Talk:Mask

From Edge of Darkness Wiki

Quotes from the author of Winter Masques on the White Wolf forums after publication:

Just pulled up my final draft on the Mask section of RoS, and it looks like my mind was on vacation when I wrote those rules--Mage Sight was supposed to be able to see through the Mask if you made a successful Scrutinizing Resonance roll at the -3 penalty, not just a repeated spellcasting roll. I think I was getting my wires crossed between Aura Perception and Mage Sight. So, yeah. The intent was that mages could scrutinize a changeling's resonance and maybe pierce the Mask, while the aura perception powers require you to make a separate roll to pierce it.

The way it would work is thus:

1) With Prime the mage concentrates on the changeling to perceive its nature as described on Mage p. 221. The mage's player (or the ST) rolls Gnosis + Prime (or Wits + Occult + Prime), minus three for the Mask, versus the reflexive Composure + Wyrd of the Changeling. If that roll succeeds, the mage knows the changeling is a changeling. If it fails, the changeling registers as an ordinary human.

or

2) The mage can use any other Mage Sight to scrutinize the changeling's resonance to determine the changeling's nature. This is an Intelligence + Occult extended action, again with a -3 penalty. One success reveals that the changeling is supernatural in some way, five successes reveals that she is a changeling. (Althow Mage doesn't explicitly say what happens when you fail a scrutinizing roll, in this case I'd say every roll that garners no successes causes the changeling's nature to register as human, which might lead to weird, inconsistent readings of the changeling's nature).

Whether that lets him see the changeling's mien is up to the ST; personally, I'd probably say you can see the mien with Fate's Mage Sight, with others just telling the mage what the changeling is.

I made sure to talk about how aura perception can possibly see through the Mask, but completely forgot that Changeling doesn't have an aura-perception power in the core book that described a changeling's aura under the Mask. Whoops. Had I thought of it, I would have given them a "special" aura under the Mask, too. I really like the "torn and tattered" idea; I think I'll use that as well.