Wonder

Overview

• Found In: M20 page 328
• In Character Generation: Purchased as standard Background, see below.
• Available To: Mages.
• After Character Generation: New Wonders may be acquired through IC play, existing Wonders may not be improved.
• Purchasable When Becoming: No
• Limitations: A rating of 5 is the maximum.

Wonders work as discussed in the M20 core. Rules for Wonders can be found on pages 324 and 653 of M20 Core or page 150 of Book of Secrets.

In Character Generation

A Mage must pay an adequate amount of points to create a Wonder. The "points" referred to on the chart below are the number of freebie or experience points spent to achieve the dot rating.

Dot Rating	Points Available
•	1-3 freebie or experience points
••	4-6 freebie or experience points
•••	7-9 freebie or experience points
••••	10-12 freebie or experience points
•••••	13-15 freebie or experience points

• An individual Wonder can have up to one separate Sphere Effect for each dot in that Background.
• The dot rating of the Wonder determines the highest level Sphere Effect(s) this Wonder can use. A 3 dot Wonder thus can use a sphere level at 1, 2 and/or 3.

A Mage needs a note with the word "Wonder" in the title, containing the following:

• The dot rating of the Wonder
• The physical description of the item
• The Quint/Arete rating
• The Spell Effects.

After Character Generation

Once a Wonder is acquired, it remains unchanged and cannot be improved.

Characters can create Wonders by following the process described below.

Step One: Send in a Request

Send in a +request describing your intentions! What do you want this Wonder to do? Staff will determine the point value of the Wonder using the Wonder creation rules in Book Of Secrets. If you do the math yourself, staff will verify it before moving forward. An individual Wonder can have up to one separate Sphere Effect for each dot in the Wonder Background. The dot rating of the Wonder determines the highest level Sphere Effect(s) this Wonder can use. A 3 dot Wonder thus can use a sphere level at 1, 2 and/or 3.

Step Two: Provide A Foundation

Your options are to buy, craft, or create the foundation for the Wonder.

To buy the item, pick an item off of +eq/list and specify that you're using that equipment item on the +job. Canonically, Wonders are ideally made of premium and personal materials. As a simplified means to reflect that less-than-ideal foundations can lead to flawed Wonders (with "insufficient" materials), a Wonder's dot-value cannot exceed your Resources score if the foundation is an item you did not personally create. You can make up the difference by incurring Flaws (page 158, Book of Secrets). So, if you want a 3 dot Wonder at Resources 1, and you want to make it out of a knife you purchased, you will have to accept a 2 point flaw. You can always get around this by crafting the item instead.

To craft the item, staff will arrange an appropriate Crafting roll and target number of successes, so please wait for a staff reply. We'll want to know what you're crafting and if you're doing so mundanely or magickally (or both). The target number is going to depend on your situation, but our default fallback number of target successes (which assumes mundane crafting) is [3 x Intended Wonder Level]. Each crafting roll posted to the +job will cost 1 Downtime and reflect an evening dedicated to the item's creation.

Step Three: Imbuing

Next, you will need to imbue your wonder-to-be with Energy. If you don't have Prime 4, you're going to need to supply five Tass per dot of Wonder. Tass can be collected from node grid squares by typing +tass/collect while standing in them, as well as be granted to you by staff (for example, sacrifice objects ala page 49 of HDYDT and then immediately follow up with Prime 3 to condense the resulting Quintessence into Tass).

If you do have Prime 4, you can use it to pull raw Quintessence as described on page 155 of Book of Secrets.

Lastly, personal sacrifice is an option instead of (or in addition to) Tass collection. You can use the Heart's Blood sacrifice mechanic that you can find on page 50 of HDYDT.

Step Four: Purification

A completely optional action, Purification, allows you to use Prime 2 to purify the Wonder-to-be from spiritual or material corruption. A mage can attempt Purification up to 3 times, getting a -1 to the overall difficulty of the Final roll. See the rules on Purification on page 156 of Book of Secrets, and post your Purification attempt to the +job. Staff can walk you through this process, but it is fine to autonomously post your Purification rolls if they're mechanically kosher.

Step Five: Quickening

Lastly, you will want to post Arete rolls to the job. You will need to achieve 3 successes per dot in the Wonder. This counts as a vulgar Prime effect and requires the appropriate Spheres that correspond to the Wonder’s Effects. Every Arete roll will reflect one hour of work. Since we use the Rite/Ceremony/Great Work rules (page 541 M20), creating Wonders requiring 5+ successes is considered Ceremony, and 10+ successes Great Work territory. This means that creating a 3-dot Wonder would be a Great Work since you'd require 12 successes.

Once this is complete, staff will approve your Wonder! You will either receive a +note describing the Wonder or an equipment item providing the same feature. If the foundation is relevant in combat (a magickal sword, holy armor, etc.) you can expect it to be given to you as an equipment item.