The magician gains information through mystical means. The information gained trough Divination is often vague and subjective. Moods and feelings are easy to discern, hard facts difficult.
The default difficulty of Divination magics is the target's Fortune rating.
Divination has one important limitation: once a character acquires some information through the use of Divination, her subconscious mind will believe wholeheartedly in it, and any further use of Divination in this situation will produce the same result. So once the success of a given power has been determined, the character cannot achieve better success through further use of the power.
The backlash for Divination is false information invented by the GM to put you in trouble. Within reasonable limits, you should act on this information as though you think it is genuine. The GM may well postpone the false information and give it to you when you try divination some other time. In general, because this schtick has so much potential for messing up the plot, it is more subject to GM fiat than most so beware!
Divination Effects
Divination has an immense variety of effects. All sorcerers and Traditions might not have access to all of these.
Astral Sight
You can use supernatural senses instead of normal sight to see. Using Astral Sight is not an action, but shifting between astral sight and normal sight is a 1-shot action. You can simultaneously look into both worlds with a continuous action. You seem distracted and distant when looking into astral space.
Using astral senses, living creatures and magic stand out clearly, while inanimate objects, especially industrially manufactured ones, are hard to discern. Objects with a strong empathic resonance are easier to see, while those who lack any psychic impressions appear faint and ephemeral, with no discernible detail. You can often find empathic traces of strongly emotional events simply by studying astral resonance. You can see through smoke, fog or darkness, even magical darkness.
Magic and other supernatural effects stand out clearly. When using Astral Sight, you find it easier to spot creatures using supernatural means to hide. Most magical effects can be plainly seen, and hidden ones can be discerned with some effort. Against such supernatural effects, you get to use your Sorcery instead of your normal Perception.
Awareness
This power warns a character that she is about to enter an action scene. It tells the mood of a scene, just as if the character could hear the theme music. It is always active unless you or your GM forgets it is there.
Observe Chi
Allows the sorcerer to see the flow of chi in an area. The stronger a place's chi, the easier it is for the sorcerer to see. She can immediately identify feng shui sites. She can identify the particular features in a natural formation or building that either channel or retard the flow of chi. The sorcerer can gauge the Chi rating of any character. She can also see any lingering supernatural effects as these deform the flow of chi in distinctive ways.
Life Sense
The sorcerer can roughly feel the location and size, but not the identity, of living creatures within a range equal to her Action Result. The Action Result must beat the highest Chi rating in the vicinity, or the image is blurry and very unfocused.
Revelation
On a successful Sorcery task check, you can identify illusions and conjured objects as false or divine the true forms of Transformed creatures using Transformationor sorcerers who using Polymorphism or Transformation. The difficulty is whatever skill the target is using.
Detect Falsehood
You can sense moods and feelings, getting an impression of the intents and desires of others. This can allow you to penetrate disguise, falsehoods and insincere seduction with a Sorcery roll against the Deceit or Seduction of your target.
Astral Quest
The character can quest on the astral plane, leaving her body behind. Such astral quests are filled with visions, inspirations and subconscious symbolism, but are not linear adventures in the normal fashion. A number of other people equal to your Magic can be taken a long at the cost of a Magic point.
Clairvoyance
The sorcerer can tell what happens in well-known places, to friends or to people she holds a former body part of or an object dear to. She will get a brief vision, often very subjective. The discipline scans for strong psychic impressions. Sometimes these visions randomly focus on an emotionally intense moment in the past or future.
Counter-Detection
Just as a skilled sorcerer can detect many things, so can things be concealed from detection. It costs a Magic point to place a person, item or small room under counter-detection. Your Magic attribute is added to the difficulty of any supernatural detection power.
Detection
You can scan your surroundings for specific phenomena. This can be anything you have a clear grasp of, an object, a type of magic, traps, supernatural creatures, a particular species et al. You can sense such things within a range equal to ten meters times your Magic attribute.
Locate Object
You can scan for any type of object. The difficulty depends on how exactly you describe what you are looking for. It is easier to search for simple things, as there are fewer factors to incorporate into the spell.
| Example | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Metal | O |
| Car | 5 |
| Sports Car | 10 |
| An Aston Martin DB-III | 15 |
| My blue Aston Martin DB-III | 20 |
Detect Creature
You can sense the presence of living beings. This can be used to detect races, species, sex, age or any combination thereof. Requires a Sorcery check against their Willpower, and must be done subtly, or they will sense your scrying.
Detect Evil
Many magic traditions have defined evil, an opposing philosophy or set of ideals that are anathema to everything you magic stands for. With this effect, you can sense such evil. It is otherwise identical to Detect Creature.
Lore
Touching an object tells you how it was made and perhaps some highlights from its legend. You can always tell if it is magical and what it is supposed to do. A curse on the object need not be readily apparent, however.
