Common Magic for a TL3 Wuxia Fantasy Campaign

[AlexanderHowl]

Roads that grant the Quick March spell would be prohibitively expensive (400 energy per hex). It would be cheaper to give everyone in a society rings of Quick March. Using Earth spells for earth-moving and stone working makes sense from an economic perspective.

For example, let us say that you had a team of 4 mages and 400 mundane assistants. One team of a mage with Shape Earth-15 and a team of one hundred mundane assistants could ceremonially shape 500 cubic yards of earth per hour (4,000 cubic yards of earth per day). Assuming a depth of 1 yard and a width of 8 yards, the team could lay the foundation for 500 yards of road per day. The other three teams of one mage and 100 mundane assistants each would use Earth-to-Stone-15 to transform the shaped earth to stone. The team could complete a mile of road a week (including making stone bridges over streams and the like).

During peacetime, soldiers could serve as the mundane assistants, allowing the society to maintain a large standing army. A nation with a population of 10 million could support a permanent army of 100,000 soldiers. If the soldiers rotated half road work and half other activities, the society could easily make 400 miles of roads per week, or 20,000 miles per year. After a decade, they would complete 200,000 miles of road.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Though this is great information, it is not what I was implying. I was talking about enchanted roads that grants people the quick march spell. These type of roads are very useful to the military and economy. Being able to rapidly move resources around is great, doing it faster is better. To counter the need for rest and FP cost you would have on hand a few mages that can cast Lend Energy and Awaken.

See AlexanderHowl's post about why this is not feasible.

For the enchanted roads, once they are constructed, it would need very little maintenance unless someone is deliberately destroying them, even then that is creating a niche that provides work for specific mages.

Weather and nearby plants would still necessitate constant maintenance unless you also plan on enchanting the road with various durability type enchantments. Which would be an even greater energy cost.

And before you go "but the old Roman roads are still around", a) that is far from all of them, b) the surviving ones are not even remotely in as good a shape as they were during the Roman Empire and c) they still see some amount of maintenance.

I agree, roads that are "good enough" won't make it to the top of anyone list. The roads I am suggesting are "better than any road to date".

Sounds like you misunderstood what I was saying there. A "good enough" road would be any road that lets travellers get from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time. If the region has "good enough" roads already, they likely won't bother making better roads unless they have the resources to spare from other construction projects.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I was just working through if automated transportation is practical. Transportation is something the ancient world always seemed to need more of.

I suspect the two things wanted are either a superior price which may be unlikely, but is worth checking or a superior speed... which is likely to be even more expensive, but possibly worth the extra price, because now you can reliably outrun almost anybody.

Hmm. Maybe. I'll think about it some more. I'm not sure I want that simply because it would be super fast.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Sending messages is important, I suspect one fairly common enchantment will be for communications.

Originally Posted by Anders

Communications is extremely important for any empire. That's why the Persians built the Royal Road. Yes, I would expect magical means to emerge.

Indeed. But I'd prefer one method to all others. Maybe Water for scrying pools would be best. Or perhaps something like the ravens from A Song of Fire and Ice./

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Stone roads that allows for faster travel between two cities (earth).

I like this idea, but I'm unsure of its execution.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I like this idea, but I'm unsure of its execution.

Easy.
A simple way is to say the roads grant a bonus to certain Chi skills, say +5 so they can be used at normal skill with no FP cost.
Examples: Light Walk is based on Walk on Air (Chi Sorcery article in Pyramid) so using it could allow better loaded weight and travel modifiers because the road is effectively smoother. I did this with the Uigya people.
Another I haven't written up yet but on my list is Enhanced Move (Ground) for say a Courier/Express Style that rather than built for fighting is a style built for a pony express type group.
Both applications limit faster or better travel to certain elites, but players could learn them and they could be common enough that most nobles or powerful martial artists have one or the other yet the common folk dont.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Easy.
A simple way is to say the roads grant a bonus to certain Chi skills, say +5 so they can be used at normal skill with no FP cost.
Examples: Light Walk is based on Walk on Air (Chi Sorcery article in Pyramid) so using it could allow better loaded weight and travel modifiers because the road is effectively smoother. I did this with the Uigya people.
Another I haven't written up yet but on my list is Enhanced Move (Ground) for say a Courier/Express Style that rather than built for fighting is a style built for a pony express type group.
Both applications limit faster or better travel to certain elites, but players could learn them and they could be common enough that most nobles or powerful martial artists have one or the other yet the common folk dont.

That's not bad, but not everyone is going to have access to Light Walk. My thought is that it's something that everyone could benefit from. Perhaps it's a minor magic most have. Or perhaps it's some kind of perk to be able to use the magic inherent in the roads.