How to enchant a staff?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

So, you’re a wizard, and you got that big old staff. Large, wood, and capped with something - say, a skull, because that will put the proper fear in the hearts of mudnanes. And shod with lead.

And you want to enchant it so that it won’t break. By accident. And so that it won’t weigh you down with Encumbrance. How do you do that?

I’ve thought of the following.

The Weightless Staff PeHe 19 (B5 as PeTe base, +2 sun, +4 levels constant effect). Doesn’t technically reduce the weight of the whole thing, just of the wood, but that should be enough to get the thing to Load 0.

The Resilient Staff MuHe (Te, Co) 19 (B4 as MuAn "doublet of impenetrable silk", +2 Sun, +4 levels constant effect, +1 for Te, Co requisites)

2

Enchanted items gain higher resistance based on the magnitude of the total amount of enchantments upon it.

Don't ask me where, I don't have the reference.

3

City and Guild rules on Damaged Goods, page 77.

4

As I recall, Load is not just mass/weight, it’s also volume, but certainly you can reduce the effort to haul it around.

One of my past jobs involved shipping: generally you need to account for the dimensions of the thing, not just the weight. Shipping a ton of feathers* is different from shipping a ton of bricks.

*A ton of feathers probably takes up much less volume, as it’s likely to be vacuum compacted.

5

Why, as I live and breath. I think that’s the first time I ever looked at that book.

Alright, so a talisman would at least have some resilience just due to the sheer amount of magnitudes invested in it. That’s good.

6

For making it really hard to break, you are looking for something like Hardness of Adamantine (HoH:S, p.37).

Also you don’t want to look at the Base number, but what the Base does when trying to find it for other Forms. The one used for the spell is “change so that it is highly unnatural”, which is two steps above just change.

MuHe Base 3 can change plants. You need to add +1 Mag because it is a “treated or finished material”, then +2 Mag for going to Highly Unnatural. +2 Mag for Sun duration. +3 levels for Constant Effect (not +4). Te and Co or An requisites (depending on what type of skull). They can be +0 or +1 based on call. Level 23 to 33.

7

Is it better to enchant these two things into the staff (burning through vis and available space), or would it be better to simply learn the spells, and get in the habit of popping them on if you’re taking the staff anywhere? That also has the benefit of having two very versatile spells in your back pocket anyway. (Lots of situations where you’d want to make wood very light, and quite a few where you’d want to make it very strong.)

But maybe the goal is having a really really nice staff and of itself.