She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

[QuidEst]

Keep 'em in a portable hole (or high-level Yggratecture) with a bottle of air breathing mask! Then they can just make stuff for your next adventuring day while you sleep.

[Primal Fury]

That actually sounds kinda cool, they can carry their tools around in... well here's ANOTHER thing. I'm looking at the class and mechanics... and I'm not seeing what tools the gramarist uses to make their gramarie.

[Morcleon]

That actually sounds kinda cool, they can carry their tools around in... well here's ANOTHER thing. I'm looking at the class and mechanics... and I'm not seeing what tools the gramarist uses to make their gramarie.

They use the material components (if any, usually some quantity of metal) and the power of their mind!

...so none, basically.

[Primal Fury]

Well that's just friggin' weird.

[Morcleon]

Well that's just friggin' weird.

Yep. They use the formulas and theories they know to create things, without need of material tools. Sort of like spells.

[Primal Fury]

I just don't get how you can turn chunk of copper into a semi-living thing without tools... but I guess it is "magitek", so I'll stop thinking about it before I ruin it for mysef.

[QuidEst]

That actually sounds kinda cool, they can carry their tools around in... well here's ANOTHER thing. I'm looking at the class and mechanics... and I'm not seeing what tools the gramarist uses to make their gramarie.

I've played Pathfinder, and I've always wanted to have my Alchemist do that. (He can hold his breath for 14 hours, so the bottle of air isn't even necessary. XP)

The tools are up for you to fluff, but if you'd like a few ideas…

Spoiler

Show

Alchemetry is pretty obvious- crucibles, funny-shaped flasks, distillation, and so on. Focusing more on the diplomacy aspect would mean lots of charts and symbols to deal with the elements based on the alignment of the planets, etc.

Eldrikinetics and Arcanodynamics both require tools for cutting down and reshaping various materials, along with large supplies of the various materials they use. Arcanodynamics would probably involve carving complex diagrams to convert energy and pass it on, while Eldrikinetics relies more on the fuel than the construction. (As seen in the fact that the skill check is largely irrelevant. Eldrikinetics is probably looked down on as inelegant and a Grammarie for those who lack true talent.)

Biollurgy would require carefully controlled conditions to convert and grow the biomass. Methods to feed in or treat it with special substances. Tools may range from surgical to lab equipment similar to what's used in Alchemetry.

Heuristicism is the least tool-intensive of the schools of Grammarie. In an emergency, it can be done with the mind alone, but normally extensive notes are taken to aid in the work. Having access to texts on Heuristicism is even better, since many aspects of the circuits do not have to be formed purely from scratch.

Imachination is also largely free of necessary tools, but is usually performed with visual aids. Having a scent on hand makes it much easier to replicate, for instance, and practitioners of Imachination usually travel with large amounts of magically preserved bottled odors or exotic food, books of reference images, and small samples of material to copy textures from. Illusions created without these aids rely solely on the practitioners memory and imagination.

Kaleidomantics and Yggdratecture are the two geometric forms of Grammarie. Kaleidomantics involves setting up networks of prisms and mirrors to retrieve the purest light possible for use, as well as to shape the light into the correct configuration. Yggdratecture relies on complex many-dimensional diagrams used to warp space in such a way as to create pockets.

[Primal Fury]

Even if it is just up to fluff, I appreciate the ideas. Thanks QuidEst.

[Hanuman]

Alright, first post.

BIG fan of the grammarie, in fact in a "top homebrew" voting thread I made, gramarie was #1 on the list and up for a spotlight until it got locked for review, I have no idea what that review process is or who it involves or how to contact anyone about it, but no one has asked me or told me anything and mods cant be PM'd. The spotlight article I'm going to write about the gramarie is on hold and I'll save the beef of what I think of the class for then. If you want to see extra homebrew content come out for the gramarie, or a nice article and guide about the gramarie feel free to report this post and get their attention or something, its going on 4 weeks now >.>.

I don't have a memorized knowledge of this class, and haven't gone through the 11 pages of backlog responses, so bear with me if some of the things I say are unlearned.

