GM DarkLightHitomi wrote: So why does omnimagic have starcraft crystals in it? I like the idea of the starcraft crystals as an energy source. It seems using crystals to power magic tech is a common theme, I just put a different spin on it. Plus you can always say its extra planatary/ planar and thereby bring it to different worlds with ease. As well they can be used for psionics / magic with ease of crossover.
GM DarkLightHitomi wrote: Myst! I love Myst!
Hmm. I like your post. Still thinking only with d20 stuff, but still neat thinking there.
That's what I meant by "player side". Working from a player's perspective. But to break out of that mould, here's a thought I worked on during my evening walkabout.
The Arcane Energy Transformation and Hoarding Reactor or "ether drive" is actually an array of technological devices which absorb, store, and use magical energy. A properly-configured AETHR device can draw magical energy from magical things. The collected energy actually takes a semi-physical form as a substance. Exposure to it is hazardous and can cause all kinds of weird effects or mutations, but the...stuff (sometimes acts like a liquid, sometimes acts like a gas or even a living thing) is normally generated and contained inside Ether Fuel Storage Units (usually called "fuses" by people in the industry/military and "mana batteries" by everyone else)
Great big AETHR collectors the size of solar farms can collect the background magical energy of the universe, creating dead magic zones close to them and inhibited magic zones (caster level check to cast, wonky magic item behavior) further out. The nation where this tech is common is basically magic-free because of the tech, and there is scholarly debate as to whether that is the reason there are so few potential spellcasters born in the country or if there is another reason.
You see, a growing nation of technology has growing energy needs, and background energy is pretty thin. Another means of charging up fuses is snagging spellcasters or magical creatures (anything with spell-like or supernatural abilities) and strapping them in. A properly-configured device can drain willing or unwilling victims of their magical potential, damaging them like the exhaustion rules and (over a long period) prematurely aging them. Most sorceror bloodlines, and people with the potential to become wizards/clerics/etc. were found and consumed, and Darwin's chainsaw removed them from the gene pool along with dragons, magical beasts, magic items, and any outsider that the government can get its hands on.
See, like oil on our world, ether is a vital component of the national infrastructure in (insert nation name here). It fuels the trains, it powers the war machines, and it works the technology. Sure a Positive Energy Ray is less effective than a cleric's healing spell, but it doesn't require tithing or trusting a god to smile upon you. It creates the explosive force that fires the bullets, generates heat and light and motive force and works the matter conversion units (turn iron into adamantine) and the plasma projectors (fire and lightning damage heavy weapons) and the cuts-through-anything proton axe.
And best of all, since the reactor can be set as a collector, any major warjack (magitek armor from Final Fantasy) design includes an anti-magic field as it draws energy from the air (not enough to sustain real activity) and from any spells or magic thrown at it.
But here's the irony, the best source of juice is outsiders. Lots of spell like abilities and they're pure supernatural beings. But no matter what they try the artificers have yet to create a stable, reliable, or predictable Gate effect. So after the first great culling of sorcerors, mages, and the like the new military oligarchy of the nation had to establish a Magic Corps (think the Psi Corps from Babylon 5) to do things like create gates that they can harvest outsiders from and create some of the magitech parts and tools that still can't be properly worked or replicated via technology.
And then we go wandering to Bas-lag, a realm where "possibility energy" can be used to manipulate reality and Torque can change a healthy and normal nation into a Lovecraftian hellscape of twisted, altered, and mutated things. Giant metal centipede monsters with screaming heads that were once trains and loping naked goat-horned beasts with twisted limbs that used to be humans.
And after that all my thoughts stray to bed (it is late), and the fact that scifi and fantasy are strikingly similar. A friend of mine once said, "most scifi basically just tells the Odyssey or the Iliad in Spaaaace."
All I can think of right now that can't be magicopied is swoop bike racing and stun weapons. But that's because I'[m sleepy.
Wow, swoop bike == nimbus 2000
Stun == wand of stupify
More seriously, floating/flying objects can come from altering their gravity and adding propulsion, of which their is numerous possibilities.
Stun weapons would be electrical weapons using more realistic reactions to electricity instead of merely using it as a damage type, which is to say that medium "damage" from electricity stuns while high amounts are required to actually harm.
GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:
More seriously, floating/flying objects can come from altering their gravity and adding propulsion, of which their is numerous possibilities.
Like what Boring7 said about mythic levitate? Or Tacticslion with lighten object, levitate, and telekinesis? Or with Reverse gravity? Or me (as TMC) with Raise/Conjure Island?
I was referring to the lack of racing games involving current rule sets. Also I was a bit foggy on sleep deprivation.
But But I suppose that is part of a larger point. You COULD have broomstick races that vast numbers of people attended or other mass-media entertainment, if such things were not prohibitively expensive. Which is a big issue with magitech and magic and tech when I stop and think about it.
Here and now, the way a computer monitor works doesn't *really* matter to most of us and might as well BE magic to most of us. It works, it's common, that's all we care about. If it was run by magic crystals beaming illusions into our brains instead of liquid crystals projecting light into our eyeballs it wouldn't make a difference, what WOULD make a difference is whether or not a bearded magic item crafter had to spend 10000 dollars to make one custom.
As a rule, when I think of magitek from Final Fantasy, it isn't that the giant battlemechs are magic or tech, it's that they are mass-produced and their supply can be controlled (unlike sorcerors, who show up randomly like mutant powers).
