u/MagickStoryteller

When it comes to cross splat discussions, it often defaults to hostilities. This is expected since most splats are hostile to each other, at least among the major splats.

But I do love to hear when the splats cross paths and are able to do something nice for each other, or at least work together in strange ways.

I mostly play mage, but here are a few neat things that have happened at my tables when they encountered other splats.

1. An ecstatic influencer began working alongside changelings as consultants for her posts and events online, helping to use their glamour sense to improve her artistry.

2. A virtual adept, after some tense negotiations after initial hostilities, made an accord with a group of Glass Walkers and essentially hired them to protect his realm in the digital web from attacks by the technocracy whose virtual agents were not expecting to be fighting garou. In exchange he gave them a crap ton of virtual adept gear he manufactured.

3. A prime master was able to manipulate the resonance and energies in animal blood to save the specific tastes (children on their deathbed) of a ventrue they had met, allowing him to cut back on his harmful hunting habits.

When it comes to mage, there is a lot of wiggle room when it comes to effects and such. Plenty of sphere ranks and combos can be argued about endlessly. But the other part of the spectrum is how many successes a given effect takes. I was curious how other Storyteller's have decided to handle these kinds of things.

Here are some of the ones Ive come up with or seen at a table I was a player at.

1. If you want to increase your initiative with magick, it costs 1 success for every two points of initiative.
2. Any effect which instantly incapacitates a non-mook takes 4 successes minimum. This is based around the fact that instantly killing an average human through direct damage would be 4 successes (technically 3 with forces)
3. If you want to have a damage over time effect, i.e. an effect that hits more than once, you need an additional success per additional proc of damage. There are already rules for damage over time in m20, but theyre more concerned with spreading out damage over time rather than doing more damage.
4. If you want to summon/bind/banish/etc an unwilling spirit, you need a number of successes equal to half their essence rating.
5. If you want to stun an opponent with magick, such as with rubbing the bones, each action removed is two successes. This also applies for paralysis or other turn denial actions. The time 3 effect however still works as defined.
6. Raising an ability (not attribute) with magick costs 3 successes per dot. Knowledges/Skills/Talents are more specific than the more intuitive attributes so they take more successes
7. Using entropy 2 magick to cause a one in ten probability event to happen takes 1 success. One in a hundred takes 2, one in a thousand takes 3, and so on. Admittedly we generally dont figure the actual probability in game but its a nice ballpark estimate.

What have you guys come up with at your tables?