Enchantment as High Crafting Skill

[Gavynn]

I was going through GURPS the last couple of days looking for how smiths could create magical items through extreme skill in crafting (as in legendary- or mythic-level). The idea here is that high level smiths would not distinguish between making extremely high quality items and items with magical properties. There is just a natural blurring from one into the other. I was describing it thusly:

Likely, the ancient smiths do not distinguish between a high-level understanding of smithing and magically enchanting an item. To them, being a skilled smith of the highest caliber is to be able to produce wondrous objects with magical powers.

But, I was reading through Magic and Thaumatology and elsewhere here and there and was not seeing exactly what I was looking for. I was searching online and I found this from someone on Reddit:

Originally Posted by Peter34cph

GURPS has no officially published supplements that gives good game mechanical support to the concept that very skilled and intuitive craftsmen - as opposed to intelligent and scholarly robe-and-staff wizards - can create permanently magical items

Is that true? It seems like something that occurs often enough in fantasy that GURPS would have addressed it. For example, arguably, this is the method by which the elven (and probably even dwarven) smiths created wondrous objects in Middle-earth.

If it is true that there isn't a GURPS publication that addresses something like this, has anyone created something of their own for this situation?

Two elements that I did find that I would want to incorporate into this are the ideas of 1) the quest and the potential need to obtain legendary materials to incorporate into the item, and 2) the potential need to "put one's self" into the item. This potentially means that some items would be "one off" (like Fëanor's making of the Silmarils, which he did once, but can't do again).

[RGTraynor]

Well ... other than a handful of paragraphs describing the whats and wherefores, what kind of mechanical support's needful? Something like:

A master weaponsmith (with base skill of 19+) who rolls a critical hit when setting out to make a weapon of Good quality or better can, through the perfection of his or her craft, impart magical qualities to it. Select appropriate weapon enchantments with an energy cost not to exceed a roll of 1d6 x 100; add half again to the result if the weapon was forged in a High mana/Sanctity zone, or if the weaponsmith has the Serendipity or Hedge Witch (cf GURPS Russia) Advantages or at least Magery 1.

That should suffice. Seems to me a system like this works better being light and mysterious rather than broken down into the usual exhausting degree of nuts and bolts.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

That should suffice. Seems to me a system like this works better being light and mysterious rather than broken down into the usual exhausting degree of nuts and bolts.

Yeah, in this context that makes a lot of sense, IMHO. Very Tolkien.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Yeah, in this context that makes a lot of sense, IMHO. Very Tolkien.

I have a different take on this, in that it feels too random. For me, the idea is that high-level craftsmen can go into their workshop expecting to be able to make magical items. They are not depending on the change of rolling critical successes.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

I have a different take on this, in that it feels too random. For me, the idea is that high-level craftsmen can go into their workshop expecting to be able to make magical items. They are not depending on the change of rolling critical successes.

IIRC, the higher your skill is, the greater the chance of a critical success. It may requires houserules, perks, or other fudging to allow critical successes at higher than a natural 6 (the limit in the RAW as far as I know, available at skill 16+), but that would also be somewhat consistent with Tolkien and other epic fantasy settings.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

IIRC, the higher your skill is, the greater the chance of a critical success. It may requires houserules, perks, or other fudging to allow critical successes at higher than a natural 6 (the limit in the RAW as far as I know, available at skill 16+), but that would also be somewhat consistent with Tolkien and other epic fantasy settings.

See Wild Criticals, GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wild Card skills, p. 26 for such an example.
Some GMs allow House Rules and/or perks to increase it in a similar way. I think -9 is a good cap though.

As for High Craft, I use High Craft Powers (p. 205), Enchantment Through Deeds and the section on Meditative Magic in GURPS Thaumatology to handle this in general with a few house rules to handle this.
200 hours studying can grant a character point and this is the core of the Meditative Magic section. So I figured it was fine to apply the same process to a High Craft skill. That is slow but Enchantment through Deeds and the named Possession perk can ad more later and I have some house rules (basically a mini-magic system) that I throw in the mix to speed things up a bit. For example using magical materials, based on Thaumatology and the Material magic article in Pyramid.

