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  1. - Top - End - #91
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    LordotheMorning's Avatar

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Vauron View Post
    Note that the unit of measure is cubic feet. To find the length of a side of a cube when all you have is the cubic feet, you need to find the cube root. In this case, the cube root of 8 is 2. This means that those 8 cubic feet transformers are cubes whoses sides are 2 feet long. To give you some contrast, a 5 foot cube like those used by medium characters takes up 125 cubic feet.

    The whole 'cubic feet' thing is also your problem with semi-spaces, although the fact that Kellus went from noting the length of the sides in YGGD101 to cubic feet in YGGD241. A cube that has a volume of 64 cubic feet has sides that are 4 feet long.
    So the maximum size of a semi-space isn't even large enough to fit a person inside without crouching down? I'm not sure why you'd even bother creating a flux inside one at that point.

    One other question I forgot to ask: Is there any way to store ebbs without Orichalcum? If you absorb energy from with a transformer, it must be used then and there or it dissipates, correct? For example, could a Ballistics engine store ebbs of puissance needed to fire it and save it for later?

    Also, changing a Hueristic circuit seems like a pain if you need to beat your own autohypnosis check every time you do it. What if you roll a 20 while setting it up, and as a result you only have a 1/20 of being able to change it? Or can you bypass the need to roll a check if you are the one who set up the circuit?
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-20 at 10:59 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #92
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    Kellus's Avatar

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

    Hey, people like it! But seriously, let's respond:

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    Curie Effect (aka. nuclear reactor)
    Very clever! Yes, nuclear energy is the way to go if you have enough room and are a high enough level, for sure!

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    Planck-Becquerel Generator (aka. Solar Panel)
    Yeah, just like in real life, solar generators can produce a fairly consistent stream of small energy outputs.

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    Carnot Engine
    Haha, I was wondering when people were going to bring elementals into the mix! Moral ramifications aside, they're certainly a nice source of constant heat.

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    Neumann Cycler
    You've got some pretty awesome ideas! The light cycle is a clever exploit in the pricing of cantrips! It's certainly conceivable that you could use it to replicate itself, although you would need some high level heuristical programming for it. You would also need to reproduce the heuristical principles every time you make a new machine, though.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zale
    You could make a magic cannon with this.
    Yes, you absolutely could! But remember that you can only channel a number of ebbs in a transformer in a given round equal to your Use Magic Device check. And while skill checks can get pretty wtfhuge, results in the hundreds are still pretty tough.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan
    Edit: and the SI unit of Magical Energy should totally be the Thaum, btw. Gigaebb doesn't have the same flow as Gigathaum.
    Ahaha, originally I was going to use thaum, but then I remembered that it was plagiarism and decided not so much. Ebb comes from Eldritch Blast, which seems to me to be the most consistent and reproducible magical effect in the game at low levels. And, from a level 1 warlock it would be the equivalent of 1 ebb.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vauron
    I'm almost disapointed that basically all of you went straight to martial uses. I'll start with something less inherently murderous: a train.
    I love trains! Yours is simple, but very well done! Perfect to slot into a renaissance magitek setting!

    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra
    The End of Caster Supremacy. Forever.
    I'm kind of a little afraid of what I have wrought now.

    But seriously, that's pretty badass.

    Quote Originally Posted by bobthe6th
    DISINTEGRATE THE WORLD
    Really don't need to say any more (make sure you've got your personal demiplane set up to escape to first).

    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra
    plane-shift the planet
    I need to play more games where this kind of thing gets said.

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    Sorry to rain on your parade, but your train is impossible.
    Vauron is exactly right here. If you have multiple engines affecting the same body, the body can exceed the listed "max speed". The max speed is the maximum you can get from a single engine, no matter how many times you prepare it. I'll clarify this in the text.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ziegander
    I have one suggestion: Allow multiple Gramarists preparing the same principle to halve the preparation time required as an option instead of simply doubling the scope. If two Gramarists can achieve double the wonders in the same time, why can they not produce a normal result in half the time?
    "Nine women can't make a baby in one month."

    But hey, glad you like it! And that goes for the kind words from everyone!

    (next page of responses in next post)

  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    Quote Originally Posted by sirpercival
    This is absolutely awesome. Why do you keep making stuff that I want to add to Magipunk? Like, this should replace my Magitechnician in several dozen ways. Why couldn't you post this months ago when I was working on that? :P
    'Cause I was still trying to figure out how the hell Push should work?

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    And I think this is still mostly due to the Ballistic engine.
    You're mostly right. You're never going to get a flying island moving at Mach 3, but I needed rules that worked for both broad applications of engines in real life: ballistics and transport. That being said, there is the nice fighter-jet sized sweet spot where you can get vehicles that legitimately count as projectiles.

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    I forsee alot of arguments over what is considered "an object".
    I don't think so, it's pretty broad. Most engines just move themselves and whatever they happen to be attached to comes along for the ride. So if a person is strapped to the engine (jetpack), the person + the engine is the "object" for determining Bulk. The only time it's different is for the Ballistic Engine so that you can make cannons that fire, I dunno, miniaturised suns.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan
    Hm. I don't see any way of directly affecting organic matter (though I still haven't read most of this). I suppose that would be the cook's problem
    As I mentioned before, the last discipline got postponed because of holidays. It'll be out shortly, and deals with organic material and animate stuff.

    Quote Originally Posted by jseah
    What is an 'object'?
    What is a 'point in space'?
    The object part seems mostly sophistry (it has a game definition already, and it's pretty self-explanatory), but the point in space part is interesting. I went with the decision to have a lot of principles simply anchor themselves to a given point, and this is where the "game" part of it kind of hampers stuff. Depending on your cosmology, you pretty much have to assume that that point is unmoving relative to the general plane/planet/turtle that it's on. So if your setting happens to take place on the actual real-life Earth, the heuristical circuit doesn't go whizzing off into space the moment you finish it just because the Earth is orbiting the sun. It's an abstraction, which I regret, but it's easier to use in play than pretty much any alternative. Most of those principles also allow you to fix them to objects or people though, which I imagine will be a more popular option for most applications.

    Quote Originally Posted by Welknair
    I am continuously impressed by your work, Kellus. I approve of this addition to the realm of Magitech.
    Hey, thanks! Your magitech is pretty awesome, but not really what I was looking for. You've come up with some ingenious stuff, though!

    Quote Originally Posted by Answerer
    As an electrical engineer, I have to object to the way transmuting something into a conductive metal causes it to take more damage from electricity.
    That is a very, very comprehensive argument. I'm sorry for the mistake, I'm a Mech E in training, not an EE, and know little about the ways of electricity. I will change the text such that conductive metals now receive less damage from electricity. Thank you for the advice!

    Quote Originally Posted by Merchant
    The only thing I would like to see is for a race that has this as a favored class and feats for both the class and the race.
    I don't really like class-specific feats in general for a lot of reasons (that I won't go into here), but the favoured race is a nice idea. I like the idea of goblins, gnomes, and warforged, and I'll see what I can put together. Thanks for the idea!

    Quote Originally Posted by Silva Stormrage
    Just finished reading through the class, though I don't understand what this class does low levels . It doesn't seem to be able to do much other than spam eldritch blast. At high levels I can see him making a tank or flying jet and cannons but he needs too many principles to do that at low levels. Is that intended?
    Yes. This is not a primarily combat-oriented class. Spamming eldritch blast just gives him something to do so that he doesn't feel totally useless in battle, but really it's a class for a different kind of campaign.

    Quote Originally Posted by Silva Stormrage
    Edit: Also what is the weight for a cubic feet of all the materials? I couldn't find a weight in the SRD for things like silver and gold and had to google them. Are the special materials like sunmetal the same weight as the material that made them (in this case gold)?
    Yes, google and wikipedia are your best bet. All of the metals behave like their real-life counterparts, and the special materials specifically mention that they have all of the properties (including density therefore) of their base planetary metals except for the special new stuff.

    Quote Originally Posted by Morcleon
    1. What is the temperature of phlogiston? How far does it radiate heat?
    "On fire" is a fairly nebulous term, you're right. I'll clarify that, and probably cite the fire elemental's burn ability to explain it (or make stuff up).

    2. Can you combine phlogiston with a ARCD 350 ice input transformer to generate an infinite source of ebbs? Blue ice, preferably with an ALCH 101 heat capacity decrease...
    I don't see why not!

    3. Can kaleidomantic filters be shaped into spheres, cubes and other hollow shapes?
    Any 2D shape. So cubes could be done with six applications, and other 3D shapes would have to have various degrees of complexity. Spheres would be nearly impossible, but you could get close once you get to something like a 100-sided die...

