Here's a thought suggested by Travis Casey on rpg-create. Enchanted objects are just spells that must be maintained like any other. However, you can transfer the "cost" of maintaining the enchantment to another person.
So, let's say that maintaining a spell costs you X mp and X drive. You can transfer it to another person if you want... then they lose X mp and X drive. Without a "host", a spell goes dormant or even breaks down entirely (there could be a Secret of Dormancy or something).
So, using a magical artifact is going to require you to attune it to yourself. Thus, an innate balancing act, of sorts. If we allow for a Maintenance skill, then it would counteract the DRV penalty, so it would be useful even for non-mages.
Some items just cost you MP to use, like wands. Non-mages will have an MP equal to their DRV (or possibly Will, which would be Knowledge + Drive, but that would be a lot... if that's the case, then X should usually be more than 1).
Hm... actually, since I include DRV in calculating your MP, losing DRV would be basically the same as losing MP, plus penalties to skills.
So, basically, this adds a new kind of balancing... any given person can only use a certain number of magic items before the cumulative penalties make it not worth their while. But a single mage could make innumerable items with this system, which probably means that there should be a secondary limit.
Also, you can have stuff like Soulstones, which count as living beings and can maintain spells on their own. Very rare and expensive and no one knows how to make more. Most of them are already grafted onto existing magic items, including sentient ones like golems.
I need to think about the cosmology behind mana in this setting, and whether or not this makes sense.
Addendum: a minor note from Travis is the idea of spells that actively attune themselves to hosts on contact. Or when their current host dies.
Posted by Kiz at March 20, 2005 10:51 PMCommentsPost a comment