[StevenH]

Awesome. Lots of cool stuff to think about. I have a few notes (I am mainly thinking in terms of the world I am using, although they may be general as well).



And I will probably have to do this kind of analysis for all of the "cheap" magic items, as a good worldbuilder should. :-)

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Hair Growth is one of those GURPS 3E spells that got ported over to 4E with very little revision. Critics of the GURPS 3E Magic system pointed out this exploit but it wasn't fixed.

Since the spell is essentially a "color" spell with few fully-described game mechanical effects it gets overlooked by both players and GMs. It's fast and cheap to cast, and, as you pointed out, magic items based on the spell are very cheap to enchant. The prerequisite chain isn't bad either.

Game mechanical effects, with an indulgent GM (Not RAW):

a) Blind, distract, or trip foes (mentioned in RAW, but no game mechanics).

b) Make it difficult or impossible to wear certain types of clothing or tight-fitting equipment (e.g., grow out a foe's beard to break the seal on his gas mask).

The spell is resisted by a HT roll. but still could be useful. Also, being a Regular spell, there is a distance penalty for casting. The item really isn’t useful here, as it takes an hour to start to affect the subject.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

c) Make friends by curing baldness or bad haircuts.

Well, yeah; this is basically the point of the spell, or the item. Basically, take them to the barber or salon, where they will likely have a Hair Hat to use. Then take 2 hours of your time to sit with the hat on your head, wait for the hair to stop growing, and then get it cut. Making a bad haircut shorter will take less time and not require the Hair Hat.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

d) Make enemies by turning people into Jo Jo the Dog-Faced Boy.

Not really a problem; the hair is no more permanent than “regular” hair. It can be trimmed as required, and unless the Hair Hat is cursed and can’t be taken off, it’s not a problem.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

e) Good as a potential disguise. (If the bad guys are looking for a bald, clean-shaven man then they might not suspect someone who looks like a hippie.)

True. And a good idea. Especially if many barbershops and salons have one, and they would.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

f) Mend torn fingernails.

Good idea, and salons will likely have one. Note that it’s not a quick fix; there is a one hour delay before the item starts working, and a one hour period of time where there is hair and nail growth. So there will then be some time required to trim the hair and nails. The Haircut spell requires a mage to cast, and there aren’t very many of those.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

g) Possibly mess with opponents' ability to wear gloves or similar items or to grasp items when their nails grow out to the length of a Chinese emperor's.

The spell could do this, but the item has a one hour delay, so it’s not useful in this way.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

h) Torture foes by growing their hair and fingernails out and then tear them out at the roots. Repeat as desired.

Yep. But the wearer gets a resistance roll, which could help for a while until they fail one.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

i) Make heaps of money in the wig, rope, or wool trades.

Not really. These items are common, and thus the disruption to the economy happened long ago, and the economy has adjusted to this new normal. Wigs, rope, and woolen items are less expensive, since the material costs are very low. The effort to create those items haven’t gotten any easier, labor costs and manufacturing time are unchanged.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Economic benefits if cast on a human:

a) Instant recovery of hair loss.

Per the spell description, this will last a month before the hairs all fall out again.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

b) Hair for wigs becomes incredibly cheap. (People with naturally great hair, or hair of unusual color, might make a living being hair donors.)

Yes.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

c) Human hair actually makes very good rope. There are stories of women in besieged towns donating their hair to make skeins for ballistas or catapults. As you point out, a 480' single strand of hair is far longer than any plant-based material which potentially makes it even more valuable.

Yes. Human hair was used for the torsion springs in catapults.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

If the GM allows the spell to be cast on animals it becomes utterly ridiculous.

There is no reason that it wouldn’t work on animals, assuming you can get the Hair Hat to fit on them. The spell works on them just fine (albeit with a resistance roll).

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

In combat, growing out an opponent's horse's hair might make it fall or panic.

Good idea; and the horse may have a lower HT than the rider, making it a more likely target.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Forget sheep you can shear every 8 seconds (with a combination of Hair Growth and Haircut). Instead, make real money by using the spell on angora goats or rabbits, beavers (high quality felt for hats), vicuna, eider ducks, or critters whose hair or feathers are valuable magical ingredients.

All good ideas. But again, the money made will be low, because the economy has adjusted. All of those resources are very inexpensive, but the labor to turn them into useful things has remained the same. The CF for “luxury” materials has decreased.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

If the GM rules that the spell affects any part of a living being which is made from keratin, raise unicorns or rhinos for their horns, pangolins (or dragons!) for their scales, or silkworms for their cocoons. Grow out silkworm cocoon silk by a factor of 1 million and you've got the world's longest fiber. Grow spider silk from spider egg sacs into long fibers suitable for making very tough, light garments which are potentially bulletproof.

Silk (silkworm or spider) isn’t just keratin, so if this were to become a thing, it would be a spell/enchantment variant. So silk prices will remain “normal”. Pangolin scales might be useful. Makes a heavy DR 3 armor though; people would be better just wearing heavy gambeson. Harvesting critters for alchemy/enchantment components will be a thing, though.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Depending on the campaign, the GM might embrace some or all of these ideas with the understanding that wool, silk, and other natural fibers are now dirt cheap. (Add the M&B college spells Clean and Reshape to quickly process and weave raw fiber into cloth. Add a permanent variant of Dye to quickly dye lots of fabric.)

Reshape doesn’t work that way. There isn’t any standard spell that will weave fibers into cloth. Shape Plant won’t do it either. Even Shape Earth (for asbestos fibers) won’t spin them into thread or weave those threads into cloth. Clean will be used, though, and a Clean Item is pretty cheap to make, too. So a fiber comb enchanted with Clean would be a very common item owned by people who produce these cheap fibers.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Sure, the first Body Control mage to think of using Hair Growth on a captive phoenix in order to harvest bales of magical fireproof feathers will make serious bank, but after a while phoenix feather suits will just become the magic version of Nomex fabric - still useful but not unreasonably expensive.

True. See the notes above about the “adjusted economy”.