Is there a fixed version of the Scroll enchantment?

[Jaware]

So I'm a big fan of scrolls. Namely the expanded scroll rules from dungeon fantasy sages.

I have found they are both good loot, and genuinely interesting toys for the PCs to play with. Similar to potions, but a more fixed and defined effect combined with the ease of transport and their light weight make them, in my mind at least, ideal for an easy 85% or more of situations.

Now. Just reading dungeon fantasy sages and looking over the rules and the flavor and the like. It states that clerical spells of healing and disease healing etc are a major source of income for the clergy and the like. Which makes sense. That also assumes that the clerics have access to the scroll spell which I can understand.

Now. I am looking to see if there is anything that allows PCs to create scrolls of the same effect as the sages scrolls. Essentially allowing them to create them in their spare time. Mage days seems a bit extreme for me. Especially when the spells cost a reasonable amount for a single person to cast. But I understand for economy reasons.

I was wondering if someone has already created an updated version of the spell for that purpose already. Like. Including the ability to make them charged and or universal etc.

It'd be nice if it has already premade and I don't need to reinvent the wheel.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Jaware

Now. I am looking to see if there is anything that allows PCs to create scrolls of the same effect as the sages scrolls.
Essentially allowing them to create them in their spare time.
Mage days seems a bit extreme for me.

The speedbump is that M57 seems to be the only Enchantment Spell with a "Time to cast" listing. Well, except "Remove Enchantment" on M58 which says to "see Enchanting (p16)"

All the rest lacking TTC entirely I think impleis the standard options: 1 hour per 100 energy (Quick and Easy) or 8 hours per 1energy (Slow and Sure).

Scroll doesn't even have an "Energy Cost" however, so neither option is technically viable...

But presumably the "day per energy to cast the spell" is roughly "Slow and Sure, with Energy Cost same as spell"

Originally Posted by Jaware

I was wondering if someone has already created an updated version of the spell for that purpose already. Like. Including the ability to make them charged and or universal etc.

I haven't figured out Universal, but "Charged" seems like it's plausible under existing rules.

M57 "Power" seems un-economical for one-shot itemsfor scrolls since it costs 500 energy...

But 15% of 500 is mere 75 energy, per M57 "Temporary Enchantment".

M57 notes ALLOWED combinations:

Temporary Enchantment cannot be used in conjunction with
any Enchantment college or Meta-Spell college spells
except the following:
Hex,
Limit,
Link,
Name,
Power,
Speed.

So in theory you could spend 1 day creating a 1-energy spell scroll, then 75 days (or 1 hour if you can amass enough energy together) to give it a one-time "power" use.

That's super-expensive though, so I had some house-rule ideas to make things cheaper.

Firstly: we know power applies as a discount to ALL spells on an item. No matter the college.

Based on the precedent of powerstone being cheaper to cast if it only affects one college (20 to 12 is -40% just like the One College limitation!) the idea is to allow a similar tidscount to "Power" as well.

60% of 500 energy is 300 for example (a bit easier to enchant) and you might even go a step further and make "One-Spell Power" and 20% of 500 is 100.

Based on that, "one-spell power usable one time" should be a mere 15 energy for the first tier. Add the 1 energy it costs to make the scroll and it's 16 energy. That's low enough that a lot of mages could approach it using "Quick and Dirty".

This is SLIGHTLY cheaper than Spell Stone (M60) which is 20x casting cost... as it OUGHT to be IMO since Scroll has drawbacks:

1) only mages can use them (anyone can use spell stone)
2) must be literate in language it's written in (no literacy needed for spell stones)
3) must speak aloud to activate (can crush a spell stone quietly)
4) takes double casting time (spell stones take only 1 second to activate, like Hang Spell or Reflex)

Spell Stone's biggest drawback is the expensive component need. It's exactly the same as Powerstone, but in the case of a powerstone you're making a long-term item, not destroying your wealth for a 1-time use.

Powerstone has the option of ignoring the expensive components by investing 4x energy. Spell Stone doesn't, but that sounds like an okay house rule (80x casting cost).

That seems fine to me, because using "Power" to build scrolls gets very costly over time, even using my -80% "one spell" -85% "one time" discounts.

15/500 quickly becomes 30/1000 then 60/2000 then 120/4000 when you get up to 4 power. Now compare how this would be to multiples of 80...

1/ 15:80
2/ 30:160
3/ 60:240
4/120:360
5/240:480
6/480:560
7/960:640

As you can see, by 7 energy, the linear x80 eventually is cheaper than the constant doubling formula Power uses.

[Jaware]

Looking over that, I agree. I seem to follow the logic and the like.

However. It still doesn't answer the question.

"Why would someone want to do this?"

