Treasure: Crystal Ring Shield

Butterflies

Weapon born from the mystical creature of the Darkroot Garden, the Moonlight Butterfly. Imbued with a powerful crystal power, like the butterfly created by Seath the Scaleless.

Can emit crystal light rings.
This is another article on treasure, a somewhat simple item again. This is a shield from Dark Souls with very little protective ability, but the unique feature that it can launch a beam attack. Let's see how we can convert this to GURPS mechanics.

Base Item

Starting with the shield, it has a weight of 3.0 in Dark Souls. This weight isn't 100% correlated to a real unit of measurement, but looking around, we see it is considered a small shield class weight from other similarly weighted shields. Because of its flimsy appearance, but strong materials, I have trouble choosing between the two shield types of light shield and small shield on page B287, so let's come back to that later.

Attack

This is one of the rare magic items that doesn't accrue a significant amount of damage from using its special ability. Because Sorcery requires EP to determine the cost of the weapon, let's stat that out and go back to finding the base weapon. First off, the attack takes a long time, so I think I'm going to say it requires a ready maneuver. The attack is ridiculously strong in Dark Souls, but this might be unbalancing. Go ahead and fiddle with the numbers as you like. I want to say it should be no more than 3d. It sends out a huge force projectile the shape of the shield, so I think crushing damage is appropriate. Finishing that up, that comes out to the following:

Crystal Ring Shield Beam: Sorcery (-25%): Crushing Innate Attack 3 (Sorcery -15%; Takes Extra Time -10%; ) [12]

So it is subject to magical influence, takes 1 FP to use, and takes a second to ready it for the attack. This makes a cost of 11.25, rounded up to 12.

The multiplier for a "metal weapon", the closest thing to a shield is .45. This gives us just barely over 5 points, so we need to round to 6. 6 Enchantment Points demand raw item value of at least $50. Unfortunately, both of the shields are slightly under what we require, so we need to add some cost modifiers to jack up the price. Balanced can bring the Light Shield to $125, which will suit our needs.

Putting It Together

The shield is a Balanced Light Shield, giving +1 to shield skill, all other abilities are equal. The ability requires 6 EP, which is worth about $1,920 in labor. The combined market price of the shield is $4,090.00.

Other Notes

It might be fitting to use the meteoric modifier for the shield to go with the magical theme. The shield would have doubled weight and cost $8,840.00 instead, but have the ability to defend more effectively against magic, which is a property of the Dark Souls version. The caveat is that meteoric items are supposed to be immune to enchantment, so that shouldn't work. The cheapest viable upgrade that might also be in line is a +1 Ornate Light Shield, which is also in theme with the design from the original, This would be $3,940, and instead of giving a +1 to skill, it would have a +1 to reaction. In the end, I almost feel like that is the most appropriate effect. One could add Magic Resistance (Improved +50%) to the weapon as well, which might require a slightly more expensive shield then. This can probably be fixed with combinations of balanced, fine, and ornate.