--

What strikes me as odd is that I can't seem to understand why a class that is so focused on building and shaping of matter and ideas has such limitations to the shaping and application of their principles.

One example would be a kaleidomantic filter, it has to emulate a wall of force as a sheet, but cannot be shaped in any other way. The closest thing you can get to an enclosed space is 4 of them in a pyramid, as far as I know, instead of creating a sphere or a ring or shaping the wall in any way you simply cannot and have to make a sheet instead via wall of force baserules.

In a lot of situations I'd want the spell Stone Wall over everything in the kaleidomantic school just because of the freedom of shaping creation it affords.

Another example would be that eldrikinetics cannot hover non-connected objects? I can't see any reference that it can or cannot. If you wanted to make a flying island fortress you may want to grab random chunks of rock and have them hover close under it for effect, which depending on ruleset needs it could be simpler to use multiple smaller engines which you could very well turn off to make a bombardment effect. With the obvious hiding a sunmetal bomb in them. Escaflowne reference (show and movie).

Another example would be that arcanodynamic's transformers do not effect other schools, such as you cannot use a transformer to create a Yggdratecture planar effect on the material plane, or that you cannot net mechanical energy via eldrikinetics--(arcanodynamic tranformer of PUSH)->arcanodynamics output, this would allow windmills or giant conan-the-barbarian slave pushwheels to generate magic from raw torque, instead of having slaves stomp merrily around a wooden stage with a crystal transformer on the bottom or have windmills drag empty tin cans in circles around one or whatever silliness you'd have to resort to for yielding the same effect.

What I'd really like to see, are feat principles. That is, principles that are enveloped in a feat so that you need to take the feat to learn them, this would expand the class while balancing it. Alternatively you could have things like Gramarie Sculpting as a feat allowing some of the things I voiced above, or changing how the base ruleset works, or giving your spectroconstruction a take-10 craft check with ranks in craft equal to half the number of principles you know. Right now there are no skilltricks nor feats I can see that let the gramarist dip further into her class choices.

That being said, I'm really quite satisfied overall with this class and it fills a definite niche in my character building wants, as it replaces quite a few TYPES of classes rather than just singular baseclasses.

Keep 'em in a portable hole (or high-level Yggratecture) with a bottle of air breathing mask! Then they can just make stuff for your next adventuring day while you sleep.

I'd use an Air Plant http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndlive/items.php?ID=2128, which is a living plant which produces enough air to be used as a portable source for 1 person. It can be about as small as the size of a fist but requires being quite damp (its bog or pond-life) so you could just have a sippycup filled with water and air plant and then just leave it out in your semi-plane for a stable fresh air source. Only problem I can think of is that you may filter out all of the other gasses and particulates in the air and get a pure-oxygen environment which could be flammable and intoxicating.

[Kellus]

Alright, first post.

BIG fan of the grammarie, in fact in a "top homebrew" voting thread I made, gramarie was #1 on the list and up for a spotlight until it got locked for review, I have no idea what that review process is or who it involves or how to contact anyone about it, but no one has asked me or told me anything and mods cant be PM'd. The spotlight article I'm going to write about the gramarie is on hold and I'll save the beef of what I think of the class for then. If you want to see extra homebrew content come out for the gramarie, or a nice article and guide about the gramarie feel free to report this post and get their attention or something, its going on 4 weeks now >.>.

I don't have a memorized knowledge of this class, and haven't gone through the 11 pages of backlog responses, so bear with me if some of the things I say are unlearned.

--

What strikes me as odd is that I can't seem to understand why a class that is so focused on building and shaping of matter and ideas has such limitations to the shaping and application of their principles.

One example would be a kaleidomantic filter, it has to emulate a wall of force as a sheet, but cannot be shaped in any other way. The closest thing you can get to an enclosed space is 4 of them in a pyramid, as far as I know, instead of creating a sphere or a ring or shaping the wall in any way you simply cannot and have to make a sheet instead via wall of force baserules.

In a lot of situations I'd want the spell Stone Wall over everything in the kaleidomantic school just because of the freedom of shaping creation it affords.

