An Enchanting Rules Variant: Using MoS to Modify Enchantment

Another expansion of the enchanting rules for GURPS (See "Enchanting Magic Items")

This is an optional rule for the Daily Grind portion of my enchantment rules. In those rules, two rolls are made per day: the Power Investment roll (using the mage's Enchantment skill as the base) and the Spell Embedding roll (using the mage's Spell skill as the base). However, that system doesn't take into account the Margin of Success for those rolls. This variant adds that for the Power Investment rolls, giving the mage a bit of a boost in power investiture, based upon how well they made their Enchantment rolls.

While the original Enchantment rules can be done with pen and paper (the math is fairly simple and straightforward), that isn't really the case here. You need a spreadsheet for this, unless you like using a calculator a lot.

Figuring out the basic amount of power the mage(s) can put in per day is the same as "basic enchanting". Add up all the power from personal reserves, powerstones, and other usable power sources. Divide by 10, and that's the base amount. For every point of MoS, add 1/20 of the base amount. If a critical success on the Enchantment roll is made, that adds +100% of the base amount (and adds 2 to the Enchantment roll for the next day). If a critical success is rolled for the Embedding roll, add 50% of the base amount. The equation in the spreadsheet will look something like this:

=((1+MoS/20)+0)*BASE_AMT.

There is a 0 there; it's a placeholder for when you need to add in the 100% (change the 0 to a 1) or the 50% (change the 0 to a 0.5).

This makes the MoS valuable, rewarding good rolls with a small but valuable boost to the mana invested in the item. It also makes the +2 bonus from the critical success worth it, too. Before, it's value only existed as a way to get a slight boost in the critical range (going from a skill 18 to skill 20, for example, bumping the critical range from 3-6 to 3-7).

An additional modification is to lower the required Enchantment skill from 15 to 12, or even get rid of that requirement altogether. With lower skill levels, there are far fewer critical successes. This makes the enchantment process longer. It also results in more power investment and embedding failures, further lengthening the process, and potentially increasing the chances of quirks, and with a smaller chance of catching the mistakes and fixing them. The upside is that it allows for lesser skilled enchanters to actually create things. It just takes longer, and their work isn't of the same quality.


I have yet to add in MoS based Embedding rolls, as that is a less "obvious" case for the MoS to matter with the skill roll. Although it might make sense to have the MoS affect the enchanter's ability to detect and remove quirks. Make a Perception+Magery roll (up to once per day), modified by half of the MoS. So if a mage makes his Embedding roll by 8, he gets a +4 to his Perception roll to find an issue (round to nearest integer). Roll against the spell skill to fix the error: it takes a full day to patch the problem in the mana matrices to make sure that the mana flow is smooth and undisturbed. The MoS of this roll subtracts 10% of this time per point, to a minimum of 20%. Even if the fix is simple, it still takes some time to do it.


Note that while enchanting, there is no guarantee that the mage will discover that a quirk has entered the item. Either the mage has to look for it, or get a critical success on the Embedding roll to figure it out.

Example

A client comes to Harald the Enchanter, asking for a dagger of "I don't care what armor you are wearing". Basically, a dagger with the Penetration(AP2) on it. That will take 250 energy, but Harald has done this particular enchantment dozens of times. He knows how it all works, and since this is the only enchantment on the item, the thaumic properties of the project are pretty straightforward. The client hands him a Fine rondel dagger. After looking at it, and doing some back of the parchment calculations, Harald says it will cost $8250 to put the enchantment on the knife. Client okays the project, and Harald gets to work.
Harald starts doing the thaumatological calculations. It's rather simple, in this case, and it only takes him 3 days to figure out how to lay the mana flows into the knife and figure out what ingredients will be necessary for the laborious process of investing power into the item. It turns out that Harald needed 13 simple, common ingredients, but 17 esoteric ones. "Sheesh, must be Tuesday, on a full moon, during a hurricane for it to require that many special ingredients!" he mutters.
It takes him 36 days to gather all of the stuff he needs, and another 7 days to prepare them for enchanting.
He calls in Gwynneth and Kyria, two of the Assistants hired by the Mage's Guild to act as mage batteries. Their job is to cast Lend Energy on Harald periodically during the day. Most of that time is actually spent resting quietly; Gwynneth has a side gig of proofreading scrivener's manuscripts, Kyria is an artist, mostly charcoal, but also conte crayon. It was time to start the daily process of pouring power into the dagger. He handed the two ladies a Staff of Lend Energy, and a ring of Bless+1 to each of them.
Day 1: Things start out okay. Not great, not bad, just okay.

Day 2: Enchantment roll failure. No power was invested, and some leaked out from the first day. Not a good day, especially since he knows he did a great job with the embedded spell.

Day 3: Kyria magically fumbled her Lend Energy spell. Her Bless ring mitigated the damage, however, changing the result from "Turn into a eunuch for 3d days" to "has epileptic fit". Gwynneth provides some first aid, and Kyria recovers in several minutes. The good news is that there were three critical successes, which gave three extra cycles of mana (at 7 pts each) to the day's work.

Day 4: uneventful; everything went according to plan, but with no extras or excitement.

Day 5: There were two crits, which bumped up the day's investment of energy.

Day 6: There was a crit on one of Gwynneth's Lend Energy casts.

Day 7: There were three crits, two for Gwynneth, one for Tyria.

Day 8: Tyria critted one of her casts.

Day 9: There were three crits on the Lend Energy casts, One for Gwynneth, two for Tyria.

Day 10: Uneventful.

Day 11: Two crits on Lend Energy. One for each Assistant.

Day 12: One crit, from Tyria.

Day 13: One crit, this time from Gwynneth.

Day 14: Uneventful.

Day 15: Last day of power investiture; the Assistants only needed to cast once each that day.

Day 16: Final Ritual. The dagger now has Penetration (AP2).
It took a total of 62 days to make, mostly spent finding the materials required. The Assistants were paid a total of $390 for their two eightdays worth of work ($13/day). Harald was paid $6200, or $100/day. There was a profit of $1660, which will likely be used to purchase the materials required for the next project. Or perhaps some will go to replace the Bless+1 ring that burned out when Kyria fumbled her cast. Had she died, or required serious medical attention, some of the profit money would have gone to funeral or medical expenses. The Guild takes care of its own.