Playbook: Focus Enchantment

While I'm not posting a lot, I'm still keeping my ear to the ground within the GURPS blog-o-sphere, especially the GURPS Day summaries over at Gaming Ballistic. One post that caught my eye was the Southern-Style GURPS post on some tweaks to the GURPS Magic enchantment system. It reminded me that, during a fit of worldbuilding for a fantasy setting a while ago, I too made an alternative enchantment system. Handily, I also wrote up a summary intended for players, so I've already spent a while polishing the description to make it look and read well. So I thought I'd share it!

As a brief foreword, I'd like to point out there's nothing wrong with the default enchantment system. The problem is that it supports a specific type of setting. The kind of setting which isn't quite "low-magic" but where enchanted weapons and armour are for epic heroes and wealthy kings. Where the creation of a +3 Longsword is a great work taking years and the deeds accomplished with it might be worthy of songs and poems. I wasn't building one of these settings; I wanted a world where the average person understood that enchantments were made by wizards via a specific learnable process, even if they'd never seen one or had any idea what that process was, and where merchants dealing in silver could afford a small bauble or two to help verify whether the coins they were being paid with were pure or debased.

I'd also like to point out I took a lot of inspiration from The Material Difference in Pyramid #3/66, which went partway to giving me what I wanted but stopped just short.

Focus Enchantment

Focus enchantment requires a focus – an item of magical power – which is inserted or integrated into the enchanted item. A single enchanter can then cast the enchantment spell via the Quick and Dirty method onto the combination of two items – the focus serves as a magical 'bookmark', allowing the enchanter to cease work for as long as is needed to recover energy and resume whenever they choose. This allows much faster enchantments than the Slow and Sure method, as more energy can be input per day, and allows enchantments with greater energies than the normal Quick and Dirty method, as it is not limited to a single casting of the spell. However, each focus has a limited energy capacity and can be used to make enchantments of up to that energy but no more. Foci are discrete and several cannot be combined to provide more energy to a single enchantment.

For example, a gryphon's crest feather can be used as a focus up to 1,250 energy for flight enchantments. Enchanting Slow Fall requires 1,000 energy, so a gryphon feather could be used as the focus. A Flight enchantment requires 2,500 energy, so a gryphon feather couldn't be used as the focus. Since focus capacities don't 'stack', no amount of gryphon feathers could provide the energy for this enchantment.

The focus is related to the enchantment being cast – ruby for fire spells, silver for healing spells and so on. This may follow any rules like gemstone correspondences, classical elements, Zodiac, etc. and is up to the GM. When an object is enchanted using a focus, the substrate item, the focus and the enchantment become a single entity. Taking one component away breaks all the others. Prising a ruby focus from a Wand of Fireball ruins the ruby and the enchantment; the ruby's energy capacity has already been expended by the enchantment and the enchantment is broken. The wand is now a worthless stick (although whatever other gold and gems were on it keep their mundane value). 

Ordinary animals can provide 1d-3 foci (minimum zero) from among their teeth, bones, pelts, organs, etc. The energy capacity of these foci are equal to IQ multiplied by their HT or HP. Use the lower value if the animal's IQ is 5 or less, the higher otherwise. Any creature with the Automaton meta-trait uses the lower, regardless of their actual IQ. Magical beasts multiply this value by ten and provide 1d-2 foci. If a creature has any special, psionic or magical advantages, such as Flight or an Innate Attack, multiply the basic point cost of this advantage by ten and add it to the basic energy value of its focus. This only applies when using it for a related enchantment.

For example: A grizzly bear has HT and HP 13 and IQ 4. Since it's an ordinary animal, any foci it provides has a capacity of 4×13 = 52 energy. Cloakers have IQ 10, HP 18 and ST 18, and are magical creatures, so any foci it provides has a capacity of 10×18×10 = 1,800 energy. However, a cloaker also has Flight and Terror. If its flying organ was being used it could handle 1,800 + 40×10 = 2,200 energy, since Flight is worth 40 points. If its psionic fear-inducing organ was being used it could handle 1,800 + 30×10 = 2,100 energy, since Terror is worth 30 points.

Foci can be 'split' to divide up their point value according to the fraction they are split in. If a grizzly bear pelt provides 52 energy, it can be split into two and each pelt section could provide 26 energy. However, the two objects can never be rejoined.

Going through the same set of calculations as in GURPS Magic, the cost for an object made with focus enchanting is $1.7 per energy, rounded up to $2 per energy. This is only the labour cost, however. The GM is free to set a value per energy point of foci or rule that foci are priceless and must be sought out, not purchased. I made the assumption that precious but mundane materials, such as gold, quicksilver or rubies, were worth one energy point per $8 of value. This brings the total cost of an enchantment to $10 per energy point.