Nasuverse You're trapped in FRO!

Drachasor · Mar 20, 2014

nick012000 said:

You're misinterpreting that myth, making a lot of assumptions, and using that to justify that Hercules must have liked how he was treated. When you make such leaps to say someone must like being used as property, that's really what might make someone accuse you of "borderline sociopathic behavior/posts/views."

The fact is there are lots of reasons within these stories for Hercules behavior that don't involve him sexually fetishizing anything. Indeed, there's nothing indicating anything like that is going on. Regarding Omphale, Hercules asked the Oracle of Delphi how to make amends for an inadvertent murder. The result was supposed to be humiliating and as a story is believed to have been the basis for comedies -- not sexual fetishizing. In principle this isn't much different from comedies of today where you might have Female on Male abuse -- that doesn't make such abuse ok outside of the comedic elements of the story nor does it mean the abusee is "asking for it" or "wants it." And like such stories today, often there's a romantic element to the story as well. Again, this doesn't mean the male character likes to be abused. As for Illya, she's clearly a lost and lonely little girl. It is well within the character of Hercules to forgive her transgressions even if he hates being in a fury -- and there's every reason to think he'd hate being kept in a constant state of fury, as it alludes to when Hera conspired to make him kill his own family. But Hercules is perhaps one of the best of Greek Heroes, so he's remarkably understanding about the follies of others (generally speaking).

Solaris said:

My only intention was to emphasize that there are a lot of ethical implications that a lot of SAO players wouldn't think about. I think there's story potential in that.

I think there are ethical ways to go about it (much like there are ethical and unethical ways to have and care for children). So I'm not against it by any means.

Also, I think this stuff is worth thinking about in general.

Edit: Though similarly there might be interesting stories in looking at people who "mistreat" familiars that look like people or animals but have no brains/will/intelligence at all. It would look bad on the surface even if such familiars are truly just things.

I didn't mean to cause a derailment though.

Mokofooja · Mar 20, 2014

The hilarity of all this is that there are parallels between ethics/morality of familiars and the abortion and euthanasia controversies in the real world. Especially the part about a familiar that doesn't want to serve it's master, but the master having to feed the familiar prana in order to keep it alive. It's eerily similar.

Maybe someone sufficiently caring, trained and well-meaning will offer counselling sessions for estranged familiars and masters. Like a last resort solution before performing the ultimate sanction.

Prince Charon · Mar 21, 2014

Drachasor said:

Solaris said:

My only intention was to emphasize that there are a lot of ethical implications that a lot of SAO players wouldn't think about. I think there's story potential in that.

I think there are ethical ways to go about it (much like there are ethical and unethical ways to have and care for children). So I'm not against it by any means.

Also, I think this stuff is worth thinking about in general.

Edit: Though similarly there might be interesting stories in looking at people who "mistreat" familiars that look like people or animals but have no brains/will/intelligence at all. It would look bad on the surface even if such familiars are truly just things.

I didn't mean to cause a derailment though.

Pretty much the same, with perhaps more emphasis on 'didn't want to cause a derailment'.

So, how many people are thinking about doing SIs based on the 'you' that's been posted in this thread?

Fellgrave · Mar 21, 2014

I for one. I'm going to wait until I'm done this semester of college though.

nick012000 · Mar 21, 2014

Prince Charon said:

*raises hand*

I'd want Daniel's okay before I actually started writing, though.

Spectrum · Mar 22, 2014

Somehow missed this thread the first go-around, caught it when daniel linked it in the outline. So!

Bounce between Front Line and Mid Line. I'm a completionist but I do like pushing content. I suspect I would lag slightly behind the front line due to finishing up content on the previous floor, but not by much most of the time. Probably dabble in crafting but only insofar as it supports my [Magecraft] and personal combat capability. Effort-wise, I'd probably judge it more efficient given opportunity costs to just pick up most of what I want from the market outside of weird esoterica that only I would want (and then there's still custom orders from that maybe).

[Magecraft] wise...I think at the beginning I would be just a basic classical elements user trying to go deeper into it (ex: blasts of air->blades of air->control air in target's lungs->turn into air???) but once system fidelity started going up, I might try to convert over to [Self Modification], maybe leverage biology+water magic or something like that. Change physical attributes, start with basic cosmetic stuff (can apply this to other players for a fee? permanent hair/eye color, larger...ahem...attributes?), then bigger/more complex things, then stuff like gender? And also at the same time start doing things to increase the body's capabilities above human peak on a full time basis. Unique traits or elements? If I stayed with the former, probably nothing, so maybe I'd be trying to get over the hump between stages 2/3/4. If I went for the latter like I suspect I might...element of [Flow]? (Well, my RL element is probably [Inertia] but let's just ignore that -_-)

Equipment wise, medium armor and unarmed, especially if the latter path. Probably try to utilize higher strength than expected for grappling and pinning attacks on appropriate man-sized targets?