Portent
A specialized prediction effect where you look into the future to see the most opportune way to do specific action. This costs a Magic point and gives you an extra die (similar to a Fortune die) to add to any one task decided upon when casting the spell. If conditions change a lot before you use this bonus, it is lost, so task prediction is usually best used for immediate tasks. In order for another character to get this bonus, you must somehow transmit the information. This bonus does not stack with itself or other effects that grant extra dice beyond normal Fortune dice.
Remove Curse
Long-lasting curses and magical effects, like those created with Fertility: Permanency, can always be negated by performing the correct deeds. This might involve some semi-impossible taks, like taking a quest, making a net out of nettles and throwing it over the victim, or learning the secret name of a demon and speaking it backwards, but the laws of magic say that there is always a way to negate a curse. This effect is used to learn how. This effect is available to both Divination and Metamagic.
Obviously, this is like throwing yourself at the GMs mercy and pleading for a plot hook but then again, you are always at the GMs mercy, so why not plead while you are at it?
Telepathy
You can form a link to another creature that enables speech, somewhat like a telephone. I can include a rudeimentary image, or you can choose to transmit some other sense instead. A speech link is free, but can be enhanced with Magic points - each of the following factors cost a magic point.
- Several recipients - up to your Magic in number.
- Full-sensory transmission - nor just a single sense
- Extended range - the basic link reaches ten times your Magic kilometres.
Psychic Link
You can forge a psychic link to someone you see by spending an Magic point. Difficulty is their Dodge. This slink lasts an hour per point of Outcome, unless you manage to score an Outcome equal to their Willpower, in which case it lasts until the end of the session, and can be maintained further. Maintaining this link costs a Magic point per game session. Once the link is established, you will always be aware of the target's approximate location, mood and general well-being.
Vision
Precognitive flash-forwards and foreshadowing of future adventures should occasionally come to sensitive sorcerers.
When a sorcerer PC uses Divination, the GM should provide a cryptic answer to the question. This answer should be designed to a) make the player work to puzzle out its meaning and b) move the plot along by providing a clue that gets the characters to the next scene. The Difficulty of such attempts depends on how good the GM thinks her clue is. If all she can think of is an obvious clue, the Difficulty is high. If she is confident in the ingenious nature of her clue, she can make the Difficulty low.
When enemy sorcerers succeed in using Divination, they get warning of the PC's plans and are ready and waiting to counter them. Difficulties for such divination attempts equals the highest Magic or Sorcery rating in the PC group.
This is more a mood-setter for the GM than a controlled effect.
''Most traditional Chinese mages will employ the I'Ching (pronounced Yee ling), the ancient Book of Changes. Even more traditional mages will tell fortunes by throwing tortoise shells into the fire and then interpreting the patterns of cracks that appear on them after they are burned. The IChing is a book of cryptic verses; one finds the relevant verses by dividing yarrow stalks into odd and even patterns, arriving at a pair of trigrams. Trigrams are parallel broken or unbroken lines arranged in threes. If the GM is familiar with IChing (good translations can be found at any decent bookstore) she can choose in advance an applicable trigram, and assign a Difficulty to the divination attempt. If the attempt fails, the sorcerer gets a random trigram instead. (The I'Ching being what it is, the players may well find just as good advice in the random trigram!).
Warning
You draw an outline on the ground around an area you wish to secure from intrusion. There is no limit to the size of the area, but the outline must be unbroken. You may name any number of specific intelligent beings who may cross it without triggering the alarm. Any intelligent being not so named causes a palpable shiver to run down your spine as the being crosses the line. If you wish, some other minor effect can occur instead, such as the ringing of a bell.
Secretly make check for Intrusion, Sorcery or Perception (whichever is higher) for the intruder; if the Action Result beats your Action Value, the warning is discovered in time. Otherwise it is triggered. Actively looking for the Warning gives them a +3 bonus. If a warning is discovered (or known beforehand), it can be safely removed with a Sorcery or Intrusion check against your Sorcery AV. You can maintain and distinguish between a number of Warnings equal to your Magic at any one time.
Ward
If the sorcerer using Warning also knows Blast and spends one or more Magic points, she can combine the two effects to create a mystical booby-trap. If an unknowing intruder triggers the warning, count his negative Outcome as positive, and use it to calculate the effect of a normal Blast. If someone enters the area knowing there is a trap there, use the active Dodge as the difficulty and your Action Value to attack. If an area effect is used, targets get to use the defense of the person who triggered the trap, or their own, whichever is better. A ward has a number of charges equal to the number of Magic points sacrificed to it when it is created; once this number is up, the ward no longer functions. If the blast effect in itself costs Magic points, such as a fireball, then those must be paid for each charge, and all at the same time.
Variant wards can be created, that have different effects, even benevolent ones. Thus you can create an altar that heals worshipers or a divan that seduces those who rest upon it. The specifics of such stunts are left to the GM.