[Varyon]

In terms of official rules, Pyramid #3/66 has "Alternative Ritual Path Magic," with one of the ideas presented being High Craft. This is (as the article title indicates) an alternate version of RPM where craftsmen can learn a High Craft skill to complement their crafting skill, and allow them to work magic into their creations. The example is of a toymaker using Woodworking and High Craft (Woodworking) to create an animated dollhouse. Note that, this being RPM, permanent enchantment isn't really a thing* - in the example, the dollhouse's enchantment will last for a year, although the toymaker could extend that indefinitely by renewing it each year before the enchantment expires (renewing a spell is cheaper than casting it in the first place, as you only have to pay for the Duration).

*You can certainly enchant something to last a long time, of course. The example is only a year, for 22 energy (of the total 35 to cast); in theory, he could have enchanted it to work for a millennium (although without tossing on a Greater Strengthen High Craft to prevent decay, it would likely be dust by the time the enchantment expired), but that would have cost at least 49 energy for the Duration alone.


For my Oubliette setting - which is Dungeon Fantasy, albeit not using the same magic system as that (indeed, I may outright dispense with having any sort of mage, and have all the magic be in the form of items) - even ordinary craftsmen can create magic items by just taking enough time. GURPS Low Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics has rules for how long crafting something takes based on the cost of raw materials and the wages of the typical craftsman of such. I modified that a bit, after noticing a trend in the wages of the example professions in that supplement, for the following.

Skill 12 in an Average skill (treat Easy skills as though they were a rank lower, Hard as a rank higher, Very Hard as two ranks higher) is good enough to make an Average wage with that skill. Every +1 to skill is +1 SSR (x1.5, x2, x3, x5, etc) to wages; every -1 is -1 SSR (x0.7, x0.5, x0.3, x0.2, etc) to wages. As crafting rate is based on labor wages, this means a character with skill 14 can create things at twice the rate as one with skill 12, for example.

Using the above, let's say a craftsman wants to create a Balanced, Very Fine Thrusting Broadsword with Penetrating Weapon (5) (while Oubliette will use a different magic item system, I'll just stick with DF examples, here). The weapon itself has a +23 CF, so it's $14,400, and the enchantment costs $50,000, for a grand total of $64,400. Raw materials for a Thrusting Broadsword cost $41.40, so we need enough labor to cover the remaining $64,358.60. Using TL3 pricing, a typical Armoury (Melee weapons) 14 weapon-maker would make $1400/month, or $7 per hour. That would require 9,194 manhours - 1,149 man-days, or 46 man-months, or a bit under 4 man-years - of work. A legendary weaponmaker with Armoury (Melee weapons) 20 instead makes $14,000/month, or $70 per hour. That's only 919.4 manhours - which is still around 115 man-days, or around 4.6 man-months. That's a full season to make one weapon - but what a weapon!

If you don't want just anybody to be able to make magic weapons, you could either call for Craft Secrets Perks, or have there be a penalty involved (or both). I'd suggest giving a time reduction to account for such penalties, however, as otherwise a craftsman is better off just making a lot of normal weapons than taking the time to learn a Craft Secret or a Technique to reduce the penalty, or whatever.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

IIRC, the higher your skill is, the greater the chance of a critical success. It may requires houserules, perks, or other fudging to allow critical successes at higher than a natural 6 (the limit in the RAW as far as I know, available at skill 16+), but that would also be somewhat consistent with Tolkien and other epic fantasy settings.

That is true, higher skills so allow greater chances of rolling a critical success. Not guaranteed but it does help.

[edk926]

Well Pyramid 3/102 has Crafting Imbuements that works as an alternative way to make "magical" items. You use the imbuement skills right after you've conventionally crafted something. You can use the "Craft Expertise" power modifier to make it like pure skill made this. Also Low-Tech Companion 3 has some information about crafting and a couple of good perks.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by edk926

Well Pyramid 3/102 has Crafting Imbuements that works as an alternative way to make "magical" items. You use the imbuement skills right after you've conventionally crafted something. You can use the "Craft Expertise" power modifier to make it like pure skill made this. Also Low-Tech Companion 3 has some information about crafting and a couple of good perks.

I had not seen that either. It has been a while since I have gotten a Pyramid magazine. Thank you for pointing me to this. This is probably really close. Access to the necessary Imbuement skill could be what the great craftsmen of the past would have had.

As it happens, I also found "Willful Weapons" starting on page 70 of GURPS: Celtic Myth. The next page has "Making a Willful Weapons" that is also about how sidhe smiths can give magical properties to weapons while forging them. Lots of good stuff there. Not for the current edition of course, but that should not be too big a hurdle.