John Lemon's page

Oceans full of water aren't any good if they are not drinkable. Supplies of healthy water are a major concern in many areas of the globe, including the southwestern United States which has been relying on large underground aquifers which do not replenish themselves as fast as the demand taps them.

Yes, our current problem with water is drinkable water. We're not going for edible magic, drinkable magic or something of the like, are we? I don't know if there's something about magic in Golarion that states that only specific types of magic can be used.

The weakness in all the above suggestions is that you suppose that magic is a unlimited resource and that it will be possible to harness unlimited quantities for a unlimited span of time in a fixed location without secondary effects.

I'm assuming magic is a renewable resource. Most of these spell combinations are of the humanly attainable sort. The elven interplanetary portals have been around for ages and there's not been a problem with them.

If we look a bit of Golarion lore we see that we have the Mana Wastes, an area where the use of powerful spells and magical artefacts had caused long lasting damage to the fabric of magic.

From what I recall, it was an excessive concentration of magic which caused the creation of the mana wastes, sounds more like a critical mass reached than a draining of all magic in an area to fuel magical artifacts.

I hypothesize that the effect of too much local magical energy caused the magical energies in an area to move to a higher/lower energy state and thus void all spellcasting or the abilities of magical items.
Also, as I recall, the average metropolis has a huge selection of minor magical items, 3d4 medium and 4d4 major magic items, that none of them have explosively combusted seems to indicate that it's perfectly fine to have a large number of magical items which are not excessively powerful.

Another interesting source of lore is the Wishcraft article in The final Wish (AP n,. 24). The continual use of wish magic in a single location warp reality.

Wish spell (SRD): "you can alter reality to better suit you." Of course that's going to warp reality, Captain Obvious.

The combinations I currently propose do not require the wish spell, so why are we even worrying about it?

So probably magic energy can be compared to water. It is abundant in most of the world, but if we start to tap to much of it in a specific location we can create problems.
So a high magic civilization will have problems similar to our own: magical pollution, shortage of magic in some specific location and so on.

I don't see how we're going to run out of water anytime soon, and we're a planet with a population of 6 billion. Golarion has a significantly smaller population.

If magic had the problem of being non-renewable like oil, then I'd worry a bit, but water? There's plenty of water about and it's part of a cycle, consumption is going to be the same as production.

But what happen when you teleport? You pass through the astral like in earlier versions?

Yes, it's even on the page on the astral plane.

Independently by what is the underling mechanic you can bet that doing hundred of teleportations from the one location to another location, always along the same route, will have some secondary effects after a time.

What would those secondary effects be?

That was a extreme infestation if you have enough rats for that - even a simple Neumann-core would need thousands of them and would be able to compute stuff that some guys with paper can do.

Hence why I said to keep a couple of rats about. Feed them, keep them breeding and regularly cull the numbers so you get extra skeletons. Stick them in a timeless plane for best effect. Unless timeless planes prevent conception, in which case I now have an extra use for the astral plane.

Oh and some cleric who disagrees with necromancy could destroy all your effort with a few well placed channels

The create demiplane spell and it's variants would allow you to perform your experiments with less disturbance than normal. Or you could just, y'know, stick the skeletons in a bag of holding.

All cool ideas. But very expensive, most people aren't going to pay for them when you can do it the old fashioned way for much cheaper.

Well, I don't recall instantaneous transportation, space elevators or the steam turbines anywhere in Golarion, but perhaps you know something I don't?

Also lightning bolt won't work to provide electricity for things like the railgun. It'd probably just melt the silver.

Lightning provides up to 110kA at 10-250 uS pulses. Powerlabs has a railgun that uses 100kA at 56 uS pulses, from what I recall, so it should be workable.

Cooling down the rails would probably need something like unshakeable chill though.

I presume this already exists, but is private instead of public.
It almost has to exist.

Maybe, but so far I haven't seen any mention of level 18 wizards in Golarion.

This is kind of primitive for Golarion... interplanetary teleportation gates are canon for the setting. Why do the masses want to get to orbit, anyway? There are better and easier ways for the powerful to build hideouts.

