GURPS Magic: The Least of Spells

[Anders]

Here's a spell that would have a huge environmental impact:

Charcoal (A)

Regular

This converts a cubic yard (1/5 cord) of wood into charcoal. This is about seven times as effective as charcoaling (ref), which makes the elves and druids happy (well... less angry). It is exhausting and takes a long time to cast, but still much much swifter than charcoaling the wood the traditional way.

This spell belongs to the Fire and Plant colleges.

Duration: Permanent.
Time to cast: Casting the spell takes 10 minutes, but the actual process takes 1 hour.
Cost: 10.

Too powerful?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Anders

Here's a spell that would have a huge environmental impact:

Charcoal (A)

Regular

This converts a cubic yard (1/5 cord) of wood into charcoal. This is about seven times as effective as charcoaling (ref), which makes the elves and druids happy (well... less angry). It is exhausting and takes a long time to cast, but still much much swifter than charcoaling the wood the traditional way.

This spell belongs to the Fire and Plant colleges.

Duration: Permanent.
Time to cast: Casting the spell takes 10 minutes, but the actual process takes 1 hour.
Cost: 10.

Too powerful?

This seems to be as relatively important as the Prepare Game spell.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

This seems to be as relatively important as the Prepare Game spell.

Prepare Game (Magic p.78) is a good candidate for demotion to Least spell, maybe with a heavier casting cost, maybe 1 per 10 lbs, minimum 2. Prepare Game, as written, costs the same for a minnow or a deer.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Prepare Game (Magic p.78) is a good candidate for demotion to Least spell, maybe with a heavier casting cost, maybe 1 per 10 lbs, minimum 2. Prepare Game, as written, costs the same for a minnow or a deer.

And here I was hoping it would help me prep for the next time I GM. :)

[dcarson]

Some googling they still make charcoal the old way in parts of Switzerland. To convert 60 ster (3.6 per cord) of wood to charcoal takes 2 men 3 weeks to build the kiln and 2 weeks to burn it. So 17 cords in 5 weeks. Some of that is the piling wood up part but more or less 3 cords of wood a week. So a slight productivity gain and a lot more convenient since you can do one batch on a free day.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-s...29563720080903

[Anders]

The major gain is efficiency. This converts all the wood into charcoal, whereas the old-fashioned method wastes at least half, but more likely 3/4 to 9/10 of the wood.

[Fred Brackin]

Nobody thought about Create Fuel yet? With the cost of Create Fuel being 1 per TL per pound and charcoal coming into use at TL1 at Skill-15 you can make charcoal with no limit beyond time and whatever risks of crit fails the GM assigns to such use.

A cubic yard at a time is a lot. It's c. 1700 lbs for dense wood like oak but charcoal weighs less than oak so you still don't keep all the weight.

On the other hand Create Fuel/TL1:Charcoal doesn't require any wood for a starter. It works on rocks or dirt (and probably garbage).

I think only mages planning industrial use would go for this version.

[Anders]

Create Fuel requires some prerequisites, though. Charcoal is an easier spell to learn.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anders

Create Fuel requires some prerequisites, though. Charcoal is an easier spell to learn.

Charcoal requires at least some wood to use and presumably costs you the whole 10 energy even if you don't have a cubic yard of wood to transform.

Create Fuel's prereqs are only Seek fuel and 2 "transmutation" Spells. I guess that means Blank to Blank and those sorts of spells tend to be highly useful.

Actually, I'd not allow a Least Spell that affected a whole cubic yard (11700 lbs of stuff) and cost 10 energy. 1 lb for 1 energy sounds a lot more like the right category.

[Kalzazz]

Prepare Game as a regular spell, so a SM+4 dead Dragon will cost 10

Given a SM+4 dragon is about the size of Shamu and likely weighs 6 tons you won't get far if it's 1 energy per 10 lbs

A 1200 lb steer is going to be an issue.