Powerstones can not exist

[hcobb]

So what variant of the rules do you practice to either enable Powerstone creation or remove them entirely from your game?

Here's the math. First we make the reasonable assumption of a 40 attribute point enchanter. So that is IQ 20 (for GMIC), and ST 8 (human minimum), giving DX 12.

Each week in the lab costs:
$300/week Salary for an IQ 19+ wizard
$50 Enchanter's cost of living
$150/week Lab Rental
$50/week for supplies and maintenance.

Each week enchanting a 1-point powerstone adds the following costs
$50/week for Apprentice salary and cost of living
$300 two doses Healing (as shown before this price is way too low)
$80 common ingredients

For a total weekly cost of $980

A DX 12 wizard requires an average of 1.35 weeks to make a one point powerstone so that is a total cost of $1,323 to make an enchantment you will sell for $1,000, a loss of $323 per stone.

Okay, sell your soul to the demons and wish your DX up to 14 so it takes an average of 1.1 weeks for a total cost of $1,080 to make a $1,000 enchantment.

Even at DX 15 you are losing $28 per enchantment

To do five points of powerstone at a time you have the following cost per week:
$1,800 eight healing potions
$50/week for Apprentice salary and cost of living

And your ST 8, DX 15, IQ 20 (43 attribute points, or 32,800 XP!!!) wizard takes 2.1 weeks at $2,400 per week at a total cost of $5,040 to make a $5,000 enchantment.

So under insanely optimistic assumptions with no overhead, enchantment loses money every week. No wonder Tollenkar turned to a live of crime.

[larsdangly]

I see this as yet another reason to ignore the listed prices for magic items. Powerstones will exist in a campaign where they are expensive to make because people will want to have them. In any campaign where players competed with each other for them in an open market, their high price would reflect that high demand.

[Skarg]

I already have abundant reasons for ignoring some parts of the magic item price lists (especially the undervalued ones such as Stone Flesh), and for treating all of them as mere suggestions, and probably the lowest price one would expect to pay for a magic item.

The math above is just one of many examples where if you take that sort of approach, some creations look like they aren't even money-makers at the listed prices, which is interesting and probably indicates some of the limits and inaccuracies in those numbers, but also in the assumptions that go into them.

I think any magic item for sale can actually become an interesting game situation, and how it goes says something about the game world.

I'd also disagree with some of the assumptions in the above math, such as:

What high-DX IQ 19 wizards are happy spending weeks of their life making powerstones for just anyone, and being paid only $300 per week to do so? Desperate ones, I'd think, or ones compelled to for some reason other than the money, as I expect there are more interesting and/or rewarding things to do with themselves.

And if they are making powerstones, I'd expect them to be usually making them for themselves, or for their allies or other powerful and wealthy people, who are probably willing and able to pay more than the list price both in coin and/or in kind.

So yes, because powerstones are, as their description says, one of the most useful and valuable types of items, probably their listed price is (like most listed magic item prices) a low starting point.

Some considerations for GMs who are interested in thinking about how common and available magic items for sale would tend to be in their campaign worlds:

* How many high-DX IQ-19+ wizards even exist in each location in your game world?
* How many of those know GMIC?
* How much of their time do those wizards spend enchanting items?
* Who will they generally be enchanting those items for?
* What will they generally be enchanting?
* What can/will those customers pay for those items?
* How much competition to buy is there for the items that are available for sale?

Other nitpicks with the math in the OP:

* I would not expect an IQ 19+ wizard who often makes magic items to often be renting their lab rather than owning it.

* Do apprentices of powerful wizards even actually get a salary? Or are they young students who can cast Aid and are usually serving as apprentices in exchange for training and room/board/protection, where the room & protection are again just natural features of the Wizard and/or Guild who don't actually pay costs for them that would be related to the enchantment?

