42 KiB
[MK][Q][BST] Munchkin the Rule and the Hourglass
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2rc6ps/mkqbst_munchkin_the_rule_and_the_hourglass/
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Score: 8
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Created: 2015-01-04T22:11:04
Post:
The latest munchkin challenge: How would you abuse the Rule of Size / Eternal Hourglass combination from 2YE?
Rules of the challenge You're you, in the real world, with only the resources that you have (and the Rule + Hourglass, of course).
Basic points:
- Shrink Item (SI)
- Permanency
- The Rule uses Improved Shrink Item (ISI), an improved version of SI with command words that can be triggered by anyone / anything within 10 feet. It can also do an Improved Enlarge Item (IEI) which makes things grow instead of shrink.
- In order to use the Rule, (1) it must be being held by the user, (2) the Rule must touching the thing that is to be enchanted, (3) the person holding it must speak the appropriate command word at normal conversational level.
- If you ISI / IEI something but don't use the Hourglass then the magic lasts for 1,000 days or until you convert the object back to its original size and composition, whichever comes first. If you ISI / IEI something and then use the Hourglass on it, then you can shrink / grow / change the thing as often as you like.
- Size and/or composition changes take exactly one Planck time to occur.
- The Hourglass is very tough but not indestructible. The Rule is absolutely immune to harm, period.
- You can put at most one ISI and one IEI on a given object -- the effects do not stack with themselves, but both spells can be in effect on a given object at the same time.
- The Rule always weighs pi / 4 ounces.
- The rule is capable of changing its own size as defined below.
Quoting from Chapter 34 of 2YE (some minor editing for brevity):
"I am imagining a magic item that I shall call a Rule of Size. This item is made of magically unbreakable adamantite but otherwise has the same form as an inches-and-centimeter ruler from my world. It is one quarter inch thick and one inch wide. Its default length is twelve inches, but on command it will change to any length from one millimeter to ten feet. Regardless of its size, it shall always weigh exactly pi over four ounces.
"Finally, I am imagining a second magic item, which I will call an Eternal Hourglass. It is a block of adamantite in the shape of an hourglass, and of the largest size that will fit comfortably in my hand. Engraved on the top of the hourglass is the word 'Permanencio.' To activate the Hourglass the holder must touch it to an object or a creature, speak the word 'Permanencio', and name one spell or magic effect that is currently affecting that object or creature. When the Hourglass is activated, it will cast a Permanency spell on the named spell or magical effect."
Since this one is definitely going to come up:
- If something is IEI'd / ISI'd but not Permanencied, then when the 1,000 days expires the object reverts to its original size and composition. If the shape has been changed / melted / boiled off / etc while it was under the magic then it retains the new shape / stage of matter / etc but just scales up or down as appropriate.
EDIT:
- SI only affects nonmagical items, so the Rule cannot affect the Hourglass. You can put both an IEI and an ISI on the same thing because things that have had ISI or IEI put on them are not magical items; they are nonmagical items that have been enchanted, not inherently magical items.
- Both spells affects a maximum of 2,000 cubic feet for the source object.
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+3] (5 minutes later)
The obvious one, just to get it out of the way:
- Go to baking store, spend $5 to buy some gold foil. Put IEI on it, sell it. Boom, nigh-infinite money.
u/lsparrish [+3] (8 hours later)
If not Permanancied, wouldn't the IEI effect fade after 1000 days, making the gold basically counterfeit?
Shouldn't be too hard to find a way to use this to mine (or even transmute) real gold though.
u/Sceptically [+2] (a day later)
Not just that. Even if it is Permanencied, the end result could find its way into the product chain, at which point you can use your command word to mess up a whole bunch of consumer electronics.
u/lsparrish [+1] (a day later)
Hmm. What happens when you mix the magically altered gold with regular gold? Presumably the section containing only altered gold atoms would shrink, but if you dilute it enough there should be spots with less than 16 atoms of altered gold in diameter.
u/Sceptically [+1] (a day later)
Note that I certainly didn't say reliably mess up a whole bunch of consumer electronics ;-)
u/eaglejarl [+1] (10 hours later)
If not Permanancied, wouldn't the IEI effect fade after 1000 days, making the gold basically counterfeit?
