[virgil]

I've been wondering about the level of efficiency mages bring to the table in Shadowrun.

So, looking at it, Shape Material can produce an decent amount of power. The amount of material is based on volume which is measured in cubic meters, which is an incredible amount of mass. Presuming you choose a roughly fluid material, you're moving many tons of the stuff at the low end. Using the same math as that used for Yoda, you're going to freaking smoke him. Force 5 Shape (Water), only one net hit, and you've got yourself 523 thousand kilograms moving at .3m/s; which is going to get you roughly 1.7MW of power. A Force 10 version of this spell, still with only one net hit, will get you 41MW. Get some finely ground granite, Shape Stone/Sand, cast it at Force 10, and get 3 net hits; and you've got yourself ~300MW.

So, a single decent mage or a spirit can probably match an efficient modern power plant; which as investments go, is quite good. We're not beating the Three Gorges Dam in power generation, as it's at 22GW (enough to power 18 thousand Deloreans), but I'm fairly certain the investment for that dam exceeds what is necessary to train a mage capable of casting the spell and permanently binding a Spirit of Man each year.

Next is in raw transportation, specifically the Movement power available to spirits. All the nerf in SR4A does is make it so the minimum speed increase on a 747 six-fold, making the change ultimately senseless, IMO. A single mage commanding an unbound spirit to use & sustain its Movement power on a number of vehicles equal to the number of services he got will allow for a decent number of international flights at a fraction of the fuel cost. Levitation through the first 10km of elevation at zero fuel will give HUGE advantages to the space industry. If you get a bound spirit to slap Movement on a cargo ship, things are looking good.

Direct military action is definitely a fool's errand. Nobody will/should risk as high value a target as a mage by placing them on the front lines, and spirits make poor scouts (is that a couch potato or a sniper in that building). Spirits, while tough, would be on a battlefield where armor-piercing weapons are the norm and soldiers will commonly have weapons that can take them out; making them better used for running around to maintain Guard on the actual military vehicles (open-ended services are good for that here).

What other logistical advantages does the wage mage get from the rules?

[Mantis]

Next is in raw transportation, specifically the Movement power available to spirits. All the nerf in SR4A does is make it so the minimum speed increase on a 747 six-fold, making the change ultimately senseless, IMO. A single mage commanding an unbound spirit to use & sustain its Movement power on a number of vehicles equal to the number of services he got will allow for a decent number of international flights at a fraction of the fuel cost. Levitation through the first 10km of elevation at zero fuel will give HUGE advantages to the space industry. If you get a bound spirit to slap Movement on a cargo ship, things are looking good.

Neither of these things (movement or levitate) work quite that way. Levitate has a threshold of 1 per 200 kg. So if you get 6 hits you can lift 1200kg. Force 10 and if you get 10 hits (yeah, right) and you can lift 2000kg. No where near the weight of a 747 which has a max take off weight of 442,000kg, never mind what a space craft weighs. This gives a threshold of 2210, which means that is also the force of spell you need and you would need 2211 hits just to move it.
For movement, you still need a very high force spirit to move either aircraft of space craft. Probably well beyond the scope of what a wage mage could summon, never mind bind. The odds are such a spirit will just eat the summoner if it doesn't outright kill him with the drain.
Example: the Fed-Boeing China Clipper from Unfriendly Skies (pg 18) is a body 40 vehicle, so to move it all with movement you need at least a spirit with a force of 20. A spirit with a force of 20 can only be called by a magician with a magic of at least 10. Not too many of those running around out there. And such a spirit will probably laugh at the magician when he tries to summon it. The binding will probably kill the magician as that would be a 20 P drain he would need to soak simply as a buying of hits, never mind the spirit using it's edge or anything else to stop the magician.
Freighters don't even use body to figure out how much damage they can take since they are so huge. So if it is next to impossible for anyone outside an IE or GD to call a spirit powerful enough to move an airliner, then it is beyond even considering to get one that could move a freighter.

As a thought exercise this is interesting but in these cases at least, it isn't probable that it would ever happen, outside an IE or a GD calling the spirit.

[emsquared]

Healing comes immediately to mind. A Mage who specialized in crafting and enchanting foci would do quite well for himself too.

[Falconer]

First things first... you're confusing 'joule' and 'watt'.    One is a measure of raw energy the other of rate of energy expenditure.   A combat turn is 3s... not 1s.   Tougher materials need to be broken down and shape much more slowly that liquid ones.


Secondly your physics instructor should give you an 'F'... as your math is way off...   1 liter of water is .1m X .1m X .1m == 1kg.    Increasing the linear dimension by 10... increases the volume by the cube so 1m3== 1m X 1m X 1m.  == 1000kg == 1 ton.

A force 5 spell results in ~5 tons of material...  which sounds like a lot more than it actually is... a 5m long 'trench' of water 1m deep (thigh deep) and 1m wide....   if you want to do a Moses impression parting the 'great stream' your buddies could wade across anyhow... great... if you're going to lift that water and move it somewhere... the rest of the water fills in the hole as you're spending complex actions to move the area of effect..  (note the spell 'shape' does not levitate.. so you're pushing water over the ground... big deal... here's a mop for you).


Others pointed out levitate has a +1 threshold per 200kg on it.   They also forgot to mention object resistance... you want to lift and move a big motorcycle... well just for arguments sake we'll say the large troll size bike is 700lb (~300 kg)...  that is OR5(highly processed technological item) + 2 (1 per 200kg of mass) == threshold 7.   And at least force 8 with 8 successes to produce enough effect to move the item slowly... otherwise you can only hold it up in position and not move it.   Force Anything * 0 net hits == no movement speed.


Movement power... someone already pointed out how body size limits that power... and for anything big you'll kill yourself doing the binding.

[virgil]

Next is in raw transportation, specifically the Movement power available to spirits. All the nerf in SR4A does is make it so the minimum speed increase on a 747 six-fold, making the change ultimately senseless, IMO. A single mage commanding an unbound spirit to use & sustain its Movement power on a number of vehicles equal to the number of services he got will allow for a decent number of international flights at a fraction of the fuel cost. Levitation through the first 10km of elevation at zero fuel will give HUGE advantages to the space industry. If you get a bound spirit to slap Movement on a cargo ship, things are looking good.

Neither of these things (movement or levitate) work quite that way. Levitate has a threshold of 1 per 200 kg. So if you get 6 hits you can lift 1200kg. Force 10 and if you get 10 hits (yeah, right) and you can lift 2000kg. No where near the weight of a 747, never mind a space craft. For movement, you still need a very high force spirit to move either aircraft of space craft. Probably beyond the scope of what a wage mage could summon, never mind bind. The odds are such a spirit will just eat the summoner if it doesn't outright kill him with the drain.
Example: the Fed-Boeing China Clipper from Unfriendly Skies (pg 18) is a body 40 vehicle, so to move it all with movement you need at least a spirit with a force of 20. A spirit with a force of 20 can only be called by a magician with a magic of at least 10. Not too many of those running around out there. And such a spirit will probably laugh at the magician when he tries to summon it. The binding will probably kill the magician as that would be a 20 P drain he would need to soak simply as a buying of hits, never mind the spirit using it's edge or anything else to stop the magician.

As a thought exercise this is interesting but in these cases at least, it isn't probable that it would ever happen, outside an IE or a GD calling the spirit.

Satellites don't need to be that big, and their fuel payload will be drastically reduced if they start at 10km elevation. Spacecraft being hit with Levitate would be the prospect of great spirits. Presuming something like that, a starting PC can summon a Force 12 spirit, which allows for vehicles tractor trailer size (with trailer); which is no slouch in the transportation industry and still allows for executive jets with as low as Force 7 spirits. Though, truly, that whole Body limitation nerf was a short-sighted change; it doesn't stop players' actions, and if anything ensures that they'll have an even bigger beast on their side when they get to their destination.

The power plant option remains, and is probably an even bigger deal than the transportation potential.

Falconer, work on your math and reading comprehension before you start insulting people. Shape Material is LOS(A), which means a Force 5 spell affects a 5m radius, which is 523 cubic meters. Also, I explicitly stated it to be .3m/s (and ground sand works like a fluid in a number of ways, though just rolling a ball has its own potential); and since 1 net hit is 1m per Combat Turn, my numbers are self-evident. I'll admit that I rounded down a bit to get .3 rather than .333 (ad infinitum). Lifting/moving water, causing the rest to fill in the hole is kind of the point of generating power, and I'm only theorizing you can't just set it to spin/rotate and let the sustaining focus handle it (or have a spirit handle it). Since the material is constantly moving, 'power' (J/s = W) is an appropriate term to use, and is the reason power plants have their output given in kilowatts & megawatts.

[virgil]

When it comes to object resistance and Levitate, it would likely be worth the reduced payload to have a wood (or other lightweight, low object resistance item) chassis to hold the more advanced tech item.

[Falconer]

You're correct... mea culpa/apologies.... for some reason I was thinking the spell said 1m3 per point of force in the description not the normal area designator...


But this still has other problems... it can only move/shape material within it's affected radius... it can not move things outside of this radius.  So you can't use the full volume of the spell.   You have to have 'free space' within your area of effect to move things around in.

[virgil]

But this still has other problems... it can only move/shape material within it's affected radius... it can not move things outside of this radius.  So you can't use the full volume of the spell.   You have to have 'free space' within your area of effect to move things around in.

If you take that sphere of water and move it within a greater body of water, it will displace its total volume both ahead and behind it, the overall disturbance can be tapped at essentially the same rate. You can also make a valid argument toward rotating it and letting the drag and inertia start moving the entire body of water surrounding it. Then there's the idea of taking a solid sphere and rolling it up a vertical incline (include treads or something if that really matters), and capture its potential energy.

A massive natural earth magnet rolling through a cage of coiled copper would be the most direct method I know for energy, of course, but I'm unsure of the object resistance in that instance.

[Falconer]

The spell doesn't work like that though... it only allows you to move and shape materials entirely within it's radius of effect.

If you cast it underwater... great you can create currents within that sphere of water... but you can't move the water into or out of that sphere.  There's nothing whatsoever you can do to 'shape' that water.   It's a solid sphere of water completely filling the area of effect.  What is there to 'shape'... the best you can do is move water fro move water around within the sphere creating currents... there's nothing you can do to shape it as there's no room to move materials to create a 'shape'.


You can move the AOE of the spell with a complex action... but that does not move the contents of the area with it it simply changes where you may apply your 'shape/move' abilities.   Another way of putting this is with shape earth... you can dig a trench by 'moving' a volume of dirt out of the ground and into a pile next to the trench (still within it's area of effect).   Then move the AOE to continue extending the trench.  (though i'd proably rule the ground has a structure rating limitng how fast this is done... if it didn't look at how hard it was for farmers to 'break ground' with a plow in the old days).

Similarly the spell must beat the OR of the materials in question as well.  So your example of 1 success only works for very basic natural materials like water.

[virgil]

The spell doesn't work like that though... it only allows you to move and shape materials entirely within it's radius of effect.

If you cast it underwater... great you can create currents within that sphere of water... but you can't move the water into or out of that sphere.  There's nothing whatsoever you can do to 'shape' that water.   It's a solid sphere of water completely filling the area of effect.  What is there to 'shape'... the best you can do is move water fro move water around within the sphere creating currents... there's nothing you can do to shape it as there's no room to move materials to create a 'shape'.

Currents are what you use to generate power, and a sphere of water rotating will transfer that energy into the surrounding medium due to drag. It still works if you directly stick high-strength propellers inside the rotating sphere; yes they displace some amount of water by being in the volume, but not by much. Using metal ground into a fine sand would allow for quite a bit of empty space and still get the effects suggested earlier because of the disparity in density, if it's really that much of a concern for you.

Please note that I stated 1 net hit, not total hits. Once you roll high enough to get the effects you want (potential for greater generation), you don't need to reroll for the spell's effect while it's sustained. So this is a low-end estimate of the power generated, as the mage could potentially just keep casting until he did well enough to maintain it. Because of the potential for such power, I think a corporation would be willing to shell out the money for a Manipulation Focus, Sustaining Focus, fetish, and high-end medical team to get their wage mage to cast the best he can.

[Falconer]

At which point I'll point out that there is a 'recharge' spell.

Rather than going to all this extra hassle... I simply walk up to the electric car/truck/plane...  and then beat it's OR and recharge it's pack.

Similarly,  you're assuming that 'normal' physics applies to the material within the sphere and under the effects of 'magic'.

Really this isn't anything new... I cast and anchor/quicken two spells which keep two rooms at two different temperatures then use that temperature differential to produce power.   Doesn't require a mage to stand there and control the sustained spell indefinitely.  (no different than the old joke that there can be no engineers and a hottest part of hell... because the engineers would tap the temperature difference and produce air conditioning).

[virgil]

I am not familiar with the recharge spell, and unless it can recharge some truly impressive batteries, the repeated usage and breaks required to recover from the drain are unlikely to match the power generation from a sustained spell.

And yes, I'm assuming 'normal' physics applies to a substance other than the movement created by the spell. To assume creates an enormous list of unintended consequences or breaks everyone's immersion by something so arbitrary as "it works in every application until the moment you directly, or at least my interpretation of directly, attempt to extract its use for producing electricity"; and that starts breaking down the whole point in having rules.

Did I somehow come off as sounding like I was special and the first person to ever think of using magic for modern society? Because that wasn't the goal at all. The goal was to consider just how much a mage can be contribute to modern society, just like any corporation would in the setting, as they are worth more than just being a ward-monkey.

Shape (material) is more likely to be had by a mage than both anchor and quicken metamagics; but that is a valid question, just how much is brought to the table by the temperature differential trick? Is a metal targeted with Ignite going to be at the temperature necessary for ignition, and if so, how much material can be affected by this spell?

[Blue_Lion]

Also I cant rember the accact name of the priciple but you can not harvest 100% of the avaible power moving across something like a turbine. It is a principle in wind power I think the theoritical max limit is around 60% in addtion part of that energy is lost in the form of heat. The speed needed to turn a turbine is set by the shape and size of the turbine. So while a modern megawatt turbine only requires 5 MPH of wind to run the need a moving baody in access of 150' across. So 12X3.3= 39.3' move/shape air lacks the abilty to turn a wind turbine. Not shure on the size of water turbines but I think they require large size and higher rate of speed. So I do not think it whould be feasble to use it to turn a turbine, for power generation. Now a spell to create and sustain fire might be able to produce steam power, or light produce solar power but that whould require lots of judement calls.

[emsquared]

Also I cant rember the accact name of the priciple but you can not harvest 100% of the avaible power moving across something like a turbine. It is a principle in wind power I think the theoritical max limit is around 60% in addtion part of that energy is lost in the form of heat.

What you're describing is just mechanical losses - friction, sound, heat, vibration (nevermind those are all different words for the same thing ;P).

[Mournclaw]

You could also take the elemental storm spell (fire) from WAR and sustain or quicken it. I'm sure that much of fire would produce a nice amount of power if used correctly.