Rules

For the most part, a mage must use the best available materials – pure gold, crushed pearls, herbs plucked from the deep woods at midnight on Midsummer even, that sort of thing – when crafting a Wonder. Substandard materials add to the possibility of Flaws, as described below under the entry for Wonder Flaws. Yes, it’s perfectly appropriate for a Marauder to enchant a cheap knockoff Spider-Man action figure purchased at a Soho flea-market… it’s just not going to be a very reliable Talisman once it’s finished.

(The artisans who crafted ancient Wonders, of course, rarely had access to the range and quality of materials that are available today; as a result, the few Wonders that survive from elder days are extraordinarily well-made, shaped from materials whose quality remains breathtaking even in our industrial age. The perfectionism inherent in such work, in fact, often makes them far superior to the Wonders crafted in our era, if only because so much more effort and skill went into making them in the first place.)

The Storyteller may rule that high-powered Wonders – those rated at four dots or more – cannot be crafted with anything less than the finest materials. Sure, you can MacGyver some one-shot Charm out of junk in order to get yourself out of trouble, but don’t expect to craft a power-armor suit out of anything less than top-secret Stark Industries technology! Even “primitive” Fetishes demand a certain level of quality; no spirit with any sort of dignity will inhabit a bunch of tobacco scavenged from leftover cigarette butts. If you wish to deal with a powerful spirit, then only fine, organically grown tobacco, harvested in the Old Way, will suffice!

Again, the specific materials involved in Wonder-crafting will depend upon the mage’s practice and beliefs, and also upon the sort of the Wonder under construction. An old Atari computer might provide useful materials for a gutter-magick Charm or Fetish, but a hypertech Device requires far better technology.