    4. If two arcanodynamic transformers have the same area of net, say a silver and an ice, and a polar ray is cast into the area, which net takes precedence?
    An arcanodynamic transformer only works when you have one input and one output transformer touching, so you'll never have perfectly overlapping nets. But that's a good point that you could have situations where it's not clear. I'll specify that the latest net set up in the area takes precedence.

    5. Can a heuristical circuit reach into an open extradimensional space (a bag of holding, an enveloping pit, etc.)? What about a closed one?
    Yes.

    6. How does one extract/store ebbs in orichalcum?
    It would have to be inside of a circuit, you can use a body of orichalcum as a repository for spare puissance. So instead of just dissipating puissance from a wood transformer, you can move the puissance into the battery. Then you can use a circuit to move the puissance from the battery to the whatever.

    7. Can't you simply take five transformers (one each crystal, copper, tin, ice, mercury) and give yourself universal energy immunity for a ridiculously low price?
    Yes, at level 14 and by carrying around 5 cubic feet of metal. Energy resistance/immunity is overrated.

    8. For spectroconstruction, is the "+3 for every additional time per day you activate it" a +3 to your check or a +3 to the DC?
    +3 to the DC, but I can see the confusion. I'll clarify the text.

    9. Can you put the number of daily uses next to the "Spectroconstruction" entry on the table (1/day, 2/day, etc.) so it's a bit easier to tell without having to count the number of previous entries?
    Okay!

    10. What are specialists of each discipline called? Perhaps... Alchemaster, Arcanodynamicist, Eldrikineticist, Heuristicist, Imachinater, Kaleidomancer, Yggdratect)
    Nope! The specialists are the prestige classes that are going to be going up as soon as I get off my butt and stop replying and get back to work! They are the Contractor (Alchemetry), the Arcanitect (Arcanodynamics), the Prime Mover (Eldrikinetics), the Dreamason (Heuristicism), the Sidhengineer (Imachination), the Shadowright (Kaleidomantics), and the Lode-Bearer (Yggdratecture).

    11. What is the significance of the maximum speeds for the larger objects? Is it an arbitrary number based on size, or is there an equation behind them?
    jseah mostly worked this out earlier, but it's a limit to keep giant stuff from breaking the sound barrier but still allow fighter jets and bullets. There is a method to my madness! (this time at least)

    12. Is there a way to increase the fly maneuverability for a two-part engine?
    The two-part engine is an abstraction for game play. It's a rough approximation of what the actual movement of something powered by those two engines would look like, so no. If you want better maneuverability, use one of the higher-end engines.

    13. Can you upgrade an existing item's skill check/bubble? How would one go about doing this?
    Yes, as described in the Principles of Gramarie class feature, the latest time you prepare the principle sets the skill check for the principle in general. So if you don't like the skill check, you can just reprepare it if you have time. Taking 20 generally means 20 hours of work on it, but allows a skill check of 20 until more work needs to be done on it.

    14. Do arcanodynamics transformers have to be 1 cu ft? Can they be smaller?
    They can be bigger!

    15. Would the following arrangement work?
    Um, I'd need to look at it closer and look up blue ice, but it seems like it could work. Let me get back to you?

    By the way, awesome questions! Thank you for the input!

    Quote Originally Posted by Omnicrat
    I just have one suggestion; add a glossary post.
    I'm glad you like it! That's an excellent idea, and I think I might use the last post for it (since I'm not sure I'm going to bother putting up sample schematics: all they do is limit creativity, half the fun of it is imagining what you could do, as this thread shows!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Orderic
    1) Can a Ballistic Engine push itself as well? Because if the answer is yes, then we could combine it, the orthogonal engine and the hang glider from the Arms and Equipment Guide to build a flying machine as soon as we get access to magisterial principles.
    No, and that's exactly why not.

    Quote Originally Posted by Orderic
    2) Unless of course... Can most of an engine be stored inside a semi-space while still working as intended?
    That's an interesting question, and I'm going to go with yes. As long as part of the engine is on the Material Plane, it can generate Push on that Plane. Although the semi-space would also have to go along for the ride... Also, it opens up some interesting applications once you can link semi-spaces!

    Quote Originally Posted by afroakuma
    Mr. Kellus, I have not told you in a while just how much you are my favorite.


    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan
    Note to self: stat up Canada as a particularly lethal demiplane where resurrection is impossible.
    "The Demiplane of America's Hat"

    Quote Originally Posted by Merchant
    Another race might be natural gramarists and get a feat "Extra Principle" at level one. (Extra Principle could be normally allowed as early as level 3 to stop Human race from being to perfect for this group.
    Haha, that's exactly why I don't like class-specific feats. If you don't get the feat you're at an automatic disadvantage compared to every other gramarist, and it just becomes a boring feat tax.

    Quote Originally Posted by Orderic
    And something else... is it really impossible to take yggdratectural portals to other planes, without recreating them there?
    I'm not sure I understand the question entirely, but if you're asking if you can move a semi-space to another Plane, the answer is yes. That's assuming it's tethered to an object or a person, of course.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning
    This is jaw-dropping. The sheer amount of flavor in this class is astronomical. Absolutely love it.
    Thank you! I'm glad you like the feel of the system! I tried to make it setting-agnostic as much as I could so it could be used almost anywhere, but that makes it hard to give a flavour of its own. I didn't really want it to end up just "vanilla" if you know what I mean.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vauron
    The whole 'cubic feet' thing is also your problem with semi-spaces, although the fact that Kellus went from noting the length of the sides in YGGD101 to cubic feet in YGGD241. A cube that has a volume of 64 cubic feet has sides that are 4 feet long.
    Good call! I will check that out and iron out one of the two instances for consistency.

    EDIT: Okay, I checked it out, and the reason for the confusion was that YGGD 101 specifically creates 2ft. x 2ft. x 2ft. cubes, instead of letting you shape 8 cubic feet of extradimensional space. This is mostly to prevent silliness abusing weird shapes. Now, YGGD 241 specifically mentions that it lets you prepare YGGD 101 up to 8 times on the same space, so while it does only say that you have 64 cubic feet, it's implied that that space is made up of eight 2x2x2 cubes arranged however you want and attached to each other. I clarified this in the text. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!

    Thank you everybody for the kind words! Now I have some revisions to make!
    Last edited by Kellus; 2012-08-21 at 02:39 AM.

  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    I did a bit of number crunching and theory crafting, and I'm finding the numbers on Eldrikinetic engines to be a little difficult to work with.

    I started off by trying to create a gun:

    A solid cubic foot of coal weighs around 84 pounds, meaning it takes 28 pounds of coal just to fire a bullet, which deals 1d3 points of damage. The price of lowest quality coal I googled and found to be about 38 cents per pound, meaning it costs $10.64 to fire a standard ballistic engine once. From the estimations I found here, a gold piece is probably between 80 and 160 dollars. For the sake of math, I'll assume it's worth $100.

    The result is that it costs one silver piece to fire a ballistics engine with enough push to fire a bullet, dealing 1d3 damage, assuming that our modern exchange rates are any sort of fair reference. Alternatively, a cubic foot of loose coal pieces weighs between 40 and 60 pounds, meaning it would still take 13 to 20 pounds of coal, costing between 5 and 7 copper pieces.

    This doesn't sound too bad until you consider that a bow doesn't cost anything to fire (except for the arrows themselves) and deals 1d8. And where are you going to keep all that coal? 28 pounds per shot, compared to .1 pounds per shot that you'd get firing an arrow, makes it a pretty cumbersome form of ammunition.

    If Yggdratecture works the way I hope it does, and objects inside a semi-space are weightless, you could potentially solve this problem with YGGD 241 by creating a weightless chamber for coal that could be as large as you need it to be (by creating semi-spaces within semi-spaces). Seeing as how the engine to launch your bullet in the first place would be large enough to warrant the use of semi-spaces in the first place, the engine could be placed in a semi-space, with more semi-spaces holding coal directly above it. Thus, you could end up with a fairly elegant looking rifle whose moving parts are all in a semi-space mounted on it's front. The barrel of the ballistics engine would presumably exude from the semi-space for aiming purposes, like this:

    Spoiler
    Show


    Again, this sounds managable, but creating a gun in this way would require the use of your specialization, a very valuable commodity seeing as how you only get one, in Yggdratecture. Pulling this off without YGGD 241 would be difficult. A cubic foot of copper weighs about 550 pounds, which means you sure as hell aren't going to be carrying around 8 times that much unless the completed engine weighs less than the materials you need to make it (?), but fortunately you have just enough room to store 8 cubic feet in a non-upgraded semi-space. From there you'd have to rig a device to hold another semi-space above that one to load coal into an input device that also pokes out of the first semi-space, like this:

    Spoiler
    Show


    (My apologies if the text is a little hard to read.) This doesn't take into account a third loading mechanism for the actual bullets. Depending on how much coal can be held within the engine itself(?), and if it can do the same with bullets (?), these extra semi-spaces may or may not be necessary. Regardless, if you do not specialize in Yggdratecture, you will not be able to upgrade the amount of push your gun creates due to space and weight limitations (you can only fit one engine inside a 2-by-2-by-2 semi-space), which means you'll be stuck with 1d3 damage unless you don't care about being able to take the gun with you (such as if you wanted to mount it on a ship). Either way, despite all these hoops we jumped through, we're still far inferior to a simple bow.

