Ritual Path Magic and magical items

[Taneli]

Hi,

I haven't seen any ideas on how to create magical items with the ritual path magic from MH1 besides the artifacts that give energy and magical charms for single-use items, protection charms and so on.

So, how would one create a staff of fireballs or some other item with those rules? As far as I can see, it's not really possible. Any ideas on how one could go about creating magical items with RPM style magic?

[mlangsdorf]

I'd treat a Staff of Fireballs as a Greater Create Magic effect that gave an Burning Innate Attack and Compartmentalized Mind (Dedicated Controls) to a stick of wood. As long as the caster maintained the spell, anyone could pick up the stick and use its dedicated controls to launch the Burning Innate Attack.

Note that this is going to be a pretty expensive ritual (I'm eyeballing it at a minimum 60 energy, likely more) so magic items might be a bit rare.

[Taneli]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I'd treat a Staff of Fireballs as a Greater Create Magic effect that gave an Burning Innate Attack and Compartmentalized Mind (Dedicated Controls) to a stick of wood. As long as the caster maintained the spell, anyone could pick up the stick and use its dedicated controls to launch the Burning Innate Attack.

Note that this is going to be a pretty expensive ritual (I'm eyeballing it at a minimum 60 energy, likely more) so magic items might be a bit rare.

Yes, that would make it quite expensive, and also would require the maintenance. Not really a permanent item I had in mind.

As a side note, (it's always great to answer your own post), I had the idea that maybe permanent magical items are not about grafting magic into an item, rather than about using object's inherent properties in ways that are not possible for the magic-less craftsman.

As an example, a magical sword might be a very fine (or super fine) blade, crafting of which was made possible by a spell that gives the craftsman an extraordinary (or, indeed, legendary) ability with his blacksmith skill.

[mhd]

I've been thinking a bit about magical items that used the RPM rules, or at least a rough facsimile. So the item itself would be a bit like a Grimoire, channeling a certain effect or combination thereof. Of course, said effect(s) needs energy.

Now this could be done several ways: A simple approach would be a fixed energy number for the item, so basically you'd have charged item, e.g. a wand. Another approach would be recharging the item using a skill. You could use Thaumatology for some kind of mage's staff – or Sword Art for your magical weapon, doing arcane katas every morning so that you can unleash a special attack once. Or for a more sinister approach, treat your enemy's HP as energy (HP/2 probably), so that after slashing and hacking at your foes for a while, you can charge up your weapon, either increasing it's damage potential for a while or unleashing a horrifying "finishing move"/"limit break".

One line of thought is a bit setting specific: I'm playing in the slightly steampunk-ish Iron Kingdoms, where there's "mechanika". Now a lot of that works via a combination of effect-producing "runeplates", powered by "energy accumulators". Which does sound quite familiar in the context of RPM… So constructing those items would use a parallel system to RPM, using lots of the same terms, maybe even with the same skills or at least defaulting to those.

Which, by the way, is how I'd generally approach such a item-creation system: It doesn't need to actually use the RPM rules as written, but tie in with those. So creating an item isn't a "ritual" as per the definition of RPM, with all its rules and effects, but probably uses a lot of the same terminology. You're probably working on a timescale at least an order of magnitude larger, require some different skills in addition to Thaumatology etc, never mind expensive materials and laboratory settings.

I could imagine just using rituals for some kind of super-charm that's still somewhat bound to its creator, but that looks more like a tribal mythological background to me ("Coyote steals Thulsa Dooms daughter"), where the material items themselves aren't that expensive/important. Call it a "boon".

[Humabout]

If you want to create a ritual that makes a permanent magic item, I'd probably start with how symbol magic is used for enchantment (Thaum p. 175). That's probably close enough to not require a lot of tweaking (if any).

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Taneli

Yes, that would make it quite expensive, and also would require the maintenance. Not really a permanent item I had in mind.

Even for a greater effect, it only takes 66 energy to make it last for a year, with +3 energy per year. And extending a ritual to last twice as long as the initial casting is dirt cheap (22 energy for a year, +1 per additional year).

A skilled caster, with Path of Magic 17, a grimoire of Wand of Fireballs +6, casting in a +2 Sacred Space, has a 75% chance of safely drawing 459 energy. Assuming 150 of that energy goes into creating a really nice Innate Attack advantage for the wand, that leaves 309 energy for duration, or 82 YEARS. And it only costs 109 energy to immediately extend that duration, doubling the usage period of the want to 164 years. He can do that with nearly a 90% success rate, even without a grimoire.

Okay, 164 years isn't permanent, but it's close enough for practical purposes.

Now you could make the argument that a skill-17 caster with a +6 grimoire and a +2 Sacred Space is pushing the bounds of reason, but enchanters are supposed to be really powerful so it doesn't seem too crazy to me.

[Langy]

In my Dungeon Fantasy with RPM game, I'm just going to be saying that the Heroes can't enchant items at all. Magic weapons and armor (ones that aren't just stolen directly from Artifacts or the Mythology pyramid issue) are going to be created with various quality modifiers, rather than the normal Magic rules (because I despise the normal Magic rules, including the normal Magic Item rules).

So something like a Flaming Weapon enchantment would be a +9 CF weapon modifier, etc.

