Players in my games are familiar with "Tura gems", enchanted gems that are attached to masterwork weapons, almost all of which have a tura gem socket. While regular enchanting works fine in Caligo, Tura gems are definitely the favored way to have enchanted weapons.

Unlike the first game where I did these, I've been trying to collapse a great deal of effects into one gem. The idea is that your armor has two sockets, your weapons and shield one, and that you gain a small benefit if you use it while casting- meaning, if you are a caster, if that weapon is out while you cast. Because the game isn't really balanced around casters scaling that way, it's not much of a benefit compared to others. In order to have fractional benefits, I introduced a "spelldie"- a d20 you roll when you cast a spell. Depending on what you rolled, you may have gained an additional benefit.

Those that can see the FID forum can see what I have so far, but I want to add some more. Here's a subset:


+5
Weapon: When attached to a weapon, the weapon gains a +5 enhancement bonus to hit and damage.
Armor: When attached to armor, the armor gains a +5 enhancement bonus to its armor bonus.
Shield: When attached to a shield, the shield gains a +5 enhancement bonus to its shield bonus.
Casting: When used while casting, the caster level of the spell increases by +1. The caster retains the spell or spell slot on an 11 or 12 spelldie result. The save DC of the spell increases by +1.

So you can see that +5 is a pretty big thing. The +1 to +4 are just fractions of this (for instance, you might only gain the +1 CL on an even spell die result, instead of always). I'm using this as the baseline for the other effects, especially with the casting, which I have to make up as I go along. +5, when brought over the casting, becomes +1 Caster Level, +1 Save DC, and a 1/6 chance of the spell not being lost when you cast it. The first benefit is only good when a spell scales by level, and when you aren't capped, but it can also be helpful if there are dispels or counters involved, so I didn't want it to be large. A save DC bump is extremely valuable to anyone who doesn't just cast buffs, and the 1/6 chance of the spell not being lost is actually much more useful to those who DO buff or heal, versus cast offensively.

Meanwhile, there's another implication- armor plusses can be higher than designed. I'm seeing the effect of that now in my game, as the party is 13th level. Since everyone uses Tura gems, the party has no problem getting to a +5 armor enhancement bonus, and I'm pretty sure the duelist has a +6 or something. While getting +10 equivalent armor is as expensive (or more) as it would be in a normal game (+10 armor is normally 10*10 * 1000 = 100,000 gold, and two +5 turas are 5*5 * 2000 = 50,000 each, or 100,000 for both), the fact that armor isn't really balanced going to 20 might create some issues. At THIS level, it mostly puts a greater emphasis on +Hit. Most NPCs the characters fight normally have access to +3 to +4 turas, with the exception of those with PC level loot, so the net effect is that already the NPCs are harder to hit than they would otherwise be, by a smidge.

I think- I think I would like to have something to wrap the extra pluses to hit into. Does anyone have a suggestion there? I mean, if you put two +4 turas in your armor, and the PCs will be at that point kind of soon, your armor is +8 equivalent- but it might actually be +8. If I had an option to ceiling at +5 and give something else automatically for the +3, that might be nice.

This is the part of the system that I'd like to change, or at least have an option for, before polishing it and finishing it up- mostly because while I like the idea of it, I suspect it would break a lot of campaigns that were looking for a cool gem based solution to itemization.


The other reason I'm posting is because I want more affixes- I need weapon and armor affixes. Does anyone have some nonstandard ones in mind? Or ones they can link to.