    At this point, the only way to make this model better would be to change the ammunition to something that takes better advantage of the Gramarist's abilities. I suppose you could shoot Phlogiston for 1d6 fire damage, but that's only if you wanted to specialize in Alchemetry. The only other idea I have would be to create a huge heuristic circuit around yourself and literally launch output Arcanodynamic transformers at the enemy which are set to contingently resume output on contact with your target (Related question: can you have multiple output transformers keyed into the same input if you only use one at a time?). Due to the size requirement of transformers, though, they'd be too bulky to go fast enough do any projectile damage. Anyone else have any ideas?

    EDIT: Would it be possible to create a Kaleidomantic net gun? Essentially, use the same trick with a large heuristic circuit, and launch the spatial reference of a Kaleidomantic barrier, which is contingently set to activate upon being launched? The result would send a yellow or purple barrier flying at your target, but I wouldn't even know how to rule the aftermath of doing something like that... Either way, I don't think it works because you can't suddenly activate Kaleidomantic barriers, can you?

    Now what if I wanted to bite the bullet, take Yggdratecture specialization, and upgrade the engine size using the former model instead of the latter? Shooting arrows at mach 3, for 2d8 damage that hits flat-footed touch sounds pretty good.

    One could fit an engine of up to 64 cubic feet inside an upgraded semi-space, which means it would generate 1,600 push instead of 200. 20,000/30 = 666.6, so unless our Push/Bulk is close to that, we're not getting anywhere near Mach 3. 1,600 push divided by the 8 bulk of an arrow is only 200, which results in a speed of 6,000 ft., which isn't even enough to break Mach 1! Maybe we can at least shoot arrows one size category larger? 1600 push divided by 27 bulk, multiplied by 30 is... 1,778 ft., just 22 ft. shy of projectile speed. Fortunately, bullets with a bulk of only 2 could be fired at 24,000 ft., which is enough to break mach 3 by a healthy margin. The best we can do with a handheld gun seems to be 2d3, but it hits on flat-footed touch, which isn't bad. If you have any static modifiers, the double damage could actually be quite delicious. Does that double damage work with sneak attack dice?

    So what is the cost? One shot of this gun is going to burn a whopping 224 pounds of coal! This is admittedly only around 8 sp per shot, which all things considered doesn't seem all that bad, but that's still a lot of coal to have to get your hands on! The most considerable price is still definitely the fact that you would have to use your specialization in Yggdratecture to pull this off. There's also enchantments to consider. Could you enchant this gun the way you could a normal bow? Could you give it properties? How would returning bullets interact with it?

    EDIT: It occurs to me now that you could afford to use less push to get a bullet going mach 3. Those extra numbers in 24,000 don't do anything, so it would cost a little bit less than I thought.

    Could I fit an even larger engine inside a semi-space if I were to link it to a second semi-space, or would that violate the rule that says it must be a single solid unit? Could I store an 8-by-8-by-4 solid piece inside two linked semi-spaces?

    It seems to me that increasing the push of a Ballistic engine to 300 or even 400 wouldn't be a bad idea. 300 base push would allow for mach 1 arrows, or for tiny-sized objects to reach projectile speed. 400 wouldn't allow any increased benchmarks, but it would still make it a little bit easier on the resource demand. It's seems reasonable to me that a one-time launch engine could exceed the power of a continual motion engine like orthogonal by more than just x2 without being too ridiculous.


    Now I'd like to move on to the concept of an air-ship. Due to the abundant nature of sunlight, we don't have to worry about fueling the ascending engine, but there's still the orthogonal part to consider. To move an airship at 30 ft., you'd need at least 512 units of push, which means at least 6 Orthogonal engines to manage a 35 ft. speed. This would require 6 cubic feet of wood per round. It was difficult to find an estimate the average cubic feet of wood in a tree via google, but I finally found a statistic saying that an average of two trees go into a unit called a cord, which as an 8 by 8 by 4 stack of wood, for 128 cubic feet. Now, a cord is has empty space in it, because it's just a bunch of logs tightly stacked together, so it's probably closer to 100 or 90 cubic feet of actual wood. The end result is that a tree will produce an average of about 50 cubic feet of wood, which is enough for a little over 8 minutes of travel with my size 6 orthogonal engine. Certain trees, like adult Oak, will produce much more, and other trees like Aspen will produce much less.

    In order to power my airship, I'm burning a tree every eight minutes minutes or so, or 7.2 trees in an hour. Moving at 35 ft., I'm going at about 7 miles per hour (according to the PHB), so I'm burning a little more than one tree per mile. Assuming the ship can run 24 hours a day, I could cover 168 miles in a day, which is probably around 173 trees, or 8640 cubic feet of wood.

    This provides another big logistics problem. A cubic foot of wood is going to weigh anywhere from 25 to 60 pounds, so even at it's lightest that's going to be 216,000 pounds of wood! I can't take all that on board without increasing the bulk of the ship, can I? By how much would it increase? How much energy could I save by installing sails on my airship? Where am I'm I gonna get all this wood? Can I buy it? Can I used Spectroconstruction to harvest it? Am I not just inviting the DM to throw angry druids at me?


    Overall, I think it might be easier to measure out materials required in terms of weight instead of cubic feet. Heavier wood is obviously denser, which means the engine should get more energy from it. The same applies to coal and various other fuels. Could it perhaps be that Eldrikinetics has a little too much resource demand for a little too little push?

    In order to make the class playable in a normal session, I think we're going to need a lot more information. There ought to be a chart of all the materials a Gramarist might need to use, their weight per cubic foot, their price per cubic foot (or per pound), the amount of man-hours it would take to harvest or mine a cubic foot (or the amount one could harvest in one use of Spectroconstruction), so that logistics questions don't take so much research to answer. I have no problem googling stuff like this, but if I have to do it in the middle of a session, the rest of my group is going to be cross with me.

    I'm also really eager to know what the prices of Sunmetal, Orichalcum, and other ascended metals are, because one of the first things I'd want to do would be to buy an Orichalcum battery. That might be tricky to balance. If it costs too much, then Alchemetry specialization becomes a gold mine. Too little, and who would ever want to specialize in Alchemetry?
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 05:17 AM.

  5. - Top - End - #95
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    I don't want to double post, but my last one was getting so hairy I figured I should start over since this is a new subject.

    I looked over the Kaleidomantics section again, and I'm afraid I'm not clear how their spatial references are supposed to work. You can fix a barrier to a point in space, that much is obvious, but I'm not sure what happens if you connect it to an object, because the barrier is essentially 2-dimensional. If you set up a purple barrier affixed to, say, a foot-long bar of metal, could you then simply grab the bar and slide the barrier to the side like a door? (It would be important to note that a non-stationary purple barrier wouldn't have any collision with the ground.)

    Can the spatial reference be affixed to the barrier by one of the ends instead of the middle, and can the object therefore be something like the threshold of a doorframe? I could set up a submarine with blue barriers if so (or a spaceship with orange barriers and gravity fluxes), but I would need to be sure that the barriers would move with the submarine.

    Can I create a purple barrier so slim that it acts like a piercing weapon? Could I then make what would essentially be a brilliant energy spear by affixing it to one end of a hilt or shaft? (though not a slashing or bludgeoning weapon because I think those would require weight to do damage). If this is the case, and I really hope it is, one could then potentially increase the damage dice on my gun design by having them shoot razor-sharp discs of superlunar pigment bound to bullets. The effective size and weight would remain the same, but I would essentially be shooting large chakram at that point. The final step would be to carve slight grooves into the bullets to ensure they loaded properly (I don't them firing with the blade end facing away from what I'm aiming at)
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 05:39 AM.

  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    Okay, huge posts! Let me answer some of the questions?

    I personally think that coal would be most useful as a power source on board a ship or something, where you're using big engines to launch cannons or harpoons or something, and where you can store all the coal you would need (or keep the spaces that connect to places where you keep all the coal). For firearms, if you really want to launch physical objects, you might have more luck with an eldrikinetic engine built out of a semi-space, that is powered straight off of puissance from the input. So either a wood-output transformer or actual orichalcum beads or bars that you buy and then insert into the firearm to charge it. For example, a bar of orichalcum with 10 ebbs in it (enough for one shot) is about 100 gp, and can be recharged later. Or a light-input puissance-output transformer that's powered by everburning torches or something. Or a gun that actually shoots magic missiles when you yell loud enough.

