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johnbragg
2013-12-14, 07:13 PM
In a magical setting with powerful cities and kingdoms with significant resources, you'd expect governments to create powerful magical effects. The Vancian D&D spellcasting system isn't terribly well adapted to this.

As a quick example, in real-world history, great empires were characterized by improved road and transportation networks--Roman roads, the Persian royal mail service, etc. In a world with magic, you'd think that the Royal Roads would be permanently enchanted with something like Longstrider, or Expeditious Retreat. Or in a Tippyverse setting, replaced with Teleportation Circles between cities.

Is there a set of variant rules around that would help decide what resources would be necessary for Longstrider Roads vs Expeditious Retreat Roads vs permanent Teleportation Circles?

TuggyNE
2013-12-14, 07:53 PM
Well, there's boon traps for most things, and wondrous architecture (SBG) for buildings specifically. Longstrider/expeditious retreat roads would probably use boon traps on the milestones or whatever. (The budget approach would be to stick min-CL longstrider traps every three-four miles; Roman-style would be either a CL-10 expeditious retreat trap on every milestone, or a CL-1 every tenth of a mile.)

boros_blitz
2013-12-14, 07:54 PM
Have you checked out Gramarie (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291019)? It's designed for pretty much exactly what you're looking for! And if you want more inspiration, check out Eberron. It's full of that kind of stuff

Aldurin
2013-12-15, 09:12 AM
I find that with the full range of spells available in 3.5e, and the knowledge that any organized establishment is going to have at least a 20th-level character's equivalent of wealth, it's easy to figure out custom magic items on stuff. For a final few leaps you can just bend a couple of rules here and there. Hell, with Silent Image you have hologram technology right in your hands, and that's just the start. Have an at-will Fireball item as part of a utility plant that provides heat to the city, or something similar.

Gramarie is also a good way to take it if you want to have exact rules and mechanics to expand certain functions, but be careful on whether or not your players get access to it, since you need to be prepared for the blueprint bookkeeping and the near-nonexistent preparation ceiling.

Xerlith
2013-12-16, 02:08 PM
What you're asking for is basically Eberron.

They have:
- trains (Well, air-elemental powered wagons moving on rails, at least),
- cars (well, earth-elemental powered carriages, expensive and stuff)
- Zeppelins (Well, air/fire-elemental powered flying ships at least)
- lanterns (permanent light ftw)
- lifts
- magical telegraphs (courtesy of the "Sending" spell imbued into items)
- etc.

And overall magic used instead of technology in every possible way. Check it out.

Realms of Chaos
2013-12-16, 11:52 PM
In answer to the original question, let's look at prices:

For the teleportation circle, the price to have one cast for you and have it made permanent is as follows):

(17 x 90) + (17 x 50) + (4,500 x 5) =24880 gp (round up to 25,000 gp if you want to put it on a fancy podium or whatnot).

This is the cost for a single teleportation circle leading to a single place.

For repeating longstrider effects, meanwhile, we are using a boon trap and the formula that seems to be used in Dungeonscape is caster level x spell level x 2,000. I'll calculate for longstrider as it allows more distance to be covered with its incredible duration

A CL 1 Longstrider trap, costing 2,000 gp, would allow a hustling target to travel an extra (10 ft x 2 for hustle x 10 rounds per minute x 60 minutes =) 12,000 feet in the duration (a bit over 2 miles). Each additional 2,000 gp in cost increases this extra range by +2 miles if the target is able to maintain a hustle for that long.

Of course, when you look at the effect realistically, it is really only a 33% increase to your preexisting speed for most humans (though dwarves, halflings, and gnomes gain a 505 increase) so the actual benefit is relatively minor, though it stretches out in all directions instead of directing to one specific location.

As you were looking at roads in particular, however, let's take a look at how things stack up. As the price for boon traps is just on a 5-foot area space, let's say that the road has regular "checkpoints" at set intervals that would allow messengers to restore their longstrider or exp. retreat effects. As the price ends up identical whether you use several smaller traps or fewer bigger ones (and the former doesn't involve getting a high-level mage involved), let's use CL 1 traps.

Given that a teleportation circle requires about 25,000 gp to establish, how long would the road have to be before you would reach a similar level of price for the nonmagical road:

Exp Retreat: 12 traps at 2,000 gp each, each positioned 1,200 feet apart (what an affected human hustling can travel in one minute), would span 14,400 feet (not even three miles) but would require 12 minutes to travel.

Longstrider: 12 traps at 2,000 gp each, each positioned 48,000 feet apart (what an affected human hustling can travel in one hour), would span 576,000 feet (over 100 miles) but would take 12 hours to cross.

Actually, let's edit that last figure as hustling for 12 straight hours would deal you over 800 points of nonlethal damage (and spending money on construct/zombie messengers would make this more expensive than the teleportation circle). To keep intervals steady, let's reduce that distance to 3/4s as we move the markers closer together and try to compensate for some of the lost speed with horses.

So, we have a still respectable 432,000 feet before we approach the price of a teleportation circle (though it takes half of a day)

So, what can be taken away from this?

If two destinations are over 80 miles away, you are losing money by making a road over a teleportation circle, even if you didn't mind the time taken. No magic road should be over this distance (but see below).

For shorter roads, it is a trickier balancing act between cost and convenience. Probably no teleportation circles within a 10-mile radius unless instantaneous travel is vital for some reason.

Exp. Retreat Roads, meanwhile, probably don't exist for travel between towns, though you may use them for sidewalks within a town to aid with local deliveries.

Other Factors of Consideration:

One section of road can split off into several roads, making that portion more cost efficient and possibly validating longer roads.
High-level mages may either not be available or not want to work on road building even in a high magic game (keep in mind that teleportation circles are 9th level spells and that making them permanent takes about as much life energy as a wish).
If conditions between towns are especially dangerous (raiders, monsters, killer mist, etc.), teleportation circles become that much more worthwhile.

Melayl
2013-12-17, 01:23 AM
In a magical setting with powerful cities and kingdoms with significant resources, you'd expect governments to create powerful magical effects. The Vancian D&D spellcasting system isn't terribly well adapted to this.

As a quick example, in real-world history, great empires were characterized by improved road and transportation networks--Roman roads, the Persian royal mail service, etc. In a world with magic, you'd think that the Royal Roads would be permanently enchanted with something like Longstrider, or Expeditious Retreat. Or in a Tippyverse setting, replaced with Teleportation Circles between cities.

Is there a set of variant rules around that would help decide what resources would be necessary for Longstrider Roads vs Expeditious Retreat Roads vs permanent Teleportation Circles?

Let's not forget other essential public works: sufficient water and sanitation.

Going back to the Roman empire as an example, you have wells (with gravel, sand, and charcoal filtration) and aqueducts providing clean water to everyone. Bacteria free (or low) water for drinking and bathing. For free (or, as part of their taxes, anyway). You also have toilet plumbing carrying waste away from the cities.

Those two innovations alone caused a massive reduction in disease and a commensurate increase in health.

I would expect a sufficiently powerful government to have things like purify water boon traps at every well and fountain (or on every well bucket). Maybe bound water elementals or other such magic to move water into the cities and flush waste to another purify water boon trap. Maybe roads enchanted with a Presitidigitation effect to keep them clean of waste (and snow, etc).

Unseen servant garbage haulers?

----Edit----

As for the roads, isn't there a spell to increase your travel endurance, or to remove the negative effects of hustling and/or forced marches to prevent fatigue?

Veklim
2013-12-17, 07:52 PM
My world (at least in the time period when they were in use) has circles and roads, the roads are paid for in taxes and are free to use, have longstrider AND endurance effects on them, but enchanted directly to the road surface. This means travel is only faster when you'rd in direct contact with the road, and I priced this effect (somewhat arbitrarily) at 5000 gp / mile. The transport circles are basically tollroads, used by wealthy people, businesses and government/military organisations at a price of 250gp / hub used. A hub is a major location which can be accessed from any other hub on the network (more than one nation has these). Each hub can have one or more branch circles which only travel to their associated hub. Hubs cost 100,000gp to establish, but I priced 'branch' circles at 25,000gp. They were built, licensed and maintained by the Wayfarers Guild in most places, making them arguably the most powerful private group on the planet, since they literally held the monopoly on long range logistics. This worked well both as a system and as a source of countless plot hooks.

