Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

[ericthered]

Shape Earth is an interesting spell. It has multiple modes, and multiple potential economic uses... the trick is to figure out which one.

I've already compared it to plowing, and its no good there. (see post 152)

For ordinary digging in ordinary soil, our ST 10 farmer can move 20 cf/hr, and a team of three can move 80 cf/hr. If they have ST 11 (which is not too unlikely), they get a +20% boost. Our Mage can move 6 cubic yards in the same time, or 162 cf/hr, as many as six men. The mage doesn't slow down in hard clay, digging like 8 men, and while digging at half speed through rock, still digs like 8 men. If competing against wooden tools, the mage's effectiveness doubles.

I'm not sure how much call for digging on the manor there is, its classically unskilled and thankless work. apparently a lot of it was required, but I'm not sure how much. If the mage can get enough of it to work constantly, he can earn a good living, collecting the pay of six to eight men.



Working 300 days a year, collecting the pay of six men, the digger can make 1800d. The question is if a digging mage will have enough work, and if they will be able to command the full price of the people they replace: I suspect work will be moderately plentiful, (250 days worth) and they can get get at least four men's worth of pay. That's 1000d a year: as much as a low-level craftsman.


The shape earth modes are not done being analyzed: a shape stone mode could use some exploration, as is using it for construction. Construction is a really hard question though, because its so dependent on demand.

[Inky]

Originally Posted by hal

Hi Inky,
I plan on using both tables and my ability to throw up a scenario at the drop of a hat. Ever wonder what happens to a community when its mill burns to the ground? That could happen as a possible scenario. Ever wonder why weather was so important during the harvesting of crops? Rain in particular, could beat down those heavily laden stalks of grass with the grains nearly ready to land on the ground and germinate for next year - only the farmers don't want that to happen, they want to harvest it, thresh and winnow it, and store it for next year. Grain that hits the ground can be lost to the harvest.

Like ericthered - you may decide "ok, I've got the village, and I trust my village reeve will handle the details, as I don't really want to be bothered by that. I want to build a few NPC mageborn and see how they interact with the village. You're perfectly welcome to do that. The things you discover may prove to be enlightening as you suggest things that no one has given much thought about. For example? Suppose you decide to build a magery 0 Earth Mage with an IQ of 10. You know that mageborn is 28 years old, and you think "ok, age him using the time use rules" or you even take ericthered's idea, and use GURPS Locations: Worminghall. More specifically, the rules for studying and gaining experience points for spells or skills.




At the time I more or less finalized my mageborn app, I had used 2d6/2 (rounded down) +7.

After seeing how it generates the primary stats, I grew dis-satisfied and have a better working model of what I think I will use going forward:

3d6/3 (rounded up) +7. The reason I like this approach better is because I did a statistical analysis of what the probabilities were for each number coming up, and the final results for stats in the range for 8 on up to 13. In the original version (2d6/2) - the results were such that 8's occured more often than 13. With the new method - each pair of numbers have an equal chance of happening. Ie 8 has the same odds of happening as 13. 9 has the same chance of appearing as 12. 10 has the same odds of being rolled as an 11 does.

Secondary attributes will be rolled as 4d3/2-4. That means that any derived secondary attribute will modify the primary attribute by values of +/-2, with the bulk of events hovering at 0, and the next most common hovering around +/-1.

Rather than say more, I'll end it here. :)

Thanks for the information, Hal!

Originally Posted by ericthered

Earth To Stone is our first economy-breaking spell, because it also functions as earth to metal and stone to metal. For 6 Energy, someone with magery 1 can turn a cubic yard of earth into a "simple", metal, like "iron or bronze".

<snip>

• What skill do you use to shape a plow out of clay? Can the manor support someone who's job is to learn the tricks of constructing clay creations, as well as a mage who only knows how to cast the spell?
• Can you really get a sharp edge with clay, or will smiths have a job putting the final edges on things?
• How hard is it to get a thin "plate" of earth? Or a shape that will easily turn into wire? Metal's weight is a serious liability in a lot of situations.
• What kind of cost savings do you get by forming something out of clay rather than beating iron into that shape?
• Why does Harn Manor not have any Potters show up as craftsmen?
• What Metal Items does the Manor need if It can get them in large quantities? especially items that won't need work afterwords.

