Topic: Repairing costs for enchanted armors&weapons

[Velig]

When enchanted armor/weapon is broken an alchemist is obviously required to fix the broken item but how much should it cost? Is there some kind of formula to calculate the price?

Thanks in advance.

[Arioch]

IMHO is an enchanted item is broken it looses all magical proprieties and must be repaired and then re-enchanted from the start.
Costs for magical item creation are covered in the Treasure Companion.

[Velig]

IMHO is an enchanted item is broken it looses all magical proprieties and must be repaired and then re-enchanted from the start.
Costs for magical item creation are covered in the Treasure Companion.

I thought this option too and I think that this can be the case with weapons when usually i.e. the blade is enchanted and the blade is like container for the magic and when the container is broken the magic brakes free. But if the item in question is chainmail that has hundreds of links and if few links are broken I think it is unreasonable that the whole chainmail is then useless.

[Arioch]

But if the item in question is chainmail that has hundreds of links and if few links are broken I think it is unreasonable that the whole chainmail is then useless.

Really depends on how magic works in your setting and how do you see that enchantment works.
You can say that magic enchants the whole object, so if the object is broken (even if the damage done to it is very small) then it isn't complete anymore and the enchantment fail. This can mean that the object simply turns non-magical, or that it loose its magical powers untill it's repaired.
Or you can say that every part of the object is enchanted (a longer process of enchanting, I think), so even if the object is broken each of its parts remains enchanted!
Or that the enchantment is placed on a specific part of the object (maybe the one with the glowing magical symbol  ) so, untill that part is intact, the item retains its powers.
Or that the item can sustain a certain amount of damage before loosing its powers: in this case, when the item is damaged I would have it make a RR (level depending on damage). If it fails the RR it bacomes non magical.

Probably in TC you'll find something more helpful, but I don't have the book handy... 

[munchy]

Wasn't there some sort of ruling for NORMAL armour and weapons that set a price of 10 percent of the buying cost of that weapon. As for recharging n stuff I would go for a cost/PP and then simply calculate what spell is needed to recharge that thing.

[Temujin]

I'd say use normal enchantment rules, but make it a day per spell level instead of a week, and scale costs down to 10% of the original enchantment, that makes it proportional to repairing mundane stuff.

[munchy]

Good point on the timescale. I would go with Temujin's suggestion. Makes things easy to handle and seems to be about expensive and time consuming enough.

[Joshua24601]

I really like the RR idea.  Depending on the damage assign an attacking level and the nature of the enchantment could affect a modifier.  I really successful resistance roll might not even require an alchemist to fix, on the flip side a really (REALLY) bad failure could result in the spell being released on the wielder, or even a magical explosion or something like that.

The neat thing about resistance rolls is that it allows the level of the spell (or alchemist who created the magical item) to be a factor.  A higher level alchemist creating a higher level item will be better at making it resistant to damage then a alchemy freshman.

[DonMoody]

IMHO is an enchanted item is broken it looses all magical proprieties and must be repaired and then re-enchanted from the start.
Costs for magical item creation are covered in the Treasure Companion.

I dislike this interpretation as there are many examples in literature and saga of reforging previously broken items (e.g. the remaking of the shards of Narsil into And?ril).

I also dislike a fixed percentage - some fixes would require more extensive repairs, some less extensive.

As such, I find the resistance roll idea rather intriguing ...

DonMoody<br>

[Ecthelion]

We always allow broken weapons or armor, be it magical or not, to be repaired for 50% of the cost the item would cost when purchased anew.

[Fornitus]

 If something is destroyed its done. maybe good for raw materials or maybe to tainted.

 However, for enchanted chain or plate repaired by a non caster we mearly reduce its numbers by the amount of the damage.
 i.e. A +20 chain shirt would have to require a major repair or multiple repairs, then it would become +15, after many other small repairs +10, ect...

[Dark Schneider]

I use a % depending on breakage, the same % of cost than the % of breakage. If it is totally broken (100%), then you need to make a new one!.

An example, a broken sword, the usual case is that sword edge is broken, and you have 2 parts that wants to join. I see it as less break because the is few material to join, so use 10-20% of the item cost.

The % cost is the same that time required to repair, so if it cost 20%, at the same time it needs 20% of the item creation time to repair it.

[Velig]

Me and my friend thought that quite reasonable amount of money needed to pay for fixing broken magic item could be the following:

(item lvl in Gp)x(alchemist's lvl price modifier)

I'm assuming that the repairer is at least the same lvl as the one who created the item and that all prices in Treasure Companion are divided by ten. For example:

Nirna Virkku, an lvl 30 alchemist (x8 price modifier), creates +20 metal weapon (item lvl 25) modified selling price 980 Gp. The item Brakes in the hands of Mighty Warrior of the Grassland and he wants to repair it because it is his favourite tool of mayhem. The warrior finds an capable local alchemist (lvl 30) who is willing to repair his weapon for 200Gp. The warrior thinks this is quite reasonable (so do we ).

You could also add the PPs, used by the alchemist for the repair, to the the price before you multiply it with the alchemist's lvl price modifier.

With my friend we thought that this system is only applicable with weapons because they either are broken or not. For armors that can have variable severities of damage there should be somekind of modifiers added.

[markc]

 IMO, if it is almost impossible for a magic item to be repaired then there needs to be a spell [if one does not allready exzist] for magic items to repaire themselves. And it should or would have been included in the items creation. But on the other hand you do not want to make it too easy for items to be repaired in general, so a good balance needs to be maintained.

MDC