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Well, I was looking over the psionic ability and I wondered about the term "last owner". What makes a person the owner of something? Is it a period of time in the person's possession or use of the item? If I take someone's knife and stab them with it and then leave it in them, am I the last owner or is the person who had it for years before me the owner? How much interaction with an object does it take to establish "ownership"? What if I have a bill of sale for an item but never used it? I think the power would be a lot better if the verbiage said, "last user" and perhaps that's what the power is intended to meant to be applied, but I don't know for certain.

-Vek
"I now have to think about how criminals would survive in a world with Object Read, Words of Truth, and Commune with Spirits."

The answer to this question can be quite subjective or very simple.

I would go with the last one to really use the object would be the one that imprinted on the object more than a merchant that is just reselling an object.

But then again, as a GM I might give the players something that is significant to their story arc rather than "theif who died after stealing it."

Ownership, for me, would be associated with long use, or at least possession. The knife you wore on your person for years, but never used, would be your knife. Your grandfather's knife that he passed to you that then sat in a shoebox at the back of a closet is your grandfather's knife. Without that long ownership and association, it's still going to hold to the last person.

Ballpark? 1 year divided by your level, so if you're 15th level, it becomes "yours" in about 24 days. Before that, it "belongs" to the last owner or the maker.

Mark Hall wrote:Ownership, for me, would be associated with long use, or at least possession. The knife you wore on your person for years, but never used, would be your knife. Your grandfather's knife that he passed to you that then sat in a shoebox at the back of a closet is your grandfather's knife. Without that long ownership and association, it's still going to hold to the last person.

I would tend to agree with this. If you take a laser pistol from an enemy and carry it every day it will probably register as yours in a few days or couple of weeks at most. If you take an armor helmet off of the body of a defeated enemy and just put it in trophy case it would probably be years, if ever, before it would register as yours vs the dead guys.

Mark Hall wrote:Ballpark? 1 year divided by your level, so if you're 15th level, it becomes "yours" in about 24 days. Before that, it "belongs" to the last owner or the maker.

I never put a firm timetable on it myself, like I said I more lean towards how often it is used, but this is as good a system as any other.

I do think you have to factor in relative importance of the item. So if that laser was one of the guys most important possessions, given to him by an officer for his valiant service, but to you it is just a spare laser than it should stay his for far longer. But if for him it was just issued gear but for you it marked your first victory in combat and you even give it a name, Wynona maybe, than it should be yours much faster.

I've always said the item must have personal value to you. There has to be some kind of significant meaning. If you came into my house and touched a pencil (maybe I used it
to write something important) but mostly since I could really care less about that pencil, you get no reading from the item. However, you touch my cell phone, you get a head
full of information without even having to figure out the password (all sorts of GM goodies). The hairbrush could have lots of info on it that belongs to a woman (one she always
uses and has own for years) while the tooth brush in the medicine cabinet of the male villain gives you nothing because it means nothing to him. The door knob to mage's home
has great significance to him because he's live there for years, always locks his door, considers his home his sanctuary, and the door is the barrier that keeps the outside world
away. The door knob of the apartment to a thief means nothing to him because he just uses the room to sleep but doesn't care one bit about the place. I've tried to use the
Dead Zone TV show with Anthony Michael Hall as my guide. His power didn't go off with everything he touched that belong to a person only particular items worked or trigger a
link to some kind of event.

As magic is linked with belief, the things that make me think someone owns something is whether they believe the item is theirs, and the amount of time involved is also an important thing. Since 1d6 months is all it takes for you to become a rune items pet, anything you have had for 6 months is yours definitely, and anything lesser would be a case by case thing.

Reagren Wright wrote:I've always said the item must have personal value to you. There has to be some kind of significant meaning. If you came into my house and touched a pencil (maybe I used it
to write something important) but mostly since I could really care less about that pencil, you get no reading from the item. However, you touch my cell phone, you get a head
full of information without even having to figure out the password (all sorts of GM goodies). The hairbrush could have lots of info on it that belongs to a woman (one she always
uses and has own for years) while the tooth brush in the medicine cabinet of the male villain gives you nothing because it means nothing to him. The door knob to mage's home
has great significance to him because he's live there for years, always locks his door, considers his home his sanctuary, and the door is the barrier that keeps the outside world
away. The door knob of the apartment to a thief means nothing to him because he just uses the room to sleep but doesn't care one bit about the place. I've tried to use the
Dead Zone TV show with Anthony Michael Hall as my guide. His power didn't go off with everything he touched that belong to a person only particular items worked or trigger a
link to some kind of event.

Importance of the item to me comes down to how much they use it but also anything that is disposable is never going to be yours. If it is a pen that is refillable than it's yours at least by the time you refill it the first time but a grenade, you can carry that round for years and it will never be important enough to leave an imprint.

Reagren Wright wrote:I've always said the item must have personal value to you. There has to be some kind of significant meaning. If you came into my house and touched a pencil (maybe I used it
to write something important) but mostly since I could really care less about that pencil, you get no reading from the item. However, you touch my cell phone, you get a head
full of information without even having to figure out the password (all sorts of GM goodies). The hairbrush could have lots of info on it that belongs to a woman (one she always
uses and has own for years) while the tooth brush in the medicine cabinet of the male villain gives you nothing because it means nothing to him. The door knob to mage's home
has great significance to him because he's live there for years, always locks his door, considers his home his sanctuary, and the door is the barrier that keeps the outside world
away. The door knob of the apartment to a thief means nothing to him because he just uses the room to sleep but doesn't care one bit about the place. I've tried to use the
Dead Zone TV show with Anthony Michael Hall as my guide. His power didn't go off with everything he touched that belong to a person only particular items worked or trigger a
link to some kind of event.

This.

Though I disagree that "zero significance" is any barrier to "ownership" or a lingering psychic presence. Strong psychic events in the presence of an item should leave a lasting impression.

Even insignificant items, if worn, carried, or kept near a person, should pick up that person's imprint. I don't care about my socks, but if I'm wearing them when I propose marriage, they'll pick up a HUGE psychic echo of that event.

"Yes, I'm getting something..." the grizzled old psychic says. "This jock strap was almost new, the tag sewn in by Maria. A new widow, her husband died of brain cancer. She doesn't know how she will support her children, Joseph and Penelope." The old woman drew in a breath. "The man who owned this, Ben, wore it only once, after his vasectomy. He was very sore."

ITWastrel wrote:Even insignificant items, if worn, carried, or kept near a person, should pick up that person's imprint. I don't care about my socks, but if I'm wearing them when I propose marriage, they'll pick up a HUGE psychic echo of that event.

Sounds reasonable to me.

I'm not sure if anyone else here reads the Taltos novels by Brust, but I use a bit of how that author handled being able to track people with some sort of mystic art. The main character could do things like that, but was also (for most of the books) an assassin. He would change weapons every few days (trade them out through used weapon shops in a big city for things the same general shape) so that he could leave a weapon behind at the scene of an assassination without worrying about being tracked through it. So, limiting the time it is on you helps with objects even going through some event with sudden stress, but if anyone gets a lock of your hair, they can find you anytime.

I don't subscribe to the "you must have emotional attachment for it to count for object reading", because that's not how psychometry is generally held to work. Yes, emotional resonance will speed the process, but people resonate emotionally all the time. You may not be thinking about your underwear, and it may not hold a lot of emotion for you... but if you're wearing them when you learn of the death of a beloved parent, they're going to pick up elements of your aura because of the emotional distress of that moment. You may not have great feeling for the grenade, but if you make sure it's there every time you suit up, it's going to pick up resonance.