What spells does a TL3 government want as widely-known as possible?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Do you really want widespread knowledge of Shape Stone which would permit them to bypass the castle walls?

So you think bridges, roads, and building castle walls are all worthless? Even the kings of the so called "dark ages" understood the value of trade, they certainly taxed it. Every spell could be used to empower the enemies of the King. But some spells bring power. Shape Stone is one of those.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

So you think bridges, roads, and building castle walls are all worthless? Even the kings of the so called "dark ages" understood the value of trade, they certainly taxed it. Every spell could be used to empower the enemies of the King. But some spells bring power. Shape Stone is one of those.

It's also a major security risk, letting enemies into the castle by means other than the main gate. Tunneling under the castle during a siege has been well-documented (and many tunnels are still there today), and that was without the use of magic moving stone, meaning it took time to set up. Add magic, and the besieging army can make their own doors in the castle walls.

I can see them controlling authorization to such a spell, but they wouldn't want every Tom, Draco, and Parkinson with a wand knowing it. It'd be LC 3 or maybe 2, but not LC 4. I took this thread as being LC 4 spells.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Do you really want widespread knowledge of Shape Stone which would permit them to bypass the castle walls?

This is why the highly skilled court wizards create lower mana zones at the base of the walls, to prevent enemy armies from trying that on. It works on peasant rebels too. In a high-mana setting (which this presumably is, if we're talking about spells everyone knows), countermeasures for magical attacks will be a standard part of fortifications. Of course, that gets into the larger issue that a high-mana setting where everyone knows a significant number of spells and many people know more than that won't actually look like our TL 3 at all; there've been numerous threads on here extrapolating what it might look like, some of which got quite long.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Do you really want widespread knowledge of Shape Stone which would permit them to bypass the castle walls?

You may be starting to think about Magic Spells without consideration of FP cost and that way lies the spreading of misinformation. Many things that are potentially possible with Magic are not truly feasible when fP costs are taken into consideration.

Bypassing the castle walls is quite expensive. I just re-checked the rules text and it says that there. Specifically, worked stone is _sextuple_ cost. That's 6 per cubic yard. Even working regular Earth to dig a proper grave(3 ft wide, 6 ft long and 6 ft deep) is more expensive than might be thought at 4 FP.

A proper breach through the walls of a major fortification probably needs to be 6 ft wide and tall (so attackers can enter 2 abreast) and go through as much as 10 ft of wall. We'll round down and make that 9 ft but it still adds up to 108 cubic yards at 6 per or 648 FP. You couldn't even raise that much FP with Ceremonial casting and spectators. You could only hold the Ceremony in front of an abandoned castle anyway.

So Shape Earth does not abolish the castle. Making a castle with Earth Magic is a long Term and mass number of laborer project too.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I can see them controlling authorization to such a spell, but they wouldn't want every Tom, Draco, and Parkinson with a wand knowing it. It'd be LC 3 or maybe 2, but not LC 4. I took this thread as being LC 4 spells.

I agree, and that was part of the reason I left it out. I've played in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign using Pathfinder scenarios, converted on-the-fly. Shape Earth overturns some of those scenarios.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

So you think bridges, roads, and building castle walls are all worthless? Even the kings of the so called "dark ages" understood the value of trade, they certainly taxed it. Every spell could be used to empower the enemies of the King. But some spells bring power. Shape Stone is one of those.

I see it like dynamite for mining, landforming, and quarrying: make sure you have a sufficient supply, but control who has access to it.

I think we've had Temporary Enchantment wrong all these years. It isn't a means of reducing enchantment cost by accepting a limited number of uses. It's a means of giving people carefully rationed abilities.

[mlangsdorf]

We had a thread a couple of years ago where I calculated that a wizard-architect with ceremonial casting could put up a castle in 9 days: https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=155532.

And even if you can't get enough devoted cultists for ceremonial casting, a fairly nice wand of Move Earth and Earth to Stone is only around 2,800 energy and lets an architect create a castle in 7 months.

You definitely want people who can cast Move Earth and Earth to Stone, but you can do that with wands if necessary (they're not Mage Only magic items). And you either want them skilled enough to cast ceremonially, or you don't care about skill and are using wands.

Somewhat ironically, magic isn't very good for making roads. A good road had a bed of gravel and crushed stone of various sizes, and none of the standard spells make that cheaply or easily.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Do you really want widespread knowledge of Shape Stone which would permit them to bypass the castle walls?

Sure? It's not like any serious enemies won't already have those spells, and in a world where GURPS Magic exists walls are (a) vastly cheaper, and (b) less effective than historically, so they're going to be used much differently anyway.

In any case, the economy-transformative spells are definitely plant spells, weather spells, and earth spells. There are also politically transformative spells such as detect lies, detect enemies, geas, etc, but those are likely to be more restricted.

[Greg 1]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

In a high-mana setting (which this presumably is, if we're talking about spells everyone knows),

The idea was not that everyone would know a given spell (or any spells). The idea was just that there are some spells that a government would want as widely known as possible.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Greg 1

The idea was not that everyone would know a given spell (or any spells). The idea was just that there are some spells that a government would want as widely known as possible.

Point remains: if enough potential members of a peasant revolt know Shape Stone that it's a serious threat to the aristocracy's fortifications, magic use is common enough to utterly change society.