Exegesis: Levels for Making Objects of Power and Ephemera

Games and Design
1

I’ve been going back and forth with my Invisible Sun GM about the process of Making Objects of Power. Here, I’m going to try to nail down the real level for crafting stuff, whether original items or established items.

Let’s start with the Effects by Level table. “Heal or Cause 1 Wound” is a level 5 effect (Book M). The Making rules reduce effective level by 1 for making Ephemera, and go up by 4 for an object with no depletion, with different depletion values at intermediate points. Deliberately adding side effects can reduce level as well.

Let’s list some items that start from this very basic effect. I’m not listing every single thing that mentions Wounds, only the stuff whose core effect is around healing or inflicting Wounds or Anguish.

  • Close Your Eyes and Die With the Sun [5] - incantation. Inflict 1 Wound, delayed
  • The Knife Explores the Flesh [5] - incantation. Inflict 1 Wound
  • The Punishment of Change Comes to the Wary [5] - incantation. Inflict 1 Wound
  • Surely Now Is Better Than Before [5] - incantation. Heal 1 Wound or Anguish
  • Alcoholic Succor [3] - ephemera. Healing effect, take -1 for an hour
  • Health Elixir [4] - ephemera. Healing effect, lose an action
  • Road to Remedy [5] - ephemera. Heal 1 Wound, heal 1 Anguish, or restore one pool
  • Exsanguinating Dart [5] - OOP, depletion 0. Does 1 Wound on successful hit

The incantations for healing or inflicting Wounds are all level 5, so the effect to level thing is consistent. Although incantations fall under the capacity limits of ephemera, they aren’t Made like ephemera - you just meditate for an hour and you have a chance of getting them. So it’s essentially a random card draw, sometimes you get this particular effect, and you’re unlikely to get it back again unless you advance in Degree.

We have three ephemera to consider, which would start at a base level of 4 (effect 5, minus 1 for depletion) to Make.

The Health Elixir is the most straightforward example of this. You could consider it a stock Maker’s product with a minor quirk attached (you lose a turn). This could have emerged from the process where an unintended side effect came about as part of a roll.

Alcoholic Succor feels like a more deliberate attempt to cheapen the item by adding a side effect. -1 for an hour isn’t super impactful, but it can matter. So making this a lower level item feels appropriate.

Because “restore one pool” is also a level 5 effect, the Road to Remedy effectively gets bumped up by 1 level for bundling 2-3 such effects together. This isn’t explicitly spelled out as a thing Makers can do, but we’re doing exegesis here.

How about the dart? A depletion of 0 would be +3 levels. The dart comes with a couple of limiting factors. First, it has to do damage. Second, well, you might lose the dart because you just threw it at someone and they may not give it back. This feels pretty serious, on top of the depletion. Is this worth a -3 level modifier to balance out the depletion? I mean, maybe.

What does all this mean?

Basically, I think that when it comes to recreating the stock items from the game, we can probably take their level as the final level for Making, and not do any further calculation based on depletion, etc. When you’re making a new thing, start from effect by level and add depletion and side effect modifiers.

Why does this matter?

If you aren’t familiar with the Maker’s Matrix, it’s because “item level” affects two separate things: the cost of materials, ingredients, etc., and the number and difficulty of checks made to create the item. There’s some confusion in the community around how this is intended to work (and arguments for or against every possible combination.

What I’m presenting here is the simplest interpretation, which is “assume the math has already been done for canonical creations” and “do the least amount of math for new creations”.

2

Let’s take this interpretation and push at the bottom part of the scale, to see what we can make of objects of power at level 1-2 that lack a depletion value, such as the Aethyr Link or Ephemera Bag.

Makers start with a level 1 or 2 item, with the stated reason that they’ve already made at least one object. Great. The text doesn’t say it has to have any particular depletion rating, only that the item be levels 1 or 2.

Let’s say we treated an Aethyr Link (level 1) as a new Object of Power. Say we said “the effect is level 1”. With no depletion (+4), this would effectively be a level 5 project - out of the range of first-Degree Makers. But it feels like a trivial object - and it is! It doesn’t even do things as useful as “heal 1 Injury”. It’s more like a cantrip. So we could say, basically, “cantrip-level effects as objects of power are level 1 with no depletion”.

Something more useful, like the ephemera bag, is effectively level 2 with no depletion - you can hold 4 extra items, but have to fetch them. There’s a cantrip called Display Ephemera that boosts the limit specifically during sales, and a level 4 house secret called Ephemera Storage with fewer restrictions. Both let you hold onto 10 items - an extra 10 items in the case of Ephemera Storage. So we’re less consistent about how much it costs to have extra ephemera laying around, but on the low end it’s pretty cheap.

This doesn’t feel particularly game-breaking. Starting Makers can make trivial items, like Aethyr Links and Chiun, without saying “it’s an effect level of 1, +4 for no depletion”, which would push the resulting project past what a first-Degree Maker is capable of. Actual level 1 items with no depletion, such as an item that could perpetually heal 1 Injury, are still out of range - perfect.