Define a Talisman

A talisman carries abilities on an item: it inscribes a few abilities, you fill the carrier's own store of aura, and it casts them for you. The definition only says what is inscribed, how much fits and what one invocation costs; whether it fires the moment it is full or waits for you to act is a property of the carrier (on the item stack), not of the definition.

Inscribing by hand has no entry point yet

The brush mxt:talisman_brush now only carries its own pigment store (dipping, see Generic Items); "hold the brush and write the ability onto it" is still not wired up — writing a talisman means tracing a formula in the drawing workstation (see Write a Drawing Recipe), or writing the item directly: /talisman give …, item component syntax (the components of /give), and the single-inscription item the creative picker builds.

So this tutorial covers the chain that genuinely runs today: define → hand out → pour → fire (step 3 is exactly the "hand it to a player" routes); the manual, traced path belongs to Write a Drawing Recipe, and the field table is still in talisman_drawing.

What You Are Building

File	Purpose
data/example/mxt/aura/qi.json	(existing) A talisman's capacity and aura costs can only reference a concrete aura definition.
data/example/mxt/ability/spark.json	The ability to be inscribed: it runs its own action fields when fired.
data/example/mxt/talisman/flame_sigil.json	The talisman definition: what it inscribes, how many invocations it holds, what one invocation takes.

Step 1 — An Ability a Talisman Can Carry

// data/example/mxt/ability/spark.json
{
  "type": "mxt:active",
  "cooldown": 60,
  "entity_action": {
    "type": "mxt:apply_effect",
    "effect": "minecraft:fire_resistance",
    "duration_ticks": 120
  }
}

The four action fields are written at the ability's own top level (see Ability Types · The Four Action Fields), so "what happens when it fires" is written on example:spark itself — one ability is enough, with no second mxt:interval to split out. The "effect": "minecraft:fire_resistance" above is a parameter of the mxt:apply_effect action (the status effect it applies) and has nothing to do with the withdrawn ability-reference effect.

Only abilities that take effect at once can be carried. An ability with a cast time (cast_time > 0) or one that is channelled (mxt:channelled) is refused, because finishing a cast or a channel walks the list of abilities the actor holds, and a carrier never grants anything. A refusal costs neither the carrier nor the stored aura, so you can swap the talisman or the ability and try again.

Step 2 — The Talisman Definition

// data/example/mxt/talisman/flame_sigil.json
{
  "abilities": ["example:spark"],
  "capacity": 5,
  "costs": [{"type": "mxt:aura", "aura": "example:qi", "amount": 12}],
  "durability": 5,
  "consume": 1
}

Field	Type	Default	Effect
abilities	HolderOrTag<ability>[]	[]	The abilities it inscribes: one id, an array, or #tags, exactly as in technique.granted_abilities.
capacity	double	1	The pour capacity multiplier (at least 1): the capacity is one invocation's aura entries times it, which is roughly "how many times this carrier can fire in a row". The multiplier that applies is then capped by what the carrier has left (worked out from its wear: none means one, and wear means at least one).
durability	int	0	How much wear it gives the carrier, summed over everything written onto one carrier; 0 or omitted means no wear account and the carrier is still burned one per use.
consume	int	1	How much wear one invocation takes off (at least 1); it only means anything with a durability above zero.
condition	Entity condition	mxt:always	Whether this holder may use the talisman right now, unrelated to its price; tested against the holder and asked before costs, and when it fails the invocation is refused with nothing moved.
costs	Cost[]	[]	What one invocation takes: an mxt:aura entry comes out of the carrier's own store, every other entry from the holder; a price that cannot be paid refuses the invocation.

Three semantics worth keeping:

• The multiplier only means anything with wear. A carrier with no durability is burned whole on its first invocation, so it counts as one and a larger multiplier changes nothing — write durability / consume alongside it to fire several times.
• The aura entries are evaluated in an empty formula context, because the client has to compute the same number to draw the pose. Anything that only has a value when somebody holds the item — "realm_rank * 4" — therefore resolves to 0 and is treated as not counted; a carrier left with no aura entry at all is a free talisman.
• Capacity and per-invocation amount are two fields. The multiplier is how many invocations the carrier holds (reaching it is what "full" means) and the aura entries of costs are what one invocation takes. The example's 12 x 5 means one full pour fires five times; for "exactly one shot at a time", leave the multiplier out (it defaults to 1). Write durability / consume to make it last (see "Durability" in step 4), costs to gate it by price and condition to gate it by anything else (a realm, the weather, what is in hand), and quality for a tier — all four are described in full under the talisman definition.

