Modern items made in a dnd world?

[UnjustCustos]

After sitting down with some friends talking about the technology of the standard dnd world and the ideas put forward by others it got me curious if anyone else has tried to get creative with low-tech and magic to replace things we have today. I know the decanter of endless water powered devices (rockets and steam wagons) have been designed to death. And that the Drow may be on the technological forefront. But what ideas do you have? Any? I understand this may be a thread with no replies, heh.

[Gildedragon]

Message devices to act as phone type items; telegraph maybe.
persisted prestidigitations to heat up and cool down habitats.

[mattie_p]

Minor Major creation makes 1 cubic foot of matter per caster level. Make it uranium and you have instant atomic bombs. Need contingent teleport.

[Krobar]

Decanter of endless water... pipes enchanted to heat and cool depending on the pipe, that can be opened and closed....

hot and cold running water.

[UnjustCustos]

Thanks for the replies guys, keep 'em coming.

[lsfreak]

Minor creation makes 1 cubic foot of matter per caster level. Make it uranium and you have instant atomic bombs. Need contingent teleport.

That's not how nuclear weapons work... but you will get extremely lethal radiation doing that.
EDIT: Actually, I suppose at higher levels you might be able to zap in 10-20 cubic feet and have it explode, but the main threat is still going to be the massive amounts of radiation. The threat of explosion will probably just be dispersing supercritical chunks of material over an area, which you can do with creation anyways.

[Magnera]

Unseen Servant let's everyone have their own butler!

[Darth Stabber]

Minor creation makes 1 cubic foot of matter per caster level. Make it uranium and you have instant atomic bombs. Need contingent teleport.

Now I may be mistaken, but last time I checked uranium is not vegetable matter. You would be thinking of major creation. Even then, you can have 87,000 lbs of uranium it won't make an atomic blast, it would give everyone in the area severe radiation poisoning, but no boom. Now causing severe radiation poisoning might help achieve the ends you were looking for with the atomic blast, but it's not going to have nearly the same area of effect.

Now I think that sending is pretty close to modern text messaging. Necklace of fireballs is a great bandoleer of grenades. It takes very little work to turn a decanter of endless water into a slow car, but having a carriage pulled by undead (or constructs for the squeamish) is a much better vehicle. In fact, there is a lot you can do with a horde of undead. Minor creation + hand crossbow + mage hand = handgun. 2 or more immovable rods = airplane. An immovable rod also makes fine breaks for your zombie car. Zombie car + dancing scythes = combine. Magic item of sending + library attended by a mass of intelligent constructs or undead = smartphone. Self resetting trap of create food and water = vending machine. Tippyesque self resetting traps are good for a great many things, and if they become common, start researching post scarcity economics.

[mattie_p]

Now I may be mistaken, but last time I checked uranium is not vegetable matter. You would be thinking of major creation. Even then, you can have 87,000 lbs of uranium and won't make an atomic blast, it would give everyone in the area severe radiation poisoning, but no boom.

You are correct that the spell should be major creation. However, it does in fact work. The "Little Boy" bomb was basically two pieces of sub-critical uranium that were shot into each other (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon) to form a super-critical mass.


Although in Little Boy 132 pounds (60 kg) of 80%-grade U-235 was used (hence 106 pounds / 48 kilograms), the minimum is ca. 44 to 55 pounds (20 to 25 kg), versus 33 pounds (15 kg) for the implosion method.

If the uranium is instantaneously created as a super-critical mass, it will in fact form a runaway fission cycle and create a nuclear explosion. The fact that the material only lasts 1 round per level doesn't matter, the explosion will occur within microseconds or less.

[Darth Stabber]

You are correct that the spell should be major creation. However, it does in fact work. The "Little Boy" bomb was basically two pieces of sub-critical uranium that were shot into each other (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon) to form a super-critical mass.



If the uranium is instantaneously created as a super-critical mass, it will in fact form a runaway fission cycle and create a nuclear explosion. The fact that the material only lasts 1 round per level doesn't matter, the explosion will occur within microseconds or less.

At this point you may as well make neutronium, so long as you don't summon an amount so big that gravity holds it together, you will get far more energy output per unit mass, and significantly more per volume.

[mattie_p]

Well, neutronium isn't technically of mineral nature, either. I think you need true creation for that.

[LTwerewolf]

Use major creation to create ununoctium. A cubic foot of it. Then protect your head as books fly at it, and proceed to pass the books back out so everyone can reroll.

[lsfreak]

If the uranium is instantaneously created as a super-critical mass, it will in fact form a runaway fission cycle and create a nuclear explosion. The fact that the material only lasts 1 round per level doesn't matter, the explosion will occur within microseconds or less.