Earth to Stone seems drastically more setting-breaking than most of the spells that have been being discussed. Wondering whether it might make sense to leave it out (or rather, the earth-to-metal part) as it seems to make things weird to such a disproportionate extent that it might drown out most of the other spells.

Even without the earth-to-metal part, Earth to Stone might still make a big difference to an economy, as you could make metal ores out of soil.


Idle off-topic thought. A spell that turns any ore into its metal sounds as if it might be useful, at the world-building level, and a straightforward way of doing things and not as OP at the worldbuilding level as just being able to conjure up any metal from any random soil. However, that might have drastically OP unintended consequences at the individual/adventuring level. Why? Well, feed it a handful of salt.

For that matter, could Earth to Stone itself produce sodium metal? "Simple metal" seems almost completely meaningless as an explanation of what you can produce. Possibly it means "the GM should use their own discretion, only metals that aren't especially game-breaking are allowed, no producing a cubic yard of gold". But if so, that would be circular reasoning in this case since the original proposal seems to be exactly to see how far we can break the setting using RAW.

Since Shape Earth has a duration of one minute, does that mean that you can cast Shape Earth and then cast Earth to Stone on the results? That might allow for very quick work and/or very unstable and/or large items compared to what can be made out of clay before converting it into stone. Might or might not be reasonable to allow creating arbitrarily complex shapes infallibly using Shape Earth, though. An alternative might be to require an IQ roll or an Artist (Sculptor) roll, similar to how Control does in Powers.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Inky

Earth to Stone seems drastically more setting-breaking than most of the spells that have been being discussed. Wondering whether it might make sense to leave it out (or rather, the earth-to-metal part) as it seems to make things weird to such a disproportionate extent that it might drown out most of the other spells.

The spells that break the economy are the MOST important. I'm not about to hand-wave them away!



I'm hoping to break things just as badly with ceremonial magic and the agriculture spells, to be honest, I just haven't gotten there yet.



I don't think the abundant metal is actually going to ripple than badly: if people are still struggling to feed themselves, its mostly irrelevant. It does raise material wealth, but that's something most fantasy settings over-estimate in the first place.



Looking at what the metal ends up used for, I'm actually not seeing a lot of demand in a TL3 manor. LTC3 indicates that metal plows only really become universal at TL4, and that gives about a 30% reduction in plowing time. Metal Cookware, fire handling tools, abundant tools, and nails are also nice, but I don't know how much of a further economic boost they give. craftsmen and soldiers see a LOT more benefit, but unless you can increase the number of people who fall into that category, it might not matter in grander terms.

Even without the earth-to-metal part, Earth to Stone might still make a big difference to an economy, as you could make metal ores out of soil.

Right now, fuel is looking like a bigger issue to me.

Idle off-topic thought. A spell that turns any ore into its metal sounds as if it might be useful, at the world-building level, and a straightforward way of doing things and not as OP at the worldbuilding level as just being able to conjure up any metal from any random soil. However, that might have drastically OP unintended consequences at the individual/adventuring level. Why? Well, feed it a handful of salt.

For that matter, could Earth to Stone itself produce sodium metal? "Simple metal" seems almost completely meaningless as an explanation of what you can produce. Possibly it means "the GM should use their own discretion, only metals that aren't especially game-breaking are allowed, no producing a cubic yard of gold". But if so, that would be circular reasoning in this case since the original proposal seems to be exactly to see how far we can break the setting using RAW.

"Simple" is a terrible word here. Bronze is explicitly included, and its complex, while almost no-one lets the spell make gold, and its an element. My interpretation is to include iron and bronze, as they are explicitly mention, and including Copper, Tin, Lead, and Brass. Gold and Silver are out, and I think I'm going to include mercury there too. Various steels are the hardest question, but I'm leaning towards being only able to make mild steel. I'd lean against sodium being a valid target. Really anything that isn't an "ancient" metal.

Since Shape Earth has a duration of one minute, does that mean that you can cast Shape Earth and then cast Earth to Stone on the results? That might allow for very quick work and/or very unstable and/or large items compared to what can be made out of clay before converting it into stone. Might or might not be reasonable to allow creating arbitrarily complex shapes infallibly using Shape Earth, though. An alternative might be to require an IQ roll or an Artist (Sculptor) roll, similar to how Control does in Powers.