Probably starts getting a little disturbing later on, unintentionally? Casually changes physical aspects as whims take, so only consistent way of keeping ID is distinctive equipment? Well, might settle on a favored 'form' more like.

Solaris · Mar 22, 2014

Spectrum said:

Somehow missed this thread the first go-around, caught it when daniel linked it in the outline. So!

Bounce between Front Line and Mid Line. I'm a completionist but I do like pushing content. I suspect I would lag slightly behind the front line due to finishing up content on the previous floor, but not by much most of the time. Probably dabble in crafting but only insofar as it supports my [Magecraft] and personal combat capability. Effort-wise, I'd probably judge it more efficient given opportunity costs to just pick up most of what I want from the market outside of weird esoterica that only I would want (and then there's still custom orders from that maybe).

[Magecraft] wise...I think at the beginning I would be just a basic classical elements user trying to go deeper into it (ex: blasts of air->blades of air->control air in target's lungs->turn into air???) but once system fidelity started going up, I might try to convert over to [Self Modification], maybe leverage biology+water magic or something like that. Change physical attributes, start with basic cosmetic stuff (can apply this to other players for a fee? permanent hair/eye color, larger...ahem...attributes?), then bigger/more complex things, then stuff like gender? And also at the same time start doing things to increase the body's capabilities above human peak on a full time basis. Unique traits or elements? If I stayed with the former, probably nothing, so maybe I'd be trying to get over the hump between stages 2/3/4. If I went for the latter like I suspect I might...element of [Flow]? (Well, my RL element is probably [Inertia] but let's just ignore that -_-)

Equipment wise, medium armor and unarmed, especially if the latter path. Probably try to utilize higher strength than expected for grappling and pinning attacks on appropriate man-sized targets?

Probably starts getting a little disturbing later on, unintentionally? Casually changes physical aspects as whims take, so only consistent way of keeping ID is distinctive equipment? Well, might settle on a favored 'form' more like.

Heh, no hang ups about the chance you might die for real?

Drachasor · Mar 22, 2014

It might be interesting to randomly determine elements and then figure out how you'd adapt. It's one thing to pick stuff you'd like to have, but it's another thing to consider how'd you deal with whatever hand you got dealt. Kirito, for instance, would never have chosen to go with just Ether...but that's what he has to deal with.

Hmm, though from the Type-Moon Wiki we do have:

So maybe the game will eventually have a way to change affinity.

Maybe something like this would serve....
(I'll refer to rolling multiple 6-sided dice below as Xd6, where X is the number of 6-siders to roll, add up the result)
Roll 2d6...
2: [Protagonist] Element
3: Four Elements
4: Three Elements
5: Two Elements
6-8: One element
9: Two Elements
10: Three Elements
11: Four Elements
12: Average One

On a 3-12, roll 1d6
1-3: Western Elements
4-6: Eastern Elements

On a 3-4 or 10-11 roll 1d6 to determine the Element(s) you don't have (this is quicker than rolling for what you do have)
If you rolled a 5-9 roll for the elements you do have.
1: Fire
2: Water
3: Earth
4: Wind or Wood
5: Ether or Metal
6: Ignore this result and roll again
Reroll if you get the same result twice.

Od/Circuit Capacity (probably easiest to determine Prana generation than number of circuits and their quality)
This is a bit tricky to figure out...going by the Type-Moon wiki the average Magus can either have 25-40 units of Prana in Od. But Ciel has 4000 and Rin has 500 (though can output up to 1000 with effort). That's a pretty ridiculous range.
So, roll 7d6 and add up the result.
For each 6 you rolled, roll another 1d6 and add that to the result.

The average is about 30, but it could be a lot higher for some (but getting to 100+ would be very unlikely).
Getting 70+ is about as likely as getting no circuits, which is about a 1 in 28,000 chance.

So, using this system, I got...
Two elements (9)
Eastern Elements (6)
Fire (1) and Wood (4)

For Circuits I rolled: 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6 => 23
Rolling again for the two 6's: 2, 3 => so 28 total (no more 6's so I don't roll anymore)
That's a bit less than Shirou (30)

So if I had Eastern Fire and Wood with Circuits granting 28 Od.
That's kind of nice, as in the Eastern Elemental system Wood feed Fire, so I'd be able to do some good Fire stuff by putting them together.