Other magic items (things like magic rings, whatever, or wands, etc) will probably be designed as Gadgets and then given a monetary cost based on their cost as an advantage. Something like $500 per point, so a Ring of Protection that gives +1 DB would be statted up like this:

Ring of Protection - $6,000, 12 points
Statistics: Enhanced Dodge (Breakable, DR 5, Not Repairable, SM-9, -30%; Can Be Stolen, Quick Contest of DX, -30%) [6], Enhanced Parry (Breakable, DR 5, Not Repairable, SM-9, -30%; Can Be Stolen, Quick Contest of DX, -30%) [4], Enhanced Block (Breakable, DR 5, Not Repairable, SM-9, -30%; Can Be Stolen, Quick Contest of DX, -30%) [2].

$500 per point sounds about right, both because that's what you can trade points-for-cash for and because it gets roughly correct prices.

[Lamech]

A couple methods
1) Using rules for training, and apply CP toward the appropriate gadget advantage.
2) Use RPM to give someone the appropriate advantage (staff of fireballs is innate attack) and add the correct gadget limitations. (Stealable, breakable) to make it permanent add enough energy to the duration that it lasts for longer than the campaign will last.

[dataweaver]

One way to get a magical item is to cast a spell on that item and work in a Duration element that's longer than you intend to be around. Eventually, the magic will fade; but if "eventually" is measured in years or decades, the enchantment might as well be permanent. Of course, that's likely to be prohibitively expensive, and it definitely counts as an ongoing spell; but more on that later.

The other flaw with the above method is that it doesnt let you create items that cast spells; it only lets you create items that benefit from ongoing spells. Often, that's enough: a cloak of invisibility that conceals whatever is under it, or a jug that converts any water that you pour into it into wine. But quite often, you need an active ability. For those, you want a "second-order spell": work out the spell that you want to be able to cast with the item, and note its characteristics (including energy cost); then add that into a Greater Create Magic effect which has its own Duration, and a Lesser Control Magic effect that defines the trigger event: the result is a spell that you can cast on an item to allow it to cast the other spell whenever the trigger event occurs, for as long as the second-order spell's duration holds out — provided it has sufficient energy to do so.

It always has enough energy for one casting; that's included in the second-order spell's energy cost. Additional energy can be included in the original casting to allow for additional uses, but this gets prohibitively expensive [i]very[i] quickly — and it's already prohibitively expensive enough as is. The other option is to cast a second-order spell on an Artifact, In such a way that the Artifact's energy reserve powers the spell for you. Triggering the embedded spell drains its energy cost from the Artifact's energy reserve.

If you want to do more than the above paragraphs describe, you need to use Raw Magic. If you cast a spell with anything longer than an Instant Duration on an object using Raw Magic to fuel it instead of the mystical energies normally used (on a one-for-one basis), the spell becomes permanent — or at the very least acquires a massive multiplier to its Duration, extending even the briefest of spells into days or more and putting years, decades, or longer well within your reach. My inclination would be the former, for the sake of simplicity: the spell becomes permanent. It also no longer counts as a spell that you're maintainng: it exists entirely independent of you. Note that this works just as effectively with a second-order spell: cast the second-order spell using Raw Magic instead of ordinary mystical energy, and the target item gains the ability to cast the embedded spell forever, provided that it has enough energy to do so.

Raw Magic is also the secret behind creatng Artifacts: determine how large of an energy reserve you want, and cast a spell with a Greater Create Magic effect that adds that much energy to its base cost; but you must fuel the spell with Raw Magic; nothing else will do.

How do you acquire Raw Magic? What I'm thinking is that the Meditative Magic rules from Fantasy would make for a good model for accumulating it. You might further restrict it by requiring that the Meditation rolls be made at sites of great mystical power, or by aspectng the Raw Magic based on where it was accumulated and only allowing properly-aspected Raw Magic to be used to fuel any given spell. There might also be naturally occurring deposits of the stuff that can be "mined", but spells intended to influence Raw Magic always require a Greater Magic effect; and, like regular spell energy, Raw Magic cannot itself be Created. Any of the other effects, sure; but not Create.

I would also allow Raw Magic to fuel normal spells in a pinch, with one point of Raw Magic replacing five points of normal magical energy; but you wouldn't get the aforementioned benefits. Likewise, you could spend one point of Raw Magic to negate three points of penalty on a casting — but not to generate any sort of bonus.

[Refplace]

Lot of interesting ideas.
I am thinking of using a Greater create effect on magic as a seal or perhaps a "Transcendent" effect which is to Greater what that is to Lesser.
That lets the item exist and not count as a charm or active spell.
It also protects the item from normal counter spells, to disenchant the item would also requires the Transcendent effect.

Additional thoughts.
Use Lesser Magic to create and move magic into an ER for the item. Transcendent to seal it. You can recharge it with a simple Ritual using lesser magic.
Use Lesser Magic and Mind to create dedicated controls to let people cast spells using the item. They can power it off its ER or normally.

Craft magic I like but Thaumatology doesn't give us much to work with. Combined with RPM or path/book you could say that each days work making the item counts as a day accumulating energy. 1 roll per day or maybe jsut 1 point of energy per day which would match Slow and Sure default magic system.
You could just say that high skill counts as a path for that purpose and it would be pretty limited. For complicated items you would want to use actual rituals but you could just pump the energy in over time and let fate decide.