GURPS Powers and Enchanting

[Celti]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, you talked about Afflictions, and that advantage is normally primarily used to confer powers on people, not to create objects. In fact, it's kind of weird to use it to create objects at all.

“Enchanting” is not usually creating an object — it is imbuing an already-existing item with a permanent magical (or other power-sourced) effect: i.e., an advantage. What trait is more appropriate to give an object (living or inanimate) an advantage than Affliction?

A simple and generic sort of “enchantment” affliction would be Affliction 1 (Accessibility, Only for enchanting items with clearly-defined abilities of the same power modifier, -40%; Cumulative, +400%; Extended Duration, Permanent, +300%; Variable Enhancement, Advantage, Any 1-point trait, +100%; PM, -10%) [85] (or [45] if you prefer Multiplicative Modifiers). As you rightly should. ;-)

ETA: Mind, that simple of an enchantment Affliction is horribly horribly broken without some extra limitations and some sort of meta-game rules around it to keep people from just enchanting thousands of character points of abilities into a magic ring in a single day! It's an example of the basics — I do not suggest using it directly! End Edit.

Thaumatology: Sorcery piles on an assortment of other modifiers to make it fit Sorcery. I could probably come up with a similar assortment of modifiers to make a few versions of it to fit Psionic Powers — a Telepathy ability that requires a properly-prepared crystal of appropriate value, that allows you to imbue it with various other Telepathy abilities — a psychotronic generator, created with a power.

Affliction is indeed the right ability here; Sorcery just happens to have a worked example of how to do it, and some very clear notes on how it was done so that it can be adapted to other powers.