Magitech in DnD 3.5e (PEACH)

[Jack_Simth]

Really? That's weird, one of my DM's said that my Silent Image can't produce light via RAW. Any source on this?

If he's playing 3.0, he's unambiguously correct. 3.0 Player's Handbook, page 158:

Because figments and glamers (see below) are unreal, they cannot produce real effects th way that other types of illusions can. They cannot cause damage to objects or creates, support weight, provide nutrition, illuminate darkness, or provide protection from the elements. Consequently, ...

(Emphasis added)

So, of course, the 3.0 version of Continual Flame (page 188 of the 3.0 Player's Handbook) is an Illusion (Figment), which means the spell cannot do what it's clearly intended to do.

The 3.5 Player's Handbook, on the other hand, has the same passage, minus that troublesome phrase, on page 173:

Because figments and glamers (see below) are unreal, they cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can. They cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements. Consequently, ...

At the same time, Continual Flame was changed to Evocation(Light) (page 213 of the 3.5 player's handbook).

Either change would have fixed the Continual Flame problem right up. They did both.

Now, while your DM is well within his rights to say that 'cannot produce real effects' includes true illumination (it's not a clear-cut thing), the explicit example that it couldn't was specifically removed in the 3.0 -> 3.5 transition.

As I said: Make of this what you will.



A bit back on topic:

More to come. MUCH more to come...

I'd be very interested in how campaign set in a world where the technology was prevalent would go... And yes, I have stats for operating mech suits and skyships. It's coming.

Well, once you get to the point where magic can handle all the day-to-day needs of the citizenry (Which it can, quite easily - Create Food and Water + Trap Rules = Uncapped amounts of food. Energy Transformation Field + a Paladin's Dectet Evil ability + Create Food and Water spell = uncaped amounts of food), then things look like what the powers-that-be want them to look like (if the powers that be are smart, anyway).

Suppose, for instance, that I am a Cleric-7 with Craft Wondrous Item, Leadership, and a bunch of GP and XP I want to burn. I have a Wizard-5 Cohort, and a bunch of NPC-classed followers, and a building under my control.

I (ab)use the trap rules to create automatic reset "traps" of useful spells, all running in a row. Cure Light Wounds, Endure Elements, Remove Disease, Remove Curse, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Lesser Restoration, Neutralize Poison, and Create Food and Water. When I'm making the Create Food and Water trap, I also have my Wizard Cohort help me out, putting in Prestidigitation, to make it taste like any of a few hundred dishes, picked at random. Anyone and everyone walking down the hallway with a bowl in hand gets cured of minor injuries, inured to normal weather, cured of most afflictions, and at the end his bowl is filled with some tasty food (enough to feed his entire family, usually).

I have my followers charge, say, 5 cp to walk down the hallway (untrained hirelings are paid 1 sp/day). For now, any money I collect goes into my coffers, which for the moment we'll assume are impregnable, and for the moment we'll say this 'traps' coins (I'm not spending money, yet).

What happens?

Well, there's going to be a large, but essentially fixed, number of coins in a given area. I have negligible operational expenses (just a really big setup cost), so I don't need to spend coins. So every time someone walks the hallway, five copper coins are drained from the local economy. As there's only so many coins in the local economy, sooner or later (unless something stops me), there will be a problem: Few, if any, coins in the economy. Eventually, you have a recession, depression, or even a full economic collapse - your employer can't pay you, as nobody has coins to buy his goods. You can't pay rent, as you don't have any coins to give to your landlord. Everyone (except me) goes slowly bankrupt.

Now, to stop this from happening, I change how I work with coins. I start spending money. I purchase buildings, which I then have other followers manage as landlords. I hire people at just a bit below prevailing wage for the type of work (but make sure their wages are enough that working five days gets them through my line for seven days - 7 cp/day for an untrained laborer, say). People work for me when there's no other reasonable alternatives... which will soon become the case, as my line is a very attractive thing to go through (if you do it every day, you can skip rent, and you don't need to pay extra for food - all your physical needs handled, for 5 cp /day).

If nothing interrupts me, I'm eventually employing essentially everyone, either directly or indirectly.

What do I have them do? Whatever I want. The actual essentials of maintaining this can be handled by a few dozen individuals - my Cohort and my followers. In this scenario, I'm a Cleric, I have a deity. If my deity is a patron of the arts, I'm probably employing them to gather crafting materials for other employees who make assorted art objects. If my deity is a deity of magic, I'm probably employing them to gather spell components. If my deity is a warrior-type, I'm probably building an army. And so on. The point is that with a fairly simple plan, I can make society look like pretty much anything I want, simply by paying people to take that slant.

If I want to make everyone's lives better, well, I start putting people in training. Those who will not work will not eat. I make sure to put everyone in a specialized task - craftsmen, miners, solders, artists, more clerics, whatever. But everyone needs training.

So what you'd get - in this scenario, at least - is one guy (or one small organization) calling the shots for everyone in a fairly sizable town. There will be a few constants:

1) The town is liable to end up 'specialized' - that is, most people are in the same general line of work, whether it's the specific thing the person running the place is directly hiring, or supporting industries.
2) The cost of hiring someone will be lower here than elsewhere.
3) The cost of living will be lower here than elsewhere.
4) There's one person (or a small number of people) who calls the shots (although this person isn't necessarily obvious at all).
5) There will be fewer buildings than most places (everyone has Endure Elements up constantly - most weather doesn't bother them at all)
6) Almost no clothing will not be based around practicality, unless it's directly related to a trade (everyone has Endure Elements up constantly).
7) There will be few (if any) beggars on the streets (almost all afflictions go away for 5 cp, and I'm deliberately setting it up so everyone who wants to work can - so anyone with a beggar's bowl is there by choice)
8) There is little, if any, farmland. There's no need. Just what's needed to get stuff for material goods - forests for wood, mines for coal and ore, flax fields for linen, cotton fields, sheep pasture, that kind of thing. But almost nobody is an actual farmer, and the stuff that still needs land doesn't need much of it - so you'll have a walled city that is out in the middle of nowhere, self-sufficient, and doesn't really bother to patrol the surrounding lands at all.