DaveB is apparently posting stuff about Mage 2e on 4chan (of all places) in the current WoD thread. No idea how much, if any of this, is new stuff for you guys, but...
Will Mage 2e fix its problem of uninteresting political schemes?
We've talked about this a lot on the Awakening blog.
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We're developing the Free Council into a viable third sect who are allied to the Pentacle, rather than eternal fifth wheels.
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We have never (and will not) say how rare mages are supposed to be, but the political structures described in the Order books require dozens of mages each, which means a full setting with every Order in it requires about 150 mages. Now, that's fine for my games, but too many for some people, and the nWoD is moving away from the artificial "a city never communicates outside of itself" model of the early games, so Order Caucuses are now explicitly decoupled from Consilia.
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As noted by anon, Awakening's theme focus / story generator is Addiction to Mystery. Consilia are having their emphasis changed to really bring out their role as nondeadly means of resolving disputes between Cabals. Most traditional "politics" is moved to Convocations.
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Some cities use the Free Council's Assembly model instead of Diamond Consilia, even with the Diamond Orders. One of our sample settings has both of them, so there's the Arrow mages in the Consilium and the Arrow mages in the Assembly, and so on.
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The Dual Arcane's new rules are based on 2nd ed's social mechanics, and are awesome. I think this is the first time I've mentioned that, so there you go - an original preview for you.
What possible changes could be made to streamline the magic system even more?
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All spells use the same dicepool (Gnosis + Arcanum,) and are all single rolls even if the spell is taking hours to cast in the game's narrative.
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All spells are hard-pegged to their Practices. No "this is a shield, but it's so powerful it needs three dots". Different kinds of life, force, matter and so on no longer require increasing dots. A weaving spell of life is always three dots, whether you're casting it on a human being or a potato.
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No more distinction between Vulgar and Covert spells - our Paradox system is based on a concept called Reach, measuring how close to the edge of your comfort zone your spell is. This system absorbs all the other cases where spells required more dots than they should; the spell list no longer has duplicates of spells at a higher dot level for casting instantly, or on someone else. Obviously magical spells still add Paradox dice, though.
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All forms of dice bonus and casting style have been unified into a "Yantra" system, which incorporates both Magical Tools and Rote bonuses, but also things that were protuding nails in the system like magical runes, concentration-based durations, high speech, and some of the special Order Merits.
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All other rules exceptions, where they require dots in an Arcanum, are split off from main spellcasting into a class of powers called Attainments - Mage Armor, sympathetic range, imbuing items, spell triggers, counterspelling, and so on.
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We have a clearly defined list of things that require Mana, which we are sticking to. This list is in the creative thaumaturgy section, for Storytellers' reference.
The end result is that the 2nd ed casting flowchart is much more of a straight line, with a few optional loops for Attainments that modify it.
When asked about extended action casting for rolls...
All spells are cast in ritual time, on yourself (or something you're touching, or as an effect you aim manually), last a duration measured in combat time, and and affect one subject by default. Making spells instant to cast, casting on a subject you can sense, affecting multiple subjects and making the duration narrative are all part of the Paradox system - how your Arcana dots compare to the dots required for the spell's practice determines how many you can do before you risk paradox dice.
A "ritual spell" in 2E is a spell you're taking time to cast because you have better things to spend your Reach on. Also, you can only use one Yantra reflexively, so casting in a ritual lets you get more dice bonuses than normal.
Imbuing Items is actually now Prime 4.
You can't stop halfway through a spell - it's always all or nothing. Even if it takes you a long time to do in-fiction, a spell is a single act, so it doesn't fit with 2E's extended action rules.
Also, this way spellcasting is greatly simplified. We only need one set of spell factor tables, and don't have to worry about spells moving between two sets of dice mechanics.
The other big thing to get your head around in 2E is that it now obeys the WoD's action mechanics - one success is all you need. Number of successes is only important if it gets you an exceptional successes. Anything that used to be number of successes (like dealing magical damage) is simply done with the Potency spell factor. You get free steps in the primary factor of the spell equal to your Arcanum dots, so a mage with, say Forces 4 will do 4 Lethal with an Unraveling spell no matter how many successes she gets, more if she bought extra potency by taking penalties to her dice pool ahead of time.
This makes successful magic have a bit of strategy behind it - for high-end spells you take penalties to get the spell factors up, use Yantras to get bonus dice to offset those and try to keep 3-6 dice in your pool so you're likely to get a success and have the spell work.
For unimportant spells ("I'm an adept of Matter. I should be able to open this lock") you use Down and Dirty spellcasting, which skips the factors and yantras.
When asked about attack spells and damage...
Yeah - spells aren't attacks, even if the spell does damage - you don't get Defense against a spell.
If the mage has cast a spell at self/touch range and is then trying to zap you with it (2E's equivalent of a 1E "aimed spell", which are up there in the leagues of rules no one seems to understand) they do have to make an attack roll, though, depending on what they're doing - aiming a lightning bolt they're throwing at you is Dexterity + Firearms, for instance, while hitting you with the palm of their hand when they have a "I paralyze anything I touch" spell up is a brawl roll.
But those aren't the spellcasting roll. You do the spellcasting roll then any attack roll you get. And casting at sensory range to avoid that althogether is the magical difficulty equivalent of making your spell last a scene instead of a turn.
Magic's always been assumed to use the optional "repeat attempts incur a dice penalty" rule, even in 1E. I've just made a note to make sure we take the dozen words needed to make that crystal clear.
Which has other rules implications - supernatural powers that work against any ranged attack do not stop a sensory-range damaging spell, as it isn't a ranged attack. Not really. They would work against an attack roll used to fire a touch-range spell at the user, though.
