Alternative enchanting system revisited

[Whitewings]

Well, the point isn't to make enchanting useful to adventurers. That's merely a side effect. The main purpose is to bring enchanting times down to something more reasonable, so that enchanting can actually be a viable career for people who are not terminally cracked, and enchanted items can be more than mostly showpieces for the ultra-rich. The enchanting rules were created, so far as I can tell, to support the Yrth setting, in which enchanted objects, barring the most minor, are extremely scarce.

[Anthony]

I have no idea why you have squaring in there. In general I think that a basic enchanting system should just say "enchantment X costs Y, use the general crafting rules to figure out how long that takes".

[Whitewings]

I originally had a system of steps, but found the squared term yielded a smooth function close to the stepwise results and without the weird break points. Basically, it keeps the cost of low end items low enough that they can be somewhat common, but the cost of higher end items high enough that they remain relatively scarce even with a good-sized circle, which appeals to me. And if the energy cost is high enough, meaning over 13,200, then the item is best made by a single master, which also appeals to me.

[Whitewings]

What I'm mostly looking for is more along the lines of how this might impact a setting. Beyond the obvious "enchanted items will be more common," that is. My assumption is that enchanters with Enchant above 20 are vanishingly scarce, and so the the practical maximum size of a circle is 6. Also, a regular enchanter earns a Comfortable income and a master enchanter a Wealthy income. This is reasonable, given that both professions require extensive training, more than almost any other job around.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

What I'm mostly looking for is more along the lines of how this might impact a setting. .

Well, since I've never seen S&S used in a game I can't say off-hand what the results of replacing S&S would be.

Trying out a single possible example of 500 energy total (like a melee weapon with +1 to hit and damage) it looks to me as it a circle of 6 divides 500 by and gets 83.33. Divided by 50 this is 1.66 which should round up to 2 and that would square to 4. so 4 hours.

By comparison the maser alone would divide 500 by 1 and then by 50 and get 10 which squares to 100 and I think your system has broken already.

If you go up to 1000 the 6 man circle scales by the square making twice as costly in time or 16 hours. The lone master also scales by the square to 400 hours.

I suspect that you might have replaced multiple breakpoints with a single strategy where smaller Enchantments made by people will always be better. Your requirement that the enchanter physically create the object during the process may remove the possibility of multiple Enchantments but I'm not sure this would be a good thing.

It would encourage having a lot of smaller pieces of jewelry instead. I don't know if you want all your PCs to dress like Mr T or not. :)

Also the math is unlovely and I would avoid this system for that reason alone in addition to my dissatisfaction with its' results..

[Whitewings]

The crafting requirement alters your analysis somewhat; the sword you present would be better made by a small group, perhaps three people (one smith, two assistants), since the time needed to forge a sword varies from as little as a month (starting from an ingot of suitable steel and using European methods) to as much as three months, using traditional Japanese methods and starting materials. It takes a full year to create a traditionally made katana, but most of that time is spent in tasks other than swordsmithing.

The energy cost breakpoint for one person versus a full circle, assuming the crafting time for the item is an hour or less, is indeed surprisingly low: only 120 energy, approximately.

[Flyndaran]

I don't see how any forging techniques could possible require months, except with large lag between specialized professions. Back then, the lion's share of cost was from materials.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

What I'm mostly looking for is more along the lines of how this might impact a setting. Beyond the obvious "enchanted items will be more common," that is. My assumption is that enchanters with Enchant above 20 are vanishingly scarce, and so the the practical maximum size of a circle is 6. Also, a regular enchanter earns a Comfortable income and a master enchanter a Wealthy income. This is reasonable, given that both professions require extensive training, more than almost any other job around.

Nevertheless, it sounds as if you'll have one of the in-world cultures eventually evolve a culture of assembly-line Enchanting, which will create a run-away effect that will be severely de-medievalizing.

As in Hello GURPS Technomancer.

And one of those effects will be that wages for Enchanters goes down.

Look at medieval times, where education was scarce. Anyone with a formal education, a clerk or scribe, could earn a good wage and demand a huge salary, compared to a commoner.

Compare that to today, where a significant minority of the population of any Western country is sent to college, and therefore the wages of the educated are no longer particularly high, not even for the very educated, Ph.D.'d and medical doctors.

It follows from the run-away effect, assembly-line style Enchantment, that your world will become the same, starting with the culture where the effect evolves, but then it'll spread elsewhere, via economic, military or memetic conquest.

Skill 20 still sounds very high, but keep in mind, economy will pursue efficiency. They eventually, and by that I mean within a few hundred years (which, mind you, is likely to still be well before your campaign begins), the popuations and cultures of your setting will develop ways to enable fairly ordinary people to achieve skill 15, and to enable merely mildly extraordinary people to achieve skill 20. Maybe via creating some kind of Gadget-Limited Magery Enchantments. +3 Magery (Limited -30% enchantments Only, -35%'ish Gadget).

Wages might not drop a whole level, but I'm sure they'll drop more than half a level each, as the now-dominant culture begins to mass-produce Enchanters, in the same way that we mass-produce people with BA and BS degrees.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

Well, the point isn't to make enchanting useful to adventurers. That's merely a side effect. The main purpose is to bring enchanting times down to something more reasonable, so that enchanting can actually be a viable career for people who are not terminally cracked, and enchanted items can be more than mostly showpieces for the ultra-rich. .

That's what the Q&D rules are for. You do need to ignore the silly note that Q%D Enchanters don't use Powerstones but after you do there are many utilitarian magic items within the reach of Q&D.

There are also many more ways to aid Q&D and Q&D circles of 500pts are not hard to achieve. See Thaumatology for things like Paut.

This does result in S&S being ignored but that doesn't mean changing S&S and then ignoring Q&D is the solution.