Like. Scroll according to magic is bad. Like. Very bad. I have never had a player look at that spell. And be happy that it exists and attempt to work it into their character. Players new to gurps, or new to magic caster etc see it, they get super excited, and then they learn how it works. And it's just instantaneous dismissal. I've seen countless discussions online about how it's not useable etc. And I'm inclined to agree.

Like. Why would I take 6 days to make a scroll of a spell that takes 6 fp to cast. That then has those listed disadvantages to use the thing. When you could just hang the spell? There's just never a reason to do it. It's like 1 step forward. At the cost of 12 steps back.

Where as the DF scrolls are interesting and fluid. And they are useable and fun. Players see awesome stuff happen thanks to scrolls. Eg making a big splash of light in a dark cave while fighting vampires or something. Or finding that scroll of resurrection, or suspended animation. Or explosive fireball when the hero's desperately need to turn the tide. Etc.

Only then to figure out they can't prepare those sorts of items in their down time. The wizard that's 320 character points that's played the same dude for 6 years weekly can't make them half as good as a npc merchant in town.

It seems very off to me. And that's something that I don't often say about gurps.

I could see a scroll spell that works almost like it does in magic, with the option to take say a -3 and triple it's cost to make it charged. And maybe a -3 and triple it's cost to make it universal. And if using the options together it's a -8. Or something. Then allowing magic perks that allow that to be bought off if bought to specific spells. Then allowing something like the rules for material enchantment pyramid inorder to actually make the thing. Test it there for a bit. See how it functions. And then make adjustments as needed.

But it's a case of 'these things are amazing I want to be able to prep them in my 3 weeks of downtime.' or 'giys I can't make it to the next 3 months of sessions cause I'm doing a trip for work, but I can email and we have me make some scroll during my downtime, I'll stay in town and make them for when I get back or something's

But the rules for making them are justto horrid to ever think about making them.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Jaware

Looking over that, I agree. I seem to follow the logic and the like.

However. It still doesn't answer the question.

"Why would someone want to do this?.

Because they want to make the spell available to somebody else without needing to be there themselves. Scroll production is a crafting job for wizards who are too smart to spend their time crawling into monster infested holes in the ground. PCs don't generally make them any more often than the manufacture their own weapons.

If you do alter them to the point that it makes sense for PC wizards to produce them, then either the market cost drops so much that it no longer makes sense for PCs to be wizards - just buy scrolls for anything you are ever likely to need - or conversely wizard character can earn so much more money as a scroll craftsman than he could ever hope to as an adventurer that it becomes an outright insane job choice instead of just a reckless one.

[Fred Brackin]

I would fix this problem with 2 House Rules. It's not RAW but is would be simple.

The first one is to change the time to write a Scroll from 1 day per energy to 1 hour per energy.

The second is to entriely remove the "gem/stone" requirement from Manstone and thus probably fixing another useless spell. Re-name it "Mana store or if you really can't bear to get rid of Manstone make a new Spell. Just let 1 energy pt be Enchanted per 1 hour of Q&D ritual.

So suppose you're worried about some fellow adventurer who lacked the foresight to buy Rapid Healing and gets a broken arm off a Crippling injury. You need an Instant Restoration to fix that and that's a 50 pt Spell (something else that might need fixing).

There's no practical way at your level of character pts that you can scape together 50 energy in the field so you don't even bother to learn Instant Restoration (you might not bother to learn regular Restoration either because that always take a month).

Sow aht would it take for soem npc Mage to make a charged Scroll of Instant Restoration under my proposed House Rules? 50 hours to write the Scroll and another 50 to get the 50 pts of Msnastore but it only requires one Enchanter.

So, 12.5 days at $33 a day at the comminssioned/custom magic item rate or $412.5. Not really that bad for an emergency item. If you wanted the 100pt version of Stop Bleeding that stabilizes Mortal Wounds that would only be 20% of the cost.

Note that you do have to roll once for writingthe Scroll and after each pt of Manastore and the cumulative chance of getting that natural 18 is why you don't make a Scroll of Resurrection.

[Varyon]

Generally speaking, it's often alright to assume a character with skill 12 in an Average difficulty crafting skill can generate (Average Monthly Income)/200 worth of labor every hour, at least with a successful roll against the skill. Every +1 to skill is +1 step on the Size and Speed/Range Table to income. Having a Hard or Very Hard gives an effective +1 or +2 to skill level (so skill 12 in a VH skill generates the same amount of labor as skill 14 in an A skill), Easy is instead at least a -1, possibly a -2. This matches decently well with the income figures for various professions in LTC3, although it does make high skill allow production of items cinematically quickly, but that's hardly inappropriate for DF. This assumes access to relevant materials and an appropriate workshop.

