Quote:
Originally Posted by hal
In theory, 5 people were required to reap and bind 2 acres per day. So, where can magic help in this process? What is the process?
Steps involved:
1) a scythe is swing in sweeping motion using a very sharp cutting implement. This cutting implement needed to be kept sharpened at all times, and thus, required constant use of a whetstone in order to periodically sharpen the blade. As a whetstone requires water on a whetstone - the mower had to keep his whetstone handy on him as he worked.
2) the item being harvested would be gathered in rows to the left (as seen in the video. Far enough way from those wielding the scythe, there would be those (generally women and children) who would gather these fallen stalks into sheaves.
3) depending on whether we're talking about hay or grains, hay required about 5 days of turning over the stalks in an effort to dry them out before placing them on a wagon to be carted elsewhere for storage. This turning over would be done, generally speaking, once per day, possibly twice per day - after the dew had evaporated (and possibly just before nightfall).
Otherwise, as best as I can determine, the sheaves of grain would be taken elsewhere. When the grain was ready to be threshed, one person could thresh roughly 1 bushel of grain per hour (about 50 lbs give or take).
Well, enough on this. Will get back to this again before TOO awful long...
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First too much focus on the tool, the time it takes to dress a scythe is about 30sec and good for far longer than 1 min. Anything short of creating an edge that just doesn't require sharpening is poor use of resources. The creation of that edge is probably also not a good return on investment. Normally you only really sharpen the edge a few times a day, the rest is just touch up.
I think you need to focus on the people more. Invest in making them stronger or more healthy. Effectively giving them more FP to allow them to work longer more effectively. Minor healing is a very over looked spell in terms of its value to the day to day farmer. The ease which someone could get a 3-4HP wound, especially working around beasts of burden and swinging blades, is more likely to return in both time invested in a trained serf and good will from healing.
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Did you ever decide on a specific edition? I think the idea here has much merit, but until you set down some ground rules about which edition your working from this is going to just get weird. Is there a reason you didnt just go straight to 4e?
There's too many variables once you move into the "Ok you have a village" but one person is using 2e and one is using 3e and two are using 4e.
Also is "Advanced" Mage training available at a price from the crown? Alternatively it's just you losing that body for 5-10 years while you wait for them to come back to contribute (and likely have to pay their room and board while they train).
Do you get a say in their studies? I would question any Lord risking his female mages on something as dangerous as child birth unless healing is more developed. Again knowing which edition and magic system is in play would help answer this a lot more.
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Another subset you could stick in a couple places is insect control, especially granaries this could be a gigantic return on investment.
Lesser to general health and welfare but none the less valuable (if they are even aware of it). Real and repeatable Divination makes it much much easier to figure out why someone is sick.
As seen in a game I'm currently involved in, actual Divination per the spells in 4e would yield far more useful information and could lead to some very fast understanding of the world without the development of technologies required to prove it.