[Magic] Rebuilding Diamonds

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Option A: Fiat that a chipped diamond is an intact diamond. A chip of diamond is an intact diamond, just as much as a sheet of paper taken from a ream is still intact paper.

Option B: Fiat that diamond is a raw material, and thus cannot be rebuilt. Otherwise you can duplicate literally any raw material. One sheet of rolled steel can duplicate an entire roll.

Option C: Don't bring in this spell in the first place.

A: Paper in a paper mill becomes paper in a wide, long sheet before it is cut into enormous rolls. One sheet of paper, RAW, could therefore be Rebuilt to become several tons of it, no problem, as that sheet was was an integral part of an enormous roll at one point.
B: Following this logic: I have a gold ring. It breaks into several pieces and I can only recover one. Since gold is a raw material, it cannot be Rebuilt?
C: Yeah, laying down a flat fiat of "Because I say so!" never occurred to me.

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Option D: Rule that the fragment is a chip of the volcanic pipe it was originally part of, with a mass of approximately 3 billion metric tons, for a cost of 12 billion mana points, and a several hundred acre site to dump it on. Though admitted that will eventually net you quite a few other nice stones....

The logical game mechanical enforcement mechanism is that if you attempt to magically create something more valuable than a trivial fraction of your Wealth level (in this case several levels of Multimillionare minimum), the spell fails. Why? You have no idea. But if it [didn't] there would be no logical justification for your character (and whoever taught him the spell) not already having that level of Wealth, so there must be one or your character design wasn't realistic.

Two things: By that logic, anything made out of iron requires that we re-create a planet. The point of Schematic would be to define at what point in its existence do we want to stop. When a tank was rusting in a junkyard? When it was smoking on a battlefield? Or when the tank rolled off the assembly line?

And if we go with the idea of not being able to Rebuild things based on your Wealth level, that means the poor wizard won't have a day job as a mechanic. Nor will most wizards be able (assuming they have the 30FT) to Rebuild the broken car engine, computer, or other gadget they already own. The spell was included in the Grimoire and kept in later editions, so it's there for some reason.

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by Varyon

An easy fix would be if Rebuild actually destroys any other fragment of the object, making it so that you can't use it to make copies, only repair the original from a fragment. There are potential abuses for that as well, of course - shave a splinter off a gold statue, sell the statue, then use Rebuild on the sliver to basically steal the statue back, for example. But that's just an enhanced way to steal back what you sell, and there may be workarounds for it (I could see a Seek Fragment spell of some sort - which lets you analyze any item to see if there are fragments of it that could be used for Rebuilt - being useful, here).

Now this has possibilities. It sort of self-generates repercussions! I like it.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by MagicalMeddler

TThe spell was included in the Grimoire and kept in later editions, so it's there for some reason.

Quite possibly for things like an ATE campaign where magic caused the Apocalypse. You use Ceremonial magic to Rebuild a car and Create Fuel TL6 to make gasoline for it and it's off across the Oz particle blasted wasteland you go!

[Inky]

Originally Posted by MagicalMeddler

Now this has possibilities. It sort of self-generates repercussions! I like it.

Yep.
Curmudgeon says some interesting things about the different jewels that were cut from the Cullinan Diamond, but suppose your players did hit the jackpot and get some tiny diamond that was an offcut from the very first cutting, so that the most recent single object it could have been called part of was the complete chunk of crystal that Frederick Wells prised out of a mine wall with a knife.
By that system, they would get the whole thing, but all nine Cullinan Diamonds would have disappeared from the Tower of London (or wherever it is they're kept).
Might be tricky selling a large diamond you don't have a reasonable explanation for under those conditions, even if it's plainly not the same one!

It sounds rather as if the term "exotic materials" in the rules for the spell isn't meant to be something with a practical or logically coherent meaning but a hint to the GM to impose extra difficulty penalties for trying to Rebuild something made from something particularly powerful or expensive.

Originally Posted by malloyd

Option D: Rule that the fragment is a chip of the volcanic pipe it was originally part of, with a mass of approximately 3 billion metric tons, for a cost of 12 billion mana points, and a several hundred acre site to dump it on. Though admitted that will eventually net you quite a few other nice stones....

Originally Posted by MagicalMeddler

Two things: By that logic, anything made out of iron requires that we re-create a planet. The point of Schematic would be to define at what point in its existence do we want to stop. When a tank was rusting in a junkyard? When it was smoking on a battlefield? Or when the tank rolled off the assembly line?

Possibly that wasn't meant to be a logical result but a funnier version of "GM fiat that they can't do that" :-D

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Quite possibly for things like an ATE campaign where magic caused the Apocalypse. You use Ceremonial magic to Rebuild a car and Create Fuel TL6 to make gasoline for it and it's off across the Oz particle blasted wasteland you go!

I love that idea! But, on the subject of relative Wealth--wouldn't such a car (meaning one that actually works) be insanely valuable, thus requiring someone to have an enormous Wealth level to be able to fix it?

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The logical game mechanical enforcement mechanism is that if you attempt to magically create something more valuable than a trivial fraction of your Wealth level (in this case several levels of Multimillionare minimum), the spell fails. Why? You have no idea. But if it [didn't] there would be no logical justification for your character (and whoever taught him the spell) not already having that level of Wealth, so there must be one or your character design wasn't realistic.

