Homebrew Lore Charms

[oneiros]

Here's one I've been thinking about. Not sure on the pricing details though:

Knowing What is Looked For Technique
Min: Lore 4
Min Essence: 3
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo OK
Duration: One scene/dramatic action
Cost: 10m, 1wp
Prerequisite Charms: Keen [Sense] Technique

With their roles as savants and advisers, many Copper Spiders develop a truly impressive well of knowledge. However, there are those who snidely comment that without practical application that knowledge is wasted, so an industrious Twilight created this charm to answer their detractors.

By standing within an appropriate area and spending 10 minutes to attune her Essence and senses to the local patterns of Creation, she can know whether or not anything belonging to a desired category of items is present in the local area. This allows the Exalt conducting a dramatic action to look for something that requires a (Perception + Survival or Investigation) check to replace it with an equivalent (Perception + Lore) check against the same difficulty.

This charm does not allow her to locate something specific (e.g. the missing crown of the local patrician ruler or the tree which houses a door into a local Wood manse) but only functions for a particular category of items that might conceivably be located in the area (e.g. useful herbs in a wood, written orders in an office, deposits of metal). Any such instances flare in Exalt’s perception allowing her to find them.

The Charm lasts for as long as the Solar remains within the designated search area (e.g. a wood, a desert, a building). For particularly large areas, the ST can require the player to use this Charm repeatedly to scan its entirety. The ST also determines whether or not what is being sought is too specific or inappropriate for the area or the remit of this Charm. This Charm cannot be used in areas outside of Creation (such as the Wyld, Malfeas and Yu-Shan)


Peering Into Chaos
Min: Lore 5
Min Essence: 3
Duration: Permanent
Cost: -
Prerequisite Charms: Knowing What Is Looked For Technique, Chaos-Repelling Pattern

You may use Knowing What is Looked For Technique in Wyld areas.

[bravesirrobin]

I like the theory, just not sure about the practice....

Certainly it shouldn't require an awareness charm as a prereq, possibly just an excellency. I think the thing is that this charm still feels like an investigation charm to me....

A charm that required detailed measurements of the surrounding area and predicted the location of objects based on their affect could work - it's possibly a craft charm, but i'd probably have it under occult....

what i think should be created is some kind of lore 'concentration' charm/tree, that allows you to learn faster, record things perfectly and possibly does odd things like doubling successes on relevant survival/awareness/investigation rolls.

[Blackrat]

Yeah, I think the abilities are broad enough already without allowing one to substitute for another. Just take points in the other

Re BSR's final para. - the DB have a good couple of charms regarding learning faster, which could be used as models.

[oneiros]

blackrat said:

Yeah, I think the abilities are broad enough already without allowing one to substitute for another. Just take points in the other

That was kinda the point really...

Essentially, it's a case of Azir should ideally be good at collecting herbs (Survival) as well as having knowledge about them (herbalism Lore) and I fluffed the char creation and took favouritism in skills I had no real reason to (e.g. Dodge) other than it being first char newbie.

Story-wise though I thought the concept of using his book knowledge (Lore) to fuel practical searching (i.e. sub for Survival) made sense, esp since it's requiring a charm over just skill points and having an Awareness prereq (i.e. looking/heightened senses) nominally shows the effort the char is going to overcome other deficiencies.

It's a trade off between 8xp for a charm (albeit it in favoured) vs 6 xp to get Survival 3, training time notwithstanding.

That said, I am inclined to think this is more a Survival/Inv/Awa charm to give a boost to the Survival or Inv roll OR do something along the lines of Irresistable Salesman Spirit (in terms of mechanics) but building in Lore somehow.

Back to the drawing board methinks.

[Blackrat]

oneiros said:

It's a trade off between 8xp for a charm (albeit it in favoured) vs 6 xp to get Survival 3, training time notwithstanding.

Indeed. In fact if I were you, I'd use the 6xp to get 2 specialties in Survival (Herbalism), since it sounds like that's all you're interested in. (Apologies if mistaken.)

If BSR's feeling generous, he might let you rejig Are there any non-favoured abilities you haven't used that you could reduce by a point? It would only be quite a small change, after all, and this is your first time...

[oneiros]

No you're right on the button there. Yeah, buying the dots (or speciality dots) is prob what I will do.

If he were feeling generous, I'd ask to swap the favoured ability marker from either Archery or Dodge to Survival, (or both, since Bureaucracy could probably do with being favoured as well) neither of which I'm really inclined to boost and then take it from there, dots-wise.

[bravesirrobin]

As a twilight, you have investigation favoured right?

You can get three dots for 6XP....

[oneiros]

Not quite sure I understand - are you saying that searching for herbs can be Investigation? If so, yay! - but don't think that feels right thematically.

[bravesirrobin]

Investigation is used for searching, don't know why it couldn't apply to a rural environment. survival can be used too obviously, but meh....

[oneiros]

Awesome - thank you

Will still go back to the drawing board and try to think of some other Lore charms though.