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Old 06-10-2014, 09:36 PM   #11
Brandy
 
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

Another possibility is hew to the energy costs as written, but let some or all of the cost be substituted by using expensive materials ("an emerald the size of a plover's egg") or rare, magical materials ("I was able to make this much more quickly because I imbedded into its construction a dragon heartstring").

If you approach it like this, then adventurers can more fully participate in a magical economy without making magic items everyday items for all.
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Old 06-11-2014, 09:03 AM   #12
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

You may find my article "The Material Difference" (Pyramid #3/66: The Laws of Magic, pp. 29-35) useful. It exists to answer a very similar question.
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Old 06-14-2014, 12:29 PM   #13
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pluribus View Post
Thanks for all the advice. It all seems to boil down to just lowering the price really.
Changing prices is a poor way to think about most of these solutions. Instead think of the prices staying the same in their native currency (effectively "mage-days") but the alternatives as adding rules for converting something else into "mage-days".

If you think of it like this, the Basic rules offer you the chance to substitute FP for mage-days at a 1:1 rate, provided you have the full cost available. Rules for purchasing enchantments with character points allow you to substitute a character point for 25 mage-days, again all at once. Other schemes convert something else to mage-days with or without a limitation on supplying it all at once or all in the same currency.

Personally if I were rebuilding Magic from scratch I'd probably price enchantments in character points to start with and have 25 mage-days or 25 energy buy you a cp worth of enchantment, but same principle.
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Old 06-14-2014, 06:26 PM   #14
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
You may find my article "The Material Difference" (Pyramid #3/66: The Laws of Magic, pp. 29-35) useful. It exists to answer a very similar question.
Well, I went and got the magazine, and no, the article is not useful to my question. The article relies on the PCs or other adventurers picking up objects that can contribute energy points. The question at hand in this thread is how to lower magic costs in a society, and a factory that makes Light/Darkness items isn't exactly going to be going out and hunting beings of pure shadow just to run their business. If anything they would farm them, and then it would just be a business expense.

So for my purposes this just says "Arbitrarily lower the price", which is what I've been saying since the start of this thread.

In the end I'm $8 poorer and rather annoyed about it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Changing prices is a poor way to think about most of these solutions. Instead think of the prices staying the same in their native currency (effectively "mage-days") but the alternatives as adding rules for converting something else into "mage-days".

If you think of it like this, the Basic rules offer you the chance to substitute FP for mage-days at a 1:1 rate, provided you have the full cost available. Rules for purchasing enchantments with character points allow you to substitute a character point for 25 mage-days, again all at once. Other schemes convert something else to mage-days with or without a limitation on supplying it all at once or all in the same currency.

Personally if I were rebuilding Magic from scratch I'd probably price enchantments in character points to start with and have 25 mage-days or 25 energy buy you a cp worth of enchantment, but same principle.
The problem with this solution is that "Mage Days" are basically the thing that gives magic items their cost. If there is something else that replaces mage days, and is cheaper, then that simply becomes the new currency. Is Roc feathers are worth 10 mage days each, and are easily obtainable, then nobody is going to bother using mage days and the prices will be driven down by the cheaper production methods.

So again it just boils down to "arbitrarily lower the price".

Industrial enchanting already gives a linear increase in money cost per energy point. Saying that players can spend character points for gear worth a certain amount of energy points is just adding a new version of the "Signature gear" advantage (which gives money for character points) and players will just choose the more efficient one.
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Old 06-14-2014, 06:51 PM   #15
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pluribus View Post
The problem with this solution is that "Mage Days" are basically the thing that gives magic items their cost. If there is something else that replaces mage days, and is cheaper, then that simply becomes the new currency. Is Roc feathers are worth 10 mage days each, and are easily obtainable, then nobody is going to bother using mage days and the prices will be driven down by the cheaper production methods.

