Can Awakened characters automatically notice Background count? I mean, I know Spirits'll probably figure it out really quickly, but what about Magicians? Or Adepts, who immediately lose powers? Do you only notice it when you try to access something and find out it's not working properly? Or is it more "the second I walked in, I knew this place had a Background Count of -3 or 1 or whatever it is"?

I reckon anything that would gimp you would be noticeable. A fog or sparkle, even, on the astral plane, a nasty/odd feeling as soon as you go into a place. An Assensing roll would rapidly get a fairly precise measure of the level, IMO.

IMO Background count is exactly the sort of thing you Awaken to. Magicians live in a world steeped in mana they breath and weave. I think they would be able to tell they were in a funny mana zone instantly and that from there tradition and experiance would let them make better or worse guess about how gimped they are. All this is before they do anything magical at all. If they are astrally persiving or try to cast or summon they would know instantly.


Question to others, is background count reduces your magic to 0 can you still use meta magics that don't roll magic?

I feel they would know about it and its relative strength instantly.

In an actually game yes I would just tell my players what the BGC was around them. Reflecting on other type of impairment (drugs, sleep dep, illness, emotional duress) You can usually tell THAT you are impaired instantly, but to tell how much you need prior knowledge or some kind of nearly reflexive test of your ability. If you are getting stoned zoning out listening to music, it actually fairly hard to tell what your -logic penalty is until you actually try to put a though together. Similarly I think that a magician would have to do the smallest kind of magical free action that there aren't even rules for to tell how impaired they are. A magician would have to ready there aura to draw magic into it before they realized that they weren't up to snuff.

Excellent answers. Thanks, guys!