Magic item cleanup project

[Skarg]

A battalion of mercenaries is certainly much more powerful for some purposes, yes. They have very different qualities and serve different purposes.

The price adjustment is only slightly more than double the RAW list price of $32,000, and was not enough to make it not a desirable item for some people who had that kind of money.

The point though was to establish ever-increasing costs for things that make people much better in combat through simple possession of an item rather than skill. And to try to have the world be self-consistent and something we'd want to play in, not too messed up by magic item proliferation.

And it wasn't enough. It only felt like it was about right once we brought in the magic item breakdown house rules, too.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Even RAW, it is not only 10 weeks to do a +5 enchantment. Class A means doubling every level, so it's 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 weeks for +5. It also doubles the number of wizards, so even if one PC wizard has that spell, he'd need 15 more wizards to do it in 32 weeks. To do it all by himself, he'd take 16 times as long. 16 x 32 / (52 weeks / year) = 9.8 years for one wizard to enchant a +5 sword.

Oops, my bad. Thanks for straightening me out Skarg!

Having opted for the "Simple Solution" all these ages, it's clear I never looked at the magic item tables as critically as I should have.

I'm not nearly as uncomfortable with the +5 sword now that you've clarified the rules. If it takes a lone wizard a decade in his tower, going in at 35 but coming out age 45 with this nifty sword, it sounds much more reasonable.

But if five IQ 14 wizards are waiting for him on the stoop, and they each cast Remove Thrown Spell at him for 2 ST as he comes out the door, that 9.8 years work is entirely erased in one combat turn? Oi, these rules definitely need more work....

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

But if five IQ 14 wizards are waiting for him on the stoop, and they each cast Remove Thrown Spell at him for 2 ST as he comes out the door, that 9.8 years work is entirely erased in one combat turn? Oi, these rules definitely need more work....

On that point, I have to say it took us a long time to notice that Remove Thrown Spell would do that.

I've never seen someone choose to do that, though I can think of situations where someone might. Either you're thinking you're going to defeat the person with the valuable enchanted item, so you don't want to ruin the loot, and/or if you're in Thrown spell range, you can probably reduce or eliminate them much more effectively with other Thrown spells.

I'd expect it to be used more by saboteurs out of combat. Like if you want the owner to die, so you de-enchant his armor before a duel. Or if someone is very jealous or malicious and wants to do a lot of financial damage. Or to frame another wizard so the owner goes after who they'll think did it. Or you're a fanatic who hates magic items...

[hcobb]

If magic items cost in general 1 ST/turn then only characters with a Mana stat would find them useful and the muggles get the short end of the magic sword.

Restricting Weapon/Armor enchantment to no more than double the base damage or protection of the underlying item helps balance warriors against wizards just as the current rules make a flaming dagger much less useful than a flaming great sword.

Having most other enchantments cost 1 ST/minute gives both wizards and warriors a reason to acquire them and guard them against a world full of thieves. (Being able to gate to a distant continent ensures that there is always someplace to fence what you snatch.)

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by hcobb

If magic items cost in general 1 ST/turn then only characters with a Mana stat would find them useful and the muggles get the short end of the magic sword....

...Having most other enchantments cost 1 ST/minute gives both wizards and warriors a reason to acquire them and guard them against a world full of thieves. (Being able to gate to a distant continent ensures that there is always someplace to fence what you snatch.)

Yes but the 1 ST/turn tier of items would be at the costs in the ITL table, which most of us have been agreeing are dirt cheap. Of course the game world could just drop that tier altogether and start with the much niftier 1 ST/minute items, they just cost 10X what the table says (or some such agreeable number). With the top tier, truly self-powered items still costing substantially more than even that.

But back to the 1 ST/turn items, or whatever the normal ST cost would be for the corresponding spell, why would the muggles be coming up short if they paid the same ST cost as the wizards? The items just work for anyone, without knowing the spell or rolling vs DX -- it's a very level playing field. If anyone benefits more, it might be the big strong muggle that has more ST than most wizards for paying that spell cost!

