Enchantment as High Crafting Skill

[Varyon]

In terms of official rules, Pyramid #3/66 has "Alternative Ritual Path Magic," with one of the ideas presented being High Craft. This is (as the article title indicates) an alternate version of RPM where craftsmen can learn a High Craft skill to complement their crafting skill, and allow them to work magic into their creations. The example is of a toymaker using Woodworking and High Craft (Woodworking) to create an animated dollhouse. Note that, this being RPM, permanent enchantment isn't really a thing* - in the example, the dollhouse's enchantment will last for a year, although the toymaker could extend that indefinitely by renewing it each year before the enchantment expires (renewing a spell is cheaper than casting it in the first place, as you only have to pay for the Duration).

*You can certainly enchant something to last a long time, of course. The example is only a year, for 22 energy (of the total 35 to cast); in theory, he could have enchanted it to work for a millennium (although without tossing on a Greater Strengthen High Craft to prevent decay, it would likely be dust by the time the enchantment expired), but that would have cost at least 49 energy for the Duration alone.


For my Oubliette setting - which is Dungeon Fantasy, albeit not using the same magic system as that (indeed, I may outright dispense with having any sort of mage, and have all the magic be in the form of items) - even ordinary craftsmen can create magic items by just taking enough time. GURPS Low Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics has rules for how long crafting something takes based on the cost of raw materials and the wages of the typical craftsman of such. I modified that a bit, after noticing a trend in the wages of the example professions in that supplement, for the following.

Skill 12 in an Average skill (treat Easy skills as though they were a rank lower, Hard as a rank higher, Very Hard as two ranks higher) is good enough to make an Average wage with that skill. Every +1 to skill is +1 SSR (x1.5, x2, x3, x5, etc) to wages; every -1 is -1 SSR (x0.7, x0.5, x0.3, x0.2, etc) to wages. As crafting rate is based on labor wages, this means a character with skill 14 can create things at twice the rate as one with skill 12, for example.

Using the above, let's say a craftsman wants to create a Balanced, Very Fine Thrusting Broadsword with Penetrating Weapon (5) (while Oubliette will use a different magic item system, I'll just stick with DF examples, here). The weapon itself has a +23 CF, so it's $14,400, and the enchantment costs $50,000, for a grand total of $64,400. Raw materials for a Thrusting Broadsword cost $41.40, so we need enough labor to cover the remaining $64,358.60. Using TL3 pricing, a typical Armoury (Melee weapons) 14 weapon-maker would make $1400/month, or $7 per hour. That would require 9,194 manhours - 1,149 man-days, or 46 man-months, or a bit under 4 man-years - of work. A legendary weaponmaker with Armoury (Melee weapons) 20 instead makes $14,000/month, or $70 per hour. That's only 919.4 manhours - which is still around 115 man-days, or around 4.6 man-months. That's a full season to make one weapon - but what a weapon!

If you don't want just anybody to be able to make magic weapons, you could either call for Craft Secrets Perks, or have there be a penalty involved (or both). I'd suggest giving a time reduction to account for such penalties, however, as otherwise a craftsman is better off just making a lot of normal weapons than taking the time to learn a Craft Secret or a Technique to reduce the penalty, or whatever.