4.1.11 Investing enchantments in items

Investing an enchantment involves casting the enchantment on an item which then acts as a focus for the enchantment. There are three reasons that a caster might choose to invest an enchantment into an item:

The investment difficulty for wards and invokable enchantments is equal to the average of their duration and availability ratings as follows:

Duration rating Duration Availability rating Number of manifestations
0 1 Minute 0 1 time ever
1 10 Minutes 1 1 time per year
2 1 Hour 2 1 time per month
3 6 Hours 3 1 time per week
4 1 Day 4 1 time per day
5 1 Week 5 2 times per day
6 1 Month 6 4 times per day
7 1 Year 7 6 times per day
8 10 Years 8 10 times per day
9 100 Years 9 15 times per day
10 Permanent 10 20 times per day

Examples

Roger, a Countermagician, decides to focus a detect magic spell in a ring that he has so that he can give the ring to a friend to wear for the day. He decides to cast a General Detect magic enchantment with Power 2, Finesse 4, Range self (i.e. 0), Area of effect 15 metre radius (i.e. 4), Duration Day Autonomous (i.e. 4 + 1 = 5), Concealment 3, Investment 0 = Difficulty 18 in total. He has to make the enchantment duration autonomous in order to be able to focus it in the item.

Roger decides that he wants to invest his staff with a counterspell (suppression of magic) enchantment that he can invokable at will. He wants the invokation duration to last for 1 year (rating 7) and wants the staff to provide the counterspell up to 10 times per day (rating 8), making an average investment difficulty of 7 1/2. He does not want the enchanted nature of the staff to be obvious (so chooses concealment 3 on the dormant enchantment), but does not mind if the counterspells are obvious when invoked (concealment 0 on the manifestation), making an average degree of concealment of 1 1/2. The counterspell itself is Power 7, Finesse 3, Range self (i.e. 0), Area of effect self (i.e. 0), Duration instantaneous (i.e. 0), making a total difficulty of 19 in total.

Charles is a Fire magician and is investing a Fire attack spell into a door so that if anyone apart from him opens the door they will get fried. He chooses a warding enchantment of a Fire Attack enchantment of Power 7 and Finesse 4. He wants to make the enchantment as obvious as possible when it is invoked (to provide the maximum deterrance) but wants to make it difficult for other magicians to analyse and defuse the enchantment. He, therefore, chooses to put Concealment 7 onto the dormant enchantment and Concealment 0 onto the manifestation, making the average degree of concealment 3 1/2. He wants the ward to last for a year (rating 7) and to manifest up to 4 times/day (rating 6), making an average investment rating of 6 1/2. The duration is to be instantaneous (i.e. 0), affect a single target (i.e. area of effect 0) and have a range of up to 3 metres (i.e. range 2) just in case some clever person tries to open the door with a long pole. The total difficulty is 23.

Roger's friend Cormac is about to go into battle with some evil magicians. Roger decides to invest Cormac's helmet with a counterspell (suppression of magic) enchantment to protect him. He doesn't mind if the magic is obvious. He has three options:

The main differences between these three are that: