Simple Questions that can "defeat" RPG systems

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Question: Which RPG's magic system allows the character to do their homework by casting a spell?

Assume a HS or College student or equilavelent who doesn't want to do the work of researching a paper and writing it out. What powers across various systems allow them to do this?

This is not easily possible in Mage or Ars Magica, D&D, or SWSE. What systems out there allow them to do this task?

Alternatively, what simple tasks have you seen players try to do in your games, or have thought of, that have no easy answers?

[Foxwarrior]

Scribble on a piece of paper and suggest that the teacher give you an A.

In a grueling contact other plane Q & A with Vecna, get him to tell you what to write in your paper, one word at a time.

Planar bind some hyperintelligent being that knows a lot and ask it to do your homework for you.

[Iduno]

Question: Which RPG's magic system allows the character to do their homework by casting a spell?

Assume a HS or College student or equilavelent who doesn't want to do the work of researching a paper and writing it out. What powers across various systems allow them to do this?

Any divination power would get you the answers. I think most systems reject sorcery that can think for itself.

Alternatively, what simple tasks have you seen players try to do in your games, or have thought of, that have no easy answers?

I had characters turn a van invisible, sneak into somewhere, and try to back up to a building while invisible. The rigger was not the one driving, as they were busy doing recon with drones. So an "okay at best" driver trying to back up without being noticed without also being able to see the back end of the vehicle.

[angelfromanotherpin]

D&D 3.x allows you to do your homework by casting a spell; you use one of the summoning spells to summon something to do it for you. If you consider that cheating, World Tree's variant of Ars Magica casting does allow for sentient spells that can gather their own intel and write it down for you. (Although by a quirk of the setting there would be a 1-in-20 chance of the spell writing a parody essay filled with obvious untruths.)

[Quasinatural]

GURPS basic magic system allows you to animate writing tools for copying and dictation. Almost any kitchen sink setting allows for telepathy and clairvoyance for information gathering; outside of that, the OP question is simply too broad. If doing homework involves computations and analysis then summoning something could work, depending upon the task. d20 3x, GURPS, and original WoD would all let you contact extraplanar beings that could maybe could do it, depending upon the subject matter. Again, the question is a bit too broad.

[K]

Any system with open-ended magic works.

DnD 3.X Limited Wish would certainly get all your current homework done, and a full Wish could generate a permanent effect that causes your future homework to just be done, forevermore.

Mage: the Ascension could get homework done with a Matter 2 effect combined with Time 2 and Correspondence 3.

As for things I've wanted to do in a game, the list is very long. I'm famous for forcing the DM to write new rules at the table.

[Foxwarrior]

Wish for 25000 gp worth of completed, mundane homework?

How much is a large mundane tome detailing how to construct a nuclear power plant worth, in an objective fixed economy?

[Quasinatural]

Mage: the Ascension could get homework done with a Matter 2 effect combined with Time 2 and Correspondence 3.

That's. . . flyswatting with an a-bomb, isn't it? Mind 2 could telepathically steal the answers and Corr 1 could get you the location of the answers, though Forces 2 or Matter 2 would still be needed to physically reproduce the answers (electronic printout or autonomous ink pen). Would a rank 3 sphere be needed?

Keep in mind, that question is subjective as MtA is inanely and ridiculously poorly written, so this is really a comparison of table-styles.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

In M&M it would be a 3/rank Continuous Transform effect to change uncompleted homework to completed homework.

[K]

Wish for 25000 gp worth of completed, mundane homework?

How much is a large mundane tome detailing how to construct a nuclear power plant worth, in an objective fixed economy?

I mean, a magic item in effect form worth 25K that just changes your uncompleted homework to completed homework.

Magic items in effect form are things like the various books and tomes that burn out in exchange for giving you a permanent effect, usually a bonus because DnD is not that creative and only has a few examples. For example, there is a Sorcerer version of the Librum of Silver Magic in one of the Dragon-fucking books that also permanently gives you low-light vision.

[K]

Mage: the Ascension could get homework done with a Matter 2 effect combined with Time 2 and Correspondence 3.

That's. . . flyswatting with an a-bomb, isn't it? Mind 2 could telepathically steal the answers and Corr 1 could get you the location of the answers, though Forces 2 or Matter 2 would still be needed to physically reproduce the answers (electronic printout or autonomous ink pen). Would a rank 3 sphere be needed?

Keep in mind, that question is subjective as MtA is inanely and ridiculously poorly written, so this is really a comparison of table-styles.

I mean, I'm pulling and creating homework from the future in order to save time.

If I want to spend the effort to actually write out the answers with my meat hands using answers from a close range Mind or Correspondence probe of my teacher, I might as well just do the homework without magick. (Also, my teacher would have the skill to do the homework, but there is a good chance they might not actually have the completed homework or know the answers off the top of their head if it's problem sets or something. I mean, math homework is about showing the steps and the "answers" in the teacher version of the textbook are always the final answer and not the steps. If it's a writing assignment, you are certainly fucked.)

[Foxwarrior]

Magic items in effect form are things like the various books and tomes that burn out in exchange for giving you a permanent effect, usually a bonus because DnD is not that creative and only has a few examples. For example, there is a Sorcerer version of the Librum of Silver Magic in one of the Dragon-fucking books that also permanently gives you low-light vision.

Did you miss where I said "mundane", or are you saying that textbooks that tell you how to do things can't exist in D&D land whether or not they're magical?

I guess it's hard to think of counterexamples...

[deaddmwalking]

Scribble on a piece of paper and suggest that the teacher give you an A.

