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One issue that kinda bothered me during the no-magic run, was how ad-hoc the whole statement of the challenge was. Sill does not have anything like a "clean" division between was does, and does not, constitute magic. I admit it does not make sense to distort the game to make this one obscure challenge somehow more sensible, and indeed one can make the case that it is even canonical: when the Valar walk openly among you, the line between the mundane and the magical is pretty blurry. But for the purpose of the challenge, it would be nice to sorta rejigger this a little bit better than it is now. I concede that anything I might have to say in this regard is irredeemably biased by doing the no-magic run, but that sort of thing has never stopped me from shooting my mouth off before. I also don't seriously expect any of this to be adopted; these are just thoughts I had while running no-magic.
There are two important things that would need to be sorted out in some way to make a clear, simple line between magic and not-magic: Smithing and Flaming arrows. There are a handful of minor things: Shadow Cloaks, Lanterns, Lore-mastery, Inner Light.
I think the simplest and most understandable division is to say that "Song" invokes magic, and so if we could just say "no singing" and make that work, it would be good.
Most obviously, this would involve making the Smithing skills "Jewelry" and "Enchantment" have "Song of Aule" as a prerequisite. That's a pretty serious hurdle to get over, so you'd want to make it cheaper: say only 2 skill points. Even so. that clearly makes it a lot harder to make significant magic item(s) at the first forge (say, Gloves of the Forge). Note that it wouldn't affect the so-called "Artistry Start". Also, I think that any really serious Smithing character ends up taking Aule anyway, so it wouldn't change the total exp invested in the end. But it would certainly make the first forge harder to take advantage of.
The other main problem is Flaming arrows. Scatha forbade them when defining the no-magic challenge, so he clearly thinks of these as magical flaming arrows, not mundane ones. Yet, any character can add the Flaming enchantment to any arrow at any time, and it just takes knowledge of Archery to do it. Conversely, making Poison arrows is considered an Enchantment. This seems totally backwards to me. It would make more sense (to me anyway) if the Flaming Arrows ability was replaced by Make Poison Arrows, which would give you the ability to forge poison arrows: you would also have to know Weaponsmithing and also have a Potion of Poison. These "mundane" poison arrows would be single use in the sense that after being shot, they would revert to being just plain arrows (the poison would come off). Conversely, forging them would not require investing any Strength. Flaming arrows would be an Enchantment. They would still always break when used, but would only require 1 Str (rather than 2, like Poison arrows do now). So you could, say, forge 3 batches for the cost of 1 Str potion. This would be a significant change. But besides more reasonably delineating magic and not-magic, it would also remove double dipping: no more poison-flaming arrows; a good thing IMHO.
As for the more minor things:
Shadow Cloaks are somewhat schizophrenic about whether or not they are magic. The description of it says that it "creates an unnatural darkness" so it seems to be pretty clearly magic (being "unnatural" and all). But at the same time it is possible to forge one without knowing Enchantment: you only need Armorsmithing. Now, as a practical matter, they are hard enough to make (18 minimum) that it seems only serious Smithing characters would ever try to make one. Indeed, I can't think of a single instance of ever reading a ladder report of anyone ever actually making one at all (no doubt someone will correct me on this point). So I don't think it would be at all disruptive to change this from a "Shadow Cloak" to a "Cloak of Shadows" and make the "of Shadows" part be an Enchantment (like "of Warmth", or "of Stealth"). One could perhaps introduce a new item, an "Elven Cloak", with say [+1] evasion and <+1> Stealth, which is not magical, just well crafted, and only allow the "of Shadows" enchantment to be placed on an Elven Cloak.
Lanterns are clearly mundane, but need the Jewelry skill to be made. This is a bit inconsistent with the magic nature of the Jewelry skill. One could just accept the inconsistency, but the simple way out is to not allow forging of Lanterns. This is a bit odd, but as a practical matter, since you can't forge fuel, no one forges lanterns anyway. Any more than people forge torches (which you can't do, but I haven't heard any complaints). Or one could make Lanterns be part of Armorsmithing. A little inconsistent on the name, but probably correct on the type of skill required.
Scatha specifically forbade Lore-mastery in the definition of the challenge. However, with the source mods, I think this restriction is unneeded, since there won't be any magic items to identify.
Inner light is something of a problem. But in this case, I think the right thing to do is to sanitize it and just declare it to be an acceptable ability. Yeah, it's borderline/suspect. But it's the right thing to do.
