Why can't they?Hedge magic is a 5 dot merit from ExvsWoD book that can be bought to get Emanation access to mortal Path magic.
For the same reason Vampires cant buy Brigid's Heir and start casting Ancient Sorcery.
And why Garou dont awaken their Avatars and start casting Mage rotes.
Its a construct.
It doesnt, shouldnt qualify for mortal-only or Exalt-only merits.
Any more than it gets access to Vampire-only or Werewolf-only Merits.
This has been discussed with @DragonParadox. Yes, you can. In fact, you can do everything with an Emanation you could normally do with a PC, because you can have a PC Emanation. Moreover, you can stack the sh*t out of this - make a prodigy, and use it as a keystone for an emanation, then gift them said prodigy, and some splendors, and use them as keystones for new emanations, etc.
I did not see that discussion. I would request a citation before I can comment on it.
It would make no sense, since constructs, whether PCs or not, cant attune most Wonders or Fetishes either.
Its certainly not in the Crafting rules as written; the rules are very clear:
Splendor Ownership
A Splendor always has an owner. This individual need not be an Exalt: anyone can own a
Splendor. There's no limit to the number of Splendors a single individual might own.
When a Splendor comes into being, its creator automatically gains ownership of it. From that
point, there are only two means by which ownership can be transferred. The Splendor may either
be intentionally given to someone else, an act requiring conscious and deliberate choice and the
expenditure of one point of Willpower; or else the Splendor may be taken. This requires the
murder of its current owner. Ownership of the Splendor automatically transfers to whoever was
most directly responsible for its former owner's death.
If the owner of a Splendor dies by natural causes, by their own hand, or by accident or mishap
that is the fault of no one but themselves, then they pass into the underworld as a wraith and
continue to own any Splendors they possess there.
The Neverborn Malfeans have collected a tiny handful of Splendors from souls fallen into
Oblivion. With the Chosen once more abroad in the world, they may stand to gain more.
Splendor Attunement
Ownership is not sufficient to wield a Splendor. First, it must be attuned. Attuning to a Splendor
requires an hour of undisturbed meditation upon it, allowing the Essence of the splendor to wash
over its owner. Next, a successful Essence roll must be made against difficulty (4 + Splendor's
rating). Attunement remains active until voluntarily relinquished.
An Exalt may be simultaneously attuned to a number of Splendors equal to her Essence rating. 4
and 5-dot Splendors "take up" 2 Essence worth of capacity, but may still be attuned by Essence 1
characters. A character can only have one Adornment attuned to her at a time, but may be
attuned to multiple Fascinations.
Un-Exalted magicians can also attune to Splendors, if they can somehow gain ownership of one.
This requires an Arete roll for mages, an Instinct or Self-Control roll for vampires and hedge
magicians, a Rituals roll for werewolves, a Gremayre roll for changelings, a P'o roll for the
Hungry Dead (beware of botching), a Faith roll for demons, and a Sekhem roll for mummies, all
made at difficulty (6 + Splendor's rating), with Splendors rated at 4 or 5 being impossible to
attune, and only one attunement at a time possible.
TLDR
Anyone can own a Splendor according to Holden's rules, but only a limited category can attune one.
An Exalt may only attune one Adornment at a time, but may attune multiple Fascinations simultaneously.
And non-Exalt magicians can only attune
one Splendor at a time of rating 3 dots or lower; 4 and 5 dots are off-limits.
Consider what happens to Splendors when the owner dies, for example.
===
I seriously have no idea why you think the guy who explicitly wrote his new Crafting system because he explicitly wanted to deny Wonders to Exalts is going to write a system where you can stack Splendors on magic constructs.
Yes, Wonders still exist in this system; Holden just wants to silo Exalts away from them by creating entirely new categories of items.
We have seen her dice pools when she had all the time to prepare for social combat, and no reason to underestimate us. Assuming she has roughly the same for combat against non-outsiders, she's rolling roughly 17 dice with -2DC adjustment. I could build a Strength 9, Dex 7, Con 9, melee 5 monster with 16 soak (soaks Agg at DC 5, soaks everything else at -3 DC), with some ridiculous weaponry and very strong resistances to any and all magic, with perfect defenses against several elements, including all of Winter's repertoire. Not quite sure about attacking power (will need to calc that out), but I am fairly sure I can come up with something fairly strong. Yes, I think I can make a thing that would take on, even mop the floor, with Mab. She'd be able to escape, obviously, but in a direct white room combat? I would at least give a specifically designed 5 dot Arcana equal odds.
