The bare bones of a new magic system

[Ben]

"Obliterate" won't work. Or rather it can't cause global devestation. Objects approching the speed of light start to loose mass. Theoreticaly, its impact would be minimal. And even at speeds where it would be at full mass, a 1 ton rock just isn't that big. My car weighs more than that by about half (as do most average 4doors). That rock will probabbly fit in my truck. At best, the worst the impact could do is reproduce the effects of the eruption of a small volcano. Sorry, doomsday will have to go to plan B.

[Furious D]

"Obliterate" won't work. Or rather it can't cause global devestation. Objects approching the speed of light start to loose mass. Theoreticaly, its impact would be minimal.

You need to recheck your relativity.  As an object approaches lightspeed the mass increases towards infinity.  This is fundamental conservation of energy in action.  The speed of light is an unattainable maximum, so the new energy can't increase the velocity beyond a certain point, instead it increases the mass.

It's impact wouldn't be minimal.  When you get up to near lightspeed, not only is your speed horrendously fast, but your mass approaches infinity.  You are looking at a blast which will literally shatter the globe, even if the object wasn't very big to begin with.

[Brian Leybourne]

Pick up a *really* big rock, and hurl it at the ground at the speed of light.

No, the rock would catch fire and burn due to atmospheric friction.  Of course, you're assuming that a sorcerer knows and understands the difference between really, really fast speeds, like the speed of sound, and theoretical limits, such as the speed of light.  I've suggested before that it's a bad idea to allow sorcerers such knowledge - it doesn't make sense in a simulationist sense, it makes them too powerful in a gamist sense, and too much of it can ruin drama in a narrativist sense.

I'm making no such assertion. A sorceror with movement 3 could very easily accidentally pick up a rock and throw it at someone "as fast as I can". He doesn't need to understand the concept of the speed of sound or the speed of light for movement 3 to allow him to push it to that speed. And atmospheric friction? Oh please. I can pick up a boulder 1 foot off the ground and then throw it at the ground at the speed of light with movement 3. There's not enough time for friction to do diddly squat and because E=MC^2 the rock is infinitely large when it hits the ground a foot below and the planet shatters.

Narativism, gamism, simulationism all be damned, I'm talking about something that could happen quite accidentally, without the mage meaning to do it, and all he needs is 3 vagary points and a moment of stupidity.

Wouldn't work in my game, but not because he doesn't understand anything. There are other forces that would stop him.

Brian.

[Jaif]

We're running into a few problems here:

1) A nit: an object with mass can't go the speed of light, just get really close.

2) Air becomes more "solid" as you go through it faster.  There is friction.

3) The biggest difficulty with the rules is that it posits a situation that violates one of the most fundamental rules of science: F=MA, or force is mass times accelleration.  The game rules state that you accelerate something "instantaneously", which means that our magician is able to apply an infinite amount of force to a mass.  That's something I would never let into my games - it just makes no sense.  As soon as "instantaneous" becomes "nearly instantaneous", then you start talking real world again, and it's again tough to do what you're asking.

4) For grins (with some rounding, and please check the numbers):

Energy = 1/2 mass * velocity^2
E = 1/2 * 1000kg * (300,000km/sec * 1000m/km)^2
E = 500 * (3 * 10^8)^2

Rock's Energy = 4.5 * 10^19 joules

Now, I just looked up a megaton on a random website (http://panda.unm.edu/courses/finley/P160/HW/HW16Sol.html) and it's:

One megaton = 4.2  * 10^15 joules

Bottom line it's 10,000 megatons.  That's 1000 times as powerful as Hiroshima.  According to this site: http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/Input/lahr/magnitude/energy.txt , you're about 4 * more powerful than the energy output of the largest earthquake ever recorded (9.5 on the richtor scale).

Now, the Hiroshima bomb blew in the air to maximize radius, but I'll skip that.  Everything within a mile was totally destroyed at hiroshima, and everything burned between 2 and 3 miles away.  I guess we're looking at a 30+mile zone of total destruction, and fires lit up to 100 miles away.

-Jeff

P.S. Yes, I've assumed a totally inelastic collision between the rock and the ground, which is really wacky.  But then again, the idea that people are tossing rocks around at the speed of light is silly.

[Jaif]

A sorceror with movement 3 could very easily accidentally pick up a rock and throw it at someone "as fast as I can". He doesn't need to understand the concept of the speed of sound or the speed of light for movement 3 to allow him to push it to that speed.

