Re: Thoughts/Questions About Alchemy

[rdcoll]

I've got another couple of questions for the forum (because you folks haven't let me down yet!). This one concerns the infamous Craft (Alchemy).

#1.
What I would first like to know is if anyone uses or knows of any ruleset (homebrew or official) about how many alchemical formulae an alchemist actually knows. It is my understanding that the simplest rule set says that a character can technically make any of the alchemical items listed in any book (limited only by the craft DC).

Is this correct? This seems ... excessive to me, so I was wondering if anyone treated alchemical formulas as though they were entries in a spellbook or something.

#2.
I'm intrigued by the whole "only spellcasters can use alchemy thing" and it got me thinking about a great little game called "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura". In that game magic and technology were at odds with each other, with regular physical and chemical processes not functioning in the presence of magic and vice versa.

Since many of the campaign settings are high fantasy with lots of magic, could that be a possible explanation why alchemy is such a difficult practice?

I've read criticisms of the alchemy system that use gunpowder as an example. Real black powder is relatively simple in its composition, but the closest alchemy item is smokepowder, requiring CL 9 and Craft Wondrous Item. This seemed crazy to me, unless the underlying reason is that regular, mundane chemistry is something that just doesn't work in a high magic environment. I'm curious if anyone else thought/read something similar.

Any thoughts?

[hiryuu]

mundane chemistry is something that just doesn't work in a high magic environment. I'm curious if anyone else thought/read something similar.

Any thoughts?

If this is true, then humans are dead. You are powered by fire and electricity.

Gunpowder is very simple, yes, but it was not discovered everywhere, even in places where the chemicals were in very eager supply. The Chinese only got it, for example, because the guys who discovered it were trying to create a medicine that gave them eternal life. The Europeans through similar means. It's more likely that an "explosive" in a D&D setting would be discovered through some alternate means. I would expect a "gun" technology to be a refined version of maybe Launch Item or Launch Bolt. Couple it with Secret Chest-type effects and you have a magazine.

I have had a setting in which alchemical items were probably the most primitive form of magic items, the first real system to come out of the idea of impersonal forces at work in the universe. Wizardry was a technology that grew out of it, and wondrous items were a parallel technology - after that, "psionics" just became a form of super wizardry. Skips the impersonal force bit.

[rdcoll]

Thanks Hiryuu - interesting thoughts for sure, but I think it is worth noting that in high magic, high fantasy, humans are not powered by fire and electricity. These settings deal explicitly with souls, life energy, undeath - doesn't enervation specifically state that it suppresses life force? That use of negative energy is certainly not suppressing electrical energy. Similarly, you don't use electrical energy to reanimate a corpse in these settings.

Obviously I'm not looking to make a magical environment scientific - I was just curious if the idea of magical effects suppressing certain physical or chemical laws was something anyone had encountered before.

I mentioned Arcanum earlier - I have since tracked down a copy of the manual and it talks about "the fundamental conflict between Natural Law and its nemesis, Supernatural Law - Natural Law being represented by a variety of simple Technological Devices, while Supernatural Law is embodied by an equally simple Magickal Device" and I was curious to see if anyone had seen this idea elsewhere.

You make a good point about Launch Item though - I guess a society that had developed such a cantrip might be less motivated to develop a technological alternative. That being said, smokepowder WAS already discovered in many settings...

Hiryuu - in the setting you mentioned, did you restrict the number of recipes an alchemist would actually know how to create?

- Rob

[NichG]

Generally speaking the reason people don't do this is because alchemy is already pretty underwhelming in D&D. The various alchemical items you can create are interesting at very low levels, but quickly become outclassed by magic items and people's class features.

I've run games where alchemy had a bigger role and could generate very potent effects, up to potions that granted permanent free templates, but in those games the players had to discover recipes by experimentation - there was no built-in way to just know how to make something.

