Mana spent to boost Magic Items? [SoD]

[NineThePuma]

I'm tossing the standard casting system in favor of a mana system based on spell points and power points. One of the key points to the system, to me, was that everyone got mana. But a rogue doesn't need their mana for anything, which lead to a discussion of magic items being used in the mana system. I made a quick judgment that by expending mana from your personal pool would stop the item from expending its own mana. Aside from this making scrolls more valuable (since they are no longer single use) and allowing you to recharge wands (by paying mana), I wasn't exactly sure what else to do with it. Until someone asked about continuous abilities, like a Ring of Regeneration. I've yet to conclude on that, but an idea I had was basically: "What if you can invest mana into your weapon to make it more powerful for a while?" So your Flaming longsword can veget mana pumped in and get more and more dice of fire damage. Naturally, this isn't permanent, but I was thinking something like... "+Yd6 Fire Damage, where Y is equal to X/2 (round up). This is activated as a swift action and lasts for a number of rounds equal to X."

Burst can be tacked in as "On a crit, deals extra damage equal to Xd10" ... Keep in mind this is on top of the baseline for the enchantment, not replacing the benefits of the enchantment.

A minor note that just occured to me: you'd have to choose which enchantment to invest the mana into. Can't just invest the same small amount of mana into all the enchantments.

Thoughts? (I'll be applying this to ALL continuous magic items, I think. So suggestions are welcome.)

[NineThePuma]

Bumping this for the daytime crowd.

I came to a decision regarding Ring of Regeneration: Invest mana to gain Fast Healing Y, where Y = X-4.

Also: The maximum amount of mana you can channel into a weapon is equal to 2* the enhancement bonus of the weapon.

[Lix Lorn]

This would be VERY complicated; as you'd need to do it for EVERY printed magic item. You'd be working for months!

...also, a Spell Points variant exists (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm).

[NineThePuma]

I'm limiting myself (and players) to Core for now. And a lot of items are quite similar, so I just have to come up with the basic rules and go from there.

EDIT: ... And I don't particularly like that system, though I'm using it as a baseline.

[ericgrau]

Well scrolls and wands are simple... just spend the mana to cast the spells. Or are they? A million scrolls and suddenly you can cast any spell you want forever. It'll have to be a no save, not CL dependent spell against a foe w/o SR, but that still leaves a lot of spells. I might bump up the mana cost to reflect this.

For other abilities I'd estimate an effective spell level for an existing ability and let you spend mana and a standard action to get it. If boosting an existing ability, I'd make you pay the difference in metamagic cost: 8 for quicken or 8+normal cost to use an ability a second time (same thing), 4 for empower, etc. Likewise I might bump it up slightly (+1?) if the on-the-fly augmenting seems too powerful.

Regardless of the application I'd limit the mana spent per ability to the character level, like psionics, to avoid going nova by blowing all your mana on some power beyond what someone of your level could do.

Agreed that custom augmentations will take a long time to invent.

[NineThePuma]

Scrolls (and wands) have caster levels calculated into their cost. I may also increase the scroll cost. Plus I have means in place to stop abusing it that way, built into the mana system. When I have a more comprehensive system write up, I'll post it.

On the fly augmentation isn't actually that powerful: you're limited to enhancing enchantments already in your gear. Weapons (and armor) have their own built in method of stopping Novas, and adding the Psionic style "can't invest more than your Character Level" works well too. I did intend for that to be included in my write up.