New Weapon Enchantment: Tutoring
It’s a common trope among fantasy adventures, and among video games, for equipment to be enchanted with specific skills and effects – such as a sword that shoots fireballs, or has a healing scabbard. While Reclaim the Wild features Enchanting as a crafting discipline, you can’t tie Feats, Spells, and Techniques to specific equipment – until now.
Tutoring
Uses: Special, see below
Effect: This enchantment allows the wielder of a weapon to temporarily use Spells or Techniques. The enchanter chooses which combinations of valid Spells and Techniques can be granted by the Tutoring enchantment, as long as the total token cost does not exceed (3 * (Rank / 2), rounded up) tokens. The Spells and Techniques you can add to this Enchant is determined by your GM; see the section “Determining Valid Spells and Techniques for Tutoring” below for guidelines.
| Enchantment Rank | Tokens Granted |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 1 | 3 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 6 |
| 5 | 9 |
The wielder of a weapon must still meet the requirements to “learn” and use a Spell or Technique, though they can use the other abilities in the Tutoring enchantment to qualify.
Here are some examples:
- If a Tutoring Weapon has Bombos, then the user must know at least 1 Fire Spell before they can use it.
- A wand with Fairy’s Light and Great Fairy’s Light will allow the use of both Spells, even if the user doesn’t normally know any Healing Spells.
- A Hylian cannot use Goron Goroll with a Tutoring Weapon.
The Tutoring Weapon must be used with the Spell or Technique. Even if the Spell has nothing to do with the Weapon (such as Yarna’s Vortex), the weapon must be held in hand and loses Durability if the Spell or Technique is used. If a Spell or Technique allows use of multiple weapons (such as with Serpent’s Fangs), the Tutoring Weapon must be one of the weapons used.
The Gem used by this Enchantment depends on which Spells and Techniques are desired.
If only Spells or Techniques without an associated Element (such as Wind-up Strike or Wizrobe’s Wave) will be used, any Gem will do.
If any Spell or Technique has an Elemental aspect, then the proper type of Gem will be used as shown in the following table:
| Element | Gemstone |
|---|---|
| Dark | Onyx |
| Earth | Emerald |
| Fire | Ruby |
| Ice | Sapphire |
| Light | Diamond |
| Shock | Topaz |
| Water | Opal |
This means that a specific Tutoring enchant cannot provide more than one type of Elementally associated Spells and Techniques; however, a Tutoring enchant can have both one Element and non-elemental Spells and Techniques.
Determining Valid Spells and Techniques for Tutoring
The Enchantment text does not specify which Spells and Techniques can be used for Tutoring. This is because the value of the Tutoring enchant may depend on how restricted it is. In the following sections you will see guidelines on how to determine which abilities can be used.
Knowledge Restriction
The most basic restriction is “what the Enchanter already knows”. However, this may overly restrict things because the marginal benefit of more than one PC may not be worth the opportunity cost of lacking a different enchantment. For instance, if the enchanter already knows Spin Attack, how valuable would Spin Attack be to the rest of the party?
A more loose restriction would allow the Enchanter to work with someone else for determining the Spells and Techniques. This at least broadens the pool so that the rest of the party – as well as any helpful and knowledgeable NPCs – can contribute to the enchantments.
An even more loose restriction would allow the Enchanter to use the Spells and Techniques that they – or their helper’s – either know, or qualify for. This for instance will allow an Enchanter to create a Bombos Tutoring Weapon when they know at least 1 Fire Spell.
The loosest restriction is to allow any player-usable Spells and Techniques (or even those used by Monsters) to be used for this enchantment. This can of course cause issues due to having such a wide selection that will expand with additional supplements and articles.
A restriction tighter than the basic one would be to have individual gems have specific Spells or Techniques. For instance, a rank 1 “Ruby of Zola’s Fireball” could be among the gems found in a pile of loot, and it could only be used to provide Zola’s Fireball if used as the main gem for Tutoring. This can be a good means to teach Monster-unique abilities, such as “Ruby of Fire Breath” falling from a Dodongo.
The tightest restriction is to not allow players to craft this Enchantment, but to simply allow it to be bought or found. This makes it easy for the GM to control just how many Tutoring Spells and Techniques the players have access to at one time. However, be careful, as some players may find themselves unwilling to use certain items that cannot easily be crafted or bought.
Thematic Restriction
Another aspect of Spells and Techniques is to determine whether they “make sense” to be attached to a certain type of weapon – or any weapon at all. This is of course dependent on the tone of the game – if your game takes place in a video game-esque world, or one with more common magic or technology, then it’s fine to have odd interactions (like a Long Gun with Greater Fairy’s Light). But if your world is more down to Earth or serious, these may not match.
The easiest to allow are those Spells and Techniques that deal damage, as they interact with a weapon’s statistics other than Durability.
Typical examples are:
- The Yiga Windcleaver weapon. The sidebar in Ravage the Wild helped inspire this Enchantment, after all!
- The Bombos, Ether, and Quake Medallions could be considered Tutoring Enchantments for the Master Sword.
- The Fire Emblem tomes can be considered Spellbooks with the Tutoring Enchantment.
Non-damaging Spells and Techniques may make sense with some types of Weapons and not others, depending on the above factors.
For instance:
- The Sand Rod can just be a regular Rod with Terrakinesis.
- Pegasus Boots can just be regular Boots with Tantari’s Jump.
- A Gate with Zelda’s Phantom.
Feats
If you do not desire to allow every Enchanter to use the Tutoring enchant, then the following Feat may be helpful:
New Feat: Tutoring Enchanter
6 tokens
Requirement: Quest Reward or GM Approval Only
Effect: You can now place the Tutoring Enchantment on Weapons.
In addition, here is a Feat that can change how to pay for the Spells and Techniques provided by Tutoring:
New Feat: Inverted Catalyst
6 tokens
Requirement: Quest Reward or GM Approval Only
Effect: When you learn this Feat, choose between Magic or Stamina. When you craft the Tutoring Enchantment, you may choose to allow the granted Spells and Techniques to use their original resource (Magic for Spells, Stamina for Techniques), or you may have both Spells and Techniques use the resource you chose.
Special: This Feat may be taken more than once. When you do so, you can choose between Spells and Techniques using their original resource, using Magic, or using Stamina, at the time of enchanting. This may require completing a different quest.
This Feat allows the use of Spells with Stamina, and Techniques with Magic. This follows precedent of allowing certain Spells or otherwise magical abilities to be used with Stamina, including:
- how the Elemental Weapon Enchantment allows the expenditure of Stamina in order to change the Element of a Spell;
- how the Hookshot (both the Magical and Personalized versions) can use various Spells with Stamina; and
- how the Korok’s Leaf Mundane Tool allows use of Korok Leaf’s Wind with Stamina.
This may not be appropriate for all games, so that is why it is an optional feat separate from the one that allows the use of Tutoring.
Ideas for Tutoring Weapons
- A Tutoring Weapon could be used as a way to go through a dungeon, instead of a Magical Tool. For instance, a Dagger with Sol’s Gleam can be used to trigger switches or to weaken the undead in said dungeon.
- You can use Tutoring Weapons to help “teach” Companions and other NPCs certain Spells and Techniques, to perform a certain strategy.
Edit 15 September 2020 – Changed “rounded down” to “rounded up” for the amount of tokens granted by Tutoring, to match the table.
Edit 17 October 2020 – Changed Darkness to Dark. Corrected some instances of Tutorial to Tutoring.
Edit 7 July 2023 – Changed an instance of “Zolas” to “Zola’s”.