I'm 100% looking at this. I was planning requiring a skill roll to get the correct shape, even with shape earth. Which is going to make shape-earth less relevant, because to make a tool you'll need the skill to make that tool, and the earth path is looking like its very point-hungry. My specific mages will be nice to watch there. Earth to stone is a magery 1 spell, and as noted, one of my magery 1 mages (and I have as many functional mages as anyone is going to get) has IQ 8.

[ericthered]

Ok, a look at replacing the smith. I'm leaning heavily on LTC3 here, which has a lot of good info for this. Raw clay costs .20$ a lb and 80 lbs of it can be produced in a day. This is likely the target material for earth to stone in finished products. Compare this with $6.90 for Iron, or high and geographically variable numbers for Bronze with an semi-historical suggestion for the ancient Mediterranean that looks like $30 for 10% tin bronze.



If a tool (like a hatchet or Adze) has 1.5 lbs of Iron and costs $40 to make, including a $5 haft*, it requires a smith $10 of iron and $25 worth of labor** to make, or just over 10 hours. The mage can make do with .30$ of clay, an hour of FP recovery, and the work needed to set up the forms***, sharpen the tool, and pound in the haft. This number is going to vary a bit from tool to tool, but my guess is it is generally from 30 minutes to two hours.



I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like bigger tools might not cost that much more than small ones in this new state of affairs. I'm not sure if the molding takes out the skill of the smith: getting right is probably its own skill. I don't know what to call it. Making a thin scythe doesn't look terribly easy though.



So if these tools are typical, The mage can spend three hours to produce ~$35 of tools. That's about $2300 a week... or 163.5d, if using the conversion in post #91. If we discount the cost of the iron (its cheap around, here, right?), we get $1630 a week, or 116.5d. But this is per week, still for astronomical gains: 116d a week is 5,800d a year. That's not as bad as we've seen before, but its still economy warping. If he can find buyers. Also, armor and swords probably need special consideration.



*Looking at the Jo, club, and light staff in Low-Tech's weapons table, this is between $5 to $15: for an axe or adze (both $40, 2lbs), we'll go with $5.


**By LTC3 iron manufacturing, a full smith is paid $900 a month. he's presumed to have helpers, so the production per month is $900 * .55 = $495, and the per hour is 1/200th of that: $2.475 an hour. The village smith, who doesn't have helpers, gets paid full and produces $2.20 worth of labor in an hour.



***For a big solid lumpy tool, like a hammer or axe, the same molds used to cast bronze will work. It fact, you can make the molds better, because you can turn them into stone. You make the mold by forming clay around a tool you want to copy, one on each side. You pack the mold with clay, and cast the spell. Then you need to sharpen and attach the haft.



Yes, I've been watching "How to Make Everything" on youtube.

[StevenH]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm looking at Essential Earth first, because I've already done a lot of the groundwork on agriculture. Thanks for pointing it out.

Does Harn even do crop rotation? I think its abstracted into the various crop types they list. I know LTC3 has info on it.

I'm looking at the 4e spell, and its not giving quantity.

Essential Earth is weird, because it lasts. a 48 hour week will yield 36 castings, or 108 square yards. That's an extra 30 meals per year, from that one week of work. It takes 44 weeks (almost a year) to do an acre, after which that acre does the work of three acres. Sir Zeedrick has an 1800 acre manor... so it will take a very long time for a single mage to cover the manor without breath-holding, recover energy, or ceremonial casting.

Essential earth won't keep you alive with its increase ... that year. In a vacuum, it produces 2/3rd of the food to keep just the caster alive, and that's a little delayed. If its combined with another mage casting bless plants*, that's enough to keep feed the essential earth mage that year, as its doubled, and its likely that bless plants mages will love targeting essential earth before the other crops, because of the increase.

Essential earth gives two extra acres of crops per year. If combined with a perfect bless plants, the total increase is five extra crops per year: I suggest that the essential earth can claim 3.5 of these crops and bless plants 1.5: the fair split is certainly between 2.5 vs 2.5 and 4 vs 1. If combined with the imperfect bless plants method described in post 152 and 155, the increase is closer to 3.8 than to 5, and I'd suggesting splitting the credit .9 to 2.9.

Using an expected value of five years of crops (a very modern value, but you have to start somewhere), essential earth on an acre of wheat is worth

• 10 crops (720d wheat) without bless earth
• 14.5 crops (1044d wheat) with haphazard bless earth
• 17.5 crops (1260d wheat) if you're hitting the whole acre with bless earth somehow (either ceremonial magic or only enchanting 100 yard radius circles)

If the mage can convince people to be more farsighted than 5 years, they can collect more: a 10 year time to pay off is double that. And if you're really working (50 weeks rather than 44), you can add an additional 13% or so.

Essential earth competes fairly well with bless plants. The floor for each of them is around 700d, which is a good living, but not economy breaking. I think bless plants might end up being the better investment for the mage themselves, in terms of income, but it depends on a lot of things. Essential earth also has better economic spells in its prereq chain, like shape earth and earth to stone, so it could be a spell that gets picked up as a way to make money when you have nothing more profitable to do.

The number of skills competing for the attention of an earth mage is a matter for another day: there are a lot, and this is one place where specifics are going to matter!

The cost for Essential Earth is in the Errata (http://www.sjgames.com/errata/gurps/4e/magic_2.html)


Good analysis. It also argues (to a certain extent) for the lords of the manor (going back however many generations) to have the mage who teaches the Earth spells spending some time every year making more of the land Essential. And have that be encouraged, in much the same way that infrastructure and utilities are better off being done by bodies that don't have to worry about profits (which is usually governments, which are the economic bodies that don't have to worry about profit under most circumstances).

And as it's permanent, definitely get people thinking long term in this case; as it's a spell that doesn't have an immediate gain. Granted, the crop takes only 1/3 the time before needing to be harvested, so if you are in an area that had two crops per year, you now have 6. (The Willamette Valley, in Oregon, grows stuff all year round, as the winters are pretty mild.)

One of the things I learned about farming (from relatives in North Dakota) is that ditching is often required to drain fields, as there can be too much rain. If there isn't a good way to drain it (and ND is really flat) the crops will be flooded and ruined. Shape Earth would work here too, in addition to plowing, making earth berms for water retention, digging wells, making walls and hedgerows, etc.

With Earth to Stone as well, that makes creating foundations for buildings very easy, even if you don't just make all of the buildings stone.

As for the economy-destroying Earth to Stone (metal), unless they deliberately flood the market (assuming they don't have more important things to do) there just aren't enough mages with that particular spell to have that big of an effect. Although peasants might have an easier time getting their hands on silver mirrors and golden candlesticks. The economy would adjust. Most people won't be affected, as they are still trying to put enough food on the table, even with the "advances" of Essential Earth and Bless Plants.

Except that now, Harvest time comes more often, and everyone is more busy. Except the herders. They still get to laze around looking after sheep and practicing their slinging skills.

Unless you have the Hair Growth spell, in which case you are doing a lot of shearing. One casting of that spell is 58 days worth of wool growth. Depending upon breed, sheep need to be sheared once or twice a year to keep their wool from getting too matted. That's 6 or 3 castings of the spell per animal. Might be good for some quick cash, but I haven't really thought about how cost effective it might be.

The enchanted item is much more effective; it gives an hour's worth of the spell (assuming you take it off as soon as possible...it grows hair for an hour after it's been removed...do NOT leave it on!). That's 114 years worth of wool, so unless you are having mutton that evening, shear it as fast as you can while the wool is growing for the next hour. Might need a couple shearers per animal, as the wool grows fast.

That item costs 100 energy to enchant, not that any of the manors are likely to have an enchanter...any enchanter will likely migrate to the city, or be bought up by monied interests. And while Hal said that "social contracts" will keep the greedy, powerhungry people in charge from somehow taking them away, I don't buy it. They will come up with a "legal" reason to get someone with that skill set, if they exist.

[Inky]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The spells that break the economy are the MOST important. I'm not about to hand-wave them away!

I'm hoping to break things just as badly with ceremonial magic and the agriculture spells, to be honest, I just haven't gotten there yet.

