[EN Pub] The Fantastic Science -- 24-page teaser!

[Kelleris]

Mr. Kelsey- you have a fan.

Thanks again! And yeah, if they were OGL I'd've been tempted to include ethergaunts in the technologist demographics charts... Never really liked them as wizards, especially since their much-vaunted technology was pathetic next to their innate spellcasting abilities.

Curses! And you need customers so we can make some of the other device ideas we've had since you shipped off the final draft of this thing...remember the Nanitic Discombobulator Matt? What about Teacup's Persistent Annoyances?

I'm trying to keep the number of discombobulators down, actually.

So, anyway, now we're waiting for the PoD to be available, and for any reviews that will be forthcoming. I hope the reviewers enjoy the book as much as you and Frostmane, DMH. Kinda wish someone would at least vote in the ENGS star-counter thingamabob, so I could get some sense of the critical reception.

And where did Alzrius run off to? He had time to dash off a review for INFINITE, and Fantastic Science is only five times as long...

 

[DMH]

Okay, first strke my comment about too few constructs. I finally got through chapter 4 and I have to say that the only device I dislike is the Balance- I don't see science causing a quest spell.

How many items do the technologists have that the savant doesn't?

How can these items be enchanted if magic makes them fail to function?

To expand upon my first campaign idea, there are a couple more products I want to bring in- Chaositech and ST Cooley's Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects D'Art. The latter has the concept of material magic (ensorcerling-magic effects that is inherent in different materials) that can not be dispelled (and in this case is immune to antimagic fields). So the giants have two sets of workers that are building up the stockpile- sorcerers who are ensorcerers and technologists. The little people are of course freaking and are developing several counterstrategies- steamtech (Steam and Steel), better mechamancy, attempts at better magic and, those nations under attack are truely desperate and are looking at chaositech (which defeats fantasitic science antimagic effects while warping their populace).

 

[DemonWolfZero]

EDIT: Sorry, accidentally hijacked Errol's account. - Kelleris

 

[Kelleris]

Okay, first strke my comment about too few constructs. I finally got through chapter 4 and I have to say that the only device I dislike is the Balance- I don't see science causing a quest spell.

Re the Balance of Synchronicity: Yeah, Ryan had the same comment. I just liked the idea of an artifact that exploited some kind of crazy, super-mathematical, non-linear causation, and that was what I came up with. Still, one miss out of more than 230 is good odds.

How many items do the technologists have that the savant doesn't?

Not many, only 2 or 3. I originally recopied the master chart and was going to go through and cut out all the stuff that became unacceptably broken when useable at will, but that turned out to be hardly any devices. Now the full secondary chart for the Savant is almost as much a quirk of layout and a matter of convenience than anything else - it lets you just print that if you're planning to give out the Savant as a handout to your players instead of the Technologist, for instance.

How can these items be enchanted if magic makes them fail to function?

Oh, they can be enchanted just like anything else - it's just that the enchantment is automatically suppressed whenever the device is actually activated. You can't use both, and the Technologist's link with any devices he or she has mastered is more than enough to simply disable any permanent magical enhancement (unless a technologist device somehow became an artifact or something, I suppose; that would complicate matters considerably).

To expand upon my first campaign idea, there are a couple more products I want to bring in- Chaositech and ST Cooley's Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects D'Art. The latter has the concept of material magic (ensorcerling-magic effects that is inherent in different materials) that can not be dispelled (and in this case is immune to antimagic fields). So the giants have two sets of workers that are building up the stockpile- sorcerers who are ensorcerers and technologists. The little people are of course freaking and are developing several counterstrategies- steamtech (Steam and Steel), better mechamancy, attempts at better magic and, those nations under attack are truely desperate and are looking at chaositech (which defeats fantasitic science antimagic effects while warping their populace).

Sounds interesting! You're really taking the fantasy science theme and running with it. My only thought is that you might consider picking two or three of those and emphasizing them over the rest, do clarify matters a bit for the players amidst all those competing magical and quasi-magical traditions. My picks would be traditional magic, chaositech, and fantastic science, but you could arguably go with any two or three of the set.

 

[DMH]

In my zeal to obtain it, I missed that there is no POD option at rpgnow- is there going to be?

 

[Kelleris]

Yes. I've been trying to get Hellhound (M. Jason Parent, the guy in charge of ENP) to upload it for several days now, with no success so far. Hopefully he'll see our posts and do so.