That's intuition speaking, secifically your intuition as to how magic is cast.  There's nothing anywhere that says a magician can automatically toss something as fast as he can: it's not like he's tossing a rock and straining his toughest.

Anyway, I think we agree on one thing: "not in our games".  I may tackle the issue one way, you may view it another way, but we're not going to let some arbitrary rule hamstring our games.

-Jeff

[Ace]

The easy solution is to forbid All  Sorcerer PC's.

This way you don't have the players running Amok killing major NPC's.

"Look its the evil Baron, I will drop a rock on the tent" It doesn't have to be at lightspeed either

Or the ever popular "Use Conquer on the folks in the castle, get a hair sample and use a Suicide spell on the Baron"

The "You can't do that" solution won't work with my players (or me) unless there is discussion  up front about what is not allowed.

A GM who cried "Game Balance"and started nerfing the rules to suit would quickly lose me and a lot of my guys as players.

I have no problem with being told, up front, I can't do something but if you decide to de-empower me as a player, against the rules as written, than I won't cooperate.

Most of my game group feels the same way.


I would feel that if the GM were constantly reducing my powers as a Sorcerer all he wanted to do was kill the character.

Its the "AHAHAHAHA I can age your character to death by not allowing him to be clever" approach in action  and I would have to have a serious discussion with the GM.

If he wasn't absolutely clear about his intent than I would assume he is a poor GM and politely quit.

I will always play with a story and am open to house rulings but I expect the GM to be fair about it.

[Rick]

Yo Ace

 I spin it like so:  I think magic is different for everyone, how they perceive it, how it should work, so on and so forth, so the challenge was to design a system that would cater to anything anyone had ever read, wanted to try, or could come up with in the future. Straight up the magic system is designed to do ANYTHING, no holds barred. ( I.e. 3 in all nine vagaries is Que from star treck, or Akira)  Now that was dang hard to pull off, in relevance to game balance, especially considering the magical standard is and synonymous with D@D, and it puts a big chunk of quick thinking responsibility in the lap of the Seneschal.  I tried to make a system that made logical sense, and in order to incorporate junk like teleportation and regeneration it was necessary to design a system with an equally proportional danger of abuse intact.  Hence the nighty-night equation and the necessity of unheard-of skills.   To date it would seem that goal has succeeded.  (Fortunately there have been no arguments that sorcerers just aren't powerful enough.) Ultimately gamers decide what they feel is appropriate in terms of tone, power and style.  (Has anyone else ever not killed Lloth?  LOL)  Chat with your guys, let em know where you want to go.  Rules are just rules.  They're only ment to make pretending easier.  It's really just supposed to be fun.

Sounds like you're having a tough time with it though, sorry to hear. Aside from say, trying to distract characters in the midst of their world crushing spells,  (a bee flying up their nose, a sink hole opening up underneath them, diamonds glittering in the sunlight, or my favorite: The sudden appearance of some of saucy wenches, I'm not sure how to advise you.  But let me tell you, it's hard to get a drink on a pile of rubble.  

Just my take,

Rick

[Jaif]

I will always play with a story and am open to house rulings but I expect the GM to be fair about it.

Of course.  I agree with this, and the gist of what you said.  In fact, I didn't allow any PC sorcs at the start of my campaign because I wasn't prepared to discuss the system in advance, and I felt I'd be making too many judgement calls on them.

With the new rules chapter, though, and some of these discussions which highlight problem areas, I'd do it now.  I'd have to go through the rules, highlight a few sections, and tell the player they may be in for judgement calls in those areas.

Btw, conquer the Baron's servants, or just silently shrink his tiara by 10x while you sit in the back of the peasants during open court.  I'm not possesive about the NPCs.

-Jeff

[Psychopompous]

No, the rock would catch fire and burn due to atmospheric friction.  Of course, you're assuming that a sorcerer knows and understands the difference between really, really fast speeds, like the speed of sound, and theoretical limits, such as the speed of light.  I've suggested before that it's a bad idea to allow sorcerers such knowledge - it doesn't make sense in a simulationist sense, it makes them too powerful in a gamist sense, and too much of it can ruin drama in a narrativist sense.

The atmospheric friction would create quite a nasty plasma-ball (do you have any idea how much energy is being carried with that lightspeed rock?), and result in an even nastier atmostpheric firestorm.

How do I know they don't have this knowledge?