I know it's an old idea, but I also had essentially limitless water, heat and power from bound elementals in the larger cities, but the outlay for intial setup and the wages required for the experienced mages and engineers to keep it running made it beyond the price bracket of anything less than a powerful/influential group or a sizable centre of population or trade. Don't even remember how much the smallest steam generator cost, but it was pricey (can't be arsed to calculate again now, since you have to factor in the crafted elements rather a lot) but shockingly, they never seemed to be of as much interest to the group, since I apparently did a very good job of making the characters take these technologies for granted. The wild places of the world were far away, and many people were quite removed from the reality of survival in less advanced areas. This wasn't great for plot hooking, but fantastic for roleplay as my 'modern western' group struggled to adapt to what was essentially the amazon basin in a large chunk of the story...it also worked.

Point I'm making is this; sometimes mechanics and pricing are important, sometimes all it needs to be is flavour...all depends on how much of your world you feel has to be quantified.

johnbragg
2013-12-17, 09:28 PM
Thanks for the number crunching. As with most things, by RAW, high-level magic is the most efficient answer. Eberron magic-driven steampunk is cool, but that's not really the flavor I want.

I suppose what I'm thinking of requires a subsystem for high-magic without necessarily involving high-level casters, something like incantations. Something where the math supports "roads of longstriding" better than "teleportation circles." High-magic in that low-level magic is all over the place and systematized, but high-level magic is rare or absent.

Maybe I'll take another look at a system I designed for a spell-points based arcane caster, where spells cost 2^SL and you have 2*CL points per day, but you can share points with other casters or "bank" points over time to cast high-level spells. (The spell points-based arcane caster project failed, but maybe there's something in the "protospells" for sharing spell points and for storing spell points that I could use.)

sktarq
2013-12-18, 12:24 AM
The single most economically disruptive spells I've been able to work out are

Permanent wall of fire:
a continuous energy source to smelt ore, fire kilns, glass, cook off water for salt, making lime for mortar, public baths, etc etc. This conserve forests in a huge way which changes the regions around the settlement due to the magic there.

Permanent animate object
Animate a water wheel, or a windmill gear. now work it out from there.

Weather control spells as a group-items help with this but most create only a single kind of permanent weather pattern.

Or even a regular aurgy spell to have very accurate weather prediction for the next few days which is then published or otherwise distributed around town.- Especially useful in port or fishing cities.

Talk to dead in murder and disputes of estates

Book of Erotic fantasy has a nifty spell that sorts out who fathered whom which would clear up sorts of divorce and inheritance cases and could be called upon in court.

Speaking of court. Zones of truth. Yes it is obvious but for good reason.

Wall of stone
architecture and wonderfully flat sheets of whatever stone you want that is much easier to cut than strait out of the quarry.

Heat metal
Similar to wall of fire on a smaller scale

Unseen servant
Very disruptive due to ease of replication-Ghost workforces basically. Again best on low skill high time investment activities-like unwinding silk cocoons or sorting mail.

Fabricate:
Some materials are work intensive and that is what makes them expensive - not the skill in producing them. Rope or paper for example. Load a bunch of cotton waste, hemp and/or wood into a hopper - activate the fabricate ability and watch the local paper economy go nuts.

Disintegrate
Mess with the casting time and the like to help control costs and a pretty good toxic waste disposal unit or sewer excavator can be made.

Leomonds Hut type spells
Tweaked and made permanent for a public work project a town could now share a space that has the perfect climate for any number of special things. Keeping vegetables fresh or perfect cheese or wine culturing that is reliable enough for a town to make a reputation and start exporting

On a big scale things like a gate spell to the plane of water could create a city in the middle of the desert. If you use the portal rules from forgotten realms it could be set up for nonliving matter only for example and an oasis is born. - A wizard buys a huge chunk of near useless land in the desert - spends the million to set up an oasis that then floods areas that are decent cropland and rents the rest of what soon becomes a small city....

on a much smaller scale. Mending. suddenly your shoes, clothing, pots and pans etc stop wearing out if access to this spell is easy. Sure if an item is wrecked in a one off it needs replacement but even so many fewer weavers, cobblers etc are needed if this spell is easy to come by.

