[MH] [RPM] Do Charms Have to Break?

[GarenLiLorian]

There are a couple of constraints:

- A normal person watching would automatically (which I read to mean: without a skill roll) know that the trigger has occurred.
-The trigger can be fooled or set off accidentally.
-The charm is 'used up' when set off: broken or torn, or expended in the case of an ammunition charm (you can't recover the bullet or arrow and use it as a charm again, I guess)

I think the second clause is the important one here. I'd rule that you could use charms that don't break (so long as they are clearly 'used up': activating a glow stick, untying a knot, breaking a circle, etc.), but they'd need to be about as likely as a standard charm to be set off maliciously or accidentally.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by GarenLiLorian

- A normal person watching would automatically (which I read to mean: without a skill roll) know that the trigger has occurred.

This is my read on conditional ritual default casting, as well. With conditional rituals you can add an additional sense effect to the spell so it can see reality in more detail and trigger on a more complex or subtle event. Are you saying that this option is, in your opinion, not available for charms?

Originally Posted by GarenLiLorian

-The trigger can be fooled or set off accidentally.

This is a little hard to regulate, but it seems reasonable that any caster with conditional rituals hanging about in their space or on their body, charms or not, would be subject to accidental casting on critical failure of appropriate skills, in addition to the other effects of critical failure.

Originally Posted by GarenLiLorian

-The charm is 'used up' when set off: broken or torn, or expended in the case of an ammunition charm (you can't recover the bullet or arrow and use it as a charm again, I guess)

The rules do not state that the arrow cannot be recovered and recharmed. In fact, the section on ammunition charms is what got me curious to ask here. The opening paragraph of the section on Charms in the RPM book describes them as "fragile objects" repeatedly, with the implicit assumption that the condition of the charm conditional ritual is "when the object breaks," but the ammunition charm has a different condition: "when shot into a target." So, presumably the arrow doesn't need to be fragile. Which means that charms don't need to be fragile? Or are these, for some reason, the only allowable conditions? Confused face.

Originally Posted by GarenLiLorian

I think the second clause is the important one here. I'd rule that you could use charms that don't break ... but they'd need to be about as likely as a standard charm to be set off maliciously or accidentally.

It is far easier to break a small bottle in someone's pocket than it is to steal an arrow from their quiver and then launch it at them. While both can be exploited, they are not equally easy to exploit.

I agree that any conditional ritual has (almost by definition) the possibility of being activated accidentally, and a charm compounds this by being transferrable. But the idea of arbitrating whether a player can make a kind of charm based on the meta consideration of how difficult it would be to exploit doesn't sit well with me. Using the rules and constraints you're given to make things harder on your enemies is playing the game, not cheating. If you want all charms to be equal, then you've got to rule that all charms are the same. That's a fair ruling, especially in a game with limited RPM and thus pressure to take up less screen time with differentiations and tactics within RPM.

[AlexanderHowl]

A charm is a subset of conditional ritual though, as you can easily have a conditional ritual that is not a charm that activates when a condition is met (for example, saying a certain phase in Liturgical Latin). The advantage of the charm is that it can be transfered (anyone who breaks it gains the benefits) versus a standard conditional spell, which cannot be transferred. A magician should probably only use charms to help others, as normal conditional rituals offer superior flexibility.

For example, Black Kat is a powerful magician who is fluent in the Basque Language who possessss Photographic Memory, Magery 8, and Thaumatology-20, giving her 28 conditional rituals. She uses her magic to hang 28 conditional rituals on her person and gives each of them a different Basque phrase as a trigger (which she will not forget because of her Photographic Memory). When the party attacks her lair in New Orleans, she is able to escape them by triggering a conditional ritual that moves her to her apartment in New York by saying 'eat my dust!' in Basque as a free action. If she had it as a charm though, it would have likely taken her two turns (one to ready the charm and one to break it), which could have resulted in her death or capture.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

... A magician should probably only use charms to help others, as normal conditional rituals offer superior flexibility.
....

That's what I thought too and I was very happy with it, but I was wrong. Another important advantage of charms is without them you can't have more than one of the same spell ready. Ref Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic Page 27, Features of Charms, the first bullet point.
A caster cannot have multiple of the same spell hung as conditional rituals on their behaviors, because they are the subject of all the spells and you can't be the subject of two spells with the same effects. So while Black Kat would do very well to have her escape spell hung as a conditional ritual for the reasons you say, she could not hang any other greater create crossroads spells on her person. You can creatively engineer your spell list to avoid this problem, but if you're a blaster, you need your charms for all those missile spells.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

That's what I thought too and I was very happy with it, but I was wrong. Another important advantage of charms is without them you can't have more than one of the same spell ready. Ref Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic Page 27, Features of Charms, the first bullet point.
A caster cannot have multiple of the same spell hung as conditional rituals on their behaviors, because they are the subject of all the spells and you can't be the subject of two spells with the same effects. So while Black Kat would do very well to have her escape spell hung as a conditional ritual for the reasons you say, she could not hang any other greater create crossroads spells on her person. You can creatively engineer your spell list to avoid this problem, but if you're a blaster, you need your charms for all those missile spells.

Well, it becomes a matter of how flexible the character wants to be. If you want to be a blaster though, you can use Greater Path of Body to give yourself Innate Attack (though GMs might restrict them to 'natural' attacks). For example, a character could use Greater Transform Body to give themselves Toxic Attack 10d (Jet, +0%) or just enchant themselves with the effect.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, it becomes a matter of how flexible the character wants to be. If you want to be a blaster though, you can use Greater Path of Body to give yourself Innate Attack (though GMs might restrict them to 'natural' attacks). For example, a character could use Greater Transform Body to give themselves Toxic Attack 10d (Jet, +0%) or just enchant themselves with the effect.

Heh. For a post-modern blaster, how about a nerf gun?

[AlexanderHowl]

You could have a dozen nerf guns modified with a dozen different ongoing rituals if you wanted, they would only count against conditional ritual limits if they are waiting to be triggered. In that case, it would be a minimum of Greater Transform Matter, and the nerf gun would be the target of the spell.