For reasons having everything to do with Dust to Dust, I started thinking about how a character in Mage would conceal a weapon from various levels of searching. While I don’t have specific plans along these lines in my own Mage game, characters might very well want to sneak a weapon into a meeting, and magic seems like a pretty good tool to accomplish that task. (Aside from a spell’s ability to deal Aggravated damage after a certain point, Weaponry and Firearms offer larger dice pools than direct damage spells in many circumstances, assuming you’ve bought skills along those lines… and you don’t make Paradox rolls to fire a gun under most circumstances.)
Some Arcana have self-evident ways to accomplish this goal, while others require more thought or combination with other Arcana. I seriously doubt that any of these will be Covert, except for (arguably) Mind.
Matter is the most self-evident of all. Three dots: Transmute Earth! Yay, that metal weapon is now something socially acceptable to carry, such as a bracelet or (perhaps rather bulky) necklace. Or, if you’re feeling saucy, four dots: Lesser Transmogrification turns your 9mm into the water in your bottle, or the shampoo that the TSA is going to confiscate anyway.
Space is almost as self-evident, though the core book doesn’t have anything quite right. I would call this a completely reasonable three-dot Vulgar effect – a kind of micro-version of Pocket Realm and Safe Keeping. This is strongly within Space’s theme, so I’d want them to handle this task about as easily as Matter did.
Prime plays a secondary but important role in hiding weapons: once you’ve cast the spell to hide the weapon, you need to hide the spell that hides the weapon, at least if you’re going to be around other mages. Prime 2’s Transform Aura is either the right way to do this, or a basis for the right way to do this.
To handle the primary function of hiding the weapon with Prime, Phantasm (Prime 3) is probably your go-to effect, unless the disguise needs to stand up to extended rough handling. If it does, then use Prime 4’s Phantasmal Weapon – either tweak the spell to create a durable masking illusion, or ditch the mundane weapon and fight with a Phantasmal Weapon.
Life doesn’t bother. Life gives the mage claws and superstrength. If you’re not satisfied with that, though, try Fantasia (Life 5) – hollow out a portion of your body and hide the weapon there. It’s ridiculous, but this is just not Life’s strong suit. Honing the Form (Life 3) can increase the caster’s Dexterity by a large amount, helping his Dex + Larceny roll for Sleight of Hand – other than claws, this is Life’s best course that I can see.
Death handles this task sort of clumsily, but decisively. Ghostly Object (Death 3), cast on a weapon you don’t need in day-to-day life, makes it a Twilight object. Touch of the Grave (Death 2) makes it somewhat fragile, but otherwise usable as per normal.
Spirit has a solution that is much like Death’s: Cast Rouse Spirit (Spirit 3) on a weapon, followed with some finagling to get the weapon into an appropriate location in Twilight. Then cast Reaching (also Spirit 3) to use that weapon. This is intensive in advance planning and is Vulgar, but (unless I misunderstand the interactions of Twilight objects and non-Twilight opponents) pretty effective.
Mind has two really fun ways to solve this problem. The first is that even when a mage has no dots in Larceny and a rather poor Dexterity, the observer doing the searching is going to have a tough time if you Befuddle (Mind 4 – and Covert!) him and significantly reduce his Wits or Composure. Breach the Vault of Memory (Mind 4) is sort of a brute-force way to make him forget seeing a weapon, but it too is Covert. The graceful way to do this is to never get searched, thanks to Emotional Urging (Mind 2, still Covert), or to trick the senses of the searcher with Impostor (Mind 3, and yeah, still Covert – you want at least two successes, to cover sight and touch; third priority goes to sound).
Forces is (as you might expect) unsubtle here. Invisible Object (Forces 2) explains itself, but you might still have to worry about getting patted down – Invisible Object won’t do anything for its volume. The obvious followup to handle that is Telekinesis (Forces 3) to tow it behind you; the classy variation on that theme is Autonomous Servant (Forces 3 and Mind 1), to carry the weapon and offer it when needed.
The one thing Forces does better than any other Arcana in this general theme is foiling mechanical weapon detection (though Lesser Transmogrification in Matter 4 certainly makes a weapon stop being metal) – better in that the benefit applies to the whole party’s weapons. If Science is your thing, use Transmission (Forces 2 – Covert!) to send false data to the metal detector; if not, short out the whole machine with Control Electricity (Forces 3 – also Covert). The latter solution is likely to lead to a pat-down search, though, and that’s inconvenient if you don’t have a backup plan. I would personally allow a mage with Forces higher than 2 to use amped-up versions of Transmission to cover shortcomings in the Science department.
