Rules

One-shot Wonders that discharge an Effect, and then either become inert or else completely consume themselves in the Effect, are called Charms. Magic bullets, ghost-summoning candles, healing elixirs, magic potions, hyperdrugs, candies that allow a person to breathe fire – these items, and others like them, feature temporary “charms” that grant them that short-lived magick.

System-wise, each Charm is a mystic Effect that has been “held” in time until a certain activity sets the magick free. Essentially, such items contain a delayed-action spell. For that reason, a Charm does not require an Arete roll, and anyone who believes in such things can use one. Technomancers have their own sorts of Charms, called Gadgets and described below. Mystic allies, meanwhile, can employ Charms… and a suitably impressionable Sleeper can use them too if she spends a point of Willpower, although a Sleeper whose disbelief would trigger Paradox cannot. (For details, see Witnesses in Mage 20, p. 531-532.)

To activate a Charm, the player who’s using the Charm rolls the Arete of that Charm, against difficulty 7. The number of successes determines the strength of the Effect. All Paradox, however, becomes the user’s problem – a Charm can neither absorb nor deflect Paradox.

Resonance-wise, Charms concentrate the energy of their intended purpose and the materials used in their creation. A set of ghost-summoning candles made of grave-dust infused into beeswax would give off a faint death-radiance, while spicy ginger candies crafted around a fire-spell might feel hot to the touch and smell vaguely of wood smoke. As the nearby Crafting a Wonder chart explains, a mage can make several Charms or Gadgets at a time. A single crafting-process can produce two Charms or Gadgets for each dot in that character’s Arete Trait. Nix, for instance, can craft six enchanted amulets in one sitting, thanks to Nix’s Arete of 3. The creator’s Arete is the Arete of the Charm itself; Nix’s candles, then, would have an Arete of 3. And because Charms require simpler magicks than the other, more complicated Wonders, such items pave the way for greater things as the mage in question deepens his skills.