You've raised a good question, and one that will truly be "answered" in the
Narrator's Guide (which by the way my wife's medical issues are finally
wrapped up and with the holidays out of the way and the new ISP and
webhosting in place I can get back to some real work on it). But tonight I
will make clear the "Golden Rule" of Serenades. In summary:

"The universe does not like to have its natural order disturbed. Using one
attention to purposely substitute for another will often result in the Aria
fighting back (raising target numbers beyond the norm) as the serenade is
being played; even without faith backing its resistance up."

So, if you used Khemia to give the door a fluid property, I would rule that
your effect level could reduce the BODY of the door in a Strength contest
for you to push through it (like going through a wall of jello). If you
used Khemia to cause the door to fall apart, you just tried to substitute
Mimicry for the attention of Destruction and therefore it should actually be
harder to use the serenade on the door.

A door easily counts as a single "target". If you tried to hit a house
you'd have to spend a little Immaculum to do an AOE (Area of Effect) to get
all the walls and the roof. (3rd Edition ruling obviously).

You do not have to touch both items, but they have to be handy, and nearby
enough to be in decent line of sight. If the target is behind you and the
recipient in front of you, the serenade will have a little difficulty. If
the marshmallow is on a table 20 yards away, it is going to count as a
rather small target and give you at least a light penalty based on
difficulty to see it among the other items on the table... And remember you
are going against both the marshmallow and the sword in order to transfer
the property (it's a multiple target serenade by design, hence the cost
factor of 5 in purchasing it).

In third Edition terms you can easily create your shirt so long as you have
the needed items/environment at hand. In first Edition terms, increase the
complexity by one additional level for each property beyond the first you
wish to copy to the recipient object.

Rick Don
Designer - Immortal 3rd Edition
rickdon@...


________________________________

From: paragons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:paragons@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of jbeckmann_1999
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 6:08 PM
To: paragons@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [immortal-l] Khemia



I'm curious about how to define the characteristic of the elements
being borrowed from one element to be placed in the other.

My example is a locked door and a glass of water. I want to take the
fluid motion of the water and apply it to the door, so the door will
just collapse and I can walk through.

If area is a concern, I would only go after the door knob to assume
that I could push open the door since the looking mechanism fell
apart.

Do I have to be able to touch both elements in order for Khemia to
work? The examples with fire seem to imply that I only need to be
'close' to make this work properly. (the power gamer in me sees
using
this serenade to make the squishyness of a marshmallow be applied to
the sword attacking me - or the low melting point of water to be
applied to a metal gun firing at me).

(since ODP is on this forum) How close of a definition of the
characteristic do I need to make?

And finally, assuming that I can get a semi-permanent effect. Can I
use the same target item for multiple effects? I want the
flexability
of a shadow for my shirt, but I also want to apply the
'anti-ripping'
nature of kevlar to make a lightweigth bullet proof shirt that's
stylish.