I have the following tech level in my magitech setting:
Mass production is a thing. Most of the clothing people wear came out of a factory, and the same applies to household and recreational goods. Canning and freezing have been mastered, and food can easily and cheaply be transported worldwide. Weapons are easily to make, but armor takes a bit longer because it has to be reasonably well fitted to the wearer. People generally have access to internal plumbing and electricity, though battery technology is very poor. We do have rotary phones, cameras (no motion pictures, though), and the printing press, and literacy is very common. Medical care is mostly administered by Experts or Alchemists.
Trains, fueled by alchemical engines, are ubiquitous for travel between cities. For travel within cities, bicycles and cable cars are dominant, though the horse is nowhere near obsolete. Alchemical engines are powerful, but they are also extremely dangerous, and a trained professional has to be present at all times during operation. Flight is even more dangerous, and only magic users can pull it off at the moment. We don’t have any passenger vehicles that can fly. Ships use alchemical engines.
Firearms exist, and are relatively common, but have not overtaken the bow or crossbow. This is because soldiers tend to fight in scattered formations to avoid offering an enticing target to magical artillery. Volley tactics are a militia thing, so the arquebus is a weapon of the militiaman, city guard, hunter, or rancher, while soldiers and guardsmen with sufficient training use bows or crossbows fitted with mechanical spanners, because these weapons make less noise, don’t throw smoke everywhere, and can be fired faster.
For bicycles to be a common mode of transportation, rubber needs to be easily available for tires. If we have lots of rubber, we would naturally use it for other things. What might those uses be for a setting of this technology level that lacks coal and petroleum?
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I have the following tech level in my magitech setting:
** spoiler omitted **...
Well if you are looking at rubber in a world that doesn't have petrol or coal I would say it's likely collected and refined from trees. From their I would say that you should probably look into rubber uses by ancient cultures that had access to rubber trees and what they did with them. Second I would think of it as an alchemical oddity, something that could be new or a novelty like a lot of other alchemical or herbalist crafted items where it has some uses people have thought of but the sheer scope of it hasn't quite hit everyone yet or its unwieldy nature (either because of the way they harvest it or the tools they have to actually sculpt and work it) leaves them with limited options.
Some quick ideas that come to mind are.
1. balls
2. rubber bullets
3. armor (increase armor check but let the wearer like reduce fall damage and/or give them some moderate DR like DR 1/slashing or piercing because of its ability to absorb hits)
If it helps think of it more as an object wizards are trying to convince people is worth a damn and joe commoner is unconvinced on buying more often than not rather than the super common item it is today.
Raincoats.
Boots and soles.
Mason jar seals: better-preservable food.
Draft excluders for doors?
Condoms.
Raincoats.
Boots and soles.
Mason jar seals: better-preservable food.
Draft excluders for doors?
Condoms.
Rubber's simplest use is to waterproof and seal stuff, so a world with rubber probably has less mildew than a rubber-free one.
Also, graphite sticks are now more useful, since they can be erased.
Thank you. I do believe all of these things do make perfect sense. Especially condoms.
Medical gloves. Probably a lifesaver.
O-rings allow good sealing mechanical systems. This would improve the efficiency of heat engines and mechanical pumps. A better seal would allow more efficient refrigeration.
More importantly however if this is newly discovered it would lead to investigation of other materials made from organic precursors which may lead to the development of other polymer plastic technologies.
