Economy wrecking spells?

[rasimus]

Originally Posted by hal

The thing to do when considering spells in their applications, is what uses can the be put to other than the immediate obvious one intended by the person who wrote up the spell description. A piece of overheated Cast iron, sitting inside a pot of liquid, will very handily act as a heat source for cooking - all without the need to have a fire handy.

Now, if this is what a mage can do with the spell, imagine what the magic item usable by anyone can accomplish?

In my mind, the next step would be to bind a fire or lava elemental to a space under the hearth. The mage need not be present in the kitchen to produce heat anymore.

Of course, I started to ponder shifts towards magical steam punk devices soon after. TL(3+2) artillery weapons and iron horses. I'd game here.

Seems to me I've read published adventures that started here, and had the bound elemental escape and kill the mage... and the players had to go investigate the mage's abode to determine what the strange noises where...

[rasimus]

Originally Posted by hal

<snip-age>With 3168 spell successes, we're looking at roughly 18 crit failures and about 18 crit successes (remember, 1 in four spell attempts will fail in the above model, so with 3168 successes, there were 25% more that were failures).

There is also the possibility that drawing this much power would diminish the mana of an area. Perhaps there are areas, old abandoned cities from a previous empires where magic WAS practiced like this. When the mana started to go to 'low', people started getting scared and fighting amongst themselves. Eventually it went to no-mana and starvation set in, 'cause real dirt farming wasn't practiced anymore. The mages were blamed, and people still don't trust them... they are driven into hiding, and suffer a serious stigma -- okay people either distrust, hate, or attempt to kill mages out of a primal fear and historical memory of the collapse centuries or millennium ago.

Now, the few mages living in secluded areas. They tend to pursue the study of magic, not for wealth, but for power.

Those old city ruins might have recovered. Few are still no-mana areas, but a few still have 'low mana' areas. There are rumors passed from mage to apprentice that many secrets were lost during those times, and still exist in the old ruins, and rare is the apprentice who doesn't attempt to pull together some adventurous group to explore those old ruins to uncover at least a few lost secrets...

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Earth to Stone has some potential here. The worst part is that a magic item with this spell enchanted on it works for non-mages. 3 energy per cubic yard.

Visualize the Great monuments along the Nile Valley, with Flood made mud being shaped into blocks and then turned to stone. No quarrying, no need to ship the stones to the monument, Assuming Pharoah has items made the typical worker can cast the spell. The Initial outlay for a lot of items is expensive, but they pay for themselves pretty fast. And the stones can be custom shaped as mud or clay before casting.

Visualize now Medieval England at the stat of the castle building phase. Most of these are made of wood and coated in mud to make them look like stone. Those that surviv will be slowly rebuilt with stone arts over the next few centuries.

With this spell, the mud coating becomes real stone, wood beams coated in mud get a hard shell that protecs them from fire and gives them additional structural support.

Dams and flood control channels become feasible at an earlier age. Roads can become flat stone pavement.

In my games, Earth to Stone only transforms the existing dirt into the kind of stone that would naturally appear given geological processes - sand turns to sandstone, mud turns to siltstone or mudrock lutites, clay is actually what you get from certain types of Stone to Earth.

And I don't allow a double energy casting to turn it into metal. For that, you need the new spell Smelt Ore (prerequisites: Earth to Stone and Heat), which turns the earth into the kind of metal you would get from applying great heat like in a furnace or smelter - sand turns to silicon, hematite turns to iron, malachite turns to copper. But with this spell, only the actual metal part remains, and it doesn't change shape - your cubic yard of sand becomes a loose sponge-like block of pure silicon, and if you start with poor hematite you end up with only a small handful of pure iron powder If you start with a mineral that doesn't have any metal, it all gets smelted and you end up with nothing.

So what magic does is makes things far easier and faster, but isn't a Star Trek replicator.

