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Panomas wrote:Just throwing out a general inquiry and I'm looking for references that specifically can give me direction into any of the games under the Megaversal flag; opinions are of coarse welcome as well...

Spells require audible language but what about magical devices; do these things require audible cues to work as well?

Sources and opinions welcome; I will be looking through things myself through the weekend.

Thanks ahead!

Greetings and Salutations. I meant to respond to this a few days ago, but I forgot. Anyways, I wish this was a simple answer, but it's not. Because it has some of the most varying magic items, I'm going to use PF2 as my reference (Rifts may have more overall magical items, but 90+% of those are rune or TW, which gives limited variation).

Rune Weapons: Rune weapons cannot speak, but it's the weapon that knows the magic. Also, rune weapons can refuse to grant a wielder access to its magic. That means the only person who can speak (the wielder) has no real power over the magic. The rune weapon (who cannot speak) has the real power. Wielders and rune weapons can communicate via telepathy though (so maybe it casts via telepathy?).

There are a few other magic weapons without description one way or the other, but we do have a description on a couple.

Page 250: "Returns to Wielder When Thrown" and "Turns Holder Invisible" both refer to mental commands.

Page 252: Under Holy Weapons the abilities of "Turn 6D6 dead," "Expel deevils," and "Radius of Protection" all mention physical actions to activate the powers.

Page 256: "Crystal Ball" and "Divinaiation Ball" both mention contentration and staring.

Page 256: "Marbles of Transformation" mentions mentally willed, but also mentions a magic word repeated three times. Note: "Transformable Weapons" on page 250 reference these Marbles and also mentions muttering words.

Page 258: "Pit Cloak (or blanket)" mentions an action and magic words again.

Page 258: "Magic Bandages" mentions only needing to be unwrapped and placed near the wound and they act on their own.

There are more that use vague terms like "at will" or "upon command" but those can mean many things and not very specific. Those are also the ones I found looking only briefly to help make my point. How a magic item is activated depends on the magic item. Some have verbal commands, some require specific physical actions, others require only mental commands, etc. TW weapons (for example) often have triggers or buttons to activate their magic.

For me, it depends. I've created magic items that had inscriptions on them, and to activate its powers you had to read/say its inscription aloud (hope you can read the language!) similar to a scroll (only it doesn't disappear after). Others required physical components (if you did X this would happen, but if you did Y this other thing would happen). Then of course there's the magic items that are always active and saves EVERYONE a lot of headache.

All right, I think that's all for now. I hope that helps, even if it was to demonstrate there is no flat answer. Thank you for your time and patience, please have a nice day. Farewell and safe journeys for now.

Greetings and Salutations. Though not exactly what was asked, you can also find an article on "Wand Magic" in Rifter #19, starting on page 25. The article is written by Kevin Christensen. There's talk of how those work as well. I only bring it up because of the title of the thread, and figured more information isn't bad. Have a great day. Farewell and safe journeys again.