And For My Next Trick...

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

An other trick you can do with a magic hat (though it may be too cartoony for you): Summon living snowman, Lockout (can't use the hat for anything else without de-animating the snowman).

 

Flashes vs. Sight are always useful.

[Dust Raven]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

Sounds a bit like Mumbo-Jumbo from the Teen Titans TV show. There was also a lady magician who helps Batman in one JLU episode - the one where Wonder Woman becomes Wonder Pig - but I don't know the character's name.

 

Mumbo-Jumbo is an example of what Encantra is NOT going to be like I believe. He's a bit too cartoony. The one you mention occasionally helping out Batman and WonderWoman is more like it though (and I can't remember her name either, damn!).

 

I liked your list of power ideas, though to be honest most of them are already on her "want" list.

[Dust Raven]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

"No doubt about it' date=' Fred -- I gotta get another [i']hat[/i]!"

 

Which brings up the possibility that the character can secret the most unexpected items away in her costume in a manner that far exceeds the capabilities of even an 18- Concealment skill. Sometimes it might make sense: "Hey, where did those keys come from?" "Hey, where did that lockpick come from?" "Hey, where did that pistol come from?" And sometimes it might defy the bounds of logic: "Hey, where did that sub-machinegun come from?" "Hey, where did that Buick come from?"

 

Hiding an item so big that you can't possibly carry it on your person, like the Buick mentioned above, is another neat trick. By using a variant on the "making an elephant disappear" trick, the character can seed the scene with useful items that only she has any idea are there. Effectively, they become Invisible until she reveals them (usually just before using them). A good enough magician can conceal the most improbable things, like brick walls (nothing beats tricking a bunch of goons into running full-speed into a wall they can't see) and Burmese Tiger Traps (if you're really nasty the trap can come pre-equipped with its very own Burmese Tiger!).

 

For the most part, I think tricks like this are easily covered by the use of her cloak, which already makes this dissappear and reappear.

[Trystan Laryssa]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

That would most likely be Zatanna that you all are thinking of... and Encantra IS a little different from her in that initially I didn't see her as actually using "real magic". What she has, in concept, is a magic box filled with lots and lots of stage props that work as much more than stage props, possibly with some "ancient Hindu mystic abilities" and such, and she herself has (as she will later discover when XP allows her to buy off some of her focus and charges limitations) mild to moderate telekinetic ability that she gained kinda Spiderman-like when she picked the lock on the box and got jabbed with a needle-trap. (One of those little things meant to attune the finder with the box's contents...)

 

So what I am looking for primarily are the "magic tricks" that require some little gadget or tool... linking rings, cloaks, hats, playing cards, and the like are already among some of the box's contents. I already see a lot of ideas I like, by the way... thanks so much!

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

Mumbo-Jumbo is an example of what Encantra is NOT going to be like I believe. He's a bit too cartoony. The one you mention occasionally helping out Batman and WonderWoman is more like it though (and I can't remember her name either, damn!).

Thet would be Zatanna, who in the mainline DC Universe was a sorcerer's daughter and second-generation superhero who posed as a stage magician. One of her schticks was that to cast a spell she had to recite it backwards, otherwise it wouldn't work.

 

One of my favorite characters in this vein cxomes from anime (which is probably not surprising). Kaitou Saint Tail was a young girl whose father was a stage magican and whose mother was a retired cat-burglar. She used stage-magic-like powers to take away items that had been wrongfully (thought not neccesarilu illegally) appropriated and return them to teir rightful owners. Aside from the capers, the really nice part was the cat-and-mouse game she played with the "junior detective" who obsessively pursued her -- and didn't know she went to school with him every day and was his constant verbal sparring partner. Can you say "in denial"? I knew you could....

[Dust Raven]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

Thet would be Zatanna' date=' who in the mainline DC Universe was a sorcerer's daughter and second-generation superhero who posed as a stage magician. One of her schticks was that to cast a spell she had to recite it [i']backwards[/i], otherwise it wouldn't work.

 

One of my favorite characters in this vein cxomes from anime (which is probably not surprising). Kaitou Saint Tail was a young girl whose father was a stage magican and whose mother was a retired cat-burglar. She used stage-magic-like powers to take away items that had been wrongfully (thought not neccesarilu illegally) appropriated and return them to teir rightful owners. Aside from the capers, the really nice part was the cat-and-mouse game she played with the "junior detective" who obsessively pursued her -- and didn't know she went to school with him every day and was his constant verbal sparring partner. Can you say "in denial"? I knew you could....

 

And the name of that anime would be...?

 

Okay, so you got me interested. Besides, if you couldn't tell, I'm a bit of an anime fanatic myself.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: And For My Next Trick...

 

And the name of that anime would be...?

 

Okay, so you got me interested. Besides, if you couldn't tell, I'm a bit of an anime fanatic myself.

It's called, appropriately enough, Saint Tail. (The full Japanese title is Kaitou Saint Tail.) It was released on DVD in the US, but wasn't all that successful comparatively and the earlier volumes are hard to find. I suggest Amazon.com.

 

Saint Tail has some interesting dyanmics around the character. She is given her "jobs" by her best friend Seira, a novice nun (most of the cast attends a Catholic middle scholl with a teaching staff composed entirely of nuns) whom people are ontinually coming to with their problems. Seira has an uncany ability to know all sorts of things, and people never lie to her. She has an equally uncanny way of manipulating Saint Tail, who frequently doesn't want to go out and steal.

 

The duel between Saint Tail/Meimi and Asuka Jr., her classmate and the son of the detective who pursued her mother, is also quite engrossing. For Saint Tail, going out on a job is like going out on a date with Asuka, who she likes but will not admit to it, and she encourages the pursuit by sending him a notice of each upcoming heist -- sometimes in the most aamzing ways.

 

By the way, you will definitely want to see the finale, a four-episode storyarc which I refer to as "Sins of the Mother". It's dyanmite.

 

NOTE: Kaitou is Japanese term that roughly translates to "Mysterious Thief". There are iunnermable Kaitous in anime and manga, from CLAMP's juvenile heartbreaker Kiatou Twnety Faces (who in addition to his appearance in Man of Many Faces is one of the heroes of CLAMP School Detectives) to Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne (a demon fighter who is the reincarnated Joan of Arc) to Conan Edogawa's enemy The Kaitou Kid.