Step 3 — Handing the Talisman to a Player

/talisman blank                                 one blank carrier
/talisman give example:flame_sigil              one inscribed, uncharged carrier
/talisman give example:flame_sigil count 3      three of them
/talisman give example:flame_sigil charged      one, already filled — the next click fires it
/talisman give example:flame_sigil stored       inscribed in store mode (accumulate, act yourself)

The whole /talisman subtree needs gamemaster permission; the top-level alias is controlled by Server Config → Command Aliases → /talisman (on by default), and /mxt talisman stays complete when it is off. charged and stored cannot be combined, and charged may only follow count.

Item component syntax does the same thing — what a carrier stores is a list of concrete entries plus a mode:

give @s mxt:talisman[mxt:talisman={talisman:"example:flame_sigil",mode:"fire"}]

mode defaults to "fire", and an empty list is a brand-new blank carrier. Pouring progress lives in mxt:spirit_storage (the same component spirit stones use).

Step 4 — Pouring and Firing

Pouring: hold the carrier and hold right-click (the same gesture spirit stones use: a BLOCK pose, a chime every 4 ticks, "stored / capacity" on the action bar). Each tick pours 1 unit and charges 1 point of your own aura, so a per-invocation amount of 12 takes 12 ticks of holding and a capacity of 60 takes 60; one gesture lasts at most 200 ticks. Pouring consumes no items — only firing takes a carrier (or its wear, where the talisman declares a durability) — while the aura is paid as you pour, one for one.

Firing is decided by the carrier's mode, and in either case it needs enough stored aura to cover one invocation's aura entries (below that, a right-click becomes a pour):

Mode	Behaviour
fire (default)	Fires automatically the moment it is full.
store	Only accumulates; right-click fires it.

Sneak + right-click toggles the mode (with an action-bar line, and the tooltip always shows the current mode). One special case: a store talisman that is already full does not toggle on a sneak-use — it fires and consumes the talisman (stored aura is there to be spent).

When it fires, each inscribed ability goes through the ordinary ability use path: its own conditions, cooldown, charges and costs all apply, and the only thing replaced is "you have been granted this ability" — the talisman itself is the source of the grant. So carrying one lets you cast magic you never learned, but a talisman is not a back door around those gates. Only when at least one ability really fires is that invocation's aura taken (and the carrier consumed or its wear taken); if every one is refused, the carrier and its aura survive. When the capacity holds several invocations, only the one is taken and the rest stays for the next shot.

Firing from the hand has a cooldown, controlled by Server Config → Talisman → Use Cooldown (ticks, 0..72000, 20 by default) rather than by the datapack; lower it or set it to 0 to click several times in a row. Its boundaries are worth knowing:

• One "attempt" starts the cooldown: an ability refused for its own cooldown or for an unaffordable cost still counts, because that click really was an attempt.
• A blank carrier and one short of a single invocation do not count as attempts and cost no cooldown — those cases only tell the player something and can be retried at once.
• Since every carrier is the same item mxt:talisman, the cooldown is recorded per player, per item: your other talismans cannot be used inside the same window either.

Step 5 — The Display Stand: Firing Without Holding

Put a carrier on a display stand (right-click the block while holding it — placing does not fire it), then charge it with a spirit burst (default V): the moment it is full it fires where it stands.

