[FrankTrollman]

Forge Bonuses round in your favor. So having one guy with the Hammer of the Cyclops making a 25 gem item saves 13 gems. Having another character with the Hammer of the Forge Lord making another 25 gem item saves... 13 gems. So if you have one guy with both hammers make an item for free, that saves you 25 gems - 1 less gem than you would save if two forging mages were making items with a hammer each that turn.

So really, what's the deal?

Sure, you can make free Rings of Wizardry or something crazy, but so what? You're already using the Hammer of the Forge Lord and a Dwarven Hammer together - you're making those rings for 16 gems a piece (8 if you have the Forge of the Ancients, 6 if you have the Steel Ovens). Is it really that big a deal?

You're saving 16 gems, but you're tying up the Hammer of the Cyclops on your main guy, which means some other forger is going to have to settle for a Dwarven Hammer this turn. Your production of Skull Faces (or the like) is going to cost 18 gems instead of 12. Your production of Rings of Sorcery is going to cost 20 instead of 30. In short, while you are saving 16 gems a turn by making free Rings of Wizardry, you are also costing yourself 6-10 gems each turn.

So your grand master plan, which generally requires Construction 8, Alteration 9, and a heavily Astral four armed pretender (no four armed pretenders start with any Astral magic) is generating a total of 6 to 10 Astral Pearls a turn. And it cost over a 100 to set up. Is the fact that it can't be dispelled (only Wish stolen) enough to make it that much worse than Stellar Brilliance in terms of gem output?

---

Seriously, the only thing that justifies this is the "surprise" factor of being able to mass produce magic items that correspond to no magic type that you do. But honestly, by the time you have Contruction 8 and Alteration 9, I refuse to be surprised by anything an Astral character can bring to the field.

-Frank