A quick poll:
How do player character s activate the invested powers in their Talisman?
A vocal command? A coded set of tapping on the Talisman? A permanent magical effect to read the mind of the mage? Some combination? Something else?
Varies by effect but not a permanent Intellego as that would warp
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I was actually hoping for examples so I can design some NPC Magi.
Say something along the lines of the mind reading effect controls all the others except the Concentration duration InMe is activated by gripping the staff just below the whirl with 3 tight grips, and the auto Concentration effect is switched off by tapping the whorl with the pad of the thumb.
Most magi I do as PC or NPC use a InMe effect activated by a command word you say at time X and with sun or moon duration. Then every other power has a linked trigger to be activated by that power when the magus desires so.
I remember having one maga with a "harm the wielder" constant effect which was only supressed by a ReVi effect activated by a pesonal InCo (asking "are you the individual X" = magus whose talisman it is) (which by design would only target the magus, not anyone else since personal is only for the magus whose talisman it is) and that InCo also activated a InMe effect for sun duration allowing her to use all others effects of the talisman.
To prevent warping, I went with an InMe,with Concentration duration, Concentration being maintain by the item, and several uses/day. Depending on how suspicious my magi feels, he would trigger the mind reading aspect of his talisman.
All the other effects have +3 for trigger effect, to be triggered by the mind reading spell.
My favorites:
- InMe mental trigger at Concentration so you can avoid long-term Warping by only having it active at certain times.
- InCo (or similar) auto-trigger (like if you fall unconscious) at Concentration so you can avoid long-term Warping by only having it active at certain times.
- Master of the Held Talisman (my ReVi spell using ReVi base 5 at Personal Range to activate a known trigger.
- Master of the Distant Talisman (as above, but Arcane Connection Range).
- Animate the Talisman, use an effect like InMe, and use that to trigger a Personal ReVi so the Talisman can activate itself rather than you needing to do so. There are a bunch of ways to do the animation.
For protective effects triggered by an Intelligo spell, simply triggering the question when the item is first grabbed or activated would avoid the issue of warping, especially if the spell is tuned to prevent warping when cast on the correct owner/weilder.
In some cases. But consider something like a suit of armor Talisman that you want to cast a Bind Wound variant on you if you ever get hurt in combat. You're already touching the item before the combat in which you receive the Wound. These are the sorts of monitoring things I was thinking of when suggesting things like InCo auto-triggers at Concentration. It's not the thing you're just triggering, but the thing that constantly monitors you for an extended period that you want to not be so long you get Warped.
Just make the triggering Intellego effect be Unlimited Use + Environmental Trigger to go off every third Moment. A Moment "may be rather more than an instant"; human reaction time is somewhere less than a second so it should be on the same time scale as speed-of-thought. And since it's only active a third of the time it won't Warp you or the talisman.
Yes, a Momentary spell may last a full round or sometimes even slightly longer. But what change to a "major magical features of the environment" is there to trigger off of every third Moment?
"Thus, it can respond to the events that end spell durations." ArMDE p257
Yes. What is that event??? Momentary and Diameter are not events that end spells. Spells can last that long, but there is no event. Try reading more of that paragraph, especially what the "thus" you quote references:
The item is only sensitive to major magical features of the environment. Thus, it can respond to the events that end spell durations (sunrise, sunset, phases of the moon, etc.), and to changes in the modifier applied to magical activities by the local aura.
Notice how it is "only sensitive" to these "major magical features of the environment." That means it's not sensitive to anything else. What events end spell durations? Sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, solstices, equinoxes, maybe something else. There are also plenty of durations not ended by any event that is a "major magical features of the environment": Momentary, Diameter, Concentration, Ring, etc.
Now, there are more things than these events, like the aura changing. Presumably passing through regio boundaries and similar boundaries in the Magic Realm all work, too.