Well, when you put it like that... :-D

Originally Posted by ericthered

Ok, a look at replacing the smith. I'm leaning heavily on LTC3 here, which has a lot of good info for this. Raw clay costs .20$ a lb and 80 lbs of it can be produced in a day. This is likely the target material for earth to stone in finished products. Compare this with $6.90 for Iron, or high and geographically variable numbers for Bronze with an semi-historical suggestion for the ancient Mediterranean that looks like $30 for 10% tin bronze.

If a tool (like a hatchet or Adze) has 1.5 lbs of Iron and costs $40 to make, including a $5 haft*, it requires a smith $10 of iron and $25 worth of labor** to make, or just over 10 hours. The mage can make do with .30$ of clay, an hour of FP recovery, and the work needed to set up the forms***, sharpen the tool, and pound in the haft. This number is going to vary a bit from tool to tool, but my guess is it is generally from 30 minutes to two hours.

I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like bigger tools might not cost that much more than small ones in this new state of affairs. I'm not sure if the molding takes out the skill of the smith: getting right is probably its own skill. I don't know what to call it. Making a thin scythe doesn't look terribly easy though.

So if these tools are typical, The mage can spend three hours to produce ~$35 of tools. That's about $2300 a week... or 163.5d, if using the conversion in post #91. If we discount the cost of the iron (its cheap around, here, right?), we get $1630 a week, or 116.5d. But this is per week, still for astronomical gains: 116d a week is 5,800d a year. That's not as bad as we've seen before, but its still economy warping. If he can find buyers. Also, armor and swords probably need special consideration.

*Looking at the Jo, club, and light staff in Low-Tech's weapons table, this is between $5 to $15: for an axe or adze (both $40, 2lbs), we'll go with $5.

**By LTC3 iron manufacturing, a full smith is paid $900 a month. he's presumed to have helpers, so the production per month is $900 * .55 = $495, and the per hour is 1/200th of that: $2.475 an hour. The village smith, who doesn't have helpers, gets paid full and produces $2.20 worth of labor in an hour.

***For a big solid lumpy tool, like a hammer or axe, the same molds used to cast bronze will work. It fact, you can make the molds better, because you can turn them into stone. You make the mold by forming clay around a tool you want to copy, one on each side. You pack the mold with clay, and cast the spell. Then you need to sharpen and attach the haft.

Yes, I've been watching "How to Make Everything" on youtube.

The smith might not be entirely out of business - metals seem to be affected a lot by how they've been worked (cooled slowly or quickly, hammered or not hammered, etc., making them harder and/or tougher), and I'm not sure whether that's included in Earth to Stone. (Even if it wasn't, the mage might still speed things up a lot by turning out a stack of steel bars ready to forge into knives). What kind of things does the earth-to-metal version of Earth to Stone usually get used for in play?

Originally Posted by StevenH

As for the economy-destroying Earth to Stone (metal), unless they deliberately flood the market (assuming they don't have more important things to do) there just aren't enough mages with that particular spell to have that big of an effect. Although peasants might have an easier time getting their hands on silver mirrors and golden candlesticks. The economy would adjust. Most people won't be affected, as they are still trying to put enough food on the table, even with the "advances" of Essential Earth and Bless Plants.

That's an interesting point, I'm not sure I'd thought of that. Given its prerequisites, Earth to Stone might be known to only a few people - and all those people would have a financial interest in not flooding the gold market. If all of them understood that, in a drastic case, you might end up with a De Beers scenario.

Alternatively, if they did produce that much gold and silver - well, maybe that's how there's so much treasure in some dungeon fantasy settings :-D In that case, things might be going on much as before but using barter, and/or some other kinds of portable valuable goods as currency, instead of gold, silver and copper coins. It might not make a lot of difference to most things, as you and ericthered mentioned - you can't eat gold, and nor can you burn it as firewood.

One possible rule (if somebody wanted a coherent rule) might be that mages can only produce metals with which they're personally familiar. That seems like it would rule out sodium metal, other alkali and alkali earth metals such as magnesium metal, types of steel that hadn't been invented by other methods yet and radioactive metals (some players might be cheeky enough).
Though gold and silver would still be possible if the mage had some already for comparison. Might have to just say "can't do that", if you were going to rule out gold and silver. Gold and silver, and to some extent mercury, seem to have a special status in alchemy as the "highest metals", so that seems sort of appropriate for magic.

