The Problem With Magic

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by maximara

As I pointed out when you run into something like Azeroth of World of Warcraft this totally falls apart.

Guns are TL4-5 and yet TL3-4 armor is viable. Dwarves can build TL5-6 tanks and yet TL3 castles are still viable. Goblins and Gnomes create TL6, 7 and ^ devices like there is no tomorrow and yet their impact on the world is in the 'Reed Richard is Useless' category.

I would argue that the reason the castle walls and armor are still viable is that the guns and tanks are not that high tech.



The guns don't have the supreme armor penetration that obsoletes armor. The tanks aren't much better at knocking down castle walls than dude with a sword, and they certainly aren't impervious to arrows or being hacked apart with a blade on a stick. The flying machines aren't that much better than domesticated flying beasts.



I don't know Azeroth well (there is an overwhelming amount of lore associated with it), but my gut says its probably TL4+1, maybe TL3+2. The combat system is so wonky that its hard to really establish what part is tech, what part is abstraction, and what part is heroic might.

[AlexanderHowl]

Shadowrun avoids a lot of the issues with 'magic as technology' because enchanted items only work for mage or are atrociously expensive because they require investment of their equivalent of character points. While magical services exist, no mundane is capable of using an enchanted weapons as anything other than a very expensive normal weapon. Functional magicians are also sort of uncommon. Potential Awakened are around 1% of the population, only around 50% of the Potential Awakened have Awakened, only around 50% of the Awakened are sane Awakened, and only around 40% of the sane Awakened can cast spells, meaning that functional magicians are only around 0.1% of the population.

With only 0.1% of the population being functional magicians though, a lot of the 'magic as technology' issues go away in any setting, as there just are not enough magicians to sustain a magical technology. At that point, the people who practice magic are either highly revered members of society and/or very wealthy members of society. You end up with functional magicians providing services that cannot be done elsewhere, like regrowing limbs or organs, and the society uses mundane technology for everything else. The unique services that they provide makes functional magicians so valued and so wealthy that even bothering to learn Enchant, much less making enchanted items, is a criminal waste of their time.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I would argue that the reason the castle walls and armor are still viable is that the guns and tanks are not that high tech.

The guns don't have the supreme armor penetration that obsoletes armor. The tanks aren't much better at knocking down castle walls than dude with a sword, and they certainly aren't impervious to arrows or being hacked apart with a blade on a stick. The flying machines aren't that much better than domesticated flying beasts.

I don't know Azeroth well (there is an overwhelming amount of lore associated with it), but my gut says its probably TL4+1, maybe TL3+2. The combat system is so wonky that its hard to really establish what part is tech, what part is abstraction, and what part is heroic might.

All the things you are talking about are products of things being Cinematic (B417; B488) and are not TL related.

Before the level scaling feature was added you could take a level 58 level character back to one of the starting areas, take off all your armor, and use only your bare fists and still be one shotting nearly everything in sight. I did that with my Draenei death knight back in Frozen Throne (to level my professions)

I should point out there is a major disconnect regarding WoW and the older Warcraft RTS games with regards to how powerful stuff is.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by maximara

As I pointed out when you run into something like Azeroth of World of Warcraft this totally falls apart.

Guns are TL4-5 and yet TL3-4 armor is viable. Dwarves can build TL5-6 tanks and yet TL3 castles are still viable. Goblins and Gnomes create TL6, 7 and ^ devices like there is no tomorrow and yet their impact on the world is in the 'Reed Richard is Useless' category.

Fair enough, but WoW is nothing if not carefully play-balanced. There must be some reason why the Dwarves and Gnomes aren't running Azeroth. Look closer at what the tech can actually do.

I'm betting that those high-tech devices are carefully limited in actual utility, so they're oddball "antikythera mechanisms" (high tech anomaly in a low-tech world) rather than (literal) game-changers.

Do the Dwarf tanks have the ability to travel at up to 35-50 mph for brief periods of time while firing a weapon 4-8 times per minute which is capable of punching through several inches of armor plate at 1,000-2,000 m range, while also more or less continuously firing an automatic weapon capable of killing or wounding unarmored people at the same range? Do they have the ability to knock down a brick building just by ramming it?

Are the gnomes building gadgets which can be used to produce TL8 style cruise missiles?

Are the wartime dwarf and gnome economies fully integrated by a national government, powered by vast hydroelectric plants, filled with workers fed by grain and veggies fertilized with nitrogen fertilizer, linked by mature railroads, telephones, and road networks? Are there gnome and dwarf shipyards turning out oil-powered ships at the rate of 1 per week which are capable of transporting war production halfway around the world?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

WoW does not make sense under the best of circumstances, as the goblins and gnomes should be running everything.

I'm pretty sure that while they may be 'running' everything, the dwarfs should be owning everything. They are the ones with all the money, and if you look at the various wars, mostly it's humans (and orcs and trolls) doing the dying, while the dwarfs seem to provide the gear, and I bet they're not doing that for free. The goblins only think they're good at making money, but blind greed loses to canny banking and accounting practices.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Fair enough, but WoW is nothing if not carefully play-balanced. There must be some reason why the Dwarves and Gnomes aren't running Azeroth. Look closer at what the tech can actually do.