However, it probably isn't as good for Golems or battle familiars, generally speaking. But if I could make some Wood Familiars that could light themselves on Fire then that could be cool.
Shikigami would probably also be worth learning. Perhaps little flying spies that double as bombs to help out others -- something I'd enjoy and coincidentally Fire is associated with spreading happiness. Or perhaps Shikigami that turn into something like a Fire Elemental for a short time.

Looking up what Fire and Wood are associated with, it seems they cover Aggression and Anger (Fire's main emotion is happiness, it seems, Wood has Anger). So I think that could manage a Bounded Field similar to what the Emiya have that reacts to people with Ill-Intent to those inside. Kind of interesting.

Wood also has associations with Windy Climate (Fire with Summer).

Hmm, Mystic Code would be [Emergency Cranes] that respond to Tension/Anger/Discouragement (but not fear, sadly, that's Water) by releasing a Flare up into the scare. And ones that could do that on command. Basically something for other players to use to call for help if things go bad. They'd be Origami Cranes and explode into something that looked vaguely Pheonix-like. Hmm, similarly [Target Dummy] Shikigami Mystic Codes that could be used to distract an enemy while the user runs away.

Which makes me think that working towards making something like a Pheonix would be good, but probably not possible. I think you'd have to be an Eastern Average One (Fire->Earth(Ash)->Metal->Water->Wood->Fire for rebirth), but with prepared Wood Supply I might be able to manage something like that in a Combat Familiar or something.

Worst thing is that with Fire and Wood I feel like I might require constant reagents. Very annoying.

On the other hand, maybe I could turn some large Trees into guardian Treants for towns -- potentially with the ability to throw one of their branches at someone and have it burst into a fireball or the like. And it might be possible to figure out how to get Prana from plants -- though I can't imagine plants have that much. But a [Prana Grove] might be able to supply a Treant or two with the Prana they need so I don't have to do it personally. Naturally they'd be kind of stuck to the area they are in.

It would be cool to figure out how to get plants to grow faster...but I feel that would involve Water which I wouldn't have. On the other hand, using Wood should be able to help bolster and direct Fire since it seems to have a minor Wind theme to it.

I still think I'd mostly focus on using my Magecraft to keep people alive and help them out and prevent death as much as possible. Hmm, Eastern Fire seems to cover "spirit" and Wood covers "mind", "mana", and "health" among other things, so maybe I could manage some soul-stuff (though I wouldn't know about the messiness of soul transfers). Also seems like Fire and Wood are a pretty good Eastern combo for healing (Fire has cleansing properties). So Familiar Scouts that can sacrifice themselves to heal someone would be another way to help others.

Hmm. If the Physics engine in the game covered Electromagnetism, then I'd try to make [Green Power] using Prana from plants to power [Turbines] to generate [Electricity]. But that would take a backseat to other endeavors. However, getting Prana from Plants would be something I'd really want to do since my average Prana would be a limiting factor in helping people.

Hardcore Heathen · Mar 22, 2014

Prince Charon said:

10 steps ahead of you.

Drakasor said:

The problem with your Circuit Generator is that there's no possibility of 0 circuits (which is the overwhelming majority of people) or circuits below 7, which is also not unheard of. You also seem to be stuck on using conventional die for your number generators (can't we roll from 0-6? and d5 is a known concept; you don't need to say "ignore 6s" and roll a d6).

Everything else sounds cool and well thought out.

Drachasor · Mar 22, 2014

Hardcore Heathen said:

It wasn't meant to determine the number of circuits. Rather only how much prana you could hold with your circuits. Determine circuits and then figuring out the quality of them would be an overly involved process I think. And it doesn't really matter what your circuits look like per se, only the net result of your total circuits.

I admit I'm not 100% satisfied with what I wrote there, but I didn't have a lot of info to go on beyond what an average Magus looks like and then some exceptional cases.

Spectrum · Mar 22, 2014

Solaris said:

Spectrum said:

Heh, no hang ups about the chance you might die for real?

There's a non-zero probability I would have died early like one of the other MMO veterans who thought they knew what they were doing. I doubt I would have been playing this solo, though, and I've been playing with my friends for over a decade, so hopefully that would mitigate that.

