Belief in magic

[Aroura]

I know some magic. It allows me to transport my very thoughts hundreds, possibly thousands of years into the future.

It's called writing.

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I always pick the Elementalist subclass. Because fire, ice and lightning is cool as fuck.

Especially fireballs

I really liked the pen and paper RPG Mage: The Ascension. It had a few basic premises:

Magic was a literal reshaping of reality
Reality is, by and large, constructed through consensus (most people believe the earth is round, gravity is real, etc.)
If a Mage performs magic that violates that consensus - especially if it's performed in front of non-Awakened witnesses - it generates a Paradox
A Paradox is bad. Reality will attempt to self-correct, in a variety of ways, almost all of them bad for the Mage because they're the source of the Paradox

Since it was a White Wolf/World of Darkness game, it was a lot more collaborative than other games. No preset spells or abilities... you had to describe what you wanted to do. So, the in-game magic was only limited by your power levels, the Paradox mechanic, and your imagination. So, yeah, you could hurl fireballs at onlookers if you had the prerequisite power levels, but reality would snap back. Hard. But if you decided to target someone with a lightning bolt during a thunderstorm, there would be little to no Paradox to contend with.

The system, on the whole, made a lot of sense to me. It was also somewhat prescient. Some of the main bad guys were those that sought to shape the consensus of reality to their own nefarious ends. We're seeing that now in this 'fake news' era.

That's super cool. My husband just ditched Pathfinder and is preparing a Mage: The Awakening campaign. I hope it's worth the effort and cost of switching game systems!