Supernal Being in its natural habitat without the need to have that being summoned. If spotted the entity may spot the mage and will be able to affect the mage with its abilities until the mage drops their Focused Mage Sights. Using Focused Mage Sight too often or two long increases your chances for getting unlucky or seeing things that hurt the mind or the soul. Suffering Breaking Points from seeing too much is a common risk with using Focused Mage Sight. Mages always encounter entities associated with their particular Supernal Realm.
A mage must be using Active Mage Sight already to Focus. Focused Mage Sight has two stages: Scrutiny and Revelation. Both pit the perceptive power of the mage against the complexity of the Mystery she is trying to illuminate. This is represented in game terms by a trait called Opacity — simply put, an abstract measure of how deep a mage must delve in order to fully understand a Mystery. A mage can attempt Revelation at any time. Revelation is the magical equivalent of a glance, a summary, a quick-read through, or a taste test. On its own, it can be useful, even illuminating, but it does not grant the mage depth of knowledge. For that, she needs Scrutiny, the in-depth, time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous practice of magically studying a target.
Revelation and Scrutiny are two different actions. They can be attempted in either order; a mage can Reveal a Mystery before Scrutinizing it to gain a baseline understanding, or Scrutinize the Mystery before Revealing it to reduce its Opacity. What a mage cannot do, however, is Reveal a Mystery twice without Scrutinizing it. Once a mage has Revealed a Mystery, she has learned all she can without using Scrutiny.
Errata: Opacity in Mage Sight is separate for each character unless Teamwork is utilized.
Revelation
Revelation is an instant action. It can be undertaken when a mage first encounters a Mystery, revealing only the surface information (see p. 94), and also when a mage has unraveled some or all of the Mystery’s Opacity.
Dice Pool: Gnosis + Arcanum – Opacity
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The player overloads her own perceptions and the subject of her study with Mana, akin to spilling a bottle of ink on a page she was deciphering. No Scrutiny or Revelation
of that subject is possible — by any mage — for the next 24 hours. The Prime spell “Cleanse Pattern” can dissolve the Mana before then, allowing further Scrutiny.
Failure: The mage is unable to Reveal anything about the subject. She can still attempt to Scrutinize it, however.
Success: The mage discovers the surface information (p. 94) of the Mystery.
Exceptional Success: The mage discovers the surface information of the Mystery and can either lower the Mystery’s Opacity rating by 1, or, at the Storyteller’s discretion, uncover one piece
of deep information.
Scrutiny
The player spends a point of Willpower to activate Scrutiny.
Lost in the Truth - While Scrutinizing, the penalty for rolls unrelated to magic increases to –3. The influx of information she receives renders her unable to interact with the Fallen World in any meaningful way.
Busting Concealment - If the mage employs Scrutiny on a subject protected by some kind of magical concealment, the Storyteller should use the same metric as Active Mage Sight for determining whether a Clash of Will is appropriate. If a Clash of Wills
is appropriate, the mage’s player receives the rote quality on the roll.
Burned into the Mind’s Eye – Using Focused Mage Sight is very intense and overwhelming and meant to be used in short bursts. It takes deliberate and conscious effort to activate the sights and is quickly closed. Things seen in their ultimate Supernal splendor are burned into the mind of the beholder forever. Mages don’t need to roll to remember anything they saw using Focused Mage Sight.
Scrutiny of a subject allows a mage to determine its Mysteries. The number and nature of Mysteries in a subject is up to the Storyteller (see below). Scrutiny is an extended action but with a few variations. The time per roll is one turn, meaning that the player can’t use an exceptional success to reduce the time per roll. Also, the player doesn’t have a target number of successes. Instead, every time she reaches a number of successes equal to the Mystery’s Opacity, the Opacity rating falls by one. For instance, if a mage begins Scrutinizing a lingering spell with Opacity 4, after the player accumulates four successes, the Opacity rating drops to three. If the mage continues (and the player accumulates three more successes), the Opacity rating drops to two.
In addition, while most extended actions are limited by the number of dice in the player’s unmodified dice pool, Scrutiny does not suffer this limitation. Maintaining Scrutiny does, however, become more dangerous to the mage. After a number of rolls for Scrutinizing a given Mystery equal to the mage’s unmodified Gnosis + Arcanum, the character’s own magic starts to leak into the Mystery. In game terms, every time the player fails a Scrutiny roll after reaching this limit, add half the mage’s Gnosis (round up) to the Mystery’s Opacity. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply only to the mage in question; anyone who attempts to Scrutinize this Mystery later has to separate out the clumsy mage’s influence on it.
