Editing Mage: The Ascension (section)

== The Nine Spheres of Magic ==
Divide all of reality into nine categories called ''Spheres'', and your rating in a category determines the extent to which you can manipulate that aspect of reality; that is the core of the ''Mage'' magick system in one sentence.  ''Mage'''s division of all magick into different Spheres is similar to D&D schools but more clear, since Spheres encompass the building bricks of existence. People like to argue over what Sphere is the best and like to argue even more about if you can do X with X Sphere and if the X and Y Spheres overlap, but hey, they're fa/tg/uys and like to argue about anything and everything. In the core ''Mage'' game a mage's rankings in each Sphere range from 1 (sensing some aspects of the sphere without changing anything) to 5 (major affectation). The 2nd edition ''Mage: The Ascension'' core rulebook has a handy one-page ''Magick Cheat Sheet'' listing all nine Spheres with exemplary effects for each level.  For Sphere ratings above the 5 of the core game, the ''Masters of the Art'' expansion details Sphere ratings all the way to godlike 9. All of the Spheres are [[awesome]] in their own ways, and most factions are particularly good with at least one of them.  
  

=== Correspondence ===
[[File:IconCorrespondence.png|75px|right]]
Controls space and distance. You can detect stuff at distance, teleport yourself and others (extra bonus points if you manage to teleport a vampire into the Sun), punch people (or simply [[Dwarf Fortress|pull levers]]) at a distance, warp bullets around, ''stack people onto themselves'', ''make several copies of yourself'', and even create planes. Becomes both crazy, drug-worthy and awesome at high levels, considering that you are in fact, telling reality to divide by zero AND IT DOES SO. Two words: black holes.

=== Entropy ===
[[File:IconEntropy.png|75px|right]]
The EDGY sphere (so naturally the sphere that White Wolf likes the most). Entropy controls luck, fate, odds, and well, entropy. You can sense luck, sense "weakness" in items, do predictions, cheat at cards, alter probability, detect lies(for some reason), curse people or alternatively make them lucky fuckers, make people/machines destroy themselves with age and wear. At the highest levels, you can even affect thought and ideas with entropy. Yes, you can make ''ideas grow outdated''. Or the opposite. Awesome sphere is awesome. Also, enjoy your Jhor.

=== Forces ===
[[File:IconForces.png|75px|right]]
FIREBALLS FIREBALLS FIREBALLS- Oh, shut up, there's more than blasting to this sphere. Forces is about controlling energy, that is fire, cold, lightning, kinetic energy, gravity, radiation, and light. Even the nuclear forces at high levels. Forces is hilarious and varied, and while being the prime offensive Sphere it has also lots of varied effects. At first, you can only control a small amount of Forces, but then you can transform energies into each other. One of the best uses of that is setting fast people on fire with friction (changing kinetic energy into heat), get infrared/ultraviolet/sonar vision, shut down electrical appliances, change gravity so the Technocrat here is going to faceplant into the ceiling at a few meters per second, pick up a phone line and intercept messages by reading electric impulses (You'll need to know how it is encrypted though), or for the more classic uses summon storms, fly, call lightning, use telekinesis, and the aforementioned fireball.

=== Life ===
[[File:IconLife.png|75px|right]]
Control over living beings. The quintessential [[druid]] sphere. Includes healing, but ALSO ripping people in half, physical transformations (you can [[Furry|transform into your inner super-special animal if you want]]), and physical augmentations. Very varied, you can give yourself winged flight, gills, super-strength, poison bite, regeneration, immortality or whatever. Also, you can turn others into cancerous masses of still-living flesh if you really want... or even yourself. At high levels, you can create life (feel free to cackle maniacally and make as many references to Frankenstein as you can), and permanently transform into stuff. Ever [[Dragon|wanted to be a dragon]] ? Now you can! Only bad thing with this sphere is that at low levels of control if you transform into animals, you can start to change mentally into an animal. How many furries were in the White Wolf team at that point? Well, apart from the inherent potential for [[yiff]], this sphere is really pretty cool and [[Muscle Wizard|you can do manly stuff with it]].

=== Matter ===
[[File:IconMatter.png|75px|right]]
Control over all inanimate matter. Very, very varied. You can transform matter into other matter, change the properties of matter (yup, trapping enemies in solidified air), or simply create matter from nothing. [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|Or just change air into rocks and let them fall.]] You can also use telekinesis with this sphere, which means all kinds of lulz when someone has a gun and it is inappropriately pointed and you pull the trigger with Matter. You can make items rust and/or become worthless, or alternatively build shit out of your wildest dreams, for the architects in you. Summon ''fighter planes'' out of thin air? Go on, man, if you have the skill to create a fighter plane, this sphere is crazy. And then you can ''remote control it'' with the same sphere! Also would be good for turning vampires into lawn chairs, since they're inanimate matter, but vampire bodies are dumb and special and hard to work with any sphere.