Another thing is whether to count transparent quartz as a gemstone (and therefore out of bounds) for the purposes of Earth to Stone. That might be a useful thing to be able to make, before glass was readily available (although, like the metals, it might still need polishing). Going by Wikipedia, it seems to have been used in large chunks compared to most gemstones but still not what you'd call cheap. Maybe possible but more difficult, with what MoS you get determining how transparent the quartz is (success by 0 giving you bog-standard white quartzite, possibly still useful for something but isn't the item that was ordered).

Originally Posted by StevenH

not that any of the manors are likely to have an enchanter...any enchanter will likely migrate to the city, or be bought up by monied interests. And while Hal said that "social contracts" will keep the greedy, powerhungry people in charge from somehow taking them away, I don't buy it. They will come up with a "legal" reason to get someone with that skill set, if they exist.

Or to achieve the kind of skill levels an enchanter has you might need to have a wealthy patron already.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by StevenH

The cost for Essential Earth is in the Errata (http://www.sjgames.com/errata/gurps/4e/magic_2.html)

Thanks, most appreciated.

It also argues (to a certain extent) for the lords of the manor (going back however many generations) to have the mage who teaches the Earth spells spending some time every year making more of the land Essential.

Lords of the manor might have more foresight... or they might not. The trick is that Earth mages have a bunch of demands on their skill points, and essential earth is yet another one. It seems that it might just be strait up profitable though.

And as it's permanent, definitely get people thinking long term in this case; as it's a spell that doesn't have an immediate gain. Granted, the crop takes only 1/3 the time before needing to be harvested, so if you are in an area that had two crops per year, you now have 6. (The Willamette Valley, in Oregon, grows stuff all year round, as the winters are pretty mild.)

Umm... huh. Going back and looking at the effects of the spell, its says the crops "Germinate three times faster" and "grow three times taller or bigger". I don't think that gives us three harvests. I think it can justify a tripple crop. It does look like it will cause problems with winter grains though. Though we could just give the spell the benefit of the doubt.

One of the things I learned about farming (from relatives in North Dakota) is that ditching is often required to drain fields, as there can be too much rain. If there isn't a good way to drain it (and ND is really flat) the crops will be flooded and ruined. Shape Earth would work here too, in addition to plowing, making earth berms for water retention, digging wells, making walls and hedgerows, etc.

And if the fields are too dry, irrigation to take water in is a good idea... I feel like some large percentage of what Harn Manor calls the "Fief Index" to represent infrastructure is just a whole lot of digging: ditches, roads, and even some buildings. I'm just not sure if its 60%, 80%, or even 95%.

With Earth to Stone as well, that makes creating foundations for buildings very easy, even if you don't just make all of the buildings stone.

Is this even an issue for the common man's house? I do need to do a building analysis for shape earth and earth to stone

As for the economy-destroying Earth to Stone (metal), unless they deliberately flood the market (assuming they don't have more important things to do) there just aren't enough mages with that particular spell to have that big of an effect. Although peasants might have an easier time getting their hands on silver mirrors and golden candlesticks. The economy would adjust. Most people won't be affected, as they are still trying to put enough food on the table, even with the "advances" of Essential Earth and Bless Plants.

I'm just saying "Simple" was the wrong word and gold and silver are still scarce. Seek earth and shape earth help more with that. But I think one mage can almost crash the market by themselves just making tons and tons of bronze. (And I'm literally talking about tons here: the maximum is six tons per casting)

hair growth

I owe you analysis on this!

That item costs 100 energy to enchant, not that any of the manors are likely to have an enchanter...any enchanter will likely migrate to the city, or be bought up by monied interests. And while Hal said that "social contracts" will keep the greedy, powerhungry people in charge from somehow taking them away, I don't buy it. They will come up with a "legal" reason to get someone with that skill set, if they exist.

Or to achieve the kind of skill levels an enchanter has you might need to have a wealthy patron already.

Yeah, I don't think enchanters aren't a manor thing, they're a city thing. I'm going to make a pass at setting up power stone farming at some point, but that skill 15 requirement is just killer. On top of that, it requires magery 1.