Here is my vote for someone inventing a spell called wood to rubber . I'm not sure how practical it could be, but it comes to mind reading this thread.
so, you don't get rubber from trees and make tires out of it, you have to vulcanize it, which has some chemical implications. rubber is brittle if it isn't vulcanized and will break before stretching.
the civilization should have at least started several advanced chemical applications. which would likely be the use of coal and petrol...
if you just force petrol to not be a thing, then to vulcanize rubber they need sulfur, rubber trees and the ability to heat the rubber. all of which should be fairly easy.
rubber would definitely be a strong alchemical tool used in machining and contraptions to maintain seals or have pliant materials for corks and such. you would definitely have a modern looking chemistry equipment in your setting.
if you have electricity, your civilization should also be starting to discover the periodic elements, and the easiest one to make and discover is hydrogen, which means dirigibles should be a thing. (electricity opened us up to the periodic table more readily than it lighted our factories so we could have workers work at night.)
also, with your modernized use of magic in a military setting, you probably would have the big British combat doctrine of staged advance and static defense being created. Which basically means, trenches, bunkers and heavy *magical* artillery all abound. basically trenches were great because explosions travel OVER the trench instead of flowing down into them, and bunkers let you do military stuff without fear of enemy artillery killing all your officers or all your plans getting destroyed, or your reserve food being blown up.
Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
Ship fenders.
Hoses.
Water proof clothes.
I don't think you'll get bows and crossbows holding out as military weapons, not if you can build steam engines with tolerances fine enough to be worth the trouble.
Bows are good for hunting and crossbows would be better if they were legal, but with alchemy emphasized you should be using breech loaders, smokeless powder, percussion caps, and possibly even drawn brass cartridges. Guns would reload faster than crossbows and be easier to use than bows and they'd all be rifles (except the shotguns).
Eventually that will be exactly what happens. At the moment, though, guns are still not the favored weapon of professional soldiers and law enforcement. The issue is that the arquebus never fully took over from the bow and crossbow, unlike real life. The largest reasons are a shift towards professional armies with troops who are trained for a while before seeing combat, a fighting style that emphasizes staggering the ranks and fighting from cover (which deemphasizes the use of mass volleys), the tendency of black powder to not fire when wet, the time it takes to load an arquebus, and the smoke and noise it gives off on firing.
In contrast, crossbows can be fitted with autospanning mechanisms so that the soldier doesn't need to manually crank the weapon, and the capability to waterproof the weapon exists. This makes it more reliable in poor weather, able to fire about as fast as a new bolt can be seated, quieter, and so on. Rapid fire is the biggest issue. The autospanning mechanism costs more money than an arquebus, making it a tool of the professional soldier, not the militia. Militia do often carry the arquebus, largely because it is cheaper.
The mechanical know how to create the parts necessary for a cartridge based breech loader exists, and eventually somebody will come up with the idea and start creating prototypes. At that point, bows and crossbows will fall to the wayside. That day is always conveniently a few years beyond the time of my campaign setting. :P
Oh, and on the actual question: gas masks. Because Bandw2 is right about trench warfare, but he forgot to mention the joys of Cloudkill and Poison Bomb (ie. cloudkill for alchemists).
Against an entrenched foe? Most definitely.
so, you don't get rubber from trees and make tires out of it, you have to vulcanize it, which has some chemical implications. rubber is brittle if it isn't vulcanized and will break before stretching.
Given the setting's bent towards alchemy, vulcanization probably isn't too hard to figure out.
the civilization should have at least started several advanced chemical applications. which would likely be the use of coal and petrol...
if you just force petrol to not be a thing, then to vulcanize rubber they need sulfur, rubber trees and the ability to heat the rubber. all of which should be fairly easy.
Yea, petrol and coal just aren't things. For some odd reason, the gods did not like those specific things when they created the world. Bad past experiences.
The setting is a Fantasy Counterpart of North America. Mexico produces rubber IRL, and I've been to a large sulfur deposit in my native California, so this world should have access to both. Heat is not a problem at all.
rubber would definitely be a strong alchemical tool used in machining and contraptions to maintain seals or have pliant materials for corks and such. you would definitely have a modern looking chemistry equipment in your setting.
Sounds useful. Alchemy is the magic of the people, after all.
if you have electricity, your civilization should also be starting to discover the periodic elements, and the easiest one to make and discover is hydrogen, which means dirigibles should be a thing. (electricity opened us up to the periodic table more readily than it lighted our factories so we could have workers work at night.)