Another example would be that eldrikinetics cannot hover non-connected objects? I can't see any reference that it can or cannot. If you wanted to make a flying island fortress you may want to grab random chunks of rock and have them hover close under it for effect, which depending on ruleset needs it could be simpler to use multiple smaller engines which you could very well turn off to make a bombardment effect. With the obvious hiding a sunmetal bomb in them. Escaflowne reference (show and movie).

Another example would be that arcanodynamic's transformers do not effect other schools, such as you cannot use a transformer to create a Yggdratecture planar effect on the material plane, or that you cannot net mechanical energy via eldrikinetics--(arcanodynamic tranformer of PUSH)->arcanodynamics output, this would allow windmills or giant conan-the-barbarian slave pushwheels to generate magic from raw torque, instead of having slaves stomp merrily around a wooden stage with a crystal transformer on the bottom or have windmills drag empty tin cans in circles around one or whatever silliness you'd have to resort to for yielding the same effect.

What I'd really like to see, are feat principles. That is, principles that are enveloped in a feat so that you need to take the feat to learn them, this would expand the class while balancing it. Alternatively you could have things like Gramarie Sculpting as a feat allowing some of the things I voiced above, or changing how the base ruleset works, or giving your spectroconstruction a take-10 craft check with ranks in craft equal to half the number of principles you know. Right now there are no skilltricks nor feats I can see that let the gramarist dip further into her class choices.

That being said, I'm really quite satisfied overall with this class and it fills a definite niche in my character building wants, as it replaces quite a few TYPES of classes rather than just singular baseclasses.

Thanks! I'm glad that you like the material!

I've got a whole lot of questions that I haven't gotten to yet on the last couple pages, but yours was very interesting in a design sense, so I'm answering it right away– you're totally right that the system has a lot of fairly arbitrary limitations that don't make a whole lot of sense. I went with this model for a few reasons.

First, I feel like this kind of approach best emulates the feel of the magitech that I want. It seems to evoke the idea that we don't fully understand or appreciate the underlying mechanics and mathematics behind the things that make gramarie work, and that seems to make it feel more exciting, exotic, dangerous, untested, and new.

Second, it is much easier to make sideways comparisons between material, easier to write for and balance against, and easier to create a common vocabulary for people to describe what they build and how they built it. If the system were ridiculously open-ended, it would be even harder than it is right now to describe how and what you're doing to the rest of the party or to strangers on a message board!

Third, and maybe most importantly, it engenders creativity and innovation. If you can build anything you want without restriction, there's no challenge. There would be no thought required, no consideration of what rules interact, and what conditions need to be met. Having limits, including arbitrary limits, encourages creativity, innovation, and a drive to think outside the box that I've never seen with any standard ruleset. This is exactly the paradigm that I wanted to create with this ruleset, where people need to take these unwieldy and impractical principles, and figure out a way to apply them to their particular circumstances and situations; because I figure that's pretty much what magical engineering would be like.

Thank you for the comments, and I'm sorry for the slow progress! More material will be coming in the next little while, as I have a co-op term this winter– should leave much more time for gramaric goodness! In particular, I may have found a truly marvelous solution that everybody will enjoy on the subject of feats, but this margin is too narrow to contain it.

[General Patton]

In particular, I may have found a truly marvelous solution that everybody will enjoy on the subject of feats, but this margin is too narrow to contain it.

I see what you did there.

[Hanuman]

That was a really thoughtful response, and the ideas you brought up were well put and clever.

I haven't playtested the gramarie yet as I haven't got a chance, I dropped to 5hp and lost 10 con last session, obviously I require to grapple with and eat more zombies to reroll as a gramarie

The thing is, with something like a push transformer you can store mechanical energy and put it back out. I'm pretty sure core gramarie is intended to make steampunk possible, such as with spectroconstructed railways that can be built as you drive on them and built as perm. routes between kingdoms via coal -> fire/steam -> transformer -> Push for a steampower train, but you can't currently have a windup clockwork construct by using heuristic intellect to embody an object powered by mechanical-driven puissance. Is it even possible to make a construct tinkerer with a gramarist without being a structure or vehicle?

Edit-
Ok, I just remembered what was is in the back of my mind.
Remember One-Piece? That anime that took 3 times as long as dragonball z to finish a plot arch but was actually great when it did actually do it's emotional context?
They had DIAL tech. http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Impact_Dial

This is what a dial is:
A dial, is an archanodynamic transformer which nets, stores and releases in a portable form, usually has a heuristic button on it to release.
The types of transformers are:
Impact = Push, and can be used to apply bludgeoning damage as a touch attack
Breath = Gas storage vacuum, can compress wind to release a sustained jet of aircurrent
Flavor Dial = Modded breath dial, slow-release
Flame Dial and Heat Dial= Adjustable ice arcanodynamic transformer
Jet Dial = Combination of impact and breath dial to apply both wind and push
Flash Dial and Lamp Dial = Adjustable gold arcanodynamic transformer
Reject Dial = Push dial that can turn everything around it to pulp
Tone Dial = Adjustable crystal dial, but can be used to record sound.
Vision Dial = Adjustable gold dial, but can be used to record light, like a camera.
Water Dial = Water storage vacuum, same as Breath dial for liquids.
Rest of the dials are too obscure to know how they work.

The main difference I can spot is that dials have the option to record specific input and then release copied output, and that their output is generally either set at creation or is in ratio with the input.

These are made from very specific seashells, so having a seashell component is actually a pretty clever way of not allowing your characters easy access to portable transformers at all, it's better for a DM to just drop pre-made transformers on their players, even if they have never heard of a gramarist.

[Hanuman]

I've created a 3.P epic spell using the gramarist rules to make the game cube from reboot.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...0#post14298400

[Omnicrat]

Hm... Silver transformers do set a precedent of the energy type (in this case, magical) being expressed in a focused manner, rather than a general one. I don't see any reason why, at the very least, one could not use crystal outputs to store pre-recorded messages, important speeches, or even music. Might be some balance issues applying this to ice and mercury transformers (used to maintain specific temperatures present at their creation), but I can't quite figure out what.

Also, if anyone knows where I can find mithril and adamantine priced as a commodity, I can get back to work on the price guide. Otherwise I'll just have to make something up.

[Amechra]

I'm trying to work out some rule-ish stuff for a fallen ancient-world facility built with grammarie, and damn it, there aren't really any rules for this stuff decaying.

The best I've been able to come up with (people will be able to find grammarie principles as treasure, which will help the small community they are running) for why the thing stopped working is that the safeguard was activated (the EI that ran the thing was instructed to shut down everything until ordered to turn them back on), and then someone smashed the generators, so that none of the more impressive features of the place (the factories, the defensive features, the planejump pillar*...) actually work.

I think there should be rules for shutting down EIs without destroying them. Alternatively, for them to transition themselves into and out of a chassis to avoid destruction.

I've also been waffling about changing how Silver transformers work, since the setting has no arcane magic, but I have no substitute coming to mind.

So yeah.

*The planejump pillar was built by the 100 most blessed engineers in the land (They all were Grammarist/Prime Movers with Green Energy and Intricate Engineering, who commissioned a few Contractors to make them some Ice-Phlogiston generators using enhanced Phlogiston (which means they generate 198 Ebbs a round.))

The pillar is a square column, ten feet square at the base and 1089' tall.

It is, after the Heuristic circuitry is installed (that actually was already added, I just need to figure out how long it took), fully capable of moving 25 cubic miles of materials between planes. Once a round.

It took them 109 days to build, in 10 hour shifts. They kinda needed to get the materials for the engines, but they bought those...

As you can probably tell, the ancients had ready access to the more advanced aspects of grammarie... to say the least (hey, considering the weirdness of how time works in the setting (to put it simply, every 3 years there's a single day where everything ages by a month), you'd be motivated to advance too; not to mention engineer gods.)

EDIT: I also just found the most potent possible explosive in this system.

It involves a Shadowright and a Contractor working together, grabbing the Ruby Ruination and Phlegmatic Phlogiston abilities.

Create a solid cube of Phlogiston that's a foot on each side; using the enhanced Phlogiston, you're getting 2000 degrees.

Now, set up some system so that you can have the cube of phlogiston pass through the red filter, oh, let's say once per round.

