RE: (TFT) How come magic gets industrial disease?

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

rsmith asked:

>	Ignoring cannon entirely, a question to the list
>in general.  If you were going to rebuild the TFT
>magic item enchanting system / chemical and alchemical
>potions system, what would allow:
>
>1)	PC wizards to make magic items.
>2)	Not suffer from ind. dis.
>3)	Hopefully be simpler than our current system.
>

Good question! I suppose some considerations could be:

a) construction of magic items or potions requires the use of some very
rare resource. Magnetic monopoles, or the philosopher's stone, or whatever.
This limits the possible quantity of magic items in the world, and explains
why streets don't have "Light" items at every corner. Also it sets up some
adventures to obtain the very rare resource.
	This is already present to some extent in TFT, but there are prices
associated with the very rare ingredients, which (as has been pointed out)
makes them seem much more accessible.

b) magic items should never be able to do something that, *in routine
circumstances* can't be done more cheaply by mundane means.
	As an example, "gate 2" as used for a quick exit back to the
wizard's entry hall works, and saves the party's tails from a bad situation
- but it costs so much gold dust per transit of the gate that they would
never consider commuting back and forth to the dungeon via the gate,
because they'd never be able to haul enough gold out of the dungeon to pay
for the commute. Likewise for a trade route through a "gate 2". Cheaper to
build a ship.
	This may mean some cool items just can't exist, because they do
things that cannot be accomplished by mundane means and therefore might end
up being financially superior in routine circumstances. Crystal Ball
applied to a stock market is an example.

c) Making an item should take something out of the wizard. Could be just an
Experience Point cost, could be attributes, could be years of life.
(Clearly there's precedent for this, in the One Ring To Rule Them All among
others.) This would murder the prospect of "industrial disease" pretty
fast, if the cost were high enough.

d) Perhaps associated with c), the magic item created is not "mass
production interchangeable" with similar items, but takes on some aspect of
its creator's personality at the time of creation. Maybe he just broke up
with his girlfriend - so his new gate won't pass women. Maybe he had a
cockroach in his boot this morning - so the enchanted sword automatically
flinches away from anything with an exoskeleton. Maybe he was reading John
Gillespie Magee poetry this morning, so his new Flying Carpet is twice as
fast as the standard model. The "differences" may or may not be apparent at
once to the creator.
	This requires heavy GM intervention, so not particularly easy to
implement.

Just firing neurons randomly, hope I didn't hit anything sensitive.
						- Mark
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