    Basically, what I'm getting at is that there are a lot of ways to look at almost any problem in the system. The other main thing to mention is that your personal level isn't necessarily the same thing as the technology level of the setting. You might just be able to buy phogiston and orichalcum, since they don't go away when you use them. This all depends on the setting you're in, and is the main reason why this material is as much for DMs as it is for players.

    Okay, the airships: if your problem with wood-burning engines is storage space, YGGD 101 provides pretty much as much storage space as you need. Or you could just use actual sails, and use the wind to move, like a boat; once you defy gravity, the hard part is done. A very small force can get a levitated object moving pretty easily. Or you could look at other methods of lift, like dirigibles or vacuum airships; both of those are possible with kaleidomantic filters.

    That being said, you raise some excellent points on the numbers needed for Push. I tried to err on the conservative side to prevent abuses, but after spending the last few hours checking math, I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm going to increase the Push from a Ballistic engine to 400 points, and decrease the wood requirement for a simple orthogonal engine to 1 pound of wood every minute. So you'll still need a lot to propel big stuff for long periods of time, but not chopping-down-forests numbers. (Also, it makes automotives more feasible)

    Coal is also probably a bad resource to use for a Ballistic Engine, since it's not really defined in-game. I'm going to change the fuel required for a Ballistic Engine to bone instead, and reduce the required fuel to 1 pound of bone per shot. That should make things a little easier to have firearms of various types and sizes. I'll be noting fuel requirements in both weight and volume to make things more user-friendly as well.

    The higher level engines seem mostly reasonable as they are, especially since you'll have all sorts of additional options at the 300-level. Like a demiplane made of acorns that you carry in your pocket, for example. But I'm going to reduce the fuel requirement for all of them slightly.

    The price of all of the high-level metals is the same as any other gramarie: 10 gp per Baccalaureate principle, 100 gp per Magisterial principle, and 1,000 gp per Doctorate, plus the cost of the materials needed.

    Thank you for the suggestions!

    Kaleidomantics:

    Yes, once you fix it to an object or creature you can move it around however you like, and it rotates in space. Blue filters that are fixed around a frame to make a submarine move with it and turn with it and everything.

    Yes, by the text (and by intention), a Violet filter can be used to make touch attacks if it's launched, since it passes through everything that's not living matter.

    EDIT: The other big change that I made was to reduce the volume for the actual SO Engine and Ballistic Engine to 1 cubic foot per preparation. You still need huge room for the fancy engines, but those ones are now a little easier to carry around.

    Note: If anyone's confused about any changes, the OP always has the latest dates of changes and modifications to the rules text.
    Last edited by Kellus; 2012-08-21 at 03:02 PM.

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

    Oh my goodness, you can move Kaleidomantics?!

    *jaw drop*


    Too bad though, Neumann cyclers are impossible unless embedded principles from Abnormal Behaviour don't go away when they are activated. (ie. they can be activated as many times as you have ebbs to power)


    EDIT:
    holy crap. Tie a violet filter to an arrow, fire the arrow at mach 3. *splat*
    Last edited by jseah; 2012-08-21 at 03:31 PM.

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

    1-Get two people
    2-Prepare a 10X10 horizontal Violet Filter under person A's feet, relative to them
    3-Prepare a 5X5 horizontal Violet Filter over person B's head, relative to it
    4-Person A stands 2.5 feet from person B
    5-Person A grabs the Violet Filter ledge above himself and pulls himself up

    Problem, gravity?

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

    That could be an interesting type of flooring. If one did not mind things going away if you dropped them..
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    Alright, part of me wants to design a von Neumann machine using this system...

    You would need to be a Heuristicism specialist, though; you kinda need to shove an AI and all the principles necessary onto nets...

    Though this does lead to the issue of... wait, no, you would only need one of each principle involved, as well as an intelligence that was instructed in making copies, and nothing else...

    Because it would be necessary to set them to minimum Intelligence, or else they would get dumber with each cycle, and that would be bad.

    But, yeah, anyway, it would take me a bit to write it up, but you would only need (off the top of my head) a Transformer, a couple of Heuristic nets, a few Eldrikinetic engines, a couple sub-spaces, and maybe a few Alchemetry principles, to be sure that I would be dealing with the proper materials.

    Int 3 is smart enough for me to coordinate self-replication, right?
    ---

    A question I have been meaning to ask; namely, we can connect a Silver input and a Wood output, for example, to convert magical energy into ebbs, right?
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    The thing with self replication is that principles can't cast principles (apart from the contingent one).
    That's what I meant when I said Neumann Cyclers need embedded principles from Abnormal Behaviour to not go away when activated.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra
    Int 3 is smart enough for me to coordinate self-replication, right?
    Int 3 is the minimum for sentience. That's why Animals all have Int 1 or 2 and why Int 3 is the minimum for a half-orc character.

    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra
    A question I have been meaning to ask; namely, we can connect a Silver input and a Wood output, for example, to convert magical energy into ebbs, right?
    Yes, you can connect any input to any output.

    As far as the embedded principles going away after one activation, that certainly wasn't the intent. The idea was that the principle is programmed intot the circuit, and whenever the circumstances are met or triggered, it activates that principle in a preprogrammed way. So you can have things like orichalcum-manufacturing plants and stuff. I'll take a look at Abnormal Behaviours and make sure that's clear.

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

    All right! The Neumann Cycler is officially possible!

    To start things off, here's a Independent Locomotion module. This is intended to be a platform that other modules can be stuck on.
    Eg. a scout to go find raw metal sources.

    Independent Locomotion
    Spoiler
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    Planck-Becquerel Generator - Eternal Flame x 3
    -> Simple Orthogonal Engine

    The trick:
    The 6 transformers are shaped into equal sections of a sphere and the Simple Orthogonal engine is a hollow iron sphere wrapped around the outside.
    The 3 gold inputs occupy marginally larger sections than the Wood output and have a little hollow to themselves on the inside of the engine shell, that hollow contains an Eternal Flame to power it.

    A Heuristical circuit pegged to the center connects all of them in the appropriate ways and contains an Exotic Intelligence (or is part of one).


    This is the smallest moving independent unit I can manage. It just rolls around, ideal for flat land.

    The Jumping Jack is identical except that the shell is made of copper and is a Ballistic engine. The engine moves the internal transformers, which then causes the entire ball to hop. This engine is more designed to climb stairs or rocks that the rolling ball cannot get up.

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

    Thanks for your response! I'm sorry, but I ended up casting another Wall of Text. If you want to get the rest of your content out before worrying about my concerns, I totally understand.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus View Post
    I personally think that coal would be most useful as a power source on board a ship or something, where you're using big engines to launch cannons or harpoons or something, and where you can store all the coal you would need (or keep the spaces that connect to places where you keep all the coal). For firearms, if you really want to launch physical objects, you might have more luck with an eldrikinetic engine built out of a semi-space, that is powered straight off of puissance from the input. So either a wood-output transformer or actual orichalcum beads or bars that you buy and then insert into the firearm to charge it. For example, a bar of orichalcum with 10 ebbs in it (enough for one shot) is about 100 gp, and can be recharged later. Or a light-input puissance-output transformer that's powered by everburning torches or something. Or a gun that actually shoots magic missiles when you yell loud enough.
    That reminds me. What would be the caster level on said magic missles? 3?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus
    That being said, you raise some excellent points on the numbers needed for Push. I tried to err on the conservative side to prevent abuses, but after spending the last few hours checking math, I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm going to increase the Push from a Ballistic engine to 400 points, and decrease the wood requirement for a simple orthogonal engine to 1 pound of wood every minute. So you'll still need a lot to propel big stuff for long periods of time, but not chopping-down-forests numbers. (Also, it makes automotives more feasible)
    Fantastic. One question, though. Is spiral motion producible by an orthogonal engine? How fast would you have to spin an object to make it a weapon, say to make whirring buzz-saws?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus
    Coal is also probably a bad resource to use for a Ballistic Engine, since it's not really defined in-game. I'm going to change the fuel required for a Ballistic Engine to bone instead, and reduce the required fuel to 1 pound of bone per shot. That should make things a little easier to have firearms of various types and sizes. I'll be noting fuel requirements in both weight and volume to make things more user-friendly as well.
    If you're changing the fuel source to bone, might you also want to change the material of the ballistics engine from copper to something that makes a more thematic fit? I love the way flesh engine to blood fuel/gold engine to sunlight fuel fit, and it'd be a shame to break that. For that matter, does the thematic of bone fit the mechanic of the ballistic engine?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus
    The price of all of the high-level metals is the same as any other gramarie: 10 gp per Baccalaureate principle, 100 gp per Magisterial principle, and 1,000 gp per Doctorate, plus the cost of the materials needed.
    This led me on another number-crunching crusade, and the results I found are a little scary in terms of balance. If Eldrikinetics were a little too weak, perhaps Arcandodynamics are a little too strong. It seems to me that if you manage to obtain any significant amount of orichalcum, your power skyrockets. If it's 1,000 gp/hour, and the principle takes 4 hours, then that's 4,000 gold + the price of tin for 200 cubic feet or 500 ibs, whichever is exceeded first. Turns out Tin is about 456 pounds per cubic foot, so you could get just about, 1.09 cubic feet for 4,000 gold, enough to hold 109.6 ebbs, or 110 if you round up. Now add the price of tin, for which I'll use the same method I used to derive the price of coal (which is a rough method to be sure). Tin is currently $5.07 per pound, which I'll round to $5, which is 5 sp if 1 gp = $100. The price for my 500 pound block is then only 25 gp. The full battery would therefore cost 4,025 gp.