Mana Shaping - The player can spend Mana during Scrutiny, releasing it and watching the shapes it makes as it sublimates into Fallen reality to gain clues about the Mystery at hand. Each point of Mana spent adds one success to that turn’s roll, but only if the roll succeeds. If the roll fails, the Mana spent that turn is lost. The mage cannot spend more Mana per turn than her Gnosis allows (see Gnosis chart).
Dice Pool: Gnosis + Arcanum
Action: Extended (each roll equals one turn, total number
of successes varies)
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The player accrues no successes, and adds two to the Mystery’s Opacity. If the player has already made a number of rolls equal to the unmodified dice pool, a Supernal entity of the mage’s Path takes note of the mage and may affect him with its powers as long as he maintains his Mage Sight.
Failure: The player accrues no successes, but can continue
to Scrutinize. If the player has already made a number of rolls equal to the unmodified dice pool, then a failed roll adds half the mage’s Gnosis (round up) to the Mystery’s Opacity.
Success: The player accrues successes, and can choose to spend Mana in order to add more, up to the normal per-turn limits of the character’s Gnosis. If the player accumulates enough successes to lower the Mystery’s Opacity, all successes are reset and the mage can continue (that is, it is not possible to lower a Mystery’s Opacity by more than one level in a single turn). If the mage chooses to break off the Scrutiny, she can reinstate it later, with the Opacity rating at whatever level it was when the mage broke off the attempt.
Exceptional Success: The player accrues successes and reveals mysteries as described above. In addition, since the exceptional success mechanics for normal extended actions (p. 214) do not apply, the player may choose one of the following options: She can apply all successes gained in this roll, even if doing so lowers the Opacity more than once; she can spend a point of Mana to blot out the Mysteries she is seeing so that other mages have a more difficult time scrutinizing them (add the character’s Gnosis to the Mystery’s Opacity); or she can spend a point of Mana to cover her tracks, obscuring any trace of her Nimbus from the area (anyone magically searching for her Scrutiny suffers a penalty equal to her Gnosis).
Scrutiny Tool Yantras
An Acanthus peers through a hag stone to study the Mysteries. A Moros sees the Supernal through the distortions of a cracked crystal ball. A Guardian of the Veil gazes out of the eyes of the mask of Sophia and thereby gains understanding. Just as an ordinary crime scene investigator employs sophisticated tools in addition to her scientific knowledge, a mage has tools at her disposal when Revealing or Scrutinizing phenomena.
System: Path and Order tools, so long as they can be semiotically linked to divination, understanding, or revelation, can be used with Focused Mage Sight. They add their Yantra bonus as an equipment bonus to any Revelation or Scrutinize rolls. The mage can only use one such Yantra, regardless of Gnosis. Common Scrutiny Tools include things like Glass, lens, mirrors, water, diamonds, gems, prisms, glasses, telescopes, microscopes, etc... but any divination Yantra Tools will work.
Permutations: Additional Arcana
A mage can Scrutinize using multiple Arcana, as long as they are in her Active Sight, but doing so carries risks. Because she is putting her senses through multiple magic filters, she has a more difficult time sorting all of the sensory input. In game terms, for every Arcanum beyond the first that mage adds into Scrutiny, subtract one roll from the maximum number of rolls allowed before a failed roll affects the Opacity rating. The base number of rolls is (Gnosis + highest Arcanum used).
The Mage may use Focused Mage Sight to study Mysteries under the purview of any Arcanum she has as part of her Active Mage Sight. In order to understand a subject with Focused Mage Sight, a mage must have Mage Sight in at least one Arcanum whose purview the mystery falls under. Life Sight, for example, is no use for Scrutinizing a ghost's tombstone Anchor. However, since all the Supernal Realms are comprised of all the Arcana, a mage can examine the "gaps" in her perception to infer the correct path forward.
If a mage does not have the appropriate Arcana active in her Mage Sight, she may still attempt to Reveal the Mystery. If she succeeds, however, the only Surface Information she receives is which Arcanum's purview the Mystery falls under. An exceptional success reveals one additional piece of surface information.
Plot-Critical Information
Mana Refund - Mage Sight is the primary means mages have to search for clues, and a Mage story may hinge on the results. If the information hidden (unless revealed through Mage Sight) is necessary for the plot of your story, refund all but one Mana spent on Scrutiny at the end of the scene.
