ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Why change the Forces Sphere? The division between "higher" and "lower" forces in Mage is quite arbitrary, and often counter-intuitive. One would expect a hermetic mage to be more at home with manipulating fire than electricity. There are no explanations why a force is high or low, other than a general sense of its "power". Is sound a high or low force? Since it can be viewed as movement of air molecules, it would be a high force, on par with radioactivity, gravity and heat. But this is an extremely technomantic explanation, and completely counter to the paradigm of most traditions. In fact, Forces is the only Sphere which is based on technomantic reality in its structure.

What Forces really deals with is energy. Forces are pattern which cause or catalyze change of other patterns. They are inherently dynamic. They do not necessarily have to correspond to forces or energy as acknowledged by the Technocracy. To a Verbena the wind is a force living in the air.

My new system divides forces into physical forces and abstract forces. A physical force can be experienced directly. Electricity, sound, fire and light belong to this category. You can see, feel and smell them. They are in some sense physical objects. A hermetic mage would say they are material.

Abstract forces control the others or are properties of objects or reality itself. Gravity, momentum, heat, movement, pressure or pure, non-material forms of the physical forces. You cannot see or touch momentum. Heat and pressure can be felt only by their actions, not in themselves. Note that this division is of course completely non-scientific.

In this new system, a hermetic mage can throw the archetypal fireball with Forces 3 Prime 2 (although the damage would be as per Forces 3). The Ball of Abysmal Flame works not by vibrating molecules (all hermetic mages know that Democritus' idea of atoms is silly anyway) but by creating pure elemental Fire, although a Son of Ether might do something similar by creating heat. In this way hermetic mages can manipulate the four elements, first by manipulating their physical powers, later by manipulating them directly.

Technomantic forces are a bit troublesome. I would say radioactivity is an abstract force, since it cannot be perceived normally. The same is true for infrared and ultraviolet light, and radio waves in the hermetic paradigm (note that you can still see in the dark using Forces 1, since darkness is a physical force). A Son of Ether regards them as completely physical, and would regard fire as an abstract force ("it's plasma, not fire!"). How much individual paradigm should change things depends entirely on the Storyteller and what fits the story. In some cases it doesn't matter, sometimes it would be detrimental to the story and sometimes it gives the Traditions additional depth.