All meaningful actions within Nobilis, miraculous or mundane, operate within a 0-9 scale. The exact meaning of this scale depends on the Trait being used to support the action, ranging the Level 0 Intention that a mortal (or even a Noble) might use to chat up a barista to the level 9 Domain miracle that rewires reality to create a race of intelligent Cats that have existed alongside humanity since prehistoric times.
Mundane Actions (such as chatting up a barista) use their own scale, and work similarly to Miracles (if on a lower power level), but are not the primary focus of this page. The main thrust of Nobilis is, instead, in the Miracles generated from the following Traits:
Each of these four traits has, at base, 5 miracle points. So, 5 aspect miracle points (AMP's), 5 domain miracle points (DMP's) and so on. These are spent in play to achieve effects beyond what your rating in the Trait itself would normally allow. It's also worth noting that some Nobilis will also have Gifts that generate various effects on a miraculous scale without directly using the systems used below.
In most cases, though, an action achieves a baseline effect equal to the Trait's Rating plus a bonus gained from spending Miracle Points (MP's). For instance, a character with Domain 2 can spend 4 DMP's to achieve an effect of Difficulty 6. What exactly that means will be discussed later. You can only spend MP's in a set number of quantities, as described below and which delinate various 'power levels' of miracles:
Rite of the Last Trump: If you don't have enough MP of the proper type to do what you want to do, you can spend 3 MP to gain 1 MP of another type. Alternatively, you can spend 1 MP and take a few hours of meditation to rearrange the remainder of your miracle points however you like.
Aspect Miracle Difficulty Chart⚠ (:showhide div=aspectmiracles init=hide:)
| Difficulty | Effect |
| 0 | Peak Performance; like a mundane action, but drawing on miraculous energy rather than the body, mind and will. Just like a mundane action, except that they always go smoothy, never tire you out, and you simply add a +3 "miraculous will" bonus to a relative Passion or Skill rather than using Intentions. |
| 1 | Enhanced Performance; these work as above, except you treat the underlying Passion or Skill as 1 point higher. |
| 2 | Pulp Heroism; again, as above, except you treat the underlying Passion or Skill as 2 points higher. |
| 3 | Inhuman Perfection; the miracles of the shining heroes! You no longer operate on the human scale; your actions are like the best humans in the world plus you benefit from an extra quality of absolute flawlessness, perfect balance and execution and an almost supernaturally perfect timing. |
| 4 | Divine Force; your actions are those of a heroic demigod; ordinary people can't even compete. You add incredible mental and physical force to the balance and timing that difficulty 3 gave you; you have the strength of a bear, the mental speed of a computer, and senses enhanced as if by machinery. |
| 5 | Legendary Mastery; your actions are those of a great legendary mastery. Your body becomes light, and you have total conscious control over it- every muscle, every system, every portion. You're more sinuous than a snake, able to balance on a thread. The same with your mind; your inner world is under your total control. |
| 6 | Unstoppable Power; you're now, basically, casually invincible. You can exert as much force as you need to, unbounded by anything except physics. I.e., you can break any qualitative boundary but you can't see things that aren't visible or pick up a mountain without proper leverage (or it breaking apart into pieces). |
| 7 | Fairy Tale Feat; you no longer have to listen to reason, or physics. You can pull off anything you can explain away as a use of a natural human ability, though you are still limited to only affecting the local area- no more than, say, a city block or so and only for a few minutes. |
| 8 | World-shaking Skill; you no longer have to worry about 'local', allowing you basically pull off anything for as long as you sustain the miracle. This is the miracle level of "shooting down a star", or "talking to someone on the other side of the world without anyone else hearing." |
| 9 | Mastered Technique; basically allows you to rewrite the rules for yourself, pulling off anything you could with a level 8 miracle and effectively writing it down on your character sheet as a skill that you can pull off for the rest of the story. I.e., you've mastered the "vibrating through steel" skill! |
Domain Miracle Difficulty Chart⚠ (:showhide div=domainmiracles init=hide:)
| Difficulty | Effect |
| 0 | Estate-Driven Divination; these miracles reflexively inform the Noble whenever something is putting their Estate in danger. This is not simply one instance of an Estate in duress, but instead the Estate as a whole being threatened in some fashion, most likely by an attack upon one of its properties. |
| 1 | Ghost Miracles; a ghost miracle lets you summon up very small thematic instances of your Estate; these are mostly for effect, as they lack much power to actually change the world (though they can SEEM very impressive). They can, however, do small things like let the Power of Fire light his cigarette. |
| 2 | Lesser Divination; the noble can divine the basic, mundane bits of information about his estate. I.e., the power of the Sun can divine the exact moment of Sunrise, or the power of Cars can tell whose owned or driven a car. |
