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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2951155" data-attributes="member: 2067">MP isn't, of course, the ONLY way to fuel technology. Other ways (steam power, man power, clockwork, chemical power, electricity, whatever) still work. However, the fantastic technologies (airships, teleporters, laser cannons) are the things the PC's are going to have the most exposure to, and those tend to use MP.I'll go over both flavor and mechanics, but since you asked about flavor first, I'll hit that. The major idea is that the old ancient empires used magical technology -- MagiTek. This fits with the idea that the old ancient imperial forces were great magicians -- dwarves trucked with dark forces, and lufenish are renowned for being sages and spellcasters. Even moogles are deeply in touch with both magic and technology (and, in their case, it doesn't involve being seperate from the natural world). The PC's, in most of their careers, will be making and using MagiTek. One could say that it would be impractical for a Mechanist to make an internal combustion engine -- why bother mining for oil and refining it into gasoline with dangerous explosions when he can take the same basic principle of "spinning an axle" and use MagiTech to accomplish the same thing? Now, because the common folk don't generally have access to a lot of this stuff, other technologies are pursued, too. So you get a lot of "background tech": steam power, electricity, etc. This is stuff PC's generally don't get involved in (though, of course, mechanists know about and can tinker with). Thus, you can get situations like in FF6, where magic was forgotten (no MagiTek), but science and technology moved forward (mundane tech). When the Empire re-discovered magic and used it to power walkers and war machines, they were capable of things normal technology wasn't -- elemental beams, TekMissiles, opening rifts in time and space, etc. You can also get situations like in most FF's, where a once-great ancient kingdom had powers that even the present day can't realize (even if the present-day is as advanced enough to have TV's and live feed and people going into space!). So, flavor-wise, MP works like a very efficient, easily available, constant fuel source. Like someone could use a windmill to tap brain radiation. It's the source that was tapped for ancient, powerful, fantastic technologies, and it's the source that Mechanists use to power most of their stuff. It's not the source that everyone uses, but it's by far the easiest and most efficient source.Some tech also uses HP to fuel it, leading to things like Mako energy (Shinra using the planet's HP to fuel technology), which is given a pretty necromantic cast.You get some very interesting in-character conflicts about Mechanists who carry around things like Magicite (dead gods?) and Materia (crystalized souls?) to power their things, and, of course, those wonderfully wicked empires and corporations that misuse them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Mechanically, you get that ever-present ability and you give people stuff to spend it on. First, there's the idea that everyone in FFZ gains some MP at some point, so it's a universal power source -- nearly every person has some to give. Knights can take feats to let them cast spells, frex, so there's no reason they can't hop in a suit of MagiTek armor and ride around town, either. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> You also get the whole "regular attacks aren't meaningless" effect. In this way, once you get a powerful technological item, you still have a reason to drop it and draw your sword, an interesting choice about whether or not you can afford to unleash it.</blockquote>

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