The difference is...** spoiler omitted **Question about silverdisks
** spoiler omitted **
Where is the write up for silver discs i saw it but can not find it now please help.
Where is the write up for silver discs i saw it but can not find it now please help.
Its in the Technology Guide unter "Battery". Check here.
Where is the write up for silver discs i saw it but can not find it now please help.Its in the Technology Guide unter "Battery". Check here.
thank you
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So let me get this straight. A silverdisk is a used battery. ... And a battery weighs 1 lb, but a silver disk weighs 50:1 pounds?
Let's do some math here. Let's say that a silver disk is 3 cm in diameter and 0.3 cm in thickness (a bit bigger than an inch wide for those two countries in the world that don't use metric).
2.12 cm^3
453.6 grams = 1 lb
1 kg/m^3 = 0.001 g/cm^3
213.96 g/cm^3 = 213962 kg/m^3
That's a density greater than the core of our local star. If you reduce it to the value of 50:1 that's 4279 kg/m^3 or about that of Titanium (many coins are made of steel or zinc and coated with other materials, and silverdisks would feel like they're lighter than that).
If you argue that the coins are smaller than 3 cm / 0.3 cm, the density goes up ... and if you argue that they are larger, it obviously goes down, but if it's too large it doesn't make much sense that you can 'slot it into a pistol'.
Finally, the idea that a space faring civilization would have batteries that either can't be recharged or break if they're recharged doesn't make much sense. If the argument is that the batteries are 'timeworn', that is breaking down because they're so old, than finding batteries, like my group has found batteries, fully charged, would be worth FAR more than 100 gp each. Those economics suggest that there are 10 discharged / broken batteries for each fully charged battery, so each battery has a half life of about 2600 years ... these things are tough.
Can you over think advanced technology....
Can you over think advanced technology....Check out Shadowrun 4's hacking rules. You can definitely overthink technology rules for use in RPGs.
There's a difference between overly complicating things, like rulesets, and overthinking things. What I see here is a collision between plausibility and game mechanics, where game mechanics won, leaving implausible things in its wake, thus making it difficult to maintain the suspension of disbelief.
And before you go 'but it's fantasy, magic, and you're complaining about this?' argument, any fictional world has a certain number and kind of conceits, like FTL travel is possible, magic works, etc. but if you either break your own rules or try to make something that doesn't fit that fictional world, like technology that we're familiar with, it strains one's credulity.
Simply put, these batteries are likely using some kind of highly efficient storage system, so that they don't burn out or become useless over the course of years like ours do. They can survive, fully charged, for thousands of years. Recharging them should not be a problem with the right equipment. Their weight should also be comparable to discharged batteries.
I went with the one silver disk equals one platinum piece and of course house ruled away the 1 lb weight for the battery.
Finally, the idea that a space faring civilization would have batteries that either can't be recharged or break if they're recharged doesn't make much sense. If the argument is that the batteries are 'timeworn', that is breaking down because they're so old, than finding batteries, like my group has found batteries, fully charged, would be worth FAR more than 100 gp each. Those economics suggest that there are 10 discharged / broken batteries for each fully charged battery, so each battery has a half life of about 2600 years ... these things are tough.
Don't overthink it, if you do that you will see that quite a few pieces of the technology guide don't make sense, the biggest example is the charges; logic dictates that all charges have the same amount of Amber but then you have things like a lighter consuming the same amount of energy per use that a laser rifle does.
I went with the one silver disk equals one platinum piece and of course house ruled away the 1 lb weight for the battery.
Don't overthink it, if you do that you will see that quite a few pieces of the technology guide don't make sense, the biggest example is the charges; logic dictates that all charges have the same amount of Amber but then you have things like a lighter consuming the same amount of energy per use that a laser rifle does.
Yup. One charge can inflict either one point nonlethal electricity damage (zipstick) or 120 points of piercing/bludgeoning damage (lucky rail gun critical). I don't know how Androffans have designed their batteries, and for my sanity's sake I don't want to know.
I houseruled battery weight away, too.