Adamantine space mining, rods from god, interstellar movement, high accuracy astronomical instruments etc.

Golarion really, really isn't the Renaissance... it's a superscience+magic setting, where a lot of the world has had a partial civilizational collapse. There might still be some flying cities. We know there are operational spacecraft.
-Kle.

Hence my use of the phrase Renaissance. I haven't seen the spacecraft thing since I only have core in that I have access to the SRD.

ooh, immovable rods. I'm not as good with physics as I would like. Is there any way something can think of a way to turn that into infinite mechanical energy?

Like making immovable rods with magnets in them, and then have a magnet in between mounted on rails or something, and harnessing the power you got by the magnet in the middle always moving back and forth forever, something silly like that? (not really all that great...hmmm)

Maybe you could wind a coil spring impossibly tight around an immovable rod pin?

I don't know if there's a way to make infinite mechanical energy from immovable rods, but I'm sure someone can come up with an idea. In the meantime, have a sample Immovable Rod idea:

Tarrasque out to destroy the world? Have it swallow a bunch of immovable rods.
Telekinesis to active the rods and laugh as it tries to free itself.
If you neutralize the spines and tail slap with more immovable rods, congratulations! You now have an infinitely renewable source of Tarrasque meat, bone and skin.

If you were so inclined, you could also build floating cities from immovable rods.

In Spells and Rituals (I think the very first 3.0 3rd party book, Scarred Lands line) there was the spell bottomless pit. I had this cool idea for a wizard to make a permanent bottomless pit, and build a city down there running on the free power you got by running wind turbines pointed down.

You could do the same by building a city in the elemental plane of air, although you'd have to find a way to not get smacked by the things in it.

A similar effect can be attained with a permanent Gust of Wind aiming upwards and mounting the wind turbine above it. At 50mph, your NREL class should be 7+.

Other infinite energy shenanigans:
Steam turbine powered by fire elementals (or a permanent wall of fire) and ice elementals.
Teleport trap powered water-wheels.
Animated turbines.
Solar energy racks powered by continual flames.

Public services:
Permanent symbols of healing in place of doctors.

I'm not getting how this does anything except possibly melt your silver rods and iron wall...?

The silver rods are the rails of a railgun, wall of iron provides ammunition that you shape using fabricate and place in between the rails.

I chose silver for the higher conductivity (less overheating, cheaper than gold).
On second thought, grease would be necessary to avoid excessive friction.

What Tiny Coffee Golem described is a coilgun. Less powerful than a railgun, but relatively simpler

Using "Stone to Flesh" repeatedly over a long time to turn a whole mountain into a pile of meat and then animate it into a colossal++++++++ creature. ^^

I imagine it's liberally interspersed with Gentle Repose spells to avoid the issue of getting a rotting golem? How do you handle the lack of a skeletal system?

Extra trick:
A new take on the peasant railgun:
50 silver coins weigh 1 lb, an 11th level wizard has 820000 sp in wealth.
Use fabricate to turn sp into two silver rods of appropriate size.
Mount them parallel to each other and lock them in place with immovable rods.
Place iron projectile to be fired (Use wall of iron as appropriate) in between rods.
Cast Lightning bolt on one rod.
Render all fortifications obsolete.

So, do you guys have any spell, action, item combinations etc. that would potentially turn Golarion into all sorts of crazy?

E.g.
Teleportation network: For 47,000gp per city (teleportation circle + permanency), you could have an instantaneous transportation network capable of sending people to any city in the world. Eat it, airliners.

Orbital elevator: Using greater teleport and permanent walls of force, create a platform in geostationary orbit. Use teleportation circle to create two way link to platform. Herald the space age of the Renaissance!

Undead computer: First, find a place with a major rat infestation. Solve vermin problem but keep a bunch of rats around. Also take rat corpses. Second, find a secluded spot where you wish to begin work on your undead computer. Third, using animate dead, turn rats into skeleton rats. Give basic orders (e.g. if rat 1 OR 2 raises tail, raise tail etc.) Congratulations, you now have logic gates. Expand from there. (Taken from 4chan's /tg/ section)