    With the Gold transformer, I can get access to nigh infinite energy at a slower rate of accumulation by level 5. With a single gold transformer, I can generate 3 ebbs per round, meaning I could charge it fully in 37 rounds, a little under 4 minutes. Now, 3 ebbs per round might be balanced for level 5, enabling you to deal 3d6 damage or cast a level 3 spell with the right transformer, but with an Orichalcum battery things get ridiculous quickly. The only thing stopping me from buying sunmetal and dropping nukes at this point would be price. Going off some of the other posts in the thread, I could get a cubic foot of gold for 12,000 gp, and then transform it into sunmetal for 4,000. So for about 20,000 gold, which 4 level 5 players could manage if they pooled resources, they could drop a nuke. If you have Hueristic specialization, then you won't even have to worry about killing yourself in the blast, because you can set it to go off in 5 minutes/on impact/whatever else.

    Of course, 20,000 gold is a lot for a one-use trick, so there's also a more sustainable way to have fun with Orichalcum using a simple Silver transformer. Assuming level 5 again, I could take 4 minutes to charge the battery. Then, assuming max ranks and 16 CHA, I could take a 20 on my UMD check for 31, enabling me to fire bolts of 31d6 untyped damage 3 times per encounter at level 5! After combat, set out your generator for about 4 minutes and you're good to go again. We'll call it a Death Ray. Setting this up would cost... 12,000 for the gold transformer, 1,200 for a silver transformer (rough estimate, assuming silver is worth 1/10 of gold and disregard differences in density between the two metals), and 4,025 for the Orichalcum, for a total price tag of 17,225 gp. Due to the weight, I'd probably have to have it carried by a wagon, or I suppose I could simply keep all the but the business end of it inside a semi-space (which almost seems a bit unfair).

    The price is really the only thing that brings any balance to it, and even then I'm fairly certain that an orthodox enchanted item capable of doing what this does would be a waaaay more expensive. I didn't expect a gold transformer to cost quite as much as it does, but regardless, the major problem is Orichalcum, which is, in my opinion, the best ascended metal by a long shot. Even Sunmetal has only specific uses and requires Arcanodynamic specialization to harness as an energy source. For 4,000 gold it's an absolute steal. It turns that meager 3 ebbs per round into a god-like force to be reckoned with. This must have been why I assumed I wouldn't have access to Orichalcum when I built that gun in my earlier post, because I guessed that if I did, I'd be on my way to bigger and better things. The idea of storing ebbs completely revolutionizes the way the class works. Producing 3 ebbs per round doesn't sound too bad until you introduce a way to store it, at which point it turns into 43,200 ebbs per day, the equivalent 4,800 9th level spells. Something like should either cost more than you could imagine or simply be impossible. I want to feel as though ebbs are difficult to get without a lot of preparation and resources, but Orichalcum breaks this by making actual ebbs per round produced irrelevant.

    I can think of a number of general suggestions to tone it down a bit, which I will spoiler in case you'd rather come up with your own idea (I don't want to stifle your creativity).
    Spoiler
    Show

    -Adjust the price of Gamarie to the level of magitechnology in the world. In a Doomsday Magitech world they would sell Doctorate for 1,000 per hour while in Magitech Rennaissance they would sell it for a much higher price, and in Low-Impact world, it would cost a fortune. This would make sense because skilled gramarists might be incredibly rare in a more traditional setting.

    -Severely reduce the amount of ebbs a cubic foot of Orichalcum can hold.

    -Severely reduce the amount of ascended metal you can create with a single 4-hour preparation.

    -Limit the amount of puissance you can have flowing through a Heuristic Circuit by some factor of your autohypnosis check. This would prevent atomic explosions from being as easy to create, but it wouldn't prevent the Death Ray, however, as one could simply max ranks and take a 20 again.
    EDIT: Actually scratch that idea completely because you could always just make more circuits.

    -Implement some form of diminishing returns to Orichalcum batteries. Perhaps they aren't rechargable, or perhaps they're less efficient at storage the larger they are. Perhaps they lose energy over time when inactive? Or maybe drastically increase the amount of time it takes to charge Orichalum?

    -Raise the price of Orichalcum specifically by a large amount, or use a more precious metal as its base (like platinum).

    -Make it so that transformers can only absorb/output a certain amount in accordance with their size, meaning that it would probably take more than a cubic foot of silver to get to 31d6.


    Also, can any of the ascended metals be found in nature?

    Thinking about weight vs. cubic feet got me thinking that if ALCH 364 is overpowered, ALCH 101 might be underpowered. Stone is going to be somewhere between 145-160 pounds per cubic foot, which means about 3.3 cubic feet of stone per preparation. So, you see that stretch of the town wall you'd like to harden? The one that's 100 feet wide, 10 feet thick, and 20 feet tall? Better get crackin', cuz that's gonna take you 6,060 hours to do! And that's probably not even the whole wall! Might wanna take another look at other principles with similar targets, because I'm noticing a trend that weight per cubic foot is usually a lot higher than anticipated.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus
    Yes, once you fix it to an object or creature you can move it around however you like, and it rotates in space. Blue filters that are fixed around a frame to make a submarine move with it and turn with it and everything.
    If that's the case, then I'm gonna need some rules for damage/knock-back when you get crushed/pushed by one of these babies, because to me, the #1 coolest thing to do with this is shoot them at people. I'd want to rig up a 20 ft. chain, fix a barrier to it, and then swing at in a circle to shunt people around. Hell, you could literally make a giant flyswatter and swing it through buildings to splat the people inside! It'd probably be some sort of modified bullrush, using a function of the weight of the spatial reference to which the barrier is linked, but leverage might also be a factor. You probably know more about physics than I do. Or perhaps there's already something in the established rules you could use to calculate it?

    Worse still I could create an 100 ft. long (or more) spinning blade out of a violet barrier, and propel it with a powerful orthogonal engine (like I mentioned earlier). Ride that baby through town and you've got a giant lawn-mower that mows living things instead of lawns. But how do you even begin to calculate how much damage that would do?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus
    Yes, by the text (and by intention), a Violet filter can be used to make touch attacks if it's launched, since it passes through everything that's not living matter.
    This is so unbelievably cool.

    EDIT: The other big change that I made was to reduce the volume for the actual SO Engine and Ballistic Engine to 1 cubic foot per preparation. You still need huge room for the fancy engines, but those ones are now a little easier to carry around.
    Also good.

    One last thing: Would darkness created by an input gold transformer be magical or natural darkness for the purposes of darkvision?

    EDIT: One other MAJORLY important question. You know that rule with crafting that says you work 8 hours a day and you can't work more than that per day? Do Gramarist's get that too?

    I'm sorry to drill you like this. If you want to hold back responding until you finish your final discipline/prestige class stuff, then by all means do so. I'll be paying rapt attention.
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 07:20 PM.

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

    @LordotheMorning: Actually, your trick can be improved upon quite significantly, with my P/I (phlogiston/ice) Generator! (Disclaimer: Does not actually make pie.)

    Put 8 cu ft of phlogiston (heat-radiating) in a semi-space, and make the entrance a 1 in diameter chip or something similar. Place an input ice transformer made of blue ice in a 1x1x1 semi-space with an opening of the same size and shape of the first entrance. Place the two openings together. Get a heuristical circuit to bond the ice input transformer to a silver output transformer, which is also placed in a semi-space with a small opening (placed on a staff or something). Assuming 14th level and arcanodynamic specialization, your UMD check is:

    17 (ranks) + 5 (Cha) + 2 (mstwk tool) + 7 (class boost) = 33

    Take 20 on the ice and silver, and you get 53 ebbs transformed per round, converted to 53d6 at about a mile range as (effectively) a free action each round. The entire apparatus (assuming you make everything yourself except for the phlogiston and not including the relatively small amounts of raw material) costs 4000 gp.