... you may be overthinking it.
Our rechargeable batteries, here and now, are apparently better than those made by a starfaring civilization. This isn't overthinking, this is transparently obviously ridiculous.
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... you may be overthinking it.Our rechargeable batteries, here and now, are apparently better than those made by a starfaring civilization. This isn't overthinking, this is transparently obviously ridiculous.
I'm not sure that's entirely fair.
For a fair comparison, we'd need to have a 9,000 year old battery of our own.
Creative Director
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One important thing to keep in mind is playability. Is it realistic that a single charge from a silverdisk charges one use of a zipstick and one use of a railgun? Probably not. But is it simpler than having a huge range of different batteries and power sources and ammunitions and the like? Yes, and that simplification is a deliberate choice I made in designing this element to make it easier to play the game.
If your table doesn't mind the added complexity of multiple power sources and the like, having silverdisks/batteries follow something like the way coins do is not a bad idea.
Alternately, you could simply assume that it's not the batteries that really provide the "oomph" but the machine itself. A low cost simple gizmo like a zipstick would be highly inefficient at processing energy and thus a single charge would only do a point of electrical damage... but a high cost thing like a rail gun would be a lot more efficient at it. This puts the power and cost of the thing on the item itself and helps to keep the battery economy pretty simple.
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I don't mind the zipstick/railgun charge thing. It is just one of those funny things that happen in games.
I have played games where batteries had exact amounts of energy and different devices used it at different rates. One laser pistol could get 47 shots from a powercell, and another one got 25. Pretty soon another player asked why every single powercell in the entire campaign universe had exactly the same capacity and mass, even between different alien species. It is always possible to overthink things, and then you have seven different powercell techlevels/types in your inventory sheet, some of them partially drained.
10 charges per battery regardless of device is fine, even appropriate for pulp science setting like Numeria. Especially when the device just drains the charges from the cell and spits out an empty husk. Besides, Androffans did not lack power. They could afford to waste it.
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Reading through this thread I see one question that was asked and answered by another poster. The question is "Can Silverdisks be repaired?" The poster pointed out Greater Make Whole. Does Greater Make Whole really repair a broken/dead battery so that it can now be recharged?
I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.
I was hoping James Jacobs would chime in with a unofficial response. Also I think Greater Make whole would be required. Not Make Whole. I think our DM will allow it. James Jacobs kind of by default at least implied that he is ok with it by quoting that exact statement that Greater Make Whole would fix broken disks. I keep a watch here for responses.
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Creative Director
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I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.I was hoping James Jacobs would chime in with a unofficial response. Also I think Greater Make whole would be required. Not Make Whole. I think our DM will allow it. James Jacobs kind of by default at least implied that he is ok with it by quoting that exact statement that Greater Make Whole would fix broken disks. I keep a watch here for responses.
Greater make whole does not remove the timeworn quality, which is more or less what we're talking about. It is not intended to be able to remove the timeworn quality, nor is it intended to restore silverdisks to full functionality. Memory of function is the spell you want, and at that point, it's not really cost effective.
Ok, thank you. Great info. Thanks for responding.
I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.
Ehmmm....
Greater make whole was made for repairing advanced technology (just not timeworn), the fact that it's a great tool for repairing a destroyed magic item.|
Creative Director
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I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.Ehmmm....
Greater make whole was made for repairing advanced technology (just not timeworn), the fact that it's a great tool for repairing a destroyed magic item.
Ehmmm...
The fact that, as written, the core's make whole won't let you repair a magic item with a caster level of 11 or higher is a flaw in the spell's design, and so I invented greater make whole to fix that flaw and allow for the quick repair of higher level magic items. The fact that it showed up in the Technology Guide was happy circumstance—I'd been looking for a place to get the spell into the system and this book was a PERFECT fit with its focus on items anyway.
But yeah... the spell was intended to repair ALL items, but it's primary reason to exist and the reason I built it in the first place was indeed to be something to fix magic items that other spells could not.
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I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.Ehmmm....