The normal Teamwork rules apply to Focused Mage Sight. However, too many investigators run the
risk of trampling evidence: every two teamwork rolls count as one Scrutinizing
roll for determining when Nimbus contamination begins.
Time & Long-Term Investigation
Too many Scrutinizing rolls in too short a time risks contaminating
a Mystery with the investigator's Nimbus. Sometimes it's better to take what information you have, explore
other avenues of investigation, and hope that new leads turn up. A mage can abandon her Scrutiny and come back
to study it later with no ill effects, assuming the Mystery remains relatively
unchanged. If something dramatic happens surrounding it, such as the resonance
of the local ley lines changing or the vampire's thrall receiving new orders,
the Storyteller may increase the Opacity or even restore it to the original
value to represent the change.
The rules for Scrutinizing presented in MtA 2e are geared more toward a single scene's worth of investigating
a Mystery, rather than long-term research projects. If you want to mechanically
enable mages to spend months or years investigating a particularly thorny
Mystery, consider the following rule: by spending a point of Willpower per roll
and increasing the interval per roll to a number of days equal to the Mystery's Opacity, the mage
removes the risk of her Nimbus contaminating the Mystery. Likewise,
Scrutinizing a Mystery becomes an action the mage can abandon and come back to
later without losing her progress.
I Most Consilia will
consider a mage allowing her Nimbus to contaminate a big in-depth Mystery a crime, to be
redressed by the payment of a fine or, in extreme cases, forfeiture of the
right to investigate the Mystery.
Spells
Over the centuries, mages have developed numerous spells to aid in
the dissection of Mysteries. The following are just a few examples which are approved for immediate play:
Camera Obscura (Prime •••)
Practice: Weaving
Primary Factor: Duration
Cost: 1 Mana
Suggested Rote Skills:
Craft, Expression, Science
Mysteries tend to arise in inconvenient or even dangerous places.
This spell enchants a camera, video recorder, or similar device, allowing it to
record Supernal energies. This allows a mage to study the recordings made while
the spell is active with Active or Focused Mage Sight as though she were
present at the site of the recording. The magic fades from the recordings when
the spell's Duration expires, and only one recording (a single photo, a
continuous video shot, etc) per Potency can retain the Supernal information,
and only the original image retains the information.
The spell has two drawbacks compared to studying a mystery
in-person. First, the mage's base dice pool for Revelation or Scrutiny is
capped by the spell's Potency. Second, instead of the observing mage's Nimbus contaminating
the Mystery itself, rolls in excess of the mage's Gnosis + Arcanum reduce the
spell's Potency by half her Gnosis. If the Potency is reduced to 0, the studied
recording becomes useless. This Potency reduction only applies to the specific
recording studied; others are not affected.
+2 Reach: For 1 Mana, the
magic is Lasting for recordings produced by the subject. The camera's ability
to record Supernal information ends with the Duration, but the recordings
retain their Supernal information until they're degraded.
Light Under a Bushel (Prime ••)
Practice: Shielding
Primary Factor: Potency
Suggested Rote Skills: Empathy,
Investigation, Subterfuge
Contaminating a Mystery with one's own Nimbus is an ever-present
danger when Scrutinizing. By means of this spell, the mage dampens the
subject's Nimbus and gives her more time to study the Mystery. Add this spell's
Potency to the number of rolls allowed before the subject's Nimbus leaks into
the Mystery.
If this spell's Duration expires while the subject is still
Scrutinizing, immediately apply all accumulated penalties to the subject's
Scrutiny rolls.
Path to Jerusalem (Prime ••)
Practice: Veiling
Primary Factor: Potency
Withstand: Opacity
Suggested Rote Skills: Expression,
Larceny, Subterfuge
This spell, named for the labyrinth at the Cathedral of Chartres,
has been variously used by mages attempting to conceal their involvement in
illicit activities, frame their rivals, or simply stymie other occult
investigators. Add the spell's Potency to the Opacity of the subject Mystery.
+1 Reach: Every Reach
spent allows the mage to plant one false piece of Surface or Deep Information
in the Mystery, either concealing a true piece of information or adding an
entirely new falsehood. This can include placing another mage's Signature
Nimbus on the Mystery, if the caster has studied it. Recognizing the falsehood
requires a Clash of Wills while examining the Mystery with Focused Mage Sight.
