Monday, March 28, 2016

Treasure: Inspired by Nethicite

It's so intense.
Nethicite is a magic destroying element in at least one game in the Final Fantasy series. It works by absorbing magic. In the story versus game separation, the nethicite was able to turn into a huge bomb in the right circumstances, but that is neither here nor there (is it?) So today, let's invent a chunk of stone that can be used to defeat magic

Number Crunching


So, what kind of powers are needed to defeat magic? We need a combination of Damage Resistance (Magic Only) and Static (Magic). Damage Resistance for a single power source are explained in Powers on p.45, and the rules for Static are on p. 98. For both, I think a 4 yard radius is pretty good. The DR probably needs to be about 18 for Dungeon Fantasy Edge cases of fireballs and other missiles that aren't stopped by static, which is a lot, but who cares!
I mostly use this book for the
enhancements and limitations.
Finally we need to probably apply a cosmic modifier to these items. These are magical items, but they do not inhibit themselves, so I'll give them the cosmic modifier. Put together the ability for this item is:

Nethicite Force Field (+200%): Damage Resistance 18 (Cosmic Source, +50%; Magic Defense Only, -20%; Force Field, +20%; Area Effect 3, 4 yards, +150%) [270]

Nethicite Static (+200%): Static (Magic) (Cosmic, Some Wacky Power Source that's almost like Magic, +50%, Area Effect 3, 4 yards, +150%) [90]

Yay! Nigh invulnerability is expensive! Next we put those two together, which comes to 360 with no rounding. Looking at the form multipliers in Thaumatology: Sorcery on p. 28, the closest to a small chunk of precious rock is the amulet for 0.50, which makes this 180 Enchantment Points, which also happens to be off the scale in the book. That's ok, the book gives rules for extending the table indefinitely in the paragraph right above the table on p.30, doo doo doo... This rock costs $20,000,000.00 GURPS BUCKS! The labor adds another $115,220!

Alternatives

I like using this book for
statting magical enchantments.
For a much much lower Magic Damage Resistance, of only 11, it's only $581,600. This is good enough a little bit more than 50 percent of the time against magic missiles, and is still pretty much immunity to all other forms of magical attacks. Alternatively, because the stone is so expensive, you might say it is a hyperdense chunk of meteoric stone from Dungeon Fantasy 1, and that would alleve us of 45 enchantment points in both cases. In this case, the nigh invulnerability stone would be $156,400, and the cheaper DR 11 version would be $67,800.00, both are pretty affordable by high end Dungeon Fantasy characters, but then again, in the game it came from, it was a MacGuffin the party got for free anyway.

Other Thoughts and Closing

Kinda interesting to see how expensive a MacGuffin item from a high fantasy franchise can become. I guess total magical immunity is pretty expensive, but that's also understandable! Also kinda funny how a chunk of stone enchanted to be like meteoric stone is phenomenally expensive compared to real meteoric stone that is just "enchanted" [it's a cosmic modifier, dunno what you would call it because it isn't really magic, "imbued?"] to grant invulnerability to magical missile attacks.

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