Originally Posted by Inky

The smith might not be entirely out of business - metals seem to be affected a lot by how they've been worked (cooled slowly or quickly, hammered or not hammered, etc., making them harder and/or tougher), and I'm not sure whether that's included in Earth to Stone. (Even if it wasn't, the mage might still speed things up a lot by turning out a stack of steel bars ready to forge into knives).

Some of that is factored into the "2 hours" from the above analysis. Iron, specifically, I believe is effected by how you work with it, because of its interaction with carbon. Bronze seems to be less like that.

I'm planning an analysis of how business looks for mages who work with smiths instead of trying to replace them. Armor and swords are specifically interesting: I don't think that the casting method is going to work well for armor, which needs a thin, uniform thinkness, and blades seem to benefit from being worked a little.

What kind of things does the earth-to-metal version of Earth to Stone usually get used for in play?

I'm playing a DF earth mage, and I've never wanted it. I could possibly want it for making really nasty barriers, or making handcuffs. If we lost our weapons, it might come up. but I've never actually used it in play.

Another thing is whether to count transparent quartz as a gemstone (and therefore out of bounds) for the purposes of Earth to Stone. That might be a useful thing to be able to make, before glass was readily available (although, like the metals, it might still need polishing). Going by Wikipedia, it seems to have been used in large chunks compared to most gemstones but still not what you'd call cheap. Maybe possible but more difficult, with what MoS you get determining how transparent the quartz is (success by 0 giving you bog-standard white quartzite, possibly still useful for something but isn't the item that was ordered).

That is an interesting question. My gut is that doing it from essential earth should count... but then we get into house-rule territory, and we're trying to steer clear of that.

[ericthered]

Unless you have the Hair Growth spell, in which case you are doing a lot of shearing. One casting of that spell is 58 days worth of wool growth. Depending upon breed, sheep need to be sheared once or twice a year to keep their wool from getting too matted. That's 6 or 3 castings of the spell per animal. Might be good for some quick cash, but I haven't really thought about how cost effective it might be.

Can you make Money with Hair Growth?

By LTC3, Sheep give 4 lbs of wool per acre-year, and does this with 2 animals. Getting an extra acre-year of growth takes 24 energy (4 hours of FP). And you get pretty much the full value, because you cast for 1 and then continue the spell for however much FP you have, so you don't drop 25% of your FP at skill 12. The work to sheer a sheep seems to be about 30 minutes according to Mount Vernon (which employs people who sheer sheep the 18th century way). So with 4 hours of FP and 1 hour of sheering, you can generate 4 lbs of wool. with the 50 hour week I've been using, that's 40 lbs for a grueling week. If using a CF+3 sheep (yes, that's what LTC3 calls it) you can double the yield to 80lbs of wool a week.

But this is a cost 1 Spell. So if you get it to skill 15... you can cast it as long as you have daylight hours, and it seems it doesn't kill you. If you sheer all the sheep yourself, you are pulling in 4 lbs an hour with bog standard sheep for 200 lbs of wool a week. If you just cast the spell all day, you can have 2 lbs of wool ready a minute. You will need 30 men working sheering to keep up with your output (you take a minute per sheep, they take 30). All of you will produce 120lbs of wool an hour, and 24,000 lbs of wool in a month.... but remember we have to pay the sheers, and that's going to cost a month's pay for 30 people, something like 750d.



As a side note, Haircut is right next to hair growth in the prereq chain, but at 2 FP, its almost as slow as traditional sheering, especially at skill 12 where 1/4 of the spells fail. Probably not worth it.


But we don't have a price for wool, and the only one I can find, in DF8, indicates that sheering sheep is not worth the time: $0.20 per lb of wool indicates you earn $.40 per hour sheering sheep, and with a 200 hour work-month, you earn $80.

So the rest of this analysis waits on a better price for wool. 40lbs of wool per week sounds like you might be able to make a living off of it though.

[hal]

Hi All,
I've largely kept quiet about my thoughts on some of the things you're bringing up, and as I spoke to one individual about, one of my long range plans is to explore concepts that are part of...

World Building.

That being said - here are some thing to keep in the back of your minds when we discuss things.

