Sympathetic Spells

• Cost: 1 additional Mana
• Prerequisite: Space ●● and/or Time ●●

Students of the Space Arcanum learn that distance is an illusion, a limit magic can overcome. By including the Space Arcanum in a spell, mages can extend the reach of their magic virtually anywhere in Creation.

Spells including a Space element (Space ●●) to increase range are called sympathetic spells, since they take advantage of what some mages call the Law of Sympathy: “Like produces like.” Sprinkling rain onto a map, scrying into a bowl of ink mixed with a drop of the subject’s blood, sticking pins into a puppet containing a lock of the subject’s hair — all of these are examples of sympathetic spells.

It requires one additional Mana to cast a sympathetic spell.

If the spell directly affects a target’s Pattern, the mage’s dots in the spell’s highest Arcanum must be one higher than normally required to cast the spell.

The mage loses his Defense while casting.

A sympathetic spell is always Vulgar, even if the spell is normally Covert.

The casting creates a sympathetic conduit between caster and target, allowing the target to direct spells against the caster — even if he does not have Space 2 — for as long as the sympathetic spell lasts.

Temporal Sympathy

Just as the Space Arcanum uses ties of sympathy to determine the ease or difficulty of making a connection with another place, being or thing, so does Time rely on esoteric ties. In order to use “temporal sympathy” when working with the past, present or future, simply apply the sympathetic modifiers for the Space Arcanum to Time spells. Note: we're using the 2E rules for temporal sympathy.

Targeting

To cast a sympathetic spell, the mage must have at least 2 dots in Space and a Mana point must be spent. The stronger the connection between the mage and the target, the easier it is to include the target in the spell’s Imago. If the mage knows little or nothing about the target, it is hard to perceive it in his mind’s eye, making it difficult to build a sympathetic connection. This difficulty is represented with dice penalties. Instead of penalizing a spell for the distance involved (distance is an illusion), it is penalized for the vagueness of the connection to the target. The less a mage knows about the subject, the higher the penalty — the greater his sympathetic “distance” from the target.

Note that these penalties (and those for Spell Factors, p. 117) can exceed the usual maximum dice penalty of five dice. Awakened magic is a special circumstance that sometimes reduce beginning mages to dice pools consisting of only a chance die.

True Names and Shadow Names

When using sympathetic magic, it is best to know and speak (mentally, not necessarily out loud) the name of the target. If the target’s name is not known, it is hard to reach out to him through sympathy — the difficulty of connection is increased by two degrees (increasing the dice penalty). For this reason, mages often hide their real names from other mages, using only their shadow names, which elude sympathetic connection. See MtA “Shadow Names,” p. 54.

• Connections can be made to animals, plants, objects and places without need of a name.

Direct Pattern Spells

Spells that actively work magic on a target, however, such as the classic “sticking a pin in a voodoo doll to cause pain,” require advanced Arcanum knowledge. The mage’s dots in the highest Arcanum used for the spell must be one higher than is normally required to cast the spell. This requirement does not affect the Space 2 component of the spell, which is the conjunctional Arcanum used to establish the sympathetic conduit. The requirement applies to the Arcanum used for the effect itself (or all Arcana used in an elaborate conjunctional effect).

• Spells that do not directly affect a target can be cast without the additional dot. These include scrying spells, where a scrying window allows a caster to observe a target or an area, but the spell itself does not affect the target’s Pattern.

Casting Conduit

Casting sympathetic magic opens a sympathetic conduit between caster and target, allowing a subject to cast spells back at the sympathetic caster without needing Space 2 (although he still suffers the relevant penalties for his degree of connection to the caster). Opening a scrying window also creates a sympathetic conduit; if a mage on the other end knows the window is there (using Mage Sight, or especially the Space 1 “Spatial Awareness” spell, although the scrying spell does not necessarily alert the mage to the window’s existence), he can direct spells through it at its creator on the other end (but not at any other target who did not participate in the sympathetic casting).

• The conduit lasts for as long as the sympathetic spell that created it.

Examples

Example: Avis wants to communicate mentally with Star. She has no idea where Star is, so she must cast a sympathetic spell to reach him. Fortunately, she has a ring Star gave her for just such an occasion, containing a lock of his hair — an Intimate connection. Avis needs Space 2, Mind 3 to cast the spell, and the effort suffers a –2 penalty for the Intimate connection.

Avis’ Intimate connection is an Acquainted connection if she doesn’t know Star’s real name. Thankfully, she knows that Star's real name is his Welsh family name of Owain Rhys Glamorgan, and so maintains her Intimate connection.

Example: Later, Avis wants to communicate with Pepper mentally. Having met her only a couple times, Avis’ connection would normally be Acquainted (–6 dice). But she does not know Pepper's real name, only her shadow name. That means the degree of connection is worsened by two degrees, to Described (–10 dice).

Connections

If the caster does not know the real name of a target, the difficulty of achieving a sympathetic connection is increased by two degrees on the chart. So, an Intimate connection would become an Acquainted connection.