Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
A lot of the problem is that shape earth is grossly overpowered, though the powers version may also be horribly underpowered. Consider the different shape spells: - 1 fp in shape air: affects 5 cubic yards of air (about 10 lb)
- 1 fp in shape earth: 1 cubic yard (~2 tons, depending on the soil)
- 1 fp in shape fire: affects less than a cubic yard of fire.
- 1 fp in shape water: affects 20 gallons of water (about 170 lb)
If all the earth spells that affect cubic yards were changed to affect cubic feet they would be more on the same scale as other spells. |
IMHO the comparisons to Shape Air and Shape Fire don't make any sense (the purpose of those spells is fundamentally different), and Shape Water is clearly underpowered (you can move water faster with a bucket). A more useful comparison is probably vs. shovels. Going by the digging rules in
Campaigns, a mage with Shape Earth-14 can do the work of around 5 strong (ST 12) men with shovels and picks. That's fine but not amazing—the mage probably wants to get paid better than unskilled laborers, so it won't revolutionize your economy. The thing that
maybe makes Shape Earth a big deal is doing things that you can't do very well at all with low-tech methods.
Oh, another question about Shape Earth: once you've cast it once on some stone, does the stone now count as "worked", raising the cost of re-casting it on the same chunk of stone?