I'm sure I would have concerns, but even at the minimum eventually the shame of "great, we're getting left behind by teenagers, this is embarrassing" would kick in and then I'd get sucked into the world. Actually, my concerns would express themselves with a focus on safety margin and always having escape abilities and contingencies ready...

Solaris · Mar 22, 2014

Drachasor said:

Alright, Using the chart from Drachasor. I apparently have a Rare/Protagonist element with a prana rating of 31 units...

Lol, thats kind of ridiculous. I wonder what Element I get.

nick012000 · Mar 23, 2014

Drachasor said:

That's not how Magic Circuits work. They don't hold usually hold prana, your soul does. Instead, how much prana you store is determined by how much you use, your natural odic prana recharge rate, and how much prana you suck in from the environment, with no real maximum. For instance, when she was hooked up to the Holy Grail, Sakura wound up filling her prana reserves with something like a quadrillion units of prana. Instead, the main limitation that Magi face is *throughput*, determined by your Magic Circuits; Shirou's maximum throughput is about 270 units, Rin's is about a thousand, et cetera.

Drachasor · Mar 26, 2014

nick012000 said:

That's not how Magic Circuits work. They don't hold usually hold prana, your soul does. Instead, how much prana you store is determined by how much you use, your natural odic prana recharge rate, and how much prana you suck in from the environment, with no real maximum. For instance, when she was hooked up to the Holy Grail, Sakura wound up filling her prana reserves with something like a quadrillion units of prana. Instead, the main limitation that Magi face is *throughput*, determined by your Magic Circuits; Shirou's maximum throughput is about 270 units, Rin's is about a thousand, et cetera.

Well, that's what the Type-Moon wiki says, so I went with that.

daniel_gudman · Apr 6, 2014

chargen

So I was going to explain why I didn't come up with a random character generator already, but while I was thinking about it and doodling with a pad and some dice statistics, I kinda... made a chargen process. So, here you go!

1) Circuits

Total prana capacity is the product of the number of Circuits and their capacity, so you'll be rolling for both of them. For simplicity's sake, I've converged them to using the same methodology.

1.1) Circuit Count
Roll 6d6.
On any natural six, roll another die.
(If that's also six, roll another die; repeat without limit.)

The sum of all dice is the number of Circuits your character has.

1.2) Circuit Quality
Roll 5d6.
On any natural six, roll another die.
(If that's also six, roll another die; repeat without limit.)

The sum of all dice is how many units of Prana each Circuit can hold.

1.3) Total Circuit Capacity

Take the product of the Count and Quality for the total units of prana you can store.

1.4) Optional Rules

1.4.1) If a Player so chooses, they can increase/decrease either Count or Quality so long as their total Circuit Capacity remains the same. That is, you can decrease your natural Circuit Count and increase the Quality proportionally (or vice versa).

1.4.2) For Circuit Quantity, if at least four dice are natural ones, save vs. Luck. Fail that save and you have 0 natural Circuits. However, for all such characters, diplomacy checks to join the Sixth Ranger's magecraft Inheritance automatically succeed. Calling her, "Argo-senpai" sets her starting Social Link to 1.

2) Elements

2.1 How many Elements?
Roll 2d6.
Sum:

2. Average One (Western)
3. 4 Elements (Western)
4. 3 Elements (Western)
5. 2 Elements (Western)
6. 1 Element (Western)
7. Rare Element (One)
8. 1 Element (Eastern)
9. 2 Elements (Eastern)
10. 3 Elements (Eastern)
11. 4 Elements (Eastern)
12. Average One (Eastern)

2.2) Which Elements?
Roll 1d6, or roll 1d5, if you have a d10 or something.

Fire
Earth
Water
Wind / Wood
Ether / Metal
Reroll

For 1 Element: roll for which you have.
For 2 Elements: Roll twice; re-roll one if they're the same. (This is the easiest way to handle it).
For 3 Elements: Roll twice, but for the two elements you don't have.
For 4 Elements: Roll once for the one you don't have.

"Rare Element" can be completely made up by the player, or generated as per:
2.3) Optional Rule: Rare
Roll 1d6.

Western-like
Western-like
Eastern-like
Eastern-like
Holy or Demon (Player's Choice)
Lightning

For an "Element-like", roll on the appropriate table for Element above; use that as a starting point and diverge to something unique.

For example:
For a roll of Western-like Element, then single element of Ether; that could become "Imaginary Numbers".

