Mage: The Ascension: Core Issues

Chargen

re: Arete: Arete is a terrible fucking stat, even worse than Essence. It costs an arm and a leg, raising it is mandatory for most character concepts, and you have to completely put your fun-spending on hold for MONTHS to boost it up. This is not an argument against certain chargen models, it's an argument that Arete costing XP to raise (rather than being triggered by roleplaying or some other advancement trigger, like Dharma in KotE) is bad design.