Better Powerstones

Better Powerstones is one specialty of the Better Magic Items perk found on page 22 of Thaumatology: Magical Styles.
It has economic advantages when things are aquired as Cash or Signature Gear.
It mentions GMs are free to round.
This does more than allow buying higher-capacity powerstones for less money though.
This includes a unique rule for establishing values for item POWER.
This is one factor which pricing of enchanted items has avoided. They base the value of items on the energy/days to create them, and in the case of power stones, the cost of an expensive item and odds of losing your previous work.
Power is "+2, for +40% to cost" though it's unclear why they don't say "+20% cost per +1".
The rationale behind this is pretty obvious: it's the M12 options which increase item power for spending extra energy.
There is no effective difference for example, between a skill 19 mage who casts a 6-energy Manastone to create a Power 20 manastone which can be used in Low Mana, or a skill 20 mage who casts a 5 energy manastone.
Basically value should assume skill 15, but then calculate "effective energy cost" which a skill 15 mage would need to use to increase that power.
So for example, in the skill 19 example, he is +4 over 15, which is +100% energy cost, so this doubles the value of the item.
If he actually spent the 20% extra energy, he is +5 over it, which is +200% energy cost. This TRIPLES the value of the item.
==using this to make enchantment more expensive==
Thaumatology includes proposals to allow enchantments when one has less than effective skill 15.
This creates problems if using 15 as the baseline price.
T109 relax the required minimum Power of 15 rules.
These especially make sense with Continuous Mana (where High Mana adds a skill bonus to magic) and with the Magical Styles perk Boost Enchantment which can make sub-15 items workable in normal mana.
"High mana makes sub-15 work" is because it adds +5, though all you really need is +1. +5 is enough to raise 10 to 15.
"10 or less" requiring VH works better if only LESS, because that adds +10 and only 9 or less needs a higher than 5 bonus to get to 15.
The most VH should allow with +10 is something with a power of 5 to work. To get things with 4 or fewer power would need Boost Enchantment to supplement the VH +10 bonus.
Ceremonial Magic cannot spend LESS energy to save points. So a base of 10 (high mana makes work) or 5 (VH makes work) power is ideal.
It could even set 0 power as the baseline (even though this means you would need Boost Enchantment 15 to use, or BE 5 and VH mana)
5 probably makes sense in worlds with all VH mana (this is the power required for normal people to use it) while 25 could make sense in worlds with all VL mana.
Universally speaking, not much is gained by having extra power aside from mana penalties not shutting it off, unless the enchantment casts a spell.
The first +5 being x3 cost makes enchantments all much costlier: you move into the "33 per energy" territory for pretty much ANYTHING with a USEFUL level of power.
Mages in VH mana wouldn't bother getting high skill (1 point in enchant would let you cast at IQ+8) and there would be many more enchanters, so the higher amounts of high-power items (10x supply) would reduce demand/cost for those items.
The higher effective skill from VH mana +10 would probably alternately mean that casters could take Time Spent discounts and crank out items much faster, reducing their demand.
Something which cost 10 days could be pumped out in 1, worth 33 on market instead of 330.
Category:Rules