3) Example Character
Circult Count
6d6 => {2,3,3,5,6,6}
Two sixes, roll additional 2d6 => {2,5}
2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 6 + 6 = 32 Circuits

Circuit Quality
5d6 => {2,3,4,5,6}
Additional die => 2
2 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 22 Prana/Circuit

Total Prana Capacity
32 * 22 = 704 Prana Units

Element
2d6 => 2 + 2 = 4
Three Western Elements
Roll for two excluded:
6 5 , 1 => Fire, Ether
Elements of Earth, Water, Wind

4) Design Backstory
Just my thought process for why it's this way, buried in a spoiler tag. Also I'll walk through the math I was doing in my head while I was thinking about it.

Okay, so first off, if it's a table-top RPG-like chargen system, then it should be based on rolling a bunch of dice manually, because rolling dice is fun. Also I want to avoid any non-dice operations, like adding/subtracting to the results, because that's just not elegant. That will inform the discussion.

Circuits:
What we know from the Wikia:
1) 20 Circuits is "average."
2) Shirou has 27 Circuits, but can handle "barely" 10 units of Prana with them.
3) Rin has 40 Circuits (plus 30 extra each?), and a total Capacity of 1,000 units of Prana.

All right.
Taking 20 as our mean, let's assume a Normal Distribution. "0 Circuits" are quite rare, so we'll make that 4 standard deviations from mean; that's a standev of 5.

But that puts Rin at four standevs above average, and Shirou at better than one standev above average; that doesn't really fit.

So that means we need a skewed distribution, since we've got the zero lower bound constraining the left side, but we need to tail at farther on the right, huh?

Skewness with dice... ah, roll another bonus dice on a max result. That'll add right skew, and it's relatively simple. It will taper off, but "infinity" is still theoretically possible.

Let's stick with d6s because people tend to have a sack of those, so you can roll a bunch of 'em at once.

Lessee... 20 / 3.5 => approximate from the times-tables: 3*6 = 18 and 4*5 = 20; The mean of 1d6 is 3.5, so we probably want between 5 and 6 dice. 17.5 is the mean for 5d6; 6d6 has a mean of 21. Six is closer, go with that.

So 6d6 with bonus rolls on 6s for number of Circuits.

Quality:
I don't really get what that "plus 30 each" comment for Rin's circuits are. I'm gonna think about that:

Well, let's assume there's two sets of 30 Circuits.
40 + 2 * 30 = 100
1,000 / 100 = 10
Hmm, that gives the same Prana Capacity as Shirou's terrible Circuits. That's probably not the right way to Parse it.

Let's ignore them.
1,000 / 40 = 100 / 4 = 25
So Rin's Circuits have 25 Prana/Circuit as an upper limit, better than double what Shirou is capable of.

What if those "30 each" are individually bonus circuits?
In that case:
40 * n + 30 * x = 1,000
One equation, two unknowns: impossible!
Well I doubt that x there is more than 10, so we'll use that to estimate the lower bound.
(1,000 - 300) / 400 = 70 / 4 = less than 20... 10 * 4 = 40; 30 / 4 => 28 / 4 = 7
10 + 7 = 17 < Circuit Capacity < 20

Well, in either case, that puts Rin at about twice Shirou's "pretty bad" capacity. I don't remember the game making a point of her Circuits being high-quality the way Nasu did with the Color Sisters, so we'll assume that her capacity of 20 units/circuit is about average. If she was above average that pushes the "average" down toward's Shirou's "pretty bad" proportionally, which was a thing that got mentioned, so we'll go with assuming Rin's per Circuit prana capacity is about average.

The mean of 5d6 is in that range but 6d6 isn't; I high-balled it a little with Circuit Count so we'll go with 5d6 here.

Elements:
I've already gone through how little information we have. So this is basically, just totally making stuff up based on what feels like "fun dice", rather than anything I can really canonically support.

I started with Rare Elements as the outlier for a result of 2 or 12 on 2d6, but then I had an odd number of results (3 - 11) to split between East/West magecraft. So instead I stuck Rare Elements in the middle position, and then marched away from it in either direction for either number of Elements. I did that so that I didn't have to add a "flip a coin for East/West" or whatever, as well as streamlining in the "how many elements" thing by making progressively more elements progressively more rare.

So that was just totally, going for elegance rather than anything actually really canonical.

Mokofooja · Apr 6, 2014

How much would a unit of prana equate to?

Say an apprentice takes on unit of prana to turn on a magic light-emitting device, comparable to your average light-bulb, florescent light, or LED lighting. Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, or complexity.

Using that as a baseline, how long would that device stay on for on just one unit? 1 hour? 24 hours? Stretching it to an improbable 7 days worth of light?