I take issue with your blanket statement. You are wrong.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by MagicalMeddler

I love that idea! But, on the subject of relative Wealth--wouldn't such a car (meaning one that actually works) be insanely valuable, thus requiring someone to have an enormous Wealth level to be able to fix it?

I would never use Wealth that way. Wealth is a quality bought with character points outside of game play. It should not be used to limit results during game play.

One problem with the concept is that it leads to paradoxical results. One PC spends cp to account for the $ he has inherited. Another is a Thief who is forced to pay cp to account for the $ he will steal. Obviously being a Thief is doing things the hard way.

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I would never use Wealth that way. Wealth is a quality bought with character points outside of game play. It should not be used to limit results during game play.

One problem with the concept is that it leads to paradoxical results. One PC spends cp to account for the $ he has inherited. Another is a Thief who is forced to pay cp to account for the $ he will steal. Obviously being a Thief is doing things the hard way.

I agree, and I apologize. I was thinking of another post in this thread.

[MagicalMeddler]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

So, if you cut a part off a gold bar, could you rebuild the whole bar from the fragment? Probably. That leaves the question of what happens to the remainder of the gold bar open though.

Does it? "This spell totally rebuilds any object from as little as a fragment." It does not say, "The spell draws in all the old materials of the object to reform it, because the spell finds it easier to reach across the universe, even into suns and black holes, to recycle the scattered atoms of the starship you're trying to fix."

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Assume that magic won't put out any more effort than it has to, and remember that the spell is Rebuild, not Create Anew.

I'm not sure there's a difference, considering Create Object and Create Earth are prerequisites.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

It is fair, or at least not unfair, to assume that the spell, in general, finds it "easier" to regather the other dispersed pieces of the object being rebuilt to fuel the rebuild than it does to create the missing material from nothing.

Create Anew (VH) performs a function. Mana goes through the spell "wiring" to do its job in the way it was designed. What you're describing is the equivalent of a short circuit and a possible result when the caster screws up.
One can easily argue that--especially given the minimum FT cost of 30!--it is actually creating matter in the shape, form, and composition necessary to, yes, Create Anew (VH)--which is another way of saying Rebuild It From Almost Nothing (VH). Moreover, the starship example is still valid. If you're Rebuilding a starship from the minor salvage you've gathered and the rest of it fell into a sun or a black hole, the spell will not find it easier to recover the lost parts.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

As for the Cullinan Diamond, having been broken into smaller named stones such as the Great Star of Africa (Cullinan I), Second Star of Africa (Cullinan II), Lesser Star of Africa (Cullinans III & IV) and others, it seems unlikely that the entire Cullinan Diamond could be rebuilt, even by the Rebuild spell.

It seems about as unlikely as taking a couple of track plates from a field in France to Create Anew (VH) a brand-new Tiger tank, but apparently that's doable. Why is the magical reassembly of a regular carbon crystal more unlikely than the moving parts, optics, and electronics of a tank or a starship? The caster doesn't need to know anything about those--just the Schematic spell.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The Rebuild spell should not be confused as to what it is rebuilding,

It won't be confused. It will do what it's designed to do.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

but consider what the spell would attempt to rebuild depending on which part of the original diamond your chip came from.

If the caster knows the Cullinan diamond started as an enormous rock, can he aim for that without using Schematic to call to mind the "ideal" form?
"The schematic can either represent the current state of the object (showing any internal damage, alterations and wear) or the ideal state of the object." --alterations, such as being mounted on some stick, as in the scepter?
If I'm casting the spell and I regard the original rock they dug up as the "ideal" form, is that what I get with Schematic? If that chip came from the original diamond, it should be something it can Rebuilt into. When I find my starship's external equipment pod as part of another starship, I recover it and start Creating my starship Anew--not the last starship it was glued to.
It specifically says Schematic is not required for objects--let's agree rocks are objects, not machines. If, as in this case, I know what the ideal form should look like (there are photographs), and I go to the trouble of defining my end result with Schematic, Create Anew (VH) won't have an ambiguity in its program. I would think the worst case is the Schematic spell should sort out for you the "ideal" state you're after so you can use Create Anew (VH). Sorry. I mean "Rebuild."

But it's really a moot point, as your answer is, "No, because I don't like it." Okay, skip the whole Huge Diamond idea. How about we just grab one of the big pieces, break the diamond, and Rebuild each piece into a whole? Sure, we don't have a 3k carat diamond block, but we've got diamonds forever and all the potential powerstones we can enchant. Just break a fresh one and turn the bits into entire diamonds again. Is that also going to be a problem for the spell? Are we going to have to bury each chip in charcoal to provide fresh material, even though we can Create it out of nothing? Do we get a FT reduction for something so easy and simple?

We might even be able to use Repair, instead! There are no moving parts and we're providing the necessary material, right?
This is way better than Rebuild! It's even easier, now, to manufacture diamonds! Admittedly, it's at -5 to skill, but we'll have lots of opportunity to Repair all the diamond chips from the original big diamond we cut down. Score!

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The easiest way of avoiding this problem is considering the character builds. Even if mana is normal, if there are only a few real wizards about (say Magery 2), should there even be a character who has the prerequisite Magery 3 to cast a Rebuild spell?

Irrelevant. The Magery the PC paid for is not the issue.