The stand path follows different rules from the hand:

	In hand	On a stand
Use cooldown	Read and recorded	Ignored entirely, not recorded
Carrier consumed	One, not in creative mode	Always, whoever filled it and whatever their game mode
Actor	The holder	Whoever filled it (they pay, are recorded and answer for the abilities)
Position	The actor	The display stand's centre

A talisman that declares a durability turns both paths into wear instead (the cap lands in the vanilla components — minecraft:max_damage with minecraft:max_stack_size: 1 and minecraft:damage: 0, which is what gives the carrier its bar and keeps vanilla repair working, plus the mxt:durability / mxt:damage_item building blocks): each invocation takes consume off, and the invocation that reaches or passes the cap destroys the carrier (that invocation's aura is still taken; only what it did not spend goes back to the actor at the pour's own price). The numbers are summed over everything written onto one carrier — a 10-point entry costing 1 and a 5-point entry costing 1 written together make 15 points costing 2 — and an entry declaring no durability rides along without paying. The framework writes the cap when it hands a carrier over (/talisman give, which then hands out single carriers because a worn carrier cannot be stacked), a carrier a pack builds itself gets it on its first invocation, and a max_damage the pack wrote onto the stack wins over the summed definitions — though it only moves the number, so whether anything is spent at all is still up to the definitions. The creative exception still holds (no wear in hand, always wear on a stand).

The position enters the formula context as block_x/block_y/block_z and is handed to position-driven behaviours as this invocation's origin (spawn_projectile, spawn_particles, explode, the centre of an mxt:area box…); projectiles still travel along the actor's facing — the position is where it comes from, the facing is who is aiming. Aura put into a stand cannot be taken back (extracting from it is a no-op); to recover the item, right-click it empty-handed or break the block.

Verify

Datapack registries are read while the world loads, so reopen the world first, then:

/mxt registries validate
/talisman give example:flame_sigil charged

1. validate reports no codec errors.
2. A "Talisman" appears in your hand: the tooltip shows the current mode and the inscription, and the charged one also says there is enough aura to fire.
3. Right-click it: one example:spark goes off (120 ticks of fire resistance), the carrier loses one point of wear, and that invocation's aura is taken out of the storage component (the example holds 5 x 12 = 60 and takes 12, so four shots are left).
4. Ask for another one without charged and hold right-click to pour: the action bar shows stored / capacity, a chime plays every 4 ticks, and 60 ticks later it fires on its own (the example holds 5 x 12 = 60 and takes 12 a shot).
5. Try stored: filling it only reports that it is stored, and a later right-click fires it; sneak-right-click toggles between the two modes.
6. Try the cooldown: click through two talismans in a row and the second reports the cooldown, and holding right-click inside the window does not pour aura either.
7. Try a display stand: place one, put the talisman in (no firing), then aim at it with V and charge it — it fires where it stands.

Common Mistakes

Symptom	Cause
Right-clicking only reports that nothing is inscribed	The carrier is blank (that is what /talisman blank gives); such a click is not an attempt and costs no cooldown.
Right-click says there is not enough aura	The store cannot cover one invocation's aura entries; hold right-click to pour, or use /talisman give … charged.
Right-click says the invocation condition is not met	The inscribed definition's condition does not hold for this holder (the realm is too low, the weather is wrong, and so on). It is asked before costs, so nothing was paid; the same talisman fires as usual once the condition holds.
The ability is reported as disabled	The ability definition that was inscribed is not in the current pack (its file was deleted, or a neoforge:conditions block keeps it out); a talisman does not bypass that.
The element affinity is reported as a mismatch	The ability's element_affinity does not match the caster's spirit roots — a talisman does not bypass that either.
It says the ability needs a cast or a channel	An ability with cast_time > 0 or mxt:channelled cannot be carried.
Pouring never finishes / nothing happens	An aura entry in costs resolves to 0 in the empty context (a realm_rank formula, say) and takes no part in the pour; or you simply do not have enough aura (reported as such).
The component syntax is refused	talisman takes a concrete id only; only abilities accepts #tags.
It fired but the aura is gone	That invocation's share was taken; when the capacity only covers one shot the component empties with it, and when it covers several the rest stays.
It only fires a couple of times before running dry	No capacity was written (it defaults to one invocation), or the carrier has no wear, which counts as one invocation. Write a bigger multiplier and pair it with durability / consume to fire several times from one pour.

Next

• talisman — the full field list and every pouring/firing rule.
• Items — how talismans, brushes and stands behave in game.
• item_aura — the storage shared with spirit stones.
• Define an Ability — writing the abilities that get inscribed.
• Write a Drawing Recipe — write a formula for the drawing workstation: the shape, what completion decides, and where paper and pigment come from.