Shared Sight (Prime •)
Practice: Unveiling
Primary Factor: Duration
Cost: 1+ Mana (see below)
Withstand: Resolve
Suggested Rote Skills: Expression,
Investigation, Occult
Few mages have even a rudimentary understanding of all the Supernal
Mysteries, but mages often find it useful to pool their investigative efforts.
This spell grants the subject, who must be a mage or under the influence of the
Prime •••• spell Apocalypse, Prime mage Sight. Mages still perceive granted Arcana under their own
Path, not the Path of the caster.
This spell costs 1 Mana per Arcanum per subject, unless the
additional Arcanum is one of the caster's Ruling Arcana.
Add Any Other Arcanum •:
Instead of or as well as Prime Sight, the spell may grant Mage Sight in the
included Arcanum. Including multiple Arcana allows the spell to grant Mage Sight
in a number of Arcana equal to the spell's Potency, so long as any Mana cost is
paid.
So what do you see? Flavor text only:
Each Arcana has a single Focused Mage Sight that helps a mage understand and scrutinize things within the purview of that Arcana. In general:
Focused Death Sight (The Grim Sight) - You see the weight of death around a person — not his likelihood of death (unless the subject has a terminal illness), but how often he has rubbed shoulders (knowingly or not) with the dead or dying. Those who have suffered the loss of many loved ones or who have killed many people tend to bear heavy burdens. This sight also applies to things or places.
Focused Fate Sight (The Sybil's Sight) - You detect the particular qualities a given mystic force has in its interactions with fate. Many describe the result as a “thickness” or “gravity,” a tangling of the the threads of destiny.
- Focused Forces Sight (Read Matrices) - You can perceive energy and magical resonance, detecting the presence of all of the universe’s various forms of energy: heat, gravity, electromagnetism and the like, including the presence or absence of different sorts of radiation, such as x-rays or cosmic radiation, either visually or through tactile perception. An undiscerning mage might be fairly blinded by the overwhelming variety and sheer quantity of energy that moves around her at all times, unable to process the ever-shifting tapestry of power that is all but invisible to the untrained eye. The mage is also especially aware of resonance’s energetic aspects and flow, its vibratory frequency and movement.
- Focused Life Sight (Pulse of the Living World) - You are able to detect the presence of mystic vital animation in the area, effectively reading resonance as a function of reality’s living energies.
- Focused Matter Sight (Atomic Density) - This spell is especially good for reading resonance that is ponderous (“thick”, “sluggish” or “dense” as some have called it). You see any understand the imprint of chemicals, atoms, and any aspect of matter.
- Focused Mind Sight (The Third Eye) - You can sense when others nearby use exceptional mental powers, such as telepathy, psychometry or ESP, reading the telltale ripples left by the movements of exceptionally advanced thought. The mage can also read resonance, discerning the emotional and psychic qualities of it: the particular nuances of will, conscious or otherwise that went into creating it. He can feel the mental processes that went into creating the resonance (such as strong emotional states or a powerful exercise of will), effectively detecting its context within reality, the “why” behind the resonance.
- Focused Prime Sight (Prime Vision) - This is the most potent of the resonance-detecting senses and the Storyteller should be lavish with its details, explaining intricacies of any given source of resonance that would likely be invisible to one using another Arcanum. Some details, however, are best analyzed with other Arcana (in the way that Matter is best suited to “thick” or “ponderous” resonances), or better still in conjunction with Prime. Many mages describe this sense as sight, though some claim to “smell” or “taste” lingering sorcery on a person or place. Others simply speak of a sixth sense or other esoteric perception that defies ordinary categorization.
- Focused Space Sight (Spatial Awareness) - You can detect spatial distortions and manipulations. You are capable of discerning disturbances in the local fabric of space (typically caused by use of more advanced applications of this very Arcanum). He can detect when someone has altered the spatial axes of an area (for example, making a place larger on the inside than outside), used a location as the origin point or terminus for teleportation, or created (or overcome) a Space Ward (see below). This sense transcends the normal five senses, but most mages tend to understand it in terms of sight.
- Focused Spirit Sight (The Second Sight) - This mage sight is good for peering at the resonance of spirits or spiritual activity.
- Focused Time Sight (Temporal Eddies) - You perceive resonance through the way in which it “snags” things, people and events moving through the timestream, by the magnitude of its presence (in much the same way as scientists determine the presence of a black hole by witnessing the phenomena around it). You can also tell perfect time, anywhere, discerning the passage of instants with such clarity that his sense is more precise than even those most carefully maintained clock.
