How would you craft sci-fi tech in a fantasy setting?.

[frogglesmash]

I've thinking of eventually running a campaign where the PCs play as master chief lookalikes who through some accident of fate, get transported to a stereotypical Fantasy world with no way to get home.
Assuming that these faux Spartans have the appropriate crafting skills how long would it take for them to be able to craft the kind of hi-tech gear that they're used to, and what kind of things could they/would they have to do to get to that point? Also, how would magic be able to aid this process?

[Fizban]

Actually climbing the tech tree from medieval to future tech? Longer than it did to get there naturally. The amount of infrastructure required to make modern technology is mind boggling, if they're doing it all themselves the answer is death by old age.

With magic in dnd 3.5? The Fabricate spell tells the laws of reality to shut up and sit down. If the caster actually understands what they want to make, they can climb the tech tree as fast as they can Fabricate it. If you determine that modern tech is still made using craft skills even though it's actually built by machines then they can do it directly, but I find this rather implausible.

You can simplify the problem somewhat by using nanobots and/or letting them keep some amount of tech. If personal crafting skills include enough knowledge to design and program a nanoswarm from scratch (and oh boy is that a lot of code), then Fabricate can make one in a single spell. Just one surviving computer implant with the design specs can be enough to walk them through the bits that are normally handled entirely by machines in order to guide the Fabricate spell. Or they can just have a certain amount of seed nanobots that can build their way up.

I highly recommend Power of Cybernetics (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=8693.0), which can do spartans just fine. I played a Cyberneticist in a game for a while, using some ancient mage's Fabricate recursion for the fluff.

[Knaight]

Do they actually need the underlying technology, or can they take shortcuts by replacing things with magic that gets the same thing done? Use of Fabricate and similar for manufacturing go without saying, but what about replacing a conventional flashlight* with something like a continual light spell in what is basically a glorified lantern - flashlight shaped, with the use of well designed parabolic mirrors, but with no actual battery. What about replacing batteries with magical power sources, complicated alloys with exotic magical materials, chemical compounds with magic alchemical compounds, so on and so forth?

Without magic being used at least for production and materials access, they're on a fools errand. There's huge amounts of infrastructure that they would need to produce tech at their level, there's knowledge bases they don't have and which would need to be spread among a population with nowhere near the background to understand them, the list goes on. The more magic can get brought in and replace technology, the better. The characters are basically space soldiers, they probably don't really care that their new plasma guns shaped much like their old plasma guns actually work by being enchanted to launch plasma pulled from a tiny dimensional rift to the elemental plane of fire on the pull of a trigger instead of whatever the previous mechanism was. That their vehicles shaped exactly like their old vehicles that move like their old vehicles are powered by technically being animated objects instead of by using fuel, combustion engines, etc. is similarly not a problem. In both cases the logistical implications make it downright favorable.

*As a really obvious example.

[Sian]

Gnome Artificer from Magic of Faerun perhaps?

[Florian]

Pathfinder, Numeria, Technology Guide, you´re good to go, all already been done for you.

[CIDE]

Wasn't there rules for this for skill checks in D20 moder/future? AFB so I can't check but I thought there was something official about jumping up the tech tree.

[Jay R]

In my world, transistors, batteries, diodes, and other electronic components simply do not work. The introduction to a recent campaign included the following:


A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

In fact, the Earth was the center of the universe, the seven planets were the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, just like it says in Ptolemy.

So they could not create high tech items at all.

So to answer your question, that depends on decisions that you make as the DM. You can make it as easy or as hard as you choose.

If you want them to take advantage of scientific knowledge early, then it's easy. If not, then it's as hard as you choose to make it.

But pretty much any transmutation spell will interfere with it. (Or help it, if they are using the spell cleverly.)

[Arutema]

I've thinking of eventually running a campaign where the PCs play as master chief lookalikes who through some accident of fate, get transported to a stereotypical Fantasy world with no way to get home.
Assuming that these faux Spartans have the appropriate crafting skills how long would it take for them to be able to craft the kind of hi-tech gear that they're used to, and what kind of things could they/would they have to do to get to that point? Also, how would magic be able to aid this process?

Check the pathfinder Technology Guide for one take on this. Unless an appropriate production facility and power source comes with them, they are unlikely to be able to advance technology enough in one human lifetime. That said, if you want them to make high-tech gear, then you can write the backstory to accommodate that. Perhaps they were on a ship that crashed into this planet. The engines were damaged the worst so it'll never fly again, but the reactor and production facilities are mostly intact.

[raygun goth]

You really can't; not just the infrastructure, but the rare Earth materials (emphasis on the rare) that are in modern computers and even the types of computers in a future, science-fiction setting are going to be essentially unavailable, and all the technical information in the world won't help you if you can't get at them. The best they might be able to do is get some hygienic stuff going, maybe revolutionize thought processes, if they even get that far.

Just because you can explain the magic doesn't mean it stops being magic. Local wizard is going to listen to them talk about how to build their power armor and go "well, obviously, how do you think I make golems? This putting a guy inside it thing, though, that's a stroke of genius."



In my world, transistors, batteries, diodes, and other electronic components simply do not work.

If lightning bolt functions at all (even if it's not caused by the motions of electrons), there's no reason you couldn't build something you could call a transistor, period. Would a PC know how to? Probably not. A transistor is essentially just a pressure-actuated valve combined with a one-way check valve. A diode is just a one-way check valve. Part of the reason transistors became so important so quick after they were invented was how freaking simple they were - it was one of those "how did this not even happen before" moments (interestingly enough, there have been computers built that use water as their medium, rather than electricity). Like the time in the 1750s they found out how fire works.

Or that time in the 400 ADs when heliocentric models correctly calculating the orbits of the planets existed but were mostly destroyed in the post-Hellenistic Period and had to be rediscovered by the Muslims.


The introduction to a recent campaign included the following:


In fact, the Earth was the center of the universe, the seven planets were the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, just like it says in Ptolemy.

So, wait, the players have literally no knowledge of things their characters would, nor any way to find that out, unless they "Mother May I" you? Because that's what it sounds like - as if nothing were real unless whoever you rolled on the random philosopher chart is correct. I mean, Ptolemy couldn't even locate his own hometown on a map using his own coordination system and was widely known to have been pulling his math out of the usual place. Where does that end? Are sea turtles related to bats? Is fire a substance or an effect caused by the release of phlogiston? Does cotton grow on sheep that dangle like fruits from oriental trees? Does deductive reasoning on its own simply not work? Is belief the same as knowledge? Are there really guys in India with backwards feet who live on the scent of wildflowers? Are there dogmen just over the next hill over which we can argue about whether or not they have souls (I mean, obviously they do, in this woodcut I have here they're wearing clothes, and therefore they know shame, and thus have souls)?

Actually, as far as "alternate physics" goes, this is one of my absolutely favorite articles on the subject (https://mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html). Warning: Heavily Platonic in nature and also long.


So they could not create high tech items at all.

Well, "high tech" based on definition. Spells that work are a technology.

And anyone trying to perform thermodynamic stunts with spells and trying to use modern bodies of knowledge is going to be disruptive regardless of whether or not gravity works, because that's a player who is not interested in the buy-in, but rather interested in simply being disruptive.

[atemu1234]

Well, "high tech" based on definition. Spells that work are a technology.

To quote the late Robin Williams, "And the Swastika is just a Tibetan peace symbol!"

The technical definition is meaningless in a setting that has a human's common sense and wetware as the basic mode of processing. The reason we have specific rules for our physics is because our physics doesn't have to conform to our ideas, in D&D they have to conform to human concepts, actually, one human's specific concept, really.

[ben-zayb]

Also, how would magic be able to aid this process?More or less how magic became the High-Technology stand-in in Eberron?

[Coidzor]

In fact, the Earth was the center of the universe, the seven planets were the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, just like it says in Ptolemy.

You call your setting Earth?


So they could not create high tech items at all.

So, what, they drop dead due to suddenly being physically impossible? Explode? Tear another hole in reality and exit the setting as fast as they entered it?

[Mordaedil]

You call your setting Earth?

So, what, they drop dead due to suddenly being physically impossible? Explode? Tear another hole in reality and exit the setting as fast as they entered it?
Remember when Alchemy was an accepted and true science?

[Uncle Pine]

Assuming that these faux Spartans have the appropriate crafting skills how long would it take for them to be able to craft the kind of hi-tech gear that they're used to?
Assuming you put a price on these technomagical goods according to their abilities and homebrewed a new Craft (sci-fi) skill, it would either take quite a lot or be extremely difficult. Probably both.
Let's take for example a clockwork steed (MMIV, 2,300 gp iirc) and call it "magitech bike". We'll use Craft (sci-fi) as a shorthand to ignore the Craft Construct, animate object and mount prerequisites because why not. If we follow the crafting rules as per the Craft skill (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm) and we assign a DC of 30 or 35 to the magitech bike (because if tanglefoot bag's DC is 25, a magitech bike is presumably harder to make), it'd take your players approximately 26 weeks to build one if they roll exactly 30 on their Craft (sci-fi) checks (23,000 sp / 900 = 25.5 weeks). With a base DC of 35, the crafting time would be down to about 19 weeks.
Note that your players will probably be able to find only improvised tools for their Craft (sci-fi) checks, which means they'll incur in the appropriate -2 circumstance penalty. In the example above, assuming they always roll high enough to beat DC 30, a -2 penalty will translate to a 2 weeks delay.

[Fizban]

More or less how magic became the High-Technology stand-in in Eberron?
So that'd be fiating a bunch of innate spell-like abilities onto some percentage of the entire humanoid population, then fiating in a bunch of enchanted vehicles that can't actually be crafted by the highest level NPCs you've put in the game, some of which fully lack necessary crafting information?

Which is pretty much what you have to do, no arguments there. The existing magic system is designed not to replace technology, and even the vaunted auto-resetting trap only does what it specifically does. If not inventing your own or using someone else's rules, the quickest method is the already suggested "get a wizard to make you something similar." Or Wish for it.


Let's take for example a clockwork steed (MMIV, 2,300 gp iirc) and call it "magitech bike". . .
Which is all easily bypassed if you can get one of the characters casting Fabricate. There's also precedent for the designers knowing full well that the crafting rules were ridiculously slow, as poisons craft 10x as fast specifically so they don't take forever,so this rule could easily be applied to the craft: sci fi skill.

The bigger problem is not having prices to begin with. If you don't actually have stats and prices for your tech, you can't convert them into dnd. And if you're just taking magic items and writing sci fi over them then there's no reason to jump through hoops creating them, just use the magical version.

[Darrin]

Just use shapesand. 100 GP for 12 lbs.

[Uncle Pine]

Which is all easily bypassed if you can get one of the characters casting Fabricate. There's also precedent for the designers knowing full well that the crafting rules were ridiculously slow, as poisons craft 10x as fast specifically so they don't take forever,so this rule could easily be applied to the craft: sci fi skill.

Arbitrarily pumping the DC of a Craft skill check by 10 or more is actually standard operating procedure regardless of whether you're crafting poisons or not. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#craft) This is why I used the lowest possible DC for the calcs: to set a base. If you can get a priest to cast on you Guidance of the Avatar once a week, it's all easier.
Of course Fabricate is better, but that either requires one of the characters to be a Sorcerer/Wizard - a bit of a stretch if they're all master chief lookalikes - or them to find a Sorcerer/Wizard trained in Craft (sci-fi), which is again unlikely in your stereotypical fantasy world.

[Fizban]

And poisons are getting "+10" for free (rather, it bumps from silver to gold pieces, same effect).

I deleted the part where I said to UMD a scroll or use a Skull Talisman due to Fabricate's one material restriction, which would make consumables prohibitively expensive, but a daily item would also do the job. One day per material/layer probably ends up with quite a long crafting time, but still bypasses most manufacturing problems.

[Jay R]

You call your setting Earth?

Nope - just that big pile of dirt in the center of it.



So they could not create high tech items at all.So, what, they drop dead due to suddenly being physically impossible? Explode? Tear another hole in reality and exit the setting as fast as they entered it?

No, they just wouldn't work. Electricity doesn't follow a path of electric potential. Energy is not conserved. Gravity is not universal. Matter is composed of four (or five) elements, not 92.

But also, no such items ever appeared in that setting, or could appear in that setting.


If lightning bolt functions at all (even if it's not caused by the motions of electrons), there's no reason you couldn't build something you could call a transistor, period..

If lightning bolt works at all, then energy is not conserved, and electricity doesn't always follow from high potential to low potential, but can be directed mentally.

Furthermore, electricity, fire, cold, and sonic are all similar things with similar properties.


Would a PC know how to? Probably not. A transistor is essentially just a pressure-actuated valve combined with a one-way check valve. A diode is just a one-way check valve.

But they work on the assumption that electricity behaves in a certain way, which way does not apply here.


So, wait, the players have literally no knowledge of things their characters would, nor any way to find that out, unless they "Mother May I" you? Because that's what it sounds like - as if nothing were real unless whoever you rolled on the random philosopher chart is correct.

No, it doesn't sound anything like that. You made that all up. That's a lot of hostility based on one out-of-context paragraph. None of the players who read the entire document and played the entire campaign made this level of complaint.

The one person in the party with Astronomy knowledge knew about the planets. The others, who grew up in small villages and had no scientific education, knew no more about science than the other people in that essentially medieval world.


Where does that end? Are sea turtles related to bats? Is fire a substance or an effect caused by the release of phlogiston? Does cotton grow on sheep that dangle like fruits from oriental trees? Does deductive reasoning on its own simply not work? Is belief the same as knowledge? Are there really guys in India with backwards feet who live on the scent of wildflowers? Are there dogmen just over the next hill over which we can argue about whether or not they have souls (I mean, obviously they do, in this woodcut I have here they're wearing clothes, and therefore they know shame, and thus have souls)?

No, nothing like any of that affected the party, so those questions never came up. By contrast, they spent some time with seven artifacts called the Staves of the Wanderers, with powers of changeability, speed, love, heat, war, electricity, and time, which they eventually figured out were based on the seven planets - the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.


[And for the record, I mentioned the works of Aristotle. Obviously, deductive logic works.



So they could not create high tech items at all.Well, "high tech" based on definition. Spells that work are a technology.

Of many possible definitions, that one is not relevant in the context of a thread about "sci-fi tech in a fantasy setting".

[frogglesmash]

I should probably clarify that when I said to assume that the players had the appropriate craft skills, it was more for the sake of whether or not they know how to build the items in question, and not because I had any intention of using the craft skills to determine craft time. My primary concern was with figuring out what kind of infrastructure, and materials they'd need.

[Coidzor]

Nope - just that big pile of dirt in the center of it.

No need to be obtuse about it. It's a fair question and not immediately obvious from what you had said.


No, they just wouldn't work. Electricity doesn't follow a path of electric potential. Energy is not conserved. Gravity is not universal. Matter is composed of four (or five) elements, not 92.

But also, no such items ever appeared in that setting, or could appear in that setting.

Well, which is it? Do they immediately drop dead because the cybernetics integrated into keeping them alive all stop functioning at once or does the universe reject them being shunted into it and shunt them into another one?

[Calthropstu]

I would take max ranks in craft:Sci-Fi Tech. Duh!

[frogglesmash]

I would take max ranks in craft:Sci-Fi Tech. Duh!

So simple! How did I not think of this!?!?

[Jay R]

No need to be obtuse about it. It's a fair question and not immediately obvious from what you had said.

Sorry. I was trying to be funny, not obtuse.


Well, which is it? Do they immediately drop dead because the cybernetics integrated into keeping them alive all stop functioning at once or does the universe reject them being shunted into it and shunt them into another one?

I still don't think I understand the question. No cybernetics from a sci-fi setting has ever entered or will ever enter that game. Universe hopping from such places wasn't part of the game I wanted to run or the game the players wanted to play. In fact, there was no adventure to another plane at all.

People there aren't composed of tiny atoms of 92 elements; they are made of the four elements and balanced by the four humors. Things that developed in that universe will work in that universe the way they are expected to. And I didn't work out a complete physics for it; I just established that modern physics doesn't apply in a world with levitation, fireballs, feather fall, and other magical effects that violate various modern physical laws.

[frogglesmash]

I still don't think I understand the question. No cybernetics from a sci-fi setting has ever entered or will ever enter that game. Universe hopping from such places wasn't part of the game I wanted to run or the game the players wanted to play. In fact, there was no adventure to another plane at all.

I think they're asking how the premise for my campaign would interact with your setting, i.e. if a Spartan II somehow got transported to your setting along with all their gear, what would happen to them and their gear?

[Jay R]

I think they're asking how the premise for my campaign would interact with your setting, i.e. if a Spartan II somehow got transported to your setting along with all their gear, what would happen to them and their gear?

Oh. It wouldn't. My conclusion was in the first post. It is:

"So to answer your question, that depends on decisions that you make as the DM. You can make it as easy or as hard as you choose.

If you want them to take advantage of scientific knowledge early, then it's easy. If not, then it's as hard as you choose to make it.

But pretty much any transmutation spell will interfere with it. (Or help it, if they are using the spell cleverly.)"

[Sagetim]

Well, if you want a list of craft skills, there are, as I recall, Chemical, Mechanical, Electronics, Pharmaceutical, and...was there another one in D20 Modern? The rules that would frankenstein in with 3.5 would be liftable from D20 Future, but you'll probably want to stuff their cybernetics and other augmentations into a template instead of making them take the horrid d20 modern class levels for things. You might also need to custom up some gun rules that make sense for the hp values of things in your game world, because from my memory d20 shootouts with even mid level characters took a Lot of bullets hitting the target just to kill anyone.

Alternatively, you could make getting hit with a bullet force a fort save vs ballistic shock. Obviously some things are immune to this, like most undead and constructs. But as I recall the way that the force of a bullet is distributed on impacting you is rather different than, say, a larger weapon. Then again, these guys might not need the advantage. I still think it would be funny if the wizard they were showing down with just got stun locked from bullets though, even though his stone skin would keep him safe from some of the damage.

In any case, the kinds of infrastructure involved in modern manufacturing is more than just 'mine stuff, factory stuff, sell finished products'. One of the reasons that we can keep the costs down for doing things is because we go big or go home. Large scale mining, outside of the realm of most fantasy settings, the technology involved in not only that, but to make the tech involved in the mining. Oh, and the tech used to transport the materials from the mine to the processing center, the technology in the processing center itself, the technology to make the technology used to make the processing center. The technology to make the factory, the factory, and so on.

That said, it's not necessarily out of the question for super soldiers to be kitted out with a 'civilization in a can' kit for the purpose of long term guerilla warfare campaigns. Perhaps the squad is sent into the field to test just such a thing on an uncolonized by resource rich planet. Insert shenanigans, do the time warp dance, and the players wind up with a box that gradually unpacks itself and builds itself into a factory to supply them with ammo, weapons, vehicles, armor, and replacement parts, while requiring them to keep it's collection drones safe and so on. This approach lets the players focus on things like interacting with the natives, combat, and so on. Now, if they then get their hands on a wizard or psion as an ally, Fabricate and it's big brother Greater Fabricate are very handy for making finished products out of raw materials. Just make sure that you're willing to interpret it as allowing multiple raw materials to be the target of the spell, because I know some people consider that a big no-no. If the players are stuck with fabricate only working on a single material at a time, then you can't use it to, for example, make alloys such as Steel.

Oh, and about Steel. You should ask yourself what the quality level of the steel in the setting is. It's a pretty relevant question, as steel was pretty awful in the historical middle ages, and incredible inconsistent in quality for most places. Wootz steel was consistently good, because of the secret and labor intensive methods used in it's creation. Damascus steel also had a leg up on the competition because of it's manufacturing technique causing carbon nanotubes to form in it during the refining process. Meanwhile medieval Europe had a lot of angry people whose weapons kept breaking because they were made of iron and weak steel. By comparison, modern steel (or the hyper-modern steel that these soldiers would have at their disposal) would be like magic. The composites in their armor are probably going to outperform 3.5's regular Mithral or Adamantine in a lot of ways. And if they have Spartan shields to go with their Spartan armor I think it's safe to say that they are going to be better equipped at the outset than most anyone. Now, add in enhancement bonuses on top of their gear, and it's probably going to make some of the artifacts in the setting jealous (and being sentient magic items, they can Be jealous). And the players are probably going to wind up drawing the attention of jealous warriors who want their stuff. It could get bad enough that the local clergy is calling them monsters so that adventurers attack them to try and kill them to take their stuff.

And I wandered off on a tangent again. My point was that you should determine for yourself if you want Steel to be a point of interest for the players. Good Steel was a rare enough thing to be noteworthy in the actual middle ages, so if you're going to take 3.5's baseline steel items and say 'these are made of crap steel' it might make some amount of sense, then there's still ranges of good steel before you get up to the player character's level of steel.

Oh, and I just remembered there's something you can use for that. The rules for Rokugani Steel in Magic of Rokugan. A third party book (because apparently only Oriental Adventures was first party, with the rest of the Rokugan setting and supplements being...not first party) that you would probably have to bash the prestige class involved in the production of the steel out of, but it's an interesting concept where you can make Steel weapons all the way up to a +4 non-magical enhancement bonus from the quality of the steel involved. But it's also a 10 level prestige class and as I recall kind of requires you to have some samurai levels in there or something.

Anyway, I've rambled enough in this post. Good night.

[Yahzi]

how long would it take for them to be able to craft the kind of hi-tech gear that they're used to
"Robinson Crusoe" was written when a decently educated man could recreate most of civilization. Up until 1850 or so this was reasonably possible.

But the further you get along the Industrial Revolution, the less believable this becomes. By 1900 you've got lots of detailed machining and specialized knowledge; and once you hit electronics around 1950, you're completely boned. Each generation of modern electronics requires the previous generation to make. Knowledge is so specialized that one person can't even master a whole discipline (look how many different kinds of doctors there are).

So, cowboy gear? Sure, Doc Brown, bring it on. Plasma rifles? Not gonna happen.