| Conversation; the noble opens up a channel of communication with his estate, allowing him to talk with it. This can be used to gain information, though Lesser Divinations are usually better for that, or to convince the Estate to perform minor favors (things that could happen on their own) for its Noble. | |
| 3 | Preservation; these miracles allow you to protect, strengthen or provide magical fuel for an instance (or multiple instances) of your Estate. The instances of your Estate, enhanced by a Lesser Preservation, last longer, become more potent and are harder to get rid of. |
| 4 | Lesser Creation, Summoning, or Animation; you can create, summon and animate the things of your estate. I.e., the power of Cars can create a car out of thin air, bring a specific car (or multiple cars) to her location, or animate a car, causing it to climb up a cliff or growl at someone nearby. |
| 5 | Lesser Destruction; these nobles erase some physical manifestation of your Estate, in whole or in part. The Power can remove an instance of the estate itself, i.e., the Power of Insects removing all bugs from a house, or a singular property, such as a Fire's heat or a Door's ability to keep the Noble at bay. |
| Greater Divination; the noble can utilize his Estate as a spy, learning anything secrets that it might know. This lets the Noble ask his estate what it or its components have seen or learned about other things, or glean some limited insight into the future from his Estate. | |
| 6 | Lesser Motion; these are the miracles of movement and dharma-they change the location, the context and the destiny or purpose of the things of your Estate. You can move a infatuation from one person to another, grow a car from a seed, or assign a new destiny, fate or purpose to a person who falls under your Estate. These miracles tend to cover their own tracks; the changes fit with some difficulty into the world. |
| Greater Preservation; these are greater miracles that preserve, protect or strengthen the things of your Estate. These miracles can last for considerably longer periods of time, and affect a larger portion of your Estate, when compared to a Lesser Preservation. | |
| 7 | Greater Creation, Summoning, or Animations; this miracle offers an unlimited power of creation and animation, allowing the Noble to create instances of his estate on a widespread scale or to create a singular instance of his estate on a miraculous scale. The noble can similarly summon up to and including all of the instances of his Estate to him, or animate his estate on a widespread and spectacular scale. |
| 8 | Greater Destruction; these miracles offer a scale of destruction similar to the above, allowing the Noble to wipe broad sections of his Estate and reduce the spread of his estate on a vast scale. Via epic acts of Destruction. As the Lesser variant, these miracles may target elements of the Estate, rather than whole instances. |
| 9 | Greater Motion; these miracles allow large-scale miracles of movement and dharma, and even (at this level of miracle) circumvent the usual properties (and Properties) of your Estate. This allows you to really stretch the boundaries of what you can accomplish, even more than what is possible with a Lesser Motion. |
Persona Miracle Difficulty Chart⚠ (:showhide div=personamiracles init=hide:)
| Difficulty | Effect |
| 0 | The Sight; the mundane world fades, as the Noble focuses his attention on those things that have deep connections to his Estate. The Sight makes obvious those things that love, hate, help or hinder your estate, the Powers of Estates with strong connections to your own, their agents, and similar details. Most notably, an Excrucian attacking your Estate is identifiable with a single glance with The Sight. |
| 1 | Blessing or Curse; makes a small change in the destiny, nature or temperament of things: giving them a dollop of the nature of your Estate, or sheltering them slightly from the essence of your Estate to a equally small degree. These changes are real, if small, and the targets previous dharma tends to dominate. |
| 2 | Lesser Incarnation; your Avatar's consciousness goes off to live within an instance of your Estate within the world, leaving your body dormant for a time. The Noble instead lives with a chosen instance of his estate, soaking up some of its nature and leaving behind his own mark in return. |
| 3 | Lesser Emulation; the nature of the Nobilis is infinite and wrapped up with the nature of their Estate. Nobles may, at this difficulty level, apply one of their Estates properties to themselves as an Affliction with a rating equal to their Persona. Taking on some of the nature of their Estate for themselves. |
| 4 | Lesser Enchantment; the Noble may add the dharma, abstract and physical elements of your estate, and/or its properties, to a thing, without taking away that things original nature. This allows the Power of Hope to turn someone or something into hope, or for the Power of Cars to make a drivable pumpkin. |
| 5 | Lesser Sacrifice; what can be given, can be taken away. The Noble may take away the dharma and/or Properties of his Estate away from something, making it less a part of his estate, or removing it from the rolls of his Estate entirely. This does not destroy the thing; what exactly is left, however, is not within his power. |
| Greater Incarnation; The noble may incarnate himself in his Estate, as per the Difficulty 2 miracle, except that he may choose to incarnate in all of his estate (or a large portion thereof), or, potentially, even to incarnate upon an instance of his Estate upon another world or realm of existence. | |
| 6 | Lesser Binding; this miracle changes how someone or something relates to your Estate--changing what your Estate means to them. You can make someone a guardian, bound to some portion of your estate, or make your Estate their enemy, or otherwise change what your Estate means in their lives. |
