[3.5] Spells that fvck with Logistics and Dragons

[fectin]

Discussion of Fantastic Leaps Forward was here
...including some back-and-forth on the dangers of mass necromancy.

Discussion of industrialization magic was here.

[hogarth]

Glibness breaks player wealth; I'm not sure it breaks economies.

I'm not sure how you can have an economy without transactions between individuals, and I don't know how you can have transactions if anyone can be convinced of anything at any time.

[virgil]

Have they shown many superhero settings where they showed the logical conclusion of people like Superman and the Green Lantern floating about their city? That probably gives a vague notion.

[nockermensch]

What are the best spells for generating energy that can be converted to work?

Some ideas by just glancing at the spell lists:

• Summon Monster from III onwards can bring creatures that radiate a lot of heat.
• Levitate can be used at the CL3 to rise a 300 lb. stone 600' high and then drop it.
• Continual Flame "creates no heat" but there's no reason to believe it creates no photons. Create enough of them and use parabolic mirrors to focus all the light at a point and you'll have useable energy.

[fectin]

Create water is a good source of steam. Tome firemages create permanent bonfires. Heat metal "boils the surrounding water" when used underwater.

Animate Dead is perpetual motion at a really affordable price.

The threads I linked above discuss in more depth.

[ishy]

Wish obviously, unless Wish had to deal with the conservation of mass, which would fucking rock.

"I wish for 15,000 GPs"

*poof*

*Somewhere out there, a dragon's hoard lightens by 15,000 GPs in the transaction... and a howling scream of rage goes up in the night".

You can actually fix all of the "something from nothing" spells by maintaining conservation of material implicitly in them. So Create Food & Pure Water means that food and water *comes* from somewhere.

It'd be kind of interesting. Someone somewhere casts flaming hands and your fire dies out all of a sudden as it's channeled elsewhere.

I don't think it fixes anything, it sounds like it would break things.
You can't rely on having any resource since it can just disappear. You don't know if your food that you're cooking right now, will still be there in 5 minutes for you to eat. Yet if everyone stops cooking, there'll not be any food to wish for.

[shadzar]

all things considered Magic Missile, must be removed. it requires line of sight, or akin to it, but cant flip levers and such, so what happens when you fire it at someone through a window? it can't move a lever due to not having any force, so therefore cant break the window to get through it either.

if it CAN go through the window, then it can go through a wall too if someone was scrying a nearby target to identify them then cast it through a wall, but we all know that isnt possible.

glass windows also affect MANY other similar spells which have an effect that "travels" and require line of sight, but exert no actual force.

i mean someone hiding behind a tower shield can't be affected by Magic Missile, because it wouldnt hurt the shield at all and not be able to reach the person behind it, and even arrow slits can block a Magic Missile.

just a thought, so what other spells does window glass screw up? burning hands? cone of X? clouds, stinking and other?

what spells can pass through glass to affect a target or target area on the other side of it?

glass isnt often present in D&D games, but for those that do have it, this was something that came up. just sadly don't have those notes anymore.

[Maxus]

Create water is a good source of steam. Tome firemages create permanent bonfires. Heat metal "boils the surrounding water" when used underwater.

Animate Dead is perpetual motion at a really affordable price.

The threads I linked above discuss in more depth.

Can also permanancy a one-square Wall of Fire.

I used that one in Dragonmech before, to bypass retardedly complicated fuel tracking

[fectin]

Shad,

It's not really a mystery. You're looking for Line of Sight and Line of Effect. Anything which requires a target, but not effect works as normal. Magic missiles ignore cover less than total cover.

Burning hands and such would apply damage/effects to the glass, per the normal rules for damaging objects. Magic missile is unusual in that it does not, because it explicitly does not damage inanimate objects.

[shadzar]

Shad,

It's not really a mystery. You're looking for Line of Sight and Line of Effect. Anything which requires a target, but not effect works as normal. Magic missiles ignore cover less than total cover.

Burning hands and such would apply damage/effects to the glass, per the normal rules for damaging objects. Magic missile is unusual in that it does not, because it explicitly does not damage inanimate objects.

you are wrong on the bolded part and i will bold why as well.

The target creature must be seen or otherwise detected to be hit, however, so near-total concealment, such as that offered by arrow slits, can render the spell ineffective.