Each pass-through gives the filter 198 ebbs.

When the red filter collapses, it explodes, creating a fire ball with a radius of (ebbs)*5' and dealing (ebbs)d6, with a reflex save for half (that probably won't be that high...)

Let's say that we let this thing run for an hour; that's 600 rounds, for a total of 118800 ebbs.

For reference, that gives you a fireball with a radius of 22.5 miles, dealing, on average, 415800 damage.

Letting it run for 24 hours gets you a 540 mile radius that deals 9,979,200 damage on average.

I may or may not have one of these in my setting that has been going for over 1000 years.

That's a 197,100,000' radius, dealing over a quadrillion damage.

It wouldn't even reach the moon, but, well, it would be enough to destroy the moon, no problem.

[QuidEst]

I'm trying to work out some rule-ish stuff for a fallen ancient-world facility built with grammarie, and damn it, there aren't really any rules for this stuff decaying.

Well, it's not something that's normally included in the rules, but I have a few thoughts…

- Heuristics occasionally are a little finicky. Too much magical energy all at once, and they'll start behaving erratically. Over very long periods of time, little fluctuations in magical energy are enough to upset the systems, resulting in unpredictable behavior or failure.

- Biolurgy can die out or be killed.

- Alchemistry reacts with its surroundings, picking up impurities and degrading over time. Gold is an exception, as it has low reactivity, and will never deteriorate perceptibly.

- Aracanodynamics is similarly relient on the integrity of the materials. Wood rots, copper tarnishes, ice melts, etc. In addition, if a net does not carry any ebbs for an extended period of time is unable to refresh itself, and breaks down.

- Eldrikinetics engines are generally made out of more resilient materials, but some can break down. Those that survive should be in working order, although there may be a drop in efficiency. (Treat them as being one size category larger on the chart.)

- Imachination needs to be experienced to maintain itself. Extended periods without being experienced causes it to fade. Without further use of imachination, it is impossible to restore a faded illusion.

- Kaleidomantics. I always liked the idea that this is like the plastic of the Magitek world. Unless you actively destroy it (as described), it will last forever.

- Yggdratecture slowly shrinks over time. Semi-spaces get smaller and smaller (pushing out their contents) until they collapse on themselves. Polarcane fields shrink as well, until the effects are no longer observable.

[sirpercival]

Question (maybe this was answered already, but I'm not wading through 22 pages of comments right now):

Say you prepare a silver output transformer to produce a spell with an xp cost (and pay the 50x). Then you use that transformer to cast the spell into a second silver output transformer which was prepared by a HEUR302 circuit. Who pays the cost? Do you, even if you're not there?

[Omnicrat]

Question (maybe this was answered already, but I'm not wading through 22 pages of comments right now):

Say you prepare a silver output transformer to produce a spell with an xp cost (and pay the 50x). Then you use that transformer to cast the spell into a second silver output transformer which was prepared by a HEUR302 circuit. Who pays the cost? Do you, even if you're not there?

No one pays it. The version cast out of the silver output does not actually have any xp cost.

[jojolagger]

No one pays it. The version cast out of the silver output does not actually have any xp cost.

One could argue the version of the spell cast into the transformer has a 50 times greater xp cost. Because it cost that much when the imprinter cast it.
Further more, when run that way, it costs more to make a silver input that imprints other inputs, which makes sense for balance.
If you can make one device of limited wish for 15000 xp, one should not also be able to create 10 devices of limited wish for 15000 xp total.
If you enforce the 50 times thing for each level of imprinting, it gets more and more costly the more the device snowballs, which makes sense.

[Amechra]

I'm still thinking that, well, there's some good things to be said for trying to convert silver transformers to a different spellcasting system...

Also, RK/P (Red Kaleidomantic filter passed through by Phlogiston, after grabbing the ability that allows Red Kaleidomantic barriers to absorb heat like an ice in generator), can be optimized to an absurd degree.

It's simple, really; open up a pair of Yggdratecture subspaces, one 5' above the other.

Have them open into each-other so that they loop; actually, just to simplify the math, have them combine so together they form a 1x1x5 tunnel.

This means that anything you drop falls through a continuous 10' loop. This is important.

