genshou said:
Now I'm confused. Were there meant to be two separate feats in Mythic Earth, one for items and one for permanent spells? Do they have the same prerequisites and the same CP costs?
The short answer:
I think it is a mistake to allow permanent spells to be available at a moment's notice. I want there to still be one feat required - Craft Permanent Spell - but permanent spells and permanent items should take the same amount of time and CP to create. The only difference should be that with a permanent spell you sacrifice the ability to loan the benefit to an ally for the security in knowing no one's going to take your item away.
The long answer:
Well, in EOM-R there were three feats. Craft Charged Item, Craft Wondrous Item, and Craft Permanent Spell. In Mythic Earth I originally had two feats - Craft Permanent Item and Craft Permanent Spell, but then I cut it down to one feat and tried a few different ways to balance the fact that I wanted Permanent Spells to be available at a moment's notice, instead of requiring days or weeks of work. I basically wanted to make curses be available.
There's a fine tradition in fantasy and folklore of people laying curses on those who do them wrong, and creating that curse does not take the person days and days of item creation. They just say something like, "For the crimes you have committed against the gypsies, I curse you!
Thinner!"
My mind changed a few times while writing as I tried to figure out how best to do this. When I sent the book off for layout, I thought, "Okay, one feat works for all permanent effects. That way you can make curses by spending CP, even if you aren't high level. All is good."
I unfortunately had a brainfart and did not realize that there suddenly was no reason to ever make yourself, say, a cloak of resistance (spending CP and many days on it) when you could just make, say, a tattoo of resistance as a permanent spell instead of an item (spending only CP and no time).
My goal is 1) to make minor items (a la potions and scrolls) easy to get, 2) to require a feat to create reusable items and items that grant enduring benefits, and 3) to allow spellcasters to create curses.
I feel the current system handles 1 and 2 well, but 3 doesn't quite fit. The rule that I intended to let people cast instant curses (bad things for your enemies) instead lets people create instant magic items (good things for your allies). The problem is that curses are really hard to define in a flexible system like this.
I could easily say, "If you're casting a permanent spell on a bad guy, spend CP, and it's a curse, and it doesn't take any extra time." But that requires lots of GM adjudication. I mean, is it a
curse to make someone be mentally dominated? Making someone your slave isn't really curse-like, in my opinion, but I could see a GM saying that it would work if the person was aware that they had no free will.
What, though, if a player said, "Tom's character is pissing me off. I'm going to curse him so he's a big, brutish, ugly beast, so that his appearance matches his personality." Tom's character ends up getting a bonus to a bunch of ability scores, and great natural attacks, and sure, Tom might roleplay his character being unhappy, but who are we fooling? This is D&D. He'd
find a way to reconcile the problem.
"Oh darn, I'm big and strong
and ugly and I guess I'll just have to get used to this. Well, let's go fight monsters. I hope my ugliness doesn't inhibit my monster-slaying."
xx
In myths and folk tales, curses usually cause grief to the cursed person. Prince turned into something nasty (toad, a big furry beast, a waifish girl), or princess cast into an endless sleep, or a wronged gypsy returning a guilty conscience to a murderous vampire. Or turning a unicorn into a young woman. Or a tomb causing ambiguous 'doom' to befall people who steal from it. Or taking away someone's memories.
So yeah, I guess I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to handle curses. But I do think that permanent spells should have the same time and CP cost as normal magic items, but that there should only be one feat required to make them.