Anchoring + Quickening, Two tastes that go great together? Options

[darthmord]

I personally loathe the idea of D&D-style magic items in SR, whether potions, rings, or +1 swords. That's just full disclosure, no relevance. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That does sound like an interesting house rule, darthmord. It makes things significantly easier on the mage; if that's what the group wants, it seems like a solid method. Lacking the Karma Drain/transfer abilities, I'd probably require some kind of ritual and/or valuable consumable materials for the transfer. When things are a little difficult, they're more appreciated, and flavor is fun. Another RAW-er option is that free spirits find employment as karma brokers, taking payment in a little skimming or something. To me, that kind of fantasy-meets-economics is kinda fun.

For the 'trace to karma source' idea, I'm slightly concerned about how that interacts with the anchoring rules (caster can control at any distance) and the basic spell rules (because it intentionally alters them). It *does* make a karma/item economy more viable if the caster *can't* influence the sold item, of course. And I may still have the anchoring/anchoring focus rules wrong in my head, sorry. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Do you not feel like it *should* be possible for a mage to examine Cronk's magic ring and be able to get a signature on the craftsman, though? Maybe dual signatures, mage and karma donor (though this isn't compatible with the free spirit karma broker). Heh.

I also wouldn't want the mundanes doing anything magic. That means no supernatural control of the anchored spell, for example. Clever use of detection, command words, etc. could handle that.

We only used D&D as a source for ideas for magic items. We understood that we couldn't make a +5 sword or anything like that. But for one shot items, D&D has a wealth of inspiration. Not to mention the wide variety of spells that could be ported over. The main reason it was like this for my old group was because we were a D&D group first & foremost. I got them interested in SR1 & SR2. They liked the idea of high fantasy in the near future. Guns, Tech, Elves, Dragons, and Magic... all in one place. What's not to like? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

We found that being a bit more flexible with the magic made magic more accessible and fair for everyone. Ultimately, everyone ended up worrying about the same costs for advancing their magical repitoire (either innate, skill, or item based), their mundane gear, and their skills.

Once in a while, NPCs had a magic doo-dad on them (they weren't all that common for NPCs or Players). We had talked about the issue you raised of being able to tell somehow who made the item despite it being linked to the intended user of the item. We didn't have a need for it but one of the discussions revolved about possibly using Masking as inspiration for that. We only talked a little about it and did NOT write out solid rules. But the basic premise was if the item's karmic cost was paid for by another, that person's aura became the dominant one. If the person assensing the item rolled well enough to look past that (in a similar manner as penetrating Masking), then they would see the item maker's aura. That was the extent we discussed it. Never worked on it further or clarified any specific rules.

Keep in mind that if someone else paid the karma for the item to work, the mage could no longer control the item. The mage's control over it was no more or less than that of the karma donor. The worst the mage (or any other mage) could do was attempt to dispell / counterspell the item or otherwise attack it like you would an active focus. Which did lead to situations where the team wanted the mage to still be able to control certain items made (that led to a lot of horsetrading and deal making).

I agree about not allowing mundanes to perform magic (though I am a proponent of mundanes having limited use of certain Active Magic skills, like Counterspelling, Banishing, etc). Items keyed to command words, actions, etc would work simply because the Magic was tied to that mode of activation. The actual spell being cast would have been controlled by the mage at the time of casting it into the item.