Cars and Powerstones

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Seek Gate feels like a good spell for a car in the right setting.

Until it turns out that the roads to Amber are blocked.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Until it turns out that the roads to Amber are blocked.

If you're gating into Amber, you're using Trumps or Sorcery, so road blockage doesn't exactly come into play. ;)

[Whitewings]

Essential Fuel would be good. 18 energy is enough to transmute a 15 gallon tank. Sure, you need to do in six stages, but hey. And the next day, the stones are back to full.

[a humble lich]

Haste, Flight, or Quickmarch would all be good, but I think they would be too expensive to effect the entire car.

I was thinking Seek Fuel would be nice to locate gas stations, but Whitewings idea of Create Fuel is even better.

Watchdog would make a good car alarm, especially since it only is triggered when someone crosses with hostile intent.

Weather Dome or Umbrella could be nice replacements for windshield wipers, and Snow Shoes would be nice when driving on ice.

Invisibility would be bad---generally you want to be as visible as possible on the road.

In retrospect, regular spells would probably be too expensive if you cannot use more than one power stone at a time. At SM +3, even spells which only cost one would be too expensive.

[Whitewings]

Only if the Powerstones are only 1 point, which I admit I did imply. 2 and 3 point stones are perfectly reasonable, and vastly more useful.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

Only if the Powerstones are only 1 point, which I admit I did imply. 2 and 3 point stones are perfectly reasonable, and vastly more useful.

Not more useful on a daily basis. 1x3 pts of eenrgy is what you get per day per stone.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by ericthered

However, I don't think you can draw power from more than one stone at a time. So if you could cast a spell for 3 mana and maintain it for 2 mana every 10 minutes, you'd have 60 minutes of effect.

Yup M69

Since a wizard can only use one Powerstone
at a time,
a large Powerstone is more useful than a handful of small ones.
A large Powerstone can be used to cast a large spell;
a group of small ones can be used one at a time to help maintain a spell,
but cannot be used all at once.

I was wondering if a way around this would be to absorb small stones' energy into your body ("may take any or all of the energy it contains,") but it seems like they need to be used directly to power spells. ("using it instead of his body’s own energy to cast a spell.")

Would a "Leech" power let you take the power from them?

M89 has "Lend Energy" so that might be a way around it? Make the target of Lend Energy yourself to restore your own pool from the stones and then use them to cast whatever you want?

There's also "Share Energy" but that doesn't seem to have any advantages for a powerstone intended for your own personal use.

Not the traditional point of Lend Energy (to give FP to others) but it seems like a decent way to make a powerstone more versatile. You can even make it spell-specific for higher capacity.

The main downside to it is casting time: you have to cast Lend Energy each time you want to get that energy and THEN cast your spell, whereas casting a spell directly from the powerstone's FP doesn't require that prep and is more useful for combat.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by a humble lich

I was thinking Seek Fuel would be nice to locate gas stations, but Whitewings idea of Create Fuel is even better.

Create Fuel is 1 energy per TL per pound of pre-existing material transmuted. Since 1 gallon = 6 pounds (of gasoline) a TL8 vehicle requires a lot of energy to keep fuelled (48 energy per. gallon) which is unlikely to be useful for this purpose.

Essential Fuel on the other hand is straight up 1 energy per pound, but it does require actual fuel to transmute. But given the 10x efficiency modifier it's still going to be quite useful, since 6 Exclusive Powerstones will allow you to transmute 3 gallons/day on their natural recharge (given the data in the OP).

[a humble lich]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

Create Fuel is 1 energy per TL per pound of pre-existing material transmuted. Since 1 gallon = 6 pounds (of gasoline) a TL8 vehicle requires a lot of energy to keep fuelled (48 energy per. gallon) which is unlikely to be useful for this purpose.

Essential Fuel on the other hand is straight up 1 energy per pound, but it does require actual fuel to transmute. But given the 10x efficiency modifier it's still going to be quite useful, since 6 Exclusive Powerstones will allow you to transmute 3 gallons/day on their natural recharge (given the data in the OP).

You're right that Essential Fuel is probably better, but looking at Magic it doesn't look like there is a magic item possible for Essential Fuel. I would probably say that gasoline is only a TL 6 fuel, which will make Create Fuel cheaper, but even so it is still too expensive. The propel spell might work. To move a 1.8 ton car at 75 mph 18 fatigue would give you a duration of about 40 minutes. 40 minutes per day of fuel free travel sounds good to me.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

Essential Fuel would be good. 18 energy is enough to transmute a 15 gallon tank. Sure, you need to do in six stages, but hey. And the next day, the stones are back to full.

I'd say that this would require modifying the engine such that it can no longer run on regular fuel.