Thaumaturgy Communication Ritual

[Wolfwood2]

Suppose you wanted to use thaumaturgy to commuicate over a distance with someone.  Let's say the trapping is that the caster waves his hand over a mirror, it grows foggy, and his face appears in a reflective surface near the target.  They can then converse.  (This was a lot more useful before they invented cell phones.)  To me this feels like the "duplicate a skill use, ignoring that it's impossible" type of thaumaturgy, though I'm not sure what kind of skill it should be.  It's not really meant to be an attack or something that the target needs to defend against.

What complexity do you think it should be and why?

Does it fall under the Divination specialty, or if not then what?

How should it interact with thresholds?

[bitterpill]

Message Carrying Water Spirits who know the ways and will deliver messages in exchange for tea (because water spirits love a nice hot cup of tea). Seriously though I think a low level messenger spirit would be the lowest complexity way to do this.   

[Warpmind]

Me, I opted for making an Enchanted Item for this effect - a magic mirror with the ability to let my charcter communicate (sight & sound) with anyone/anything he seeks, provided there is a mirror near them...
So worth the item slots, IMO...

[Imp]

Perhaps it could be an item... sorta a "seeing stone" type.   You would need to create X number of mirrors and those mirrors would only be able to connect to each other

[Wolfwood2]

Message Carrying Water Spirits who know the ways and will deliver messages in exchange for tea (because water spirits love a nice hot cup of tea). Seriously though I think a low level messenger spirit would be the lowest complexity way to do this.   

Isn't "low level messanger spirit" just a trapping in this case?  It doesn't really matter whether you want to say you're talking through a foggy mirror, having spirits carry messages back and forth, or having your writing appear on a page in a remote location.  It's the same basic effect, just with different descriptive flavor text.

[Wolfwood2]

Perhaps it could be an item... sorta a "seeing stone" type.   You would need to create X number of mirrors and those mirrors would only be able to connect to each other

Uh, that's not really answering my question.  Let's say the caster does not create and item and instead is doing a ritual.

This seems like an extraordinarily basic effect, the sort of thing that you wouldn't think twice if you saw a wizard snap off in fiction.  Is there some reason it shouldn't be possible for a Dresden-type caster?  And if not, what's the complexity?

[Wolfwood2]

Me, I opted for making an Enchanted Item for this effect - a magic mirror with the ability to let my charcter communicate (sight & sound) with anyone/anything he seeks, provided there is a mirror near them...
So worth the item slots, IMO...

Clearly you've determined what the complexity should be, since items are duplicating effects that Thaumaturgy or Evocation could achieve.  What did you decide the complexity should be and how did you decide?

[devonapple]

For reference, I'm including a link to the discussion from when I brought up a similar thing awhile back:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,23572.0.html

[Wolfwood2]

For reference, I'm including a link to the discussion from when I brought up a similar thing awhile back:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,23572.0.html

Hmmm, that discussion seems to assume that both parties are working together to communicate.  I should probably explain where this would be coming from, storywise.

There's a middling powerful fae (like, with subordinates, but nowhere near a Lady or anything) based in the city, and a wizard wants to talk to him.  The wizard knows where the fae's home is and could just go there to talk to him, but that involves crossing some territory he doesn't want to cross.  So he decides to do the magical equivalent of placing a phone call instead.

He could potentially place an actual phone call, but for whatever reason he'd prefer to use magic.

[jybil178]

Me, I opted for making an Enchanted Item for this effect - a magic mirror with the ability to let my charcter communicate (sight & sound) with anyone/anything he seeks, provided there is a mirror near them...
So worth the item slots, IMO...

Err...  That actually seems fairly outside the scope of a normal Enchanted Item.  Something like that would most likely fall under an Item of Power Instead.

Granted, a very POWERFUL wizard, who devoted enough Enchanted Item slots to get its combined complexity high enough ( which would probably take a decent number of enchanted items ) could probably get something along those lines, but would normally only work once a session, bar enough additional enchanted items to increase the number of times per session it could be used.

But in all honesty, something like this would most likely fall under the effects of a Thaumaturgical spell, every time, especially since you'd most likely require a symbolic link in order to find the person you were looking for..

[bitterpill]

I think the magic item he was talking about was a Item of Power with Ritual Divination and some Refinement or at least someone has done the samething with that set up.

[infusco]

Well, basically, this is a ritual that mimics a straight forward action, namely talking to someone. In Thaumaturgy, distance itself is rarely a limiting factor.

What IS a limiting factor is the normal limitations of Thaumaturgy, namely that of a symbolic link. So you can't communicate with someone remotely if you don't have anything that is uniquely part of that person ... either an actual piece of him, like hair, or something that that person identifies with very strongly, like his 20 year wedding ring.

Other than that, the complexity of something like this is probably next to nil, like 2 or 3 maybe. Easily a single roll. This assumes the person isn't resisting. Otherwise, the minimum complexity would be (probably) their Conviction or Presence score plus two to compensate for Aspect usage.

Although if it crosses into the Nevernever, it might cost more, although I'm not sure.

Since you're establishing a visual link between the two sites, I'd definitely say Divination since you're seeing something that you wouldn't normally be able to see otherwise.

[bitterpill]

So twin mirror would be easily as they are direct link to each other. You could probably set up a network of interconnected Mirrors with your wizard allies. 

[devonapple]

I'm sure the denizens of Downbelow will happily "link" you and your friend together. They just need both of your True Names and some blood...

[Wolfwood2]

Granted, a very POWERFUL wizard, who devoted enough Enchanted Item slots to get its combined complexity high enough ( which would probably take a decent number of enchanted items ) could probably get something along those lines, but would normally only work once a session, bar enough additional enchanted items to increase the number of times per session it could be used.

Remember that a practitioner can make enchanted items work beyond their "per session" uses merely by taking a point of mental stress per extra use.  For a non-combat item like a talkie mirror, the mental stress is usually trivial.