Dirigibles? Okay, but not the super advanced airships of steampunk. I like steampunk, but that's not what I'm trying to do with this setting.
also, with your modernized use of magic in a military setting, you probably would have the big British combat doctrine of staged advance and static defense being created. Which basically means, trenches, bunkers and heavy *magical* artillery all abound. basically trenches were great because explosions travel OVER the trench instead of flowing down into them, and bunkers let you do military stuff without fear of enemy artillery killing all your officers or all your plans getting destroyed, or your reserve food being blown up.
mechanically wise, hardened rubber could be made into clubs that deal nonlethal damage equal lto modern day baton sticks and such.
non lethal damage for firearms and slings
Load a wood and rubber bolt into a light crossbow and fire it into a rioting crowd. The result is not going to be pretty.
alchemical items similar to smokesticks with increased duration and stink from mixing fire and rubber
improved versions of tarbombs, having rubber sticking to you while it burns
Bleck. Burning rubber smells nasty. Good idea, though.
special material for armors that receive resist electricity or even better sr vs electrical effects
Yes, but it'll make you unbelievably sweaty.
elastic ropes
How did I forget about elastic?
More importantly however if this is newly discovered it would lead to investigation of other materials made from organic precursors which may lead to the development of other polymer plastic technologies.
Are there plastics that can be created without petroleum?
Are there plastics that can be created without petroleum?More importantly however if this is newly discovered it would lead to investigation of other materials made from organic precursors which may lead to the development of other polymer plastic technologies.
It's your world, you can just say some common plant or mineral was discovered that when run through some alchemical process creates plastic, without the toxic byproduct (or with, the people NEED a Toxic Avenger!).
honestly with this level of advancement you should have maxim guns and such up and running.
also, bows were largely FORGOTTEN during the age of the gun, and were only remembered as a hunting tool around the year 1900 or so, as people wanted to make it difficult to hunt again.
during the 1800s you had people who didn't even know what bows were.
honestly with this level of advancement you should have maxim guns and such up and running.
also, bows were largely FORGOTTEN during the age of the gun, and were only remembered as a hunting tool around the year 1900 or so, as people wanted to make it difficult to hunt again.
during the 1800s you had people who didn't even know what bows were.
Issue is, this world went directly from medieval to industrialization, because of a massive jump in the availability of magic. As a result, technological development is all over the place compared to the progression our world had, and a lot of ideas are new. Rubber vulcanization is maybe three decades old or so now, antibiotics are about 70 years old, the importance of sanitation in disease and infection prevention has been known for about 90 years, high powered fertilizers are about 85 years old, and the rise of alchemists was a century ago. It just doesn't mirror Earth's development well at all. Before that, we didn't have full plate armor yet. In particular, automatically spanning crossbows mean that there is a strong reason to prefer crossbows over arquebuses in military service, and the arquebus itself is a fairly new idea. Somebody will come up with cartridge firearms, and it probably won't take that long for it to happen, but I want to keep that a few years in the future, because I don't want guns everywhere.
honestly with this level of advancement you should have maxim guns and such up and running.
also, bows were largely FORGOTTEN during the age of the gun, and were only remembered as a hunting tool around the year 1900 or so, as people wanted to make it difficult to hunt again.
during the 1800s you had people who didn't even know what bows were.
I'm pretty sure those people weren't living in North America, where some of the native groups (in the Great Basin, for example) had never even seen a gun before the 1830s.
a large portion of them had upgraded to guns, but i was mostly talking about europe. Archduke Ferdinand used a maxim gun to hunt from his personal train car.
a large portion of them had upgraded to guns, but i was mostly talking about europe. Archduke Ferdinand used a maxim gun to hunt from his personal train car.honestly with this level of advancement you should have maxim guns and such up and running.
also, bows were largely FORGOTTEN during the age of the gun, and were only remembered as a hunting tool around the year 1900 or so, as people wanted to make it difficult to hunt again.
during the 1800s you had people who didn't even know what bows were.
