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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: zenten on August 19, 2011, 12:10:09 AM
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So the thaumaturgy difficulty can be based on the difficulty to do something mundanely. People can now make diamonds, of good enough quality to sell for jewlery. So what difficulty is that? And as the technology improves and it gets easier to do this does that make doing so with thaumaturgy easier?
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With enough prep time and not getting in a hurry about finishing the spell in as few turns as possible, it could be done pretty easily. Transforming one form of inanimate carbon, say Kingston charcoal, into another isn't going to be nearly as difficult as transforming a human into a wolf, for instance. If for no other reason than you have no will opposing your own.
Which is fine if you want a bag of gems to scatter on the ground and cause one heck of a distraction. If you want diamonds that're worth a damn though you're going to have to go for as pure a carbon source as is humanly possible to find. The kind of diamonds you'd get out of common sources of carbon (without adding a goodly bit of complexity to filter out impurities) wouldn't be worth as much as even industrial grade diamonds.
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It might be quite a bit easier to conjure diamonds, if you don't mind them melting into ectoplasm.
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I doubt improvements in industrial production will change the difficulty for wizardly production.
The process ultimately doesn't change: heat and pressure for the non-magical transformation. The machinery becomes smaller, faster and more economical, but the physics and chemistry involved is the same.
You might say that Industry's skill level has become higher.
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So the thaumaturgy difficulty can be based on the difficulty to do something mundanely. People can now make diamonds, of good enough quality to sell for jewlery. So what difficulty is that? And as the technology improves and it gets easier to do this does that make doing so with thaumaturgy easier?
Go with the Value of a Diamond. Check out buying things and see what a Diamond costs. Then use that as your base difficulty for creating a Diamond with thaumaturgy. If you then want to create a really huge and really expensive diamond... well, cost will go up quick.
Really Big diamonds will be at Legendary and above.
That would be creating raw diamonds... if you want ones that are already shiny i'd add a few shifts on top of that.
To represent magical cutting and polishing if you will.
So a really big Diamond that's already shiny will start at 10-12 shifts... more can be added.
and that's assuming you have material that you can transform. If you want to conjure it... add another few shifts for duration.
Smaller diamond will be easier, just look at the buying things table for base difficulties.
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Generating the kinds of heat and pressure to create even a small, gem quality diamond should be freakin' difficult.
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So since Thaumatugy can magic up a skill roll you don't otherwise have...wouldn't making a diamond just be a magic resources roll? With a Superb resources roll I can afford a 100,000 dollar diamond. (that is quite the rock) It seems as though that should be the difficulty of Magic-ing up one from coal.
Now turning said diamond into spendable currency might be another story in its own right...Pun intended
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If you let someone magic up valuable things (and not just conjure something that looks like them) then PCs with thaumaturgy basically don't need the Resources skill anymore.
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If you let them use divination then they don't need investigation any more...law breaking aside mind magics can make social skills unnecessary...the real question is why we want a diamond...does the magic death ray need one...or are we trying to get a resources skill without paying for it.
In his own home a Wizard could have all sorts of nice conjured stuff...that he would have to re-conjure if his pipes break...with all the trappings of resources. In that situation I would tell my player to lose the stuff or buy the resources, but if the story needed a diamond and the getting of the diamond wasn't a big part of the plot...I don't see why it would be so hard...if i needed a specific diamond there are lots of reasons a magic one wouldn't work.
if the problem is a player trying to nerf the system...that is a complexity issue of the player not the diamond
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Generating the kinds of heat and pressure to create even a small, gem quality diamond should be freakin' difficult.
There's no need to generate heat or pressure. A simple mechanical rearranging of the carbon atoms into the proper crystal matrix would do fine. I'd start with a base of a teleportation spell with an effect like the escape potion in SF and tweak the back end.
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There's no need to generate heat or pressure. A simple mechanical rearranging of the carbon atoms into the proper crystal matrix would do fine. I'd start with a base of a teleportation spell with an effect like the escape potion in SF and tweak the back end.
A simple rearranging of carbon atoms in a proper crystal matrix? Using what elemental magic? You realize we don't even know what an atom looks like, but can only hypothesize what they look like.
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If you let someone magic up valuable things (and not just conjure something that looks like them) then PCs with thaumaturgy basically don't need the Resources skill anymore.