A) GURPS FANTASY 1st edition introduced the basic framework of spell working.
It also introduced the history of Yrth and established a backdrop of things. The Banestorm is the result of a major spell backfire that was ceremonially cast. In many ways, that event moves at the speed of "plot" as opposed to having any kind of game realism baked into the system. By this, I mean that if you look at the spell critical failure table, you don't see a single even there that is comparable to that of the genesis of the Banestorm

B) GURPS 2nd and 3rd editions did not have Magery 0 - and GURPS 3rd edition revised didn't even have it. It took the introduction of GURPS COMPENDIUM I to bring that nugget into being. Note that the original concept of mageborn was that each level of magery was 10x higher than the subsequently improved level of magery. Right now, you get to explore what Magery 0 is capable of - and sad to say - once you spend your "coins" (aka mageborn) towards a single purpose, you won't be able to do any of the higher level magics that people look at saying "with Magery 2 and enchantments, you can create X, Y and Z". Without an academy system of teaching, students will only be able to engage in apprentice/master style study of spells, and if a mage dies - his ability to teach as well as practice given spells will diminish.

C) you may end up with a mageborn 1 NPC, but if he has no teachers - EVERY single spell that is magery 1, will take twice as long to pick up. If a person with an IQ of 10 Magery 1 tries to study a spell that will be used in ceremonial casting - you have to be VERY careful to include the fact that ceremonial castings are not the same as singular castings.

D) Until the advent of GURPS MAGIC 4e including powerstones that did not require the power stone be a gemstone - large powerstones were prohibitively costly to where even a 10 point power stone was not cheap.

All of what you're doing now is based on GURPS MAGIC for 4e. Later, we will look at GURPS GRIMOIRE (called GURPS CLASSIC GRIMOIRE) and GURPS MAGIC 2nd edion (called GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC) to see how the slight but definite differences in rules may have an impact on the world being designed by either yourselves - or readers who stumble across this thread in the future.

Bear in mind - I'm trying not to set in stone ANYTHING so much as to get you to think about what trying to make a true TL 3 like fantasy environment entails using the rules as written, be it the unadulterated GURPS MAGIC for 4e with zero restrictions, or GURPS MAGIC for 4e with restrictions (and the reasons behind those restrictions discussed here in the future) or GURPS MAGIC for 3e's spell lists only, with some of the GURPS GRIMOIRE spells utilized as well.

World Building is one thing. Having a more intimate understanding of the game world you are presenting to your players - can only be enriched if you first occupy the "game environment" as if it were real, and try to imagine what you'd do if you lived in such a world.

So - first - unrestricted Magic for 4e, along with the concepts of Magery 0 to see what kind of impact that has on the world. Then, simple pruning of spells that may or may not be allowed in a future campaign world you may want to run. And finally, the bare bones set up I tend to use for my own campaigns.

Why the Bare Bones approach?

Ask yourself one simple question...

Yrth's background history was first written when all they had was GURPS FANTASY 1st edition (if you want the spell list presented in the volume, let me know and I'll send a text file for you with that list). Then came GURPS MAGIC 1st and 2nd editions. Then came GURPS GRIMOIRE, and finally, we got GURPS COMPENDIUM.

The simple question is this:

Can Yrth's background be described using the spell lists given with Fantasy 1st edition? Can the history of Yrth survive intact, the introduction of spells from GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition? Can the History of Yrth survive the introduction of spells from GURPS GRIMOIRE?

The truth is - with the advent of unrestricted Spells from GURPS MAGIC for 4e - the history of the Banestorm and of Yrth (largely unchanged from GURPS FANTASY 1st and second editions) and expanded upon in GURPS BANESTORM, could not survive intact. Too many of the spells in GURPS MAGIC for 4e, would cause the society to change from TL3 to something akin to TL3+2 or even TL3+3. Even Germ Theory alone would change that in a big way.

**shrug**

[hal]

For those who might be interested...

Download a free demo version of FANTASY GROUNDS, and we can make an arrangement to try and get a conference going with as many people as can meet at any one given time. I'm located in the Eastern Standard Time Zone, and work Third shift with odd days involved (ie I work Saturdays and Sundays).

This means that people in Europe or throughout much of the American states can eventually schedule a time where I should be available.

8 to noon Mondays through Fridays - I am usually available
Monday nights are reserved for my Cyberpunk Online game group once it resumes again after an unexpected hiatus.

So - you want to try and get together for a more or less real time chat session of idea slinging and discussion, contact me via email and I'll see what can be done.