Steve Jackson Games Forums - [RPM] Better Arms and Armor Through Magic

Quote:

Originally Posted by DangerousThing (Post 1740075)

OK, superfine might be overdoing it in a traditional fantasy environment.

To be fair, my artificing system as it currently stands would allow a highly skilled TL4 swordmaker to produce a wavy-bladed (which should be Cheap) broadsword with +4 damage (+2 on top of Very Fine), +2 skill (+1 on top of Balanced), -4 breakage (-2 on top of Very Fine), immunity to maintenance checks, and Armor Divisor (2). He wouldn't even need to know any magic (although I may make either magic-free enchanting in general a Craft Secret, or even each such enchantment a Craft Secret)! The "ritual" for making it is going to be something like Lesser Strengthen Matter x4 (12) + Bestows a Bonus 2 (Damage, 2) + Bestows a Bonus 1 (Skill, 2) + Bestows a Penalty 2 (Breakage, 2) + No Maintenance (10) + Rules Exemption (2) + Armor Divisor 2 (10), for a total of 40 energy. The weapon itself, before taking into account the price for the energy, would likely cost somewhere around $15,200.

Of course, now that I know that Bestows a Bonus/Penalty is legitimate to apply to Breakage chance, I think I'll get rid of that Rules Exemption - weapons that are made with sub-par materials/designs simply need to negate this using Bestows a Bonus. As implied above, in addition to what I previously listed, I think Armor Divisor 2 and Bestows a Penalty 2 (Breakage) may be the limits of Lesser Strengthen Matter. On the topic of Breakage, the newest Pyramid introduces a Heavy Enhancement (and corresponding Light Limitation) which give me a jumping-off point for increasing/decreasing the weight of weapons (I'm not going to bother trying to modify armor weights, even if Lighten is something popular - just start with an armor of the weight you want and give it bonus DR until you're where you'd like to be). Heavy is +10% per +10% weapon weight, so that's easy enough - 1 energy per +5% weapon weight. This would modify MinST and weight for breakage purposes, although the weapon would still have the same nominal weight (for encumbrance). Light is -5% per -10% weapon weight - as making a weapon lighter is going to primarily be done to drop its MinST, this is an enhancement, but with the corresponding increase to breakage it's not a perfect complement to Heavy - we'll keep the 5% from the article, making it 1 energy per -10% weapon weight. I'd say the limit for a Lesser Strengthen Matter would be +/-1 on the SSR table - so x1.5 for Heavy (10 energy), x0.7 for Light (3 energy). I'll modify the original post with the new Lesser Strengthen Matter guidelines.