1) I'm the GM, problem solved.
2) Just because the word "atom" was coined in the bronze age doesn't mean they're atomic theory was correct.  It wasn't.
3) Modern physics is the result of thousands of people's lifetime efforts, including the work of a few hundred geniouses & near-geniouses.  Furthermore, any understanding of complex physics requires an understanding of complex math.  The bottom line is there's no way even a genious level sorcerer could work it all out himself.  "Start with counting and x-ray vision: work out non-euclidean geometry, partial differential equations, and then use these tools to create a reasonable explanation of the world around you."  Yeah, right.

My character is an 800+ year-old fey who has set out on the task of learning how the universe works. He has an MA of 7 (which qualifies as a genious, I'd start with higher, but that's not allowed) and has been documenting things throughout his life. He has been working far more efficiently than human scientists in real history because he doesn't have to transfer his knowledge repeatedly through a long chain of discoverers. He has had from the very beginning the finest of scientific instruments with which to observe the world around him.

-Psychopompous

[Jaif]

...do you have any idea how much energy is being carried with that lightspeed rock?

What?! At the risk of being rude, did you even bother reading this thread? I just calculated the energy of an impossible lightspeed, 1 ton rock under the rules of basic mechanics.  It came out to be 1000 Hiroshima bombs.  On the richtor scale, it's probably around 9.7-9.8.

So yes, yes I do know.  The question is, do you, or are you just using wild guesswork like most people in this thread?

Listen people, when you start saying things like "a lightspeed rock will obliterate the earth" you've just jumped into the realm of science.  Your woman's intuition, trick knee, ouija board, or whatever other form of guesswork you chose to use is meaningless.  Show the numbers, or back off.

I'm not suggesting that you do physics for every spell.  At the same time, don't jump to a scientific conclusion (the world will be obliterated) without scientific backing and then complain that the system is too much.

I have to admit, I don't get some of what I read here.  You make rulings that "hurt" the game, then complain that the game is easy to hurt.  Just change your ruling.

....

May I suggest something?  How bout lvl 3 movement does almost exactly what it says, but with the following additions:

1) No instantaneous acceleration, so we have no infinite forces.  For now, really fast, with definition provided later.  Newton can stop rolling now.

2) A further modifier to a spell's CTN.  You can accelerate to any velocity you want, but every multiple of the speed of sound qualifies as an additional 1 to the CTN.  So +1 for mach 2, +2 for mach 3, and so on.

....

Ace,

If you want traditional magic, the thought that keeps going through my head is something like this:

1) Instead of rolling for months of aging, roll for points of fatigue (chapter 5).  That will slow your mages down, but not stop them.

2) Combine summoning of spirits and demons into one thing ("entities"?), and allow your players to summon elements from another plane.  With entities, they can summon allies ala traditional D&D (who only have a duration here before they disappear), and with elements you can summon earth, air, fire, water, etc...

3) If you feel that level 3s are too easy to reach (which I understand), try the following: lvl 1 costs 1, lvl 2 costs 4, lvl 3 costs 27.  For the curious, that's 2 squared and 3 cubed.  Apply these costs at start and during play.  This means to get a 3, a mage must have 25 points stored and be granted 2 points at one time (or 24 & 3, etc...).

Those are just thoughts, I haven't really worked them through.  But they would be a way to preserve most of the system, and achieve the main effects that I think you're looking for: a) a less deadly system, b) a smoother progression of power, and (mostly) c) spell effects more like D&D.

-Jeff

[Jaif]

Ok, I'm probably overdoing it here, but one last point.

Mass of the earth:

6000000000000000000000000 kilograms

Mass of the projectile

1000 kilograms (rough)

Get the picture?  Or, in terms of a 60kg woman:

60000 grams (changed to grams)

versus

   0.00000000000000001 grams

A grain of sand:

   0.003 grams

Now, a grain of sand hits your body at whatever speed you want.  Actually, the grain of sand is now a trillion times smaller.

This is why I commented earlier about "obliterate" being hard to fathom.  The world is a very big thing.

P.S. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/

[Furious D]

...do you have any idea how much energy is being carried with that lightspeed rock?

What?! At the risk of being rude, did you even bother reading this thread? I just calculated the energy of an impossible lightspeed, 1 ton rock under the rules of basic mechanics.  It came out to be 1000 Hiroshima bombs.  On the richtor scale, it's probably around 9.7-9.8.

