My player is breaking my world [long]

[JRRNeiklot]

For some excellent theoretical ideas on miniturization, I suggest reading "Fantastic Voyage 2" by Isaac Asimov.

That said, regardless of wether it works in practice, I would kill to have a player put that much work into something!

My players backgrounds are usually things like: "I'm a dwarf. I kill things." And they never come up with anything creative, except maybe a new way to abuse the rules.

:-(

 

[Tsyr]

Actualy, elves in my world have done the shrink/enlarge building trick for a while now... not for really complicated things, but look at it this way... a single elven wizard with a bit of talent with a chisel can "sculpt" the entire outer wall of a castle, for example, in the course of a couple days, or pillars, arches... doors carved out of wood... etc etc. Elves IMC use it because there aren't many elves, period... the race is not very prolific...

 

[Aaron L]

I thought Enlarge and Reduce maxed out at 50%.

 

[reapersaurus]

Using the Reduce for mural purposes and art is fine, but the military application angle is weak.

The dropping-the-shrunken-item was worked out way back, and it should work fine.
Magic IS devastating, but really - i guarantee that humans would have come up with that tactic WAY before the ELVES would in any world.

 

[bardolph]

I have to say that if your player is writing lengthy dissertations in character to NPC's within your game world, this is VERY GOOD, and you should encourage your player to continue. His contributions will only add to the richness and depth of your campaign.

If you simply speak as the DM and say "no, this won't work because..." you are cheating yourself out of some potentially great roleplaying.

One thing you can do (if you're up to it), is to play the role of some of his superiors, who may be more traditionalist. They, being conservative, obviously will disagree with some of these "radical" notions.

Take some of the posts in this thread, and print them out as "counter-argument essays" written by some of the older scholars of this wizards' guild. Rather than just saying "no" as the DM, speak through the NPC's, and keep the discussion going in character.

Of course, eventually your PC will want to "take to the field" with some of his theories, and test out how well they really work. And, if you're an alert DM, you might make it work kinda like "real"
science: some theories will work, others won't, and still others will have entirely unexpected results.

This can be a great source of adventure ideas. Even better, since your PC is providing half of the work! Maybe one of his "shrinking" experiments goes sour, and a whole mountain disappears! Or maybe it opens up a trans-planar rift, which lets in a pack of Githyanki, or whatever...

Try not to put the kabosh on ALL his ideas. It's fair, if he's putting great effort into guiding the future of the campaign world, to let him have SOME effect. Maybe he DOES manage to invent super-warships, and the nation goes to war!

Wouldn't that be fun?

 

[Alcamtar]

i guarantee that humans would have come up with that tactic WAY before the ELVES would in any world.

Why? I don't see elves as mentally inferior to humans. In fact, I see them as far superior (given the same intelligence score) since they have much longer lives in which to learn and synthesize ideas. Most innovation is built on previous work, and typically involves applying several fields of knowledge to a new application. How many different fields of science go into building an airplane or a microprocessor? It requires years of training just to master a single field, much less dozens. Elves are ideally suited to training in multiple fields.

A lot of arguments here have relied on science: crystallization of metals and so forth. One thing to keep in mind here is that this is fantasy and applying physics to it is a dangerous rathole. Sure you can use physics to kill this application, but once you've set the precedent you open the door to using physics to REALLY abuse the system. Saying "no, because of X" implies that it's okay as long as you can find a way around X. Whatever standard you use to defeat this will be the standard the player uses to try again.

I would allow that cast iron is rather brittle for building ships, and that you'll need some bracing to keep it from collapsing, but I don't think I'd press it further.

Some have cited cost and lack of wizards. The whole point of the original report was "train wizards to do this" not hire wizards for money. It costs nothing for a wizard to do this himself.

Also, I thought I read something in there about guns and modern manufacturing? This already sounds like a near-renaissance level setting. Some people have said that you can't do fine detail work at such small size, and that defects will be magnified. That is true to a degree, but OTOH don't underestimate persistence. Look at the miniaturization and precision we are able to achieve in reality! Given that elves are possibly the worlds finest craftsmen, and given the motivation to succeed and restore their race to prominence, I dont' see why they wouldn't practice until they developed the techniques to make this work.

