04-26-2008, 03:03 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
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Re: Magical Airships
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04-26-2008, 03:27 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
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Re: Magical Airships
The balloon seems safest. A would-be medieval balloonist might not know what helium was, though; helium and hydrogen were isolated by chemists much later. Perhaps Heat would be better; a metal bar "radiator" heated for an hour with just 2 points of Power would reach a temperature of 1200 degrees, quite enough to heat the air in a well-sealed gasbag. Give it a "thermostat" that turns it on or off by comparing the temperature in the bag (Measurement spell) with the setting of a physical device set by the operator, maybe?
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04-26-2008, 03:57 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Magical Airships
Perhaps an alchemist could come up with an alchemical alternative to lift gas. It needn't even be in gas form; the anime series Visions of Escaflowne featured anti-gravitational stones used to create airships as well as flying castles.
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04-27-2008, 12:58 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Oct 2006
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Re: Magical Airships
The zeppelin-inspired "carrier suspended from lifting mechanism" approach needn't be the only one. The individual perma-vaccuums, or whatever, might be inside the body of the ship in separate compartments. The surrounding materials give physical DR, obscure the location of the lift mechanism, and might have Fortify and all sorts of other protective spells on 'em.
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04-27-2008, 05:29 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Feb 2008
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Re: Magical Airships
It might by good to wait for GURPS Thaumaturgy as it may as well contain some cool enchanting and Alchemy options to use.
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04-27-2008, 03:48 PM | #16 | ||
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Vilnius, Lithuania
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Re: Magical Airships
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04-27-2008, 04:09 PM | #17 |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: Magical Airships
A localized negate gravity spell that moves with the subject would do the trick, if there were such a thing.
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04-28-2008, 09:40 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The deep dark haunted woods
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Re: Magical Airships
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04-28-2008, 10:28 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Pflugerville, Texas
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Re: Magical Airships
In my particular cooked up fantasy setting "The Werlde" an ancient elemental dragon of air gave his life in combat with an evil (but once irritable and tempestuous) undead sea god, however his neckbone was given (post mortem with the dragons spirit approving somewhat) to a relatively powerful wizard to enchant as the body of the ship. It had innate flight ability because of the handwaved physical properties of dragons in my world. Essentially dragons in my world defy their inability to fly rationally with antigrav lifter module equipped bones.
Interestingly enough, it has recently been upgraded with a necromantically reanimated "Boreal" or tree-ent like figure that died on the roof after rooting in the structure of the ship during a battle with my vaguely cthuloid bio-suited minions of the aforementioned evil undead sea god. Since Gurps doesn't directly address any of this, I feel free to ignore the limitations of it's non-syntactic magic system for spells/alchemical agents supporting this kind of fantastic engineering and go with what feels right and will earn me the results required to tell a good story. So essentially I say just come up with something and hammer it in using the syntactic magic rules with respect to the flight advantage as a baseline enchantment cost computation method. I also highly encourage players of Mages to learn syntactic magic as a long time high fatigue cost method of creating *any* of the spell effects that are "canned" or "rote" spells in the books. I find the spells in the book (save for the link and another) as being rather limited in scope but efficient in cost. If you want to do the truly nifty magical stuff, go outside this system and you'll get something useful. Here's hoping that Thaumatology expands on this in a way that is compatible with what I've already done. |
04-28-2008, 10:57 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Re: Magical Airships
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