[Rainshine]

One quick point to make is the distinction between Craft (Alchemy) and Brew Potion. Not that it matters in 3.5, but in PF the Craft (Alchemy) doesn't require to be a spellcaster. It also has a list of other alchemical things to make than just acid/fire.
And as a player of Arcanum who particularly loved the flavor of the game, even if the implementation was a bit flawed, it made a fundamental distinction between three of the skills; I believe it was Herbology, Chemistry, and... Therapeutics? All three might fall under the general heading of Alchemy, but they covered very different things. I've done stuff with homebrew before, replicating certain similar effects through oils and the like, but a lot of that is covered in D&D through Brew Potion. And in Arcanum, much like D&D, alchemical stuff was pretty quickly outpaced by well-orchestrated magic

[hiryuu]

Obviously I'm not looking to make a magical environment scientific - I was just curious if the idea of magical effects suppressing certain physical or chemical laws was something anyone had encountered before.

There are no such laws - only words we use to describe how those things generally work. In a world where there is magic, when the laws are written down, exceptions would be made.


I mentioned Arcanum earlier - I have since tracked down a copy of the manual and it talks about "the fundamental conflict between Natural Law and its nemesis, Supernatural Law - Natural Law being represented by a variety of simple Technological Devices, while Supernatural Law is embodied by an equally simple Magickal Device" and I was curious to see if anyone had seen this idea elsewhere.

TOO MANY other places. Somehow very few even creative people cannot wrap their heads around the idea that "natural law" can be adjusted when new information presents itself. When fire fails to burn sandstone, do you assume that the fire has somehow been prevented from burning, or that the thing you're trying to burn just happens to be a piece of sandstone? Likewise, if a piece of paper refused to light, you'd likely think there was some kind of local environmental effect preventing that from happening, right? It wouldn't suddenly throw everything into question. Cosmologies built like that are bad and they should feel bad.

Technology is any set of rules, tools, or systems designed to solve problems. Spells are a form of technology. Magic items are a technology. Any time you construct anything that solves a problem, you are creating technology.

[NichG]

TOO MANY other places. Somehow very few even creative people cannot wrap their heads around the idea that "natural law" can be adjusted when new information presents itself. When fire fails to burn sandstone, do you assume that the fire has somehow been prevented from burning, or that the thing you're trying to burn just happens to be a piece of sandstone? Likewise, if a piece of paper refused to light, you'd likely think there was some kind of local environmental effect preventing that from happening, right? It wouldn't suddenly throw everything into question. Cosmologies built like that are bad and they should feel bad.

Technology is any set of rules, tools, or systems designed to solve problems. Spells are a form of technology. Magic items are a technology. Any time you construct anything that solves a problem, you are creating technology.

A contrast can be made between things that work consistently and things that work idiosyncratically. For example, Thor deciding to grant spells to his cleric is fundamentally different than lighting a piece of paper on fire, because the paper can't just 'decide' that it doesn't feel like burning today, but Thor could decide based on psychology/unknowable details 'nah, I don't want to grant this spell today'.

So one way to contrast 'science' and 'magic' is in terms of one being based on interactions that are purely intrinsic, whereas the other relies on some animistic/willful force that may not behave consistently day to day or place to place. Magic doesn't have to be this way, but its one way to create a cosmological difference between the forces without it being based entirely on a lack of understanding of science.

[hiryuu]

A contrast can be made between things that work consistently and things that work idiosyncratically. For example, Thor deciding to grant spells to his cleric is fundamentally different than lighting a piece of paper on fire, because the paper can't just 'decide' that it doesn't feel like burning today,

There are a lot of belief systems in this world in which paper can decide that.


but Thor could decide based on psychology/unknowable details 'nah, I don't want to grant this spell today'.

I'm not arguing that such a thing isn't the case; I'm arguing that people in the world who know thatThor exists (because most D&D worlds assume a Henotheistic setup) SHOULD KNOW THAT THOR CAN DO THAT. And that it would not come as a surprise to a scientist that such a thing could happen.


So one way to contrast 'science' and 'magic' is in terms of one being based on interactions that are purely intrinsic, whereas the other relies on some animistic/willful force that may not behave consistently day to day or place to place. Magic doesn't have to be this way, but its one way to create a cosmological difference between the forces without it being based entirely on a lack of understanding of science.

You're assuming scientific philosophy can't describe things in which there is an animistic or willful force involved. In a universe where that is possible, those are the things science would describe. Seriously. Science is a very creative, investigative process that would have no problem accepting the idea of blue pixies holding up the sky if PIXIES WERE HOLDING UP THE SKY.

