Cantrip Casting 101

Changelings can create a wide variety of effects with their cantrips. The open-ended nature of the cantrip system gives a great deal of flexibility in what you can do. The Art determines what effect you can create, and the Realm tells you what you can affect.

For instance, With Chicanery 2 (Veiled Eyes), a Changeling can make something or someone invisible. If he has Fae 1, he could make himself invisible (assuming he was not a noble) or any other changeling who was not a noble. With Prop 2, he could make a sword or a statue invisible. If he combined Fae 1 with Scene 1, he could make a small group of changelings invisible. If he wanted to move the sword around (waving it menacingly at some goblins), he could use the Art: Legerdemain 1 (Gimmix) with the realm Prop 2.

How to Cast Them

Pick the effect you want, and what you want to act on. This determines the Art and Realm. Your roll is determined by the levels you have in the Realm, plus the attribute that the Art is based on.

Then you perform a Bunk. Bunks are little gestures, rhymes, or similar actions which help you cast the cantrip. For example, you could pull your ear, or dance a jig, or say a cute Rhyme about the object or thing you are affecting. The bunk, if appropriate, will lower the difficulty of casting the Cantrip.

Bunks have 5 levels of effort; level one bunks are quick (tapping out “shave and a haircut”), while higher level bunks take actions (one action per level over one - for instance drawing a door on a wall). Each time you cast a cantrip, try to come up with a different bunk - using the same one over and over gets banal.

The difficulty to cast the cantrip is either the caster’s Banality +4 or the target’s banality+4, whichever is higher. Each temporary Glamour point spent can reduce the difficulty as well.

Then you determine the cost in glamour. All cantrips cost one glamour unless they are Chimerical cantrips, and they are cast on other changelings, chimera, inanimate objects or enchanted beings. Casting a cantrip without a Bunk costs a glamour point, and using a modifier realm (Scene or Time for instance) costs an additional glamour point.

Example

Wilma the Sluagh has slithered into Lord Frederick’s chambers, to look for a treasure (a golden cup) he’d confiscated from her mentor. She finds a chest which might hold the cup, so she tries to open the chest using a cantrip (it might be trapped, so she does not want to touch it). Moving the chest would require the Art Legerdemain 1 (Gimmix), and the Realm Prop 3 (it has moving parts). For a Bunk, she moves her hands like an opening chest. Legerdemain is based on Dexterity; unfortunately Wilma's Dex is only 2, but fortunately she has Prop 4 (Attribute + realm). So she has 6 dice to roll. The Chest does not have a Banality rating, so she uses her own Banality rating of 3 to determine the difficulty; since Prop is the realm that Sluagh have an affinity for, the difficlty is lowered by one (Difficulty=6). Her Bunk is appropriate, so the difficulty is lowered by one (to 6). Since the chest is a Wyrd cantrip (it has a real-world effect), she must spend a point of Glamour. She rolls her dice, and gets two successes. Unfortunately, she needed three successes to open the chest (its Heavy!).

Trying a different trick, she moves closer to the chest, and uses Primal 1 (Willow Whisper) to try to talk to the chest. The Realm is the same (Prop), but Primal uses Stamina as the base attribute. Wilma’s Stamina is 3, so she has 7 dice (3 for the Stamina, 4 for Prop). As a Bunk, she quietly whistles at the chest to "wake it up". So the difficulty is 5 (base of 7 for her banality+4, -1 for Prop affinity and -1 for the Bunk). Willow Whisper is Chimerical, and the chest is inanimate, so Wilma does not need to spend Glamour. She scores three successes, so the chest is quite happy to tell her that the Cup is not inside it, but that Lord Frederick carried it into the next room.

Slithering under the door, she sees it on the Fireplace Mantle. She also sees Lord Frederick, and his attendant Barney the Boggan. Before they notice her, she wants to use Chicanery 1 (Fuddle) to muddle their vision (to help her hide). Since there are two of them, and Lord Frederick is a noble, she must use Fae 2 (fae nobility) along with Scene 1 to affect them both. Chicanery is based on Manipulation (and Wilma has 4 Manipulation). For a Bunk, she pantomimes pulling a sheet over their heads. Since she has to act fast, she only uses a level 1 Bunk. Lord Frederick is a Grump, so his banality of 5 (which is higher than Wilma's or Barney's) is used as a difficulty (Difficulty is base 9). Because she is using a modifier Realm (scene) to affect both of them, the difficulty increases by one (to 10); her bunk lowers the difficulty to 9, and she decides to use a glamour point to lower it to 8. She must also spend a glamour point to affect both of them. She has 6 dice (4 for Manipulation plus 2 for Fae).

Does Wilma avoid detection? You decide...