Sunday, March 8, 2015

DF Enchantment Changes

I decided to take the plunge and make an equipment rules change in my DF campaign.

- Magic weapons and armor require a positive-cost prefix to hold an enchantment.

- Charged magic items can only store power as if they were a Power Item equal to their non-magical value. Ex: A magic wand made out of dragon bone and gems worth 12,000 can hold up to 25 FP.

I discussed the armor enchantment a little bit before here, and my rules in general here.

The second one is just something that's been mostly in effect already, but I wanted to make it clear how it works.

Any special reason why?

Yes. The extreme cheapness of Fortify and Lighten meant that every single piece of armor the PCs have is +1 DR and 75% of normal weight. Same with the armor of almost every single NPC, even cheap-end hirelings who could barely afford beer money - enchanting a full suit of armor cost as much as getting a spare axe or mace.

So I was starting to feel the pressure on enemies, too - why don't the orcs all have +1 armor? Why not the hobgoblins? Why not bandits? Basically, shouldn't everyone have magic armor? It's ridiculously cheap and canonically some of those groups have access to wizards, and canonically some of them have looted civilized areas and/or trade with them.

Changing this also means that equipping new characters is much faster - no longer do you need to figure out the per-item costs for these spells and ensuring all new guys have the right armor enchantments.

Weapons, well, that's just to avoid the whole "I have 5K burning a hole in my pocket, I'll make my sword +1" thing. I'd rather people have a good basic item first.

Why now?

With a lot of new characters, and the old guys needing to re-equip, it seemed like a good chance to do this while keeping it fair for all.

What's the in-game justification?

Guild rule changes. Enchantment is NPC only, and they decided to stop enchanting junk for a pittance.

It was either that, or change the enchantment rates to $20/point for any enchantment, which would essentially make spell stones and minor enchantments go away, which would be a great campaign starter but I like the access to money-draining one-shot spells. I could just do it for armor, so it was 1000 for +1 DR and 2000 for -25% weight, but I didn't want to make that split. I could, if my players would rather say anyone can get this but it's more expensive for armor, but I like the fact that armor needs to be pretty good stuff (Ornate +1, say, or Dwarven) to get enchantment.

How did this go over?

Okay. One of my players asked for existing characters re-equipping to be grandfathered in. I said no, because the fact that everyone (or almost everyone) currently playing needs to re-equip was why I sprung this now. Grandfathering the old guys in would mean they'd all have cheap armor with Fortify and Lighten them but the new guys wouldn't, creating a have/have-not split. That didn't seem fair. Otherwise, it's not a huge deal.

19 comments:

  1. Nate, Em, and Mark all require at least ornate (+1 CF) on a piece of armor to carry the enchantment - I think this is for armor only. High TL also qualifies. But yeah, basically the same game: no super-enchantments on cheap stuff.

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    1. I won't require Ornate, because that means, say, Fine Elven Thieves' Mail isn't eligible for enchantment because it's not pretty enough. But the principle is the same - the stuff has to be of an improved non-magic quality before it can be magic.

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    2. It was at least Ornate (CF +1). Any of Fine, Elven, Thieves' or whatever would also qualify.

      Letting people use Ornate at CF+1 meant that you could get cheap magic items, but not as cheap as the standard rules, and you paid for a mostly useless enhancement.

      Personally, these days I'm tired of the cost difference between Q&D and S&S, and price them both at 20 pts/level. Or more preferably, use a difference pricing scheme than random energy points.

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    3. So basically, same rule as above - a cost-positive prefix.

      I'd go for $20/point too, but it would mess up a number of magic item prices already in play, and like I said above, I'm fine with cheaper access to spell stones and other consumable magic items.

      Setting a "consumable" price vs. "permanent" price is the same as now, just shifting what falls under each category, which would be a pain.

      Setting entirely new costs seems like an exercise in choosing my own randomness over looking up someone else's established randomness. I always err on the side of less work, so . . .

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    4. I'm in the same boat. I like $20/point both because it puts Fortify +1 and Lighten 25% in the same price range as other enchantments, and because it doesn't make enchanting armor one piece at a time cheaper than enchanting the whole suit.

      But I didn't impose this house rule at the start of my current game, so I'm not going to change the rules in the middle. My players would go nuts if they all suddenly got slower due to extra armor encumbrance from losing the cheap Lighten.