An easy way to differentiate them is thus: science is a process, magic is a force. Science is certainly a way to describe forces. I mean, that's what the entire process is about. Describing how things happen using a lexicon upon which everyone can agree. Having spell schools tells us there is a scientific process at work somewhere. Being able to distinctly describe what a plane is? Or describe exactly what encompasses the idea of a deity? Congratulations, you're doing science. You're doing it in-milieu, but you're doing it.

[JoshuaZ]

Thanks Hiryuu - interesting thoughts for sure, but I think it is worth noting that in high magic, high fantasy, humans are not powered by fire and electricity. These settings deal explicitly with souls, life energy, undeath - doesn't enervation specifically state that it suppresses life force? That use of negative energy is certainly not suppressing electrical energy. Similarly, you don't use electrical energy to reanimate a corpse in these settings.




This does not follow. The existence of combustion and electricity do not by themselves rule out the existence of souls or undeath. In fact, reanimating life by zapping it Frankenstein style makes no sense. There's no reason one can't have a universe that works more or less like ours but with additional rules added on. Some people don't like the *feel* of such universes for their campaigns or their novels, but that's a completely distinct claim. And there are many examples of at fictional works that do manage to do this that are well-respected (e.g. Shannara, Mistborn, Death Gate, Wheel of Time, Prince of Thorns,) so one can't even argue that this works badly from a narrative standpoint.

As long as we discussing such issues of settings, there are other related tropes which people seem to want to insist must exist in settings but don't really need to. There's very little technological change in many settings. Eberron is one of the exceptions, but even then the tech level progression has been quite slow, or only applies to a few recent inventions. One obvious example is Forgotten Realms whose timeline can be seen here (http://o-love.net/realms/fr_time_notable.html). I suspect that the desire to have worlds with long stasis and the insistence that physics must be fundamentally different stem from the same desires, although I'm not sure what exactly the underlying cause is. It may be connected to a poor understanding of actual human history where the medieval period is erroneously seen as a period of stagnation, and thus people imagine that thousands of years of stagnation could occur. That sort of stagnation is plausible for a much lower tech level (say hunter-gatherer tribes), but not much beyond that.

Edit to add:

Hiryuu is basically completely spot on here, but I want to address another point:



So one way to contrast 'science' and 'magic' is in terms of one being based on interactions that are purely intrinsic, whereas the other relies on some animistic/willful force that may not behave consistently day to day or place to place. Magic doesn't have to be this way, but its one way to create a cosmological difference between the forces without it being based entirely on a lack of understanding of science.

Science studies will forces all the time. We call them humans, and the areas are sociology, psychology, anthropology. And the success there has been quite high. Give Kahneman and Tversky (he's dead now, but this is a fantasy situation) data about Thor and a few other deities and they'll churn out testable, accurate hypotheses about when the deities are likely to grant spells or not.

[NichG]

I'm not arguing that such a thing isn't the case; I'm arguing that people in the world who know thatThor exists (because most D&D worlds assume a Henotheistic setup) SHOULD KNOW THAT THOR CAN DO THAT. And that it would not come as a surprise to a scientist that such a thing could happen.


You're assuming scientific philosophy can't describe things in which there is an animistic or willful force involved. In a universe where that is possible, those are the things science would describe. Seriously. Science is a very creative, investigative process that would have no problem accepting the idea of blue pixies holding up the sky if PIXIES WERE HOLDING UP THE SKY.


I'm saying that at some point, science can only describe things statistically, not deterministically. And you're never guaranteed that those statistics are not the result of persistent hidden variables that are outside of your ability to measure until they become relevant.

Basically to put it another way, science can tell you about people's bluffing behavior in poker, but no matter how much theorizing you do, you can't hit 100% predictive power if you cannot measure all the relevant variables.

Something dominated by hidden variables will lead to a very different engineering methodology than something dominated by measurables. Imagine building a computer if, every time a bit were supposed to flip, there was a 10% chance it just didn't. If this 10% were purely stochastic you could just build a lot of bits and use redundancy. But what if now, 10% of the time all copies failed to flip, and in fact there was an intelligence smarter than you actively learning ways to circumvent your engineering?