Now, make a red kaleidomantic filter covering the mouth of the upper tunnel.

Apparently, my earlier statement that terminal velocity was 300' per round is wrong; according to Sage Advice in Dragon #327, you fall 500' per round, with a 1200' per round terminal velocity.

Now, that's kind of confusing, so let's just leave it at the 500' per round.

Grab the Phlogiston. Use tongs, man!

Drop it in the hole, and move away.

Why move away so soon?

The phlogiston is going through the filter 50 times per round, charging it up with some good ol' ebbs!

What's even better is building the two subspace's opening in such a way that they can be moved; move them so that they touch, and the damn things falls through the filter 100 times per round.

That's 9800 ebbs a round. And red filters have no limit...

So, here's what you do, if you really need power. Lot's of it. It's not repeatable without being reset, but...

Create a set up where, at the time of you getting your energy is necessary, activate both some source of cold damage (enough to destroy the filter) and an ice input.

The average ebbs you get from a single round of this thing running is 5716~5717 ebbs.

The one issue is that you also need to have an entirely fire-proof barrier around the set up, or else everything within 5716~5717 feet (per round that the thing ran) will be annihilated in fire damage.

If you really want a massive blast, you can charge a Vast Sunmetal object to the exploding point in ~2586570 rounds.

That's 179 days; just under half a year. For a blast that will kill everyone (except some lucky, lucky people with Improved Evasion) within a 147,865,600 mile radius.

For reference, if someone did that on Earth, that would destroy everything within 1.6 AU of Earth.

This is enough to hitentirely engulf and destroy Mercury. From the opposite side of the Sun.

If this was set off at the Sun's position (center of its mass), you'd be able to destroy Mars except if it were at it's furthest possible distance.

Now, if you could get something like 40 of these set-ups together, you could annihilate everything out past the orbit of Pluto (again, from the Sun's position), and make people with Evasion feel really silly as they float around in space and asphyxiate.

Of course, this is very impractical, but a demiplane could be made, with the proper nets converting the proper materials, and then it could be mined...

Let's just say that these are the real WMDs of a Grammarie-using world, and leave it at that.

(Note: simply by adjusting the scale of the Sunmetal you use to make the 'splody, you can limit the size. Not the damage, just the size, since Sunmetal's blast area is based off of how many cubic feet it takes up. So you could literally have a bomb set-up that could fit in a couple back-packs that could take out a city with minimal fuss, leaving a crater a mile deep.)

EDIT: The rule actually is 500' first round, 1200' the next couple of rounds...

Yeah, that's 240 pass-throughs a round...

[Omnicrat]

One could argue the version of the spell cast into the transformer has a 50 times greater xp cost. Because it cost that much when the imprinter cast it.
Further more, when run that way, it costs more to make a silver input that imprints other inputs, which makes sense for balance.
If you can make one device of limited wish for 15000 xp, one should not also be able to create 10 devices of limited wish for 15000 xp total.
If you enforce the 50 times thing for each level of imprinting, it gets more and more costly the more the device snowballs, which makes sense.

I may be mistaken, but unless this was just a ruling by my (former) DM, what I said before came straight from Kellus and is officially how Gramarie works. Not that I don't agree that your way makes more sense, but a rule is a rule (until someone [namely, Kellus] changes it).

[Morcleon]

I'm still thinking that, well, there's some good things to be said for trying to convert silver transformers to a different spellcasting system...

Also, RK/P (Red Kaleidomantic filter passed through by Phlogiston, after grabbing the ability that allows Red Kaleidomantic barriers to absorb heat like an ice in generator), can be optimized to an absurd degree.

It's simple, really; open up a pair of Yggdratecture subspaces, one 5' above the other.

Have them open into each-other so that they loop; actually, just to simplify the math, have them combine so together they form a 1x1x5 tunnel.

This means that anything you drop falls through a continuous 10' loop. This is important.

Now, make a red kaleidomantic filter covering the mouth of the upper tunnel.

Apparently, my earlier statement that terminal velocity was 300' per round is wrong; according to Sage Advice in Dragon #327, you fall 500' per round, with a 1200' per round terminal velocity.