The upshot of all this is that the no-magic challenge could then be more cleanly stated as "turn on no-artefacts and no-magic-items, and never take any Song abilities." What is magic and what is not-magic is clear, and all the abilities (other than Song of course) are fair game.
And if you managed to slog all the way down to here, I thank you.
There are two important things that would need to be sorted out in some way to make a clear, simple line between magic and not-magic: Smithing and Flaming arrows. There are a handful of minor things: Shadow Cloaks, Lanterns, Lore-mastery, Inner Light.
I think the simplest and most understandable division is to say that "Song" invokes magic, and so if we could just say "no singing" and make that work, it would be good.
Most obviously, this would involve making the Smithing skills "Jewelry" and "Enchantment" have "Song of Aule" as a prerequisite. That's a pretty serious hurdle to get over, so you'd want to make it cheaper: say only 2 skill points. Even so. that clearly makes it a lot harder to make significant magic item(s) at the first forge (say, Gloves of the Forge). Note that it wouldn't affect the so-called "Artistry Start". Also, I think that any really serious Smithing character ends up taking Aule anyway, so it wouldn't change the total exp invested in the end. But it would certainly make the first forge harder to take advantage of.
The other main problem is Flaming arrows. Scatha forbade them when defining the no-magic challenge, so he clearly thinks of these as magical flaming arrows, not mundane ones. Yet, any character can add the Flaming enchantment to any arrow at any time, and it just takes knowledge of Archery to do it. Conversely, making Poison arrows is considered an Enchantment. This seems totally backwards to me. It would make more sense (to me anyway) if the Flaming Arrows ability was replaced by Make Poison Arrows, which would give you the ability to forge poison arrows: you would also have to know Weaponsmithing and also have a Potion of Poison. These "mundane" poison arrows would be single use in the sense that after being shot, they would revert to being just plain arrows (the poison would come off). Conversely, forging them would not require investing any Strength. Flaming arrows would be an Enchantment. They would still always break when used, but would only require 1 Str (rather than 2, like Poison arrows do now). So you could, say, forge 3 batches for the cost of 1 Str potion. This would be a significant change. But besides more reasonably delineating magic and not-magic, it would also remove double dipping: no more poison-flaming arrows; a good thing IMHO.
As for the more minor things:
Shadow Cloaks are somewhat schizophrenic about whether or not they are magic. The description of it says that it "creates an unnatural darkness" so it seems to be pretty clearly magic (being "unnatural" and all). But at the same time it is possible to forge one without knowing Enchantment: you only need Armorsmithing. Now, as a practical matter, they are hard enough to make (18 minimum) that it seems only serious Smithing characters would ever try to make one. Indeed, I can't think of a single instance of ever reading a ladder report of anyone ever actually making one at all (no doubt someone will correct me on this point). So I don't think it would be at all disruptive to change this from a "Shadow Cloak" to a "Cloak of Shadows" and make the "of Shadows" part be an Enchantment (like "of Warmth", or "of Stealth"). One could perhaps introduce a new item, an "Elven Cloak", with say [+1] evasion and <+1> Stealth, which is not magical, just well crafted, and only allow the "of Shadows" enchantment to be placed on an Elven Cloak.
Lanterns are clearly mundane, but need the Jewelry skill to be made. This is a bit inconsistent with the magic nature of the Jewelry skill. One could just accept the inconsistency, but the simple way out is to not allow forging of Lanterns. This is a bit odd, but as a practical matter, since you can't forge fuel, no one forges lanterns anyway. Any more than people forge torches (which you can't do, but I haven't heard any complaints). Or one could make Lanterns be part of Armorsmithing. A little inconsistent on the name, but probably correct on the type of skill required.
Scatha specifically forbade Lore-mastery in the definition of the challenge. However, with the source mods, I think this restriction is unneeded, since there won't be any magic items to identify.
Inner light is something of a problem. But in this case, I think the right thing to do is to sanitize it and just declare it to be an acceptable ability. Yeah, it's borderline/suspect. But it's the right thing to do.
The upshot of all this is that the no-magic challenge could then be more cleanly stated as "turn on no-artefacts and no-magic-items, and never take any Song abilities." What is magic and what is not-magic is clear, and all the abilities (other than Song of course) are fair game.
And if you managed to slog all the way down to here, I thank you.
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