I'm betting that those high-tech devices are carefully limited in actual utility, so they're oddball "antikythera mechanisms" (high tech anomaly in a low-tech world) rather than (literal) game-changers.

It varies wildly. Take the stuff you could make in Warlords of Draenor. Your Gnomish Gearworks can build the N.U.K.U.L.A.R. Target Painter with which you can "Paint a target location, causing a powerful warhead to land there after 10 sec, dealing 500000 Fire damage to all enemies within 20 yards."

In theory you should be able to take one of those and turn any place of your choosing into a duplicate of Theramore but the game won't let you. And this is just the most obvious example.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Do the Dwarf tanks have the ability to travel at up to 35-50 mph for brief periods of time while firing a weapon 4-8 times per minute which is capable of punching through several inches of armor plate at 1,000-2,000 m range, while also more or less continuously firing an automatic weapon capable of killing or wounding unarmored people at the same range? Do they have the ability to knock down a brick building just by ramming it?

Based on what you could crank out of your garrison yes to all of that. Hence the problem.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Are the gnomes building gadgets which can be used to produce TL8 style cruise missiles?

Yep its part of the N.U.K.U.L.A.R. Target Painter the Gnomish Gearworks can crank out like there is no tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Are the wartime dwarf and gnome economies fully integrated by a national government, powered by vast hydroelectric plants, filled with workers fed by grain and veggies fertilized with nitrogen fertilizer, linked by mature railroads, telephones, and road networks? Are there gnome and dwarf shipyards turning out oil-powered ships at the rate of 1 per week which are capable of transporting war production halfway around the world?

They should be able to do all of this but for some reason they don't It is Read Richard is useless dialed up to 12.

[edk926]

I kind of feel that every game out there would fall apart like this if you put serious thought to it.

[AlexanderHowl]

It depends. GURPS is actually quite robust, it is just that Magic does not really mesh well with the rest of the system. You either end up with spells that are really cheap when compared to abilities (such as Teleport) or really expensive when compared to abilities (such as Measure). It especially falls apart when combined with abilities, as players will inevitably find the most broken combination of abilities and spells possible and ruthlessly exploit them, such as combining Extreme FP Regeneration with Stone to Earth in order to create thousands of metric tons of bronze per hour (at $1 per pound, they can make over $12,000 worth of bronze per casting without any difficulty).

[scc]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It depends. GURPS is actually quite robust, it is just that Magic does not really mesh well with the rest of the system. You either end up with spells that are really cheap when compared to abilities (such as Teleport) or really expensive when compared to abilities (such as Measure). It especially falls apart when combined with abilities, as players will inevitably find the most broken combination of abilities and spells possible and ruthlessly exploit them, such as combining Extreme FP Regeneration with Stone to Earth in order to create thousands of metric tons of bronze per hour (at $1 per pound, they can make over $12,000 worth of bronze per casting without any difficulty).

Given how GURPS balances things based upon how frequent their appearance should be, presumably based on media, it isn't that surprising that spells might be cheaper, wizards very often have a wide array of abilities that might not be encountered else where.

As for broken combo's the response is first to disallow them. And to prevent cases like you described I'd take a page out of Harry Potter, I'm not sure if it's canon or fanon extrapolation but from what I've read in fan fics it seems that the only things that wizards can truly summon/conjure are water and air.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

GURPS is actually quite robust, it is just that Magic does not really mesh well with the rest of the system. You either end up with spells that are really cheap when compared to abilities (such as Teleport) or really expensive when compared to abilities (such as Measure).

Nobody has yet been able to answer my fundamental question, why is this a problem? In what campaign are players seriously met with the choice between Warp and Teleport? Why is this hypothetical GM not pruning the allowed traits to match the setting? And even if the setting does have both Warp and Teleport, what's wrong with every teleporting player character taking Teleport instead of Warp? Maybe some NPCs use Warp.

It especially falls apart when combined with abilities, as players will inevitably find the most broken combination of abilities and spells possible and ruthlessly exploit them, such as combining Extreme FP Regeneration with Stone to Earth in order to create thousands of metric tons of bronze per hour (at $1 per pound, they can make over $12,000 worth of bronze per casting without any difficulty).

Congratulations! You've just turned the entire mountainside into bronze! You can settle down and get rich! (Too bad about that princess who needed rescuing, though.)

Again, why is this a problem? Players are interested in going on adventures, not settling down to become bronze-sellers. Before you ask why this doesn't show that an enterprising wizard will alter the economy, ask why the GM allowed that accelerated FP regeneration. And if that's allowed, why do you assume that enterprising wizards wouldn't do this? And if you do turn the entire mountainside bronze, what makes you think it's your bronze? Won't everyone from the area come and stake claims too? Or steal it? How do you guard — or transport — thousands of metric tons of bronze?

GURPS traits are a superset of all the traits you'll find in a single game. They're not designed to all be used at the same time for every game. Most settings are narrower than that, and you have to prune the trait list to reflect your setting's reality. These things are only "broken" if you fail to use only the appropriate traits in the appropriate settings.

Edited to add: Or to put it all another way, if I'm trying to maintain a pseudo-medieval D&D-esque setting, why on earth am I allowing PCs to take Warp?