| Greater Emulation; Identical to Difficulty 3 miracles of Lesser Emulation, except in scale. The effects of embodying a property of your Estate as a Greater Miracle are greatly inflated and are capable of producing (by default!) complicated, massive and large-scale effects. | |
| 7 | Greater Enchantment; Identical to Difficulty 4 miracles of Lesser Enchantment, except in scale. Your imbuements of your estate are more potent and dramatic at this Difficulty level, and allow more potent effects, allowing you to make someone or something an important and powerful part of your Estate. |
| 8 | Greater Sacrifice; Identical to Difficulty 5 miracles of Lesser Sacrifice, except in scale. You can remove the nature of your Estate, leaving behind... something else... on a wider scale and to grander possible effect. |
| 9 | Greater Binding; Similar to a Difficulty 6 miracle of Lesser Binding, a Greater Binding allows you to alter how large portions of the world relate to your Estate in similar fashions as for a Lesser Binding. I.e., you could make a City a holy place of your Estate, or appoint all the spirits of a mountainside guardians. You can also invoke particularly complex destinies, or work exceedingly potent Bindings on one individually, changing them as befits a Greater Miracle. The destiny you lay out, in any case, is protected by a Level 4 Auctoritas for the rest of the story. |
Treasure Miracle Difficulty Chart⚠ (:showhide div=treasuremiracles init=hide:)
| Difficulty | Effect |
| 0 | Claiming an Anchor; you may use a difficulty 0 miracle to make an ordinary thing into an Anchor. The Anchor becomes one of the best of its kind, is "free of charge", and your interactions with it ignore the Intentions system as per Aspect 0 miracles. Your Anchor may always communicate with you, and vice versa, with this communication channel receiving free Strike equal to your Treasure. |
| 1 | Possession; you may use your Anchor as an alternate body, shifting your consciousness wholly into it. This limits you to its senses (or a vague impression of things relevant to your Estate, if it has no senses). Your identity displaces the Anchor's; it retains only vague and confused memories of what happened. |
| 2 | Guidance; this miracle allows use of ones anchor as an extension of yourself. You share the Anchor's senses and gain a general awareness of its condition and circumstances, as well as opening a communication channel and being able to take actions 'through' your Anchor. It's action gain 1 Edge, and add +1 to the value of a Tool. |
| 3 | Unleashing Wonders; this miracle allows you to claim Wondrous Anchors, as per Difficulty 0 but more-so, and to unleash the wondrous powers of such Anchors to their full effect. This simply turns the power 'on'; it must be used separately via Mundane Actions or Aspect Miracles. |
| 4 | Getting Some Help; you may declare that an ordinary or wondrous Anchor does something to strengthen or aid you. It's actions leave the mundane scale behind, and can stretch beyond an anchor's wondrous power, but remain roughly within its normal capabilities. You have access to your Anchor within a City- or Chancel-sized region. |
| 5 | Weaponizing Anchors; you may use your anchor, directly, to wound (inflict an undesired effect upon) something or otherwise disrupt the status quo. Specifically, this allows you to directly (and authoritatively) use a Treasure Miracle upon another in Miraculous Conflict, instead of simply having 'things happen'. |
| 6 | Weaving Destiny; you may declare that an ordinary or wondrous Anchor uses its powers or abilities to create a positive or definite outcome. I.e., your sword "wins a fight for you", that your servants "set a group of troubled teens on the right track" or that you use your rocket car to "bring a new era of peace and prosperity to Quebec." |
| Unleashing Miracles; this miracle allows you to claim Miraculous Anchors, as per Difficulty 0 but much more-so, and to unleash the miraculous powers of such Anchors to their full effect. Such powers are simple at core, like a wondrous anchors power, but can be profound in scope and equivalent to a greater miracle in power. | |
| 7 | Getting Miraculous Help; you may decide and declare that a miraculous anchor does something to strengthen or aid you in some way; that it comes to your aid from anywhere in existence of its own will rather than by command and does something that is helpful and useful to you. |
| 8 | Communion; you may enhance the powers of a miraculous anchor, merging them with your own and unleashing a joint effect that pairs the miraculous Anchor's power with either the substance of your Estate or some enhancement suitable to what the Anchor means to you. |
| 9 | Imperial Miracles; your miraculous anchor sings an Imperial Miracle, wherein it speaks a need into the world and the world changes to bring this to pass. This is not fast, but it is predictable: the Noble may cancel the effect (and recover his MP) if he decides the effect is no longer to his liking as it develops. |
Treasure Miracles and Anchors: It is worth noting that Treasure Miracles, for all their flexibility, are constrained by the thematic of the Anchor being used to create the miracle. What one can accomplish with Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is very different from what is possible with ones 7-year old adopted daughter, Jannie, which in turn is very different from the capabilities of Hiro Nakatana, former assassin for the Yakuza.
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