Mage the Ascension House Rule

So, I've been thinking.

Yeah, I know a shocker. I've been pondering about games rules of late, and obviously when an idea strikes me but I know I'm not going to use it right away I might as well put it here. Darker Days Podcast in episode 4 put forward several house rules for Mage the Ascension that I rather liked.

- Static Difficulties on Arete rolls(+5 if ritual/rote, +6 Freecasting, +7 if Vulgar/Distracted, with a few basic modfiers: -1 with Foci, +1 when Combining Spheres outside of a Rote, +1 If there are Witnesses, etc.)
- Rotes having greater benefit ( -2 to Paradox rolls, +2 difficulty on detection)

- Runes of power (Write down mystical mumbo-jumbo/small device/whatever for +1 success to duration)

- Spend a willpower dot to cut loose a spell so that it self-maintains (does not count towards spell limit)

However, in light of the the fact that two of these house rules come from Mage the Awakening's take on the rule part of me spent some time awondering about one of the rule changes they made in Awakening's Mechanics of Spell knowledge. The idea of what inherently limits the spheres/arcana and it's mechanical effect. In Mage the Ascension, the maximum number of ranks in a sphere equals your arete. So if you had Arete 3 you could only learn up to rank 3 in any of the spheres unless you raised your Arete to 4...which is a feat in of itself at a whopping 28 XP nevermind the cost of spheres. So I'm considering a house rule based upon the idea that Mage the Awakening introduces that Gnosis is not an immediate cap upon the level of Arcana. Of course having a higher Gnosis helps you learn more Arcana, but you don't need gnosis 4 to gain Rank 4 in any Arcana.

So this is what I propose instead for Mage the Ascension: Your spheres are capped your Arete + 1, so an apprentence mage at Arete level 1 could have level 2 spheres. Mechanically some might claim that this represents a degree of power creep, but I say BULLSHIT. Developing a specialty sphere costs 7 x New Dots, Developing other spheres or Arete costs 8 x New dots. A mage going from Arete 2 to Arete 3 must spend 24 exp. Which with a conservative ST takes about 12 sessions or with a more Generous ST takes 6 sessions, assuming that one is saving XP just for that. From a Game-play perspective it doesn't affect the chance of success overmuch because of the small pool that is being rolled. The need to accrue successes for specific effects just means that magic can be more flexible for variety of effect rather than potency. From a within world perspective what this means is that one can explore the depths of spheres before they achieve great power. In fact, this further raises the question of choosing between spending to enhance a person's power or a chance to increase the depth of one's ability. This seems like a fairly easy house rule to integrate that will encourage players to not immediately maximize their Arete at character creation.

Additional Houserule Idea: Avatar Teacher.
I've always felt that "Avatar" as a background kinda sucked. While it was useful for gathering quintessence and channeling it, as a shard of reality that is responsible for magic and responsible for most mage's capacities for learnng spheres and arete, it really does Jack-Shit otherwise unless the ST really makes the most of it. So I've got a small house rule that I think adds a certain something to it, reduce the cost of Spheres and Arete by Avatar background + 1. So at minimum at Avatar 1, a 2 xp discount at maximum Avatar 5, a 6 xp discount.