volume target of sculpture

[Ashren Va'Hale]

Ok, one of my players wanted to use sculpture to sink a boat so he targeted a plank and made a spell to sculpt a circular slice into the plank which he could remove to sink the ship. now he figured the volume taget should only be the total mass of the area being sliced and since the slice was razor then the volume was minuscule... I lean more towards the plank you are sculpting is size X and that is your volume... in other words I consioder volume to be the volume of the object affected while he sees volume as only the specific area directly affected by the spell.
I defaulted to the "seneschal is always right" rule and told him to get over it and do itmy way but I want to hear what the word on the board is about this.

Lemme know.

[Lance D. Allen]

I say the target is based on the object being affected, so the entire plank.

Honestly, I think he should be grateful you didn't make the volume the entire boat, as it was the ultimate target of the spell.

[prophet118]

well, i suppose he was on the actual boat, otherwise he'd need to use vision.....lol......

sculpture to slice through a plank of wood.....interesting..im not sure sculpture would cover exactly what he wanted, unless he was sculpting a hole...lol

[Valamir]

I'd concur Ashren...and the whole boat might actually not be a bad idea as wolfen suggested.  

Think about some of the issues that your players attempted finagle would incur.

"I'm going to destroy the entire cathedral by making a 1 molecule wide slice through the key stone of the arch holding up the groin vaulted ceiling, causing the key stone to fall out and bringing the whole place down...the actual volume of material effected...oh...couple of milligrams tops".

NOPE...thas just bad news.

I'd make it the whole dang cathedral myself.

[Bob Richter]

IMHO this is a volume 1 spell. The Sculpture effect clearly effects matter (otherwise, what would be the point?) and is therefore NOT incoporeal, but the incision is the only part of the area actually effected. Chances are it fits within the area of  3 gallons/20 pounds/1 yard.

Even a very LARGE hole in a ship should fit within those constraints.

Of course, using this technique (which does naught more than causing a razor-fine circular cut,) the ship won't be sinking very fast.

Remember, sorcery is SUPPOSED to be powerful. No point in going out of your way to gimp it more that it is already.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

my roomate just pointed out to me that I didnt read the book well enough and that one of the volume options is length and I could have used that to define the variable of the cut. It was right there in front of me the whole time!!!

[Mayhem1979]

Even when I was thinking of sinking the entire ship with the spell, it wasn't like I was saying "I'm gonna slice the enire ship in half"  Beyond the voluem, I'd say that reqired vision level two at least, simply because a ship isn't actually one object, but thousands and a lot of them are hidden from view, and I'd need level three vision to make a cut fine enough to do it with a  The idea was to cut a plug out of the hull and just make sure it was to big to effectively seal.

My argument for target number in volume... at least for inanimate material... is that you only really include the amount of material actually being affected.  At least you do if the sorcer casting the spell thinks of it that way.  After all, if you pull a spike of rock out of the ground, are you gonna determine the casting number based on the whole peice of friggin bedrock that the spike was pulled from?  Or just the amount of rock it took to form the spike?

Now wthout any enhancement from the vision vagary, and using the spell in question (I call it "split") I'm trying to make a circualr cut... the only material I'm afecting is about an inch wide area around that split, since what it does is pushes the material apart, which will effect the surrounding material.  Done right i'd be able to keep it under the 20 pounds limit, but it's not going to be an amazingly impressive hole.  Big enough to crawl through and eventually sink the ship, but thats about it.

Besides with a limit of 3 gallons/ 20 pounds / 1 yard... it's not like it's overly powerful spell, but done right it should be enough to take a good chunk out of the side of the ship/target.

[Brian Leybourne]

I'd concur Ashren...and the whole boat might actually not be a bad idea as wolfen suggested.  

"I'm going to destroy the entire cathedral by making a 1 molecule wide slice through the key stone of the arch holding up the groin vaulted ceiling, causing the key stone to fall out and bringing the whole place down...the actual volume of material effected...oh...couple of milligrams tops".