Also researching a variant of the spell - purify food and water to work on an area and being able to make it permanent in an item would have a lot of economic value. Put that item in an aqueduct. All the water going past comes out drinkable.

Quench and/or control fire spell items with greatly maximized ranges to replace the need for a fire department.

Plant growth in public parks - all the trees in an avenue suddenly growing to 15 feet as soon as they are planted makes them a more attractive option and thus more popular to use

also things like the cantrips count, sort, and clean can do a number on a tax office for example. And an item that casts the taste cantrip on something would replace a spice merchant. economically viably. not public but very visible.

there are a few I've thought of at the moment.

Realms of Chaos
2013-12-18, 11:54 AM
I suppose what I'm thinking of requires a subsystem for high-magic without necessarily involving high-level casters, something like incantations. Something where the math supports "roads of longstriding" better than "teleportation circles." High-magic in that low-level magic is all over the place and systematized, but high-level magic is rare or absent.

To ask the obvious, why does low level magic have to be more efficient if you have no or almost no high level magic in your world? If you lack archmages, wouldn't a town use the low-level magic regardless of how inefficient it is? :smallconfused:

Is the idea that there are tons of archmages in your world but that they can't find work because their stuff is just too inefficient? :smalltongue:

johnbragg
2013-12-18, 03:36 PM
To ask the obvious, why does low level magic have to be more efficient if you have no or almost no high level magic in your world? If you lack archmages, wouldn't a town use the low-level magic regardless of how inefficient it is? :smallconfused:

Well, yes. Yes they would.

But if you monkey with the math so that large-scale low-level magic (roads of longstriding, city walls of protection from evil) is more economical than high-level magic, then you can have both.


Is the idea that there are tons of archmages in your world but that they can't find work because their stuff is just too inefficient? :smalltongue:

No, the idea is that, in any given decade, there might not be a living, active archmage. OR maybe there is. But the kingdom definitely has say 100 caster levels' of say 3rd-7th level casters. Working together, that group should be able to produce effects that are beyond the ability of a 10th level caster.

So the king shouldn't be wetting his pants because an archmage is at odds with him--the Royal Society of Wizards could be a match for a lone epic caster.

If you have high-level magic in your citycrafting, you end up at the Tippyverse pretty quickly. I want to figure out how to rig the rules so that widespread use of low-level magic makes sense, but high-level magic is too expensive to use wholesale.

Part of the issue is daily Vancian solo casting. I would need to bring in rules for group casting, either casters-only or casters leading a congregation, and rules for long duration casting.

Realms of Chaos
2013-12-18, 04:35 PM
Well, from what I'm seeing, the issue of teleportation circles vs. roads of longstrider is the only place where the high magic is more efficient so I'm not really seeing why you need an entirely new system.

Seriously, the math I did above that shows that teleportation circles might be more economical only works because A) a teleportation circle to any distance is going to have a flat price while B) a road is going to cost moreas it gets longer.

You can literally price the roads at 1 CP per 100 miles and the teleportation circle is still more efficient at a certain point. Further, when you consider that even a road of Exp Retreat is only going to double your rate of travel, teleportation circles just become far more practical over a certain distance even if you have to pay 100 times more to get them.

For everything else, however, this axiom of "high magic" being more economical than "small magic" seems to break down.

Apart from a couple of high-level spells with tremendous areas like control weather or shadow landscape (Spell compendium), there is no magically more efficient version of walls of protection from evil, mailboxes of animal messenger, doors of alarm, fountains of create water, and the like.

Summary: Insofar as your original requests, teleportation versus speed increase is one of the only times that high magic is more cost efficient so you probably don't need a new magic system for the purpose of public works.

Insofar as this new desire to let a large team of mages overcome a giant archmage, that is most definitely a new magic system. Not what you were originally asking for, however, or what I had been talking about. Good luck on this one.

johnbragg
2013-12-18, 06:02 PM
Well, from what I'm seeing, the issue of teleportation circles vs. roads of longstrider is the only place where the high magic is more efficient so I'm not really seeing why you need an entirely new system.

