[Magic] Do Plankton Count As Plants?

[scc]

Fairly simple, do plankton count as plants? The reason I'm asking is that I've got story ideas that involve a few million refugees from a DF world seeking shelter in ours and I'm trying to wrap my head around all the consequences of using a Cone of Power to dump the requisite 6.5 million energy to cast a Bless Plants spell that covers the entire planet (Note: RAISING/GETTING this much energy isn't that hard with a Cone of Power, just use a big music festival or something.)

As this will be literally doubling the amount of food grown in the world there's going to be some interesting economic effects (Like possibly a major US collapse), but given that plankton do a lot of carbon dioxide sequestration, if this spell effects them as well that will have a even bigger impact.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by scc

Fairly simple, do plankton count as plants? . . . given that plankton do a lot of carbon dioxide sequestration, if this spell effects them as well that will have a even bigger impact.

Plankton are a mixture of animals, plants, bacteria and fungi, but Bless Plants should certainly work on the plant types, who are the photosynthetic phytoplankton.

I've only once seen anyone try to interact with plankton in a GURPS game, but the Speak with Plants advantage, with the Sapience enhancement, worked fine.

[ravenfish]

Point of order: many types of phytoplankton are bacteria, and, even of those that are eukaryotic, not all are closer to (multicellular) plants than they are to animals. So you will have to decide if you want to define "plant" functionally (as something which photosynthesizes), taxonomically, or traditionally (as something that is alive, green, and non-moving [this last being optional in many fantasy games]).

[The Colonel]

Although it probably doesn't help, didn't space include plankton eaters amongst the herbivores/grazers?

[Varyon]

Seeing as DF defines fungi as plants (see Crushroom), what counts as a plant is obviously more of a "Would TL3-4 people think of it as a plant?" For plankton, or indeed most unicellular organisms, I think if it would be defined as anything, it would be a slime.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by scc

Fairly simple, do plankton count as plants? t.

Probably not for the purpose of Bless Plants because the spell designer defined the parameters of the spell and there's no particular reason why it would include single celled organisms she probably wasn't even aware of.

[tbone]

For your purpose, I'd say that Bless Plants would be fine – it'd supercharge the plant component of plankton, and that'd mean a bunch of food. Specifically, algae. Which is a broad bunch of organisms, some single-cell, some multicellular, but algae photosynthesize, and for spellcasting purposes, I'd say that makes it all plant life. Go for it.

The animal component of plankton will be fish (eggs and fry) and a whole bunch of things that Magic would lump together as the vermin "class" of animals. So a combination of spells for plants and animals (vermin) would handle plankton. (Also toss in the fish class if you want to be a plankton completist, but for simplicity here, let's say that fish eggs and tiny fry fall under vermin.)

The problem is that there isn't any animal version of Bless Plants, is there? If not, it's time to make one!

Or maybe you could take another route: forget Bless Plants, and look into the Food spells. Like an Area-effect variant of Create Food, which increases the mass of existing food (that'd be the plankton). Would that do the job?

Another route: Create new spells specifically for plankton. One idea would be to treat it as a hybrid of vermin and plants – not that each organism is a hybrid, but the swarm is. Following the method for spells affecting hybrids, the prerequisites Bless Plants and a hypothetical Bless Animals (Vermin) would let a mage learn Bless Hybrid (Plankton).

(Side thought: Seeing as how spells for handling hybrids are VH but are unlikely to see much use, perhaps the GM could extend this idea to general use, and let any Hybrid spell be used against mixed swarms. That is, if you've paid the big costs to learn Mammal Control, Bird Control, and Hybrid Control (Mammal/Bird), then you can control an ostrich, or or a bear, or a hybrid ostrich-bear, or a swarm of crows, or a swarm of rats, or a swarm of hybrid crow-rats, or - the new idea here - a mixed swarm of crows and rats. Hm. I like that. But. Back to the topic . . . )

One final thought: If anyone really wants to break off unicellular life into a whole new class (neither plant nor animal) and develop spells for dealing with these, keep in mind that spells for causing or curing disease already handle this to a degree. (Not that that's really relevant to the OP's food question, but as a semi-related aside, there it is.)

So there's a disjointed bunch of ideas. Bless Plants, with the assumption that it's the algae in the oceans that you're interested in, sounds like the easiest option to me.

A whole new bunch of plankton-specific spells may be technically more what you have in mind, but I don't see many mages wanting to develop or learn such spells. (I mean, "The High Priests of Krill" may sound awesomely eldritch, but the eager cultists you signed up are going to find the Great Summoning quite a letdown.)

[scc]

Originally Posted by tbone

The problem is that there isn't any animal version of Bless Plants, is there? If not, it's time to make one!

I'm only really interested in the carbon sequestration at this point, but please note that as Bless Plants causes grass to grow twice as fast, you can feed twice as many animals on a given area, and get twice as much meat, possibly an end to feedlots.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by scc

I'm only really interested in the carbon sequestration at this point, but please note that as Bless Plants causes grass to grow twice as fast, you can feed twice as many animals on a given area, and get twice as much meat, possibly an end to feedlots.

Yeah, that sounds good. Bless Plants on all the oceans means more algae, more little shrimpy things that eat the algae, more of whatever eats the shrimpy things, more of everything.

And more of the same on land.

So. 6.5 million energy for the whole planet, powered by a music festival? Sounds like a plan!

[cptbutton]

Vaguely recalled high school biology says plantness was about rigid versus nonrigid cell walls.

Digressing, In my GURPS Werewolf IN SPACE! campaign, I had Umbra of a planet which was tainted by the primordial scream from when a planet's worth of alien plankton was killed as part of the terraforming process.