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

[QuidEst]

So far, in six hours of playtime, the players have boarded a ship and landed on a beach in Yucatan. Landing on that beach provoked a 1.5 hour discussion on gramarie-methods of clearcutting jungle.

Just warn them that you're going to start adding discussion time to in-character gramarie preparation time.

[Grimsage Matt]

There are only two gramarie-methods of clearcutting jungle.

The First is a Giant Chainsaw that can move and operate itself.

The other is a flamethrower.

[Morcleon]

There are only two gramarie-methods of clearcutting jungle.

The First is a Giant Chainsaw that can move and operate itself.

The other is a flamethrower.

Silver transformer w/ disintegrate + (Ice input + phlogiston)

Crystal transformer (sonic) + (Ice input + phlogiston)

Biollurgical chassis with grafts designed to cut down trees.

Sunmetal nuke (if you don't mind completely screwing over the ecology of said jungle)

Yggdratecture portal under the sea (at 8000 m, ~800 atm) to a smaller handheld portal to create a water beam cutter.

The possibilities are limited only by imagination.

[jojolagger]

There are only two gramarie-methods of clearcutting jungle.

The First is a Giant Chainsaw that can move and operate itself.

The other is a flamethrower.

A Bunch of Colossal++++ Biollurgical chassis that is herbivorous and eats trees.
A Self replicating mobile chainsaw.
The sound cannon I talked about earlier.

[Qwertystop]

A Bunch of Colossal++++ Biollurgical chassis that is herbivorous and eats trees.
A Self replicating mobile chainsaw.
The sound cannon I talked about earlier.

I thought we showed that the soundcannon didn't work?

[Grimsage Matt]

Sunmetal nuke (if you don't mind completely screwing over the ecology of said jungle)

Good third option. However, I will admit that I place my "options" on what is the most absurd or what causes the biggest explosion. Or if it burns. I'm a mad scientist after all.

[radmelon]

Anything self-propelled could use an orthogonal engine, which consumes wood. With any luck, it'll be self-powering.

[jojolagger]

I thought we showed that the soundcannon didn't work?

I am not referring to this sonic cannon:

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I don't know about that. I mean, with gramary, you can construct super weapons that clearly should inflict infinite damage without a saving throw. Really, I made a sound cannon that can subject a hemispherical area in front of it to the combined energy of an arbitrarily high volume of noise accumulated over an arbitrarily long duration. You think 100 people talking at once is bad? With Create Sound, I could get 4 people talking for weeks or even years and hit you with the sum of all that in one instant. This should, by all accounts, vibrate your subatomic particles apart.

I'm referring to this one:

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A crystalOut that does lots of sonic damage would leave a crater as a result of it also damaging the ground. A crystalOut keyed to an iceIn wrapped around phlogiston, assuming high enough skill checks to pass the energy around, would be capable of cutting 3.8111 feet into a stone floor with only average damage.
Combine that with the damage being a 980 ft. cone, and you can destroy more than 18 million cubic feet of stone with a single shot.
Just build the 98d6 sonic cannon.

Even if they can't get the skill check of 98 they need, four grammarists, assuming +15 from the best bonus and +6 from aid another, can get 41 when taking twenty.
Which results in a 41d6 sonic cannon, which should be sufficient to shred the trees down to sawdust. 143.5 average damage should punch through thinner trees in one shot, and larger three in likely no more than 3 shots, while working out to a range of 410 ft.

[QuidEst]

Actually… I would say use Spectroconstruction, if it's allowed. It's a boring answer compared to the others, but you get 7200 man hours. If they're allowed buck saws (the long ones), they can tear through a forest pretty fast. If they take sixty times as long as the world record (10.78 seconds), and there are 450 trees per acre, that's 89 acres or so per use. Four PCs, and we'll say they're level three, so they'll fail something like half their checks to use it. So every day, they can cut down the Hundred Acre Woods and build a house out of it, or cut and clear out the logs. Higher level PCs can, of course, do all this much more efficiently.

It doesn't take time away from crafting, and the result is felled trees rather than cinders. Actually, if it weren't for Biollurgy churning out carnivores and/or biomasses that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, I'd be pretty worried.

