Power Items

Power Items are described in the Dungeon Fantasy series.
*Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers talks about them on page 28
*Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items has extended focus
A power item is effectively a manastone (does not recharge on its own like Powerstone) that is "recharged" in town via recasting Manastone on it.
DF gives a list of costs suitable to store certain FP maximums. When compared to M69's "$10xP^2 + $40xP" formula it seems to match up, indicating it is the base cost of manastone and no the x4 (20 energy) version used to impart FP into less valuable objects.
The $5 per FP charging cost when compared to M20's Buying Magic Items falls in between the $33.3/energy for Slow and Sure (8 hours per energy) and $1/energy for Quick and Fast (1 hour per 1-60 energy).
Manastone has a base cost of 5 energy to enchant 1 FP, and must be cast separately per each FP endowed, so it ought to take 40 hours (5 mage days) to put 40 energy into the highest-mentioned $37,000 item.
The idea that Quick and Fast dictates a lower price yet price is still tied to energy doesn't really work out for low-cost items though: it takes a full 60 minutes minimum to enchant something costing 1 energy or 100 energy. A different rate than 1-100 energy per 60 minutes might need to be used: For example 5 energy per 3 minutes, which would allow much faster manastone creation.
The idea that Power Items are "recharged" rather than "recreated" calls into comparison the use of the Charge Powerstone spell, which is intended for Powerstones, not manastones.
Viewing powerstones as energy reserves, the standard Powerstone could be perceived as Slow Recharge so a powerstone which didn't self-recharge but could be charged via Charge Powerstone could be the equivalent of Special Recharge, and could perhaps be allowed as some kind of quirk. Not recharging inherently avoids a drawback of Charge Powerstone: missing the next natural recharge.
This would allow for faster recharging in town: it only takes 10 minutes to cast the spell regardless of how much FP, though that could be extended via Ceremonial Magic (allow helpers to supply FP for x10 time) or multiple castings (to recharge FP in between) so the $5/FP is simply to pay for that spell, not the enchantment.
Powerstones (even less valuable ones quirked so they don't recharge) would have some kind of value though, so it would be strange to effectively give this for free to a character, even if it's useless until you pay for a charge.
Power Items also have an explicit benefit which a baseline powerstone/manastone lacks:
*"can’t have multiple power items or use another’s power item."
The inability to have someone else use your powerstone is usually covered under costly Limit enchantments.
Mages normally can "have" (just not simultaneously USE) multiple power stones, so it's possible that this might operate like some kind of Vow, in which case such an "unwritten disadvantage" could cover the cost of the inherent owning of a powerstone.
The only issue there though is that powerstones have varying values depending on the max FP capacity, while "can't use any other powerstones" is of fixed value.
Can't Use External Energy from T23 prohibits powerstones, so it might be that mages all have this, but then they buy it off for "one character only" (-80%: their personalized powerstone) as in Either/Or Limitations, for a net -12% limitation.
It may be that the advantages of "I have a 40 FP powerstone that I can use" is offset by the "the only powerstone I can use is my $37,000 gem which everyone wants to steal" which brings higher risk to the guarantee than "I carry around a $50 object for a bonus 1 FP which is a lesser target for theft"
Category:Rules