I suppose I want the new system because what I want isn't even easy to describe in terms of 3X D&D. I really don't want a setting where Create Food and Water traps provide most of the food. I want a setting where the entire agricultural population comes together on the Equinoxes and sing the Hymn of Demeter in unison, boosting crop yields in a defined area by 20%.

Solo daily Vancian casting doesn't take that into account. There should be magic in the united willpower of an entire citizenry. There should be a mechanic that supports the fictional fantasy trope of an order of priests chanting an invocation in unison. There should be mechanics that support the trope of a wizard laboring away for months and years on an epic spell.

I was hoping that someone had done the work for me, and I figured magical public works projects were a likely reason for someone to do so.


Summary: Insofar as your original requests, teleportation versus speed increase is one of the only times that high magic is more cost efficient so you probably don't need a new magic system for the purpose of public works.

I used that as example No. 1 because common spells exist to do those jobs. Oh well.

Network
2013-12-18, 06:46 PM
The Incantation system from Unearthed Arcana is EXACTLY what you are looking for. It can be found in the SRD, more precisely here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm).

It is one of the only two official subsystems I know that allow for magic rituals in the standard, non-Vancian fantastic style. The other is, of course, epic magic, which you might use as a base to create new non-epic incantations. Link for epic magic is here (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/epicSpells.htm).

Hope that helped.

johnbragg
2013-12-18, 07:12 PM
The Incantation system from Unearthed Arcana is EXACTLY what you are looking for. It can be found in the SRD, more precisely here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm).

It is one of the only two official subsystems I know that allow for magic rituals in the standard, non-Vancian fantastic style. The other is, of course, epic magic, which you might use as a base to create new non-epic incantations. Link for epic magic is here (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/epicSpells.htm).

Hope that helped.

I may end up using the Incantation system, with some kind of mechanic to factor in low- or mid-level casters being more important than non-casters--something like 10 commoners = 1 caster level.

I also suspect I can use the DMG's tables for what casters should be found in a town of size X, and say that those represent what the town's caster guilds and academies and temples can do, not that they happen to have a combat-tested Nth level wizard.

Or I may just handwave the whole thing.

Veklim
2013-12-18, 09:17 PM
*sigh*
What you want isn't D&D, what you want is Exalted. It's ALL there, in the very core of the system.

Realms of Chaos
2013-12-18, 10:12 PM
If you want a very loose idea of a system that might do what you're after, I'd actually look at epic spells.

1) It includes the aspect of mages spending long periods of time researching the magical effects they desire.
2) It allows you to build spell effects, that, while powerful, shouldn't innately break a campaign.
3) It allows lots of people to act together to make the spellcraft DC manageable.

Even though epic magic is supposed to be really impressive, you only really need some minimal changes to make it work:

Casting time may not be reduced below one hour and is increased to one hour if otherwise lower.
Time needed is measured in weeks instead of days but the cost in GP and XP is reduced to 1% (this reduction doesn't reduce the time needed proportionately)
At least 5 additional participants are required per point of final spellcraft DC. Unlike normal epic rituals, noncasters may be used for these purposes.
Mitigating factors other than ritual participation or increased casting time may not be used.
Epic spellcaster is renamed ritual leader and is no longer an epic spell.
One "epic spell slot" is gianed per 5 ranks in the appropriate skill instead of per 10 ranks (minimum 1) but are gained per month instead of per day.



In this way, you create a system of spells that need a long time to develop, require lots of people and time to cast, and that can't be cast every day to cheapen the use of these effects.

Here are some example effects:

Rite of the Unmaker
Transmutation
Spellcraft DC: 20 (100 contributors)
Components: V, S, Ritual
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: 100 feet
Target: 1 helpless creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fort save half
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 1,800 gp; 3 weeks; 72 XP. Seed: destroy (DC 29). Mitigating Factor: 9 additional casters contributing 1st-level spell slots (-9 DC).

A rite developed by the forsaken clergy of Tharizdun, this rite is restricted for use on the most dangerous captives members of its faith can catch, submitting the target unto utter oblivion. At the conclusion of this ritual, the single target takes 20d6 damage (or half with a successful save), entirely vanishing (as disintegrate) if lowered to 0 or fewer HP.