NOPE...thas just bad news.

I'd make it the whole dang cathedral myself.

Jeez, I really hate to agree with Bob, but... (just kidding Bob *grin*).

Ralph, this is totally acceptable in TROS magic, IMO. I might require the cut to be more than a molecule thick, as that probably wouldn't allow any slide, but cutting a 2-3 inch thich gash through a supporting pillar in a chapel to make the place collapse is a brilliant idea (although I might also require some kind of skill check to be able to recognise what constitutes a supporting pillar and what doesn't). You're nerfing magic more than is necessary. The target isn't the whole cathedral, it's whatever volume of stone/wood/whatever I'm removing with the spell (doing the opposite of Sculpture, as is allowed under the rules).

Powerful? You bet. Gotta love that TROS magic.

As for the original question, IMC I would require the target to be whatever volume of material was removed, for a circular cut that's probably V1. Unless he was actually looking at the plank there would be a vision requirement too of course.

Brian.

[Valamir]

Its not that I don't like the powerlevel...its that I don't like the thought process it encourages.

Using Sorcery effectively then becomes an exercise in min maxing effects to find the loop holes and "what's the minimum I need to do to get maximum bang from this spell".

I HATE role-playing with people who think that way...and generally just refuse to do so; so I have a great deal of dislike for rules that encourage players to get into that sort of mindset...because once you're in that mindset it spills over into everything.

[Bob Richter]

Its not that I don't like the powerlevel...its that I don't like the thought process it encourages.

Using Sorcery effectively then becomes an exercise in min maxing effects to find the loop holes and "what's the minimum I need to do to get maximum bang from this spell".

I HATE role-playing with people who think that way...and generally just refuse to do so; so I have a great deal of dislike for rules that encourage players to get into that sort of mindset...because once you're in that mindset it spills over into everything.

It's not really minmaxing.

It's really a matter of "how can I solve THIS problem with THESE vagaries and still have a manageable (or even -- heaven forfend -- low) CTN?")

Not every mage is going to think this way, but the ones who live long and productive (or destructive) lives are.
:)

[Brian Leybourne]

Using Sorcery effectively then becomes an exercise in min maxing effects to find the loop holes and "what's the minimum I need to do to get maximum bang from this spell".

Doesn't that *always* happen in TROS magic though? You need to think that way to keep the CTN down and thus not age yourself into a prematurly early grave (and not fall unconscious while the cathedral collapses around and onto your prone body...)

I think it's more a factor of being cunning and careful, rather than min-maxing, but I agree that there's a fine line there.

I would also note that under your proposed system, many many spells are totally impossible since the maximum volume is 2000 pounds (less than 1000 kilos), so you can't do ANY spell that affects a part of a building (for example) as the overall volume is higher than V3's limit...

Brian.

[Mayhem1979]

Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 8:31 pm    Post subject:    

Its not that I don't like the powerlevel...its that I don't like the thought process it encourages.

Using Sorcery effectively then becomes an exercise in min maxing effects to find the loop holes and "what's the minimum I need to do to get maximum bang from this spell".

I HATE role-playing with people who think that way...and generally just refuse to do so; so I have a great deal of dislike for rules that encourage players to get into that sort of mindset...because once you're in that mindset it spills over into everything.

But in TROS as a magic user that's the ONLY way to play and survive or at least not cut your lifespan in half in the period of one or two campaigns.

And outside of magic there really aren't to many areas in TROS that you can really play that way.  Or at least I can't think of many... and I've been playing this game since before the official release.

About the only place where you can even do anything resembling that is in character creation be specializing your character for one task... but honestly, you do that and you are screwed in so many other ways it's not even funny.

[prophet118]

just call it quits with Vision 3, movement 2....maybe...

sculpture would work as well, use vision 3, sculpture 3, distintegrate the plank.....problem solved