Upgrading existing gear

[zuljita]

Say you bought a really nice weapon, took weapon bond and signature gear on it, all that sort of thing. Then you come into a large chunk of cash. If you want to pay the town wizard to enchant it, is that kosher? If yes, does it take a significant amount of time? (I know GURPS rules for enchanting take time, but DFRPG takes different assumptions on many such things). If I'm willing to leave my favorite sword in town for a dungeon crawl while Enchanters-R-Us gives it penetrating, will it break things to let me do it?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by zuljita

Say you bought a really nice weapon, took weapon bond and signature gear on it, all that sort of thing. Then you come into a large chunk of cash. If you want to pay the town wizard to enchant it, is that kosher? If yes, does it take a significant amount of time? (I know GURPS rules for enchanting take time, but DFRPG takes different assumptions on many such things). If I'm willing to leave my favorite sword in town for a dungeon crawl while Enchanters-R-Us gives it penetrating, will it break things to let me do it?

My rule from my (pre-Dungeon Fantasy) DF game is that since a town "turn" is one week, enchantments, training, special orders, and the like take one week per expense (for armor and similar this is per piece) per enchanting circle/guildhall/merchant/craftsman available in town (usually either one or none of each).

[Anthony]

Whether this breaks things depends on the game style you want. In general, the feel of classic dungeon fantasy is that you get the magic items the GM felt like including, which may be weird, inconvenient, or suboptimal, whereas if you can just go to EnchantMart and get whatever you want, people are likely to standardize on a particular list of favored items. In addition, things like weapon bond are as cheap as they are because of the reduction in flexibility they cause.

[Kromm]

That's one of those "beyond the scope of the current rules" questions by dint of the boxed set being a starter set with only a modest focus on ongoing campaigns. For a quick-and-dirty rule:

Divide enchantment cost by $20 and use that as the number of days you'll be without your item; e.g., to improve your broadsword with Penetrating Weapon (2), which costs $5,000 on a melee weapon, you'll need to pay $5,000 and wait 250 days.

If the GM feels generous, then multiplying enchantment cost by (1 + N) halves the wait N times. For example, for that sword, paying $10,000 halves wait time to 125 days, and paying $30,000 gets wait time down to about a week (7.8 days). The extra money has nothing to do with magic . . . it's about reimbursing the Wizards' Guild for social and administrative difficulties such as losing business with Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, hiring extra help, and putting more magical stuff out there that will flood the market.

As for nonmagical changes, these aren't generally possible – armor and weapons have to be made fine or dwarven or whatever. The exception is making something ornate, silver-coated, or bejeweled. That takes a week and costs the difference in value plus a 10% commission. So if you also decide to add a silver coating to that broadsword, which would raise base item value by $1,200, you'd have to pay $1,320 and wait a week. This can't be sped up.

[zuljita]

Thanks, that's helpful guidance.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kromm

As for nonmagical changes, these aren't generally possible – armor and weapons have to be made fine or dwarven or whatever. The exception is making something ornate, silver-coated, or bejeweled. That takes a week and costs the difference in value plus a 10% commission. So if you also decide to add a silver coating to that broadsword, which would raise base item value by $1,200, you'd have to pay $1,320 and wait a week. This can't be sped up.

One thing that fits in this category that was some consternation to me is bows. I think it is possible to restring an existing bow to a new draw, within some limits, but I a) don't know enough about archery b) can't decide if this is event relevant for DF and maybe the bow should just be assumed to automatically be adjusted for the new ST and c) don't really want to penalize Scouts for improving ST.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

One thing that fits in this category that was some consternation to me is bows. I think it is possible to restring an existing bow to a new draw, within some limits, but I a) don't know enough about archery b) can't decide if this is event relevant for DF and maybe the bow should just be assumed to automatically be adjusted for the new ST and c) don't really want to penalized Scouts for improving ST.

I don't know enough about archery to speak with authority. My feeling is that within the very low realism level of the DFRPG, I'd probably go with "make an Armory roll." If the bow has tons of special properties, I'd repurpose the Fixer-Uppers rule on p. 15 of Exploits to make it at least a little challenging . . . adjusting a balanced, elven, fine bow with two enchantments on it should be harder than adjusting some munitions bow grabbed off Brigand #4 after the fight.

[zuljita]

Related question: If a PC wants to order something that isn't on hand in ye olde shoppe, are there rolls to try to get something *very* specific. For example a fine, balanced, dwarven, oricalcum, penetrating scythe (random example I'm totally not trying to find for a game I'm a player in ...). What does that look like?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by zuljita

Related question: If a PC wants to order something that isn't on hand in ye olde shoppe, are there rolls to try to get something *very* specific. For example a fine, balanced, dwarven, oricalcum scythe (random example I'm totally not trying to find for a game I'm a player in ...). What does that look like?

A map to a dungeon? "It's in there somewhere! Znargross heard a rumor."

;-)

[JMason]

Originally Posted by zuljita

Related question: If a PC wants to order something that isn't on hand in ye olde shoppe, are there rolls to try to get something *very* specific. For example a fine, balanced, dwarven, oricalcum, penetrating scythe (random example I'm totally not trying to find for a game I'm a player in ...). What does that look like?

Nothing official that I know of, but you could try something like this:

Anything "mundane" is going be almost always available. Let's called that a frequency of 16 or less on 3d6. Treat every enchantment and option as a modifier to the frequency, either -1 or -2. I'd go with -1 on common mods, and -2 for uncommon or better enchantments... but that will be up to you.

So with your example: Scythe (16), fine -1, balanced -1, dwarven -2, oricalcum -2, penetrating -2; Roll (16-1-1-2-2-2) 8 or less to be able to get one. I'd also make the wait time a couple of weeks.

All that said, the whole point of Dungeon Fantasy is to kill monsters and get loot. It might play better to have the players start asking around town to find what dank hole happens to have a "fine, balanced, dwarven, oricalcum, penetrating scythe" in it.