Did you find the material in the first chapter helpful in designing this campaign?

And don't forget not to show your players the book - half the fun of introducing a new spellcasting tradition is that they probably aren't at all familiar with it, and get to learn the hard way.

EDIT: You didn't accidentally buy too many pdf copies, did you? Your post makes it sound as though you might have.

 

[DMH]

No- I just have one. If I did buy a second, I would have given it to a friend.

Did you find the material in the first chapter helpful in designing this campaign?

It is the reason I though of the setting. It probably won't be a campaign (like the 50 or so other settings I have posted to the net over the last year), but that doesn't really matter. If someone else take the setting seed and uses it- that is what is important to me.

 

[DMH]

The example of the familiar that has a combat mode of a knife spider- how much does the enhancement cost?

Edit- As I was skimming it again, I started to wonder why outsiders and elementals are powered by magic. Undead and magical constructs obviously are and I would place many magical beasts, most dragons, most aberrations and all oozes as abnormalities, but not elementals (they are the building blocks of the multiverse) or some outsiders (just living on a particular plane doesn't mean you require magic).

 

[Kelleris]

The example of the familiar that has a combat mode of a knife spider - how much does the enhancement cost?

That construct is simply both a knife spider and a technologist's familiar, and can be activated as either using the usual activation time and costs for each version. I just added the weight of one to the weight of the other and called them the same construct. Call it a very minor house rule if you like, but I do recommend you allow players to build devices with combined functionality like that one, so they don't have to, say, wear three pairs of goggles at once. As long as each device is considered a different device for activation purposes, it isn't unbalancing.

As I was skimming it again, I started to wonder why outsiders and elementals are powered by magic. Undead and magical constructs obviously are and I would place many magical beasts, most dragons, most aberrations and all oozes as abnormalities, but not elementals (they are the building blocks of the multiverse) or some outsiders (just living on a particular plane doesn't mean you require magic).

There's a set of three overlapping reasons that led to that decision - a flavor reason, a logical reason, and a pragmatic reason. Given these considerations, I felt those four fit best, though (as you note) a case could be made for others.

The pragmatic reason is that I wanted those abilities to affect a certain broad subset of creatures in an easily rule-defined way, so I needed about three or four creature types to pick on. Those four creature types struck me as the most "magicy" of the available ones, so that's what I went with. If you don't use creature types as the determiner of what can and can't be affected, it gets messy, and if you throw in too many different creature types those abilities get to be too powerful.

The logical reason is that elementals and outsiders are both constructed of the materials of their respective planes. Given that the outer planes are essentially the physical expressions of their respective alignments (which is why they cannot be raised - they just *are* their soul), and that elementals are likewise made of pure planar stuff without even a token nod to plausible biology (neither creature type needs to eat or sleep, elementals don't even breathe), they seemed likely candidates for being "made of magic" to a sufficient degree that they could be blasted by antimagic.

The flavor reason is that elementals, outsiders, constructs, and undead are the creature types that mages and clerics can bind into service, summon, create, and most easily control. So they're the creature types most closely associated with fantastic science's opposing spellcasting traditions. It seemed appropriate to make them the most hated-on of the creature types for technologists, since any wizard who tried to stamp out technology is going to be employing a creature of one of those four types, most of the time.

All that said, I never split that group of "abnormalities" up into any subgroup, so you can easily redefine what counts as an abnormality in your game and those abilities will not be significantly affected - essentially, you'd just change some reminder text to apply to the new creature types instead.

And, for what it's worth, I was planning to have a feat in the book that allowed the antimagic abilities to apply to additional creature types before it got cut out for space reasons.

 

[DMH]

I guess we view magic differently. I don't think of the 4 (or 18 by the old MOP) elementals as magical. They are spirits, yes, but it is not magic in the sense of spellcasting that allows them to form bodies of their element. I can't explain it well because it is a gut thing. As for outsiders, you are correct- for the wheel. I was thinking of outsiders like Cook's Beyond Countless Doorways. Not that it makes any difference- every DM tinkers and I doubt that I will be doing the most wild things with FS by far.

Call it a very minor house rule if you like, but I do recommend you allow players to build devices with combined functionality like that one, so they don't have to, say, wear three pairs of goggles at once. As long as each device is considered a different device for activation purposes, it isn't unbalancing.

Actually, that has some very interesting implications. I will have to fiddle with it (and adapt it to some bones of steel). Thanks!