[Magic] How much food can the Blossom spell produce?

[Michael Thayne]

Blossom (Magic, p. 162) is worded in a way that makes it sound like it can produce a full year's harvest in an hour if cast on an orchard. Is that really right? If so, what population densities could it support when combined with otherwise ancient/medieval tech? I got thinking about this for purposes of trying to explain how you justify huge populations of dwarves or whatever living deep underground with limited ability to get food from the surface. But it could also apply to explaining how huge elven cities could exist in the middle of a forest. Thoughts?

[Taneli]

What's the mana level of the setting? What's the proportion of mages to muggles in the setting? Is magic common, rare, hidden, illegal, or what?

With the right adjustments to these parameters, almost any type of changes or none can be inferred.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Taneli

What's the mana level of the setting? What's the proportion of mages to muggles in the setting? Is magic common, rare, hidden, illegal, or what?

With the right adjustments to these parameters, almost any type of changes or none can be inferred.

I'm assuming normal magic with magic out in the open and legal—probably a decent number of mages, but even a single community around one mage could be interesting. Like a single caster leading a ceremonial casting with a hundred untrained assistants can cover maybe five acres with one casting if my math is right. The biggest limit on productivity might be how many apples a person can pick in a day, at least once you get to something like 1 mage per 5000 people capable of assisting rituals.

[edk926]

Plant Spells has the Harvest spell, which would do the dirty work for you. It's just a matter of having the energy requirements for both.

[Gef]

Unless you rule that magically stimulated plants don't deplete the soil, then your limiting factor is Essential Earth. If I recall it costs 8 per hex, and it is NOT an Area spell. I'm not botanist enough to know how many growing-season-equivalents you get before having to recast Essential Earth.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by edk926

Plant Spells has the Harvest spell, which would do the dirty work for you. It's just a matter of having the energy requirements for both.

Good catch. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Gef

Unless you rule that magically stimulated plants don't deplete the soil, then your limiting factor is Essential Earth. If I recall it costs 8 per hex, and it is NOT an Area spell. I'm not botanist enough to know how many growing-season-equivalents you get before having to recast Essential Earth.

It's true that an annoying thing about Blossom is ambiguity about the effect on soil—as well as the air and water. Though Purify Earth is worded such that it sounds like it fixes the problem in a more energy-efficient way?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Blossom (Magic, p. 162) is worded in a way that makes it sound like it can produce a full year's harvest in an hour if cast on an orchard. Is that really right? If so, what population densities could it support when combined with otherwise ancient/medieval tech? I got thinking about this for purposes of trying to explain how you justify huge populations of dwarves or whatever living deep underground with limited ability to get food from the surface. But it could also apply to explaining how huge elven cities could exist in the middle of a forest. Thoughts?

As it causes the plants affected to enter their autumn phase, and thus implies that all you're doing is getting the crop early, not more often, and it costs 2 energy per yard radius, it's considerably worse than Bless Plants, which costs half as much (thus allowing the caster(s) to affect four times the area per casting) and doubles yield.

Therefore, I think Blossom will have little effect on yields in general. What it might do is let armies loot crops to feed themselves at any time, by force-ripening them.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Rupert

As it causes the plants affected to enter their autumn phase, and thus implies that all you're doing is getting the crop early, not more often, and it costs 2 energy per yard radius, it's considerably worse than Bless Plants, which costs half as much (thus allowing the caster(s) to affect four times the area per casting) and doubles yield.

Therefore, I think Blossom will have little effect on yields in general. What it might do is let armies loot crops to feed themselves at any time, by force-ripening them.

On reflection, I think you're probably about the intent of the spell. Not at all clear from the text though, IMHO!