06-17-2018, 10:33 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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Of course as a world builder you may specify that spell casting is always a adventuring task and not allow routine uses, but that does not work well with having high number of mages in the general population. But in the general case it seems there should be task difficulty modifiers as normal. There should be a different difficulty if you have to dodge enemy attacks between castings with adrenaline up and routine use in your day to day job. |
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06-17-2018, 11:06 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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But indeed, in most cases it would make more sense for the mage to do something else with their magic to get a better income. The requirement for skill 15 is indeed harsh. It should be noted that already using the standard prices magic items are extremely expensive. A 4' by 6' flying carpet at $158k is more expensive than a Helicopter for a TL 8 character when compared to average pay with the comparable price of 588k vs the helicopter 500k. Making enchanting cost 5 times as much would push the price to $3mil compared to current salaries and making enchanting cost 20 times as very wealthy, would push it to business jet price class. Overall if you want to preserve the traditional fantasy feel you either need to: Adapt the D&D idea where a adventurers are really wealthy, in GURPS terms even starting adventurers should be at minimum comfortable/wealthy with them reaching multi-millionaire by level 20, or to make magic items cheaper. Of course if you want to build a different feel than the "standard fantasy" then you can obviously change things as you see fit. |
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06-17-2018, 11:29 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
The base assumption here is that all of those people who have Magery have it at level 3, yet Magic doesn't say that. Take that statement as meaning that 1 in 100 people have Magery 0 at least, but that includes people who have modified Magery 0.
I have no idea how things scale beyond that, but it might be fair to say that 1 in 150 have unmodified/limited Magery 0 or greater with a caveat that the unmodified in this case only applies to their Magery 0, higher levels may well be modified/limited. After that consider not allowing permanent creations except for the simplest things, air, water, and normal earth are all permanent, but everything else temporary, as are transformations, so if you turn lead into gold you'll soon have an angry mob after you for duping them. EDIT:ADDENDUM: I should have said this before but I was in a bit of a hurry. There may well be logistical issues to enchanting or other that restrict who a society allows to perform it, or who other people are prepared to work with. For instance Thaumatology 251 says that Kumeatêl, who provides bonuses to enchanting, is associated with "silk cord, knots with hidden ends, rose (both the flower and the color)" which means that a shibari outfit of red silk rope provides a +3 to casting, in a society where this is known and used enchanting may well be restricted to attractive people, and possibly only women as a result. And while this isn't in the rules, I was once working on a Magical Style that operated with the assumption that enchanting used the normal failure table to explain why it doesn't get the usual +4 for non-combat, which resulted in rituals needing to be conducted skyclad to prevent clothing ending up being the target of the spell, and it taking place inside two pentagrams to contain any summoned demons, with various support personal between the time and so on. Last edited by scc; 06-18-2018 at 12:55 AM. |
06-18-2018, 06:18 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
Why would any magic get any TDM modifiers for non-combat situations? I am unaware of any rules that state that magical spells (or any other form of supernatural abilities) get them at all. Could anyone point me to the place where it explicitly says that magic spells (or other supernatural abilities) benefit or suffer from TDM?
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06-18-2018, 06:42 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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__________________
Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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06-18-2018, 09:25 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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This is a perfect example of how Sean Punch, Aka KROMM, got his start working for Steve Jackson Games. Initially, he was just a GURPSNET participant. Then, over time, his responses garnered the eye of SJGames, and eventually, he became the Line Editor. But seriously - the issues involving "that which is not expressly forbidden is permitted" vs "that which already has a rule relating to it, is exempt from any other generalized rule" tends to require official adjudication, or at the very least, GM's who know that the buck stops with them, and they make a ruling. GURPS MAGIC went so far as to suggest that there are multiple ways in which to put out a fire without using one specific spell seemingly invented for just that purpose alone. So too, multiple different spells might offer similar effects, but simply arrive there from a different route. |
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06-18-2018, 11:10 AM | #27 | |||
Join Date: Jul 2012
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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Personally I fully support PC wizards developing those connections in play, but that comes down to GM style. I can see a delver-wizard as being extremely limited in their capacity to market their spells. Quote:
I think we should clarify your definition of "mages". When I think of "mages" in GURPS, especially in the context of being 1% of the population, I think "people with Magery" - not "professional wizards who make their career from magic." This does bring some ideas up about how to stop the economics of magic issue. Namely, the risk of a wizard blowing himself up or being dragged off to hell means a few things... 1 - hiring a wizard is risky, and most insurance companies won't cover "our wizard summoned a demon by mistake", meaning less work available for the wizard. 2 - how do you practise without dying and improve your skills to 15+? 3 - going back to Enchantment, it being longer term with fewer rolls in more hours means it might simply be the way for a wizard to work with the least chance of cataclysmic effects. The problem with this line of thinking is Enchant seems to do nothing until at skill 15+, which brings us back to "how did the Enchanter gain skill 15 to begin with?" But Enchantment rules are an issue. Last edited by Railstar; 06-18-2018 at 11:35 AM. |
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06-18-2018, 11:42 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
I think that an apprentice with Enchant-10 could invest 200% more energy through Slow and Sure Enchantment to get an effective Power 15. Now, that is economically unsupportable, but it is fine for the learning process.
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06-18-2018, 12:40 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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"Casting a spell works like any other use of a skill: roll 3d and compare the total to your effective skill (your base skill with the spell adjusted by any applicable modifiers)." and then goes on to talk about effective skill and such. (emphasis mine) And the general section on modifiers and effective skill B344-356 talks about how skills are modified with some modifiers coming from the skill and then from a long list of generic things and only the time spent is separated from the list out to not apply to magic. Thus spells are skills and they use effective skill for casting, not absolute and thus use general skill use mechanics unless specified to some part to be different(as is the case with time spent). It should also be noted that ceremonial magic places several other restrictions specifically for ceremonial magic restricting things like luck and more. So above fully only applies to non ceremonial magic. |
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06-18-2018, 12:44 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: The Economics of Enchanted Items
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"Lone enchanters cannot gain a skill bonus for using extra energy." |
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