Enough with crafy skyship-building methods (though I really liked that one). Time for a new spell! This one is unsubtle, but I'm not sure whether it's "priced" correctly, nor how to translate its effects in game terms.
The dragon's black breath, CrTe 5
R: Touch, D: Diam, T: Ind
The caster exhales a vast cloud of very fine coal powder, that within a round settles as an inch-thick blanket over everything in a cone approximately at third of a mile in length and a third of a mile wide at the base. The dust chokes and blinds unprotected people and animals (note: this is obviously only a minor inconvenience, that, at most, will probably cause the loss of a round or two - I'm trying to find a reasonable mechanical description). But should even a tiny spark touch the coal dust while it lasts, a vast conflagration will result (hmm, any ideas of how to model a coal dust explosion?)
Base: 1 Create 10 cubic paces of dirt/sand/dust, +1 Touch, +1 Diam, +2 Size X 100
Edit: while there's many "paces", I'm assuming a Roman pace which appears to be approx. 1.48 meters, or 58.1 inches; in particular, 1000 paces make a Roman mile (from the root "mille" = thousand), slightly shorter than the English mile.
Since there is no Rego requisite, anyone moving in that area will rise a HUGE ammount of dust. I can imagine your magus being affected by his own spell easily. Be sure not to cast it in a urban area, or you will have your explosion while casting the spell!
But saying that, I think putting fire to it wouldn't make it explode, only combust. Something like an instant conflagration doing +1 damage to everybody in the area, and setting flammable things (like thatch) on fire. Welcome to the city's roaring inferno.
The fact the fact that it is combustible is not a cosmetic side effect, would increase the spell magnitude by +1, at least.
Well, the magus is at the very tip of the cone, so he shouldn't really be affected unless he marches forward... or should he?
Actually it's meant as a sort of "artillery" in the open field, e.g. against a marching army or a charge of knights. Though I can see it cast on a village...
That's exactly the idea! The question is ... how fast is the combustion? I guess the faster it is, the greater the damage per round, but the fewer the rounds. It seems that coal dust can create pretty sudden conflagrations, but I'm not an expert in the field...
Why? It's a pretty natural property of coal dust, like, say, of wood made through Herbam or of wax made through Animal or of oil made through Aquam...
You can state this by some application of RAW , including Art & Academe , that this is how it works in the setting ,
not just your application of real world physics?
I still dispute your lifting power increases arithmetically.
I barrel of sand lifts X amount of weight.
2 barrels , in paradigm , do not lift twice as much , no matter how many times you say it does.
Many of us like your ship idea , but some in game mechanics of why it would work this way would help.
Obviously you can House Rule that it works the way you want it to.
Using , Muto , Highly Unnatural , is not sufficient reason , imho.
Just to note , im not trying to win an argument and prove you wrong ,
but as yet i dont see , for myself , anything that dictates this will work as you want it to.
If you dont feel this needs addressing , that im just being too obtuse to understand ,
feel free to say so.
While it may seem otherwise , i am not in the anti-fun brigade.
Using an "unnatural" guideline allows you to do something that is "unnatural" within the setting --- so explaining how it works "naturally" is a moot point.
Mythic Europe might well be governed by Aristotelian physics --- but Hermetic magic allows you to break the laws of physics that exist in Mythic Europe. Hermetic magic is magic, not physics.
It's hand-waving.
Just saying "its magic" isnt enough either , Hermetic Magic has limits and rules.
Using existing in-game mechanics to explain how your magically-created effect works.
I highly unnaturally Muto my aged , three-legged dog named Spot , so each hair of the dog ,
has lodestone properties , rinse & repeat , to create any crazy scheme i can think up.
No further justification needed then.
The dragon's scintillating breath, CrTe 5
R: Touch, D: Diam, T: Ind
Substitute Diamond Dust for Coal Dust , no explosive effect , but highly abrasive.
Base: 1 Create 10 cubic paces of dirt/sand/dust, +1 Touch, +1 Diam, +2 Size X 100
Pretty certain you need a Rego or Auram requisite to do this for Terram ,
unless prevailing winds are in your favour.
Aquam and Ignem have natural movement and do not need it.
While the idea is cool, I have to disagree on how it is translated into the spell's parameters.
Range should not be Touch, at least not if you keep the target as Ind -- you are creating the coal dust over a large area. To me that sounds like Sight range equivalent. Otherwise you have to change the Target to be the covered area. Trying to get around this by saying the dust is "exhaled" by the caster is just hand-waving. Even adding a Rego requisite would not get around this, as the range of the Rego effect would have to be large enough to cover the area over which the dust is projected.
