Please forgive the ridiculous levels of geekery this post will contain. And please forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere
In a game I'm in, a player has shown curiosity as to what would happen if someone took several Dusts of Dryness that have been used to absorb water, and then put them into a sphere of force, (Resilient Sphere).
*Warning Math*
Now Resilient Sphere gets you a 1ft sphere/caster lvl. If i did my math correctly, and no guarantee I have, it takes ~486 gallons of water to fill one 5 ft sphere. Now, let's say you put 6 of the 100 gallon beads in the sphere and something to break them, say a tiny Water Elemental. This will get you 600 gallons of water in a space that can't hold them, and if I remember elementary school science correctly, water does no really compress; and a sphere that can't be broken. What happens?
We've come up with a couple possible alternatives.
1) This is how Spheres of Annihilation are born, good job.
2) You rip a hole in the plane, quite possibly to the Elemental plane of water, good job.
3) You've created magical cold fusion, non-sarcastic good job this time. At least if you figure a way to use it without blowing up half of Golarion.
4) Nethys himself comes down to congratulate you on your insatiable curiosity with one hand, and smite you for stupidity with the other.
But I can totally see some old, powerful, and quite possibly senile wizard doing something like this. Can't you?
This is why it is best not to mix physics and magic.
Okay. Here goes anyway. Water is not incompressible. It doesn't compress very much; on the order of 10^-5 % per atmosphere of pressure.
Let's see one 5ft diameter sphere (489.6 gallons) plus 600 more gallons in the same volume means we need to compress the water by about 55% which will require roughly 5.5 million atmospheres of pressure or about 81 million psi.
Let me put it this way. I don't want to be around when the spell ends.
Factoid: This is roughly equivalent to the highest pressure achieved in a lab (5 x10^11 Pa) or about 1.4 times the pressure at the center of the Earth.
That is incredibly useful information. Now I just see someone taking this as far as possible and filling it with dozens of beads. Put that into the bottom room of a keep or something, it'd level the building probably
You've created a bomb. The instant the pressurized water is released by the end of the spell, it will explode outward in an attempt to reach equilibrium now that it is no longer constrained. This is how those dry ice bombs kids make as pranks work.
On a related note, are you an anime fan?
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Please forgive the ridiculous levels of geekery this post will contain. And please forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere
In a game I'm in, a player has shown curiosity as to what would happen if someone took several Dusts of Dryness that have been used to absorb water, and then put them into a sphere of force, (Resilient Sphere).
*Warning Math*
Now Resilient Sphere gets you a 1ft sphere/caster lvl. If i did my math correctly, and no guarantee I have, it takes ~486 gallons of water to fill one 5 ft sphere. Now, let's say you put 6 of the 100 gallon beads in the sphere and something to break them, say a tiny Water Elemental. This will get you 600 gallons of water in a space that can't hold them, and if I remember elementary school science correctly, water does no really compress; and a sphere that can't be broken. What happens?
We've come up with a couple possible alternatives.
1) This is how Spheres of Annihilation are born, good job.
2) You rip a hole in the plane, quite possibly to the Elemental plane of water, good job.
3) You've created magical cold fusion, non-sarcastic good job this time. At least if you figure a way to use it without blowing up half of Golarion.
4) Nethys himself comes down to congratulate you on your insatiable curiosity with one hand, and smite you for stupidity with the other.
But I can totally see some old, powerful, and quite possibly senile wizard doing something like this. Can't you?
If the Resilient Sphere was actually indestructible, this would be a great way to level cities. :) However, there is one thing wrong with your assumptions about the Resilient Sphere. It is incredibly difficult to destroy, having hardness 30 and 20hp/caster level, yes but under extreme pressure as would happen in your scenario, such resilience could never hold up to such incredible pressure. The net result is the sphere would fail.
Now I would rule that anything within 30' takes 1d6 or 1d8 damage per level of the caster and anything out to 60' takes half. Those within 30' do not get a save. Also, everything within 30' is automatically bullrushed and knocked prone to the end of the 60' radius, while those beyond 30' get to recieve an bullrush attack at +5 per/caster level. The reason is that as the pressure built to the failing point in that blink of an eye, there would still be incredible pressure built up. As to the type of damage inflicted, I would say bludgeoning damage, as it would probably compare the best to explosive crushing damage. Keep in mind these are just estimates to make the game playable. The real life effects of something like this would likely be catastrophic.
Things would get really interesting if you could heat the water before it exploded. It would be like an steam explosion at a nuclear facility. In that case, I'd probably multiply the damage factor by at least 3 or 4.
A very interesting discussion. :)