If I had time to actually do it, then a 5 dot Arcana with a full panoply (i.e. 5 5 dot attuned splendors / prodigies) would abslutely wreck anything and everything we have seen so far in the story. You are strongly, strongly underestimating them.
1)No, we didnt.
We explicitly forestalled social combat by bringing up Maeve's situation.
2)Mab's social combat dice pool at our initial meeting was 20 dice, and thats not counting any save or die abilities like the UMI glamor that IPM allowed us to shut down.
And social is her dump stat.
Winter's primary role, and that of its Queen, is to defend Reality's borders. Thats what the Fae have done for ages, even back when it was other pantheons who got command, the fae were the foot soldiers. If she's able to throw 20 dice of social at us, her combat and leadership dice pools will be higher, because thats her primary role.
And thats just raw dice, not any charm-like abilities she may or may not bring to the table.
Winter doesnt really like investing effort into magic items and weapons for doctrinal reasons according to Butcher, so you can at least rest easy that she's not got a Gugnir in her armory.
3) Even an Exalt is only allowed to attune Splendors up to her Essence cap, with each 4 or 5 dot Splendor counting as 2 Essence.
The idea of loading up an Arcana with that many is mechanically impossible.
Not that it matters.
Splendors arent going to stop
Mab Seeker Arianna tearing it to pieces, looting the corpse and pissing on the remains.
These things are not supposed to be in the role you are trying to force them into.
No, they are explicitely not of the same power. Golems are what you want for combat power.
No, that cant be true. *checks* No, its not true.
Golems are stronger and more
survivable, because they get to soak damage better, and have higher base soak.
But they are still the same power tier; their tradeoffs for that brawniness includes significantly lower social, and critically,
mental attributes. Like Wits. And
Perception.
Anyone who's fought naagloshii, or fae, or svartalfar will attest to how important being able to see your enemy is.
There's literally a section called
Countering A Splendor.
The intent is repeatedly reiterated that there is supposed to be means for the rest of the setting to address this sort of thing.
Bone stains quite easily. If you had a way to conjure ink / markings there, you could tattoo it. In fact, this has been done in real life (article
talking about it, it has links to at least two scientific papers where direct examples of tattoos on bones are shown).
Dead bone stains. Living bone doesnt.
You misread your article.
It speculates that staining on historic bones is either post-mortem manipulation, or due to ink deposition during decomposition of the overlying soft tissue:
Your Article said:
There are two interesting research studies Deter-Wolf pointed me at that claimed to have found tattoo pigment on human bone in the archaeological record. In 1969, bioarchaeologist George Armelagos and colleagues published
an article in Science about their findings from ancient Nubia. Specifically, their Figure 5, which you can view at the linked article, is captioned "Tattooing on the femur of an X-group male (infrared photograph)" from a cemetery that dates to 350-550 AD. The design in question involves a diamond-and-dot pattern. And in 2010, archaeologist Natalia Shishlina and colleagues reported on
tattoos from a Bronze Age burial ground in Russia dating to around 2600 BC. Their Figure 3, which you can view at the linked article, shows parallel, zig-zag lines on a tibia from one skeleton, and Figure 4 reveals lines and dots on the right metacarpals of a second skeleton.
Shishlina and colleagues assume that "as the skin decomposed, the sooty substance that had been used to make the tattoo was transferred to the bone." Based on the way skin tattoos work, however, Deter-Wolf and other colleagues he has spoken with are "very skeptical that this process could actually occur." An alternative explanation is that both the Nubian and Russian examples are the result of a specific death ritual that involved post-mortem manipulation of the bones.
Living bone does not tattoo as far as I am aware.
I have never heard of it being possible.
Yes, we can, quite easily so. Pay someone to do this for us, never appearing on the radar of the people we need to convince to stay away.
@BronzeTongue addresses this better than I can right now.