We can see a similar ruling with the spell Arcs of Fiery Ribbons (CrIg 25). Although the flames appear to shoot out from the caster's hands, it is the "reach" of the spell that determines the range, not the fact the distance from the caster at which the effect starts.
This makes this a level 15 spell. I would also consider adding one additional magnitude for complexity (it must be a very fine dust to explode at the slightest spark, not just your ordinary coal). So total level 20.
Personally, I'd say that this does a +5 damage on explosion, and double that is the explosion is within an enclosed space. Things and beings that are sheltered from the explosion within the area (within a building or a barrel, for example) would be protected.
Sidenote: in Tales of Mythic Europe, flour dust (often the cause of mill fires) wa snoted as hard to create via Hermetic Magic as the Finesse needed to get it as fine as was needed for explosive purposes was generally too high.
Not sure if this should be a factor, but in my games if someone wanted to convince me that they would wipe out a village via that or similar method via a spell that is a magnitude or so, I'd likely consider if that's something I want to see repeated in my game.
Giving it the property of magnetite isnt unnatural, but giving it PART of that property? In such a precise way. I would call it EXTREMELY unnatural. "Highly" isnt strong enough. "Slightly" i would say is if you were to make it have stronger magnetism than normally(which you are apparently already doing, because normal magnetism strong enough to lift a boat will not come easily(or at all), magnetite simply wont do it, you would need electromagnets, as lodestone magnetism is very WEAK). "Highly unnatural" might be to make it attract anything.
You´re essentially doing a munchkin argument(which is exactly why i really dont like using fake physics, it can be twisted all too easily, despite historically being an attempt to explain REAL physics).
Sure it will, but it wont be pushing the iron anywhere. The problem of lifting yourself showcased in a nutshell.
If you want this to work, just use the "Highly unnatural" to say that affected sand has negative weight at some ratio compared to actual weight. Then you add or remove sand to the "chamber" as needed.
Add a simple Rego item to provide movement as you wish.
If someone wants flying boats, let them work at least a LITTLE bit for it?
Above suggestion will still be done in much less time than it takes to build the boat!
Eh? Say WHAT? I think you´re confusing naturally magnetic magnetite with "constructed" magnet which are a whole lot stronger. And the "a bit of iron PLUS a weight ten times as large as the iron itself", whatever gave you that notion? Its simply a bad statement. Size doesnt matter to the magnet, total weight does.
If you tape 10 times the size of the iron worth of gold to it, the magnetism isnt going to do anything unless the magnet is powerful enough to actually lift the weight of the gold.
Size being completely irrelevant.
Commonly used magnets today are at their very weakest about 10 times stronger than magnetite.
The weakest of "made" magnets are about 5 times stronger than magnetite.
Modern Neodymium are 75+ times stronger.
If im reading correctly, for one CUBIC METER worth of magnetite you would get the magnetic strength to exert the equivalent of 2-10 kJ. Thats about enough for a normal to very strong lawnmower. With a cubic meter of magnetite weighing in at around 5.5 tons, well you certainly wont make it lift anything, including itself.
Its enough to power an ultralight aircraft. Barely.
So "action-reaction principle" isnt anywhere close to being the problem.
Magnetite. Hematite is inherently NON-magnetic under normal circumstances.
So, exactly as written, your spell is completely useless regardless of any other problems with it.
Your spell includes nothing to cause the spread of the cloud. You´re also specifying the spread quite exactly(determined area and even spread and VERY fast spread as well(it will have to move at a rate of over 100m/s, thats 360kph)) which would mean a Rego requisite or +1 for complexity if Rego is used for the spread anyway. How does your spell reach that far away? Range sounds more like "Sight".
As written i expect you would end up with BIG mound of coaldust on top of one VERY annoyed magi. :mrgreen:
And isnt the standard pace the "not quite a meter" one?
As with flour and some other materials, if you can get it to mix close enough to100% perfectly with air(different materials are more or less "picky" about the mix), you can make it explode VERY violently.
Coaldust however isnt that severe though as it is relatively slowburning(this is part of its reason as an ingredient in gun powder). Also, to make it burn quickly you will need it mixed with air, not as a layer covering the ground.
As a layer on the ground it will probably be quite hard to ignite actually.
Spread enough in the air to ignite easily, +5 or +10 damage to everything in it. As a more compact layer, you need some rather good fire to ignite it and it will probably do less damage than the spell used to ignite it.
