Very variant spell magic

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

To be honest, I'm not even sure what's in dispute at this point.

Your apparent belief that the "High Demand, Low Supply" cost woud be a stable condition. It would not be. Supply and demand interact and change in response to each other.

I'm also trying to convey that your proposed rules changes would not lead to your apparent desired objectives. There are many items in Gurps Magic whose extremely high energy costs are the barrier that keeps them from being common. Reducing _all_ enchantment costs by a factor of 100x removes those barriers.

I think you actually need to chose some other rules change.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That implies that, while a "typical" mage earns $1600 per month, an enchanter would earn $2000 per month. Now, one who knows how to make a Ring of Halt Aging might instead be more inclined to make Wands of Minor Healing (which a quick lookup of some online resources indicates requires 600 energy, or 6 days of enchanting), simply because 100 days of enchanting in a row is more grueling than 6 days of it, so may charge more than just that 25% markup.

What online resources indicate 600 energy can be pumped into an item by a single enchanter in 6 days? Quick and Dirty enchanting doesn't work like that under the standard rules.

Sure there are a host of special options to make that possible but if one is going off the standard rules unless one has Paut talismans with insane total energy one isn't going to pump out a 600 energy item on their own under standard rules.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Your apparent belief that the "High Demand, Low Supply" cost woud be a stable condition. It would not be. Supply and demand interact and change in response to each other.

I'm also trying to convey that your proposed rules changes would not lead to your apparent desired objectives. There are many items in Gurps Magic whose extremely high energy costs are the barrier that keeps them from being common. Reducing _all_ enchantment costs by a factor of 100x removes those barriers.

I think you actually need to chose some other rules change.

Stable is not an absolute term in economics, I'm entirely aware of that. I simply do not agree with the position you seem to be advocating, that the supply must inevitably grow, and very quickly, to fully satisfy the demand and thus crash the price, without regard for such factors as labour cost. And as I put forth earlier, the cost of many items, though less high than before, is still very high for many of them, if not most, so they won't be common, merely less rare.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

That surcharge only applies to longer projects, more than a week or two. Shorter ones, like the Minor Healing wand, allow breaks between. To be honest, I'm not even sure what's in dispute at this point.

What's in dispute is how common, given the way you have magic working in your setting, something like a Ring of Halt Aging would be. They're vanishingly rare in the default rules because they require nearly 30 mage-years (10,000 days) of uninterrupted enchanting. Requiring only a bit more than 3 mage-months is going to make them much more common. My suggestion of having the mages charge enough to make themselves Filthy Rich working 10 months out of the year would still allow for the items to be common (amongst the wealthy) while more than fairly compensating the mages for their time, which in turn would strongly encourage eligible mages to pursue that as a profession.

Originally Posted by maximara

What online resources indicate 600 energy can be pumped into an item by a single enchanter in 6 days?

Online resources indicated Minor Healing was a 600 energy enchantment. Whitewings has suggested 100 points of energy per day with Slow and Sure in his variant system. 6 days was simple arithmetic.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

S, the cost of many items, though less high than before, is still very high for many of them, if not most, .

The cost for any S&S is 100x less. That's not just "less high" and doesn't leave anything at a level of "still very high".

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The cost for any S&S is 100x less. That's not just "less high" and doesn't leave anything at a level of "still very high".

Did you read my analysis, or Varyon’s, which is even less generous? Neither one suggests that the price for high energy cost items will become low, and I’m honestly at a loss as to how you conclude that such items will become cheap. I can only conclude that you’re willfully ignoring the basic principle that the compensation for a task must always be proportional to the scarcity of the skills and natural aptitudes required to perform the task, the responsibilities attached to it, and the drawbacks attached to it. The task of creating high energy cost magic items requires extensive skill and education, moderately rare natural aptitude, little responsibility beyond producing an item that works as specified, and the considerable drawback that the production process allows for few to no days off, which translates to a very high labour cost.

[Whitewings]

It occurs to me that the two most common spells in this world, after Scroll and Enchant, will likely be Lend Energy and Restore Energy; the item for the latter, contrary to the note in the book, will likely be very common. With its unusual appearance, the rings could even become professional markers.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

Did you read my analysis, or Varyon’s, which is even less generous?

All factors that were raising costs after the 100x reduction were doing the same thing before the reduction (and quite possibly to a greater degree). 100x less energy cost is at least 100x reduced monetary cost.

More importantly, these reduced energy costs greatly lower the barriers built in to Gurps Magic. 7500 mage-days is a high barrier against Enchanting +5 ST or HT. 75 mage-days is not.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

All factors that were raising costs after the 100x reduction were doing the same thing before the reduction (and quite possibly to a greater degree). 100x less energy cost is at least 100x reduced monetary cost.

More importantly, these reduced energy costs greatly lower the barriers built in to Gurps Magic. 7500 mage-days is a high barrier against Enchanting +5 ST or HT. 75 mage-days is not.

What are you trying to argue? That magic item will be more common? That magic items will be less expensive? Nobody's claiming otherwise. That's a logical consequence of the premise. Are you trying to argue that every single mage will become an enchanter because that's the most lucrative option? That's not how people work. Some will, but not all. Some, probably most, will have "make lots of money" as a lower priority than "build things" or "heal people" or whatever. Or are you trying to argue that magic item will be everyday things, like cars in our society?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

I'm thinking of Magery being normally One College (Enchantment).
Some mages are Ceremonial Magic Only with Solitary Ceremonial

T28 notes that enchanting is already an exception to the need for at least 2 people to perform a ceremony, so I don't think you'd need to bother with that enhancement if you took (B67) One College Only (Enchantment) -40%

Which I guess you would take on top of Ceremonial Magery -40% (T23) for a total of -80% as otherwise (since Enchantment is always done ceremonially, I think?) there'd be no reason to take OCO(E) when you get the same discount with fewer limitations from CM-40

Not sure if you could also take "Enchantment-Only Magery" (T24) for a total of -110% ... the distinction seems to be that EOM prevents CASTING non-enchantment spells, while OCOE prevents LEARNING non-enchantment spells:

differs from One College Only (Enchantment) in that you can learn spells from any college

Seems like this would only work on all your magery if you were using Ritual Magery though (prereq count only) since the key "Enchant" spell has outside-college prereqs.

Of course this gets further muddied by the "Unusable Prerequisites" note which says the standard assumption is you are able to learn spells you can't actually cast due to magery/mana limitations.

Which really is why the "your magic school is a place of High Mana" or "your magic teacher has Mana Enhancer" ways seem like a must, and mandating that you need the proper magery/mana to learn, otherwise Enchantment-Only Magery and Enchantment College Only being different things doesn't really make sense AFAIK