Magical water painting pens are a fun and creative tool for both children and adults. These pens work by using water as a medium instead of traditional paint. The pens are designed with a special brush tip that allows users to easily control the flow of water and create beautiful, vibrant paintings. One of the main advantages of magical water painting pens is that they are mess-free. Unlike traditional painting, there is no need for paintbrushes, palettes, or messy paint mixing. All you need is water and the magical pens to start creating your masterpiece.

Forms of magical forensics, magical investigation and code-breaking using magic

\$\begingroup\$ Do you have any idea what you party composition would be in terms of classes or levels? Furthermore, are you allowing all 3.5e material? I suspect that I single reasonably leveled caster would destroy your mystery. \$\endgroup\$

\$\begingroup\$ @J.Mini ' I suspect that I single reasonably leveled caster would destroy your mystery.' Go ahead that's exactly the kind of responses I was hoping to elicit. Also Ranger, Paladin, Bard and Artificer cohort. \$\endgroup\$

\$\begingroup\$ There's quite a few psionic options as well, including a few that would allow a character to watch as they encode the message in the first place. \$\endgroup\$

\$\begingroup\$ Was the coded message written by hand by the sender? Will the PCs have the original coded message or will they receive a copy? Or are both of these pieces of information the kind of thing that the PCs are supposed to discover on their own? \$\endgroup\$

\$\begingroup\$ @HeyICanChan They will discover on their own, however for our purposes it is the original coded message and it is written by hand. \$\endgroup\$

All you need is water and the magical pens to start creating your masterpiece. This makes it a perfect activity for young children who may not be able to handle paint and brushes without making a mess. Another benefit of these pens is that they are highly portable.

2 Answers 2

Psychometry, Object Reading, Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions, and Destiny's Trail.

Psychometry: see who was in an area last, and what they did. This power is sequential, meaning it shows who last was there, and then the person or people before them, but disregards temporal distance. However, you might be hard pressed to find a location or area where the last person in the area was your desired target. Works better in secret rooms and other closed off locations.

Object Reading: this only works if the object ever had an actual owner. Also, one would only learn about the owner, not the object. However, the information revealed by this could not only help pinpoint the time period, but also provide targeted information for other forms of divination.

Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions: limited to 100 years x manifester levels, and events which would have left a strong emotional impression. which may or may not apply to a specific person.

Destiny's Trail: learn about everyone involved with a specific event that you can describe when you are at the location in question, regardless of temporal distance. With this one, you could directly target the person who last held the cipher. Then reiterated manifestations could even track that person around town, through handoffs, and eventually back to the person who wrote it. though it may take a long while. Another great power for digging out data useful for subsequent divisions. Combined with a Locate Object effect and they could eventually find the code book to decipher it.

However, in time critical situations or mysteries, some of these options are not tenable.

Has anyone ever considered how magical forensics might work in uncovering crimes that use magic? (1 Viewer)

I am designing a scenario where a demon hunting wizard is trying to thwart a ring of demonic cultists from summoning demons to take over a magical city. Has anyone ever considered how magical forensics might work in uncovering crimes that use magic? Please let me know your ideas.

MoonHunter

Game Guru-Thread Shepherd

Okay - Lord Darcy Series is just what you want to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Darcy_(character)
This is a magical police procedural.

Or you can read things more current, Dresden gives you a lot of what you want.
He starts serious with the investigation of a magical nature. He is written in the Noir/ Detective novel style.

Oh and the Diana Tregarde series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey_bibliography#Diana_Tregarde
Tregarde does investigations with more of a supernatural/ urban fantasy approach. There is less official police aspect to these investigations. This series has set the bar and created the format for urban fantasy investigations.

Dagor

Validated User

Well, one of the most basic ideas is that active use of magic and its aftereffects could be detectable by wizards and possibly others. "Somebody's working on a summoning ritual a few hundred yards down this alley right now!" would certainly be useful information to have right there.