Greater make whole was made for repairing advanced technology (just not timeworn), the fact that it's a great tool for repairing a destroyed magic item.
This is why I should always re-read the spell instead of going off memory. Considering that, I'd amend my previous statement to say... well, basically what James has already said. No go on timeworn/depleted stuff.
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I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.Ehmmm....
Greater make whole was made for repairing advanced technology (just not timeworn), the fact that it's a great tool for repairing a destroyed magic item.Ehmmm...
The fact that, as written, the core's make whole won't let you repair a magic item with a caster level of 11 or higher is a flaw in the spell's design, and so I invented greater make whole to fix that flaw and allow for the quick repair of higher level magic items. The fact that it showed up in the Technology Guide was happy circumstance—I'd been looking for a place to get the spell into the system and this book was a PERFECT fit with its focus on items anyway.
But yeah... the spell was intended to repair ALL items, but it's primary reason to exist and the reason I built it in the first place was indeed to be something to fix magic items that other spells could not.
Ok i didn't know that, i was wrong in my previous post (also i forgot to add a "it's just gravvy" in the end of my post).
I just assumed that since the "repairs destroyed magic items with a CL up to half yours" was intented, especially since this was a change over 3.5's make whole.How come this wasn't errata'd during some of the many core rulebook reprints?
PS. Since i now the intent behind the make whole and greater make whole then that means that i can stop forcing my players to travel to Numeria in order to get their destroyed magic items restored, i can just allow them to learn greater make whole.
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I wouldn't let make whole or greater make whole work on advanced technology. The major cap on abusing the power of tech comes from its limited use, allowing a PC to circumvent that with a relatively low level spell seems wrong.Ehmmm....
Greater make whole was made for repairing advanced technology (just not timeworn), the fact that it's a great tool for repairing a destroyed magic item.Ehmmm...
The fact that, as written, the core's make whole won't let you repair a magic item with a caster level of 11 or higher is a flaw in the spell's design, and so I invented greater make whole to fix that flaw and allow for the quick repair of higher level magic items. The fact that it showed up in the Technology Guide was happy circumstance—I'd been looking for a place to get the spell into the system and this book was a PERFECT fit with its focus on items anyway.
But yeah... the spell was intended to repair ALL items, but it's primary reason to exist and the reason I built it in the first place was indeed to be something to fix magic items that other spells could not.
OK. I'm going to nitpick here JJ: If you intended to make it fix "ALL" items, perhaps you should not have included the line "it otherwise functions as make whole" since "make whole" can't fix charged items such as wands.... AND SILVERDISKS! Aren't they a chargeable item? That said, can greater make whole fix wands and silverdisks? A straight yes or no, or maybe an errata on the whole charged items thing is needed? Do they come back fully charged? Or non-charged (wands would this be a fixed stick, which they were before the spell).
I know I am necro-ing this thread, but I mean, it really hasn't cleared up ANYTHING regarding fixing silverdisks. Has it?
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One important thing to keep in mind is playability. Is it realistic that a single charge from a silverdisk charges one use of a zipstick and one use of a railgun? Probably not. But is it simpler than having a huge range of different batteries and power sources and ammunitions and the like? Yes, and that simplification is a deliberate choice I made in designing this element to make it easier to play the game.
If your table doesn't mind the added complexity of multiple power sources and the like, having silverdisks/batteries follow something like the way coins do is not a bad idea.
Alternately, you could simply assume that it's not the batteries that really provide the "oomph" but the machine itself. A low cost simple gizmo like a zipstick would be highly inefficient at processing energy and thus a single charge would only do a point of electrical damage... but a high cost thing like a rail gun would be a lot more efficient at it. This puts the power and cost of the thing on the item itself and helps to keep the battery economy pretty simple.
It makes sense that all the battery slots from a single race of spacefaring explorers were universal. I see no real issue with this and it makes a fine bit of sense when you put it in context. Likewise, the Dominion would probably have alternate power sources which may or may not be universally interchangeable (brain coins?). I guess since I necro-ed it once, I might as well comment a second time. :)