Traits and Rolls
System
Each type of Wonder involves a different creation process. Rather than lay out a complex set of rules for every kind of Wonder, we’ve featured the essential Traits and rolls on the nearby Crafting a Wonder chart. The specific Spheres involved can also be found on the Common Magickal Effects chart in Mage 20, p. 508. Ideally, you and your Storyteller should narrate out a detailed creation process – probably staged during down time – that suits the characters, materials and Wonder involved.
In every task, of course, you’ve got potentials for success, failure, and utter disaster:
• Success: The creation process results in the desired Wonder. Although the player may decide to include a flaw that lowers the Background cost of that item (see that sidebar), the Wonder is damn-near perfect.
• Failure: The creator doesn’t get what she was going for. Either the Wonder has a significant flaw, or else it simply doesn’t work (Storyteller’s choice). Back to the drawing-board!
• Botch: Catastrophic failure. The Wonder doesn’t work, and the process leads to some dramatic… and potentially explosive… setback for the creator and her efforts.
For more elaborate descriptions of the creation-process behind various Wonders, see The Technomancer’s Toybox, the Mage Storyteller’s Companion, and Forged by Dragon’s Fire. For the sake of simplicity and consistency, however, assume that the systems given in Mage 20 override the complex and sometimes contradictory systems given in those sourcebooks.