Now, that's kind of confusing, so let's just leave it at the 500' per round.

Grab the Phlogiston. Use tongs, man!

Drop it in the hole, and move away.

Why move away so soon?

The phlogiston is going through the filter 50 times per round, charging it up with some good ol' ebbs!

What's even better is building the two subspace's opening in such a way that they can be moved; move them so that they touch, and the damn things falls through the filter 100 times per round.

That's 9800 ebbs a round. And red filters have no limit...

So, here's what you do, if you really need power. Lot's of it. It's not repeatable without being reset, but...

Create a set up where, at the time of you getting your energy is necessary, activate both some source of cold damage (enough to destroy the filter) and an ice input.

The average ebbs you get from a single round of this thing running is 5716~5717 ebbs.

The one issue is that you also need to have an entirely fire-proof barrier around the set up, or else everything within 5716~5717 feet (per round that the thing ran) will be annihilated in fire damage.

If you really want a massive blast, you can charge a Vast Sunmetal object to the exploding point in ~2586570 rounds.

That's 179 days; just under half a year. For a blast that will kill everyone (except some lucky, lucky people with Improved Evasion) within a 147,865,600 mile radius.

For reference, if someone did that on Earth, that would destroy everything within 1.6 AU of Earth.

This is enough to hitentirely engulf and destroy Mercury. From the opposite side of the Sun.

If this was set off at the Sun's position (center of its mass), you'd be able to destroy Mars except if it were at it's furthest possible distance.

Now, if you could get something like 40 of these set-ups together, you could annihilate everything out past the orbit of Pluto (again, from the Sun's position), and make people with Evasion feel really silly as they float around in space and asphyxiate.

Of course, this is very impractical, but a demiplane could be made, with the proper nets converting the proper materials, and then it could be mined...

Let's just say that these are the real WMDs of a Grammarie-using world, and leave it at that.

(Note: simply by adjusting the scale of the Sunmetal you use to make the 'splody, you can limit the size. Not the damage, just the size, since Sunmetal's blast area is based off of how many cubic feet it takes up. So you could literally have a bomb set-up that could fit in a couple back-packs that could take out a city with minimal fuss, leaving a crater a mile deep.)

EDIT: The rule actually is 500' first round, 1200' the next couple of rounds...

Yeah, that's 240 pass-throughs a round...

PI Generator: 506 ice inputs with minimal bubble size (~1 mm) are alchemetrically treated with phase change and heat capacity and arrayed in a 5 ft radius around 1 cu ft of phlogiston. 506 wood outputs are placed, one per ice input, to transform the energy into puissance and expel it into a heuristic circuit. The above array is placed in a sufficiently large semi-space (approx. 12'x12').
Output: 50,093

More power than just gravity.

[Amechra]

Wait, where is 1mm given as the smallest bubble size?

Also, with the actual fall speed subbed in (1200' per round), you get 23,520 ebbs per round.

Note, you can only get these dumped all at once, unlike your (dubious) set-up; however, they take only a few cubic feet, and can be, after one round, destroyed to deal 23520d6 damage to everything within 117,600 feet (about 20 miles, give or take.)

Also, and I wasn't going to mention this, but...

I simplified the above (and understated it) by having the semi-space loop be 5'. the minimum size you can have it be (you just have to rotate the semi-spaces later... put 'em on a pair of plates, and it's a done deal) is 1' of falling distance per iteration (much smaller, and you get to the issue of "so, if I were to drop a bunch of paper-thin sheets, would I get the heat from each one?").

At 1' of falling for each iteration, that comes out to 1200 pass-throughs a round.

This just got to the point where, using a single block of unaugmented Phlogiston, we're getting 117600 ebbs per round.

Again, that's a burst amount, but quite frankly, it makes an amazing emergency battery for your floating island (each one takes up, at most, a 5' cube. You could have banks of them, each one dumping their energy if your generators go off line (due to sabotage!). Seriously, each one outputs enough energy to power pretty much anything you could want on that floating island for a round, and refilling the actual, non-burst batteries to capacity all at once.)

Remember, they start out with only 39000 ebbs generated on the first round the phlogiston drops, but accumulate 117600 ebbs every round thereafter.