    The P/I generator makes 100 ebbs per round, and considering this array only uses 53 ebbs per round, you can add on even more transformers. And if you add on even more generators, you get even more power per round! Also, it has insignificant weight (about three marbles and a staff), and you only need one staff, no matter how many generators and firing points you add.

    This can all be done at a lower level (and higher optimization), but requires you to buy more stuff.
    Last edited by Morcleon; 2012-08-21 at 07:24 PM.
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    Default Re: She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

    I believe the simplest version of my troll physics flying device would be a Violet Filter shaped like a box with an open top, with its spatial reference being a steering wheel like object. Sit in the box holding the object and lift/turn it.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning View Post
    If that's the case, then I'm gonna need some rules for damage/knock-back when you get crushed/pushed by one of these babies, because to me, the #1 coolest thing to do with this is shoot them at people. I'd want to rig up a 20 ft. chain, fix a barrier to it, and then swing at in a circle to shunt people around. Hell, you could literally make a giant flyswatter and swing it through buildings to splat the people inside! It'd probably be some sort of modified bullrush, using a function of the weight of the spatial reference to which the barrier is linked, but leverage might also be a factor. You probably know more about physics than I do. Or perhaps there's already something in the established rules you could use to calculate it?
    I second this notion. A surface being held at a fixed distance from something else that can be moved will break physics as soon as someone starts interacting with both the Filter and the object it's affixed to. You can't even meaningfully calculate the motion since there's no forces involved with some of the components of this system. Without constructing physics for it, you could carry infinite weight on a Filter glued to an object and create bootstrap drives that we can only assume move at infinite speed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zale View Post
    That could be an interesting type of flooring. If one did not mind things going away if you dropped them..
    You are now imagining a dungeon in which the floor is a purple barrier suspended above an enormous pit. In this room, you encounter a fighter who is the best damn disarmer you've ever seen. You drop your weapon and down it goes. Like a rust monster, but infinitely more creative and amusing.

    @Morcleon: Yeah, Phlogiston may potentially be another problem-causing ascended metal. My point wasn't to optimize it, but to point out how much power you can get by level five as a way to help Kellus balance. At the very least, this happens at level 14, and at that point things start to get broken anyway. I'm also not sure if Phlogiston stacks addi- *checks numbers of Phlogiston and Ice transformers*... . Phlogiston is a full 980 degrees hotter than room temperature, so it produces 98 ebbs/round?! And that means normal fire does near that too!

    EDIT: I think I should have read your entire post before typing my response. I think Kellus is gonna have to swing a nerf bat at this one too.

    Also, I think you forgot about the price of blue-ice. Unless you used Alchemetry to make it.
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 07:48 PM.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning View Post
    Thanks for your response! I'm sorry, but I ended up casting another Wall of Text. If you want to get the rest of your content out before worrying about my concerns, I totally understand.
    Wow, you have some really insightful questions. I'm being lazy and putting off finishing Biomachinery, so let me answer your questions first.

    That reminds me. What would be the caster level on said magic missles? 3?
    The same as the caster level of the caster who placed it there in the first place. You need to cast a spell into an arcanodynamic transformer in order to get it to output the spell in the first place.

    If you're changing the fuel source to bone, might you also want to change the material of the ballistics engine from copper to something that makes a more thematic fit? I love the way flesh engine to blood fuel/gold engine to sunlight fuel fit, and it'd be a shame to break that. For that matter, does the thematic of bone fit the mechanic of the ballistic engine?
    Bone I think thematically works fairly well (violence), and is at least something that isn't going to cause arguments finding in-game like coal. I'll admit copper doesn't thematically have much of a link to it, but it does have the sort of spirit of early ballistics, cannons, and firearms that I think the principle evokes, so I think it'll do. I want to make sure it's a planetary metal to make sure it's in good supply, and most of the others are already taken.

    (interesting stuff about pricing and orichalcum)
    This is a really interesting topic. I agree that the idea of storing puissance allows you to do a lot more than ever before. At 14th level+ that's totally okay, since everything is lolwtfbbq but before that it can certainly have some nasty side-effects with clever parties.

    I'll think about various scenarios, but I think the most reasonable solution is to be careful as a DM introducing any higher tech level material into lower tech settings.

    I've tried to stay away from the economic side of things, mostly because:

    1. I don't really care
    2. I don't know much about economics
    3. Any economic decision is predicated on the specifics of the setting

    Especially number 3. I can't make generalisations like "orichalcum is especially valuable in low-tech settings", because maybe someone wants to run a low-tech game set in a post-apocalyptic setting where the fallout of the angel wars has left a lot of orichalcum and phlogiston deposits lying around. Essentially, I trust DMs to understand the material, and control how it enters into their game. Orichalcum is a Doctorate-level effect for a reason.

    But let me think a little more about it, I might at the very least put some guidelines in about handling orichalcum in the setting. At least advise DMs not to hand out massive chunks of it.

    Also, can any of the ascended metals be found in nature?
    No, unless you want them to be in your setting.

    Thinking about weight vs. cubic feet got me thinking that if ALCH 364 is overpowered, ALCH 101 might be underpowered. Stone is going to be somewhere between 145-160 pounds per cubic foot, which means about 3.3 cubic feet of stone per preparation. So, you see that stretch of the town wall you'd like to harden? The one that's 100 feet wide, 10 feet thick, and 20 feet tall? Better get crackin', cuz that's gonna take you 6,060 hours to do! And that's probably not even the whole wall! Might wanna take another look at other principles with similar targets, because I'm noticing a trend that weight per cubic foot is usually a lot higher than anticipated.
    The 101 principles don't have especially large impacts on the setting, and in this case at least it's pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. 6,060 hours is quite a while for one party member, but if he hires, say, a construction crew of 50 1st level gramarists, he can be done in about a week. Faster if they're elans or warforged or something else that doesn't need to sleep. The point is that in order to do big-scale stuff like that you need teams and crews working together to get big engineering projects done. On your own, you can harden the party's equipment and stuff, sure. But fortifications? Good thing that most kingdoms have engineering corps with their armies.

    If that's the case, then I'm gonna need some rules for damage/knock-back when you get crushed/pushed by one of these babies, because to me, the #1 coolest thing to do with this is shoot them at people. I'd want to rig up a 20 ft. chain, fix a barrier to it, and then swing at in a circle to shunt people around. Hell, you could literally make a giant flyswatter and swing it through buildings to splat the people inside! It'd probably be some sort of modified bullrush, using a function of the weight of the spatial reference to which the barrier is linked, but leverage might also be a factor. You probably know more about physics than I do. Or perhaps there's already something in the established rules you could use to calculate it?
    Well, that's an interesting point. Luckily walls of force already exist in the game, and have rules for how they interact with people. For trying to push and squish people, bull rushes seem perfectly reasonable, and lets them try to resist it with their Strength. I would start by figuring out the size of the filter for the bludgeoning damage it deals, and treat it as an improvised weapon that initiates a bull rush based on the attack roll + the size modifier of the filter. At some point, the actual rules inevitably break down, and you need to make a judgment call based on the specific circumstances; no ruleset can predict every scenario. That's exactly why every part of this ruleset tries to reference existing material as much as possible so you know exactly how an effect slots into the game.

    That being said, see my response to General Patton below.

    One last thing: Would darkness created by an input gold transformer be magical or natural darkness for the purposes of darkvision?
    Natural darkness. Magical darkness that darkvision doesn't work in always specifically mentions it, like an actual darkness effect.

    @Morcleon–

    Haha, I'm not sure I'd rely too much on blue ice. I get that it's pretty cool, but the intent was that when an effect specifies "ice" it means actual frozen water.

    The main problem with a phlogiston/ice transformer is that phlogiston has a temperature of 1,000 degrees Centigrade around it, and even with alchemetric modification, there's only so much heat you can channel away with arcanodynamics. If you can set something up to get around that, it's a fantastic source of energy!

    Quote Originally Posted by General Patton
    I second this notion. A surface being held at a fixed distance from something else that can be moved will break physics as soon as someone starts interacting with both the Filter and the object it's affixed to. You can't even meaningfully calculate the motion since there's no forces involved with some of the components of this system. Without constructing physics for it, you could carry infinite weight on a Filter glued to an object and create bootstrap drives that we can only assume move at infinite speed.
    This is a really good point. I'll write up some rules for kaleidomantics for what happens when something is pushing back against a moving filter that should hopefully clear up some of the confusion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus View Post
    @Morcleon–

    Haha, I'm not sure I'd rely too much on blue ice. I get that it's pretty cool, but the intent was that when an effect specifies "ice" it means actual frozen water.

