Activating Magic Items

[Shandar]

What conditions must be fulfilled in order to activate a magic item held by another person?

Examples:

Jill has been killed and Jack wants to use Jill's activatable life item (a stone in her pouch) to save her. Should Jack:

a. Search Jill, pull the item out of the pouch, and activate it (complete change of possession)

b. Search Jill, reach into the pouch, taking hold of the item, and activate it (partial possession)

c. Touch the item and activate it (direct contact without possession)

d. Grab the pouch and activate the item (partial possession of the container holding the item)

e. Touch the pouch and activate the item (direct contact with the container holding the item only)

f. Touch Jill and activate the item (direct contact with the player, no contact with the item or container)

What if Jack has no direct knowledge of the item's existence? May Jack attempt to use an item which may or may not exist (or may not have charges left, or may not be where he thinks it is, etc) as a sort of 'hail mary'?

Can other peoples' magic items be activated offensively (ie, the same scenario, except that Jack is attempting to waste charges on Jill's items instead)?

What if Jill is conscious? Can Jack take/grab hold of/touch Jill's items and use them with permission? Without permission?

 

[Polare]

This post is to inform you that your question is currently being discussed by the ARC and once some clarification has been made will be posted here. Depending on the level of clarification and discussion (and potential involvement of the Owners or other national staff, if needed) this may take time.

 

[Polare]

On review of this topic, it's pretty much all already been answered by ARC on this very forum:

viewtopic.php?f=98&t=475

Please make sure to do a topic search before posting new questions in this forum.

Thanks!
-Bryan Gregory
ARC

 

[Polare]

As a followup, we've been asked to note how the situation above might be different in light of the item in question being in a pouch instead of being immediately accessible (such as a shirt). The same requirements always need to be followed in either case; clear possession is all that's needed.

So let's say Joe is on the ground and has a Life item in his pouch. Assuming you know about the item, and can gain clear possession of the pouch (if Joe is unconscious, merely touching it would probably be fine), you can activate it on Joe.

As noted in the initial post,

- For any magic item, you have to have had the item IDed yourself or someone explain its use to you before you can use it. You can't just grab someone and blow all their magic items.

- If there's someone obviously in possession of the item, the possessor has to be willing or incapacitated and you must be aware of and touching the item.

In this case, "touching the item" was meant to be "in possession of" the item.

Think of it this way - if someone hit you with a "Disarm Pouch-with-magic-item" would you take it and have to drop the pouch? If yes, you're in possession of it. If not, you're not. It's usually a reasonably clear distinction on the field, and as always we recommend to people that you do your best to make possession clear. It's easier to do this if one of the people who "might" be holding the item is unconscious/dead/incapacitated; if both people are able to utilize the item/hold the pouch you need to be very clear about who is holding the item and who is not.

-Bryan Gregory
ARC