Basically it becomes impossible to build a device that works on those principles. The only way to deal with that is to negotiate directly with the animistic entity, or your inventions will stop working over time.

So maybe we're talking 'engineering versus magic' instead of 'science versus magic'.



Science studies will forces all the time. We call them humans, and the areas are sociology, psychology, anthropology. And the success there has been quite high. Give Kahneman and Tversky (he's dead now, but this is a fantasy situation) data about Thor and a few other deities and they'll churn out testable, accurate hypotheses about when the deities are likely to grant spells or not.

They're best in aggregate, not so great on the individual level. And in general they're slow - they describe methods to determine things about a person, but require extended periods of interaction and willing participation to do so.

Conceivably you could have the field of 'god-botheringology', but at best you can say that it can make the attempt to understand its subject. I don't think its really possible to argue that it would be guaranteed to succeed in the case of an alien, singular, and possibly not forthcoming intelligence.

Keep in mind, much of what we learned in psychology that works comes from being able to look at people whose brains were damaged and say 'ah, this causes that' and so on. With an external deity, your information pipeline is rather narrow.

[JoshuaZ]

So, most of what you said essentially comes down to something close to a Cartesian demon- the problem of an entity which can intervene everywhere and deceive however it wants. And that is a potential problem. But that's not by and large a problem in most fantasy settings- there are a hodgepodge of conflicting deities and powers. But, your point about engineering being more of an issue than science is potentially a good one and a useful distinction to make here.


I'm saying that at some point, science can only describe things statistically, not deterministically. And you're never guaranteed that those statistics are not the result of persistent hidden variables that are outside of your ability to measure until they become relevant.

Sure, and you aren't guaranteed that in real life either, yet science works.



Basically to put it another way, science can tell you about people's bluffing behavior in poker, but no matter how much theorizing you do, you can't hit 100% predictive power if you cannot measure all the relevant variables.

So? You don't need to.



Something dominated by hidden variables will lead to a very different engineering methodology than something dominated by measurables. Imagine building a computer if, every time a bit were supposed to flip, there was a 10% chance it just didn't. If this 10% were purely stochastic you could just build a lot of bits and use redundancy. But what if now, 10% of the time all copies failed to flip, and in fact there was an intelligence smarter than you actively learning ways to circumvent your engineering?

Actually, there are theorems about this. Von Neumann proved a set of theorems in the 1950s that can be roughly summarized as saying that even if you had something like of 10% of bits getting flipped when you didn't want them to by a malicious adversary, you can still do computation. Moreover, you can do it with only small overhead.

And if you have an omnipotent entity that can really intervene everywhere then you shouldn't just be worried about changes to your circuits- you should be worried that wood will turn to jello one day- bridges, stones, agriculture- everything would be tough to use, not just advanced things.






Keep in mind, much of what we learned in psychology that works comes from being able to look at people whose brains were damaged and say 'ah, this causes that' and so on. With an external deity, your information pipeline is rather narrow.

So, I specifically used K&T as an example because they don't require anything like that. Their experimental style focuses on behavior of regular, normal individuals.

[Grinner]

I don't know a whole lot about classical alchemy, but the idea of transmutation is quite interesting.

One particularly good source on the subject is this one Nobilis supplement (Unlikely Flowerings?). I don't remember the details, but the game posits that reality is a complex network of concepts, called Estates. Everything in the mundane reality is linked to this network, and by ritually realigning an object, you can modify what Estates its linked to, modifying its function.

[Saidoro]

But, your point about engineering being more of an issue than science is potentially a good one and a useful distinction to make here.
Not really. Just as science can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge through study of events, engineering can be defined as the implementation of events through application of knowledge. They're basically the same thing done backwards and you can't have one without the possibility of the other. Granted, the engineering would be done based off of different fields of knowledge, but then so would the science.

[NichG]

So, most of what you said essentially comes down to something close to a Cartesian demon- the problem of an entity which can intervene everywhere and deceive however it wants. And that is a potential problem. But that's not by and large a problem in most fantasy settings- there are a hodgepodge of conflicting deities and powers. But, your point about engineering being more of an issue than science is potentially a good one and a useful distinction to make here.

