Banestorm Navies

[Polydamas]

Purify Water is a very important spell, given the importance of clean water in public health. The way that it can make salt water sweet is important too though ...

Originally Posted by hal

The beams and knees themselves can be made stronger via sharp plant. Whereas normal wood with certain properties had to be made, shape plant for example, could create plywood like strengths where none existed before.

Could it? A GM might also rule that Shape Plant is a macroscopic effect, but too clumsy to make the internal structure of the wood as strong as timber which spent decades growing under wind and gravity. The spells in GURPS Magic have deliberately vague descriptions, so a lot depends on the GM.

My aesthetic is one where magic should have limits and drawbacks; nothing for nothing.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Ransom

Just cast Destroy Water on the flooded area.

I was going to look at alternative methods. ;)

One thing I was going to look into was the possibility of one way gates fastened to the lowest portion of the ship's hold, and the only thing it permits through is water.

Not that anyone might consider this to be a problem - but my "mindset" is that because I do not consider GURPS GRIMOIRE to have been properly playtested and is a flawed product, so too is GURPS MAGIC for 4e flawed in the same way. Worse yet, the extra spells developed purely in GURPS MAGIC for 4e (ESSENTIAL WOOD is a prime example) violate previous spells in GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC in ways I won't go into here (you can always send a private message to me or email me if you want more particulars).

So, when I make suggestions about how the use of Magic might change things a bit, I have to make a conscious effort to reread spell descriptions in GURPS MAGIC for 4e instead of going off what I remember from GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC. In the end, it probably doesn't much matter (I'm still going to make mistakes if I read too fast, or don't pay attention to the subtle but important changes from the original spell descriptions in Classic), but I'd prefer to give people ideas that are functional for their own campaign.

Not that I'd ever start up a new "Alaconius Lectures" thing, there is nothing to keep others from starting up their OWN version of the lectures. Back in the day when it was GURPSNET, I even suggested that people do their own take on things, and submit their own lectures on their own character name as if they were teachers at an academy.

I went so far back in the day, to even create the character using the GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC spell list and rules (which made the creation of illusions and even created animals VERY handy if you knew the spell to skill 15+). Likewise, if anyone wanted to, they could easily enough create a thread, called "ROMA COLLEGE" or something like that, and postulate a world where MAGIC existed in an alternative Earth timeline - and then wonder how the Emperor of Rome would have organized the Academy of Magic. I even ran a "over the net" Mage Wars where the barbarian Tribes had tribal magic and used a Master/Apprentice method for teaching magic versus the Emperor's College Style of teaching/training. Because of the written language benefits, the Emperor could subsidize spell research in a way that the Master/Apprentice method could not. The flip side of that however, was that the older cultures had been at the spell research game longer than the Emperor and may have had some really powerful spells that had been researched earlier on. Of course, the requisite issues rears its ugly head... ;)

What would be fun would be to start a new thread or even a play by post kind of thing where players would enroll their "student" mages in the School, and using the time use rules, learn new spells. What "Grows" organically via the school will be FAR different than the buffet style of "Pick your spells, make sure your requisites are in order, and start game play with your character" style of character creation. But I digress from THIS thread.

For me, the joy of playing any MAGE character is the creative use of spells in ways that were not envisioned initially by the publishers/writers of the spells. Likewise, letting my mind free-associate what spells MIGHT be used in naval warfare is a welcome diversion from the less fun elements in my life right now.

[Polydamas]

Another use of Shape Plant would be to fuse small timbers together. In our world, areas without good supplies of big timbers had to develop traditions of fastening many small planks together, usually by sewing. When these met ships built to withstand North Atlantic gales and armed with a few small cannon, the results were not pretty. In Banestorm, the Orclands and Al Wazif spring to mind as areas with free use of magic and a dry climate.

Of course there are alternative, like magically growing trees quickly in greenhouses created over magical fires, or creating a Gate to somewhere with plentiful woods and harvesting it there, or magically-powered timber wagons over magically-improved roads.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Can...should...whatever They don't as far as the written rules go. Personally I'd rule that an Anglic speaker speaks broken English and vice versa but that's a house rule.

Actually, language defaults are RAW in GURPS 4e. See Basic p. 506, "Languages" - "If two languages are close, those who know one at a given comprehension level can understand the other at one or two levels below that, and can improve their comprehension from that level."

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Building the entire ship of Essential Wood is probably overkill for a merchant ship. From what I understand one of the big long term problems with wooden sailing ships is hogging where the fact that the middle of the ship is more buoyant then the ends causes the keel to bend up in the middle. You can't fix it other then totally rebuilding the ship. So using Essential Wood on the keel and maybe other spells to fasten the pieces that make up the keel together stronger might be cost effective.

That's not the way Essential Wood works. You don't produce Essential Wood by itself. You transform normal wood into the Essential version and you can definitely do it with finished wooden items. It says so plainly in the second paragraph of the rules text for the spell on p.164 of Magic.

Also, as Essential Wood is a Regular Spell with no specific rules about how much for what it follows the Regular Spell rules and the cost of 8 is for an SM+0 item. Larger items multiply that cost by 1 + the SM mod (and if you wonder this is probably not a good rule but its' canon).

So the SM+7 Cog from Campaigns can be transformed all in one piece for 8 x8 energy or 64. That's quite affordable for a Ceremonial casting and could lead us into a long sidetrack about energy from spectators.

Because of the way SMs work the keel alone would be only 1 or maybe 2 SMs smaller i.e. 48 to 56 energy. You'd also run into that problem of hammering nails into 3x as hard wood.

so no, you really don't only use Essential Wood for just part of the ship. It really isn't that expensive and costs are not linear.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Actually, language defaults are RAW in GURPS 4e. See Basic p. 506, "Languages" - "If two languages are close, those who know one at a given comprehension level can understand the other at one or two levels below that, and can improve their comprehension from that level."

Yeah, I guess you could claim that applying this rule to Anglish is a "house rule" but its, IMO, more of a setting element (and an oversight in GURPS Banestorm). It is hardly the same thing as making Will and Per base attributes or whatever.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yeah, I guess you could claim that applying this rule to Anglish is a "house rule" but its, IMO, more of a setting element (and an oversight in GURPS Banestorm). .

It wasn't overlooked. It was specifically discounted on p.33 where it is stated that Modern English and Modern Anglish are too far separated for meaningful crossover

Even if there had been no other influences since the language of the "English" speakers in the original Banestorm was halfway between Beowulf and Chaucer.

Lack of any usable relationship between the two tongues may be a choice of realism over convenience for a certain type of game but it wasn't an oversight.

[sir_pudding]

Well, okay that's different. It seems odd that Arabic gives a default on Akaddian in comparison though.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Well, okay that's different. It seems odd that Arabic gives a default on Akaddian in comparison though.

Where does it say that? There are versions of Arabic which in GURPS terms default to each other at Broken or worse and they have been diverging about as long as English and Anglic.

Since this is a thread about "rational fantasy" its hard to criticize the authors for making the plausible choice not the choice which pleases Anglo gamers.

[sir_pudding]

"Speaking in Tongues"