Power Stone Price

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The base objective of the enchantment system in GURPS Magic is "PCs should never do enchantment". Thus, it was made extremely unappealing. The time requirements aren't necessarily bad, it's just that the skill and prerequisite requirements for enchantment are unduly high.

That sounds about right. I honestly have no idea as to why they wanted to make it that unappealing, though. *shrug*

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Langy

I honestly have no idea as to why they wanted to make it that unappealing, though.

(a) it was the standard trope at the time -- and still may be, given that relatively few fictional mages just whip up backpacks full of magic items customized to their problem at hand, as opposed to all the elite craftsmen laboring a lifetime to produce their one unique masterwork; and (b) it's not that interesting to have a PC that just sits around in a lab creating and mailing stuff to some other, active, PCs to use. In fact, that usually gets gets abused into an NPC / Ally of the real PCs.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

(a) it was the standard trope at the time -- and still may be, given that relatively few fictional mages just whip up backpacks full of magic items customized to their problem at hand, as opposed to all the elite craftsmen laboring a lifetime to produce their one unique masterwork; and (b) it's not that interesting to have a PC that just sits around in a lab creating and mailing stuff to some other, active, PCs to use. In fact, that usually gets gets abused into an NPC / Ally of the real PCs.

Sure, but if enchanting stuff took a reasonable amount of time (a few days to a few weeks) and prices for enchanted goods came mostly from material costs (due to magical reagents or whatever), then you could still have 'magician can't whip up permanent magical items customized to situation at hand immediately' and 'no need to have player sit in lab all day while everyone else adventures' along with 'more reasonable economic assumptions'. It'd also get away from the current non-trope of 'GURPS enchanters have to work together', which isn't a trope in any fiction I can think of.