Procession of the Mithral Road
Transmutation
Spellcraft DC: 27 (135 contributers)
Components: v, S, Ritual
Casting Time: 24 hours
Range: See Text
Area: One section of road up to 30 feet wide and 100 miles in length.
Duration: One year
Spell Resistance: No
To Develop: 2,430 gp; 5 weeks; 97 XP. Seed: Fortify (17). Factors: +25 feet (Ad Hoc +10 DC), Change from target to area (+10 DC), Change duration to 1 year (Ad Hoc x 2.5 DC), Change area to road (Ad Hoc +10 DC). Mitigating Factors: Increase Casting Time to 50 days (-100 DC), 20 additional casters contributing 1st-level spell slots (-20 DC)

This time-intensive ritual involves a slow procession down a road that takes the better part of two months and that often involves participants from multiple settlements along the road, blessing every inch in the process to ensure mercurial travel to all who pass down the road. For one year after this ward is put in place, all creatures passing down the road gain a +30 enhancement to their speed for all forms of movement. Those flying above or burrowing below the road only gain these benefits within 10 feet of the surface.

periscope69
2013-12-21, 04:18 AM
For things like sanitation you don't need disintegrate or anything nearly that high level.

A prestidigitation spell cleans just fine and since it doesn't state where whatever the substance that it's cleaning off goes, we can only assume then that it is destroyed.

For sewers all you'd need is something small enough (small animated object maybe?) to go move through the piping and that carried a constant prestidigitation effect around it (say in a 10 ft radius?).

You could use the same effect for everything from housework to street sweepers (short of cleaning up rubble or bodies anyway).

That sounds like an D&D version of a Roomba actually, now that I think about it....

Mutazoia
2013-12-22, 10:26 AM
For things like sanitation you don't need disintegrate or anything nearly that high level.

A prestidigitation spell cleans just fine and since it doesn't state where whatever the substance that it's cleaning off goes, we can only assume then that it is destroyed.

For sewers all you'd need is something small enough (small animated object maybe?) to go move through the piping and that carried a constant prestidigitation effect around it (say in a 10 ft radius?).

You could use the same effect for everything from housework to street sweepers (short of cleaning up rubble or bodies anyway).

That sounds like an D&D version of a Roomba actually, now that I think about it....

Sanitation is easy. Build your SEWER system, have all the passages/pipes running downward to a central pit. Bottom of the pit is a gate to the elemental plane of fire. Flush with water at regular intervals. The odd Gelatinous Cube to prowl around eating garbage and bums (that's what they were made for after all).

Need power, gate to the para-elemental plane of steam...now you've got steam power.

Water....should be obvious by now....


*sigh*
What you want isn't D&D, what you want is Exalted. It's ALL there, in the very core of the system.

*sigh*
Maybe the OP doesn't want to buy and learn a new system and would rather work all this into his existing campaign?

Veklim
2013-12-22, 08:32 PM
*sigh*
Maybe the OP doesn't want to buy and learn a new system and would rather work all this into his existing campaign?

That's fair enough, and if he wants to do so then that's fine. I just see it as more sensible to use a system which contains everything you're looking for rather than using a system which doesn't and adding a huge amount of extra rulings, especially if the players are likely to try and find loopholes in all the new content. This is coming from someone who has always played with multiple systems though, and I accept that a lot of groups tend to stick to only the one.

There's a 3rd party book called Steam and Sorcery which has quite a bit of this sort of stuff in (with a distinctly steampunk edge, as the name might suggest), and Eberron is filled with loads of this stuff too. If none of that fits, I only suggest that a different system might be the best plan.

johnbragg
2013-12-22, 09:14 PM
I appreciate the Exalted suggestion--I didn't know Exalted had mechanics like that, I hadn't gotten the impression that Exalted was focused on world-building at all.