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  2. One of the most common magic items I see in starting characters is a Cornucopia Quiver (a Scout's go to item). Next is a Mage's Staff spell (for Wizards etc).

    So would you require a ornate or fine on these?

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    Replies
    1. They aren't armor or weapon enchantments, so no.

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    2. I would happily require at least $500 in Ornate before letting someone have a Cornucopia quiver. Cornucopia quivers are too cheap.

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    3. I'd agree, except that:

      - Scouts are generally less lethal than most other direct-damage combatants.
      - They depend on ammunition.

      Letting them fork over a nominal fee to avoid the headache of arrow tracking whenever they use their default arrow type is a total no-brainer for me.

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  3. The division between what is a weapon/armor enchantment versus enchanting a weapon or armor is a good distinction.

    Using CGA, and hitting a $10 shoulder quiver to end up at $500 is a bit extreme.

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  4. The effect of market forces is tangentially addressed in GURPS Magic, but it's really at the core of the problems you're addressing. Demand for life-and-death, arms race-type enchantments like Fortify, or versatile ones like Lighten, is always going to encourage expansion of production of such items to the point where the Orcs all really do have +1 armor, or its going to run up against limits in the availability of qualified mages or other production bottlenecks, and drive up the cost of such enchantments considerably. Such demand would also likely "crowd out" production of other items, driving their cost up as well.

    Meanwhile, something like a Forgetfulness enchantment (on a "cursed" helm or some such) is either going to be a niche item that will be hard to come by except as a special order (with a considerable mark-up). Meanwhile, their sale value as treasure would be heavily depressed by low demand -- no one is likely to care that the Forgetfulness helm you found would cost $18,000 to produce if they don't feel a need for one, unless the market for such things is so liquid that they'd consider buying it as a speculative investment (magic-item "flipping"?).

    So the decision to increase the market cost of enchanted items really can be done arbitrarily, rationalized by backstage economic factors (guild-driven or otherwise), though that would potentially incentivize PC mages to learn some enchantment spells to gain "at-cost" access to key items.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The effect of market forces is tangentially addressed in GURPS Magic, but it's really at the core of the problems you're addressing. Demand for life-and-death, arms race-type enchantments like Fortify, or versatile ones like Lighten, is always going to encourage expansion of production of such items to the point where the Orcs all really do have +1 armor, or its going to run up against limits in the availability of qualified mages or other production bottlenecks, and drive up the cost of such enchantments considerably. Such demand would also likely "crowd out" production of other items, driving their cost up as well.

    Meanwhile, something like a Forgetfulness enchantment (on a "cursed" helm or some such) is either going to be a niche item that will be hard to come by except as a special order (with a considerable mark-up). Meanwhile, their sale value as treasure would be heavily depressed by low demand -- no one is likely to care that the Forgetfulness helm you found would cost $18,000 to produce if they don't feel a need for one, unless the market for such things is so liquid that they'd consider buying it as a speculative investment (magic-item "flipping"?).

    So the decision to increase the market cost of enchanted items really can be done arbitrarily, rationalized by backstage economic factors (guild-driven or otherwise), though that would potentially incentivize PC mages to learn some enchantment spells to gain "at-cost" access to key items.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The way I've handled this is that Quick and Dirty and Slow and Sure are "either/or" instead of a spell using both. Simple wizardly tools and ammo enchantments are Q&D; other stuff is S&S. There are some quest-based ways around this but the result is "pay $20/point unless it's a Powerstone."

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    1. So basically you create a small class of $1/point items and leave the rest as flat cost per point? That seems like a good way to go. That way +1 Puissance arrows aren't $500, but +1 Fortify armor isn't $100, either.

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    2. That does seem to be best solution. I don't mind inexpensive consumables like potions, poisons, or spell stones. I object to the situation where every scout has 4 cornucopia quivers (impaling, piercing, cutting, crushing) of basic arrows, but can't possibly afford to get a single quiver that produces fine arrows. I also object to the situation where no one buys Fine armor because Lighten +1 is so much cheaper.

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    3. You want a situation where scouts have Cornucopia quiver producing Fine arrows?

      I'd rather have "I can take four quivers cheaper than getting a +1 to every single hit I make" than the opposite.

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  7. I believe what we settled on for my GURPS Jade Regent game was that enchanted items had to have at least a cumulative +1 CF to be enchanted. Didn't apply to items enchanted through deeds or Named Items.

    That said, I also like the effect Mark's "everything costs $20/point" has as well.

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