I was thinking that maybe a way to handle enchanted items in TOR might be to let the craftsman put his own rewards (and possibly some virtues) into an item. Doing so would be difficult, and the number of things that could be invested into the item would be based on the quality of the success. Naturally all the crafting would mean spending Treasure Points.


When investing of himself into the item, the craftsman looses the virtue/reward invested along with a point of wisdom/valor. The advantages of doing this are that:

-The item can be loaned, traded, or given to others.
-The crafter is free to improve his Wisdom/Valor allowing him to acquire virtues and rewards as normal/. This could ultimately allow a character to end up with more than 6 virtues and/or rewards that's to items.


Some disadvantages of doing this would be that:
-The item is no longer "protected" the way other virtues and rewards are. It can be taken away.
-Failing the craft roll might result in the loss of the wisdom/valor/virtue/reward for nothing (that would help to keep this idea form being overused)

With a little work this could be expanded to allow for items that hold skills, or even something like potions that could store endurance points.




Assuming that there is some sort of vices that work for evil beings, this would probably help to explain why Sauron invested so much of himself into the One Ring.


Again, this is just an idea, but something I could see PCs using in a limited fashion, or the LM using to introduce rewards to the PCs like those in the books.

What enchantments are you bestowing to the item with which you're "spending" a Wisdom point?

Ones that you have. So if a Dwarf Smith had the "Old Hated" virtue he could craft it into a sword, and the weapon would get a bonus against orcs.

I suppose a loophole would be needed to be able to get virtues from another. Willingly for good enchanters, and by force for sorcerers. I realize that one snag is that some of the items given out in LotR are duplicated by virtues from other cultures. For instance the "Elven Cloaks" in LotR are covered with a hobbit virtue.

Maybe a crafter could learn how to invest virtues he doesn't have into a item with study? Maybe if they invest a virtue from another once they retain the knowledge of how to invest that virtue later on, even if they don't have it or have access to it? The crafter would still spend the Wisdom point, and loose one of his virtues, but he'd have a repotiore of known virtues he could invest.

Still brainstorming here, but I think the basic idea might be rested enough to keep enchanted items rare enough to work in TOR without glutting the setting with magic items that occurs in most RPGs. Character could make them, but they would be expensive (cost TPs),, take time to craft, risky (botched rolls probably mean botched items), and cost Wisdom and Virtue, so nobody could afford to mass produce them. A character might make an item every decade or so, depending on how fast he gets experience to use to raise Wisdom. That is probably fine for NPC elves and dwarves to have made a stockpile in ages past, but is slow enough to keep a adventurer in check.

I won't pretend to comprehend what you're trying to replicate here Cuz I don't. I really am not sure all of what you are saying?


what I think you are trying to adjudicate is that a person raises his wisdom. then takes an associated virtue. then he enchants an item via craft skill and imparts the weapon with the virtue he has. this removes the virtue from his knowledge but the item forever more grants the wielder of it whatever the virtue granted. then the crafted can earn more xp and raise his wisdom again and select another or same virtue again and do it all over again if he so chooses.....?


if this is accurafe ; one major flaw to the system would be the ease of which one would raise wisdom from 1 to 2. in other words it costs far less xp to raise it to lower numbers than one lime gandalf with a high wisdom. character with low wisdom could theoretically do this 5 times in the time it takes a much more wise man to do only one since its a lot harder to raise a 5 back to a 6 than it is a 1 back to a 2.

Another issue I see is how do you justify virtues such as the Woodsman's Hound being imbued into an item?

Well......for some virtues - common sense should suffice that not all are used as enchantments.


But my concern is more for making the system fair and balanced mechanically/statistically.

atgxtg

You may be interested in this thread, as your ideas have been raised before:

http://cubicle7.clicdev.com/f/index.php?tr...&showtopic=3394

I will address magic items in Part 4 of my magic system, if I ever get around to it!

My basic idea is that although I partly agree with your ideas (in that an enchanter can only put into an item what he/she already knows), I prefer either the temporary or permanent loss of endurance (or hope as others have argued) because you are trying to represent the loss of intrinsic power not the loss of knowledge from the enchanter to the item.

Robin S.