There have been a lot of good steampunk-flavored suggestions, and I appreciate that. I'm not really looking for magic that duplicates real-world tech, or "obsolete futuristic" tech like steampunk. There are plenty of RAW ways to build a railroad with D&D tech, but I don't see that as an idea that emerges from a Classical Age or Medieval setting where magic works. (Although if you gave Leonardo Da Vinci a Wand of Wheel Turning.....) You could also build a network of Teleportation Circles with RAW D&D tech, and outfit the cities with Create Food And Water traps, but then logically the countryside between them becomes economically irrelevant.

Epic Spells are probably my best bet, they have the flexibility and the framework for things like multiple casters. I'll also add a feature where 10 mundanes can contribute 1 spell slot level, to account for the magical effects of the community supporting the ritual.

Alent
2013-12-22, 11:08 PM
here are plenty of RAW ways to build a railroad with D&D tech, but I don't see that as an idea that emerges from a Classical Age or Medieval setting where magic works. (Although if you gave Leonardo Da Vinci a Wand of Wheel Turning.....)

Actually... The D&D world has Mine Carts, which in our world go back to at least the 1500's, and those were copied from something the Germans had even earlier. Give minecarts any kind of locomotion and you'll quickly discover a railroad industry pops up to exploit the need for easy transfer of goods- so long as there's any kind of goods at all to move.

Where there's a need, answers usually are adopted as soon as they're available. Which is where your magical civic constructions run into a natural obstacle when attempting to provide convenience without obsoleting muggles: Magic solves EVERYTHING.

If you want to "halt" things at a certain tier of convenience and stay with 3.x, you'll need a plausible reason for why Magic isn't used for any given task. Like "We don't use conjured food because that stuff has no taste. We'd rather toil by the sweat of our brow and eat food that has flavor."


Epic Spells are probably my best bet, they have the flexibility and the framework for things like multiple casters. I'll also add a feature where 10 mundanes can contribute 1 spell slot level, to account for the magical effects of the community supporting the ritual.

Look into Red Wizard of Thay's circle magic, and the optimization for using it to combine level 1~2 spells into higher level spells. It more or less provides the ability to combine lower level spell slots from other wizards and use them for higher level spells that you're after.

Now note that UA's sample Incantations act as 6th level spells. Come up with some sort of plausible way for the wizards to claim the incantations as spell slots, transfer them up the ladder with circle magic, combine them to form epic level spell slots, you should have epic crowdsourced magic that only requires a bunch of commoners with Kn(arcana) and decent rolls.

periscope69
2013-12-22, 11:41 PM
Sanitation is easy. Build your SEWER system, have all the passages/pipes running downward to a central pit. Bottom of the pit is a gate to the elemental plane of fire. Flush with water at regular intervals. The odd Gelatinous Cube to prowl around eating garbage and bums (that's what they were made for after all).

Need power, gate to the para-elemental plane of steam...now you've got steam power.

Water....should be obvious by now....

That sounds like it would work although take into account certain residents of the plane of fire wouldn't appreciate a section of it suddenly smelling of burning crap and suddenly gaining an influx of water.

Also there will always be incidents of "substances" sticking to the inside of pipes, even if fully vertical. That builds up and causes blockages and back ups, not to mention that things will start growing in there (you don't want monsters coming out of the toilets, do you?).

Having a pit with a permanent cleaning prestidigitation effect would work, possibly with helpers that run routes (see my earlier suggestion) that would prevent back ups and blockage.


If you want to "halt" things at a certain tier of convenience and stay with 3.x, you'll need a plausible reason for why Magic isn't used for any given task. Like "We don't use conjured food because that stuff has no taste. We'd rather toil by the sweat of our brow and eat food that has flavor."

Was this a Bioshock Reference? If so kudos!

Network
2013-12-23, 12:44 AM
Was this a Bioshock Reference? If so kudos!
Most likely biblical, I think.

TuggyNE
2013-12-23, 02:36 AM
Most likely biblical, I think.

Of course, Bioshock may have made the same reference.

Veklim
2013-12-23, 09:17 AM
Actually, when it comes to steam engines and the like, they actually first appeared in ancient greece (no joke) but were small things considered toys, on account of the engineering and materials needed for a larger pressurised boiler not happening until a LOT later

Omnicrat
2013-12-25, 07:06 PM
Actually, when it comes to steam engines and the like, they actually first appeared in ancient greece (no joke) but were small things considered toys, on account of the engineering and materials needed for a larger pressurised boiler not happening until a LOT later

Another note is that the Roman's could have had advanced steam power, as one of their great scholars invented an advanced steam engine, but the emperor of the day refused its use outside of trivial matters because with such an ease of labor, "What would we do with all the slaves?"

Veklim
2013-12-27, 10:05 AM
Good point. So basically we have 2 historical examples of where a technology was NOT implemented. The first because of improper materials/methods, and the second because of improper economics. Just seems incredible that it took so long for the tech to emerge again and living up to it's potential...

periscope69
2013-12-28, 02:59 AM
Good point. So basically we have 2 historical examples of where a technology was NOT implemented. The first because of improper materials/methods, and the second because of improper economics. Just seems incredible that it took so long for the tech to emerge again and living up to it's potential...

If you think that's bad, they found a neolithic village in Scotland that was apparently figuring out the basics of indoor plumbing.

Some have also theorized (and have some evidence to suggest) that the Egyptians were figuring out the bare bones of electricity. Archaeologists were finding these clay pots with traces of acid and copper. Anyone here use copper wire and lemon juice to power a light bulb in science class?

There have been multiple instances of technology being found and forgotten.

It wasn't until the printing press was invented (Guttenburg was the inventor of what would be considered the first true printing press in 1450, even though some forms of movable type predate that by a couple of centuries) that stuff like this could be written down in mass, and therefore preserved. Before that, one fire and all the handwritten scientific notes on a subject were gone.

There is a reason that destruction of places like the Library of Alexandria, the 600-700 years of dark ages scientific suppression, and the "burning of books and burying of scholars" by Qin Shi Huang in ancient China are credited with setting mankind back between 1000-1600 years worth of development.

Veklim
2013-12-28, 06:33 AM
That's the little coastal settlement with the integrated hearth, shelving and drainage ditch system with the covered underfloor channels....saw a TV documentary about that place, would be amazing to see it...

I know about the Egyptian batteries too, aye...but that said there have been people playing about with that sort of stuff for a long time in one form or another...

The general consensus seems to be that a lot of these ideas were tackled at one point or another in entirely mundane means a looong time ago. More fuel to the fire for magic being no more than supplementary to mundane technology surely?

sktarq
2013-12-28, 04:07 PM
*facepalm* Forgotten realms has a whole section on this-Elven Mythals. Everyone in town under effect of a tongues spell, or has fire resistance or whatnot. Good if you want to use epic/very high level power casters and or just use it as a basis to create your own mechanics for it. - Heck the whole detect family of spells as public works would make for an interesting place.

periscope69
2013-12-28, 10:36 PM
*facepalm* Forgotten realms has a whole section on this-Elven Mythals. Everyone in town under effect of a tongues spell, or has fire resistance or whatnot. Good if you want to use epic/very high level power casters and or just use it as a basis to create your own mechanics for it. - Heck the whole detect family of spells as public works would make for an interesting place.

there could be an argument there for "invasion of privacy", depending upon what the local laws would be.

Actually, how would increases in "technology" affect the legal systems of a land?

Would it favor freedom or tyranny?

What about a persons right to privacy vs the people's right to know what's going on in the community?

I'm not trying to implie negative or positive connotations (yet) but kind of curious as to what people's take on that would be.

Say that someone wants to put up a device that casts detect evil over the town (like a clocktower or maybe something similar to lamp posts) that detects evil and activates a faerie fire or glitterdust effect on someone who detects as evil. Do you do this and round up the ones that register, do the same but put them under observation, or not do it to protect privacy?

Hazzardevil
2013-12-29, 01:56 PM
That's straying into politics there, so we ought to be careful here. I imagine it will dependmon he race where it goes. Halflings will go for individual rights, Dwarves would be more invasive.

periscope69
2014-01-01, 03:06 AM
That's straying into politics there, so we ought to be careful here. I imagine it will dependmon he race where it goes. Halflings will go for individual rights, Dwarves would be more invasive.

You're right, sorry my bad.

How about a magic air conditioner? Gust of wind (Severely cut in power) and ??? to chill it?