Sure, and you aren't guaranteed that in real life either, yet science works.


In physics at least, we'd basically be hosed except for the fact that it seems like physics is invariant under changes in location and time. Thankfully our universe seems to be fundamentally 'simple' in this sense, and there's a very clean separation between the stochastic hidden information (wavefunction collapse in QM) and basically everything else. Saying 'we're lucky' is probably silly since that kind of invariance seems to be an attractor and its unclear that e.g. life would be able to exist in a universe that violates that principle at all scales. But basically if this didn't work for some reason we'd be unable to make much of the progress we've made in the last 500 years.

The key elements we've used to make this kind of progress are the ideas of reproducibility, generalization, and simplification. Reproducibility is important so that you can test and retest things and basically create a system of interdependent theories - 'I know this is true to within X, so I can depend on it when I study Y'. Generalization is important so that you can actually generalize your results - the idea that instead of reporting results 'for this sphere at this time of day in this location' you can report results 'for objects, everywhere, all the time'.

Simplification is important due to limitations of the human mind more than any fundamental reason - if our first contact with physics were something like modern bio-informatics with its thousands of intertwined and idiosyncratic components, we'd never have progressed far enough to invent the computers that we use to actually do bioinformations in the modern day.

Now, we've basically evolved to be good at problems that are along the lines of how the universe works, so one could argue 'different universe, different humans'. I'm willing to grant that in a universe with idiosyncratic physics, we might end up with equally idiosyncratic brains that can handle it.



So? You don't need to.


Well its a bound on the effectiveness of 'technology'. If the best you can do is 5% better than random guessing, thats an improvement, but its hardly enough to build a civilization on if that is the theoretical limit of how well you can possibly predict something.

One can argue whether or not people could use magic at all in a world where magic was completely unpredictable of course. But I think thats not so much of a problem if you consider the multiplicative effects of complexity.

I think in general there's some range of predictive power where you can have 'magical' things - practitioners who try stuff that fails half the time, but what matters is the other half when it works - versus when you can have 'technology/engineering' where you can basically make a self-contained version of the idea, mass produce it, distribute it, and expect to have it to work.

The rationale is something like this. If you have a chance P that an attempt works, and you're just doing the basic stuff, then you have a P chance of success. If you're building technology, you're trying to make a chain of things that rely on consistent behavior, so each element in the technology is a point of failure. If multiple attempts are not statistically independent (so if one fails in a certain place and time, all will fail in that place in time) then you have a P^N chance of it working, where N is basically the complexity of the device.

Essentially, you can have a system where simple things are still feasible (P~0.9, say) but where complex things become infeasible.



And if you have an omnipotent entity that can really intervene everywhere then you shouldn't just be worried about changes to your circuits- you should be worried that wood will turn to jello one day- bridges, stones, agriculture- everything would be tough to use, not just advanced things.


Sure, in principle. But I think this is generally why you see in particular a 'science vs magic' dichotomy show up so often. Its a lot easier for us to imagine a universe where, under certain circumstances things become mutable and unreliable, rather than a universe where they are always mutable and unreliable. Its the idea of 'the universe gets along like ours, until a deity decides to intervene, at which point all bets are off' - much more approachable than 'wood stays wood because there are gods constantly making it so all the time'.



So, I specifically used K&T as an example because they don't require anything like that. Their experimental style focuses on behavior of regular, normal individuals.

I don't think I can give this particular part of the debate proper coverage. I'll just say that humans studying humans have lots of advantages in doing so - the ability to have willing experimental subjects, for example. You can always fall back to Bayesian inference, but I'd call that an approach that is fundamentally distinct from most of what we call 'science', which consists more of creating generalized abstractions that cover large swaths of the observable behavior.

At some point when things get messy enough, Bayesian inference basically wins out over the abstraction method. For example, spam filtering. You can try to write down rules for what spam is and isn't, but that doesn't work as well as just doing the Bayesian analysis and running with it. However the cost is that you've replaced understanding with a black box - you can't say that because you've trained a Bayesian filter you yourself 'understand' spam.