Sure they do... for one thing- magic transformations should probably still have to pay for longevity (which can get ritually expensive fast). Diamonds eventually decay back to raw carbon- normally over the course a century or two- but if you rush the formation, degradation will probably be a quicker problem too.
As for needing heat and pressure... magic's about taking short-cuts... and it's also a lot about instinct and visualization. Any given zoologist will recognize a werewolf as being wrong, because holding a perfect image of a wolf's anatomy in one's head to transform into is impossible... but get close enough, and the magic just sort of fills in the gaps to make sure it works close enough. I'd say the same goes here- you'd be able to create an authentic enough forgery to fool yourself (and by extension, anyone else who's not more of an expert than you are).
I'd almost suggest adding shifts for "authenticity"- ie, the difficulty for identifying the diamond as a forgery.
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Sure they do... for one thing- magic transformations should probably still have to pay for longevity (which can get ritually expensive fast). Diamonds eventually decay back to raw carbon- normally over the course a century or two- but if you rush the formation, degradation will probably be a quicker problem too.
As for needing heat and pressure... magic's about taking short-cuts... and it's also a lot about instinct and visualization. Any given zoologist will recognize a werewolf as being wrong, because holding a perfect image of a wolf's anatomy in one's head to transform into is impossible... but get close enough, and the magic just sort of fills in the gaps to make sure it works close enough. I'd say the same goes here- you'd be able to create an authentic enough forgery to fool yourself (and by extension, anyone else who's not more of an expert than you are).
I'd almost suggest adding shifts for "authenticity"- ie, the difficulty for identifying the diamond as a forgery.
OK, that kind of stuff I can get behind. If you're doing like a 30 complexity ritual to pull off what a diff 6 Resources roll could do then I think it's fine (but lower complexity if you want there to be a bunch of flaws that make it have a lower utility). It's the idea that you can pull it off with a complexity 6 ritual that I have a problem with.
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A simple rearranging of carbon atoms in a proper crystal matrix? Using what elemental magic? You realize we don't even know what an atom looks like, but can only hypothesize what they look like.
Well, I was thinking thaumaturgy but it could fit under either earth because they're both rocks or spirit because of the teleportation method. Remember, we do have precedent for taking something apart at the atomic level and putting it back together again with only Harry's skill in SF.
AS for knowing what carbon atoms look like, we do (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2008/09/09/graphene-images/). Granted it's not exactly a good picture but with magic the point isn't so much correctly knowing what a carbon atom looks like as much as it is believing you know what you're doing and that you should be doing it. A little time spent with a chemistry textbook can take care of the former; the latter is up to you.
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Sounds to me like you are trying to create Geo-Alchemy. Big Earth magics, mixed with trasmorgrative spells, to let shifts in form be permanent. With the addition of polish and cut to the jem, I would put this about as difficult as building a sparrow from scratch. Not impossible, but not a snap.
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AS for knowing what carbon atoms look like, we do (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2008/09/09/graphene-images/).
Looks like a waffle to me :)
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Sounds to me like you are trying to create Geo-Alchemy. Big Earth magics, mixed with trasmorgrative spells, to let shifts in form be permanent. With the addition of polish and cut to the jem, I would put this about as difficult as building a sparrow from scratch. Not impossible, but not a snap.
"Also, consider that the consequences and other aspects in those situations are often the result of the spell, but they aren't sustained by the spell. Attacks of that kind don't really have an intrinsic duration--they just happen, and they're done."
(YS266)
I think there's a good argument that it's not even transformative since it's still the exact same number and type of atoms; only their positioning is changed and carbon is just as happy being diamonds as coal. I don't think you'd need to allocate even one shift to duration.
Yeah, it'd definitely take more complexity to arrange them in a pretty fashion but that's not really necessary if you can just pay a jeweler to do it for you or tell them lop off enough to cover the cost and keep it.
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Looks like a waffle to me :)
Yeah, made me hungry.
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Go with the Value of a Diamond. Check out buying things and see what a Diamond costs. Then use that as your base difficulty for creating a Diamond with thaumaturgy. If you then want to create a really huge and really expensive diamond... well, cost will go up quick.
If you use the value relative to human resources, the value will change as supply and demand change.
