Quote:
Originally Posted by scimon
Unless the Hamster Wheel powers a Flywheel and you pull the power out of that.
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* You have to distinguish between energy and power. Energy is a flat amount (so many joules); power is a rate at which energy is generated, transmitted, or used (so many joules per second, or watts). A power plant puts out an ongoing flow of energy, so many watts; a battery stores a single pool of energy, which flows out once (fast or slow) and then is used up. Draw Power is intended to work on power plants or power lines, and Steal Power on batteries. But a flywheel is an energy storage device and follows the rules for batteries.
* In the 4e rules, we don't really have figures for energy storage in watt-seconds, but we can improvise, using data in GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics. A car battery is Large, and typically stores around 50 ampere-hours at 12 volts; that multiplies to 600 watt-hours. That's equal to 600 x 3600 watt-seconds, or joules, or 21,600,000 joules. GURPS Magic says that 360,000 joules is 1 FP. So that battery holds 60 FP. If you have skill-15, you gain 15% of that, or 9 FP.
* A Large flywheel made of steel (or, I suppose, iron) stores as much energy as a car battery, weighs 67.5 lbs., and costs $2500.
* I've worked out that you can estimate sustained work output as BL x Move, in watts. If your golem hamster has Move 5 and BL 0.2 lb. (from ST 1), it has an output of 1 watt. It will have to run for 21,600,000 seconds to spin up your flywheel, or 6000 hours, or 250 days; you can approximate a golem hamster, then, as giving you 1.5 recharges per year. That's 13.5 FP per year. Of course, that assumes you have low-friction bearings that will let the wheel keep spinning . . .
* You might do better to have apprentice mages who pay for their training by running on a treadmill for four hours a day. They have output of 100 watts, so it only takes 2.5 days, or 60 hours, or 15 shifts to power you up.