Aisling Damage and also Magic

[MathiasJack]

Real quick, consensual reality in MtA dictated what the difficulty of casting something was, and the level of backlash in paradox. It sounds like Lex is more of an afterthought of reality rather than a "prethought", and you make other factors determine difficulty anyways. Lex appears in your game to, rather, determine how someone is to see an Otherworld denizen, and how at times that view shapes the Otherworld denizen. It sounds like you are avoiding all the philosophical discussions of paradox in MtA by making Lex a narrative "mechanic" in your game rather than a system mechanic. Nice, I like it.

[Mike Holmes]

This is a really unformed thought, but it seems to me that the "Lex" is embodied in the motes that compose the target. That is, magic should just be an attempt to alter the motes in the target in some way. Damaging magic just removes them. But if you want a spell that makes the target bigger, don't you basically lend a red mote to the target?

Are you getting my drift?

This is what I'm talking about when I mean keeping the mechanics all mote oriented. Game effects first, magic description just follows the mechanics.

Mike

[taalyn]

Lex only affects Wizardry feits (spells). This is because wizardry uses the caster's own motes to create a resonance affecting ambient motes. I get my own red, cyan, and clear motes to vibrate, and this creates a resonance in motes around me, setting them to vibrating (or whatever), and then when I pour out Luck, the vibrating ambient motes absorb it and create the effect.

Lex is the ability to shape (or be shaped by) reality, and thus affects, in essence, ambient motes. It disturbs the resonance, preventing or twisting a feit. Lex is a side effect of will and belief, created when emotions are at their extremes. Lex explains the grandmother lifting the car off her grandson, or the man who jumped out of the plane without a parachute and received only a sprained ankle. It is the "food" that created the Fae, and when the Compact was broken, it created Breed.

So, you see, it isn't related to magical susceptibility at all. At least, that's all I got from your comment, Mike.

I also think I'm moving backwards from what you suggest. Since one of my main goals is the "mechanics support setting", I start with what I imagine happens in the game (e.g. how motes are manipulated to create feits), and then work out how to represent it in mechanics. Game effects then come from a combination of the two.

Aidan