Then we get into "proper" information-gathering magics and the countermeasures to them. A magical scrying device could depending on what its actual use limits are potentially give somebody considerable surveillance capabilities. except, of course, that in a high-magic culture at least the rich and powerful will probably have their homes and at least parts of their business places as warded as possible against just such scrying to keep spies and random magical peeping toms out. If there's a magical way to see straight-up into the past, then unless there are also reasonably common defenses against that detective work just became a lot easier simply because you can potentially see for yourself what actually happened instead of having to deduce it from leftover facts still in evidence.

Marquez Horne

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Feature's Darcy as Chief Investigator to the Duke of Normandy and his assistant Forensic Sorcerer MasterSean O'Louchlan. Most other investigators are homages to popular spies or detectives of fiction, including Peter Wimsey, Hercule Perot, Nero Wolfe and James Bond,

MoonHunter

Game Guru-Thread Shepherd

The big things you need to determine:

In your game system world - How do we detect/ locate/ sense magic? This determines if people can be found working magic. It will also determine if there is counter/ hiding magic spells. Related to this: Is there an analyze spell, allowing for the "fingerprinting" of magical energies? Thus you might not know who spelled, but you will be able to recognize their work if you encounter it again.

If you don't have that ability, there is limited investigation abilities for the magic use.

Does your game have Counter Magic? Can you dispel what they are doing, after the fact or only when they are casting. Thus it determines if you can stop the spell or you have to stop the caster.

Scrying only works if you know what you are looking for or where to look. If scrying exists, counter spells to stop scrying exists. (If you are smart, you look for the areas that you can't see. then go there.)

Jason Brennan

Validated User

The Guernicus chapter of Houses of Hermes: True Lineages for Ars Magica 5E goes into some detail on the topic of magical forensics. Basically, however, the idea involves using magic to detect traces of the magus' casting sigil (effects common to all of a magus' spells while also being unique to that magus). This strategy can, of course, be countered by using other spells to accelerate the degradation of the caster's sigil or to leave a false sigil in it's place which can themselves be countered by spells to detect older, less powerful, traces of magic to discern their sigils.

Sinmaan

Validated User

I work in law inforcement (forensics).

So, its one thing to KNOW something is true and its another to prove the same thing in a court of law.

Therefore, magical forensics would greatly help personal investigation but would not have any hold to get those criminals behind bars.

There is a saying in law inforcement: "the main show is the trial of the investigation. The review of the evidence comes next, sometimes never".

The Scribbler

A Flash of Hope

The Thieftaker series is basically hardboiled urban fantasy set in Pre-Recolution Boston, and the main character dies a bit of what you're talking about (being the guy hired by private individuals to reclaim their stolen goods, which sometimes means him stumbling into bigger issues with other conjurors). When he detects magic he can note the color of any conjurings that are fresh in the area and each conjuror's magic has a unique color and shade to it with that sight, and he can learn a good deal by the impressions/patterns it leaves or where it was focused.

The Bekka Cooper/Provost's Dog series is well done YA fiction about a member of the Provost's Guard (aka Dogs), who are charged with keeping the King's Peace and enforcing laws/bringing in lawbreakers. There are mages or people who use magic to do ill, and the guard keeps mages on the payroll to deal with them as threats or puzzle out uses of magic in crimes (though it seems like they're rarely as helpful as the main characters would like them to be).

The main character herself has some minor inherited magic gifts, by which I mean she has two specific supernatural abilities; pigeons (the messengers of the Black God) carrying the voices of restless dead seek her out sometimes so she might quiet them, and "dust spinners" (little eddies or large vortexes of wind in cities) collect snippets of speech that they carry like weights and dump onto her if she approaches them right. She uses both in aid of her investigations, but neither are exactly a science or fit a methodology. more like sources. Her hound partner's nose (as of the second book) is often far more directly useful, especially when it comes to that whole "knowing a thing versus proving it" issue.

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Reviews for "Dive into the World of Water Painting with these Magical Pens"

1. John - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with these magical water painting pens. The colors were very faint and did not show up well on the paper. I even tried using different levels of water, but it did not make a difference. Additionally, the pens started leaking after a couple of uses, making a mess and ruining my artwork. Overall, I would not recommend these pens if you're looking for vibrant and long-lasting colors.

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Magic in Every Stroke: The Power of Water Painting Pens