Rituals and Armor tags

[Brandon Mintken]

2.0 has rituals that specifically target armor. When a suit of armor is targeted with rituals, what is the requirement for the target?

A) The armor rep is the target, and any armor tag that fits can be used with the rep
B) The armor tag is the target, and the rep can change, but if I am using a 30 point tag, with a 45 suit rep, I have to use the 30 point suit if I want to make use of the rituals
C) The magic item tag is the target, and can be used with whatever combination of rep/armor tag.
D) some other thing (please explain)

I've gotten a lot of different and conflicting answers as to what is the target rituals that target a suit of armor.

 

[Polare]

Moved to Marshal Questions for discussion here first. If a consensus cannot be reached by Marshals, please repost in the ARC Questions forum.

Thank you,
Bryan Gregory
ARC Chair

 

[Draven]

I can answer that.

The ritual targets the Armor tag, not the Armor rep.

“But why, Evan? Why does it work that way?”

Simple. Because, mechanically, your armor isn’t Armor unless it has a tag. Consider this:

If you’re wearing decorative metal (untagged armor), it’s not an IG item that can be stolen from you. It’s not actually Armor. It’s just garb. It’s an OOG possession that, sure it exists IG thematically, but in a sense, it doesn’t exist mechanically in any meaningful sense.

You could have a pair of leather bracers enchanted with a Spell Store. They’re not necessarily Armor (if you don’t have an Armor tag for them, anyways), but they’re now converted to an IG item that can be stolen. It’s because, mechanically, the tag gives them that distinction.

An arrow quiver is a bit of an exception in that it exists mechanically, but if your quiver is shattered, making your arrows unusable, you can “find a quiver” the next time you go into your cabin. Your “backup quiver.” But thats because arrow tags have a container requisite for use, and quivers don’t have tags unless they’re enchanted.

So yeah. To summarize, those rituals target a suit of armor, which must be tagged in order to be defined as a suit of armor. Therefore, it will always be the tag that’s the target, because it’s the tag that actually defines your armor as armor.

 

[MaxIrons]

There is one quibble on that though, and that's IG theft. Armor, as a tagged item is stealable, with the owner of the physrep having the option to ask to keep the rep and in return give up rights to "identify it as theirs" in game. From my understanding there was a kind of tacit agreement that since large suits of armor are OOG very expensive, and armor could be fenced for maybe 2 gold IG for the largest suits, that the tacit agreement was to just let them keep the tag.

It was possible before for armor to be a MI, but with the new armor targeting rituals this is a lot more common and the tacit agreement starts to break down when the armor has IG expensive and difficult to obtain rits on it. I can forsee players demanding players take the physrep, as it's hard to easily carry/hide a set of full plate. "You want my enchanted full plate? Well, help me get it off and you can try carrying a 62 pt suit of armor off the field"

I'm chewing on how to best handle it, right now I see numbering/tagging the most protective single piece of costuming being thed most fair to thief and victim, while keeping the ideals of tagged items being physical things.