Fate handles this issue sort of similarly to my idea for Life’s Honing the Form solution, but instead of improving his Dexterity, the Fate mage improves his chance of success with various Fate manipulations – starting with Exceptional Luck (Fate 2 – Covert, but with an annoying Mana cost) at the low end. Lucky Coin (Fate 3, Covert) is entirely reasonable, Superlative Luck (Fate 3, Vulgar, Mana cost) is sort of excessive, and Probable Cause (Fate 4, Vulgar, Mana cost) is just beating destiny over the head. The nice thing about Lucky Coin is that it stacks with any one of the other three spells I’ve listed here.
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The poor man's variation on the last one is a simple Space 2 apportation (with Matter 1 or 2; it doesn't explain what rank you need for conjunction with that rote). Of course, that assumes you have enough time to scry then apport before you get your gun, and that you don't mind leaving a link to your gun locker that another Space mage could follow.
But if the goal is just to get past a security checkpoint and you won't need to be fighting immediately thereafter, it's arguably the simplest method of them all: low sphere rank, and no chance of it going wrong during the pat down.
Hey, how 'bout that. That's what I get for not reading closely enough! Yeah, that's certainly a better solution for the vast majority of Space mages.
Just another reason for all of these posts about Mage – learning things about it when people comment. This is important, because there is a hell of a lot there to learn. =)
This reminds me of the other thing that's unintuitive for me between old and new Mage. In Ascension, the reality that observed you for Vulgar without Witnesses was kinda dumb. Bringing a weapon to hand magically, as long as you pulled it out of a coat or bag, would generally be a coincidental effect (unless there was a security guard standing right there to go "HEY! I searched that!").
In Awakening, reality is paying way more attention to your shenanigans. It obviously leads to a more consistent application of paradox (see above example of effect that skips directly from Coincidental to Vulgar with Witnesses without ever being just regular Vulgar), but I wonder if there isn't some degree of creativity lost in, well, the shenanigans inherent in trying to use the environment to justify something obviously insane as a coincidence.
New Mage does have a concept of Covert But Improbable, which is a way for Covert magic to become Vulgar and suffer from Sleeper Disbelief. For example, all of the Thyrsus healing spells are Covert, under the principle that the magic can easily be explained away as "oh, it was not as bad as it looked," or "oh, he's really tough and putting on a good face." On the other hand, if a doctor is inspecting the patient right at that moment and watches his wounds stop bleeding and close up as the Thyrsus casts his spell, that's Improbable, and Paradox, etc., apply. I think, anyway. Other Awakened and Proximi never cause Covert magic to become Improbable.
While I haven't thought it through with case studies, my feeling is that you can still have creativity in working to remain Covert in front of Sleepers; it's just that you change your solution, rather than trying to fake them out with a more convoluted path to a Vulgar solution. It's not "how can I make this seem probable and explainable?" so much as it's "using this much, much smaller set of tools, how can I solve this problem?"
For one specific case, imagine that you want to incinerate a bunch of bad guys. From what I understand, Ascension says, "Fight them somewhere that there's a gas line or other explosive substance, so that your fireball seems Coincidental." Awakening says, "Fight them somewhere that there's a gas line or other explosive substance, so that you can use Death to make the pipeline of the gas decay at a key moment (or whatever), resulting in an explosion.
Which really comes down to a lot of my issue, really: diversifying enough to be competent in Awakening is still expensive as hell. The exp chart hasn't changed extensively from Ascension, and you're going to spend most of your career either mediocre at a bunch of magic or good at just a couple of things. Suggesting that the trick to going covert is to figure out how to use a less vulgar sphere in the fight isn't really a solution.
Maybe I'd feel differently about it if I wasn't playing a Forces specialist, but it does at times feel like they've taken away the few tools the sphere had in Ascension to go coincidental and moved them completely to other arcana in Awakening.
Transmute Earth is not enough to turn a gun into a bracelet, you would need Reconfigure Object for this sort of task and even then the result would have the mass of the original object. And if you just reconfigured it then when you needed the weapon again you would effectively have to rebuild it from the materials, meaning you best have a good Crafts skill and Int.
One might create a Rote just for a temporary modification that functions similarly to RO but having a Prolonged Duration. Casting this in combination with Transmute Earth could give a scarf that reverts to gun form when the duration lapses or when the spell is canceled. Spells meant to conceal are harder to detect and do not trip Unseen Senses so this would be a more solid option than Jury Rig, the more common route with concealing weapons with Matter.
Life+Matter could allow you to graft it to your body or turn it into a plant or animal.
Tome of the Mysteries has a Space enhancement that allows you to give an item multiple forms. So in a jiffy a fountain pen becomes a Lucky Hardened Altered Efficiency (+5) Siderite Oathbound Familiar Custom Built Mercury Recoil Dampened .50 Cal if one is so inclined to make such an investment of resources. Monty Hall example aside this is very effective.
I mean no insult by this, I think you should check out the official WoD forums. Mage is a hugenormous system that one does not sit down and master in one or ten readings. People who have played it for a while can still be uninformed on matters that will make them facepalm.