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Old 08-03-2020, 11:03 PM   #1
Tinman
 
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Default [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

So I'm GM'ing a DF campaign and want to create a magic item & need help in pricing it out (preferably in $, but power points will work too).

I want the item to allow the cater to: Once per day add guided to any missile spell he casts.

In http://www.warehouse23.com/products/...magical-styles under "new perks" (p.21) it talks about learning how to add guided to spells known. It also points to: Thaumatology, pp. 39-40.

So I figure it should be relatively minor enchantment as it's essentially a perk.

Any thoughts guys?
Thanks in advance.
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Old 08-04-2020, 02:37 AM   #2
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

Well, it's a little more complicated than a perk because of how Adjustable Spells work in GURPS.

First, you'd need to price this out as an ability using the rules in GURPS Thaumatology. That would be a perk (Rules Option) plus a technique to add Guided (a Spell Technique). Since Guided is a +50% enhancement that's going to add 10 FP to do it as well as as 11 points to buy the penalty off. Thus, that's a 12 point ability. Next, I would convert it over to an advantage so you can further modify it. Since you want it set at 1/day that's a -40% limitation or 8 points. I'd use the rules for signature gear ($500/point) to price it so the cost of it would be $4,000.

If you want the FP cost to go away, add Reduced Fatigue Cost to the base trait raising the cost to 32 points and worth $16,000.

That's kind of waggy, but it should be enough to get you in the right ball park.
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Old 08-04-2020, 03:06 AM   #3
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
Well, it's a little more complicated than a perk because of how Adjustable Spells work in GURPS.

First, you'd need to price this out as an ability using the rules in GURPS Thaumatology. That would be a perk (Rules Option) plus a technique to add Guided (a Spell Technique). Since Guided is a +50% enhancement that's going to add 10 FP to do it as well as as 11 points to buy the penalty off. Thus, that's a 12 point ability. Next, I would convert it over to an advantage so you can further modify it. Since you want it set at 1/day that's a -40% limitation or 8 points. I'd use the rules for signature gear ($500/point) to price it so the cost of it would be $4,000.

If you want the FP cost to go away, add Reduced Fatigue Cost to the base trait raising the cost to 32 points and worth $16,000.

That's kind of waggy, but it should be enough to get you in the right ball park.
Away from my books, but it occurs to me you may want to incorporate Gadget Limitations. Also, given the once per day restriction, this may be a case where it’s more efficient to give the item a dedicated ER. ER 10 would cost [30], more than the [+24] of Reduced Fatigue 10, but applying the Limitations of a slower recharge, only working for a single ability (the “add Guided” effect, not the spells a user would have), and being a Gadget should drop it enough.
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Old 08-04-2020, 03:13 AM   #4
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Away from my books, but it occurs to me you may want to incorporate Gadget Limitations. Also, given the once per day restriction, this may be a case where it’s more efficient to give the item a dedicated ER. ER 10 would cost [30], more than the [+24] of Reduced Fatigue 10, but applying the Limitations of a slower recharge, only working for a single ability (the “add Guided” effect, not the spells a user would have), and being a Gadget should drop it enough.
Sure, that's another way you could do it. You could apply One Stunt only (-50%) to the ER for cheaper, but that feels...like cheating.
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Old 08-04-2020, 05:12 AM   #5
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

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Sure, that's another way you could do it. You could apply One Stunt only (-50%) to the ER for cheaper, but that feels...like cheating.
At my books now. Checking the rules from Thaumatology (I don't have Magical Styles, so things might work differently there), it looks like the Technique is per-skill (as typical for Techniques). If the pearl allows the character to add the effect to any relevant spell, without a penalty, I'd say that's a good case for a Wildcard Technique, increasing the initial cost to [34] ([1] for the Perk, [33] for the Technique).

For the Gadget Limitations, a pearl is probably SM-10 or so, and would be stealable with trickery or stealth, for -20% (it is immediately useful to the thief, at least if the thief has one of the skills it can modify). If it's breakable, you'll need to set the DR; I'd be tempted to go with 5, for -15%. Being usable only once per day is -40%, for a total of -75%. This reduces cost to [8.5], which optionally rounds up to [9] (I say optionally because fractional point values work when converting to $).

For the ER, Slow Recharge (1/hour) is -20%, and the above Gadget Limitations would apply, for another -35%. One Power -50% is indeed what I had in mind, and seems fair, seeing as without it the character would be able to use the ER stored in the pearl for any of his/her spells. Of course, the full -50% may not be appropriate when the "One Power" is essentially a Wildcard Technique, but even if we drop this to -25% we're still at the -80% cap, so we should be fine. This gives us ER 10 (Gadget -35%; One Power -25%; Slow Recharge, 1/hour -20%) [6].

With our total of [14.5] or [15], and your guideline of using Signature Gear pricing of $500 per [1], that gives us an end cost of $7,250 or $7,500. A version that only works for a single spell (such as Fireball) would reduce the first cost from [8.5] or [9] to [3], changing the cost of the item to $4,500. Personally, I'd be tempted to standardize the cost based on either the all-spell or single-spell version, then modify it by a factor of 3 for the other. If you standardize to the all-spell version, that means the single-spell version would only cost $2500 or so; if you standardize to the single-spell version, the all-spell version would cost $13,500.
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Old 08-04-2020, 06:20 AM   #6
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

I still am not sure about the gadget modifiers. You could I suppose, but that seems double counting to me - by dint of it being a magic item it has those modifiers. Other than that, your build is workable.
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Old 08-04-2020, 06:49 AM   #7
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
I still am not sure about the gadget modifiers. You could I suppose, but that seems double counting to me - by dint of it being a magic item it has those modifiers. Other than that, your build is workable.
I can see it going either way, now that I think about it. Honestly, I had thought you were basically giving Tinman a "Lite" version of your "Metatronic Generators" rules, and those appear to incorporate a modified version of Gadget Limitations.
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Old 08-04-2020, 06:52 AM   #8
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
I can see it going either way, now that I think about it. Honestly, I had thought you were basically giving Tinman a "Lite" version of your "Metatronic Generators" rules, and those appear to incorporate a modified version of Gadget Limitations.
Indeed. I just was blackboxing it a bit. :-)
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Old 08-04-2020, 08:20 AM   #9
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
If you want the FP cost to go away, add Reduced Fatigue Cost to the base trait raising the cost to 32 points and worth $16,000.

That's kind of waggy, but it should be enough to get you in the right ball park.
We're technically not allowed to use Reduced Fatigue Cost but paying 4 energy to get "halved energy cost" isn't going to have a net benefit for lost-cost spells.

The -16 to skill needed to get a +20% enhancement also loses you at least 3 tiers of -1 cost for high skill, so it's more like you're paying 7 extra energy to halve the cost.

The impact this has I guess depends on where you apply the halving: to the base cost, the cost after subtracting high skill, or the cost after adding the +1/5% enhancement fees.
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Old 08-04-2020, 08:26 AM   #10
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Default Re: [DF / Magic] Pearl of Power: Guided Missile

You can, but it requires GM judgement. In my judgement, it's unlikely to get out of hand when used in this specific way. Tinman is of course free to disagree as its his game.
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