Re: (TFT) Are TFT Magic Items Too Complicated?

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

Rick asked:

>I'm curious how many people strongly like or
>dislike the TFT magic item creation system.

Like it pretty well, so far.

On the one hand, it's pretty dang easy to create magic items. I mean, in
the source material (Tolkien) they are *rare*, important artificts. The
costs in TFT imply that they ought to be pretty common utensils:

("Sleep"+"Cleansing" necklace for a master physicker?)
("Light" Chandelier? This one pays for itself vs. candles pretty quick...)
(+1 or +2 swords/bows/armor? What good armory *wouldn't* do that?)
(Gates? Maintaining a 50-km road between cities is *stupid*.)

On the other hand, it's not *totally* trivial. It does require a smart
wizard and he has to take time off from the campaign (while his player
works up another character) for a while to do most things. Or it takes a
pile of treasure (and time) to get it from the guild.

Stan commented:

>I also think that rather than saying that adding a
>second or subsequent spell "requires more wizards"
>and then saying elsewhere, "well of course, one guy
>can do anything a team of X can do, it just takes X
>times longer", it might be a little more intuitive
>to state it the other way around.

But then the rules would have to be careful to point out that you can't
*cut* the time to cast the spell below its base time by just adding even
more wizards.

One of Rick's ideas was:

>	I am curious about what people think.  One
>idea I've been playing around with is that there
>are no NEEDED ingredients.  Everything can be
>done with common ingredient but if you have the
>special stuff, it costs a little bit less to
>make or maybe is a bit better an item.

I'd just allow the PC's (or an NPC?) to try to research a new enchantment
(potion, whatever) that does the same as an existing one, but uses fewer
(or different) special ingredients. I'd make the cost 20-50% higher than
for the spell/potion/whatever with the original ingredient requirement.

Stan wrote:

>Given TFT's Job Table, it seems that perhaps Jackson contemplated the idea
>of PC's occasionally passing blocks of time in week increments.

Right. The limit on players' taking advantage of this being the "aging"
rules. It is kind of a masochistic kind of fun to sit down and try to "roll
up" a really powerful character by using the jobs tables. If you assume he
can buy stuff (wizard's labs, etc.) at fair market value, he can come out
pretty powerful with a bit of luck.

DMG wrote:

>   1.  Every spell can be a potion (trailtwister)

= "scroll"? Only good for wizards, but otherwise I think this does what you
wanted, no?
						- Mark
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