* Since making healing potions as described has been shown to be too dangerous and expensive to sell for $150, it probably either isn't sold for only $150, OR there is some other way to make alchemy safer and/or less expensive.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by hcobb

So what variant of the rules do you practice to either enable Powerstone creation or remove them entirely from your game?

Removed them entirely.

Or more precisely, never introduced them in the first place. We never allowed manufacture or sale of magic items in our world, which was established before the advanced rules ever appeared.

The concept of a portable magic battery never much appealed to me anyway.

And aren't these things mostly obsolete and redundant now because of the Mana Staff? The latter has no start-up cost beyond a piece of wood, and unlike the Powerstone it can be upgraded as you go.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

And aren't these things mostly obsolete and redundant now because of the Mana Staff? The latter has no start-up cost beyond a piece of wood, and unlike the Powerstone it can be upgraded as you go.

No. They have different types of requirements, and different limits.

A staff has no material cost beyond the object it's made out of, and it only takes one turn and 5 ST to create, but it has costs in terms of attributes and study/memory and XP for the mana stat itself (which is limited to the wizard's IQ, or IQ x 2 once they learn Staff of Power), which have to come from the wizard who uses it.

A powerstone on the other hand has material costs (gemstone, healing potions, ingredients), and it requires an IQ 20 wizard who knows Greater Magic Item Creation, as well as a lab, assistants casting Aid, and creation time measured in weeks... BUT it is usable by anyone (unless it's set in a Staff or has a Limiting spell or something), and can be used in addition to staff mana, and it CAN be upgraded later, and could theoretically have hundreds of points of strength.

So powerstones are still about as useful and as desirable as they ever were.

In fact, a great wizard who doesn't learn Staff I through V could instead learn five other spells for the same amount of effort, which might be considered more useful if powerstones and apprentices are expected to be available for what they want to do.

[Terquem]

In my story there is a type of device called a "jackson's machine" which is a mechanical device that uses rare crystals that can be charged with the mana to produce spells - they are rare, and the secret of their construction is believed lost

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Skarg

and could theoretically have hundreds of points of strength.

You could usually get over a hundred points before you roll that 18.

[Senturian]

Staffs can only be used by their creating wizard.
Strength Batteries (powerstones) can be used by anyone.

as such, they fill a demand. as to how much of one...???

I'd rather have them. Especially after the wizard in the party is killed and his staff is just a stick.

[Steve Plambeck]

Yes, Powerstones and Mana Staves have different requirements. With those for the Powerstone being considerably more expensive in almost every way than a Staff V. Hence my sense of it being the Mana Staff is now the more attractive of the two things. Not necessarily more attractive to everyone, but more attractive to the wizard making one or the other for their own use.

Even a cash-poor wizard with no apprentices can make a Staff V staff for themself if they know the spell (and without needing to know Greater Magic Item creation). They can even do it in one turn, although it will take awhile to charge a freshly made one. And the wizard only needs to get to IQ 17, not 20, to do so. Yes XP gets spent on expanding the stave's Mana limit, but at only 200 XP for each point. Compare that to the number of XP it might cost to get from IQ 17 to 20 if it's already an advanced figure.

If you lose a Powerstone, it'll cost as much time and money to replace it as it did to initially create it. Lose a Staff V, make another one instantly with a free piece of wood; it will have the same Mana capacity as the lost one.

The main difference in their limitations is of course that, unlike the Powerstone, only the wizard who created the Staff V Mana stick can use it. But if that's the wizard's intention, then it's certainly no drawback for them.

The power limitation itself only matters if you start looking beyond 40 ST Powerstones, which require immense allocations of time and money. At IQ 20 (the minimum to create any Powerstone) the wizard who'd earned 8000 XP could already own a 40 point Mana Staff V, and replace it as needed, without further expense.

[hcobb]

All you need for Mana Staves is IQ 11 wizards, and because each and every wizard is taught the Aid spell by the time they're 16, you can easily pool up to power vast magics with a small group of wizards