Purely speculation, of course, but I've been pondering about it for spell-based reasons...

Solaris · Apr 6, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

Hmm, I think you have a problem with your elements chart. How exactly are you supposed to get an average one western using 2d6 if Average One Western is on a 1? Anyway. I guess I'll assume it's supposed to be 2 going up to 12.

Alrighty. And my Character Is...

Edit:
Solaris
Circult Count
6,3,3,4,1,5,6,6,6,4 = 44

Circuit Quality
6,3,3,2,6,5,2 = 27 Prana/Circuit

Total Prana Capacity
44 * 27 = 1188 Prana Units

Element
2d6 => 6 +6 = 12
Five Eastern Elements
Elements of Fire, Earth, Water, Wood, Metal

Though, since I'm not really sure what these elements mean. I'm kind of stumped on what I'd be able to do Magecraft wise because Eastern uses all kinds of symbolism in their elements.
And holy shit 1188 prana capacity? Wth? When am I ever going to even need that much prana anyway?

Ryune · Apr 6, 2014

Alright, this has been niggling in the back of my head for a while now.

Name: Rune
Element: water specializing in transfer of power
Origin: reproduction(as in making more of stuff I already have you perverts)

I am rather crappy at magic in combat situations. I am, however, really good at cheating. Which is where my personal mystic code comes in. I asked myself "If you can't assemble a spell in combat then why bother doing it in combat?" and my spell loader was born. The spell loader is in effect a complete rip off of the materia system. It takes in and stores a spell and then when prana is run through it with a particular intent it forcefully reshapes that prana into a copy of the stored spell. Granted, the user has minimal control and flexibility with the spells but that is balanced out with the consideration that it can instant cast a spell equivalent to a 10 count aria should one be stored and the prana available.

My favorite spells are grenade type. By taking the fairly lackluster projection spell and using it as a physical vehicle to transport a separate spell you get fairly decent grenades and my favorite among them is what I nicknamed a casaba howitzer. You can guess from the name how they function and they make indirect attacks amazingly easy. The fact that I can produce and hold onto them until I have a number of them doesn't hurt.

Mokofooja · Apr 7, 2014

Solaris said:

Here's a freebie for you Solaris, one that I've been pondering for a little while after being inspired by the Ilya vs Zolgen fight. I might even call it [Solar Beam] just to match your name!

Let's take your average light spell and say that 1 unit of prana will cause that light spell to stay on for 1 hour. For now, let's also assume that creating light is an elementary cantrip in magecraft (plausible) and that it can be done universally regardless of your element (also plausible).

Let's compare that light spell to a 100 watt light bulb (and ignore inefficiency factors by assuming the inefficiency stays the same as we...change...the end goal/state of the spell). So 1 unit of prana is equivalent to 100 watt-hours.

Now, take that light spell and focus it in a single direction/vector from the source, rather than radiating it everywhere. As a simple modification to the spell, plausibly, it should have no effect on the difficulty of casting. Keep the area small and tight - around 1 cm squared.

Optionally, add a filter to the light spell so that it only emits a certain wavelength of light. A little more difficult in terms of spell complexity, but there are potential efficiency returns here of unknown value.

Finally, pump up the output. At minimum, aim to reach a comparable output to welding lasers, which operate at one mega-watt (million watts) per cm squared range, and each beam emits either as a short one centi-second burst or as an extended three-plus second beam.

Assuming a one-second beam, each one mega-watt emission would be 1/3600 of an hour, and therefore consume 277 + 7/9 watt-hours of energy. That works out to 2 + 7/9 units of prana, rounding up to 3 units of prana per second.

If we double our output emission, or double our total surface area of emission, we double our prana consumption per second. If we switch to short mini-bursts like centi-second burst emission (not always useful, but there as an option), our prana consumption drops to fractions of a prana per emission.

Controlling that burn rate is gonna be terrible the longer the emission is, and aiming it in the correct direction will also take some effort and practice, but both should be doable for even apprentices given enough time.

Using Solaris' 1188 prana capacity, then, we can calculate that he has enough prana to blast this one mega-watt/cm squared laser photon particle weapon for more than 396 seconds continuously from full capacity (using the rounded 3 units/second consumption rate). That works out to more than six and a half minutes of FIRIN MAH LAZER. Even if the inefficiency factors were much greater than originally assumed, it should be well within Solaris' capacity to spend three minutes in a battle just blasting photons at his opponent.