To put more brakes on, I also say that most skills are limited by a college-specific skill (earth creation/transmutation spells are limited by Geology skill), and Margin of Success. So really smart, well-educated wizards are going to be rich, which doesn't seem all that wrong.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The spell in question is called Inspired Creation (and incidentally it can't be blamed on Grimoire).

Your "minor damage" is 5 HP and 10 FP and in a point that might need to be cleared up that might be per day of the work process. Can you make a normal sword in 1 day with TL3 tools?

Not if you are going to make a Very Fine sword. Even a critical success would only take what would otherwise be a Fine sword and take it up a level.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Not if you are going to make a Very Fine sword. Even a critical success would only take what would otherwise be a Fine sword and take it up a level.

The spell does specify that a weapon made this way is automatically VH.

[martinl]

A fix"for "magic farming" that appears in most of my fantasy games:
Crops that are blessed produce at what turns out to be the appropriate rate for the economy I want (9-1 or whatever). Unblessed crops just aren't worth it. Note that this is the default assumption in the real world, even today. Farmers pray for their crops. Religious authorities in agricultural areas ditto. The only change is "does praying actually help" is definitively answered in a direction not supported by data in RL.

An interesting fix for "mage problems" from the Harn setting: Harn mages more or less have a rule "Use real magic[1] to blatantly mess with politics or economics or mundanes in general, and a bunch of archmages will drop by and ask you to stop and say you're sorry[2]. If you don't, they kill you." If you look closely at the background material, this seems to be a side effect of the "Eldrich Period" that was apparently a mageocracy that did not work out well. This tends to produce insular academic mages who may have great personal power but don't obviously mess with the rest of society.


[1] Frauds, alchemists, herbalists, and real mages peddling fraud, are left alone. Priests ditto, although most priest magic is "non-blatant." "Wild talents" (and a large chunk of innocent scapegoats) tend to be killed by their neighbors for witchcraft, or are very subtle about using it.

[2] The major historical exception was an archmage so hoss that when six other archmages came to kill him, he fought them to a standstill, killing three. He was still forced to run off to barbaric lands after that.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The spell does specify that a weapon made this way is automatically VH.

I assume that's because you are actually putting the effort in to make a really good weapon. Isn't that where the hitpoint damage comes from?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I assume that's because you are actually putting the effort in to make a really good weapon. Isn't that where the hitpoint damage comes from?

I assume that it is because anything made by Inspired creation is automatically _Inspired_ with a capital "I". It isn't "Slightly Better than Usual Creation".

It's not even just an automatic Critical success for the caster on non-weapon items. It's Crit from someone with a Skill level 5 pts higher than the casters.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's not even just an automatic Critical success for the caster on non-weapon items. It's Crit from someone with a Skill level 5 pts higher than the casters.

Minor nitpick it says:
"The work is as good as if it were made with a critical success by an artisan of
skill 5 levels higher than the subject’s actual skill"

(bolding mine) So you could cast it on a master craftsman and get truly astonishing work.

[Jasonft]

Originally Posted by weby

Minor nitpick it says:
"The work is as good as if it were made with a critical success by an artisan of
skill 5 levels higher than the subject’s actual skill"

(bolding mine) So you could cast it on a master craftsman and get truly astonishing work.

And it doesn't give any restrictions on what sort of crafting/ forging/ whatever it can be used on. That always bothered me.

True, you might have to take the damage every day (assuming the construction takes that long) but that's what assistants and healing mages are for. Since the Master might not be *able* to stop they follow him/her around casting Heals and Lend Fatigue every so often.

In the hands of a clever player this spell could wreak all sorts of havoc in a campaign. Especially if you apply it to criminal enterprises. Critical success on Forgery/ Counterfeiting at effective skill 18+ comes to mind... GUARANTEED Critical success.

Gadgeteering is even a possibility, but is outside the parameters of the thread.

Forgery combined with Inspired Creation means that damn near everything official would have to have a magical 'seal' affixed to the paper or it would not be trusted. "Gee Sven, this order to execute your father sure looked legitimate to us."