i consider magic steam engines to be small time. Think Animated Object.
It's more investment, but a single animated millstone can power an entire factory, or just a vehicle, and will transport ITSELF anywhere you need it.
Also: Check out this guy
Yeah, I know guys. I apologize for letting the BS get to me. However, in all honesty I was at first very intrigued about the possibility that I had missed something of historical significance, and then as things went on I let my frustration get the best of me.
Lesson learned.
i consider magic steam engines to be small time. Think Animated Object.
It's more investment, but a single animated millstone can power an entire factory, or just a vehicle, and will transport ITSELF anywhere you need it.
This.
Also: Check out this guy
Yeah, that's the "Hero" I referred to in my first response to AF's stuff.
AD: what would YOU use create water effects for, if you had to?
Mark, I have a fairly major bias in my interpretation of the "PF universe", and that bias is all tied up in a world that I have been basing all of my campaigns for 30+ years. That world is very carefully constructed and I have done my best to try to deal with magic in a logical and internally consistent way. That means that I have had to interpret spell effects certain ways to keep the world from becoming absurd.
Many of the things I see on these boards about how to exploit spell effects are things I've already encountered and had to deal with, which is why I tend to react to certain things with a response of "think about what you are saying here, and what it would mean in a world of actual greedy, power-seeking people".
Also, technology in the real world is a very complex hierarchical structure where advancements are almost always the result of clever people putting previous discoveries together to achieve a very specific purpose, dealing with the limitations of the technology of their time, the availability of materials that can withstand the stresses involved and the ability of the markets of the time to absorb the new technology into the economic model.
In a world with magic spells that can be cast to accomplish the same goals as technology, most of our complex technology would not exist. Not because it wouldn't work (although that is an open question in a universe whose physical laws include magic, but that's another conversation) but because they would not be needed. Why in the world would an "inventor" create a complex system involving hundreds of critical parts that have to be meticulously maintained and serviced for the system to work reliably when they could just cast a spell and make the end result happen directly? It makes no sense. In a world of any significant amount of available magic, a steam engine would be nothing but a very crappy way of achieving a result that would be far more reliably and cheaply achieved through a few spells.
Anyway, to get to your question about what I would do with "create water", my characters tend to use create water very... um... "creatively." I have not yet had to put any major restrictions around create water in my campaign world. I do actually have some cities that rely on create water to survive since they have no other source of readily available water. However, my world also has a very active magic user's guild that monitors magical use and if someone started generating millions of gallons of water for some purpose, they would certainly get a visit from the guild to find out what they were doing and why.
Mostly create water in my world is used to provide clean water for drinking, farming and animal husbandry.
My characters have used create water to do things like create puddles which can reveal invisible creatures moving, create difficult terrain by making sand or dirt muddy or quicksandy, create temporary obstacles for people to overcome (a sudden waterfall down a flight of stairs can be pretty useful in an escape situation) or to disrupt or create diversions (nothing like a sudden flood of water in the palace to stir up some trouble).
But steam engines? Not so far.