And if the surrounding mana/solaris' inner od is sufficient, and this difficulty level doesn't count as magic beyond Solaris' means (so no health damage from overdoing it), Solaris could then refill his circuits, AND DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

Now, having said all that, the damage from such a spell wouldn't be much unless it was ramped up an order of a magnitude, but consider the following:

- "Ramping up" the spell is feasible and practical. Even making it a 10 mega-watt spell or a 2 mega-watt 5 cm squared spell would only reduce your "beam time" to about 40 seconds - more than enough for a one-versus-one combat situation. The only difficulty is control, spell finesse, and making sure this isn't magic beyond your means; but if you can cast Cure, a complex spell involving recreating human tissue to stopper wounds and heal injuries, then you should have more than enough skill to throw photons at opponents - you just need to watch your power.

- The laser photon particle projectile is light-speed, so no projectile physics would be applied to it like arrows or fireballs (no recoil, leading the target, accounting for gravity drop, accounting for crosswinds, etc.)

- Aiming the spell relies entirely on your mind; if you can see it and think it, you'll hit. Can you say Critical Hit, Every Time, All the Time? Can you cackle evilly when you see that your target has eyes to aim for (and blind)?

- Beyond some possible (and plausible) popping from the atmosphere getting superheated into plasma by your beam, there are no tell-tale reports of it being cast via sound or sight (if you can see the spell, that means you just got hit by it in the eye). It's an ambush-grade weapon against anyone without magic-detecting senses.

- Depnding on the original light spell that was modified, all you might need is a focus source for the emission, like a gem, rune, or other amplifying mystic code. If you use a piece of equipment you are wearing or wielding as the focus source, you can cast the spell without occupying free hands.

Other possible shenanigans applications as players continue to progress in power and skill:

~Wind element users can use wind to form (an) atmospheric "lens(es)" by which they can further focus or manipulate [Solar Beam] a la Hikari to Yami no Mai

~Giving up the control and flexibility of casting the spell to engrave a hard-coded version on a mystic code creates a fairly simple [Magic Casting Weapon]. Whether it draws on internal prana or the user's prana lies with the creator.

~Set intruder traps in your base(s) by turning your magic lanterns into sensors AND sentry lasers particle cannons!

~Did Liz say House Fire rules have been implemented?

daniel_gudman · Apr 7, 2014

Mokofooja said:

Answering this question is borderline impossible, becuase magic is ridiculous.

Projection:
Let's say 10 units of prana can create something massing 1 kilogram.

e = mc^2

m = 1 kg
c = 300,000,000 m/s

10 units/prana = 1 kg * (300,000,000 m/s)^2

1 unit/prana = 9E16 J
1 J = 2.8E-8 kWh

A normal lightbulb is 75 Watts

So one unit of prana would power a bulb for:
9E16 J * 2.8E-8 kWh/J / 75 W = 3.33E11 h

At 8,766 hours/year

A unit of prana could power a lightbulb for:
38,000,000 years
(yes 38 million years, that's not a typo)

Reinforcement

A human is good for about 250 Watts of power, or 1/4 hP for USC units. That's steady, not peak.

Let's say 10 units of prana could Reinforce someone to 10 times that much, that is, 10 unit of prana is enough to give someone E-rank Strength as a Heroic Spirit.

That means 1 unit of prana = 250 Watts

First off, that's not even the same units! We just got a value for power whereas I got value for energy coming from projection!

Okay, let's say that the Reinforcement is good for 8 hours, as an approximation.

1 unit of prana = 2 kWh
1 unit of prana = 7.2 MJ

Compared to the value from Projection, that's approximately a billion times different.

Ah, that wasn't hyperbole; 2.5E11 kWh vs 2 kWh...

Actually it's understatement, it's more like, a hundred billion times different.

Beamus

Let's assume that Rin's beamu from the end of HF powered with 1,000 units puts out about as much power as MIRACL, that laser the US Navy developed in the 80s to slice Soviet missiles in half.

1,000 units of prana = 1 MW * 1 min = 60 MJ
1 unit of prana = 60 kJ

Conclusion
I can't even circle in on what an appropriate order of magnitude for how much energy a "unit of prana" represents. I haven't even tried to find something like, specific entropy.

Well, basically, I'm going for a gut feel of "what matches story-telling powerlevels", rather than sizing goddam pump motors or whatever.

