Amazing session and Scrying (Through pants)

[ryanshowseason2]

So my players are having a first encounter with the big bad, which they brilliantly kept forcing me into corners in order to figure out a way to get him out of it. Manuevers are being thrown around like no ones business and consequences are flying at him. Walls of water, earthquakes, incite emotion with fear of water the works when...

One of my players had the brilliant notion during combat that de-pantsing his foe would break his morale somehow,  Don't ask me why. But I say sure roll it as a maneuver, success, great you slide under him like you're stealing home plate grab him by the crotch and rip his pants off, congrats you now have his pants. It was quite comical at the time.

Later on he escapes and they are separated from him. He still has the pants though, we ended the session but before then he wanted to scry for the big bad... through the crotch of his pants...

So my question is how do you run scrying and are pants a proper medium to be able to scry through?

[devonapple]

Technically, they are associated, though that link should diminish much more quickly than a piece of hair. In fact, the best way to handle it is to say that they found a leg hair (or whatever) in the pants, and that is the focus of the sympathetic link. If you don't want to establish stealing clothes = sympathetic link, but you want to reward them for their cleverness, retroactively place a forgotten item IN the pants which works as a more plausible sympathetic link, and explain that stealing clothes won't always be an immediate link.

Certainly rationale for wizard-savvy foes to always wear new clothes.

Also, scrying - in the D&D sense - has been established as a VERY hard thing to accomplish in the DresdenVerse. Harry needs Little Chicago, and that only works for Chicago.

That said, we had a similar scene in my game, except it was the bad guys who stole the good guys' clothes. Our werebear entrusted an apprentice wizard with his own, personal (non-rented) tuxedo, and later that scene, the wizard used The Sight and ended up being motivated to get the hell out of there, and accepted a Compel to drop the pants. The bad guys took the trousers hoping to use magic to find the players later.

[Bruce Coulson]

It would be thaumaturgy; I think the book gives an example of Harry's spell for finding people (about 9 shifts; more if the target is shielded).

I'd certainly give pants a +2 for connection for the ritual...  There's tons of skin flakes, etc. that would be in pants.  (There's also the question of how good the Bad's hygiene is...)

[devonapple]

It would be thaumaturgy; I think the book gives an example of Harry's spell for finding people (about 9 shifts; more if the target is shielded).

Harry's spell is actually a very low-budget scrying effect - a magical bloodhound, obligating Harry to physically go to the target's location to find them.

For something like a crystal ball or scrying pool, which Harry sort of emulates when he uses Little Chicago, it would actually be a much much more powerful ritual (as his near-death in one scene indicates, which is also illustrated in the rulesbook). That, however, is easily explained as Harry taking physical consequences to power/control the ritual.

[Haru]

Pants should be a fun way to power a search spell. Especially, if you declare that, in order for them to work with the ritual, the wizard has to wear them, and they will literally trace its owners steps, which the wizard will only have limited control over (he might stop at will, but he would not be able to change directions).

As for a difficulty, it should be a simple action replacing investigation with thaumaturgy, just like Harry's search spell, only a bit weirder than his version.

[Kaldra]

i think a pair of pants walking back to its owner would be a hilarious way of running it; i can see it now the group is in a car racing after a pair of pants running down the middle of the road... ya that sounds about right...

[Masurao]

i think a pair of pants walking back to its owner would be a hilarious way of running it; i can see it now the group is in a car racing after a pair of pants running down the middle of the road... ya that sounds about right...

Even more fun if the wizard is still being run around in those pants

[ryanshowseason2]

I was going to go for "you have to gaze through the crotch of it to see what would normally be viewable from his pants"

Then if they don't specify what direction they're looking through the pants have them look the "wrong" way.

[computerking]

I was going to go for "you have to gaze through the crotch of it to see what would normally be viewable from his pants"

Then if they don't specify what direction they're looking through the pants have them look the "wrong" way.

And if they look the "Wrong" way, they see what would normally be seen if the bad guy were wearing the pants and unzipped his fly?

[devonapple]

i think a pair of pants walking back to its owner would be a hilarious way of running it; i can see it now the group is in a car racing after a pair of pants running down the middle of the road... ya that sounds about right...

My players were in the middle of a ritual to burn the trousers remotely using the rest of the tuxedo, hoping to sever the sympathetic link possessed by the enemy. I violated (somewhat) the rules of how Circles work by having an enemy spellcaster "animate" the tuxedo jacket and have it "attack" the ritual from inside. Ultimately it made controlling the ritual each round a contested roll, and it motivated the ritualist to put their all into burning that tuxedo, and ended up torching the enemy spellcaster.