I'm pretty sure those people weren't living in North America, where some of the native groups (in the Great Basin, for example) had never even seen a gun before the 1830s.
Imagine if he'd brought that to Sarajevo. :D
ID love to contribute to this thread but everything I can think of has already been brought up.
Btw Kelesy your Campaign world sounds like a lot of fun!
Dirigibles? Okay, but not the super advanced airships of steampunk. I like steampunk, but that's not what I'm trying to do with this setting.
Unmanned balloons were used as early as 220 AD in China. It's really not hard to think about how to create a hot-air balloon once you understand the concept of hot air, let alone one when you have spells like fly or similar that would allow greater control over even a hot-air balloon.
It's unlikely dirigibles would be super advanced at this stage anyway from what you said. If you simply want to keep people out of the air, that's fine, but the concept of flying ships has been around for centuries.
Father Francesco Lana de Terzi conceived one in 1670 that would work on the principle of vacuum. The first manned balloons came about in 1783. If your objection is more along the lines of potential firepower, simply have it be that the more zeppelin-type ships are okay for carrying cargo or even work well for passengers, but outfitting them with weapons simply won't work due to their bulk or whatever. It'd be very hard to see to aim, and if they move at a slow speed they'd be sitting ducks for any sort of attacks.
Also, don't forget colorful party balloons.
Issue is, this world went directly from medieval to industrialization, because of a massive jump in the availability of magic. As a result, technological development is all over the place compared to the progression our world had, and a lot of ideas are new. Rubber vulcanization is maybe three decades old or so now, antibiotics are about 70 years old, the importance of sanitation in disease and infection prevention has been known for about 90 years, high powered fertilizers are about 85 years old, and the rise of alchemists was a century ago. It just doesn't mirror Earth's development well at all. Before that, we didn't have full plate armor yet. In particular, automatically spanning crossbows mean that there is a strong reason to prefer crossbows over arquebuses in military service, and the arquebus itself is a fairly new idea. Somebody will come up with cartridge firearms, and it probably won't take that long for it to happen, but I want to keep that a few years in the future, because I don't want guns everywhere.
Why not have crossbows with cartridges? Or is that what you mean with automatic spanning? If the bolts themselves can have various alchemical augmentations to make them deal energy damage or other tricks then you will get a lot more life out of crossbows.
Also, you can use wood or metal for bike wheels instead of rubber. It wouldn't be as nice a ride, but it's certainly possible.
Don't forget magic items!
Caoutchouc Mask
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 11th
Slot head; Price 20,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.
Description
This unsettling totem mask, sewn together from long strands of cured rubber, seems to stretch and shrink continuously. Once worn, the mask melds with the wearer's face, infusing his body with supernatural elasticity and flexibility.
The mask has 10 charges, which are renewed each day. As long as the mask has at least one charge remaining, the wearer gains a +5 competence bonus on all Escape Artist checks and Acrobatics checks made to make high or long jumps.
The wearer can spend one or more charges to gain the following benefits:
1 charge: As a swift action, the wearer can elongate his limbs, thereby increasing his land speed by 10 feet (considered an enhancement bonus) and extending his natural reach by 5 feet until the beginning of his next turn.
2 charges: As a standard action, the wearer can temporarily increase his body's flexibility to gain the compression universal monster ability and DR 5/slashing or piercing for one minute.
3 charges: The wearer can temporarily increase his body's elasticity to reflect the momentum from a melee attack made against him back upon his attacker. After being hit, as an immediate action, he may perform a bull rush combat maneuver against his attacker, using his opponent's attack bonus as his combat maneuver bonus. This bull rush maneuver does not provoke attacks of opportunity and the mask's wearer can not move with his opponent.
In conditions of severe cold (below 0° F), the caoutchouc mask becomes rigid and brittle and stops functioning.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, fluid form, jump, kinetic reverberation; Cost 10,000 gp