Would ultra-low level magic still revolution the world? [Archive]

Conradine

2020-12-13, 05:15 PM

Silent Alarm

2020-12-13, 07:09 PM

Arcane Mark and Detect Magic would revolutionize currency distribution (counterfeiting becoming impossible when all currency has a specific Arcane Mark that cannot be duplicated). Detect Poison would be a miracle in the food service industry. Ghost Sound would revolutionize the entertainment industry. Prestidigitation (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20010707) deserves its own thread to go into the depths of how powerful and flexible it could be.

Change: Transform expired foods into the exact same food, but unexpired, or transform grapes into wine and so on and so forth.
Chill/Warm: Refrigeration if applied to a trap.
Clean/Dirty: Hygiene and cleanliness would skyrocket. Applied to traps in sewers, septic tanks, etc and waterborne diseases would go down.
Color: Art would be revolutionized in that new colors could be explored? Idk. I'm not an artist.
Dampen/Dry: Fire Resistance 2 for an hour would make firefighters jobs much more safer. I'm sure there could be plenty of other applications here; Dry however? Less so.
Firefinger: Lighters are great.
Flavor: Everything taste like Thanksgiving dinner.
Gather: I can see this being used for mining, and farming.
Polish: Better mirrors? I'm sure someone else can think of others.
Sketch: I have used this as a means of replicated magical circles created from Magic of Faerun.
Stitch: Would be great for anything you would need to stitch together from limbs to little girls dolls
Tie: I have no idea.

EDIT:
A quick google search reveals that there are even more world changing cantrips, including a handy spell called "Easy Math", that essentially allows you to use the Perform skill to make complex calculations in the blink of an eye.

AvatarVecna

2020-12-13, 07:14 PM

We all know that the whole world would be turned upside down in a single round if D&D 3.5- level magic became real.
But.

If magic was real but very, very limited...

like, only level 0 spells ( orisons and cantrips ), and even those require exceedingly high abilities ( Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma 20 ) and years of pratice. This means to cast a cantrip one has to be a natural gifted genius ( natural 18 ) with a lot of pratice and experience ( level 8+) or venerable scholar ( who gets higher abilities with age ) who starts with quite high abilities anyway.
And only the true geniuses or masters know more than one or two cantrips.

It's still enough to revolution / significantly impact a world?

Let's assume each person rolls 3d6 for every attribute. Getting a 17 or 18 on any given roll is a 1/54 chance - therefore, any particular person has a ~5.45% chance that they start with a 17 or 18 in at least one casting stat. Additionally, 1/6th of the world's population is 65+ years old (which is essentially venerable, so +3 to stat). So ~0.908885% of the world population that can cast something, or about 1 in 110 people. This doesn't include people who started with 18 and have been casting since they turned 53, nor it is counting people who are experienced enough to gain level bumps. This is purely venerable people who started with a 17 or 18 (and thus have 20 or 21 at their age). With our world's population, that's ~71 million casters. Statistically speaking, that's a small handful of old people you personally know who can probably pull a cantrip if they have to.

(If, instead, we assume people are rolling 4d6b3, that's a 25/432 chance on any given roll, and any particular person ~16.376% chance of having one 17 or 18 in a casting stat, and therefore ~1/37th of the population overall that can cast something. 1 in 6 old people you know can cast, and overall 217 million. But I won't be operating on that assumption)

Cleric/Druid/Wizard 1 each get 3 cantrips per day, while sorcerer gets 5. Assuming an even chance of Int/Wis/Cha, that means we're looking at 87 million cleric/druid cantrips and 173 million sorcerer/wizard cantrips being cast every single day by the whole of humanity.

I gotta go get food. When I get back I'll explore options for breaking that.

Doctor Despair

2020-12-13, 07:18 PM

stuff

To be fair, OP vastly limited the amount of people that would be able to use cantrips. Many of the uses you've described would have limited impact if only the top 1% of the population can use them 1-4 times each day -- and only if they are correctly identified and trained up.

Silent Alarm

2020-12-13, 07:28 PM

To be fair, OP vastly limited the amount of people that would be able to use cantrips. Many of the uses you've described would have limited impact if only the top 1% of the population can use them 1-4 times each day -- and only if they are correctly identified and trained up.

+4 ranks (1st level)
+3 (Skill Focus: Trapmaking)
+2 Circumstance from Masterwork tools
+1 Competence bonus from Guidance
Take 10 to craft a CR 1 trap.

It would require specialized training, but that is what higher education is for.

Mechalich

2020-12-13, 07:45 PM

Assuming you prevent any of the 0-level spells from having chicanery based effects - for example you probably need to rule that Create Water draws water vapor out of the atmosphere rather than actually materializing H2O molecules from nothing and that you can't use Open/Close to manipulate sub-atomic particles - then with strict limits on the number of casters none of them are powerful or abundant enough to replace any significant 21st century industry.

Cure Minor Wounds is a major point of inquiry here, but it really depends on what you decide it actually does, which means you have to resolve, for this hypothetical scenario, how 'hit points' work in our world. Because if the majority of people are 1st level commoners, they only have 1-4 hp, which means Cure Minor Wounds can actually heal rather serious injuries and if HP=meat you've just made faith-based healing real and dropped hydrogen bomb in the cultural/religious landscape. You also get weird questions of how Cure Minor Wounds interacts with long-term chronic or terminal conditions. D&D hp doesn't effectively represent 'you have 6 months to live' conditions effectively at all (this isn't a game flaw, it's almost entirely irrelevant as an in-game mechanical issue) but the majority of people who die in the 21st century die of conditions of this nature: heart disease, cancer, organ failure, etc. Can a cleric delay terminal cancer indefinitely by casting Cure minor wounds on the subject once a week? a month? a day?

Eurus

2020-12-13, 07:58 PM

I think that it's really going to depend on how rare they are. Your scenario being tied to ability scores is a bit confusing, because it relies on a lot of demographic assumptions that I don't know how to make, so I'll just speculate. Also, I'm assuming that a person with cantrips has some sort of daily limit and can't just spam them all day.

If 1% of living people can cast some sort of cantrip/orison, and if they can pick a useful one instead of being stuck with something random, it should be fairly significant. Cure Minor Wounds might be one of the best picks for its ability to instantly stabilize someone, very useful in a medical setting. Using Arcane Mark on currency seems like it might be dubious, because that means your ability to make new currency is tied to one person and if they die or retire you need to change the mark, but maybe the benefits would be worth the trouble. I suspect that there would be some interesting scientific advances just from studying energy-manipulating cantrips like Light and Ray of Frost, but it's hard to guess exactly what those would be.

Speaking of energy-manipulating cantrips, I have no idea how to calculate how much energy you can get out of one, but it's unlikely to be enough to have a big effect if you're only casting it half a dozen times per day. Even if you can cast one at will, it's still probably just not enough to really change the world's energy situation. Same with Detect Water.

If even less people can cast cantrips, maybe one in one thousand or one in ten thousand, or if a lot of people are stuck with useless cantrips, then they're even less useful and I can't see much use for anything except Cure Minor Wounds in high-end hospitals to make sure really rich people have an extra safety net during surgery.

+4 ranks (1st level)
+3 (Skill Focus: Trapmaking)
+2 Circumstance from Masterwork tools
+1 Competence bonus from Guidance
Take 10 to craft a CR 1 trap.

It would require specialized training, but that is what higher education is for.

Magical traps require Craft Wondrous Item. If this hypothetical world lets people take feats as well as learn cantrips, that's a whole other conversation.

Conradine

2020-12-13, 08:02 PM

With our world's population, that's ~71 million casters. Statistically speaking, that's a small handful of old people you personally know who can probably pull a cantrip if they have to.

It's not enough to have the stats, It would still require years of study, a dedicated mindset and an appropriate place of learning.

You also get weird questions of how Cure Minor Wounds interacts with long-term chronic or terminal conditions. D&D hp doesn't effectively represent 'you have 6 months to live' conditions effectively at all (this isn't a game flaw, it's almost entirely irrelevant as an in-game mechanical issue) but the majority of people who die in the 21st century die of conditions of this nature: heart disease, cancer, organ failure, etc. Can a cleric delay terminal cancer indefinitely by casting Cure minor wounds on the subject once a week? a month? a day?

Healing hit points do not cover healing disease ability damage.
Yet, a skilled surgeon could find the spell incredibly useful to repair tiny lesions in critical points ( like an artheria or a vital organ ).

calam

2020-12-14, 01:16 AM

I think its not the power as much as how common it is. Even with the 3d6 spread I don't think level 0 spells will significantly change the amount of people who are essentially getting natural philosophy training and then doing academic work for decades to likely get it. If anything the bigger change would be the ability to make alchemical items. The ability to make alchemical lighting would be the biggest change of all from the ability to run workshops 24 hours a day to creating night life. On the other hand level 0 spells being able to be cast up to 4 times by a handful of people in each city can't do much. Maybe if they took short term useless class levels to spend the last 10 years of their lives creating magic items well stocked hospitals will have at will resistance bestowing items, kings will all have spoons of detect poison or purify food and drink and possibly have a couple wands of dancing lights that can be used for signaling.

With level zero spells we'd probably see a 5% higher disease survival rate, much purer food and drink and a flare gun equivalent a couple centuries early. If it also gives them alchemy access then the influence will be larger but I don't know as much about alchemy and it seems semi off topic.

Telok

2020-12-14, 02:44 AM

It's not enough to have the stats, It would still require years of study, a dedicated mindset and an appropriate place of learning.

That's basically a decent college degree. Probably equal to a chemistry or engineering degree, something where reality and practical labs don't let you get away with writing half-*** papers on the prof's favorite subject. Check for statistics about over-50s with those sorts of degrees to find a national/global population.

You could probably score a pretty nice retirement job just living next to a hospital and dropping by the emergency room three times a day for Cure Minor.

Wasn't there a cantrip that copied books at a touch? Archeology would love some people with that, trading a single fingerprint for a clean and legible transcript of an entire super-fragile ancient scroll (it might be better to grow a fingernail out for that, less touching the artifact).

I wonder how well the cleaning function would work on old murals and paintings. It would make cleaning the Sistine Chapel ceiling easier.

Um. Can Mending fix broken cellphones? Computer hard drives? Lots of people would love that. Electronics being damaged by radiation is an issue in space and with a single pound of equipment costing $10k to lift into orbit replacing parts is a rare occurrance. Someone healthy and can cast Mending might have a nice job at NASA, ESA, etc.

Batcathat

2020-12-14, 02:56 AM

Um. Can Mending fix broken cellphones? Computer hard drives? Lots of people would love that. Electronics being damaged by radiation is an issue in space and with a single pound of equipment costing $10k to lift into orbit replacing parts is a rare occurrance. Someone healthy and can cast Mending might have a nice job at NASA, ESA, etc.

Now I really want to create a setting with magic using astronauts. I wonder if there's any urban fantasy on the subject?

Eurus

2020-12-14, 10:39 AM

Um. Can Mending fix broken cellphones? Computer hard drives? Lots of people would love that. Electronics being damaged by radiation is an issue in space and with a single pound of equipment costing $10k to lift into orbit replacing parts is a rare occurrance. Someone healthy and can cast Mending might have a nice job at NASA, ESA, etc.

I looked at Mending, and 3.5 Mending is actually extremely specific in terms of what it will fix, which is funny because I don't think I've ever really paid attention to that cantrip before. I'm not saying it's impossible to find a clever use for it, but it'd be tough.

liquidformat

2020-12-14, 11:11 AM

We all know that the whole world would be turned upside down in a single round if D&D 3.5- level magic became real.
But.

If magic was real but very, very limited...

like, only level 0 spells ( orisons and cantrips ), and even those require exceedingly high abilities ( Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma 20 ) and years of pratice. This means to cast a cantrip one has to be a natural gifted genius ( natural 18 ) with a lot of pratice and experience ( level 8+) or venerable scholar ( who gets higher abilities with age ) who starts with quite high abilities anyway.
And only the true geniuses or masters know more than one or two cantrips.

It's still enough to revolution / significantly impact a world?

There is a lot to unpack here, first off what does having a 20 in Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma actually mean in reality compared to d&d and how closely do our rules conform to the d&d rules. For example while people do gain some wisdom and 'intelligence' through education and life, most people do start to experience cognitive decline in accordance with physical decline as they get older rather than gaining cognitive ability like they do in D&D. Furthermore, children are more malleable before the age of ~18 and therefore it might be possible to gain extra Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma through proper schooling.

Also what do levels represent and what level of education would each level corollate to. Specifically what does level 8 mean, is that a college education, masters, doctorate, being Mr. Fantastic/Tony Stark, or autistic savant level brilliance?

In a lot of what I have seen E6 is probably an ok representation of human potential which would put having 8 levels in whatever class gives cantrips/orisons an impossible task...

Kalkra

2020-12-14, 12:05 PM

I'm kinda iffy on the exact mechanics of this (because the OP didn't specify things like classes, presumably deliberately), but if you can teach people to UMD scrolls that widens the applications a lot, particularly if you can swing Artificer, although that requires a feat, and I wouldn't assume that people get those in this hypothetical.

Regardless, Animal Trick seems pretty useful, depending of what exactly you can train an animal to do. Create Water pretty clearly actually creates the water, rather than just drawing it from the surroundings or something, so that's cool in a violation of of physics sense, and also is useful in areas without much water naturally, although it doesn't make that much water if everybody's at CL 1. Purify Food and Drink actually produces more potable water in situations where one has seawater or the like. Cure Minor Wounds is potential very good, as has been mentioned. Death Watch would be useful for medical professionals, assuming that casting it doesn't turn you evil, but that's another thread entirely, and Naturewatch is similar. Detect Disease would be very useful, but it's only on the Shaman spell list, although Archivists could still cast it, as can Artificers, if they exist. Guidance is just generally useful, even if the bonus is small. Mage Hand seems like the kind of thing that could be useful, although I can't think of anything offhand. Mending is very useful, limited though it may be. Preserve Organ is very useful, particularly because it seems like you might be able to cast it on an organ in a creature's body, keeping it in that condition. Prestidigitation is obviously incredible. Repair Minor Damage might be useful, depending on what's considered a construct, and what restoring hitpoints does.

There are some other cantrips and orisons that people might use, but I've been focusing on spells that can't be easily replicated by any existing technology, or that can be used in situations where existing technology couldn't. That being said, all of the uses I was thinking of are mostly just doing things which are already done, but better. Perhaps that's a failure of imagination on my part, but I don't see any of these really changing the world, just slightly improving it.

Naturally, if Wondrous Items are in play things become very different, with unlimited healing and free energy and whatnot. Those would change the world on a very fundamental level.

Also, this list of cantips and orisons I was working off of was pretty complete, but I know that Dragon has a bunch of good ones, and there's always other 3rd party stuff, if any of that's legal.

Also, various feats could make things better, as could PrCs obviously, but it's not clear if people get either. If they do, I'll mention that Invisible Spell with Create Water lets you create permanent invisible water. That's just cool.

The biggest thing to think about, though, is the ability to research new spells. All of the existing spells (barring some 3rd party stuff) were created by people in a high fantasy setting, and some of them also happen to be useful in a modern setting. The assumption is that there are certain things which would be as useful for us as their cantrips and orisons are for them, at which point it's just a question of what effects can be accomplished at level 0.

Conradine

2020-12-14, 03:01 PM

So, many utility things but nothing that would turn the world upside-down, right?

Telok

2020-12-14, 04:06 PM

So, many utility things but nothing that would turn the world upside-down, right?

Well Create Water literally creating matter from nothing has implications for physics that will get metric tons of money thrown at it. I think Message might count as FTL communication? That goes down time travel and information paradox or it proves an... pfft, lost thr word... privledged? frame of reference.

As long as magic works by invariant rules, even if we can't fully understand them, then it's less "magic" and more "physics is way more interesting than we thought".

liquidformat

2020-12-14, 04:28 PM

Well Create Water literally creating matter from nothing has implications for physics that will get metric tons of money thrown at it.

Conjuration [creation] (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#creation) says 'A creation spell manipulates matter to create an object or creature in the place the spellcaster designates' which while incredible would still seem to obey the law of conservation of matter so you could swing using physics laws outside our current understanding...

I think Message might count as FTL communication? That goes down time travel and information paradox or it proves an... pfft, lost thr word... privledged? frame of reference.

As long as magic works by invariant rules, even if we can't fully understand them, then it's less "magic" and more "physics is way more interesting than we thought".

Message honestly doesn't sound that much different than having walkie talkies with ear pieces and very sensitive microphones so you could whisper to each other. Heck with the range, duration, and issues with barriers in some situations the walkie talkies might actually work better than the spell.

Conradine

2020-12-14, 04:29 PM

Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science, right?

Gusmo

2020-12-14, 04:40 PM

OP doesn't specify whether the few capable of these feats would be barred from making magic items. That would vastly increase the usefulness of magic, if allowed. Prestidigitation alone has insane potential.

Edit: by default RAW, here's unlimited use mage hand item (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#handoftheMage) that only has a market value of 900 GP. That means it can be crafted in a single day. It'd be reasonable to assume all level 0 spell magic items should have the same cost, and therefore cost to make. Unlimited sending, cure minor wounds, prestidigitation, create water, purify food and drink, light, know direction, acid splash, ray of frost... this would be gigantic.

WanderingMist

2020-12-14, 04:46 PM

Well Create Water literally creating matter from nothing has implications for physics that will get metric tons of money thrown at it. I think Message might count as FTL communication? That goes down time travel and information paradox or it proves an... pfft, lost thr word... privledged? frame of reference.

As long as magic works by invariant rules, even if we can't fully understand them, then it's less "magic" and more "physics is way more interesting than we thought".

Can Create Water also destroy water? If so, keeping spaceships cool in space gets a lot easier because water is an amazing heat sink, and if you can just get rid of it instantly and replace it with new cold water whenever you want, you don't have to worry about needing giant wings for your spacecraft.

H_H_F_F

2020-12-14, 04:52 PM

As mentioned, I think cure minor wounds would be big. I once discussed with a few friends what would be the best at-will cantrip IRL, and though we all agreed prestidigitation would be amazing, CMW was the only responsible answer. Stabilise anyone wounded, cut recovery times by days, weeks, and months - applying CMW to a burn victim would be huge, and warfare would change as well.

Mending and mage hand would be super important to extreme work conditions.

Feats and CL could make many others very influential.

However, I'd have to say the biggest one is probably purify food and drink. That's a lot of volume even at level one, and it would majorly change the lives of the world's poorest on the short and long term.

Saint-Just

2020-12-14, 05:02 PM

Can Create Water also destroy water? If so, keeping spaceships cool in space gets a lot easier because water is an amazing heat sink, and if you can just get rid of it instantly and replace it with new cold water whenever you want, you don't have to worry about needing giant wings for your spacecraft.

I am not sure that heat dissipation is a significant problem for the modern spacecraft (though even the hardest space settings tend to assume at least some means of propulsion significantly better than modern rockets, so the issue of heat dissipation will increase in importance), but Create Water will be useful anyway.

a) It can be used as a reaction mass, which you don't need to accelerate first, so you are free from the tyranny of the rocket equation. Earth-to-orbit launches will not become better but depending on exact situation with the mages (e.g. how exactly will you earn experience, and can you do it at all, or you only get to cast if you are old or venerable; also whether you can create wondrous items) deep space missions may become significantly easier.

b) If you are not talking about spaceships flying to and fro but only rare missions planned years in advance you can use the water to as a heat sink anyway. Create it, heat it and the eject it. Any risks created by such pollution would likely be less than a normal risk of micrometeorites.

However, I'd have to say the biggest one is probably purify food and drink. That's a lot of volume even at level one, and it would majorly change the lives of the world's poorest on the short and long term.

Off the top of my head, unlikely to be cost-efficient. A salary for someone who can cast mending, mage's hand, CMW, possibly dawn or deathwatch would do more to provide a community with clean food and water than actually having a person who can cast purify. At least in any situation where there is a local infrastructure and local economy. Entirely understandable why someone who have seen the negative effects of malnourishment first-hand can chose to learn that cantrip instead of more economically efficient ones, still wouldn't make it a biggest one.

Duff

2020-12-14, 05:48 PM

Dry however? Less so.

Dry would be a revolution in manufacturing, construction, agriculture and possibly transport

It's not enough to have the stats, It would still require years of study, a dedicated mindset and an appropriate place of learning.

Don't sorcerers get cantrips?

H_H_F_F

2020-12-14, 06:44 PM

Off the top of my head, unlikely to be cost-efficient. A salary for someone who can cast mending, mage's hand, CMW, possibly dawn or deathwatch would do more to provide a community with clean food and water than actually having a person who can cast purify. At least in any situation where there is a local infrastructure and local economy. Entirely understandable why someone who have seen the negative effects of malnourishment first-hand can chose to learn that cantrip instead of more economically efficient ones, still wouldn't make it a biggest one.

Unfortunately, that's true today (in the sense of first world people having the resources to solve these issues), and people still die and suffer because of unclean water. Someone did the math above of the amount of people that would have this ability. It's rare, but it's really not rare enough. No one is going to look for hires in rural Nepal for these jobs, and the people who would get these jobs wouldn't dedicate themselves to solving the problems of rural Nepal. However, an old person in each village being able to provide clean drinking water to all the children in the village is HUGE, and you could certainly expect a healthier and more secure next generation going for the jobs you've described.

Saint-Just

2020-12-14, 07:08 PM

Gavinfoxx

2020-12-14, 07:30 PM

There's a lot of really good obscure 1st party cantrips out there. Look up Deftness sometime!

H_H_F_F

2020-12-14, 07:42 PM

No system with humans in it is going to be 100% efficient, of course, but I do think that any country no mater how poor as long as it is not war-torn or suffering a disruption of equal proportions would try to capture significant percent of the mages and redirect them to medicine, industry and (depending) possibly law-enforcement. If people are looking for financial incentives they will leave (even if they are being paid significantly more than a regular worker in that country).

I was writing a long comment before realising I'm straying out of the appropriate subjects for this forum. I'll just say your logic applies to a lot of real world situations, and there are reasons things are as they are. Have you spent any time in rural areas of the developing world? There are often hurdles to social mobility and information that far exceed the expectations of some people.

Saint-Just

2020-12-14, 08:03 PM

I was writing a long comment before realising I'm straying out of the appropriate subjects for this forum. I'll just say your logic applies to a lot of real world situations, and there are reasons things are as they are. Have you spent any time in rural areas of the developing world? There are often hurdles to social mobility and information that far exceed the expectations of some people.

In short: in my initial post I did assume that those skillsets would be overwhelmingly valuable (I am no longer sure that is true, neither I am sure that is untrue), but in the second post I was focusing on people moving within a country or even merely within the region. I was not saying that the mages would be paid enough to significantly sponsor their original community (like the would be if they were hired to work in significantly wealthier nations) merely enough to make themselves significantly... wealthier, for a certain quality of wealthier. Hurdles to social mobility and information will remain, but it seems like a clear-cut case where people with money and/or power would be interested in spreading the information and lowering the barriers as much as possible. It still may help the original communities little to not at all, in fact.

It is indeed a risky issue on these forums, but if you cannot assume that people would be able to do whatever is most productive with their abilities (and you cannot assume that even short of magic) neither you can assume that people will remain wherever they are and do what benefits the community.

PairO'Dice Lost

2020-12-14, 11:28 PM

So, many utility things but nothing that would turn the world upside-down, right?

Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science, right?

It depends entirely on whether the magic in this situation is actual D&D magic or simply magic that lets you achieve the same effects as D&D spells using a vaguely-Vancian-looking framework. In the latter case, where create water just condenses water out of the atmosphere and cure minor wounds just causes flesh to rapidly regenerate and stuff like that, the practical effects of spellcasting would be nice and it would give the scientists and engineers a few headscratchers to work on for quite a while, but day-to-day life and our conception of the world probably wouldn't change all that much.

In the former case, however, under D&D metaphysics create water "creates" water by pulling it from the Elemental Plane of Water and cure minor wounds heals things by infusing them with positive energy, which means that the discovery of magic means the concomitant discovery of dozens of entirely new infinite universes with entirely different laws of physics compared to our own, as well as hard physical proof of things like life force and souls and objective physical morality so forth. The actual cantrip and orison effects themselves would pale in comparison to the massive metaphorical shockwave caused by all of the world's scientists' minds getting blown at once, and if a few simple magic words, gestures, and thoughts can easily let someone access said universes of infinite matter and energy, well, give the researchers and engineers 20 years and the world will be totally unrecognizable.

Alcore

2020-12-15, 12:24 AM

I am not sure that heat dissipation is a significant problem for the modern spacecraft (though even the hardest space settings tend to assume at least some means of propulsion significantly better than modern rockets, so the issue of heat dissipation will increase in importance), but Create Water will be useful anyway.
It is a "problem" but has been solved. In a nutshell;

"Space is not cold. It lacks the matter to be cold."

The flip side is that there is matter. It is virtually zero (void) not actually zero (void). Problem is that thermal energy has nowhere to go. Ever been in a small room and it mysteriously heats up? That is you heating the room which isn't a problem; you are heating the walls which will then start heating the matter outside the walls.

This is where the problem is; there is not enough matter outside the spacecraft to matter. A human is 98 degrees. Eventually an astronaut in a metal container floating in space will heat his box to 98 assuming nothing else is providing yet more heat.

Spacecraft have long been designed with heat sinks. You know about that space station up there? It has a bunch of things sticking out of it. Some are clearly solar panels but others don't quite match. Those are heat sinks that store up heat and are as wide as possible to allow what matter space has to more easily collide.

It is not as dangerous as it sounds. Right now you are colliding with millions of atoms that make up the air. If it feels cool you are heating those atoms and if warm they are heating you. That is why the heat sinks work so well; their job is the same job as our skin.

Sorry for the tangent! :smallcool:

_______________

So another asked what a 20 looks like. I have no answer for that. Only the OP can answer what he thinks the real world is modeled as. When i make a low magic setting i use the alexandrian model... here;

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2

Crake

2020-12-15, 06:55 AM

It is a "problem" but has been solved. In a nutshell;

"Space is not cold. It lacks the matter to be cold."

The flip side is that there is matter. It is virtually zero (void) not actually zero (void). Problem is that thermal energy has nowhere to go. Ever been in a small room and it mysteriously heats up? That is you heating the room which isn't a problem; you are heating the walls which will then start heating the matter outside the walls.

This is where the problem is; there is not enough matter outside the spacecraft to matter. A human is 98 degrees. Eventually an astronaut in a metal container floating in space will heat his box to 98 assuming nothing else is providing yet more heat.

Spacecraft have long been designed with heat sinks. You know about that space station up there? It has a bunch of things sticking out of it. Some are clearly solar panels but others don't quite match. Those are heat sinks that store up heat and are as wide as possible to allow what matter space has to more easily collide.

It is not as dangerous as it sounds. Right now you are colliding with millions of atoms that make up the air. If it feels cool you are heating those atoms and if warm they are heating you. That is why the heat sinks work so well; their job is the same job as our skin.

Sorry for the tangent! :smallcool:

_______________

So another asked what a 20 looks like. I have no answer for that. Only the OP can answer what he thinks the real world is modeled as. When i make a low magic setting i use the alexandrian model... here;

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2

This all being said, I'm fairly sure prestidigitation does a better job at this. For 1 hour, you can, each round, chill 1 pound of water. So in 1 casting, you could chill 600 pounds of water. "Chill" is rather loosely defined of course, so...

MoiMagnus

2020-12-15, 08:14 AM

It's still enough to revolution / significantly impact a world?

Yes. Not a quick one, but it will eventually revolution science. Where does the energy come from? And how to "exploit" this energy sources for other purposes than cantrip? The entire scientific community would be like a group of hackers trying to exploit the newly released features.

Numbers of medical operations will become possible (or much easier) when you manage to move and affect organs through the body without needing to open it.

The ability to generate any flavour at will with prestidigitation is priceless for experimenting prototypes of new flavours. Assuming they are not pure illusion but actual molecules added to to meal, they will be eventually "hacked" by scientists to experiment prototypes of other substances. Assuming they are pure illusions that trick the human mind, they will help to understand how the human brain works, leading to huge progress in the related fields.

From an outsider perspective, I doubt there will be a lot of effects. But think of it like quantum physics. It has like zero application is day-to-day basis because of how complex it is to build situations in which you can use the power of quantum computing, and still, the scientific community is crazy about it and is searching every way it could exploit the "magic" of quantum physics.
=> Low level magic would likely have more impact on the world than what quantum physics has and will have. So a lot of impact at a scientific level, but not that much different from any other technological breakthrough for the average citizen.

Conradine

2020-12-15, 10:05 AM

So another asked what a 20 looks like. I have no answer for that. Only the OP can answer what he thinks the real world is modeled as.

Nobel-level scientist are probably at 20 Int, mabye even 21.
Also, very experienced and very bright university professors, probably.

A tiny minority anyway. Less than 1% would have the raw potential, many less would have the necessary dedication, time and access to resources.

Gavinfoxx

2020-12-15, 11:01 AM

A level 1 extremely talented, world-shaking professor would have, say, 20 int, Skill Focus: Physical Sciences, and the feat Education, applied to 'Physical Sciences' and 'Earth and Life Sciences', to use the D20 modern versions of the skills (but the 3.5e version of the appropriate Education feat, which gives a +1 rather than a +2).

So +5 ability, +4 skill, +4 from feats. That's +13 on a check without any assistance or tools, that they can take 10 on.

Now, look at the cantrip "Deftness". A +2... on anything, for a small period of time. And it stacks with Guidance, for a net +3. That would give anyone who can get access to both spells, for a short period of time, roughly a fourth the skill of the most educated and genius professor on any topic, and would also increase the ability of those experts to get through the most difficult problems by a significant amount of their raw skill and knowledge.

Also... those are divinations. They might just pull out correct answers from nowhere! What happens when you repeatedly cast them on the top expert in a particular field as they ask detailed technical questions associated with the advancement of their field and try to come up with the answers?