You could use the above guidelines to figure out how quickly the character can create a given scroll (I assume using the lower of Scroll and the relevant spell skill). The character would still need to purchase (or otherwise acquire) the appropriate media (high-quality papyrus, magical inks, etc), and should probably have to pay to rent space in an appropriate workshop, of course. I'd be tempted to say the Mage's Guild (or Temple, or whatever) pays something like 10% of a scroll's nominal cost in materials, maintaining workshops, etc, and the rest is the scriber's labor. Murder-hobos, even if temporarily settling down (while their player is out on a business trip, say), are going to be paying markedly more for materials and to rent space in an appropriate workshop, if the guild even lets them do that at all. I'd be inclined to go with somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/2 the scroll's nominal worth, but the character still has to put in the same amount of labor, and the fact the scrolls lack the Mage Guild's official seal (or whatever) means the character isn't going to be able to sell them, or won't be able to sell them for enough to turn a profit (it is a built-in assumption for DF that the murder-hobos can't really make money without murder-hoboing it up, as otherwise why do the latter?).

Now, I don't have Magic to check, but let's say Scroll is a Hard skill, and you want to make a Universal, Charged Scroll of Fireball (also a Hard skill), at 3d damage. You have each skill at 17. That's comparable to an Average skill at 18, which would produce labor at +6 SSR (x10) the Average rate. DF's starting wealth of $1000 implies roughly TL3, so Average income is going to be around $700/month, or $3.5/hour. So, your labor in making the scroll is at $35/hour. Assuming you set it to skill 15, the scroll would cost $300 to purchase ($60 for 3 energy - skill 15 is $20 per energy - multiplied by 5 for being both Universal - x2 - and Charged - x2.5). You need to make up for 90% of this, or $270, in labor - that's 7.7 hours (might as well round up to 8). The Mage's Guild would need to pay $30 to cover materials, shop upkeep, etc, but the character would pay markedly more (for materials, renting a space, etc) - probably somewhere between $100 and $150. Such a "bootleg" scroll wouldn't be possible to sell on the open market, and even on the black market would probably be worth only a little more than what the character paid to make it. But, hey, the downtime lets the character produce the scrolls for 1/3 to 1/2 the cost, and if he intended to just use them for himself, Universal wouldn't even be necessary (cutting cost - in both time and money - in half).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Jaware

Scroll according to magic is bad. Like. Very bad. I have never had a player look at that spell. And be happy that it exists and attempt to work it into their character. Players new to gurps, or new to magic caster etc see it, they get super excited, and then they learn how it works. And it's just instantaneous dismissal. I've seen countless discussions online about how it's not useable etc. And I'm inclined to agree.

HAVING a scroll can be good... for some spells anyway. Mostly because of not needing to roll at all (enchanted items still require you to roll against Power) and because that means ignoring annoying stuff like cumulative penalties.

Of course that requires multiple scrolls of the same spell...

You come up against that 'Slow' time that is paralyzing, which is why giving Scroll Quick and Dirty would have LOTS of mages doing it, but then also mean lots of mages have access to a wide variety of spells.

I'm thinking we could maybe reverse-engineer Temporary Enchantment to come up with multi-use scrolls made at higher cost.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The second is to entriely remove the "gem/stone" requirement from Manstone and thus probably fixing another useless spell.

Eh, as long as it follows the same rules as powerstones you can just cast it for 4x cost without using a gem; an extra $20 per point of energy fits nicely...

[Jaware]

[QUOTE=Varyon;2341441] /QUOTE]

I like this a lot. It seems to really work nicely. At least in theory.

However. I don't play dungeon fantasy, or dungeon fantasy point totals.....

But overall it seems pretty nice

[AlexanderHowl]

In my games, scrolls contain energy for their associated spell up to the creator's level in the Scroll spell (for an additional price equal to 0.5% starting income per point of energy) without increasing the time to make the scroll (the base/minimum cost of a spell determines the time required). Users must use the energy with the Scroll before their own reserves when casting spells from a scroll, but a Scroll does not dissolve until all of its energy is exhausted.

For example, a TL3 magician with Scroll-20 could store up to 20 FP in any of her scrolls (and can charge an extra $100 for her scrolls). If she has Major Healing-15, she can create a Scroll of Major Healing in just 1 day and charge $133 for the scroll ($33 for one day of scroll creation and $100 for the energy). The scroll could be used to heal up to 40 HP before its own reserves are exhausted.

Of course, the ability to store energy within scrolls changes the economics of magic quite a bit. Enchanters specialize in Scroll instead of Enchantment, meaning that the price of enchanted items increases 4x. Since scrolls can only be used by mage though, it means that every PC buys Magery 0 unless they have a really good reason not to.