Stun weapons like I'm talking about aren't tasers, I mean the magic super-awesome stun weapons that can take out a target vastly more effectively as modern-day lethal weapons but without the rather perilous chance of permanent damage/death that modern-day technology has in its non-lethal (and often not very effective) weapons.
Which is more a game balance issue than any limitation on magic.
First off, much real life racing is prohibitively expensive, as far as any individual is generally concerned (not including the concept of super-sized loans that you spend the rest of your life paying off and still an individual would not get into pro racing that way, hence the dozens or even hundreds of sponsers)
Why would want super perfect, no risk items? Having perfectly effective (equates with no save and still die) powers would not be a good thing for a game in so many different ways it's funny, but having something about as effective as real life is perfectly fine and do-able. And tasers don't have that great of chance of death, if it did, they wouldn't require you to get tased in order to be allowed to use a taser.
So why pick super weapons as something to mention anyway? (might make a good macguffin though)
Why do super weapons? Because super weapons tend to be a large part of Magitech, on the other hand, perfect weapons, I'm very leery about that simply because they're perfect.
Speed!
Speed is an interesting question. There are a lot of ways you can already fake a lot of scifi tropes and idioms within the rules, but for example the airship as an animated object caps out going at a base speed of 40 (at least by the rules in Ultimate Magic). Even the fastest critters you can find, (Dragons, unless I missed something faster than 200' base) caps out going around 23 MPH (that's 37ish in kilometers)
I know there are rules for vehicles, but I'm not particularly familiar with them. How fast do you let players get and what can it lead to, for good or ill? Means of traveling fast and far can make entire economies function, a secondary industry no longer needs to be built right next to a mine to get all its raw materials. You can have a coal mine 100 miles from your iron mine and another 100 from the smeltery if it doesn't take 2 weeks of travel through unchecked wilderness. And this also applies to tracking down bandit groups and rooting out raiders inside a countries borders. If it takes a trade caravan a month to get to you and 3 months for you to be certain they're missing you can't do much. If it takes a day you can find where the convoy was attacked while the trail is still (relatively) fresh and track the hijackers to their lair.
Or you could just scry, but that's not the point.
GM DarkLightHitomi wrote: . . .
Why would want super perfect, no risk items? Having perfectly effective (equates with no save and still die) powers would not be a good thing for a game in so many different ways it's funny, but having something about as effective as real life is perfectly fine and do-able. And tasers don't have that great of chance of death, if it did, they wouldn't require you to get tased in order to be allowed to use a taser. . . .
Depending on the effect you're going for, having constant maintenance for items, like a steam punk feel, or the new (or really old) volatile nature of the equipment (like unrefined discoveries) really adds a bit of uncertainty to the processes which can be used for as many side stories or plot bits as necessary. I feel that can be a positive thing.
boring7 wrote: Speed!
Speed is an interesting question. There are a lot of ways you can already fake a lot of scifi tropes and idioms within the rules, but for example the airship as an animated object caps out going at a base speed of 40 (at least by the rules in Ultimate Magic). Even the fastest critters you can find, (Dragons, unless I missed something faster than 200' base) caps out going around 23 MPH (that's 37ish in kilometers)
A swiftwood Sailing Ship (Double speed of a normal sailing ship) has a max speed of 360ft, as a full round action it can go 720ft. which equates to 120ft/s or 131km/h. With my homebrew Elemental binding you can double a ship's speed again with air elementals effectively giving a sailing ship/ Galley a speed of 262km/h. You missed that Dragons can "run" while flying so it's really more like 92mph or 148ish Km/h or half that as a normal double move.
Cr500cricket wrote: boring7 wrote: Speed!
Speed is an interesting question. There are a lot of ways you can already fake a lot of scifi tropes and idioms within the rules, but for example the airship as an animated object caps out going at a base speed of 40 (at least by the rules in Ultimate Magic). Even the fastest critters you can find, (Dragons, unless I missed something faster than 200' base) caps out going around 23 MPH (that's 37ish in kilometers)
A swiftwood Sailing Ship (Double speed of a normal sailing ship) has a max speed of 360ft, as a full round action it can go 720ft. which equates to 120ft/s or 131km/h. With my homebrew Elemental binding you can double a ship's speed again with air elementals effectively giving a sailing ship/ Galley a speed of 262km/h. You missed that Dragons can "run" while flying so it's really more like 92mph or 148ish Km/h or half that as a normal double move. Can't run long distances.
Well maybe you can as a high-level dragon, I'm not too familiar with the exhaustion rules but they got some good stats.
Double move can go for hours. A Gargantuan or larger dragon can cover 72 miles by hustling in an hour. A Great Wyrm Red Dragon can "Run" for 2 minutes and 54 seconds before having to make con checks. That can cover approx. 1.4miles in less than 3 minutes ( dragons can have a fly speed of 250ft. )
For some I feel like that's unimpressive
Mostly I think we're out of generic material. After the generic you get into specifics, a lot of those specifics are "how does this effect your game world?"
Essentially, you can do whatever mix of magic, technology, and improbable steampunk mix you want, the question is what do you want?
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
It occurs to me that necromancy would allow for power sources moved by the power of dozens or maybe hundreds of untiring undead laborers. As long as the drudge work is fairly mindless, you could even get some effective assembly lines going.
boring7 wrote: Mostly I think we're out of generic material. After the generic you get into specifics, a lot of those specifics are "how does this effect your game world?"
Essentially, you can do whatever mix of magic, technology, and improbable steampunk mix you want, the question is what do you want?
Define Specific. And if you can't, give me an example.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules
|