[radmelon]

Actually… I would say use Spectroconstruction, if it's allowed. It's a boring answer compared to the others, but you get 7200 man hours. If they're allowed buck saws (the long ones), they can tear through a forest pretty fast. If they take sixty times as long as the world record (10.78 seconds), and there are 450 trees per acre, that's 89 acres or so per use. Four PCs, and we'll say they're level three, so they'll fail something like half their checks to use it. So every day, they can cut down the Hundred Acre Woods and build a house out of it, or cut and clear out the logs. Higher level PCs can, of course, do all this much more efficiently.

It doesn't take time away from crafting, and the result is felled trees rather than cinders. Actually, if it weren't for Biollurgy churning out carnivores and/or biomasses that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, I'd be pretty worried.

Yes, spectroconstruction might be the most efficient answer, but there comes a time in every man's life when he must choose between what is right, and what is awesome.

[QuidEst]

Well, compare with the fancier methods. Sonic cone of destruction- much higher level, and it's working four acres at a time. It requires level 14, and lots of time to take 20. Sunmetal Nuke is pretty much a level 20 thing because of the DC. Water pressure cutter is level 14 as well, but the water pressure would destroy the weak portable semi-space almost instantly. (Reinforce with blue Kaleidomantics! Now you just need 29 gallons of pig blood to get it down there, and you're good.)

I propose that clearing the forest be left to spectroconstruction so that the time can be better spent working towards the creation of a giant, undyingly loyal, soul-draining exotic intelligence centered on yourself. Or tag-teaming with a Biollurgy specialist so that said intelligence can have a custom-built programmable body. Then start developing illusions for it to use as lures. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

[jojolagger]

Well, compare with the fancier methods. Sonic cone of destruction- much higher level, and it's working four acres at a time. It requires level 14, and lots of time to take 20.

True, but via bulk purchase, a high efficiency set of IceIn phlogiston generators can be purchased for 4 hours * Specialist Doctorate level work/pounds of phlogiston produced + cost of 1 pound of iron. + 1 hour * Doctorate level work + 1 lb. of blue ice.
Or (4*2187/3920+643+cost of iron). or 646 gp, assuming 1 lb iron to cost ~.75 gp.
You see, you make 8 cubic feet, or 3920 lbs. of phlogiston, cut it into 1 lb. chucks, and embed them in IceIn transformers.
Numbers assume doctorate level magitek setting. That said, *3 to the magitek costs for magisterial level magitek is (4*6561/3920+1129+cost of iron), or 1136 gp, assuming ~.3 gp for a lb. of iron.
The Creator would be at least level 14, meaning a reliable 27 ebbs per battery per round if he took ten and was terrible at optimization. Really, 35 or 40 would be a more realistic number.
Simply put, these are cheap plug and play generators that are worse for balance than orichalcum.
I mean, a Grammarist can sell 35 ebb generators for 1300 and be making over twice what he would normally earn (in a doctorate level setting).

EDIT: Got well derailed there. The point being, the sonic cannon is available at level 7, unless you absolutely must use that energy source and make it personally.

[QuidEst]

Sure- if you're playing in Doctorate tech levels, you can get anything. Rich people probably have private floating islands with biomass trees to filter the air.

cut it into 1 lb. chucks, and embed them in IceIn transformers.

The embedding process would be a nuisance, but it's doable. (Take a wider area IceIn transformer so you can handle the phlogiston, put the phlogiston in the middle of a 1'x1'x1' cube of normal water, and then use Alch 325 to raise the melting point of the water to well above room temperature.) A safe system would enclose the 5 ft. radius in a red filter and keep a separate IceIn block encased in red filter on hand as a failsafe. That should be enough to keep the phlogiston from burning anybody making repairs, even if the system is damaged.

[jojolagger]

Sure- if you're playing in Doctorate tech levels, you can get anything. Rich people probably have private floating islands with biomass trees to filter the air.

~650 gp in a doctorate level setting, ~1200 gp in a magisterial setting, and ~2600 gp in a Baccalaureate level setting.
Ie. Available on the wealth of a third level character.

Also, embedding is easy. You take Blue ice at bit below the melting point, pouring a pound of molten phlogiston onto the blue ice, at which point it stops ~ halfway through and the whole thing solidifies. Then you make it an IceIn and have the reactor.

