Revision as of 08:08, 5 April 2010

Solar Bureaucracy Charms

by haren

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<b>Cost: 10 motes, 1 willpower
Duration: Indefinate
Type: Simple
Min. Bureaucracy: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Speed the Wheels

For someone who understands the system, you can do amazing things without ever being seen. You can even give birth to a completely fictional person with access to resources of their own. This charm produces the forms and papers "proving" the Solar is a particular person. They have a history on paper for anyone looking. Within a day of using the Charm, the Solar will be provided with anything she needs to move as the person she has created. The player of the Solar rolls Intellegence + Bureaucracy at a difficulty of 3. Successes over that can be used to buy the backgrounds of Backing, Contacts, Followers, Influence, or Resources at a success per dot up to 3 and double for each afterwards. They can also be used to buy other things, such as perhaps authorization to go into a restricted area (with ST approval, who decides the cost for each). The paper trail for this persona lasts only while essence stays commited. Expenditure of an experience point allows the persona to remain permanently. While this does provide papers, the Solar does not appear different and can be recognized as normal by someone who has met them before without use of other Charms. Also, such recognition or pushing by people who can "prove" the Solar is not the person their papers say they are, can break the power of this Charm, though this usually requires at least some magical assistance.

Comments

This strikes me as a very Sidereal-flavored effect, something First Age Solars would have absolutely no need for. "Do you see my forehead? Good. Let me in." However, I reckon I can see it being developed by Night Castes or devious Eclipses in the Time of Tumult. Mechanically, as extra successes give you temporary backgrounds, what does the normal success at Diff 3 award you other than a phony passport? Finally, for a Solar to beef up backgrounds for a fictional dude, and then spend a single XP point to gain potentially a lot of backgrounds seems awfully problematic, especially in light of the Backgrounds-for-XP rules as of late.--UncleChu commenting on a two-year-old Charm, not expecting to see a response

What backgrounds-for-XP rules? The Second Ed errata specifically give two ways to gain backgrounds, only one of which involves XP. -- GreenLantern, who doesn't use the xp-for-backgrounds system

Actually, I can make an arguement for it being needed (or, well, valuable at least) in the first age... It's just a charm for speeding up requisitions, but Solars are so over the top that -everything- is within their power to requisition, whatever their status. In the first age, it would have been useful for an eclipse that didn't want to spend weeks sending messages back and forth proving that yes, he was allowed to tell society x to go and do y, he just uses this charm and reality adjusts itself to provide the proper paperwork. Since he would have originally been authorized anyway, it's just a speed-up... Nowadays, however, the solars are -not- typically in control of everything, but their charms work just as well since heaven still has them mandated as ruling creation etc, and this charm is now if anything more powerful. That would be my justification. I agree completely on the xp point though, it does make getting these backgrounds much easier... but most of them just take time anyway, and the familiar-gaining charms make getting that background much easier anyway. Plus, this charm creates lots of tracable papertrails by its very nature. I think it should probably stay. As to a normal success, not sure... could grant just 1 dot of something, or just let them prove they're someone else who doesn't really have any power/influcence/etc.
-- Darloth

You've got it down exactly right, Darloth. Those were exactly the ideas I had been using. And GreenLantern, I believe that he was using the Players Guide information, which is pretty much the same as the 2nd Ed. errata. While this charm was made for first edition, I think it'd be just as useful in second. It just should be modified for the social system. - haren