So again it just boils down to "arbitrarily lower the price".
In that case, I don't think anybody has a clue what you are looking for. Anything at all that makes magic items more common relative to other stuff can be called "arbitrarily lower the price" by that standard. That's what more common *means* after all - more people are willing to trade whatever the ultimately limited resource in their lives is for it. The law of supply and demand requires that if it's more common, it doesn't cost as much in those terms.

I guess we foolishly thought you were looking for ways to make items cheaper in a logical way, not for a revision of the fundamentals of economics.
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Old 06-14-2014, 10:24 PM   #16
simply Nathan
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

My solution:
Large numbers of Poor assistants to use items with Lend Energy enchanted on them. Even small children have 10 FP in GURPS; these can refill an enchanter's FP immediately after casting a Quick & Dirty enchantment; you only need like two or three of them per enchanter.

This doubles the amount of time in a day an enchanter can spend enchanting stuff so long has nothing needs more than 100 energy total.



Another thing I sometimes like to do is drop Q&D entirely but reduce the listed energy requirements to 5-10% of their current listing depending on how common I want a particular magic item to be.
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Old 06-14-2014, 11:56 PM   #17
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

The issue is that you don't just want to make magic items more common - you want to do so in a manner that is consistent with your gameworld, your idea of enchantment, or what (if any) actual goal you have behind this. The problem with this is that no one else really knows what your gameworld looks like, or how you think enchantment should be done, or what you are trying to accomplish.

Arbitrarily lowering the price changes nothing but the economics of enchantment - none of the rules change, there is simply enough competition to justify cheaper enchantment. After a point, this is probably not realistic, but hey, nothing is perfect, and this is the simple route.

Allowing exotic materials to reduce enchantment costs is helpful for certain circumstances, and has the added benefit of being a method uniquely suited to typical PC groups. But it may not suit your idea of magic and is not likely the kind of thing that could be utilized on a large scale, so really nothing is becoming more common.

So:

1) What do you / don't you want to see happen with magic and magic items in your gameworld?

2) How do you / don't you want magic to work?

3) What ultimate goal are you trying to accomplish, if any?
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Old 06-15-2014, 12:09 AM   #18
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

One idea I toyed around with years ago was separating enchantment into two steps - fabrication, and enchantment.

The first step might require P^0.5 man-hours of labor, spent engraving runes or bathing the item in the blood of a virgin or whatever - perhaps it can be done by apprentices or non-mages.

The second might require the mage to build a reservoir of energy - he can fill it any way he chooses (Draw Power, anyone?) but the reservoir leaks some amount of energy AND becomes harder to contain as it gets larger. Every time energy is added to the reservoir, a skill roll is made at a penalty relative to the size (-2*log10(P) is what I initially planned, so -2 at 10pts, -4 at 100pts, -6 at 1000 pts, etc), with large or critical successes slowing the leak rate, and failures either increasing the rate or even discharging the reservoir in some chaotic combination of magical effects. It makes enchanting powerful items much faster, but also much riskier, since a leaking or uncontrolled reservoir could have tremendous and destructive effects.
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Old 06-15-2014, 01:40 AM   #19
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
I guess we foolishly thought you were looking for ways to make items cheaper in a logical way, not for a revision of the fundamentals of economics.
In that case I will restate it as clearly as possible, for you and anyone else that may be confused.

I want magic items to be more accessible for narrative reasons, but I am not particularly interested in the narrative reason that the price is lower. The players are probably not going to take a tour of the inside of a factory anytime soon, but they are going to need to buy equipment and I want them to be able to actually afford it.

I am asking for advice on a price shift that will not break game mechanics. Advice on how low is too low, if/how I should change the energy increase between increments of enchantments like "Accuracy" or "Fortify", and how I might do all this without making one single item like a wand of fireballs become so much more price efficient than anything else.

I am also hoping someone out there can point to a systematized means of doing this so that I do not end up having to go through the entire magic book to manually re-price every single spell. I certainly wouldn't mind if I found a spreadsheet made by somebody who has already done this.