So are you agreeing or disagreeing that it gets easier as the technological manufacturing base advances?
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If you use the value relative to human resources, the value will change as supply and demand change.
So are you agreeing or disagreeing that it gets easier as the technological manufacturing base advances?
I'd say it's as difficult as it needs to be to make the story go. Were not modeling reality anyway, just a story with a modicum of verisimilitude.
Also, did I see the Buzzard imply that teleportation spells were simple above?
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Also, did I see the Buzzard imply that teleportation spells were simple above?
Harry managed a short distance teleport potion in the first book, granted with the help of Bob for a significant lore boost. Which means he could pull off the same as a proper thaumaturgy spell. Also stands to reason that LoS and extremely short distance would be somewhat easier than non-LoS and a couple dozen yards. Exact amounts would be up to the GM. Simple, no, but doable at 8-10 base refresh.
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If you have thaumatergy, wouldn't it be a lot easier to just steal some?
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If you have thaumatergy, wouldn't it be a lot easier to just steal some?
It's pretty easy to steal them without thaumaturgy. Guns are almost certainly cheaper than the materials you'd need to produce diamonds via magic on any scale worth mentioning. Plus it'd be a lot more exciting. It just amused me to think about how best to do it.
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It's pretty easy to steal them without thaumaturgy. Guns are almost certainly cheaper than the materials you'd need to produce diamonds via magic on any scale worth mentioning. Plus it'd be a lot more exciting. It just amused me to think about how best to do it.
With thaumatergy, you wouldn't have to hold anyone up to steal stuff.
You could just pop in and grab it after hours or summon it if you had the means to do so. Getting shavings from a diamond cutting facility would be the easiest way.
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As someone pointed out in another thread - this system is not based on physical principles, but story instead - the in-game Difficulty should really be based on what the player expects the diamond to do.
If all they are looking for is something good enough to cut glass, it might be nothing more than an Average difficulty.
If they want a one-shot Resources boost - the difficulty should represent that amount.
I would however add in a supplemental Craftsmanship (gem-cutting) action if you want a properly faceted stone.
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As someone pointed out in another thread - this system is not based on physical principles, but story instead - the in-game Difficulty should really be based on what the player expects the diamond to do.
If all they are looking for is something good enough to cut glass, it might be nothing more than an Average difficulty.
If they want a one-shot Resources boost - the difficulty should represent that amount.
I would however add in a supplemental Craftsmanship (gem-cutting) action if you want a properly faceted stone.
I would argue that how this is done completely varies from gm to gm and table to table. I prefer to GM with as much "common sense" as possible. I lay the groundwork of the story and the players flesh it out, but I try to interject as much "realism" as possible. When I do so, there seems to be much higher player satisfaction.
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I would argue that how this is done completely varies from gm to gm and table to table. I prefer to GM with as much "common sense" as possible. I lay the groundwork of the story and the players flesh it out, but I try to interject as much "realism" as possible. When I do so, there seems to be much higher player satisfaction.
Of course! :D
But for that sort of thing you have to balance realistic simulation of physics with what's most relevant to the game.
If you want to intimidate a bunch of mobsters by melting a jukebox with a fire evocation, should you evaluate the amount of energy needed to do the job or should you just figure it as a maneuver to place an aspect on the scene?
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The problem with applying realism to magic in this setting is that magic in the setting explicitly follows something nearly indistinguishable from narrative law.
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I'd be willing to accept permanence of a transformation for free in some cases... but I'd still push for the player to pay extra shifts for "authenticity"... again, making yourself into a wolf that's close enough to a wolf to fool a biologist is a lot harder than it seems... same goes for diamonds no matter how regular the patterns are... after all, not all diamonds are created equal. The carbon structure in diamonds has never been found to be perfect, and the flaws that occur naturally and in artificially made ones are easy to spot with even a skilled optical inspection- the artificial ones stand out, and are considered less valuable (because they're less rare, and the value of rare minerals is almost entirely a result of their rarity).
Make one too regular, too unflawed, and you're likely to get a lot of unwanted attention.
Make it flawed the wrong way, and it loses value, or worse, mimics a variety of conflict or blood diamonds.