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

but burning hands wouldnt be able to get through the glass, nor would a fireball.

both fireball and magic missile have form (ball and an arrow), but no force.

a fireball encountering a window would erupt on the window, unless it was previously melted or something by the fireball.

Fire Ball: A missile which springs from the finger of the Magic-User. It explodes with a burst radius of 2"

Lightning bolt can't pass through glass either.. insulator and all that. just imagine a Faraday's cage and the person inside is completely unaffected by lightning bolts. where would those be that make lightning bolt hard or impossible to use? well power plants, substations, office buildings, anyplace that is grounded. satellite dish for a shield anyone?


point remains, that glass in D&D changes MANY things and the way they react because of its properties and spells as written, thus why glass doesn't exist in D&D, and if added without these things taken into consideration, verisimilitude and Sod can easily be affected.

so i am offering a contrary to the thread, as logic that screws with spells in terms of a recently modern world, with modern tech, at least more modern than normal D&D.

[Prak]

Shad, I see that you are referencing 2e. It would be somewhat unfair of me to bitch about it, because I did not specify an edition of D&D.

That said, I am specifying one at this time: This discussion is about 3.5 D&D. Rules from editions prior to or succeeding 3.5 do not apply here. You had some worthwhile remarks in this thread. 2e, however, does not apply.

I will edit the thread title to make this more apparent.

[shadzar]

Shad, I see that you are referencing 2e. It would be somewhat unfair of me to bitch about it, because I did not specify an edition of D&D.

the "fire ball" actually came from OD&D Men & Magic actually. i still think you have to look back at EVREY edition unless it is specified in the case of spells to see the bits left out like in the case of Magic Missile where it actually states for example in BD&D:

A magic missile is a glowing arrow, created and shot by magic, which inflicts 1d6 + l (2-7) points of damage to any creature it strikes. After the spell is cast, the arrow appears next to the spellcaster and hovers there (moving with him) until the spellcaster causes it to shoot. When shot, the magic missile will automatically hit any one visible target the spellcaster specifies. The magic missile actually has no solid form, and cannot be touched. A magic missile never misses its target and the target is not allowed a saving throw.

so the whole solid form thing leads to questions can it pass through them, and what can it hit. i don't think 3.x has anything on that specifically for detail.

Evocation: (Force)

A missile of magical energy darts forth from your fingertip and strikes its target...force damage.
The missile strikes unerringly, even if...has less than total cover or total concealment.
Inanimate objects are not damaged by this spell.

yet still with that, glass doesn't exist... so many spells probably haven't changed from edition to edition as NONE consider glass even to exist. which would mean, though being able to see through glass, again the window provides total cover right? i assume cover to be something that say a thrown pillow will not get tot he person behind, or even just a beanbag. so a window provides cover from being hit, but not being seen? right? or can 3.x MM pass through things like walls so that you could cast one on someone as you are scrying on the other side of the wall?


assume two things with them ALL.. the target is at arrow slits, they are untargetable by MM; the caster is casting from window slits, and can hit anyone?

maybe the damage type of 3.5 is just the stupid part throwing me off. maybe they should have just used creature like BD&D/RC as the allowed target, instead of vaguely saying "target" to have to correct later in the paragraph?

now my eyes are fucked looking at 3.5 books so don't expect me to be able to search other things in it.

in the event a spell description is changed that horribly form pre-WotC to WotC editions, you will have to adjust my ideas. :meh:

[Prak]

I would reconcile Magic Missile really simply: It's a bit of animation disrupting non-physical force. It attempts to affect the first solid object that it hits, hence line of effect needed, and takes something of a "comet" like shape, where it's a non-mass with a spread out "tail." The tail is larger than 1 sq. ft, and if the tail is stopped, so too is the rest. Worn clothing and armour are not sufficiently far away from an "animating force" to offer protection, but a tower shield is, or rather, it's thick enough.
If the missile hits glass, it dissipates. Ditto stone and non-living wood. If it hits a living or undead creature or a construct, it disrupts the energy that animates it (positive energy/negative energy/??? energy) and thus causes damage.

That's why it doesn't damage or apply force to objects.

[shadzar]

moved to http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=339913#339913 .

[Prak]

[[moved]]

[shadzar]

moved to http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=339913#339913 .

[Prak]

Hmm.. threads are crossing over and it's getting hard for me to keep track.

This should really be specifically about spells that make games focused on resource management and the limits thereof go sadly wank in a corner.

