New World of Darkness rotes and vulgar magic

Question

Hopefully some of you guys know about nWoD. The section on rotes in Mage: The Awakening is really really unclear.

I get this:

If you're an order, you can take that order's rotes and you get a better dice pool, in addition to a +1 if they use the right skills for that order. Also, using a rote is less likely to cause a paradox, etc.

I don't get this:

Can you take a non-order rote? What sort of advantages does this give, since it obviously doesn't give the new dice pool? Is it easier to cast in any way? Are apostates just totally screwed compared to people in orders, especially since order members get the high speech merit for free?

Second question, about vulgar magic. What happens if someone uses vulgar magic, rolls, it doesn't cause a paradox, but it happens to be that someone caught this casting on film? Would then showing it to sleepers just be like "Oh, this is some kind of special effect", so there would be no roll for paradox despite the sleeper "witnesses"?

Answer 1

In my understanding, every Order may have (in theory) its own rote for every spell listed in the rule books. The rotes explicitly described are just examples (in general indicating which Orders are most likely to use a rote version of a given spell.)

If you learn a rote from a mentor belonging to a different Order than yours, you'll use the rote dice pool with the skill given in the spell's description - but the Attribute linked to it may differ from Order to Order (and will be determined by the Storyteller.) See Spell Format > Spell Title > Sample Rote on p.131, MtAw.

Using the rote version of a spell is almost always better than improvising the same: see p.111 of MtAw for the reasons, under "Rote Spells." This is true even if you don't get the +1 from the Rote Specialties (because of using a rote that does not rely on your Order's Rote Specialties.)

Yes, Apostates are rather screwed rote-wise, since rotes are heavily guarded secrets of the Orders. (It takes a lot of effort to get even a mage of your very own Order to teach you a rote spell, let alone to an outsider - especially if that outsider is not a member of any Order.) There's the price of the apostate's "freedom": a serious lack of support to rely on in a harsh world.

As for the second question, I'd say you're right to suppose Sleepers would consider the recording (possibly very, very skilfully) manipulated.