The Fantasy Trip

[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
I've previously said that I'm not troubled by the complexity of magic items, but in this post I was going to go over which part I liked, and which parts I disliked.

THINGS I LIKED:
-- I really like the rule of 5. This limits how many items a character can get.

-- I like how successive enchantments on the same item cost twice as much for each new enchantment. x1, x2, x4, x8, x16. This makes it very, very expensive to get a 'full load-out' of 25 enchantments.

-- I liked how I could pay x10 and make a magic item self powering. This allowed customization. More ways to customize an item would be cool in the new TFT.

-- I liked how you had to have apprentices to make some enchantments. This was not a problem in a city, you just rent more from the guild. But a wizard in a tower in the wilderness, (with say two apprentices), is limited to only being able to make some items and not all. This limitation was neat.


THINGS I WAS INDIFFERENT ABOUT:
-- Many, many rolls to make a big enchantment. I assumed this was for 'realism' and didn't give it much thought, but the many rolls were not fun. Just something to get thru. Not a big problem because it didn't happen that often.

-- Starting items to begin enchantment. I saw the point, but it didn't come up much. If Steve is looking to simplify things, rather than needing a Basilisk Brain to start a 6 week enchantment, change it into 1/8 of a Basilisk Brain per week. (1/8 rather than 1/6 so you are not hooped if you miss a DX roll.) Dividing (one large) starting ingredient into (several) weekly ingredients simplifies calculations with NO COST as to how the game behaves.


THINGS I DISLIKED:
-- The only part of magic item creation that confused me for a while, was the purpose of notes D thru H. The purpose of these rules were not explained. I thought this was for the cost of security, but now I believe that they take into account the chance of failures (16 or 17 which waste a week's work) and disasters (an 18 which destroys the current work so far). This is a lot of complexity in order to allow lots of rolls. If a 20 week enchantment had ONE roll at the end, these notes could quietly go away. If Steve is planning to simplify magic, the thing that would give the most bang for the buck is to reduce 20 rolls to one.

-- The algorithm for calculating costs is not in the book. This system:

(Divide cost of item – Starting ingredients) / number of weeks to make = Weekly_Lab_Cost.

Weekly_Lab_Cost – $150 (for lab maintenance) – $50 (for lab rental) = Weekly_Cost_Plus_Profit.

Weekly _Cost_Plus_Profit – (Wizard's Weekly Profit) = Weekly_Cost.

--> Greater Magic Item Enchantment.............. Wiz's weekly profit = $300
--> Lesser Magic Item Enchantment................ Wiz's weekly profit = $200
--> Weapon Armor / Enchantment ................. Wiz's weekly profit = $120
// These profits are from the job table.

Weekly_Cost – $50 (for each apprentice needed) = Cost of common ingredients needed per week.


Once I knew this, using the magic item tables was simple. I could make new magic items and properly make everything work. (I don't trust the tables in the back. They round values, and a slightly wrong value multiplied by many weeks is pretty far off.)

I think that the Wiz' profits are too high. Taxes, (or land rental), and the price of security could reduce the wizard's profit, if wanted.

*****

In summary, the current system is OK, tho it can use some polishing. A lot of values in the table are off (some items are far more profitable than others). However, if Steve does a massive revision, the things I most hope stay in TFT are the rule of 5 and the doubling costs for subsequent enchantments.

Comments welcome.

Warm regards, Rick.