Instruments

“It’s an ILLOOOOSION!” Mages who’ve learned how to hide their Arts in plain sight can at least try to pass off their Effects as stage trickery. If the magician in question has an arsenal of real-life tricks – ones that don’t actually employ True Magick but sleight-of-hand and misdirection – it’s far easier to then convince the Masses that the flying car or teleportation jump was simply another cool illusion.

On a similar note, pranks, gags, pratfalls, traps, con-jobs, and other tricks can be useful tools for the mystic or hypertech Arts as well. A well-executed prank or scam is kind of like magick to begin with; if the grifter just happens to employ real magick to make her tricks more effective, well, then she’s simply very good at the game. Gamblers and survivalists can put Correspondence, Entropy, Life, Mind, and Matter to good use by wrapping such Effects up in tricks and traps. And as for illusions, Mind excels at getting folks to see what they want to see, not necessarily what’s really going on.

Certain Social Abilities provide excellent dice pools for this instrument; for details, see the Art, Blatancy, Expression, High Ritual, Seduction, and Subterfuge Talents in Chapter Six.