[Omnicrat]

Actually… I would say use Spectroconstruction, if it's allowed. It's a boring answer compared to the others, but you get 7200 man hours. If they're allowed buck saws (the long ones), they can tear through a forest pretty fast. If they take sixty times as long as the world record (10.78 seconds), and there are 450 trees per acre, that's 89 acres or so per use. Four PCs, and we'll say they're level three, so they'll fail something like half their checks to use it. So every day, they can cut down the Hundred Acre Woods and build a house out of it, or cut and clear out the logs. Higher level PCs can, of course, do all this much more efficiently.

It doesn't take time away from crafting, and the result is felled trees rather than cinders. Actually, if it weren't for Biollurgy churning out carnivores and/or biomasses that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, I'd be pretty worried.

After the hour and a half long discussion, and a rules ruling or two, we actually did wined up just using specroconstruction. Turned out only the part of the jungle nearest the beach really needed clearing, anyway.

[Grimsage Matt]

You didn't use enough force that the land will be scared with fallout for Ten Thousand years Shame on you.

[QuidEst]

~650 gp in a doctorate level setting, ~1200 gp in a magisterial setting, and ~2600 gp in a Baccalaureate level setting.
Ie. Available on the wealth of a third level character.

In lower tech levels, you might not be able to get a bulk rate, and it might not be available. You need people able to make DC 65 diplomacy checks. 45 bonus required to pull it off when taking 20. That takes a fair amount of dedication to reach. The same person could instead be making themselves immortal and selling immortality on an installment plan at DC 60, making way more money in the process with much lower risk.

Also, embedding is easy. You take Blue ice at bit below the melting point, pouring a pound of molten phlogiston onto the blue ice, at which point it stops ~ halfway through and the whole thing solidifies. Then you make it an IceIn and have the reactor.

I don't think so- the phlogiston just melts all your blue ice. The temperature is 1000 C once it goes in.

EDIT:

After the hour and a half long discussion, and a rules ruling or two, we actually did wined up just using specroconstruction. Turned out only the part of the jungle nearest the beach really needed clearing, anyway.

I thought that might be what the real goal was. Nice to see that poor spectroconstruction getting some use!

[jojolagger]

I don't think so- the phlogiston just melts all your blue ice. The temperature is 1000 C once it goes in.

1000 C doesn't melt blue ice. It melts at the same point as iron does.

Bulk rate is somewhat valid, but my method is still within the rules.

[General Patton]

I thought it was stated that Blue Ice isn't actually ice. If anything, I'd expect it to be concentrated elemental coldness in crystalline form.

[Omnicrat]

True, but via bulk purchase, a high efficiency set of IceIn phlogiston generators can be purchased for 4 hours * Specialist Doctorate level work/pounds of phlogiston produced + cost of 1 pound of iron. + 1 hour * Doctorate level work + 1 lb. of blue ice.
Or (4*2187/3920+643+cost of iron). or 646 gp, assuming 1 lb iron to cost ~.75 gp.
You see, you make 8 cubic feet, or 3920 lbs. of phlogiston, cut it into 1 lb. chucks, and embed them in IceIn transformers.
Numbers assume doctorate level magitek setting. That said, *3 to the magitek costs for magisterial level magitek is (4*6561/3920+1129+cost of iron), or 1136 gp, assuming ~.3 gp for a lb. of iron.
The Creator would be at least level 14, meaning a reliable 27 ebbs per battery per round if he took ten and was terrible at optimization. Really, 35 or 40 would be a more realistic number.
Simply put, these are cheap plug and play generators that are worse for balance than orichalcum.
I mean, a Grammarist can sell 35 ebb generators for 1300 and be making over twice what he would normally earn (in a doctorate level setting).

EDIT: Got well derailed there. The point being, the sonic cannon is available at level 7, unless you absolutely must use that energy source and make it personally.

1) You would need a cubic foot of blue ice, not one pound.
2) Blue Ice was ruled to not be ice for the purposes of transformers.
3) Iron costs 1 sp

[Eldan]

You didn't use enough force that the land will be scared with fallout for Ten Thousand years Shame on you.

That's down in Peru. How did you think Cuzco the Earthshaker founded his Empire of the Sun?

[QuidEst]

1000 C doesn't melt blue ice. It melts at the same point as iron does.

Bulk rate is somewhat valid, but my method is still within the rules.

Oh… I couldn't find anything called "Blue Ice" in the class description, so I assumed you meant regular frozen water that's been treated with ALCH 325 to raise its melting point to above room temperature. You don't need Blue Ice, though. (Treating the water does raise the cost again, though.)