So yes, yes I do know.  The question is, do you, or are you just using wild guesswork like most people in this thread?

There is one terrible, glaring problem with you calculation.  That is  E = 1/2*m*v^2 breaks down as you approach light speed (because of the mass increase).  If you check with Einstein, you'll see that energy in fact "approaches infinity as the velocity v approaches the velocity of light c".  This is not a rock with 1000 megatons of energy.  This is a rock with near infinite energy.

[Furious D]

Ok, I'm probably overdoing it here, but one last point.

Mass of the earth:

6000000000000000000000000 kilograms

Mass of the projectile

1000 kilograms (rough)

Actually,

Mass of projectile:

Some ungodly huge number as relativistic principles take effect.  We're talking millions or billions of times that original (effective rest mass) of 1000 kilograms, ballooning to incalculable realms of imagination the closer you get to the speed of light.

You're still thinking in Newtonian terms.  This is the relativistic realm now.  It's an entirely different game here.

And that's why movement 3, as written, is just way too overpowered. :P

[Mike Holmes]

I like silly topics like this.

Any object that is moving is heavier than when it is not moving. It's just not noticeable at what they call non-reltivistic speeds. Yep, at just nine tenths the speed of light, your object weighs more than twice what it would at rest. This increases asymtotically as you approach the speed of light. So, if we can get to .999999999999999 times the speed of light, as an example, the object would then weigh over 22 million times as much.

That rock hits the atmosphere, and before it passes the fraction of a second that it would take to get to the ground, it goes through the fusion process (skips right past plasma) and is destroyed. Yup, releasing so much energy that the earth is reduced to its atomic structuresin a matter of moments. Well, I'm actually just guessing, really. It might actually take a few more nines in that number above. That's all a desktop will do without special programs. But you can have as many nines as you want.

Theory states that it's possible in real life as long as you could figure out how to impart that much energy to a rock. To destroy the Earth, it would take about as much energy put into the rock as you would get by say, tossing the Earth into the sun for fuel. The mass is really irrelevant, you get as much energy out as you put in; you could use that grain of sand, or a single atom or even subatomic particles (which is what super-colliders do; hadrons to be precise, leptons might not do it). Energy is conserved. You get out what you put in. Enough nines above and you have imparted enough energy to do anything.

Actually, you'd only need a small fraction of the Earth's total mass involved in a fusion reaction to effectively destroy the whole thing (even less in an anti-matter reaction ['bout a golfball], but hey, that's a different topic entirely). It takes a lot less energy to break a chemical bond than you get from fusing atoms of the same mass together. So you'd need much less mass than the entire ball o wax. And you don't really need to vaporize eveything, anyhow. Just burn off the relatively tiny atmosphere would probably suit the suicidal sorcerer just fine.

Yes, the movement thing is problematic, IMO. If you can move something as fast as it can go by the laws of our universe, you have "near infinite" energy at your disposal, and can easily do away with planets. Heck, the real challenge would be the big central galaxy black holes. Need a lot of nines for that.


Better to place another limitation on the process as others have done here. Either change the rule (simple enough) or just say that the speed of sound is the limit (it is a point at which there is a large barrier to further acelleration), or come up with a maximum velocity that the average sorcerer can concieve of for purposes of the spell. Or better yet, come up with an in-game description of the ability and translate back into physical effect (though that might require dismantling a lot of the current system).  

Mike

[Lyrax]

Furious D- This is what happens... IF the object ACCELERATES to light speed.  Einstein has nothing to say about what happens if you are already going the speed of light.  Some of you weren't listening when you watched K-PAX.

A bit more seriously, though, nobody says that the rock is accelerating towards the speed of light (indeed, instantaneous acceleration would indicate otherwise), thus its mass would not balloon into infinity.  Sculpture would be needed in order for the rock to maintain its form (we can't have 1000 kilogram rocks just disintegrating all over the place, now can we?) and, unless you don't mind being close to the epicenter, Vision would be needed to see what one is doing.  This makes the obliterate spell a Spell of Three, not unlike Fold or Smite, which are given in the book.  Incidentally, the Spell of Three bit sort of reminds us why it hasn't been done accidentally.  Also, Einstein hasn't been born yet, and for all we know physics on Weyrth is different than physics on Earth.  Thus, sorcerors can "accelerate" things to light-speed without destroying the world.  What light-speed really means here is: "As fast as your sorceror can imagine, which is probably pretty darn fast."