Leaving this thing to run for an hour is 7.045e7 ebbs, out to 3 significant figures.

Leaving it for a year (totally doable; it only takes 4 hours to create one, anyway, so you can build 'em, and stick 'em in a climate controlled vault) is 6.171e11 ebbs.

Of course, cracking them open for the power inside is crazy dangerous, but that's half the fun!

[Morcleon]

It was never specified a minimum, I just selected something arbitrarily small.

Where exactly is it dubious? Also, it's a lot safer (but can't be weaponized as easily).

[Amechra]

First of all, because how are you getting those 506 Ice-in generators close enough that they can generate their respective bubbles? After all, when it says that they "emit" the bubble, that means that it is centered on at least a part of themselves.

The best packing algorithm for cubes is something like 13 touching another cube, which essentially ends up being the largest number of bubbles that can effect an object (due to the bubble having to include at least part of the block inside of them, or else the thing isn't "emitting"; anything further away than that is going to overlap with another bubble, which isn't a problem as much, but which does cap your number of bubbles.)

Off hand, I think you can get something like 13 bubbles without the Arcanodynamics PrC coming out and giving them the ability to shape the bubbles.

Also, the best packing algorithm would end up having unprotected ice touch the phlogiston (pretty much unavoidably; anything that covered every part of the ice would also overlap, lowering the number of bubbles that you could keep up.)

So, best case scenario, you are getting 6 inputs before too much overlap occurs, unless you shape the phlogiston into some crazy shape. Or you have red kaleidomantic filters protecting the ice, which actually would work better...

And before you say that the ice itself could be shaped into spindles, while that is technically correct, it does make the entire thing harder to guard against being randomly melted, thus messing up energy flow.

So, best case scenario: We've got 13 cubes generating tiny bubbles, with Red filters shielding them from melting (arcanodynamic bubbles ignore Kaleidomantic filters); that gives up 1261 ebbs per round, after accounting for wood transformer loss. I hope you weren't planning to have a chain of wood transformers, because that would cause a massive amount of ebb loss...

[Morcleon]

And so on in that fashion. A bubble can actually take any shape you like that would fit into the bubble of the appropriate size, but you still need to prepare the principle enough times to create that volume of effect. Essentially, you can always choose to have the bubble fill less than the full volume of the bubble if you like.

Bubbles can be shaped. And each ice-in is only 1 cu ft. The 5 ft radius of the phlogiston fire aura is 5^3*pi*(4/3)=523.599 cu ft

So then, just make each ice-in shaped in whatever way would minimize the space between them. I think I just took away a few cu ft of space to account for that...

[Amechra]

You do run into the problem of the weight of all this; gotta be careful not to hit a large enough multiple of the carrying capacity.

And I forgot about the heat radiating out; still, there is the issue that the ice has to be 1 cu ft', so you actually can't cover all the space (You are going to need a bubble of at least a radius of a bit over a half-foot for each, because you want them covered.)

Also, now that you mention it, I kinda remember Kellus mentioning shaping bubbles, but I thought that was a thing that would be introduced later on (look at the PrCs that each give an ability that allows you to deal with weird shapes. Why should arcanodynamics be any different?)

But yeah, the thing is, there's going to need to be a ruling on how small you can make a bubble, because if you go by "it just has to fill up to that 5' cube", you could design a bunch that, you know, are micrometres wide or thinner and get arbitrary amounts of energy.

At least my method (which is an entirely different kind of "power generation") takes less than 4 hours to set up if you can get the Phlogiston from elsewhere, so an Elf Grammarist could literally produce one a night...

Plus, it doesn't interact with poor wording that can get you to (effectively) limitless energy each round.

[Omnicrat]

I think the fact that it takes so long to make is the check against being able to have tiny bubbles. Yes, you get more bang for your buck, but its incredibly heavy and time consuming.

[Amechra]

Whereas building a massively potent explosive takes 3~4 hours!

[Milo v3]

Using some Ballistic Engines I got an arrow going at Mach 3, but I lack Complete Warrior. So how much damage would a normal arrow deal when going at projectile speed?