So! I was upset with the current state of cars, requiring half a ton of wood in place of a gallon of gas. That's all right if you're in a Baccalaureate setting, have money (and trees) to burn, and are just going around town. I give you… the seventh- and ninth- level cars for non-experts!

During your first six levels, pick up HEUR 101, and YGGD 101. At seventh level, you get a Magisterial Principle. Take YGGD 212 (Polarcane Geometry). Build your car to look roughly like a steamroller, but give the rollers tire-like treads. The rollers should be filled with a really heavy/dense material for a quarter (25% on a pie graph), and a light-but-sturdy material (tin or wood) for the other 75%. Make two gravity redirection fields the shape of the rollers (you can create any shape that fits within the appropriately sized sphere), and tether them on the rollers. Hook up your HEUR 101 heuristical circuit to include both rollers. The circuit constantly spins the gravity in the rollers. The heavy portion follows. No fuel!

How is on/off handled?
•Make a low autohypnosis check on the circuit.
•Take ARCD 101 and make a SilverIn transformer with a small radius. Hit it with any spell, and the logical circuit will switch on or off. Not a great method.
•Wait until level 9 (*sigh* Two levels to get your second Magisterial Principle…) and get HEUR 245 (Nonstatic Instruction) to allow speed control and on/off.
•Buddy up with a level 7 guy who's taken either HEUR Magisterial principle. They both work, although 245 will work better.

How is braking handled?
Manually. Not /everything/ has to be magical. You shouldn't try to brake while gravity is still spinning, though…

I think this would be an emerging transportation for Magisterial tech-levels. There might be some variations, of course… using four half-dense half-light spheres instead of two rollers trades traction for omni-directional movement.

Baccalaureate tech settings probably use horses. They take much less fuel than an orthogonal engine. Any orthogonally-driven cars would use a semi-space to hold ~372 lbs of wood, enough for two hours of continuous operation (during which the vehicle would travel 7 miles). A souped-up model with five engine blocks instead of three could run for 75 minutes, but would be able to travel 8.5 miles. Now, by D&D 3.5 firewood prices, that "tank of gas" would only run you 1sp, 9 cp. That's… nowhere near as bad as I thought, actually. Still more than three times the operating cost of a horse in order to get walking speed or running speed, depending on which it is. (Wood prices would rise if orthogonal cars started catching on.) A horse costs more initially, but can do a lot more.
Note: This assumes that the vehicles are automobile size- if they are "human with a jetpack" fuel efficiency is twice as good, and speed is much better. Horses are history, and the clear-cutting of forests begins. One environmentally unfriendly industrial revolution, coming up.

Doctorate level goes to two-part engines because fuel stops being an issue. Why move on the ground when you can fly? Poor people will still burn wood using orthogonal engines.

[Draken]

Blue Ice is a special material from Frostburn.

[Qwertystop]

How would you guarantee that the grav-car wouldn't just start flying in a tiny vertical circle, pushed by the wheels?

I'd say it would be best to use KALD 101 for a Yellow filter relative to a small stone or something, and build a flat sheet-metal platform on top of the field. Then put a large heavy object with a slot to firmly hold the field-stone in the front, and use a gravity-redirection-thingy like you said for horizontal propulsion.

[QuidEst]

How would you guarantee that the grav-car wouldn't just start flying in a tiny vertical circle, pushed by the wheels?

The weight ratio of the wheels and the car would be important. So long as the car weighs more than the wheels, it won't fly. You are going to get a bit of "bobbing". Actually… hills wouldn't work. On a steep enough incline, the weight of the car pulls the whole thing back down.

I'd say it would be best to use KALD 101 for a Yellow filter relative to a small stone or something, and build a flat sheet-metal platform on top of the field. Then put a large heavy object with a slot to firmly hold the field-stone in the front, and use a gravity-redirection-thingy like you said for horizontal propulsion.

Ah yes… and if you had a nice sports car model, you would be falling with style.
This will work a lot better, yeah… Actually, a slight adjustment to what you're suggesting. Currently, reducing acceleration will flip the car. The gravity field only controls direction, not strength of gravity. The only way to "ease off" the accelerator is to point gravity not-quite-forward, but a little down instead. The stone needs to sit just a bit behind the front wheels.


Next- cheaper free energy!

