@Richard_Chilton : I had heard of Tin Man (it's in my instant queue but I haven't seen it yet) but I hadn't heard anything about Alice. I'll probably watch both of those sometime next week if I can. Thank you very much for the information.

As for your IoP, That's amazing. I love the detail. It's really not very powerful but, at the same time, I can see very easily where a clever player could get a LOT of fun out of it. I think I may use that in the next campaign I run (Just 1 shots from now until halloween then I can finally start my campaign). Also, I love the cute characters thread. That's amazing. Thank you very much =D

Thank you both for the ideas! I've decided that I really like the Sidhe Trickster as the guide or "Cheshire Cat," if you will. I'll have him offer the party two choices as consequence for trespassing in his demesne. Either A) they submit to him (he can eat them, enslave them, do whatever really) or B) they can complete 3 tasks for "his amusement" at which point he'll send them home. With the intimidation and all, they're pretty much assuredly going to go for the B option.

For the first test I'm going to drop them in the water world given as an idea for the islands campaign thread. Basically they'll have to find out the hard way that they can breath under water, and then complete the task. Note that they can breath and see but not speak. The players will have to complete this task without use of words. The task will be to grab a pearl from an underwater ruin. This should play out like a puzzle but they might find some baddies (think Ursula's eels from The Little Mermaid). The baddies will be there primarily as a cause of urgency for the players. Depending on how dire things become I'll either have them ported to the next place when the whole party touches the pearl or immediately upon any of the PCs picking up the pearl.

Next I'll have them standing on a cloud for a moment with the jester explaining that now they must get him a map from a sky captain. This should cause some confusion and probably any explanation I give them will only cause a heightened confusion (entirely intentional). Regardless of whether or not they're ready, the party will suddenly find the clouds not so solid and they will fall from the sky onto the deck of an "airship." Sure, the hull is really just built on the back of some strange winged life form allowing for flight but still. Totally an airship. Anyway, the crew are NOT pirates (Thought about it and decided against it). Anyway, there will be any number of ways for them to get this map. Either they can try to steal it (their presence on the ship will not go unnoticed seeing as they'll drop loudly out of the sky onto the deck of the ship, in broad daylight, in front of people), try and bargain for it, or even offer up a gamble or game with the map as the prize should the party win.

Upon obtaining the map they'll be given the third challenge which I haven't figured out yet. I'm thinking it should be something that they might not want to complete and as such could be compelled to try and try their luck fighting the Trickster instead.

If they fight the trickster then, should they put forth a "valiant effort," seeing as a group of 6 refresh characters with no formal training could never really hope of defeating him, he'll play dead and let them go (world disappears around them and they all wake up in the "haunted house as if it was a dream). They'll then find him not so very dead as they're leaving the haunted house and someone sees him grinning in the window, or something like that, during the aftermath (that was a great idea! Thank you again HobbitWarrior).

However, if they do take up the challenge, I don't know what the third and final challenge should be. Anyone have any ideas? I know this is kind of pathetic of me as a gm but I'm cutting this game deadline really close >.<

~Sitrein

personally the "True Hope" thing just doesn't make sense to me and I think it's kind of stupid. In my games, I run it as True Faith making true believers slightly more powerful if only for a single enemy (or potential friend) but still. True Faith just works better for it, imo.

I've been wondering this myself!

I know right? All the players in my group just say it goes up indefinitely but I just can't bring myself to believe that. It would also make the circle terribly vulnerable to birds/bats/etc flying through them without ever being near them or even really in sight of them.

But taking her stating that she reads about computers as only reading about them would be just as, if not more, illogical.

How does one go to medical school nowadays to keep up with the latest medical developements without coming into contact with state of the art (comparatively with respect to the age of the wizard) technological medical equipment? I would start by looking into this with regards to hexing first.

It would be illogical given the context. Out of context? Sure. Illogical to make any conclusions either way, but the book, where this passage was given, was not devoid of context. With how she said it she was implying that she only reads or if not only than primarily because it would be too hard to do much else. Past that, she is not scholarly with computers. From what was given she was implying reading things like Maximum PC magazine or an electronics magazine.

I'll start with the Luccio thing. She states clearly that she reads about computers when questioned about her hobby. To take her not specifying that she only reads as proof that she does more, would be entirely illogical. There's no sensible reason to assume that because she didn't specifically say otherwise when implying otherwise, that she uses computers. She's not a fey dancing around words. She's a human with no reason to hide her ability from Dresden, especially in the context given by the book.

As for the wizard ability to use computers through the water room. To properly fully drown out all magical ability with water, every case given in the book has the wizard IN the RUNNING water. Still water doesn't really do much of anything if anything and just being around the running water only hampers magical ability - it doesn't stop it.

So, to fully protect the computer you'd have to have the wizard in running water while using it (comfortable, no?). The peripherals would need to be waterproof for that reason and then all of these costly and annoying measures should allow the wizard to check his or her facebook for a while until the pumps that keep the water flowing over the wizard eventually give out. At that point you hope the wizard has implemented many redundancies.

As for magical Faraday Cages, Then again, we have Mac's which uses many random occurances of the number 13 to put up a magical umbrella. That would probably be enough to throw off SOME of the magical energies but hell, if I recall correctly, Mac won't even use light bulbs because of the massive expense. This leads me to believe that nothing short of massive amounts of complex anti-magical redundancies paired with a lot of expensive technological redundancies for those occasions when things just fail (because that happens even without magical need. Come on, it's computers) would be pretty much the only way to allow a wizard to use a computer reliably.

Just for the record, this would all leave the wizard more or less magically naked. Weak. Defenseless. Sure, you might be able to put together a work-around but bare in mind that all these work-arounds and redundancies take up time and money as well as, in all likelihood, some enchanted item slots and the like. At what price Technology?

On a much simpler end of things, I just like setting up electronic locks that my party's wizard always tries to hex. Seriously, the guy never learns that if he just shoots off the hex button like that, I'm going to say he broke the lock and now it won't open at all.