Everything

As explained in Mage 20’s Countermagick section (Chapter Ten, pp. 545-547), a mage could use various forms of countermagick to resist or unweave a ward’s Sphere Effects. The full process of countermagick can be found in that section; the basics, however, involve the following requirements:

• The mage countering the ward must have at least one dot in each of the Spheres involved in the creation of that ward.

• That mage then makes an Arete roll. The normal difficulty is 7, although the Reckoning metaplot (described throughout Mage 20) sets that difficulty at 8.

• The mage in question must also spend one point of Quintessence for every point spent in the ward’s construction. A ward built with five points of Quintessence, for instance, cost five points of Quintessence to unweave.

• Each success rolled negates one success from the successes that were originally used to construct the ward. Getting past that ward, then, requires one more success beyond the original amount. It would take 16 successes, for example, to counter a 15-success ward.

• Once countered by unweaving or antimagick, the ward is gone. A character with sufficient innate power (see below) could pass through the ward without bringing it down.

In many cases, characters may encounter a ward whose casting had not been played out in the chronicle. In those situations, the Storyteller should simply decide which Spheres were involved and how many successes the characters need in order to overcome the ward, and then play out the unweaving process. Let’s say that John Courage is trying to overcome an old mystic ward; assuming that Courage has all the right Spheres (and probably does), the Storyteller has the player roll a total of 18 successes in order to defeat the ward.