Sorcerous Enchantment Gripes

Sorcerous Enchantment Gripes

Not that long ago, I wrote a huge post about enchanting. Now, it has become more relevant to me, as I've begun writing Enchanted Item Compendium. However, as soon as I started it, I immediately encountered problems, and I'd like to write another rambly post that, hopefully, will help me fix the situation.

As I outlined in the aforementioned post, the enchantment process has the following steps:

1)      Design the item with traits and modifiers

2)      Apply the form multiplier

3)      Apply additional enchantment modifiers

4)      Calculate the Enchantment Point (EP) value

5)      Calculate the inherent value of the underlying item

6)      Enchanting the item

The problem I encountered lies in step #2 - apply the form multiplier. Form multipliers essentially are slightly altered gadget limitations from GURPS Basic Set that take into account how easy it is to remove or break the item. On the first glance, it seems sensible enough, and I understand why they work like they do from the game mechanical standpoint. However, it can create strange situations from the in-universe perspective. Why is it easier to enchant an ogre-sized ring than a human-sized ring? Why is it easier to enchant a wooden weapon than a metal weapon? What happens if you enchant a wooden weapon with lots of cool enchantments, and then enchant it to have higher DR? Why don't you enchant a projectile and then transform it into armor via a spell? Why are projectiles and other single-use items so prohibitively expensive? Why does a magic ring work only if you have no gloves or gauntlets?

Again, I understand it in terms of mechanics, but it doesn't feel right. There are other downstream effects from it. For example, I cannot really write an Enchanted Item Compendium with ready-to-go generic enchantments and enchanted items, because these form multipliers applied in step #2 affect everything in steps #3-6. Let's take something generic, like a flaming weapon enchantment. In D&D, you knew that it adds X gp to the item's base cost and took Y days to enchant. Here, you carefully build the ability with advantages and modifiers, and then find out that all parameters - EP, minimum inherent value of the underlying item, cost of the enchantment, and enchantment time cannot be made generic. Sure, I could list, for example, three sets of values - for metal weapons, wooden weapons, and projectiles - but that would be messy and cumbersome. And what if you'd like to enchant something like an adamantine weapon? That would require you to recalculate everything yourself. This makes such Compendium practically almost useless, as the main purpose is to have ready-to-use things.

My first thought was to abolish the DR component of the form multiplier, but now I realize that I have issue with size being a huge factor as well. Should I only use the "removeability" aspect of the form multiplier? But then the issue of rings not working when worn with gloves rears its ugly head. I don't want that. What do I do then?

Perhaps, before doing anything else with sorcerous enchantment, I can take a look at how enchantment works in other systems. First, I'll describe how ACKS II does magic item creation. In ACKS II, to be able to enchant an item, you must either know the spell that the item uses for its effect, have a sample (existing magic item of that type), or have a formula. Magic item creation is composed of three costs - component cost, material cost, and research cost. All three are equal. There is a table for devising component cost from the item's effect that might come in handy later.

    The component cost is paid in special components, i.e. monster parts (there are less effective substitutes). It's paid at the end of the project.

    The material cost is paid in gems, rare woods, metals, expert craftsmanship, etc. It's paid at the start of the project. Essentially, this is the same as the minimum inherent item value in GURPS Sorcery.

    The research cost is labor of the enchanter, possibly with a few assistants.

    The difference between ACKS enchanting and GURPS Sorcery enchanting is that component cost is mandatory, material cost is generally higher than in GURPS, and the number of assistants is quite limited.

Next, I'd like to discuss enchantment per GURPS Magic rules. Every (well, almost) spell has the "Items" section at the bottom, where common enchanted items that use this spell are described. Each one has an energy cost and, sometimes, special materials that are required (for example, a ruby for fire spells). There are two ways of enchanting:

    1. Quick and Dirty enchantment takes one hour per 100 points of energy, can be used with assistants, but you all must provide all the energy at once. Thus, it's only practical for cheap items.

    2. Slow and Sure enchantment takes much longer. Each point of energy requires one "mage-day" of work.

    In terms of economics, assuming TL3, items with energy costs of up to 60 cost $1 per energy point (as they are enchanted via Q&D enchantment), and items with higher energy costs have a market price of $33 per energy point (as they are enchanted via S&S enchantment). This is how much you pay if you commission or buy an item. If you're selling something you found in a dungeon, you sell at around 40% the price. Items you enchanted yourself have a lower discount. All these calculations and the Q&D/S&S breakpoints are explained in detail, which is very much appreciated. Thus, if you have different assumptions for pay grades, you know how to calculate the $/energy rate.

If you are familiar with my work, it might be surprising to you, but I love GURPS Magic. It's full of great and flavorful ideas, but I just believe that the implementation is sometimes lacking. But in any case, if I weren't using magic-as-powers, I'd be using GURPS Magic instead. So, what is preventing me from using GURPS Magic enchantment instead of sorcerous enchantment? It allows for so much more flexibility, including enchanting "non-items", such as permanent walls of fire and other magical effects. The only problem aside from some minor adjustments I'd have to make is that there are no guidelines for devising the energy cost for items. However, we can use the suggested 1 character point = 25 energy points as a rough guideline and also refer to the ACKS II table for certain multipliers. The end product will still be arbitrary, but this is something I am already doing with alchemy, so why not try it?