[ArcturusV]

Note that on point one I think there IS some underlying limits to Alchemy. Not all alchemical compounds are automatically known. Can't be as I'm sure there are a few PrCs there that have special Alchemy that they can use only because of their class. I know at least two, the Anointed Knight and Warrior of Darkness... which due to the silliness of Spellcasting only for Alchemy crafting means that these pure warrior, no casting progression classes need a level of caster or several levels of a gish class to use. But it is special compounds they make that no one else can.

It's not a Baaaad idea to have Alchemists limited in such a fashion. But the problem is... there's just not that many good Alchemical items out there to make. Most Alchemists are really only going to want to make two, maybe three items anyway (Least that I've ever noticed), then the limitation on having only a couple of known formulas really isn't. Just means they'll buy rather than craft some of the "one off" items they might have otherwise wanted.

2? I loved Arcanum, so I instantly know what you're talking about. It would be an interesting way to go. It could be a racial flavor thing too. Such as magically deficient races (Like dwarves typically) taking up Alchemy as a science rather than a mystical art. I kinda like the idea of Orcs/Half Orcs/Gobbos being big into Alchemy as well (As they were in Arcanum, at least story wise, as they loved explosives).

I don't think it'd necessarily break the game to say something like... Craft (Alchemy) cannot be used by spellcasters. Any Alchemical Item which is in the possession of a spellcaster for up to 1 hour (inclusive along all contact, not just per contact), loses it's potency and is rendered inert.

That would give a rough feel of Arcanum. And make Alchemy something other than "Free Spell Slots" like it's often used at low level. You know, the guy who's a wizard and wants to chuck fire, but doesn't have enough slots so he ends up making a ton of Alchemist's Fire and throwing it instead. But instead open up Alchemy as something that a mundane uses to counter an unusual threat.

Of course, adding more alchemical items to your home campaigns beyond the paltry, usually niche and seldom used ones in the book is always a good idea. I usually allow a variant of the "Research a spell" type rules for a player to come up with a new Alchemical Item if they so desire. It's only happened twice in my games so far. But I was more or less happy with it. A few days, sinking gold into research and experimentation materials, a check against a DC, and see if you learned how to make some new wonder.

[rdcoll]

Wow - we sparked a cool discussion with this one! Awesome!



I don't think it'd necessarily break the game to say something like... Craft (Alchemy) cannot be used by spellcasters. Any Alchemical Item which is in the possession of a spellcaster for up to 1 hour (inclusive along all contact, not just per contact), loses it's potency and is rendered inert.


ArcturusV - I think that is a really great idea for an experiment. I would love to try that out and see how it works!

I want to note that I only used the terms natural law and supernatural law because I was quoting Arcanum, and at no point at all did I mention science. I was talking about physical laws (i.e., laws from classical physics) and magical effects. There are definitions of magic that state that the effects are unaccountable (i.e., magic could be considered unaccountable, by definition).

I realize that its kind of difficult to keep our terminology consistent here, so I will elaborate on my thoughts with an example or two.

There is a physical law that states that an object at rest will stay at rest. There is a magical effect (i.e., the Launch Item cantrip) that would appear to violate this law. That doesn't necessarily mean that inertia doesn't hold anywhere in this setting, it just means that it might not hold in the presence of this magical effect. So just because magic can be used to violate this law does not mean the law doesn't hold in other cases.

I liken it to the idea of people living on a massive plateau at sea level, observing an apparent "law" that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. If someone found a mountain, climbed it, and then attempted to boil water, the reduction in air pressure would appear to violate that law. That doesn't necessary make the law invalid, it just means it doesn't hold in this particular situation.

I started thinking along these lines about Craft (Alchemy) specifically because of gunpowder. I understand why the designers chose to make gunpowder so difficult (i.e., flavor and concerns about unbalancing the weapon system) but what I cannot reconcile is how this is explained within the setting. An alchemical gunpowder exists already with extreme requirements (CL 9 and Craft Wondrous Item) in spite of the fact that the magic involved in imparting momentum on a bullet (i.e., Launch Item) is a remarkably simple spell.

If the spell is simple, and the chemical formula of black powder is simple, then why is the magical substance a wondrous item that can only be crafted by ninth level casters that are also expert alchemists? That is the question that got me thinking about Arcanum's treatment on the subject.