I do not care how the factory works. Enchanting could be powered by the tears of kittens for all it matters to the questions I have asked thus far in this thread. I am looking for numbers, not names of magic reagents.

It's not even important how long it takes them to enchant things. The setting is an industrial society. For comparison, in real life even a generic Tabasco Sauce takes up to three years to make, but you don't put in an order and wait three years to get your sauce. You just go into the store and pick out one they already have sitting around.


My first post, and all of my subsequent posts have said "I plan to lower the price, but I am not sure how much I should lower it." and almost every reply has basically said "You should lower the price."






This however, does look promising. Because it asks how the customer base effects the prices.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicfish View Post
1) What do you / don't you want to see happen with magic and magic items in your gameworld?

2) How do you / don't you want magic to work?

3) What ultimate goal are you trying to accomplish, if any?
1) I want items that run on magic to be as common in my setting as objects that run on electricity were in the 1960s or so. Probably more common than that even.

I want a player wielding an enchanted crossbow to feel as capable and powerful as if they were carrying a TL7 gun. Not necessarily because it has the same damage dice, but because of the magic effects they have been able to customize it with.

The PCs are in a region that follows a rather warlike deity. There is an emphasis on being able to form a militia if called upon. Instead of a "Right to Bear Arms" they basically have an "Obligation to Bear Arms". It's not all about weapons though. I want there to be plenty of practical magic items, and even ones simply for luxury.

Most of all, and this is the point of this thread, I want them to be reasonably priced. Not so high that you'd have to buy several levels of wealth to dream of owning a single enchanted item, but not so low that everyone drowns in their own pile of gear, or that some uber-spell is accidentally made too easy to obtain.

2) I am more or less fine with how magic works in GURPS. People can cast spells using their own FP, but often it is better to use a device for that purpose (like using a remote vs walking across the room to change channels on the TV). What I do have a problem with is the pricing of enchantments. Both in dollar amount, and how oddly some things are priced. For example, "Shade" prevents you from getting sunburned, and enchanting it costs 100 energy. "Reverse Missiles" makes you completely immune to all projectile based attacks, and causes them to attack whoever shot them instead. Enchanting it costs 600 energy. An increase of just 6x seems odd for the difference between something that is literally described as being exactly as useful as a parasol... and something that could send a two ton boulder screaming back towards the catapult that fired it.

Then there are time travel spells, I plan to just leave those out.

3) I want the world to be a TL7 equivalent through use of magic items. These items will often be based on a foundation of TL4 technology. Much like steampunk, but instead of Victorian devices modernized through steam power, it's "Age of Sail" devices modernized through enchantments.

There are no ruins full of powerful artifacts. There is little practical reason for an object that is really old to be better than one that is new. Unless it is some forgotten technique like a Stradivarius Violin. Just don't expect it to lay waste to your enemies.

For the most part the party will go shopping at the same places any other civilian could. If they want a more powerful weapon, they buy or custom order a more powerful weapon from the store, or obtain it through the black market.
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Old 06-15-2014, 04:09 AM   #20
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Default Re: How to make magic items more common?

If you do not want to simply reduce the energy costs of magic items simply by dividing by ten (or whatever), here are some perks to make enchantments more effective:

Faster Enchanter: add 1 EP/day to enchantment, as many levels as levels of magery possessed by the enchanter are possible, so a magery 3 enchanter could have three Levels of this perk and put a total of 4 EPs/day into enchantment

Enchanter´s Helper: if assisting in enchantment one does not cause a -1 to die roll, but only one helper per Level of magery of the lead enchanteris possible, so our magery 3 enchanter could have three helpers

Better Enchanter: if leading an enchantment, one assistant does not cause a -1 to die roll, as many levels as levels of Magery are possible, Prerequisite: Enchanter´s Helper, so the magery 3 enchanter could have three assistants without Enchanter´s Helper without a skill reduction
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