Vedra Atharia Spell Clarifications

[Waju]

Regarding the spell, The Unerring Truth:

Could you clarify on the conditional modifier:

Only a target of which the truth is known.

[JasonYarnell]

Yes, you need to know a very specific Truth about the target that no one else or VERY few people know. In other words, knowing that he has red hair does not count, but knowing that he is having a secret affair with a priest of Asuna is.

[Waju]

For the eratta that are forthcoming, I would suggest changing "truth" to "special or dark secret"

[JasonYarnell]

Except that it doesn't have to be a secret. It just has to be known to the target only or just a few people and it has to be significant or important.

But it does need a clarification, most of the Seal special abilities do, actually.

[Waju]

Regarding Revelations of Evidence

The point of it is lost on me if the caster is unable to learn anything new?

[JasonYarnell]

Regarding Revelations of Evidence

The point of it is lost on me if the caster is unable to learn anything new?

I've contacted the author and asked that he respond the question.

[Waju]

OK. It would be a very powerful spell if they could learn things, and that ability would seem to be balanced out by the amount of information needed, the research required, and in general the prep work. That said, I completely understand the caveat that the caster would not be able to interact with the mirage

[Thia Halmades]

This is one of those cases of "Yeah, that's not the best wording, but I couldn't find a better way to say it." What Revelation of Evidence really does is act as a holodeck that moves under its own power. The phrase "can't learn anything new" means (again, hard to explain and I'm still sluggish this morning) that casting the spell can't solve the murder. By the time this spell is cast, the caster already has 95% of the information they need; this lets them put everything into perspective.

Frex: You know that Miss Scarlet killed Professor Plum in the Kitchen with the Revolver. You have other pieces of evidence that you haven't fully grasped. By casting Revelation of Evidence, you learn that your piece of rope was used by Mrs Peacock to choke Miss Scarlet which caused the gun to fire at the odd angle it did. You could, reasonably, have pieced that together on your own, but didn't yet.

The best, out-of-game-speak way to describe the spell is a Plot Compression Device. "Okay GM, I did all my research, I think I know what's going on, but now I'm going to cast Revelation of Evidence to see it in action and put it together." Hence, the CHARACTER has learned "nothing new." They only have clarity. The PLAYER, however, may in fact get told, "Based on your evidence, you see Mrs Peacock choke out Miss Scarlet, which causes the gun to fire, and the a very surprised look on Prof Plum's face suggests, along with the letters between the two and other evidence, that she had no motive to kill him. Miss Peacock did, however, based on this other evidence, and now you are certain that you know how it all went down."

See? Rather than stabbing around and guessing and playing 20 questions with the GM, he can just compress the plot device you need and say "Here ya go."

Does that make more sense?

~DEM/TH

[Waju]

That to me would seem to be a big piece of knowledge. It was not murder at all, but I diverge.

How about, "Revelations will not reveal the who are what's of a scene, those must be discovered through the course of research and interrogation. It will; however, reveal the manner through which actions were undertaken, and words were spoken in the scene by any evidence researched. Thus, the caster will not reveal the identity of the murderer, but could see that a killing was unintentional or in self-defense."

[Thia Halmades]

I apologize, because I can't fully agree or disagree with you, largely because how the spell works depends on GM call, but that's kind of the intent; the best description I can give you is that it's a "plot compression device." It won't replace the requisite research, but it could reveal hidden gems. Hence, "Revelation." I'm not trying to be difficult, but you've struck on one of the most complex spells in the Atharian set.