Topic: It's magic, not physics

[Marc R]

Yeah, and it's easier to teleport 100' than telekines 5lbs.

For telekinesis I allow speed to be swapped for weight.  Allowing larger objects to be moved very slowly.

Makes sense actually, the telekinetic thing is a good house rule. . .sort of you apply 5# of force. . .takes a long time to move something big.

That said there's a limit to how much you can apply scientific logic to magic, at least in terms of "It would take more energy to teleport a 200 pound man 100 feet than pull a 5 pound object 100 feet over 1000 seconds."

Perhaps not in the magic logic. . .magic is almost intentionally contra scientific.

If you want to slap an energy budget on anything, creating a few pounds of something runs up against E=MC² in an ugly manner. . .like "Ahh, create meal for one man equals fireball that makes a smoking crater the size of kansas."

In the end, likely the answer boils back not to mystery of magic, but game balance relating to dropping heavy things on people, or flinging things very fast at people vs moving yourself or the willing around. . .but "mysteries of internal magic logic" sounds so much more poetic. 

I do like the trading V for M logic of telekinesis, it doesn't even get overly dangerous.

Have you ever had anyone try firing light things like needles at high speeds at people?

[smug]

The advantage of leveraging physics to some extent is that it makes it a lot easier to have a consistent world (much like our own) to which additional elements get added. Personally, when stuff is "created" I am more likely to say that it's been swiped from somewhere else that doesn't matter (some extraplanar place, or grabbed in tiny quantities from lots of different places, etc). The main issue we avoid, though, also comes from Special Relativity, which is the inability to travel faster than the speed of light. In many cases it's irrelevant, but if we did want to have actually simultaneous transfer, we'd have a problem (but then, it's a problem we're used to ignoring in Science Fiction gaming, too).

[Marc R]

I like to leverage physics after I have the way in which the magic breaks the rules straight in my head. . .more like "OK then I do this, and that <magic happens> OK now that thing is really hot, what would happen now?"

I don't try to poke too hard at <magic happens>.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

The advantage of leveraging physics to some extent is that it makes it a lot easier to have a consistent world (much like our own) to which additional elements get added. Personally, when stuff is "created" I am more likely to say that it's been swiped from somewhere else that doesn't matter (some extraplanar place, or grabbed in tiny quantities from lots of different places, etc).

I like the idea of magic, and even psionics, drawing energy from extradimensional spaces. It's an elegant solution.

The main issue we avoid, though, also comes from Special Relativity, which is the inability to travel faster than the speed of light. In many cases it's irrelevant, but if we did want to have actually simultaneous transfer, we'd have a problem (but then, it's a problem we're used to ignoring in Science Fiction gaming, too).

Objects which are teleported don't move faster than the speed of light. They don't really "move" at all. They disappear in one place and reappear in another without having traversed the space between.

[smug]

Objects which are teleported don't move faster than the speed of light. They don't really "move" at all. They disappear in one place and reappear in another without having traversed the space between.

From the Special Relativity point of view, that wouldn't matter. maybe SR is wrong, of course (doesn't seem likely) but as SR works would be true whether I'm looking at the thing or not, when it moves/translocates, the prohibition on constant speed movement faster than light would also apply to non-uniform translation/translocation/whatever. However, as I said, most SF also requires a way around this, particularly the sort that we play in rpg games.

[David Johansen]

Well, I have a fixed notion in my head of what's harder and easier.  I recently used it to design a magic system by using cascading hiearchy lists to set the spells power levels rather than purchasing game effects for points.

But yeah, as anyone who played the earlier versions of GURPS with Telekinesis knows you have to put some limits on the direct relationship between speed and mass or it makes railguns look like pea shooters.  Personally I'd think you'd lose control as you lose sight of the object but at short ranges it still makes a pack of needles lethal.

I've heard that the original reason for the low power of Telekinesis in Spell Law was game breaking abuse.

[Marc R]

It's an F spell, so you could use it to pick someone up and lift them way way up, then drop them. . .or drop really big things on people. Sort of like why long door is a U. . .I wouldn't let someone grab just your head and lift it either. (The "pull your eyeball out" use was one I'd seen a GM shoot down for similar reasons.)