Alternate Resonance

by J. Verkuilen

Gaining Resonance

Each mage typically has one dot of resonance per point of Arete, and this represents the amount that a mage can normally manage without trouble. Every time you have a Seeking, you gain another dot of resonance, which should be appropriate to the Seeking. e.g., Pang Yin recently had a Seeking and also decided to abandon her old sect of the Akashic Brotherhood for the Li Hai after her master was forcibly retired and a new, hostile master was promoted. She picked up a point of Entropic (Rebellious) resonance.

It is possible but unusual to have less or more than your Arete. Doing something particularly spectacular can also cause you to gain Resonance above your Arete. The GM could “award” a full dot or some part of a dot (XP as it were). Having too much resonance is usually a bad thing--down that path lies the way of the Marauder, Nephandus, or Stasis. This generally means that you have lost control of your resonance and it’s now really controlling you. The exact effects are up to the ST (aside from what’s listed below) but they can be quite unpleasant, starting to push into Paradox territory. No human can handle that much resonance.

Having too little can happen if you lost one due to substantial Mind magick, a backlash, etc. It’s definitely unusual as, in general, resonance doesn’t go away--though it can shift form. So, if Pang Yin, decides to return to the new master and work within the system for change her Entropic (Rebellious) resonance might shift to Entropic (Reforming).

Effects of Resonance

In general your resonance provides certain “special effects” to whatever you do, but this is best left to roleplaying. However a tangible game effect is nice to have to make sure that the system actually has an impact.

Resonance can have a positive effect on your magick if you “go with the flow” and a negative one if you try to go against.

For each dot of resonance you have, once per session you can add an extra die to your Arete pool for one roll (not over an entire extended action) for an effect that particularly fits your resonance. In general you can only use one extra die at a time.

However, for an effect that really doesn’t fit your resonances, it can fight you, acting as a die of Countermagic. In general this should not happen too often (just like you can’t spend a resonance die all that often). (This is the usual countermagic just like the book--it might or might not actually do anything.)

If you happen to have two dots in a particular resonance, e.g., Static (Focused) twice, you can use it twice per session. If you do something that is contrary to your resonance, however, you can have multiple countermagics.

Example:

Dr. Lloyd Whitman, a Son of Ether, has the following resonances:

When turning his oxyacetylene welding torch into a weapon for a particularly sticky moment of a fight via Forces 2, Dynamic (Amplifying) seems to fit the bill as he’s basically taking the torch and amplifying its effect. Dr. Whitman can add a die to his Arete pool of 4 bringing it to 5 for the purpose of this one roll.

However, some other time he finds it necessary to masquerade as a hippy. As he’s none too good at doing this mundanely (in general, but also see below) he decides to use magick. However, this goes against his general inclination of Conservative and Reactionary. Thus this effect might have one or two dice of countermagic working against it.

Social Effects of Resonance

Resonance leaves an impact on your personality. As a mage you are decidedly more intense than a sleeper and your passions sit on your personality much more than a normal human. (A normal person in general has no resonance, but there are, of course, exceptions.)

If you meet someone who would react badly to your resonance, e.g., Jennifer Butterfly Rain Tree, the hippy that Dr. Whitman was trying to bamboozle, social difficulties are one higher per dot of resonance in opposition as he simply rubs her the wrong way. Static(Conservative) and Entropic(Reactionary) seem to be opposed to Jennifer so he would suffer two higher social difficulty dealing with this individual.

If, by contrast, you meet someone who would react positively to your resonance, e.g., Jeb McDoodle a fellow Life Member of the NRA for Dr. Whitman, difficulties go down by one for each matching resonance. Thus he’d probably be two difficulty lower on social rolls with Jeb. It’s easy to convince Jeb because he instinctively reacts to the fact that you’re just “right” somehow.

It is possible that the effects of your resonance net cancel out, though this should in general be interpreted by the ST as ambivalence not as neutrality-- you’re more intense in two different directions.

Detecting Resonance

In general, Perception + Awareness is used to detect resonance, though, of course, appropriate magical effects can do so as well (generally a lot more efficiently).

To determine the difficulty of the roll, take the sum of dots of your dominant resonance and subtract from 10. Thus, for a character with two Dynamic resonances, one Pattern, and one Entropic, the difficulty would be 8. This roll is, of course, opposed by Arcane as usual, as well as any masking of resonance by magical means.

Counting the number of successes, the reader notes with:

One Success: The dominant resonance or resonances of a person if they happen to be balanced.

Two Successes: One fact about the dominant resonance or what the second highest resonance is.

Three Successes: Another fact about the dominant resonance or the second highest resonance, or what the third resonance is.

Four or More Successes: Another fact about any resonance for each success.

Thus, finding out about a person’s dominant resonances is easy but getting the stuff way down on the chart (as it were) is hard. This process is fairly complicated--but so is a character. It might take multiple viewings to note this.

Let’s say that someone looked at Dr. Whitman with Perception + Awareness. The difficulty is 8 because he has two Dynamic resonances. Suppose that four successes were rolled. This would reveal that his primary resonance is Dynamic. At this point, the viewer could use the second success to find out that he is balanced between Entropic and Static or find out specifics about his Dynamic resonance. In general until you know that a person has a general resonance type, you cannot find out any details.

Suppressing Resonance

It is possible to use Mind magick on yourself to temporarily suppress your resonance. This is always resisted by your resonance, naturally, but can be useful--indeed even vital--in the right circumstances. Enough effort in a very long and difficult ritual and you could possibly get rid of resonance. This might be important if you pick up a lot of excess resonance above your Arete.