Rules

Characters can have flaws, and Wonders can as well. In this case, the Flaw Traits reflect awful luck or influence: psychosis, neurosis, a tendency to go berserk or find yourself haunted by enemies you didn’t know you had until now… Like the Merits that reflect the good side of ownership, such afflictions harass a person with a cursed Talisman or flawed Invention.

Flaws like these are especially appropriate for mad-scientist underlings, or for Technocrats of dubious loyalty. Technocracy characters with the Background: Secret Weapons (Mage 20, p. 325) often find themselves getting stuck with flawed Devices, Gadgets, Inventions, and so forth. That’s the price of being Q Division’s guinea pigs. Likewise, an agent whose Requisitions score is low, or who’s in trouble with someone with inconve­ nient levels of influence, will discover that he’s using flawed gear… often at the worst possible times.

System

-wise, these features and flaws either add to or sub­ tract points from the cost of a created Wonder. As an optional rule, the Storyteller may allow players to employ features and flaws when crafting Wonders for the mages, use them himself as hidden quirks, or both.

Alternate

ly, the player could use the Supernatural Flaw: Jinx /Infernal Contraption in order to “buy down” the cost of the Wonder. In this case, the Wonder is simply an almighty pain in the ass. For details, see Chapter One, pp. 88-89.

Regardless of the flaws it may possess, a Wonder Background – with the exception of Charms, Gadgets, and Trinkets, the “lesser Wonders” that can be used up and then replaced later – can never cost than one Background dot, or two points, through the value of its flaws.

Once again, the Flaw Traits remain part and parcel of the Wonder; if it goes, they go too. Problem is, buggy wonders have a nasty tendency to keep coming back no matter how many times a person tries to get rid of them…

That which can be made can also be broken; in many cases, that which has been broken may also be repaired by a sufficiently skillful artisan or tech. As a general rule, a damaged Wonder can be fixed by someone who has the Arete, Spheres, and Abilities necessary to create that Wonder in the first place. If you could make it once, after all, you should usually be able to remake it again.

This rule, of course, depends upon the materials involved in crafting that Wonder. A suit of dragon-hide armor can’t be mended if all the dragons are gone. A Talisman that has been crafted from the finger-bones of a saint is ruined if those bones are crushed, and so the mystic properties of such a treasure get lost forever. An ancestral sword that gets shattered against some HIT Mark’s head can’t be fixed with Krazy-Glue. In certain situations, then, a broken Wonder cannot be repaired at all.