The next generation of Mages

In my mage campaign all mages can not use prim at all. Except for the newly awakened mages, they just woke up with the ability to use it...

I give the floor to the rulelaywers!

Can I inquire as to why?

That is, why did you want to have a campaign where the arcanum of Prime has never existed until only recently?

Well, whatever the reason, I can imagine that having the arcanum would give a tremendous advantage over other mages. Counterspelling and dispelling. Harnessing the power of ley lines. Magic shields. Easily absorbing mana, and stockpiling it in the form of tass. For that matter, if your rules for tass remain unchanged, than their will be an enormous amount of inedible tass lying around.

Hell, the ability to veil the resonance of their spells would be a tremendous boon, as would the ability to instantly determine whether anyone else is a mage.

On top of that, at higher levels, the fact that they can suppress sleeper Disbelief could be exploited to dangerous effect.

There is a good possibility that these newcomers could utterly dominate all other mages.

I should have word what I said differently. The idea of Prime never came to the old school mages because they never thought of something as being the essence of all magic. They only knew of the 9 arcanas and studied only those 9 because prime isnt something that can be taught.

The newly awakened mages (our characters) were never trained by the old school mages, they were all self trained mages and through their practice of their specific arcanas, stumbled upon the essence of what magic realy is and then began to hone their newly aquired arcanum.

Think of it as a REALY confusing math problem and prime is the solution. All of the old school mages were trying to use the other 9 arcanas to figure it out, learning from books or other old school mages and what not, and not being able to figure out the awnser because of that. Then our self taught mages came along and because of their new knoledge the arcana of prime came into exsistance, but the old school mages realy cant grasp the concept of "the essence of all magic"

Hmm, a strange idea. And it does require a large scale reimagining of the Mage cosmology.

Still, it makes for an interesting concept for how an unbiased perspective on magic can lead to new results. Kind of like how the Arabs created the zero, and that created a whole new form of mathematics that was far beyond the Greeks or Romans.

All I can say is "ouch" must have sucked to be an old school Obrimos having only 1 ruling arcana, the other mages must have thought of them as cripples. All mages start with a minimum of 1 dot in both their ruling arcana, so what happened to that dot for the old school Obrimos?

I propose that it gets pushed into Forces, allowing them to start off with the very un-crippled Forces 4.

Except that there's far more to Prime than just manipulating "the essence of magic."   Phantasms, for one thing.    Prime is also necessary for manipulations of any type of spiritual energy, including spiritual essence and deathly plasm, much like Forces controls any kind of energy found in Physics. 

Blunt Vorpal:

Except that there's far more to Prime than just manipulating "the essence of magic."   Phantasms, for one thing.    Prime is also necessary for manipulations of any type of spiritual energy, including spiritual essence and deathly plasm, much like Forces controls any kind of energy found in Physics. 

You don't need prime to minipulate those things. You use spirit arcana to controll spiritual things and you use death to manipulate things like DEATHLY plasm. 

PRIME IS TO CONTROLL MAGIC, PERIOD. Pg. 219

It also could have been that there were no Obrimos prior to this generation.  Perhaps the Watchtower of Aether hadn't been set up until just now.  That would mean that there would have been no Masters of Forces, except for those that discovered Force-based Legacies.

Actually, that could make sense... we've only discovered radiation in the past few centuries, and really only were able to harness it for every day use since the turn of the 20th... and although we've known about gravity, no one STILL knows how it works, but Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is starting to pan out (Gravity Probe B, I believe, was a NASA project that suggested in early stages of data analysis that the theory has some proof to back it up).  Both of those are properties of the Fifth Dot of Forces... perhaps the concepts didn't become graspable until the Tower was established.

Ranger:

I give the floor to the rulelaywers!

Umm ... what exactly are we supposed to do with it?  You didn't change any rules, you just changed back story.

Ophidimancer:

Umm ... what exactly are we supposed to do with it?  You didn't change any rules, you just changed back story.

Honestly I thought it would piss them off...

I stand corrected...

Ranger:

Honestly I thought it would piss them off...

Which violates Terms of Use.  I wouldn't recommend doing things like that, even if you failed at doing so the first time around.

Ranger:

Blunt Vorpal:

Except that there's far more to Prime than just manipulating "the essence of magic."   Phantasms, for one thing.    Prime is also necessary for manipulations of any type of spiritual energy, including spiritual essence and deathly plasm, much like Forces controls any kind of energy found in Physics. 

You don't need prime to minipulate those things. You use spirit arcana to controll spiritual things and you use death to manipulate things like DEATHLY plasm. 

PRIME IS TO CONTROLL MAGIC, PERIOD. Pg. 219

Read what other things you do with prime. It's also were you deal with illusions.

Ranger:

PRIME IS TO CONTROLL MAGIC, PERIOD. Pg. 219

Pg 219 of the Mage corebook:

"Prime
Purview: Hallows, illusions, magical imbuement, Mana, resonance, tass

Prime is the light that burns without heat, the energy that defies description. It is the power that courses through all things in material existence and which serves as the skeleton on which all willworkers hang their magic. Prime is an Arcanum of mystic power, named for the prima materia, the Supernal substance. Thus, it is often practiced by those who would seek to possess mastery over the subtle and otherwise largely unquantifiable substance that serves as mages’ medium.

Awakened who concentrate on Prime tend to be passionate, though they are often driven to loftier ends than the majority of people: self-mastery, understanding of Creation and enlightenment. These sorts usually have an intense drive to understand the “whys” and “wherefores” of reality.

Some have their curiosity satisfied merely by learning answers to their questions, while others capitalize on knowledge to control what they understand now. Many Prime willworkers have a particular lust for life, an energy that impels them to be ever active, moving forward toward some objective (which need not be easily quantifiable)."

I see nothing that states absolutely "PRIME IS TO CONTROL MAGIC, PERIOD!"  It's purview even covers Illusions and Resonance which are not just "controlling magic."  Nor is arguable Mana, Hollows and Tass.

Ranger:

Blunt Vorpal:

Prime is also necessary for manipulations of any type of spiritual energy, including spiritual essence and deathly plasm, much like Forces controls any kind of energy found in Physics. 

You don't need prime to minipulate those things. You use spirit arcana to controll spiritual things and you use death to manipulate things like DEATHLY plasm. 

"Essence Gift
(Spirit •••• + Prime ••••)
The mage can convert Mana into
Essence and channel it into a spirit"

and Tome of Mysteries and other books that cover crossover suggest that any Energy Stat needs Prime in order to be affected at all by Supernal Magic.

He has a point, one doesn't actually need Prime to manipulate Essence.  You may need Prime to exchange Mana for Essence, but if you just want to move Essence around all you need is the Spirit 4 spell Sacramental Chain.