Litmus test: one could also use a ritual like this to turn a bunch of lard and canvas into a forgery of a lost van gogh oil painting. If the only defining factor in the shift-cost of the spell is the value of the item, then someone like harry, with no knowledge of art or forgery, and little eye for detail, could conceivably whip up a perfect forgery (genuinely perfect) in no time flat from a picture in a book he got from the library.
This, I'd say, is inappropriate when the item itself bears a great deal of complexity he has no right to mimic so easily (textures, pigments available in the era, aging and cracking of the paint, etc, that he'd have no way of knowing, much less getting right).
If you make the authenticity factor (DC of determining whether the item is genuine) something the player gets for free during a successful transmutation, then you make imitating a van gogh as easy as imitating a child's fingerpainting.
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Also... minor point to mention. Currently, they can test the mineral content, what ever was in the soil the diamond was born in, and identify WHERE it came from. What would it show, in this case? If you used carbon from coal in Minnesota, would it read as a Minnesota diamond? Or would it come to match what ever sample you used as a template.
Ooooooooo, would you not get to reduce shifts, if you used the magical property of similarity and used a sample to set the "Pattern" and just matched the material to that? So, steal one diamond, and use it as a "Template" to work Geo-Alchemy and make more.
Also, make enough and DuBose and the others in the diamond kartel will come gunning for you. Same goes for the emerald kartel in Brazil, and the Ruby kartel in india. They frown upon competition. Not to mention, you can kill the price, by removing the rarity.
Personally, I plan to get rich by harvesting unreachable platinum under the oceans. Thats just a question of Detection and transportation. No one "owns" it and you CANT glut the market, Platinum is ALWAYS needed, to get the Fuel Cell research going.
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I'd be willing to accept permanence of a transformation for free in some cases... but I'd still push for the player to pay extra shifts for "authenticity"... again, making yourself into a wolf that's close enough to a wolf to fool a biologist is a lot harder than it seems... same goes for diamonds no matter how regular the patterns are... after all, not all diamonds are created equal. The carbon structure in diamonds has never been found to be perfect, and the flaws that occur naturally and in artificially made ones are easy to spot with even a skilled optical inspection- the artificial ones stand out, and are considered less valuable (because they're less rare, and the value of rare minerals is almost entirely a result of their rarity).
Make one too regular, too unflawed, and you're likely to get a lot of unwanted attention.
Make it flawed the wrong way, and it loses value, or worse, mimics a variety of conflict or blood diamonds.
Excellent point.
Also... minor point to mention. Currently, they can test the mineral content, what ever was in the soil the diamond was born in, and identify WHERE it came from. What would it show, in this case? If you used carbon from coal in Minnesota, would it read as a Minnesota diamond? Or would it come to match what ever sample you used as a template.
Ooooooooo, would you not get to reduce shifts, if you used the magical property of similarity and used a sample to set the "Pattern" and just matched the material to that? So, steal one diamond, and use it as a "Template" to work Geo-Alchemy and make more.
Good thinking and good idea with the template. A lot like using a seed diamond when growing them in a lab.
Also, make enough and DuBose and the others in the diamond kartel will come gunning for you. Same goes for the emerald kartel in Brazil, and the Ruby kartel in india. They frown upon competition. Not to mention, you can kill the price, by removing the rarity.
Personally, I plan to get rich by harvesting unreachable platinum under the oceans. Thats just a question of Detection and transportation. No one "owns" it and you CANT glut the market, Platinum is ALWAYS needed, to get the Fuel Cell research going.
Could make for an interesting story arc, yeah? If you're running a pre-TC campaign it's almost certain to be the rampires running the cartels out of Brazil. No idea for african diamonds. Indian Rubies could even land you a pissy rakshasa or contracted hitters for the Jade Court.
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The problem with applying realism to magic in this setting is that magic in the setting explicitly follows something nearly indistinguishable from narrative law.
This is a great point.
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The problem with applying realism to magic in this setting is that magic in the setting explicitly follows something nearly indistinguishable from narrative law.
Depends a lot your audience then. Me, I dig on bits where Jim goes more in depth on the "how" of magic. Makes it feel less like a Deus Ex Machina and draws me further into the story. I like to carry that over to the games I run or play too. Admittedly, sometimes up to the point where it looks like it might soon start boring people but hey, you can't hit the target dead center every time.