[DM advice] How do you deal with your enchanter?

[trooper6]

I did a thing for my Alchemist recommended on Thaumatology pg 104...maybe you could do it for your enchanter.

Basically, the player take the Gizmo advantage (max is normally 3), the player can pull out an elixir that he already made (that might be back home) or that he can afford to pay market prices for out of cash.

You could do that with your enchanter. If you enchanter has the cash to pay for the enchantment, they could use their Gizmo for the day to basically say that they have already done it.

[makke]

Originally Posted by Gnomasz

Thus, I'd make a new advantage: Quick Enchanter [50].

I myself don't like those big circles of wizards and therefore tend to allow more fp per day on the slow method. But I have to say that this Quick Gadgeteer for maigc items sounds like a much better method to justify the lone enchanter that doesn't spend ages on every single item (and it doesn't even wreck the game world! ;) ).

[Anthony]

In general, the issue with PC enchanters is the same as any other sort of PC crafting: it gives you a specialized form of income (you can craft items, then sell them), so for balance reasons you shouldn't be able to create value significantly faster than a regular job appropriate to your status and wealth level. If your PC can create a $10,000 magic item in a month, he'd better be at least Very Wealthy ($14,000 typical income at TL 3).

In general I recommend deciding how much you want magic items to cost, and what wealth level you want enchanters to be, and then it takes on the order of (item wholesale price - item material costs) / (expected enchanter income) months to create the item; wholesale price will likely be 50-75% of retail price. For fantasy (TL 3), if enchanter is a normal wealth job, figure at least 1 month per $1,000 in retail price, and if it's not a normal wealth job, the PC enchanter should normally buy an appropriate wealth level. Note that there's no particular reason you need to use the GURPS Magic rules for magic item values, I'm personally fond of something like $10 x (listed energy cost). Also note that, if you keep magic item prices constant, higher TL can craft items faster.

If you want faster enchantment, but still want to keep the economy under control, figure that you can spend 1 character point to cut one month off of the create time of an item, and also bump material costs up really high -- at TL 3, if the cost of magic items is $10 x energy, but they require $5 x energy in materials, and being an enchanter (significant effort to learn, and requires an unusual talent) is a wealthy ($3,500/month) job, S&S enchantment rate should be on the order of 10 energy per hour (thus, in a month where you work 170 hours, you can craft a 1,700 energy item with a nominal value of $17,000, but it costs $8,500 in materials and if it sells for $12,000 (71%) to a wholesaler, your enchanter makes the target $3,500/month).

[Phoenix_Dragon]

I kept the same costs for enchantment while drastically cutting down enchanting time by completely ditching slow-and-sure enchanting. Since that means you have to have all the energy there up-front, I used Raw Magic, and priced it so that the cost of enchanting stuff was the same (About $3,000 per unit, depending on availability). Also means enchanting is limited by the supply of raw magic, and it becomes a valuable trade commodity (And good loot, too).

[jspade]

I did a Pyramid article on this some years back, but I'm not sure whether the archives are still accessible, much less how to get to them.

[cosmicfish]

A while I ago I ran a campaign where I allowed Draw Power and Conduct Power to be used on natural energy sources (a volcano for us), and then added a new spell "Build Power [VH]" which allowed the character to build a pool of energy for enchantments or other high-power spells. Essentially, each second the spellcaster could draw 0.5*HT*Magery^2 fatigue from a source and add it to the pool. Each second he or she would have to roll to maintain the pool at a cumulative -1 per second, and while the spell did not have its own fatigue cost, it did 1 point of damage to the caster per second. On a failed roll the pool simply dissipated and the injured caster would have to start over, but on a critical failure the pool would be released as an explosion - can't remember for sure but I think I used something like 1d damage and 1 hex range, both multiplied by the square root of the energy in the pool, almost certainly fatal for anyone nearby after just a few seconds. The damage and risk made it an option only for the most vital of circumstances, and kept it from destabilizing the campaign.

I may be off on some of the details, I am trying to reconstruct this from memory.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Depends on the setting, I've done things like give the PC super-gadgeteer, give them access to Threshhold Magery limited to enchanting, access to Ley Lines for draw power, etc.


If you have power fluctuations in the setting, you can have things like during the 7th hour of the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year there are 7 moving points on the planet which are tappable for power, etc.