I feel like "what kind of energy" is highly dependent on "which element is the prana"; but more than anything else, my advice is, balance it with your gut feelings, because I don't think it's possible with concrete measurement.

paintedspear · Apr 7, 2014

Name: Antaeus (changed with name tag)
Element: earth
Origin: sympathy
Circuit Count: 17
Circuit Quality: 28
units of prana: 428
armour: light leather armour
weapon: heavy iron claws
I would focus on my earth magic just the basic stuff like stone missiles and earth walls at the beginning.
but when the origin quests come along and I found out I had the sympathy origin I would look at traveling though earth mediums like rock and soil and to turn my self in to a living statue.
so as to enhance me self this is also how I would heal myself by covering the wound in a earth medium and then sympathizing it to the surrounding flesh but the end goal I would want from my magecraft would be high level petrification spells/mystic eyes I would not care as long as I got petrification.
my best spell which would take a long ass amount of time to create would where I sympathise with the surrounding area of about 10 meters all round me allowing me to total control the surrounding earth such as shape and consistency(sand, rock).
at will the spell would be call the seven pillars of creation taken from gods creation of all thing in seven days the pillars would ring the area of my spell each bearing what god created on the given day (1st pillar would have a sunburst representing light)
and even later on I would look at sympathising with object that have a connection to earth but not me directly such as (tree, metal, land based animals) to varying degrees of success with trees being the most successful that I could control almost as well a rock and metal not as much due to the small amount off earth that is left in the metal after refining and animal being almost nothing but a few senses from them
and when I found out that magecraft was real I would be so happy till I found out how many things there are that want to kill/eat/turn/chop/hurt me their are I would then run and hide in a rock

lask · Apr 7, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

Um, you'll never get Western Average One working off that list.

Hardcore Heathen · Apr 7, 2014

lask said:

I think all of the numbers need to be increased by one - you'll notice that there's no result for a 12, either.

Valint · Apr 7, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

That means that having a rare element is actually more common than having, say, a single Western element.

Under this distribution (and assuming you meant to shift the numbers down by one), if we assume there's ~8000 people in the game, you would have:
* 1333 with rare elements
* 2222 with a single element (half Western/half Eastern)
* 1777 with a two-element affinity
* 2666 with a three/four/five-element affinity

That just seems a bit off to me, with single element affinities being a minority. You'd have, for example, the same number of players with the single elemental affinity of Fire as there are Average Ones.

I don't really have a handle on what the actual elemental distribution is in canon. My assumption was that having a single elemental affinity would be overwhelmingly the default, with two elements being outside the norm but still somewhat common, and anything beyond that being worthy of note. I'm not sure I have any basis for that assumption, however.

Here's a suggestion for an alternate system:

Roll a d6. On a 1-5, you have a single elemental affinity (1: fire, 2: earth, 3: water, 4: wind/wood, 5: ether/metal); roll another d6 to see if your single element is Western (even) or Eastern (odd).

On a 6 on the first roll, you're one of those rare individuals with a multiple or unusual affinity. Roll another d6. On a 1-3, you have two affinities; on a 4-5, you have three affinities. Go back and roll d6's to see what those affinities are (ignoring 6's, this time).

On a 6 on the second roll, you've moved beyond unusual to downright noteworthy. Roll another d6. On a 1-3, you have four affinities; on a 4-5, you're an Average One; on a 6, you have a Rare Element.

Assuming 8000 players, that would give us a breakdown of about:
* One element: 6666
* Two elements: 666
* Three elements: 444
* Four elements: 111
* Average One: 74
* Rare Elements: 37

Then again, my assumption might not have any real basis. Asuna has, IIRC, four elemental affinities, and the response was basically "Oh, that's nice; shame you're missing one" not "Wow, you really lucked out!"

Prince Charon · Apr 9, 2014

Rolling d20 Dice Bag, because Anydice produced impossible results.

Circuit Count:

6d6+0
3,6,5,1,5,3+0 = 23

1d6+0
4+0 = 4

OK, if I get a 10 next, I'm going to be very disturbed.

Circuit Quality:

5d6+0
4,3,6,6,3+0 = 22

1d6+0
6+0 = 6

1d6+0
2+0 = 2

1d6+0
1+0 = 1

Prince Charon

Circuit Count: 27
Circuit Quality: 31
Total Circuit Capacity: 837

Well, I'm clearly going to be a [Frontliner].

Due to reading comments about the [Element Generating System], I'm going to skip that until daniel_gudman says whether he's changing that, and if so, to what. I don't think Valint's system matches what we see in the fic (as he/she points out), but I do agree that it's odd that [Rare Elements] aren't - unless that's supposed to be the case, seeing as how any one [Rare Element] is going to be less common than any thing else.

Nasuverse You're trapped in FRO!

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