Ultimately, trying to stop this specific spell combo is going to be futile, I think. How many other ways are they to achieve similar effects, and how many other spells and items are waiting to be exploited? Look what you can do with the Create Wondrous Item feat! If you don't want this sort of thing in the campaign, talk to the player or just say the elves aren't interested. I think that invoking physics will only cause problems; if you make it a "human (elf) engineering" problem, you can keep control.

Mike

 

[bardolph]

Also, remember that, as a DM, you are under no compulsion to reveal ahead of time whether or not a magic experiment will work.

Just let him try it.

THEN, you can decide on how well it works.

Maybe one of these magical ships mysteriously sinks.

You don't have to tell your PC why. Let him investigate and figure it out. He may learn that there was some error in his calculations, or that he made assumptions that didn't work out. Maybe he'll never know...

You don't have to give him all the answers up front...

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Another thing that shouldn't be overlooked: The durations of the spells.

Shrink Item is a great spell--at least for the transportation angle that he wants to use. That is, after all, what the spell is designed to do.

Reduce, on the other hand lasts 1 minute per level. (And is a non-fixed/personal range spell and therefore can't be made persistant). That's hardly enough time to do what the player wants to do. I would expect that, even if a magically reduced item doesn't count as a magical item (which shrink item can't effect), when the reduce spell wore off five minutes later, the shrink item spell would end as well (since the item is now too large to be effected by it).

Reduce is also far too short term to allow for large scale mold making. Fabricate exists for large scale fabrication of items.

Similarly, shrink item/reduce and carving is one way to quickly assemble fortresses, but a higher level wizard would do it even more quickly with Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, Dig, and Move Earth. (All of which are instantaneous duration now and not susceptable to dispelling).

If I were you, I would decide which things work and don't work and then have the elders respond in character, picking one or two of his workable ideas and saying that they will consider them for a field trial (of 100 years or so if you want to go along with the "elves take a century for anything" approach).

 

[Macbrea]

A letter in return:

Gentle sir,

Your letter on the matters of magic have been recieved by the council at this time. We are going to take into consideration every matter in which you have sent us. We will require a bit of time to research these matters and will have to get back to you. As we are unsure, when such matters can be gotten to by the council, we will send you or your children a letter at the time of completion. Please, make sure to inform any member of your immediate family as to the nature of the project in case of your demise.

As of this date, we have discovered a few flaws in your processes. The use of "Shrink" and "Reduce" seems to produce no discernable difference due to the duplication of magic theory, proposed by the Arch-magi Liandrial in 621 S.E. Because these theories were proven correct. We will not do further research into this topic.

The concept of metal ships does interest this council at this time and will be experiemented with at first oppurtunity. The project will be known as the "<insert last character name> Project" and 200 elven sailors will be assigned to the first experimental vessel. If you have interest in being at its opening ceremony, please send word back with the herald.


Thank you for your time,

Elyan Liandril,
High Elven council

 

[Artoomis]

Aside from the fact that you most likely cannot work with miniaturized materials at all, no one in tme middle ages time frame would believe a metal boat would float. That thought would most likely be met by ridicule until proved.

The logic, quite simple, would be:

Wood floats, ergo a wood boat will float.

Metal sinks, ergo a metal boat will sink. Unless, of course, some form of magic was used to make the metal float like wood.

The Shrink Item spell seems to imply that an item cannot be worked while shrunken. I'd say doing anything to the item would ruin it - or, for more fun, cause the spell to stop working, making the object enlarge itself back to regular size immediately!

But thanks for asking.

The best way to handle this is a letter back to the character from his "superiors." This is fantastic role-playing, encourage it!!

I like the suggestion of possibly sending him the spell to conduct his own research. Thus the player gets some reward for his imaginative thinking.

And, by the way, using shrink item to create bombs is good thinking - done properly, this most certainly will work.