[starslayer]

One thing which I have used in my games (which are notably a lot more 'high magic' than your game seems to be aiming) is that powerful magic creates echos both forward and backwards in time, like the side-lobes of a radio broadcast, and that detecting an echo does not require more than magical training or other detection ability (Empathy, oracle, danger sense, etc).

Thus if you are considering combat with someone who has a 100d doom arrow in their quiver and you have danger sense you can get a sensation of raw destruction and harm being placed within an arrow before you are committed to the fight.

Similarly this helps protect the 'state of the union' (State of the union: the concept that everything is the same as you know it, but magic/supernatural has been added) in that, even though under RPM a large cult could in theory get together, drink the magic kool-aid, and do voluntary sacrifice until death getting up to thousands of points of energy rather quickly and easily- the echos of that will stretch so far backwards in time that anyone inclined to disrupt the cult will have ample time to do so (and probably lots of someones if the ritual is for 'turn the entire world's oceans into soup').

For your lower powered, more subtle magic, game making all magic have echos (with the amount they ripple subject to scope and energy) should allow things to remain largely the same with only a few individuals 'in the know' required to 'run interference'- the classical 'slow moving bureaucracy', multiple decision makers, and arbitrary delays of large governments and organizations may actually be simple mundane defenses against mystical manipulation and anything powerful enough to circumvent such defenses creates large enough echos that the limited number of 'in the know' defenders can step in.