    The main problem with a phlogiston/ice transformer is that phlogiston has a temperature of 1,000 degrees Centigrade around it, and even with alchemetric modification, there's only so much heat you can channel away with arcanodynamics. If you can set something up to get around that, it's a fantastic source of energy!
    Blue ice is frozen water. It just happens to be super awesome frozen water from the deepest areas of the oldest glaciers.

    As for the heat...

    The material is cold and feels identical to regular ice upon casual observation, blue ice only melts under intense and direct application of heat, similar to iron.
    I assume this means its melting point is that of iron, which is ~1500 degrees Centigrade. If the problem is with channeling of heat, it's not that hard to simply place another (or another 2 or 3 or 4 ) ice transformer in conjunction with the phlogiston it to channel the rest of the heat.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra View Post
    Int 3 is smart enough for me to coordinate self-replication, right?
    Int 1 is sufficient for reproduction. Animals manage that by themselves.
    Also, why not use semi-spaces linked to a demi-plane, such as the one my generator generator would be on, to act as a power source for the bots instead of generating the power on them.
    Same goes with AI, possibly even using the same link. You know you want the self replicating machines to be legion.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning View Post
    -Adjust the price of Gamarie to the level of magitechnology in the world. In a Doomsday Magitech world they would sell Doctorate for 1,000 per hour while in Magitech Rennaissance they would sell it for a much higher price, and in Low-Impact world, it would cost a fortune. This would make sense because skilled gramarists might be incredibly rare in a more traditional setting.
    Here is an idea with a nice table.
    {table]2 above setting|100,000 gp/hour
    1 above setting|10,000 gp/hour
    setting level|1,000 gp/hour
    1 below setting|100 gp/hour
    2 below setting|10 gp/hour[/table]
    This way, in a low magitek setting, high level magitek is really damn pricey, while low grade magitek is in the general magic item territory.
    As you add magitek to the setting, it gets cheaper, but highest grade magitech never goes below 1000 gp per hour.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning View Post
    -Raise the price of Orichalcum specifically by a large amount, or use a more precious metal as its base (like platinum).
    A platinum base would result in a 120,000 gp price tag per cubic foot, plus gramarist expenses. In a high magitek setting, that's 124,000 gp for 100 charges, or 1240 gp per charge. Which is a fair bit more reasonable, as you'd need almost 40kgp for the 31d6 deathray. And then it only stores a single shot. With the 1/2 wealth on 1 item thing enforced, a character would need to be at least level 12 to start with such a battery.
    In low magitek, it'd be 520,000 gp, or 5200 gp per charge. 161200 for a single 31d6 deathray shot capacity. Said character would need to be level 17.
    At those prices at those levels, it is quite reasonable, considering what else is available.

    Edit: Also, Alch 101 (heat capacity) can result in immunity to fire and cold damage with a result of 0. Said result can also apply a 1/0 multiplier to fire damage on an iron golem, meaning any fire damage fully heals them. Then use Alch 364 and make it a phlogiston golem. It now fully heals, always.
    Last edited by jojolagger; 2012-08-21 at 08:00 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Morcleon View Post
    Blue ice is frozen water. It just happens to be super awesome frozen water from the deepest areas of the oldest glaciers.
    Okay, I'm sorry, but I'm not personally responsible for every stupid thing that WotC has written in random splatbooks. It's not ice just because it has 'ice' in the name, any more than Baatorian green steel is the same thing as normal steel. Or the colour green for that matter.

    That being said, if your DM thinks it's reasonable, go nuts! I'm not going to tell you how to play your game!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus View Post
    The 101 principles don't have especially large impacts on the setting, and in this case at least it's pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. 6,060 hours is quite a while for one party member, but if he hires, say, a construction crew of 50 1st level gramarists, he can be done in about a week. Faster if they're elans or warforged or something else that doesn't need to sleep. The point is that in order to do big-scale stuff like that you need teams and crews working together to get big engineering projects done. On your own, you can harden the party's equipment and stuff, sure. But fortifications? Good thing that most kingdoms have engineering corps with their armies.
    The thing about this, though, is that a Gramarist can build a house in thirty minutes by himself with Spectroconstruction. If he can build it that fast, why should it take him weeks or months to strengthen it? I'd say this principle has one of the least abuseable uses in the first place because you can only use it to increase a given attribute once, so you have little to fear from improving it by. There's also the notion that various other principles, such as ARCD 101 and HEUR 101, are not only incredibly useful, but essential for most of the things you'd want to do with the class.

    I also edited in this question on my earlier post, but I must have been too late to be seen: You know that rule with crafting that says you work 8 hours a day and you can't work more than that per day? Do Gramarists get that too?

    @jojolagger: Those platinum prices are pretty steep. Maybe a little too steep. Although at the same time, I'd actually rather it be too hard than too easy so that my DM doesn't just think I'm trying to be cheesy.

    Funny thing about that, actually. My DM homebrewed in something he calls X-Spheres, which are little crystal artifacts that are remnants of an ancient civilization that was very adept at manipulating "mana" (which is functionally identical to the idea of puissance). X-Spheres are a major part of the plot, and are essentially really, really good Orichalcum batteries. The party has managed to collect a few already, so if I do get to take levels of this class, I'm gonna be having a lot of cheese for dinner. Most of the ones we've found have been full, but we have no way to charge them. I have a glove that allows me to draw puissance from the battery to cast a spell instead of having it count for my spells for day. Now, if I can take this class, I can learn to charge them... I showed him this thread and joked that was practically already using these rules without realizing it. I think the complexity of some of the rules confused him a bit, but I think he'll come around. Especially since it's such an absolutely perfect fit for his setting.
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 08:29 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning View Post
    The thing about this, though, is that a Gramarist can build a house in thirty minutes by himself with Spectroconstruction. If he can build it that fast, why should it take him weeks or months to strengthen it? I'd say this principle has one of the least abuseable uses in the first place because you can only use it to increase a given attribute once, so you have little to fear from improving it by a bit. There's also the fact that various other principles, such as ARCD 101 and HEUR 101, are not only incredibly useful, but essential for most of the things you'd want to do with the class.
    That's an interesting distinction. Heuristicism, and arcanodynamics (to a lesser degree) are what I think of as 'systemic' disciplines, whose main use is to work inside of a machine as a whole. Alchemetrics is much more of a standalone field, and is mostly useful for providing the materials to do crazy stuff with (especially the highest level principle). Spectroconstruction is specifically nothing that mundane labour can't solve in its own right. The lyre of building described digging ditches, mines, building stuff, and so on. Magically enhancing the durability or heat capacity of materials isn't something that a normal work crew would be able to do. Even though people in the thread haven't yet figured out crazy stuff to do with ALCH 101 on par with the others, I'm confident that there are quite a few abusable things to do with it (and in fact it's practically required for some of the stuff like ice transformers). It's also interesting because it's very useful in its own right in a more standard combat scenario, since you can increase the durability or hardness of stuff.

    Now that you mention it, though, I'd completely forgotten about that limit of a single buff to a material. I'd intended to remove that clause at one point, and had even been considering allowing a single preparation to set each of the qualities to the point on the slider that you like. I'm sorry for the error, stuff sneaks through from draft to draft.

    I also edited in this question on my earlier post, but I must have been too late to be seen: You know that rule with crafting that says you work 8 hours a day and you can't work more than that per day? Do Gramarists get that too?
    No.

    @jojolagger: Those platinum prices are pretty steep. Maybe a little too steep. Although at the same time, I'd actually rather it be too hard than too easy so that my DM doesn't just think I'm trying to be cheesy.
    That does actually make me feel a little better about orichalcum, including since it seems a better fit for it than tin. I still stand by that it's up to the DM to allow higher tech into low-tech scenarios, but I understand also that that's an infuriating cop-out. So I think I'll place platinum in as an 8th option for the final set of planitary metals, and figure out something else interesting for tin. Thank you for the suggestions, jojolagger and lordothemorning!

    Funny thing about that, actually. My DM homebrewed in something he calls X-Spheres, which are little crystal artifacts that are remnants of an ancient civilization that was very adept at manipulating "mana" (which is functionally identical to the idea of puissance). X-Spheres are a major part of the plot, and are essentially really, really good Orichalcum batteries. The party has managed to collect a few already, so if I do get to take levels of this class, I'm gonna be having a lot of cheese for dinner. Most of the ones we've found have been full, but we have no way to charge them. I have a glove that allows me to draw puissance from the battery to cast a spell instead of having it count for my spells for day. Now, if I can take this class, I can learn to charge them... I showed him this thread and joked that was practically already using these rules without realizing it. I think the complexity of some of the rules confused him a bit, but I think he'll come around. Especially since it's such an absolutely perfect fit for his setting.
    Haha, I hope that it works well. What's the worst that could happen?

