Rotes & Procedures

Traffic can be a nuisance, but it can work in a mage’s favor too. By working a successful Entropy 3 Effect, a traveling willworker may shift the flow of people, animals or vehicles into a pattern that allows for either easy access, a helpful impediment to pursuing characters, or both.

Rules-wise, the difficulty depends upon the thickness of the crowd and its opportunity to go elsewhere. A total-standstill traffic jam, for example, cannot suddenly be redirected to go somewhere else. (For that sort of magick, see Moving Mountains, p. 82.) Most crowds can be redirected with between two and five successes; thick crowds may demand a few more. Really chaotic crowds, however – like riots or stampedes – are easier to scatter than orderly ones are.

Redirecting an extensive crowd – like a congested free-way or shoulder-to-shoulder protest march – might require

Correspondence 3 as well, so that the redirection affects parties who are too far off to see directly. (Correspondence 3 matches the Rank for that Entropy 3 Effect.)

An additional Mind 2 Effect can add a “Get the fuck out of my WAY!” impulse to this feat, or win a mob over so that folks cover for your escape. This sort of thing usually adds three or more successes to the amount necessary to simply redirect the flow of chaos.

Given that crowds and traffic literally are moving flows of entropy and stasis, this trick is typically coincidental. A Forces 2 or 3 version could push traffic around too, but if cars and people suddenly go flying, things become vulgar indeed.

Brooms, wings, jetpacks, superpowers… the list of things that can let a person fly without using a plane or some similar apparatus is as long as the human imagination can make it. Given the right focus and Spheres, a mage could levitate, grow bat-wings, call upon the East Wind, strap on his trusty Etherjet Rocketpack, or use whatever other method his beliefs and instruments allow.

By the way, controlling one’s self in flight may demand Dexterity or Wits + Athletics rolls if and when things get rough. Characters who specialize in flying around under their own power may want to get the Flying and/ or Jetpack Abilities described in the Secondary Abilities section of Mage 20,