The posts about my setting--though intimately tied to this subject--should really go in the post apoc. setting thread.

I'm going to move the last few posts over (quoting yours) so that that discussion is where it makes more sense.

[shadzar]

sorry. it happens when you think of these things and how spells are not disconnected entirely from magic and magic items...

[Vebyast]

Funnily enough, for the purposes of heat engines, creating cold is just as useful as creating heat. All you need is a heat gradient that you can extract work from. Under certain conditions (for example, if your hot end can only get so hot and you're looking for more power), cold can be even better than heat. Most of the cold-tagged spells are pansy compared to their fire equivalents - heat of vaporisation is almost universally greater than heat of fusion and lots of fire spells boil water - but there's a surprise in, of all things, Sorc/Wiz Cantrips: Ray of Frost is, as far as I can tell, the only level-zero spell that can be used to drive a heat engine. I'd have to do the math to compare it to higher-level spells and Create Water, but I suspect that the exponential scaling of spell costs may make it viable on a power-per-money basis. Plus it's level zero, which means that there's probably a way for everybody in the world to get access to it.

[Saxony]

Wish obviously, unless Wish had to deal with the conservation of mass, which would fucking rock.

"I wish for 15,000 GPs"

*poof*

*Somewhere out there, a dragon's hoard lightens by 15,000 GPs in the transaction... and a howling scream of rage goes up in the night".

You can actually fix all of the "something from nothing" spells by maintaining conservation of material implicitly in them. So Create Food & Pure Water means that food and water *comes* from somewhere.

It'd be kind of interesting. Someone somewhere casts flaming hands and your fire dies out all of a sudden as it's channeled elsewhere.

You got it almost right. If conservation of mass is followed, then we could still make gold out of dirt by binding elements together. So you could get 15000 gp and a chunk of dirt having the same mass would disappear somewhere. Or air, or water, or whatever.

[shadzar]

You got it almost right. If conservation of mass is followed, then we could still make gold out of dirt by binding elements together. So you could get 15000 gp and a chunk of dirt having the same mass would disappear somewhere. Or air, or water, or whatever.

you might want to read the other thread that states, or was it this on, about scarcity. creating things like water, gold, etc is NOT wanted, so your alchemy to turn lead into gold would obviously violate the design tenants of Prak's world.

there isnt any real spell that i saw that creates something through fusion or such, it is all alteration or conjuration magic, that would be what screws with the ability to have scarcity of things. i would assume any "science" involved that could perform alchemy such as turning lead into gold, was probably lost during the war.

[Prak]

Well, the setting is somewhat in flux. It is desirable that things are scarce, but that may just be due to the fact that, 16 years after a 144 year long war, there's no one high enough level to cast Major Creation or Fabrication.

It doesn't even get into fusion. A permanent wall of fire and a permanent wall of ice make one hell of a heat difference engine.

[sabs]

Here is the other question. Have any scientists survived? is there the level of knowledge we have now? Yes, a wall of fire and a wall of ice is a huge heat difference engine. But is there anone alive who even knows about heat difference, and can use it for anything useful?

[tussock]

A permanent wall of fire and a permanent wall of ice make one hell of a heat difference engine.

That's the sort of thing to avoid. Adding science to your magic, like conservation of momentum and energy for teleports, it doesn't help. Stick with the rule of thumb that is: spells do what they say they do and no more.

So binding a fire elemental into your steam engine follows the rules for inventing your own golem, maybe called a cotton-mill golem. And it costs about a hundred times more than just paying peasants to do it, again. Same for custom items of heal-everyone or massive food production or whatever, just handwave up a bullshit-large cost.

and I don't know how you can have transactions if anyone can be convinced of anything at any time.

We have that here, it's called a handgun. You get whatever you want and then later the police come along and murder you to get it back. Only in D&D the police can be high level spellcasters who really will murder your character.


EDIT: @Thay, has 5 million people, and not all that many high level Wizards. People are still almost all dirt farmers in Thay, and the Wizards mostly concern themselves with grand international secret conspiracies rather than bettering the lives of their underlings.

[duo31]

Problem with nerfing Conjuration to follow conservation of mass, is that it means dick all if you still have Evocation that can create energy out of nothing.

If i can [magic] create energy, i can sure as hell research to [magic] convert energy into matter.

The only way to fix magic's impact on economies is to not allow permanent effects.