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

    Hmmm...

    Will the Alchemetry specialist PrC include some feature that will let you apply ALCH 101 more than once to an object, just not the same enhancement twice? Because, as it is, I cry a little when I see that you can't, you know, make a really hard, difficult-to-break substance out of, say, tin.

    Plus, I totally want to increase the Melting point of Ice and the Heat Capacity of said Ice.

    It isn't that hard to hit DC 100 Diplomacy checks, which are what you would need to get a piece of ice with precisely a 100 degree melting point and a heat capacity of 1/10th.

    Let's see... specializing in Alchemetry gives you a good +43 modifier, with full ranks and 20 levels in the class...

    Skill Focus (Diplomacy) is a +3, you obviously want to play a Half-Elf with that synergy-boosting feat (+9 from all the synergies), Masterwork Tools, a casting of Guidance of the Avatar (+20 to a skill check)...

    That's a +77 modifier. We just need another +4 or more to make ice that will not melt if you use it as a box to hold Phlogiston.

    Let's say 2 or more assistants Aiding Another?

    Then we get 998 Ebbs a minute. Not bad... Especially since this is pretty cheap, and can be sold for a pretty penny, I would think...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra View Post
    Hmmm...

    Will the Alchemetry specialist PrC include some feature that will let you apply ALCH 101 more than once to an object, just not the same enhancement twice? Because, as it is, I cry a little when I see that you can't, you know, make a really hard, difficult-to-break substance out of, say, tin.

    Plus, I totally want to increase the Melting point of Ice and the Heat Capacity of said Ice.
    You now can! I made some revisions, letting you stack buffs on materials. For some reason in an earlier draft I thought that would be unbalancing.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra View Post
    Hmmm...

    Will the Alchemetry specialist PrC include some feature that will let you apply ALCH 101 more than once to an object, just not the same enhancement twice? Because, as it is, I cry a little when I see that you can't, you know, make a really hard, difficult-to-break substance out of, say, tin.

    Plus, I totally want to increase the Melting point of Ice and the Heat Capacity of said Ice.

    It isn't that hard to hit DC 100 Diplomacy checks, which are what you would need to get a piece of ice with precisely a 100 degree melting point and a heat capacity of 1/10th.

    Let's see... specializing in Alchemetry gives you a good +43 modifier, with full ranks and 20 levels in the class...

    Skill Focus (Diplomacy) is a +3, you obviously want to play a Half-Elf with that synergy-boosting feat (+9 from all the synergies), Masterwork Tools, a casting of Guidance of the Avatar (+20 to a skill check)...

    That's a +77 modifier. We just need another +4 or more to make ice that will not melt if you use it as a box to hold Phlogiston.

    Let's say 2 or more assistants Aiding Another?

    Then we get 998 Ebbs a minute. Not bad... Especially since this is pretty cheap, and can be sold for a pretty penny, I would think...
    I still that's that's way too strong. It can be powerful, but that many ebbs is just excessive. I thought it was crazy when I thought it made 98 ebbs, and now that I realize I did the math wrong... well. That outstrips every other power source by a huge margin. You don't even need Phlogiston to do it. Just light a fire.

    I had another idea as to the price of ascended metals- the skill check. One could charge a lot of money for something that requires the services of someone capable of getting a skill up that high. The price could potentially include the DC of the skill check required as a factor.

    I do hope the Alchemetry specialist is able to use ALCH 101 in some sort of superior manner. I had this image in my head about building small 10-by-10 forts on the fly, reinforcing them, and then getting the whole party inside to have the best chokepoint defense ever. A Gramarist would be a wonderful class to defend a position with.
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 09:34 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordotheMorning View Post
    ou don't even need Phlogiston to do it.
    Nope! Phlogiston radiates a massive amount of heat, but 1,000 degrees Centigrade is about the temperature of a flame, not of the ambient temperature in an area. Depending on the area and whatnot, most flames wouldn't raise the ambient temperature by much more than 10-50 degrees, as we know from real life. Recall that an actual fire doesn't deal more than 1 or 2 d6 fire damage (being caught on fire only deals 1d6 damage per round). If it's not clear how to interpret it, there's usually another way to go about it. A normal flame would generate a few ebbs, and then puff out. Phlogiston specifically warms an area to incredible flash point temperatures because it's magic.

    I do hope the Alchemetry specialist is able to use ALCH 101 in some sort of superior manner. I had this image in my head about building small 10-by-10 forts on the fly, reinforcing them, and then getting the whole party inside to have the best chokepoint defense ever. A Gramarist would be a wonderful class to defend a position with.
    I don't think you'll be disappointed.

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

    Sweetness!

    Though I realized after posting that I can make ice that could carry Phlogiston as a box very easily.

    You just need to raise the melting point by 20+ degrees, and then set the bubble up to include the ice.

    Done and done; if you can buy the services of a couple of 14th level Grammarists, you could pull this off at level 1; as it is, if you are working alone, you can set up your first 998 ER (Ebb (per) Round) generator at 14th level, in less than a day.

    This begs the question: is there any way to boost the temperature of Phlogiston? I kinda want to find some really high ER generators, and I think a boosted temperature Phlogiston would be quite the boost.

    Let's see... you would need 100 cubic feet of Sunmetal to match a P/I generator with an S/L generator. That being said...

    Unlike a P/I generator, you wouldn't be able to drop an S/L generator of similar rate into a tub of Quicksilver, which is then dropped into a Fast Time sub-space, for a good old 3992 ER. Sure, it takes a pair of 14th level specialists to pull off, but you needed one of them anyway (if you were to do this solo, anyway.)

    Seriously, when you adjust for size, a P/I generator is the most efficient, full stop. The next best option, a S/L generator, takes up 50.5 times as much space, and no other generator comes close, except for maybe a Silver generator filled with a nice Arcane Fusion spell, though that doesn't feel legal for some reason... (Arcane Fusion is a 7th level spell that in effect casts 11 spell levels, iirc; it would generate an effective 4 ER, if you take looping into account, which barely seems worth it...)

    You know, if you want to be damn sure that all Vampires are gone, you can just connect a P/I generator to a Gold output; you get 9945 feet of Daylight equivalent, at the very least, which is constant.

    On a side note, I wonder...

    Yep, we can chill an area below absolute Zero by creating a P/I generator attached to a Mercury output.

    That... is something that you might want to disallow...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kellus View Post
    Nope! Phlogiston radiates a massive amount of heat, but 1,000 degrees Centigrade is about the temperature of a flame, not of the ambient temperature in an area. Depending on the area and whatnot, most flames wouldn't raise the ambient temperature by much more than 10-50 degrees, as we know from real life. Recall that an actual fire doesn't deal more than 1 or 2 d6 fire damage (being caught on fire only deals 1d6 damage per round). If it's not clear how to interpret it, there's usually another way to go about it. A normal flame would generate a few ebbs, and then puff out. Phlogiston specifically warms an area to incredible flash point temperatures because it's magic.
    Oh. Well that's better because I was about to say "EDIT: As a matter of fact, all you really have to do is build a larger Ice transformer, hold it over a fire, and enjoy your profit of 1000+ ebbs that you make before the ice totally melts," but you nipped that one in the bud. All the same Phlogiston is still better than Sunmetal, and you can't even capture energy from Sunmetal unless you specialize in Arcanodynamics (which means you have to buy your Sunmetal).
    Last edited by LordotheMorning; 2012-08-21 at 09:40 PM.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Amechra View Post
    Done and done; if you can buy the services of a couple of 14th level Grammarists, you could pull this off at level 1; as it is, if you are working alone, you can set up your first 998 ER (Ebb (per) Round) generator at 14th level, in less than a day.
    Not sure where you're getting a thousand ebbs a round from; an ice transformer generates 1 ebb for every 10 degrees, so your icebox only generates 98 ebbs per round.

    Heh. Only.

    This begs the question: is there any way to boost the temperature of Phlogiston? I kinda want to find some really high ER generators, and I think a boosted temperature Phlogiston would be quite the boost.
    Not yet. I'm sorry, I'm working on the prestige classes as we speak!

    Yep, we can chill an area below absolute Zero by creating a P/I generator attached to a Mercury output.

    That... is something that you might want to disallow...
    Holy hell. I would have thought it self-evident because 3rd law, but I'll make sure to put in a statement disallowing temperatures below -373.

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