I suppose in D&D-land homework doesn't exist because explosive runes do.

[K]

Magic items in effect form are things like the various books and tomes that burn out in exchange for giving you a permanent effect, usually a bonus because DnD is not that creative and only has a few examples. For example, there is a Sorcerer version of the Librum of Silver Magic in one of the Dragon-fucking books that also permanently gives you low-light vision.

Did you miss where I said "mundane", or are you saying that textbooks that tell you how to do things can't exist in D&D land whether or not they're magical?

I guess it's hard to think of counterexamples...

Separate from the homework question, you could Wish for books with knowledge that does not exist since everything in DnD has a GP value.

Pricing completed homework is not even hard. You price out the cost of hiring an expert to do the homework.

Pricing other unknown things gets tricky. I mean, rather than doing spell research you could wish for original spells on scrolls or spellbooks because rarity of the spell does not change the value.

That being said, knowledge that does not exist in the setting might be too expensive, forcing you to cast multiple times to get chapters or even single pages at a time.

[Pixels]

This is not easily possible in Mage or Ars Magica, D&D, or SWSE.

You underestimate the breadth of spells from D&D splats. Scholar's Touch was the first one that rose to my mind, which lets you skim textbooks in seconds. Amanuensis is useful for copying notes or even whole assignments. These are level 1 and level 0 spells respectively, well within the reach of even the lowest level magical students. There are also a number of spells that improve skill checks or mental stats, though depending on the exact spell it may be difficult to maintain them for long study sessions.

These aren't snap-poof-homework-done spells-- for that you'd need something like Planar Binding a high-intelligence outsider to do your homework. Or as K notes, Wish.

[Pariah Dog]

I suppose in D&D-land homework doesn't exist because explosive runes do.

That made me chuckle more than it should.

Minor Image a blank sheet of paper into completed homework.

Pixels got the names of the spells I was trying to remember from a book heist plot (steal the knowledge without removing the book).

[Dogbert]

This is easily possible in Mage

Fixed that for you:

Mind 2/Forces 2 will let any VA or Thig Hermetic take a coffee break while their workstation browses the net and writes the essay for them with say, 3 successes or so.

Mind 2/Prime 2/Matter 2 will let any old-fashioned hermetic do the same with pen, paper, and the right books handy.

Spirit 3/Entropy 2 will let anyone of shamanistic inclinations find the right spirit to do it for them (some bartering may be required, though, but good social skills or Prime 2 and at least Avatar 1 for quintessence bribes will do the trick).

I hope that helps.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Wow~! good responses everyone!

My thought with M:tA is that yes, there ways to "cheat" and either (1) look into the future and/or (2) spy on the teacher's answers to do the homework... But there isn't a generic "just do this for me without knowledge I don't have" kind of spell, Prime 2/Matter 2... Though maybe I'm just being semantic.

Iduno's point that "I think most systems reject sorcery that can think for itself." is sort of the point - the magic has to be explicitly 'programmed' by the users knowledge (mage in particular) and doesn't autogenerate a new novel that will be as good as Harry Potter with the drop of a hat.

[DrPraetor]

I'm writing a grant proposal this week, so all of a studden this question is of interest to me .

In mechanics, or in fluff? Lots of games (Warhammer FRP, for example) have scholars writing stuff that is channeled from demons, but few have any rules (WFRP might have a ritual to do this written up somewhere, but in WFRP I & II rituals just "do stuff", so you could certainly make one.)

Likewise, in Call of Cthulhu, spells just do stuff so you could have a spell Write Term Paper, which would be totally on brand. Bonus points if term papers written by the spell are obscenely perfect, and thus subtly evil, so that whoever reads it slowly goes mad. Weird fiction stories exist in this vein, although with artwork instead of scholarship. Hell, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan was written in a drug-induced haze. If you drink some space mead, and wake up an hour later with a written term paper, grave dirt under your fingernails, and no memory of how it was written, does that meet your specs of conjuring the term paper?

Contact Ghoul, of course, could contact a ghoul that you could hire to do it for you but that's no different than hiring another student with money so I take it that's not what you mean.

Amber magic can do this (I'm not going to check the game mechanics in Amber diceless); there are other systems I'm sure that let you conjure generic stuff from parallel realities, but in any case: there's a suitable term paper somewhere in shadow that you can just pull over. I think that's the only conceit that lets you get the term paper without some homonculus (in the sense of an AI) that you hire/create/magically compel to write it for you.

Paul Erd?s, the famously eccentric, peripatetic and prolific 20th-century mathematician, was fond of the idea that God has a celestial volume containing the perfect proof of every mathematical theorem. “This one is from The Book,” he would declare when he wanted to bestow his highest praise on a beautiful proof.

[Prak]

In WtA, you go to the largest library you have access to, find a knowledge spirit, and bind it to a pen with the effect of filling out your homework.

[hyzmarca]

Polymorph Any Object your teacher into your completed homework. Then Polymorph yourself into your teacher. Polymorph yourself into your teacher, give yourself an A.

[Dogbert]

... But there isn't a generic "just do this for me without knowledge I don't have"

There's a whole magic tradition that deals with the collective knowledge base of humanity (you know, the akashic records).

Also, "Writing" is one of the oldest technocratic/hermetic Mind effects.

One of the old books deals precisely with "reading" data sources, and the key sphere they used was Mind (more than one book, actually, now that I remember, any NWO operative can find any piece of data existing with Mind 1/Forces 1, as per the Players' Guide to the Technocracy if I remember right).