05-25-2020, 11:37 AM | #21 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
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05-25-2020, 11:40 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
The enchanter family would be inbred to hell and back, to maximise the number of enchanters they can churn out. Meaning they will have all kinds of strange physical and mental... peculiarities. Sorcery doesn't really require high IQ, just as long as you can understand what the customer wants, so savant syndrome may be the way they turn out.
Another way to go would be to make enchanting dangerous. Maybe making an enchanted object requires a roll on the Threshold Calamity table, with a modifier depending on how powerful the item is. Or maybe it gives you Corruption. This would also quickly lead to enchanters being "strange."
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05-25-2020, 11:42 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
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05-25-2020, 12:04 PM | #24 | |
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Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
I have no strong opinions about this, that being a question of what the individual GM believes will break their world. For example, I generally wouldn't regard enchantment as an issue, but it appears to be for your campaign. That said, DF's approach to modifying magical effects is a pretty decent start.
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05-25-2020, 12:46 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
If you want to follow the old 'lost secrets of the past' trope, it could be that Enchanting was once common, but now the method is forgotten, perhaps because the only family or families who could do it died out due to excessive inbreeding and/or internal conflicts.
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05-25-2020, 01:48 PM | #26 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
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Besides the skills its mostly like Will or HT in providing energy and resistance vs, some powers. I think pricing it as HT is therefor appropriate. The downside to the 10/level price is its easy to buy up so you have higher average than if it were 15 or 20 points a level. If you want to counter that I suggest 20 points like IQ or DX but removing the surcharge modifier on powers. Quote:
Also high chi items could attract spirits or monsters that want to feed on them so owning magic items itself can be dangerous as is being around those who do. The exception being items with their own spirit such as the godhand weapons as the spirit makes it much harder for things to feed on it. That gives you family and ancestral items where mages sacrifice some or all of thier spirit to make them which they are unlikely to do for mere coin. Using the rules for Soulbroker could also be in effect, especially to create items. Then over time they buy off the requires character points to use them as more and more users have poured energy into them. Most would trade it in for a simple costs fatigue limitation, with a few (probably well used heirloom items) not even having that.
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05-25-2020, 02:21 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Ottawa, Canada
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
If enchanting a magical item using sorcerous empowerment requires the expenditure of character points, why not make that an actual in-game element of the process rather than just a metagame concept?
What if enchanting requires the enchanter to actually put a part of his soul/essence/power/chi into the object. And it comes at the cost of weakening him... perhaps those points come out of ability scores, or it lowers the Sorcerous Empowerment or Qi (I'm assuming that's your "Magic" attribute). Edit: After all, gaining character points is a metagame concept, and unlikely to occur for any NPC, so the points have to come from somewhere. And maybe the item becomes a back door for targeting the enchanter... you can charm the enchanter by casting charm on the sword he made. An enchanter will only be able to enchant a few items before he burns out his magical ability/potential. Enchanting items therefore is likely only going to occur when it's important, or as a gift representing a great honor ("You have saved me and I owe you my life, so please take this magical sword empowered by the life you have saved.") Part of this makes the assumption that only the enchanter can spend part of his soul/essence/magic and can't steal it from others. If you can steal from others, I can see enchanting getting a bit dark and sacrificial in nature (rumors of such black magic might exist, though). And you still need all the training to become an enchanter. You can't just decide to enchant something when you're near death just because... so becoming an enchanter is literally a life-long commitment. This could also lead to a cultural incorporation of enchantment. When a powerful family mage is getting close to death, perhaps he (culturally) ritually sacrifices his magic to make an item for his family, as his legacy to live on pass his own death. Magic items become very linked to heritage/inheritance, and most noble families would take a dim view of people using items created by the magical-power sacrifice of their ancestors. Most magical items encountered by players are therefore from deceased enchanters because of the costs involved. Then throw in the rumor that some enchantments also sometimes pass on a part of the personality of the enchanter, as an unexplained side-effect. When used properly, or certain feats are accomplished with the item, they can gain sentience (if you have sentient items in your setting).. or a semi-sentience/willfulness of their own. Or just have rumors of such things even if they don't actually exist. Last edited by Kallatari; 05-25-2020 at 02:30 PM. |
05-25-2020, 05:03 PM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
You could have magical gadgets instead of magical items. Every 25 days of enchanting invests 1 CP worth of traits into the magical trait. A price of $10,000 per CP would probably keep things balanced.
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05-25-2020, 08:57 PM | #29 |
Ceci n'est pas une tag.
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Vancouver, WA (Portland Metro)
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
There's a two-book series (Sorcerors of Verdun, by Stovall).
In it, the world knows of sorcerors. It's WW 1, and there are sorcerors in the trenches. One of the sorcerors is a cross-dressing woman (hiding her gender, so she can fight) who fled an arranged marriage. Bloodlines are protected with deadly earnest. Breeding in a new ability is considered paramount. Pretty good series. The sorcerous powers of the Austrian-Hungarian imperial family... yikes! Edit: And it addresses sorcerous enchanting, something that was THOUGHT to be impossible...
Spoiler:
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05-26-2020, 07:26 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Social Strata and Magic Ability
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That's power and it would only take generation of nobles to make it so. (Yeah, I strongly favor dystopian settings ovet utopian ones)
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