BrilliantRain/HearthstoneSupercharger

Hearthstone Supercharger

Artifact 3 --By BrilliantRain

Once there was a Dragon-Blooded artificer who became curious about something. He wondered what would happen he built an artifact that contained a power hearthstone setting with all of the power conduits arranged to that they fed the power back into the hearthstone. He built one with the expectation that it would cause the hearthstone to explode, which, under certain circumstances, can be useful. What he discovered was that, while they do tend to cause the stone to explode, a properly built one causes the hearthstone to increase in power while in the setting. He found this very useful and started building them in quantity.

The Hearthstone Supercharger causes any hearthstone set in the attuned item to gain one level thus making it's power more impressive. For example an Ice Blade gem would instead of merly making a blade very cold, actually freeze one out of the moisture in the air. (Basically same power, just increased by one level of effectiveness.) This comes at a cost of losing the rapid essence regeneration that the stone provides. A hearthstone must be set into a HS of the same material as it's aspect (i.e. Blue jade for air stones, Moonsilver for Lunar stones, etc.) otherwise the stone explodes when the item is first attuned, doing (hearthstone level) lethal damage to the holder. The stone reforms at it's manse in the usual amount of time. Level 5 hearthstones always explode no matter what the supercharger is made of.

Comments

I'm not sure wether this sould be a level 3 artifact, or if any given one should have a level equal to that of the maximum level of heathstone it can hold. any suggestions?
-- BrilliantRain

I would recommend that its level be one higher than the maximum hearthstone it can augment. Otherwise it becomes too easy to abuse. That also solves the level 5 hearthstone problem. --Toram

At some level I'm inclined to agree with you, but I keep having this nagging feeling that I'm overcharging for what is essentially one extra hearthstone level. --BrilliantRain

The thing to remember is that the power of both Hearthstones and Artifacts does not scale linearly with their level; the game impact of a level 5 Hearthstone could easily be greater than the combined effect of a level 4 Hearthstone and a level 4 Artifact. --Toram

On the other hand, you shouldn't overcost an item that simply advances something on that scale, because, while the effects do not scale regularly, their costs do, and it's really not fair to the players to say, "You can have this level 5 Hearthstone (7 bonus points), or this level 4 Hearthstone and this level 5 Artifact that turns it into a level 5 Hearthstone (12 BP total)."

I think it's pretty reasonable at Art3: 2 BP to account for the possibility of raising Hearthstones to levels 4 or 5 (each of which costs 2 BP), and 1 additional level for the added flexibility of swapping stones in and out to upgrade different ones at different times. Reducing its flexibility so that it only works on one Aspect (the way you have it written) justifies you adding a second special power, I think. - willows

In my view, the linear scaling of starting BP costs is a flaw in the system, which encourages players to min-max during character generation. Then again, I tend to err on the conservative side when trying to balance things, as it's generally easy to increase the power level if you initially make it too low, while trying to do the reverse makes people unhappy. --Toram

Well I'm not really sure either, so I'll leave it under the level 3 section, but others can decide to cost it as either the same level or level+1 of the hearthstone it can effect, if they use it in their games. So what do you guys think about the idea behind it and the other artifacts around here? --BrilliantRain