hi all,
first post here 
I have been reading the book realms of magic: faeries and it looks cool, so I would like to play a cognizant faerie. The problem is that all those -way too common - dominion auras put faeries at -10 on all rolls or worse. My question is , is there any way to avoid (or circumvent) those penalties? precisely dominion auras are so common that the faerie would be quite useless nearly all the time, so any idea will be welcome
thanks all
Not got my books with me, but aren't those penalties only applied to powers, not skills, and only when someone calls for the divine's aid against the faerie?
But are pretenses powers?
Pretenses aren't powers in this sense.
As to using powers:
There are some cities where a certain number of faeries serve the Dominion, and so the others do not suffer penalties, or suffer them only in private homes, or in certain places. The same is true of the Infernal (faerie tithes to Hell and so on), but not Magic insofar as anyone is aware, although you might argue the point in the case of certain cases.
In every city there are places where there is no aura (such a place is called a "lacuna") or where there are auras other than Divine. Make sure your confrontations happen in such places.
Some faeries have the power to extend their glamor: that is, they carry an aura about themselves because the aura is actually -them- (or more closely connected to what they are in Deep Arcadia) and the body is just an interface. You could just buy the virtue that lets your faerie aura's travel with it. It doesn't overwhelm more powerful nearby auras, nut you might argue it retreats no further than the body, and so maintain Personal powers at no penalty.
Pretenses aren't powers in this sense.
As to using powers:
There are some cities where a certain number of faeries serve the Dominion, and so the others do not suffer penalties, or suffer them only in private homes, or in certain places. The same is true of the Infernal (faerie tithes to Hell and so on), but not Magic insofar as anyone is aware, although you might argue the point in the case of certain cases.
In every city there are places where there is no aura (such a place is called a "lacuna") or where there are auras other than Divine. Make sure your confrontations happen in such places.
Some faeries have the power to extend their glamor: that is, they carry an aura about themselves because the aura is actually -them- (or more closely connected to what they are in Deep Arcadia) and the body is just an interface. You could just buy the virtue that lets your faerie aura's travel with it. It doesn't overwhelm more powerful nearby auras, nut you might argue it retreats no further than the body, and so maintain Personal powers at no penalty.
Oh yeah. You want to find the infernal lacunae? Look in the red light district. The faerie? Probably a good chance of it being in any parks, in a city. A town, it's more likely to be outside the walls.
Also, the dominion only extends to where church bells can be heard. Underground, church bells are hard to hear. This is why magi can dig down to find magic auras if they know there's one nearby but overwhelmed by the dominion, AFAIK.
Another thing to consider is how common would these auras be in the stories the character participates in. The fact that they're not uncommon in the setting doesn't mean they'll be common in stories. There are sagas that hardly ever see a Dominion aura, and plot-lines that don't involve such auras at all. Not every character comes along to every adventure; it's perfectly fine for your character to stick to adventures in Faerie, say, if your group agrees and will have enough of those. If you come to an agreement with your group that you'll be able to play the character mainly in non-Dominion settings, so that a Dominion would be a rare obstacle rather than a backdrop reality, then you don't need to worry about it too much.
Another point to remember is that magic items aren't that affected by a Dominion aura. Especially ones not relying on penetration. So you might want to pack up on those.
I remember the bit about church bells being in 3rd edition, but not in 5th (never played 4th) given that dominion aura's are not tied exclusively to Christianity does that still apply?
Till refuted, most sagas still apply it.
I'm also sure it's mentioned offhand in the core rulebook, but I can't think where.
Thank you very much, you have been very helpful. I will try a mix of some answers from here and see if we Cam work it out with the troupe. Furthermore, after reading the part in the core rulebook where it speaks about auras it says out affects supernatural abilities, so we could say pretenses could be treated more like normal skills