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Old 12-18-2012, 04:56 AM   #14
Prince Charon
 
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Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: Five Earths, All in a Row

FTL drives based on space warps are possible, but don't expect them to happen soon - well, relatively: if by 'soon', you mean 'within the next ten-to-twenty years, probably,' then sure, it should occur soon. Before the end of 2013, not likely at all, but sort of cheap interplanetary travel that takes days or weeks instead of months or years is quite plausible, with or without warping space-time. Wormhole-based FTL should happen sooner, but it will be a matter of attaching one mouth of a stable wormhole to a space probe, and sending it off to wherever you want to go. This is fine if you want to go to Mars, but if you want to visit Alpha Centauri, it's probably best to wait for warp-based FTL to be developed.

The creation of magic items is, in some ways, a matter of creativity for all worlds. Attempting to create a fetish while bored, frustrated, or just generally not in a creative mood, will tend to result in a weak fetish, or no fetish at all. Crafting one while in a creative mood, OTOH, tends to make quality control, and mass production, difficult (unique or rare quirks, differing bugs and features, and so forth). On the bright side, 'weak' does not equal 'useless': a fetish that does the same thing as the base object, only better, is to some degree a 'weak' fetish. Making a car significantly more fuel-efficient, a computer smarter, a sword sharper, and so forth, is fairly easy to do even when quite bored (particularly making a computer smarter). Making a car fly, a computer project holograms, or a sword sing show-tunes is not. Further, magic is not handwavium, and does not take care of such things as life support issues with no input from the caster: sure, you can turn a Reliant Robin into a space shuttle eventually, or even make one out of duck tape and cardboard boxes, but if you forget some vital survival factor, you die! For most magic-item-makers, it's much faster and safer to get an enchantment job with Virgin Galactic (or whomever, this situation is likely to massively increase the number of space concerns on OTL-Earth, all the way down to SF clubs forming cooperative ventures), save up, and buy a spacecraft with your employee discount.

In general, a beginning enchanter can turn an item into a better version of itself (e.g. an already-working spacecraft into one with twice the delta-v, a fusor or pollywell that does better than break even), fairly consistently, in an hour or so, or a few minutes, if the effect is temporary (making a vehicle faster or stronger for a few minutes to maybe an hour). Causing an item to act like something similar (e.g. turning a high-altitude jet that's had LO2 tanks installed, and some or all of it's engines replaced by liquid-fueled rockets into a working spacecraft) is rather harder, and usually takes longer to compensate for the difficulty. Turning something into something else that it looks like, but isn't (e.g. prop Police Box into pseudo-TARDIS, saucer-shaped house into actual flying saucer), is yet more difficult, and making something act like something totally other (ring that shoots fireballs, car or watergoing ship to spacecraft) is even more difficult, to varying degrees. As you can see, symbolism is important: a Reliant Robin with wings and rockets, or with a Star Fleet paintjob and a pair of 'warp nacelle' props (especially if the nacelles contain 'warp coil' props, and such), looks like a spacecraft enough to be rather easier to turn into one (though you still have to remember all the life support issues, navigation issues, and other fiddly details). A ring with rubies and a fire motif is likewise easier to turn into a ring of fireballs. Puns may also be symbols: for example, springmetal is most effective when forged in March, April, or May, near a natural wellspring, and/or quenched in spring water (and other puns for other languages, of course). Power is another matter, however. By this I mean both processing power (complex things are harder to do), as well as the physics definition (which to some degree, both fall under what RPGs tend to call 'power level' or 'power rank'). In both senses, the more power you need, the more effort is required, and the longer it takes - though of course, those who are already more skilled, powerful, or both, have an easier time of it. In terms of physical power, the more you have from mundane or semi-mundane sources, the less magical effort is required - wall current, batteries, enchanted fusion reactors, car engines, sunlight, and so forth, all can be used, rather more easily than tapping into dark energy (or whatever it really is).

A note on ranged weapons: the farther away you are from your target, the easier it is to make you miss, whether with psychokinesis, probability alteration, or clever uses of other powers. Likewise, the more complex your weapon, the easier it is to psychically screw it up, or even turn it against you. Thus, swords and bows are generally more useful against magic-users and some psychics than guns and most grenades. That's not to say that guns are useless, because they're not, but their usefulness is limited. A sniper against a magician isn't going to do well, because the distance maximizes any defensive thoughtforms' ability to cause a miss, even if they're prevented from affecting the sniper directly. An infantry squad or section is another matter: Firstly, they have a numerical advantage, which means more guns to disrupt, and even if those guns are reduced to awkward clubs or clumsy spears, there's still eight to sixteen of them. Secondly, they're trained to work together (well, in First World professional forces, they are; Third World rebels or conscripts, random mobs, and gangs of thugs, are generally not so effective), and in some cases, have done so for years, which is a substantial advantage. If you know your squad/section is going up against a magic-user who might know something about modern weapons, leave the automatics and semi-autos on base. If you must have a rifle, make it a SMLE or other bolt-action rifle, and if you must have a handgun, use a revolver; otherwise, pump-action or simpler shotguns are preferable, as are bows, crossbows, machetes, axes, entrenching tools, knives, swords (see why they're still part of the uniform?), or Home Guard pikes.

The Psychic Deflection ability is a mix of long range Combat Sense (though not limited to surprise attacks), and long range TK. The ESP determines where and when an incoming projectile is going to be, and the TK nudges it off to the side, just enough that it misses. Stats would be helpful, please.

The other common limitation of modern firearms is related to certain types of psychokinetic shields (which are distinct from PK deflection): while most such force fields provide the same resistance to all attacks, there are some that have a 'water-like' or 'Holtzmann-like' (though without the 'makes lasers blow up' part, as it doesn't fit this context) effect, having greater resistence to the impact of very fast objects than to relatively slow objects. Rather than go into an exhausting list in a post that's already longer than I'd like, I'll just say that a shield that would generally be penetrated by a sword or a crossbow quarrel, would strongly resist most subsonic bullets, and fully block most supersonic bullets, unless they're at the level of a .50 BMG or greater, due to overwhelming force. Such shields tend to be (relative to the number of beings who have PK Shields at all) rare-to-nonexistent on Fa-Earth and Clp-Earth, uncommon on Stp-Earth, and fairly common on Dp-Earth, paralleling the development and availability of firearms. They're likely to become fairly common on OTL-Earth, for that very reason.

It's an enhancement I'm not sure the cost of. I don't normally like the way GURPS uses Imperial instead of metric, but here, it makes the shield enhancement much easier to model. Basically, the greater the energy in foot-pounds exceeds the speed in feet-per-second, the less effective the shield is against high-speed objects. For example, a .50 BMG round (647 gr Speer) has a velocity of 3,044 ft/s, but an energy of 13,144 ft·lbf. That's quite a difference. A more normal bullet, like the .30-06 Springfield it was based on (well, the 150 gr Nosler Ballistic Tip version), has a velocity of 2,910 ft/s, and an energy of 2,820 ft·lbf. A DR 1 PK shield with this enhancement would stop a .30-06 bullet, but would be penetrated by a sword, an arrow, or a .50 BMG bullet. I'm hoping someone here can help me work out the stats for this, and perhaps help the explanation make sense.


TL;DR: Magic, including weird science, consists of psionics used in simple or complicated ways, usually involving thoughtforms (often called spirits or gods) to do the work. Spellcasting mostly involves long rituals, and there are many styles of magic.
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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