a case of Paradox

[whswhs]

In the third session of my Mage: The Ascension campaign, held December 3, one of the player characters, an Orphan in 1905 London, had a geas that forbade him to sleep under a roof. However, in the previous session, he had been dosed with an instantly acting sedative inside a Technocratic facility, and—gone to sleep. So I had said that his Entropy magic would turn against him for the next 24 hours.

Back at the PCs' chantry, he learned that one of his companions had had a condition inflicted on him that was causing severe itching (it was actually a drug that activated an autoimmune reaction). So the player said that his character would use Entropy 4 to encourage the other character's body to heal itself. "All right," I said, "that will take an accumulated five successes." So the player got out his four dice, and I reminded him of his violated geas and had him set one of the four dice to 1.

Four rolls later, he had accumulated nearly enough successes to succeed—and one botch negated by spending Willpower. And then he rolled a second botch! That meant that he had four Paradox from the four previous rolls, and four more from the level 4 Entropy effect. Adding in his two previous dots of Paradox gave him ten dice to roll, which led to seven successes. So I had him erase those seven dots. The other player had been joking that his character felt cured, all right—and that gave me an idea: I said, "All right, Shaluku no longer has that itch, but John has acquired it from him." That seemed like a plausible way for Entropy to turn against one of its users. . . .

Now I have to review the rules on how Paradox effects are gotten rid of. I think the 20th anniversary edition has a more detailed discussion of this than the original Mage 2nd.