How to make magic items more common?

[Pluribus]

I am starting a TL4+3 game. Meaning regular tech reached TL4 before magitech took over for the next 3 levels, making it similar to TL7. Given this, one would think that magic items would have replaced many "modern" devices. Such as flying carpets instead of cars.

Trouble is, even using advanced enchanting rules such as the ones found in "Technomancer", the increased income of TL7 PCs, and this handy pricing reference site http://technomancer.jargon-file.org/...ncer4Items.pdf magic items are still prohibitively expensive.

A TL7 PC's starting wealth is $15,000 and all but $3,000 of that is tied up in cost of living. Thing is, even putting puissance +1 on a weapon costs 25,000. Nearly double your starting wealth, and more than eight times your actual spending money.

A one square meter flying carpet that can support 225 lbs will cost $18,000. Even if I inflict a "low ceiling" and restrict it to roads to make it more car-ish it probably still wouldn't approach the price of a smartcar nowadays which would be less than $5,000 GURPs dollars (given the $1 loaf of bread conversion), and has a lot more functionality.

Plus there's a bunch of incidentals. Instead of carrying an umbrella or parasol it would help flavor if people could have magic items that cast "umbrella" or "shade" spells. Trouble is that those would cost $390.

So I feel kinda conflicted. I want magic to be a pretty significant part of society. But I don't want to just tell players to take a weapon with revolver stats and just say it's a glowing crossbow. However, to allow sufficient enchantment to reach the level of basic TL7 equipment I would have to make enchanting dirt cheap. And if I do that how to I justify not skipping right past martial weapons and everybody just carrying giant-fireball wands?

The setting also takes place in a "high magic area" if that helps.

[Nereidalbel]

If large portions of the world are high-mana, you can reduce the cost of Slow And Sure Enchantment. The abundance of mana in the world makes enchanting so simple that it's just a mainstream job, not just some arcane thing only a handful of mages can do.

[mlangsdorf]

Enchantment costs are completely arbitrary*. There's no particular reason that is has to take an enchanter 250 days of work to create a mildly magical sword, so there's no reason that you should have to pay him some reasonable wage for that amount of effort. Pick how much you want the various enchantments to cost and just go with that.

[LemmingLord]

Get rid of prerequisites for the enchant spell.

Let enchanters put as many fatigue points into their magic items as they can expend; let them make just one enchantment roll per item or per month as part of job to reduce critical failures.

One Mage with standard 10 fatigue during an 8 hr day can generate 58 fatigue towards a project.

Assume a higher level Mage could have a couple assistants, effectively tripling the amount per day to 174.

Assume 25 days worked a month, 58x25=1450 energy per month for a single enchanter, 4350 for an enchanter with two helpers. Failures should decrease the energy output and/or introduce faults into the item.

[Terwin]

I thought that there were industrial magic rules to allow assembly-line enchanting.
I would look for those if that is not already what you are referring to in Technomancer.

There are also metachornic generators(Pyramid article) that may provide another option.

If you just need huge power sources for Q&D enchantment, take a look at urban magics(a Thaumatology expansion)

You could also GM fiat 'power points' where enchantments can be made for much less time and energy.

[David Johnston2]

The price of enchantment is designed to restrict it to rich fellas and master magicians. It can be reduced at your option. And if you do that, packing fireball wands instead of swords isn't that appealing because Missile Shields and Reverse Missile items become cheaper as well. And if you stick to the RAW, fireball wands are only usable by people with Magic Aptitude anyway.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pluribus

The setting also takes place in a "high magic area" if that helps.

That lets you tap Powerstones twice as often and lets you get by with one half the Power enchantments otherwise necessary.

You could also modify the Power enchantment. Instead of costing 500 energy each for the first two levels but giving 2 energy per level you could have a local version that cost 250 for the first 4 but gave only 1 pt per level.

You can also sue concepts like Sacred Architecture to juice up Enchantment sites. If their Workshop gives +5 to Enchantment rolls any Enchanter could lead a 6 man circle and he usual sort of Master could have a 10 or 11 man circle.

Draw Power is a way to juice up Q&D Enchantment. Essential Metal/Orichalcum would let you build the MW level steam turbines necessary or you could have any sort of more esoteric large power plant you wanted. Even a simple circle could do 300pt Items and an enhanced circle could do much larger ones.

Then there's Paut. A Mage can drink his STx6 in ouces (energy pts) of Paut in a 5 minute period and use all of the energy for casting a spell (including enchantment). At $25 per ounce this doesn't lower things much but you're not stuck with that price. You can push it much lower if you want and credit Industrial Alchemy or special local ingreedients.

Thjs last option can make things very simple if you like it. The price of Enchantment will be overwhelmingly determined by the price of Paut and you can calculate total cost on a simple per pt basic up to the limit of possible Q&D. This limit could be pushed up to c.1000 energy by the right modifications too..

Getting around the limits of the Gurps Enchantment rules is an ancient pastime and has much prior art. If you don't like any of the above there's more.

[Pluribus]

Thanks for all the advice. It all seems to boil down to just lowering the price really. I think I'll just have to fiat some of the "trivial" spells like Umbrella, after I think really hard to make sure they can't be exploited in crazy ways.

in addition to reducing the price, I think I'll have to adjust the ramping of power cost. Many of the costs seem to be on a nearly exponential curve. such as 250 - 1000 - 5000 There wouldn't really be a way to price that on a point per power basis that wouldn't have a weird disparity between where it starts and where it ends up. Even if it just doubled every level that seems more reasonable. Plus it would allow us to go beyond +3 and maybe be somewhat competitive with what normal tech would have been.

[Genesis]

They way I always do high magitech is allow for the invention of "mana concentrating" as a technology. Usually large and immobile (read: architectural), it would increase local mana, perhaps only for the purposes of enchanting - maybe only for the purposes of a specific enchantment! That way you can have your "umbrella" factory churn out rain-repellent headgear without destroying everything else.

Magic as written assumes enchanting is an artisanal process. If making an umbrella required forging all the ribs by hand and weaving your own polyster you can bet it'd cost $400! The innovations of high tech can be applied to magic, if you want to keep the feel of modern technology but add the window dressing of magic: automation, scale, and modern-ish supply chains should all be possible at TL 4+3. It requires changing the assumptions a little bit to make it possible - but it's no worse than comparing a blacksmith to a modern automotive parts plant.

[Whitewings]

I addressed this problem in this thread. You'll probably want to drop the crafting requirement, though. I included it because it fit with my image of how magic worked in that setting.