Sure, we can get as much energy as we want from phlogiston + IceIn. But how do we get it at a lower level, cheaper?

You want a heavy fly wheel for your mechanical generator. Have two gravity fields, covering one half of the wheel, and one covering the other half (50% pie chart for both of them). Point the gravity fields in opposite directions, creating a torque. The top half of the wheel falls forward, while the bottom half falls backward.
<-
O (Highly technical diagram)
->
As each part of the wheel enters the new gravity field, it's accelerated along the new "down". Hook it up to regular wheels with some gears or something, and there you go! Reducing acceleration is easy- you can angle the gravity fields so that instead of pointing exactly forwards or exactly backwards, they're pointing at a little bit up and a little bit down respectively. Slowing down is just reversing gravity.

Other details:
•Heavy spinning wheels are very dangerous. If they get going fast enough, they come apart into what amounts to a lot of bullets.
-Just stick it in a yellow filter to keep it contained. (Also, don't let it spin fast enough to explode, 'cuz then you have to replace it.)
•Why don't I run my car with this?
-Having a giant, heavy wheel spinning really fast is like a gyroscope. It'd be really hard to turn corners or travel at any incline.
•What else can I do with this wondrous technology?
-Remember that "exploding" bit? It'd be impossible to time, but seriously, a polished lead or steel sphere that has a heuristic on-switch for two gravity fields? That makes for a really nasty grenade. No power transfer, either, so WoodIn can't turn it off.

[jseah]

(if you don't mind completely screwing over the ecology of said jungle)

Um,
Clearcutting jungle more or less destroys the ecology of said jungle. Sunmetal nuke just negates the task of weeding afterwards.

[QuidEst]

Um,
Clearcutting jungle more or less destroys the ecology of said jungle. Sunmetal nuke just negates the task of weeding afterwards.

Clear-cutting trades the jungle ecology out for a new, smaller ecology. The trees are gone, but some of the animals can deal with that or move, and you leave all the grass, plus everything underground. Sunmetal nuke kills all the animals, including the insects in the ground, and then effectively salts the earth so that nothing can grow there for half a century.

[Ezra_The_Mad]

I'm trying pretty hard to figure out how to make a functioning TARDIS.

It obviously involves yggdratecture, probably a couple thousand man-hours preparing YGGD 353 as a separate demiplane, accessible from the outside as a blue box. Heuristical circuitry with an immensely powerful EI runs the beast (Heart of the Tardis. Go watch [I]The Doctor's Wife[I]). It's probably set to dead magic to simulate the grace field, with a ton of eldrikinetic engines hooked up to some kind of extraplanar power source (The Time Vortex. This may or may not suit your cosmology.) It almost certainly has a planejumping engine that essentially allows it to cheat relative to mass and FTL limitations- By jumping to the Ethereal plane, your mass relative to the Prime Material is instantly zero. You could accelerate to at least a significant fraction of C or faster by simple virtue of not having any mass and no limits on terminal velocity. The Time Vortex probably has some insane time trait that allows actual travel through time while within the plane.


Bam. Stat out the Doctor and the Master as epic-level grammarists.

[kopout]

Biostructure can heal and can be eaten. Can you cut off a chunk of Biostructure to eate and have the main mass replace it? I know fast healing dosn't alow for regenation of body parts but this isn't like amputating a limb it would be more like carving out a lump of skin and fat.

Edit:
If not how about this a principle

Spoiler

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BIOY 210: Artificial horticulture
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisite: BIOY 101, Heal 8 ranks
Target: 1 cubic foot of biostructure
Preparation Time:

This principle alows a mass of Biostructure to take on the sembalance of a plant. At its most basic this means that the Biostructure can convert energy and one imput matterial into an output matterial. In addition to needing to brath the Biostructure must be kept moist and exposed to at least dim light in order to proform this function.The output is determind at the time of preperation and can only be changed by using this preperation a second time.{table=head]Output|DC|Production time/ cubic foot
Food|15|5 days
Wood|20|150 days
Bone|25|100 days
[/table]
Food produced in this way is nutritios but bland and rubery it contains no seeds. It is posible to maintane a diet of only food produced in this way and remain healthy.

[Amechra]

That principle should actually let you just set the flavor of the food to whatever, a la Prestidigitation.

Because why not? It's totally fine to make plants that make little cakes spring forth from the end of their branches!