=== Mind ===
[[File:IconMind.png|75px|right]]
Mind magic. What you see is what you get: telepathy at low levels, then you can start to influence people (and find an interesting way to mess up with the Storyteller's story), also you can boost your intelligence or will to superhuman levels. Alternatively, you can make vegetables out of people with Mind curses/debuffs, or restore madness. At high levels, you can create minds (total combo with high-level Life for that Dr. Moreau feel). Alternatively, cast it on a broom and get sentient broom familiars), or project yourself astrally (since you aren't going through the Umbra it isn't Spirit). Very, very good for shenanigans. However, it only controls humans and animals, not spirits (Werewolves, fae, etc).

=== Prime ===
[[File:IconPrime.png|75px|right]]
The meta sphere. This allows you to control raw quintessence, the primordial and metaphysical energy that makes up all of the other spheres and is the equivalent to mana in the game. It mostly deals with things like enchanting objects, buffing allies, debuffing enemies, creating something from nothing, and erasing anything from existence. And while this all sounds good, Prime's real strength comes into play when combined with other spheres since it effectively broadens up what a mage is capable of doing with them.

Like all Spheres, Prime allows you to sense its specific element, which is quintessence in this case. This means that a mage can sense if quintessence is near by like fetishes, nodes, or other mages. A mage with Prime can control pure quintessence to do things like make holograms and illusions, blast things with pure energy, or channel the quintessence that make up other patterns. Prime combined with other Spheres also allows mages to enchant objects, giving them unnatural properties like a shotgun that can hurt spirits (+[[#Spirit|Spirit]]), electronics that don't need an electric power source to function (+[[#Forces|Forces]]), or a bracelet that can teleport you next to other party members (+[[#Correspondence|Correspondence]]). You can also 'reap' objects of their quintessence, destroying their magical properties to gain it for yourself (think Dark Magic from the Dragon Prince). At higher levels, you can begin to channel the quintessence of living things to buff or debuff them as you see fit and get even more power from reaping object than before, create more powerful and complex enchanted objects like a Talisman, and even create patterns from nothing (provided you have the appropriate tier of the corresponding sphere) or destroy them by taking away every last ounce of quintessence. It can also be combined with other spheres for some potent hax powers. For instance, using Matter along with Prime lets you become a Green Lantern and make constructs out of pure energy. Finally, a master with Prime can create and manipulate Nodes and other arcane things, interact with your own Avatar (though you need to be a master with spirit to do that anyway), and you can even straight up nullify paradox. That's right, Prime allows mages to just say no to the one weakness mages have in the game, which is a really good way to piss off your DM.

=== Spirit ===
[[File:IconSpirit.png|75px|right]]
Everything to do with the '''Umbra''', which is essentially the spirit world. It lets the user tear open the Gauntlet, the protective Saran-wrapping around reality created by the Technocracy's consensus, and slip outside of the universe. Masters of this sphere can conjure, bind, and control powerful spirits and other entities, create "bases" for themselves out in the Umbra, and travel around inside of it. If, rather than fight a useless war you already lost to restore a bunch of incompetent fucks who did a shitty job of running the world the last time they took a crack at it, you just want to relax in a palatial extradimensional mansion while your harem of adoring [[monstergirl]] waifus feeds you fresh [[meatbread]] mouth-to-mouth, this is the sphere for you... unless you're playing ''Revised'', which essentially nuked the entire Umbra to prevent that sort of thing, consequently making your entire sphere nearly useless. The Void Engineers' version is essentially identical, but they call it '''Dimensional Science''' instead.

=== Time ===
[[File:IconTime.png|75px|right]]
Well, it's temporal magic. Actually, manages to be not completely broken because time travel is HARD. Like if you travel into the past, you lose yourself in history or something equally trippy. At low levels you can perceive time accurately (yay!), then you can do more interesting stuff like sensing the past and trying to sense the right future between all the possible futures (prescience is hard, go read [[Dune]] again), controlling the flow of time on targets (actually slowing down your relative time means you get super speed and probably get extra turns. Broken ? Yup), and then you can time travel at high levels. Interestingly, traveling to the past is harder than going to the future because the past is already set in stone (...sort of, except not really at all) while the future has yet to be determined. Think of it like gravity forcing things down, while it is possible to fly and go up, it's much easier to simply fall. Also, it makes for a good deterrent to avoid munchkins doing ridiculous stuff with time travel.