Will it, though? In order to get an actual explosion, nuclear weapons use precisely-timed explosives to super-condense the fissle (uranium/plutonium) - we're talking a popcan-sized chunk of solid material being crushed at tens of thousand of kilometers a second to down to the size of a pea. Even then, there's "mirrors" added to keep the reaction contained even longer in order to ensure more material fissions, and modern weapons add additional sources of neutrons, again, to ensure more material fissions.

Now, with 20 cubic feet of it you may very well get some kind of explosion, but I don't know/don't want to try and figure out whether you'll actually get something impressive or if it will just make a comparative pop before it shatters and spreads itself out to a whole mess of supercritical - but very much not explody - chunks.

EDIT: Semi-tangent on the nature of exploding stuff
If you have Minecraft, you can see this in action. Spend 10 minutes and you'll see what I mean. Creative mode, dig 20 spaces down, and hollow out a chamber 3 blocks tall and as deep as you can get without moving from where you dropped down. Fill the entire thing with TNT, place a single redstone torch, and fly up. You'll see the TNT undergo a chain reaction, just like a nuclear weapon does. The important thing is that the TNT spread out massively as it reacts, because the inner blocks will push the outer blocks farther and farther out. Now imagine that if the blocks get too spread out, they no longer explode at all. That's what happens in any explosion, the key is to keep everything contained as long as you can so that as much as it reacts as possible. Nuclear weapons work the same way, but because they're so much MORE than a normal explosive, you have to go to even greater lengths to contain the first little spark of explosive so that it doesn't just blast the rest of it across the countryside before it gets a chance to do anything. Hence the massive implosion system, the mirrors, the extra sources of neutrons, and half a dozen smaller things all designed to contain the explosion as long as possible, so that the maximum amount of material will fission.

[Ashtagon]

That's not how nuclear weapons work... but you will get extremely lethal radiation doing that.

EDIT: Actually, I suppose at higher levels you might be able to zap in 10-20 cubic feet and have it explode, but the main threat is still going to be the massive amounts of radiation. The threat of explosion will probably just be dispersing supercritical chunks of material over an area, which you can do with creation anyways.

Actually, it's pretty much exactly how nuclear weapons work.

RW bombs work by having two fragments of uranium which are forced together by conventional explosives. Separate, they are sub-critical. Together, they reach critical mass and spontaneously explode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass

The critical mass of U235 (the most common useful form of uranium) is 52 kg, which can be a sphere of 17 cm diameter, well inside the "one foot cube" (you could fit eight of them inside that cube, with jiggle room to spare). Such a mass of U235 will spontaneously explode in a boomy way. Because it is being created as a whole piece in one go, conventional explosives (or other means) aren't needed to bring two halves together.

[lsfreak]

^See my edit. Being critical isn't important, being supercritical isn't important. To make a boom, you have to make it so massively critical that huge portions react near-instantly, because if it doesn't react near-instantly, it'll blow itself apart before it can do any damage.
EDIT: To add more to this, see criticality accidents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident). These are supercritical masses of fissle material - several of them the warheads of nuclear weapons - with a very distinct lack of boominess, because they're just supercritical - they lack all the features necessary to make a nuclear explosion.

[Gnorman]

Carpets of Flying (the 10 x 10 variety) can hold up to 1600 lbs. Sounds like the makings of a hover car to me, albeit a slow one.

Also, how do two Immovable Rods create an airplane? Is this a "rotation of the earth" thing?

[Darth Stabber]

Carpets of Flying (the 10 x 10 variety) can hold up to 1600 lbs. Sounds like the makings of a hover car to me, albeit a slow one.

Also, how do two Immovable Rods create an airplane? Is this a "rotation of the earth" thing?

Something like Brachiation.

1)Engage rod1,
2)move rod2 above rod1,
3)engage rod2,
4)disengage rod1,
5)move rod1 above rod2,
6)goto 1

Well, neutronium isn't technically of mineral nature, either. I think you need true creation for that.

Given the structure it takes, you could make a case for it being a crystal, though the case is quite flimsy. In all honesty i'm of the mind that you may as well call it a different phase of matter all together as opposed to just solid. And if you need true creation, so be it. A cubic centimeter is more than enough to annihilate a planet. You need a contingent planeshift on the first neutron splitting, which will enable you to escape the holocaust. I say planeshift because no teleport will get you out of the range of this.

[shizukanashi]

As much as I am enjoying the A-bomb discussion, I must bring up the 'traditional' DnD Atomic bomb.

http://i.imgur.com/Gfq4q.jpg

[UnjustCustos]

Love this topic. Thank you everyone. Now if I could just think of a way to replace Wikipedia. Huge library into one book, or something.