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Message: <blockquote data-quote="index" data-source="post: 1648420" data-attributes="member: 21195">GURPS does thisChaldfont wrote:> Has anyone seen a spell that reveals the exact time of day and/or> date? How about a spell that gives your precise location (latitude &> longitude or the D&D equivalent)?In the real world, navigation drove the development of trulyaccurate timepieces.Latitude is easy to check every night unless the stars areobscured.  If your calendar is accurate, you can also checkit at local noon.Longitude was always more difficult until accurate clockswere developed.  Then you could compare local time (based onsunrise and sunset, or based on noon) with time back homewhere you set the clock.> I thought I'd make cheap magic items replicating a watch and a GPS> unit for Eberron. It sounds like something that would fit right in.Don't make it too easy.  Remember that GPS depends onexternal 'beacons' - the GPS satellites.  Before GPS,navigation was usually based on various different radiobeacons scattered in various places around the globe.  LORANis still used as a GPS backup in critical systems such asairplane navigation.  Inertial navigation was and still isused as a backup, but it's not really accurate enough forone-shot-one-kill artillery.  Before all of these was deadreckoning, star readings for latitude, and clocks forlongitude.In GURPS, there's a spell to tell the time.  I very quicklywondered if that was 'local' time or time at a known point,and decided that there were two different versions of thespell, and that between the two, longitude was easy tomeasure.Assuming that you measure local noon accurately, a clockthat is one minute off will give you a longitude error offour degrees.  At Earth's equator, that's less than 300miles, I think.Another option, that more closely resembles LORAN, is tocast several new fifth level spells at known locations toset up beacons.  (Make them permanent.)  Then, anyone whovisits one of these beacons can later cast a 0-level spellto tell which direction the beacon is in.  Cast the 0-levelspell twice to narrow your location down to two choices, orthree times to narrow it down precisely.  Since theaccuracy is unlikely to be near perfect, learn as manybeacons as you can, and back up your navigation with asextant and a good clock.> If I had to create the spells myself, I think I'd make the "clock"> spell a 0 level divination. But the "GPS" spell might have to be> higher level. With a precise map, you would never get lost. This> sounds like 1st or 2nd level divination magic to me (as it would> essentially be something like a +5 bonus to Survival checks to take 10> and beat a DC 15).I assume you mean that with a precise map and a GPS spell you'd neverget lost?  In the US Army, I was always painfully surprised by howeasily other soldiers could get lost during land navigation training.(Good map to compare to the terrain features around you and a magneticcompass, and supposedly you've measured off how many steps you take totravel 100 meters.)  I never got lost, of course.I'm not sure why most D&D world don't have good maps.  In 3e edition,you could, on a clear day, look down from several miles high withClairvoyance and draw an accurate map.  With the 3.5e nerfing ofClairvoyance, this is no longer possible, but you can still Levitatevery high up and draw your map that way.Most DMs still allow Scrying to be used to look from aspecific location rather than forcing you to pick a targetcreature even though that's been officially nerfed, sothat's still an option for map making.> This leads me to another idea. How about a magical map that shows your> exact location?Makes things too easy for the PCs.  And for NPCs withsimilar magitech.  Are you thinking of the Marauder's Mapin Harry Potter?  Wonderful, and I had much fun with such amap in a GURPS game long before Harry Potter, but you needto be prepared to have such an item become an extremelyimportant part of your game.NPCs can and will kill each other and your PCs for such amap.  Even if it merely shows your exact location, with onlyten miles or so of zooming out, without showing any othercreatures, it would still be worth fighting over.off-topic :One thing that disappointed me about Eberron was themechanics for the Dragon Mark Houses.  Considering the vastutility of even low-level spells, I think a better way tohandle it would have been to let Dragon Marked peopledevelop 1st level in a spellcasting class very easily, withinitial spells depending on which House.  I'm verydisappointed that they chose a new (feat-based) mechanicinstead of using a pre-existing mechanic.(Above I've already shown how useful 0-level spells can befor a large number of people with a 9th level ally orruler.)--index</blockquote>

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