If you don't know how to make something, fabricate is utterly useless in this regard. Fabricate and polymorph don't negate the need for craft checks, it doesn't even provide a bonus for them. If you don't have the knowhow, fabricate won't substitute for it.
Except because of the same access to magic why wouldn't mages be using spells like fabricate and polymorph any object to experiment with advanced firearms prototypes that could then be mass produced?
I guess the word experiment in there was lost on you. The spells merely greatly speed up the R&D process and as you could reuse the same material over and over not have all the da vinci style drawings but actual objects.
I'm using the rules as they stand, but bringing in weaponry from the D20 Modern Past book. (The same way I'd been running my homebrew Pathfinder campaigns for ages.)
Much better this way.
Multiplying the purchase DC of firearms by 20, and that of ammo boxes by 5, to reach a decent cost in gold for them seems to work well.
Hauling over the different kinds of guns, firing types, upgrades and magazine sizes makes it all so much more fun.
(and the feats like Double Tap!)
Well lets see on just how efficient we're talking about. Hummingbirds regularly cross the Gulf of Mexico without refueling. for a DC 3 to do same thing with it's flight mass and payload scaled up, it would have to do it on less than 100 gallons of gas.
True but some humming birds do die when they cross. It is just the majority succeeds.
If you don't know how to make something, fabricate is utterly useless in this regard. Fabricate and polymorph don't negate the need for craft checks, it doesn't even provide a bonus for them. If you don't have the knowhow, fabricate won't substitute for it.
Except because of the same access to magic why wouldn't mages be using spells like fabricate and polymorph any object to experiment with advanced firearms prototypes that could then be mass produced?
Actually, yes, yes it will. Here's the thing. A wizard will typically have a very solid intelligence score. They tend to be geniuses after all; the sort that advance things, create magical clones and monsters in vats, splice elementals and people, and create Frankenstein; it's just what they do.
Even without magic items, an 11th level wizard (can cast fabricate) can also cast fox's cunning on themselves for +4 Intelligence for the duration of their projects. An NPC wizard can easily hit a 23 Intelligence by this time with just base 15, +2 racial, and +4 enhancement. That gives him a Craft (Anything) check of +6, simply by virtue of his creative and reasoning capabilities.
If he discovered, say, the basics for crafting Firearms, and placed a single 1 rank in Craft (Firearms), he gets another +4. A set of masterwork tools (say diagrams, blueprints, etc) grants a further +2; but even without the masterwork tools, he has a +10.
And here's the funny part. He can just keep trying again. He has enough knowledge to create a giant robot powered by an elemental as an infinite battery (iron golem), and can easily hit a DC 26-30 after just trying over and over again.
Exotic Weapons are DC 18 to craft. Even if we added +10 to that, he could create one, or many. He can try over and over again. Do you really feel that a spring-loaded cartridge, or a revolving chamber, or a shell-based ammunition are so inhumanly complicated that it would require higher than a DC 30 to create?
Well lets see on just how efficient we're talking about. Hummingbirds regularly cross the Gulf of Mexico without refueling. for a DC 3 to do same thing with it's flight mass and payload scaled up, it would have to do it on less than 100 gallons of gas.
As far as moon landings go we are hitting a very serious wall with practical space travel, you know the kind where you don't throw away your ship on it's maiden voyage. Anything can be done expensively as a one-time stunt. But making it practical is another thing altogether. The Space Shuttle was a first attempt at making a reusable craft that would lower the cost of getting things to orbit. While the first part of it's mission is a debatably a very limited success, the second part was an abject failure.
I wonder how many hummingbirds can make a trip from the East Coast to the West Coast of the united states in a day. I wonder exactly how efficient they are, since they literally are constantly burning fuel and have such a rapid metabolic rate due to the method they use for flight. I wonder how many fly past the point of being able to breath oxygen.
Humorously, D&D tech is already far, far past the space exploration level. D&D characters can explore other planets and regions of the solar system as early as they have access to greater teleport, which can literally take them anywhere they wish to go on the same plane. Bottles of Air, and various protective magic items with continual effects (such as endure elements, or resist energy) can make environments tolerable. Liches can explore worlds without fear of making a cosmic error; as if they teleport somewhere during their journeys that have environments too hostile for their existence (say they teleport into a star, thinking it was a planet), they come back in a few days; so an exploring lich can just "go naked" into space, with only their prepared spells as needed.
D&D tech shatters the biggest limitations we face today. It makes light of things like space/time, and can produce infinite amounts of energy for a relatively inexpensive rate. Hell, a 10th level wizard could build a generator that produces the energy that surpasses a bolt of lightning every 6 seconds, and a 5th level wizard can produce about as much energy at the same rate just with the shocking grasp spell (5d6 = 17.5 average power output, which is comparable energy with a low-powered lightning bolt from a thunderstorm; as defined in the Environment section).
Honestly, Eberron is the only campaign I've ever seen have a semi-realistic grasp on how D&D worlds would actually function. It has huge vehicles powered by airships and magic, trains run by powerful electrical generators, and people acknowledge magic for being just as amazing as it is. Heck, magicians (and dragonmarked people, who have magic naturally) own a monopoly on the largest forms of trade and power in the setting.
Most other settings seem to fall into the very trope that the 3.x Dungeon Master's Guide warned against. Pretending everything is medieval Europe while in towns and villages, and then a fantasy world of sorcery and superpowered wizards running around just outside of town.
Yeah...
