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FuzzyGeff and I speculated about where some "off list" magic items could come from in GURPS.
We started speculating from my wondering how someone without magical aptitude would go about learning a spell.
If you can't cast it, how do you know you learned it?
Learning by rote apparently works, but you've no way to test it. I can also see people who are learning this way wasting a lot of time as the casting is "telephoned" to death.
Well, you CAN test it. A high mana zone. Anyone who knows a spell can cast it in a high mana zone as long as the spell itself doesn't require magery as a prerequisite.
This jogged my memory about very-high mana zones. In a very high mana zone you don't get charged fatigue for your casting. It would seem ideal for enchanting as the energy expended is replenished as fast as it is used. Quick and dirty enchanting for large items for the win!
Except...
A normal failure in a very high mana zone is treated as a critical failure and a critical failure is much, much worse.
Which brings us back to strange and unusual magic items you add to your character sheet with points rather that G$.
They're a by product of these failures, occasionally.
"Where'd you get that neat item?"
"From the magic shop, in a basket labeled, 'contents of crater,' why?
I would assume, typically, that low-level magic items would come into magic pawn shops by NPC 'adventurers' and magic artificers needing quick cash, or from a magic shop specializing in whatever.
ReplyDeleteItems could be stuff created a long time ago and found in treasure hordes.
Items could also come from whatever magic school or magic artificer that are training up students/apprentices. Or from ignorant family selling off a dead user's stuff in the Magic World version of a garage/estate sale or the Magic World version of a little old lady selling off her dead husband's guns. Collectors and hoarders, don'tcha know