Limits of Technomagc?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There's a list of "primary explosives" here, although many of them are definitely too sensitive for primers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrazene_explosive

.....looks lke it might be the stuff. At least one cite has it being used in real world primers. Better than one of them I found which "explodes without apparent provocation". :)

So it appears that with sufficiently advanced organic chemistry conventional firearms are possible even without a full range of the periodic table. That was sort of what I was trying to find out.

[Walrus]

Why do you bother about mundane explosives when you have Alchemy?
I think you can go with some Essential <element> spells to ignite powder as well.

And firstly you should define what TL those magicians or their most educated engineers are from.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This has been discussed and no working definition of "simple metals" was arrived at.

I was trying to avoid repeating that extremely fruitless discussion by limiting the question to explicitly mentioned metals.

Are they unable to invent new spells? GURPS does have a system for that, and creating a close variant of an existing spell should be easier than creating a totally unrelated spell. Thus they should be able, starting from Earth to Metal, to over time develop Earth to Brass, Earth to Mercury, Earth to Aluminium, and so forth. Alternatively, they might invent Iron to Steel, Bronze to Tin and Copper, Tin to Aluminium, Bronze to Brass, Brass to Gold...

[Lamech]

And essential versions of all of them. They'll be fine.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Are they unable to invent new spells? ...

I don't want to waive my hands to make the problem go away. I already know I could do that if I wanted to.

I especially don't want to waive my hands before I find out how badly I need to do so. So far the answer is handwaiving not particularly needed.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Walrus

Why do you bother about mundane explosives when you have Alchemy?
I think you can go with some Essential <element> spells to ignite powder as well.

And firstly you should define what TL those magicians or their most educated engineers are from.

1) I know of no estalished rules for making alchemical explosives.

2) If you want to ignite gunpowder with magic there's already a very easy Ignite Fire spell and cheaper magical alternatives are unlikely.

3) You may assume TLs up to 8. If not originally then as time goes by and more people get banestormed to the place.

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

3) You may assume TLs up to 8. If not originally then as time goes by and more people get banestormed to the place.

If an indefinite number of people get banestormed to the place they'll bring some equipment with them. Computers, thermometers and the like. Rebuild can produces copies of most anything. Eventually you'll get lucky and get that mercury thermometer or whatever. That will provide all your resource needs.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Lamech

If an indefinite number of people get banestormed to the place they'll bring some equipment with them. Computers, thermometers and the like. Rebuild can produces copies of most anything. Eventually you'll get lucky and get that mercury thermometer or whatever. That will provide all your resource needs.

I'm not at all sure that Rebuild transmutes or Creates elements without limits. Also, I'd rule that if you simply cut an item in half casting Rebuild on one half reunited the two halves rather than making a new half out of nothing.

So many people don't seem to understand what I'm after here so I'll try and explain one more time.

This thread was titled "Limits of Technomagic?" in an attempt to find out what the size and shape of the box looked like based on whatever the limits of Created materials from Gurps Magic are. I'm not at all interested in getting out of the box before I know what it looks like.

For example, I haven't yet found any bottlenecks on building computers from scratch so nothing waits on found computers that can be cloned with Rebuild (if the spell even works that way).

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The basic assumptions of this question start with a mage or two of signifcant power and convenient knowlefge being Banestormed onto a vast and featuteless plane of solid stone with the characteristics of a "sargasso" like Yrth in the IW setting.
[...]
So the first specific question is whether soembody out there kinows of a way around the lead and mercury problem.

The second and general question is whether or not there are other bottlenecks that will come up?

If you mean literally a featureless stone plane, there doesn't seem to be a hydration cycle in operation to keep crops alive, so bulk vegetable goods are in short supply. If it's only figuratively that, and represents something like a stone plain on a terrestrial planet, there have to be some more clement places where the atmospheric mix of gasses are maintained sufficient to keep it habitable by wizards.

If there's a planet under the stone, lead and mercury ores can be located and excavated with earth magic, and smelted with fire magic. If there's no planet under there what is there?

If the place has had a long history of life, there could be petrochemicals to support high-tech industry, otherwise you have to walk or fly or teleport to someplace with forests.

And in general, there seems to be a long period building the population base necessary for public goods beyond those personally achievable by a couple of wizards with alchemy and spell magic, but some of the more epic magic from THAUMATOLOGY might do it, either directly by large-scale effects or by somehow supplying the population base.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This has been discussed and no working definition of "simple metals" was arrived at.

It's one that can be constructed from the four elements, of course.