But it will KEEP doing that low damage every round for as long as the spell is active.
Hmm, that's a very good - and interesting!- point. I was not aware until now that fine flour clouds could explode, but apparently flour dust can be even more explosive than coal dust!
I think you are missing the point here; in aristotelian physics, it's a property of magnetite to move towards iron, and a property ofiron* to move towards magnetite. Magnetite does not "attract" iron except in the sense that a mare attracts a stallion.
I totally agree that by modern physics (which I think you mentioned elsewhere is what you use in your saga) it would be extremely unnatural, because of the action-reaction principle, the same that forbids you pull yourself up by the scruff of your neck.
I should have written "A magnet can usually "lift a bit of iron PLUS a weight ten times as large as THAT OF the iron itself." I find it surprising that you did not realize that was what I was saying. I also wonder how you got all worked up about "Size" here, I never mention it...
Sure, because the cloud does not spread. The effect is cosmetic. If you wish, I could have written "You create a volume of dust equal to 100 times the base amount listed for "Individual", at Touch Range. The shape is a layer approximately 1 inch thick, with an approximately triangular shape." It sounded cooler the other way. But it's really identical.
No, see above. You do not need to reach the totality of your target, only the closest part.
Yes. For comparison, depending on the type of coal (essentially we're looking at carbon combustion, but coal varies in purity), you'll get roughly 2/7 to 1/2 the energy released per gram as you get from methane. Methane, however, is slightly more massive per particle. Let's estimate that as 40% of the energy per reaction. Methane also maintains particle number, while coal reduces particle number (though only slightly due to its generally solid nature). That makes the pressure slightly lower on average for the coal explosion. However, there are more particles to heat up with a methane reaction; the coal reaction will rise about three times as much in temperature per unit of energy given off. Combining this with the 40% gives us a slightly higher rise in temperature for the coal reaction, but then checking with particle number we can probably call this about even, a little in methane's favor. So if you could really grind it up finely enough and disperse it well enough as DIREWOLF75 says (Why couldn't you with magic?), you should expect something similar to a natural gas explosion, unless I've missed something.
Because its just as wrong to say 10 times the weight, which means your basic understanding was wrong which made your "large", which written alone can only refer to size, part of your general woopsie instead of multiple ones.
The TOTAL weight is the main determinant of wether it can be lifted or not. And natural magnets are, yet again, WEAK.
The strength of the magnetic field can make it preferable to use a larger piece of iron as an intermediary for lifting with magnets(because more material reacting to the magnetism can be within or within stronger parts of the magnetic field), but your "ten times" is simply incorrect. You can NOT simply increase the size of the intermediary and then be able to increase payload 10 times equally. Unless you´re playing with ELECTROMAGNETS(and not generally there either). And that doesnt even exist at all in ME(well, at least not beyond some vauge and distorted guessings about how magnetic and electric forces corelate).
Simply, if you have a magnet able to lift 1kg, that doesnt mean it can ALSO lift 10kg of payload added.
It means it can lift 1kg, regardless if its 1kg iron or 100g iron with another 900g "whatever" attached to it.
Semantic arguing mostly. As i said, i think you´re going seriously munchkin in this.
I would say its a property of iron to react to magnetism. Which means you would have to add a 2nd spell to modifiy the iron.
And you STILL need to increase the magnetic force a thousand times to even be able to lift the lfiting "system". I can argue that as being beyond "slightly unnatural" simply because the extreme magnitude of increase.
And, you´re still trying to "lift yourself by pulling your hair". There are just too many things with the original idea that simply fails outright or is questionable that i wouldnt dare to run it.
Ok so my munchkinmeter just hit the jackpot with enough energy left over to create a universe or five...
So if you want to create water into a lake that is a few hundred meters uphill from you, you simply use touch range obviously...
Fine, i touch the ground here and have a volcano form under you. Poof.
Or how about using a InAu spell to listen to a conversation a few km away? Using Touch range.
Good job, you just opened Pandoras box.
Sorry, im so totally against it that im going gaaaaaah...
DIREWOLF, we already know that you do not understand/accept aristotelian physics. This spell works under those, and not modern ones, so it's clear you fail to understand/accept it. No point discussing it any further.
However, I'd like to point out that your analysis of magnetite's "strength" is, in my opinion, just plain wrong, even under modern physics. I'm not willing to go into lengthy detail about it because, honestly, I think it would be a waste of time - I've never seen you change your opinion even in the face of overwhelming evidence presented by other people. Sorry.