As an aside: in my universe (at least one of them anyway) every person has a Mana stat/life force, aside from ST that is. Wizards of course use it to pay their spell costs, whereas it's just a useless appendage (like an appendix) in muggles. That is until they actually have something they can spend it on, like powering a magic item if it requires it, or letting a wizard draw on it to recharge their own Mana (voluntarily, or perhaps involuntarily). But why not let muggles be born with psychic energy just like anyone else, although they can't use it to cast spells unless they learn to cast spells, which is kinda where we're at anyway with the RAW for learning things.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

If magic items cost in general 1 ST/turn then only characters with a Mana stat would find them useful and the muggles get the short end of the magic sword.

That's not true at all. Many magic items would still be powerful with a 1 ST/turn cost, and all of them would still be useful.

The difference is they wouldn't just be used constantly all the time, becoming permanent features of a character. Which makes a huge difference.

Originally Posted by hcobb

Restricting Weapon/Armor enchantment to no more than double the base damage or protection of the underlying item helps balance warriors against wizards just as the current rules make a flaming dagger much less useful than a flaming great sword.

I think limiting armor enchantment based on the armor enchanted is an interesting limit... but I don't understand any of the rest of what you wrote there. What do you mean by the "base damage" of a weapon? What do you mean about warrior/wizard balance?

Originally Posted by hcobb

Having most other enchantments cost 1 ST/minute gives both wizards and warriors a reason to acquire them and guard them against a world full of thieves.

Some items do seem like they might be good to stay active for longer than one turn per ST. When we made our magic item breakdown house rules for the same reasons ST costs seem good, we divided magic items into classes and gave them different periods based on what they did. Combat items should probably be 1/turn, but not Lens of Translation or Amulet of Skepticism ...

Originally Posted by hcobb

(Being able to gate to a distant continent ensures that there is always someplace to fence what you snatch.)

Yet another reason that that probably isn't very often available.

[hcobb]

Limiting weapon enchantment bonus damage to the amount rolled is a much bigger limitation for daggers than greatswords.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Limiting weapon enchantment bonus damage to the amount rolled is a much bigger limitation for daggers than greatswords.

Oh, thanks for explaining. I'd never even noticed you mention that idea before. Yeah, that would... though if I were going to do that, I'd be less interested in "what's the simplest mechanic for this" than I would be in getting the effect I wanted. That mechanic also is actually more complex in play since it wants thinking about during each hit, instead of something you can just write the result of on the character sheet or item description.

[hcobb]

It's easy

Enchanted Very Fine Silver Dagger(1d+1+5)

The last term is the enchantment and no more of this applies than what you've totaled up to that point with your shrewd blow from Dagger Mastery.

[Skarg]

If it best captures what you want it to be like, then great.

If I were interested in a TFT mechanic to represent the idea that quality and magic have a proportional effect on weapon damage rather than a directly additive one (which I think is the core principle, and you've complained before about the fine damage effect being flat too, not just magic) then I'd be thinking of using multiplication instead. I'd do a complex mechanic first to get the actual effect I'd like, and only after I felt I knew what goal effect I was aiming for, would I look for clever simplifications for the mechanic to use in play.

What gets multiplied, I'm not sure... I could see using the average weapon damage, or the minST (though daggers and some other weapons have none - would need to add in a figure to use).

So for example if I was going to use minST, and I wanted minST 12 weapons to the the point where it was possible to enchant them up to +5, then I could assign say effective minST 6 to daggers for this purpose, and just plot a proportional line to some lower point, or experiment with various plots till it felt right. Then translate back to a simple mechanic.

Doing that quickly here, I end up with a plot I like that then suggests a quite simple mechanic that can be simplified to:

Weapon Enchantment max bonus = 5 or weapon minST -7, or 1 for weapons with no minST. i.e.:

minST   max enchant
  <9          1
   9          2
  10          3
  11          4
  12+         5