What I was wondering is if anyone has heard this before - not that science and magic can or cannot be reconciled, but the idea that magical effects might interrupt regular physical laws (e.g., gunpowder is less likely to burn properly in the presence of a magical effect).

Again I will say that I am not trying to claim that this is how the game world works - I am simply exploring the idea that you could come up with a convincing explanation without just saying that the designers made a bad call.

[Saidoro]

There is a physical law that states that an object at rest will stay at rest. There is a magical effect (i.e., the Launch Item cantrip) that would appear to violate this law. That doesn't necessarily mean that inertia doesn't hold anywhere in this setting, it just means that it might not hold in the presence of this magical effect. So just because magic can be used to violate this law does not mean the law doesn't hold in other cases.
There's really nothing inherent to the launch bolt cantrip that requires the suspension of normal physical laws, though. It just needs to take energy and momentum from elsewhere and stick it into the bolt.


What I was wondering is if anyone has heard this before - not that science and magic can or cannot be reconciled, but the idea that magical effects might interrupt regular physical laws (e.g., gunpowder is less likely to burn properly in the presence of a magical effect).

Again I will say that I am not trying to claim that this is how the game world works - I am simply exploring the idea that you could come up with a convincing explanation without just saying that the designers made a bad call.
Here's the problem any explanation is going to run into: there are exceedingly few changes or disruptions that can be made to natural law that will not kill people dead as fast as they do technology. Sure, you can mess with the electronegativity of iron to make it rust faster, but then what happens to hemoglobin? You can change how Gunpowder combusts, but that would likely have similar effects on how sugar or fat combusts in a cell. Disrupting the mathematics behind pulleys and levers would essentially remove any functionality from your limbs. And so on.

[rdcoll]

Here's the problem any explanation is going to run into: there are exceedingly few changes or disruptions that can be made to natural law that will not kill people dead as fast as they do technology. Sure, you can mess with the electronegativity of iron to make it rust faster, but then what happens to hemoglobin? You can change how Gunpowder combusts, but that would likely have similar effects on how sugar or fat combusts in a cell. Disrupting the mathematics behind pulleys and levers would essentially remove any functionality from your limbs. And so on.

That really is a very good point and I do get that, but there also seems to be an inherent supernatural (forgive the term, for lack of a better word only) effect that keeps people alive in many of these settings. The same thing that is suppressed by negative energy. After all, it has been established by at least some of the settings that the life force is an exceptionally powerful force.

I think that the established (in the setting) existence of this concept of life force (reinforced by existing rules) means that meaningful explanations are not necessarily impossible, and the fact that these explanations are not simple shouldn't preclude us looking for them.

After all, I think searching for a consistent and reasonable explanations for unusual rulings could lead us down interesting and entertaining avenues of though - things that might really enrich the setting.

[Grinner]

There's really nothing inherent to the launch bolt cantrip that requires the suspension of normal physical laws, though. It just needs to take energy and momentum from elsewhere and stick it into the bolt.


Here's the problem any explanation is going to run into: there are exceedingly few changes or disruptions that can be made to natural law that will not kill people dead as fast as they do technology. Sure, you can mess with the electronegativity of iron to make it rust faster, but then what happens to hemoglobin? You can change how Gunpowder combusts, but that would likely have similar effects on how sugar or fat combusts in a cell. Disrupting the mathematics behind pulleys and levers would essentially remove any functionality from your limbs. And so on.

See, the most basic mistake you can make is to assume that Fantasy-land's physics represents ours in any but the most superficial ways. There's an infinite dimension composed primarily of fire, after all. Conservation of energy does not apply.

[ArcturusV]

Worse than that I think? Is the throughput that some people put into things. How many times does something like the average barometric pressure of a given area of a place come into play? Or the specific gravity of a titanium elemental? And so on. But I've seen people spend hours, even days, working on projects like this. For something that will never come up.

Thus I keep things simple, figure things work the way they work, and just make sure the "rules" play nicely enough with one another that the average player can sink their teeth into it without having to break out the engineer's pad and a slide rule.

[rdcoll]

But... but I love my slide rule! :)

[TuggyNE]

But... but I love my slide rule! :)

Slide rule users represent! :smallcool: