Magic-tech?

[Jimp]

Let's say there's a high magic setting, Netheril (sp?) style high magic. The people in this place start putting magic together with other things to make magic-powered-technology.
Using the core spells, what kind of things can you come up with?

[BarroomBard]

Well, there's always the delightful Create Water/ Purify Water porta-potty.

[Jack_Simth]

Let's say there's a high magic setting, Netheril (sp?) style high magic. The people in this place start putting magic together with other things to make magic-powered-technology.
Using the core spells, what kind of things can you come up with?

Assuming, for the moment, you can craft "traps" to do whatever?

Food:
Create Food and Prestidigitation (for flavor).

Water:
Decantur of Endless Water

Hot and cold running water:
Deacantur of Endless Water, pouring water into pipes, which then go through Permenencied Wall of Fire (one using an Archmage's Mastery of Elements to be cold flames, one regular).

Light Everywhere:
Continual Flame (duh).

Lights with switch:
Continual Flame, with a cover on a simple lever/pulley system.

Housing:
Wall of Stone.

....

I mean, really - the basics can all be covered.

[Xefas]

Decanters of Endless Water have a multitude of uses, including free energy. Use one to turn a water wheel or have it flow into a Permanencied Wall of Fire to create steam.

This question comes up quite often, so expect some good ones...

[Kizara]

See Ebberon.

[Prometheus]

I can't imagine within-town transportations being accomplished with anything other than Mount.

There might be a couple of permanent Teleportation Circles, depending on how many powerful and generous wizards are running around. But it also becomes an issue of sovereignty, in that countries want to control their own borders and not allow easy entry points for potential threats. On the other hand, it's the quickest way to bring mercantile goods.

[Eclipse]

If you want to try something really outlandish, have all buildings made with Magnificent Mansions and spells derivative of it for some variation. Since all of them are accessed via portals, it saves a lot of space in the countryside. Just house rule that they can be made permanent.

Perhaps they use crystal balls as a form of television, not just for scrying.

Perhaps volunteer fire departments have rods of fire extinguishing (though depending on how many people know magic, it may be more expedient to have clerics dump gallons of water on the blaze through create water).

The spell control weather could be used to maximize crop efficiency. It would also make a great weapon of war to threaten another land's crops with.

Helms of telepathy (or something similar, perhaps hand-sized and/or without the suggestion spell use) could be used as cell phones.

[Kyeudo]

Let's say there's a high magic setting, Netheril (sp?) style high magic. The people in this place start putting magic together with other things to make magic-powered-technology.
Using the core spells, what kind of things can you come up with?

As someone else said, just see Eberron. Between the lightning powered trains, the sending powered telegraph, and the levitation supported buildings, Eberron has it already covered.

[mikeejimbo]

Hmm, if you standardized some sort of encoding/decoding system, you could use 'sending' to emulate the internet.

Edit: I see Eberron beat me to the punch.

[FlyMolo]

I can't imagine within-town transportations being accomplished with anything other than Mount.

There might be a couple of permanent Teleportation Circles, depending on how many powerful and generous wizards are running around. But it also becomes an issue of sovereignty, in that countries want to control their own borders and not allow easy entry points for potential threats. On the other hand, it's the quickest way to bring mercantile goods.

So they'd simply be fortified around. No point in sending troops through the circle if they arrive bottled in, with murder holes overhead and archers all around.

But yeah, check out the build me an airship thread that was on here a while ago. Steam engines, immovable rod waterwheels (the rods act as paddles to move whatever they're attached to) etc etc. My favorite one, that ended up as part of the campaign I'm running, was 6 walls of force around a gate to some plane with no air. Space, or something. The point was, there was no air inside. It weighed nothing, so therefore pulled the airship up through buoyancy. Lots of fun.

[Randel]

I've been thinking of a campaign world where simple magic items that create usable energy are mass-produced. (that is, wizards are more likely to just churn out a bunch of transparent glass marbles with 'continual flame' cast on them than mess with metamagic rods.)

So, something like a metal plate with a permanent 'Heat Metal' on it would be easy to make and fairly affordable. Then people just kind of plug it into whatever machine or engine they want.

So, with a source of perpetual heat, you could make lots of hot-air balloons that can stay up almost forever since they don't require refueling.

Get a lot of canvases to make balloons, have a Heat Plate supply it with hot air and you can have lookout towers that can see for miles. Have those towers equiped with horns or lights and you can send messages via good-old-fashioned telegram (unless you want to have magic mirrors that people can speak through).

Get enough, and you could make house-like structures in the air. Floating balloon castles supplied with water and food via magic or really long rope elevators leading down to the ground below.

With spells like levitate and control water you can enchant rivers to flow uphill. Create canals that wind across the countryside and provide easy shipping.

Also, be careful about Lyres of Building. All it takes is one Bardic Lich with a grudge to grab himself one of those and start strumming away... cutting down forrests and digging out mountainsides in an hour that a few hundred slave workers would take a week to do. Get a band of orcs behind him and he could turn the elvish homeland into a sprawling urban landscape just waiting for orcs and goblins to move in.

[nerulean]

We've been looking at mass produced magic, too, and had an idea for magic bubblewrap. Essentially, a single spell is imbued into the bubblewrap, and every time you pop a bubble the spell is cast. Prestidigitation bubblewrap means never having to do the dishes again!

[shadow_archmagi]

I can't imagine within-town transportations being accomplished with anything other than Mount.

There might be a couple of permanent Teleportation Circles, depending on how many powerful and generous wizards are running around. But it also becomes an issue of sovereignty, in that countries want to control their own borders and not allow easy entry points for potential threats. On the other hand, it's the quickest way to bring mercantile goods.

Phantom Steed. I discovered this little nifty not long ago... Wagon of Phantom Steed=horseless carriage that goes 20mph=Model T car.

[weenie]

Can you make Telekinesis permanent? Because if you can, that's the purest source of kinetic power you could wish for. You can push stuff directly with it or use some sort of transmission system(like the ones used in cars) to achieve even better results. Oh, and who needs transparent orbs when you can have minor image & sending based holograms? Everything is going to be so much easier once scientists discover magic

[Hyfigh]

I have discussed for hours the near endless possibilities of entertainment the various illusion spells can provide.

[martyboy74]

My favorite one, that ended up as part of the campaign I'm running, was 6 walls of force around a gate to some plane with no air.

That's seems like it'd be difficult, what with the second paragraph.

[Collin152]

That's seems like it'd be difficult, what with the second paragraph.

Okay, so you neeed much mroe than six.
Assuming the walls have thickness.
Otherwise, indestructable razor blade.

[Devils_Advocate]

Hmm, if you standardized some sort of encoding/decoding system, you could use 'sending' to emulate the internet.

I'm thinking scrying + programmed image + sending for broadcast television.

"The TV was on, showing the morning news. Some self-proclaimed expert was talking about the supposedly looming peak loot crisis and how it wasn’t really as bad as everybody said."
- Tales of MU

Note that in a thaumaturgically advanced society, illusion magic has some very prominent uses. If you think of illusion as being primarily deceptive, that's probably because D&D is a game that tends to set up all sorts of adversarial situations way more than it examines widespread peaceful cooperation. But think: When I watch a video on YouTube, it's showing me something that's not really there, but it's not tricking me -- I know that what I'm seeing isn't actually happening in front of me. The standard uses of illusion magic should actually be entertainment and communication. The upshot of this is that gnomes basically run all sorts of important stuff. They run lots of important stuff that doesn't even have anything to do with illusion or alchemy, actually, because they're geeks. They're chemists, engineers, spell researchers, tinkers, artificers, inventors.