Details, details. ;>
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (26 minutes later)
Until you devalue the market price of gold by introducing too much excess gold into the economy anyway.
u/CopperZirconium [+3] (50 minutes later)
At that point you switch to a different material. Platinum, gemstones, rare minerals... Once you have enough money from your gold trick, you could get your hands on more expensive materials.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (37 minutes later)
Hence the "nigh" infinite. ;>
u/notentirelyrandom [+1] (19 hours later)
Followed shortly by "Boom, nigh-infinite gravity well." Oops. Knew I should have created the gold a little at a time.
u/Rouninscholar [+1] (2 days later)
Size restriction blocks that
u/capsless [+3] despiser of hpmor (8 hours later)
'aight, pretty sure i've got a complete utopia genesis plan. only the rule is necessary, nothing here requires the hourglass.
first, claim any supernatural proof award generic enough for your items to qualify. wikipedia says that'll net on the order of one-and-a-half million. use this money to buy several diamonds of the highest quality/size you can, the use iei to make them into 10000 carat monstrosities (this is preferable to gold in every meaningful way, because gem worth increases exponentially with mass). the "very large gem" market probably isn't big enough for sustainable cash via this method, but it'll be good for at least a few billion. next, commission very small samples of perfectly-pure metals (a microgram or so). at this point, you either abuse a) the si definition, or b) the way item enchantments work in 3.5e. si (and presumiably ei by extension) can be stacked an arbitrary number of times on an object, provided the previous casting was permanencied:
Shrink item can be made permanent with a permanency spell, in which case the affected object can be shrunk and expanded an indefinite number of times, but only by the original caster.
the meaning of this is obviously intended to be simple reversion and reapplication of the first si, but according to strict raw allows recursion as well. :y
the second method is by exploiting the fact that an item (and by extension its enchantment) designation is fundamentally unique and intransferable -- that is, an enchantment cast once may only apply to one continuous body at a time by the 3.5 rules. if, therefore, you split an item on which iei has been applied, the end result is a smaller body of unenchanted material and a larger body of enchanted material; both cannot have the same effect at the same time. crucially, this operation can be repeated; you can split the larger body into two objects, both of which smaller than the unenchanted first piece, and that piece will remain unenchanted (the item designation doesn't leap across space to the largest remaining part).
the end result is, of course, that you may produce arbitrary quantities of a material with the same qualities as the original. applying this to the previously-obtained metal samples, you can create a complete monopoly on all homogenous materials -- and by extension, acquire absolute control of the economy.
the next stage is to leverage complete market control into complete political power, thereby ending coordination problems and (by using your magic) scarcity of basic resources. a rough fermi estimate indicates that a single use of the rule can create 2e8 l of an arbitrary material. since a human requires something like 0.5 kg of soylent per day, you would only need to use the rule eighteen (!!!) times a day to feed the entire populace of the planet (provided you hire people to fill and process the gargantuan vats of nutrition powder). since you can produce any raw substance orders of magnitude more efficiently than any competitor, the planet will quickly become entirely dependent on you. bask in your global dictatorship.
the final stage is the reapplication of the populace to tasks that strictly advance humanity. there are a lot of jobs that are no longer necessary (retail, finance, agriculture, etc.), and those people can be reassigned to research or manufacturing. more importantly you can direct research directly onto high-yield subjects, and tailor incentives to match maximal efficiency. of particular note it would be important to reduce x-risk as much as possible very quickly; eg by introducing total global surveillance for nuclear weapons and ufai. it would be fairly easy to colonize mars: people most likely count as "items" before complete information-theoretic death, so it would be trivial to isi them (with the cloth option), dehydrate and freeze the dolls, then resuscitate them upon arrival. equipment and habitats can be miniturized and stored in the same way, and since cloth is fairly light there would be a payload mass reduction on the order of 20000 times. especially with antimatter propulsion (antimatter is, ofc, as easy to duplicate as anything else), you could achieve obsene quantities of dv while holding all equipment necessary for a complete mars colony -- and probably shorten the transit time to a couple of months.
next, get everyone working on friendliness theory until you're absolutely confident that you're correct. win everything forever.
u/puesyomero [+2] The Culture (9 hours later)
i like your idea for food production, in reality we already produce more food than what we need. the problem comes with distribution and its cost, but with the rule you could solve that! enchant a Bouillon cube sized piece of food and send it through fedex with the enlarging word to be used once before cutting. great for relief efforts!
u/capsless [+0] despiser of hpmor (19 hours later)
the problem comes with distribution and its cost
the reason that food scarcity exists isn't because it's impossible, it's because it's not incentivized. if an agent (the rule owner) no longer has to compete, they are free from incentive structures and can do as many selfless things as they wish (because there are no longer any selfish options)
enchant a Bouillon cube sized piece of food and send it through fedex with the enlarging word to be used once before cutting.
the problem with this is scaling. you simply can't say enough words to feed the entire impoverished populace with this method. better to leave the distribution to the unpowered, while focusing the magic on things that require it.
(good small-scale ideas, though. maybe for quick disaster relief before duplication mechanism is set up)
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (a day later)
b) the way item enchantments work in 3.5e. si (and presumiably ei by extension) can be stacked an arbitrary number of times on an object, provided the previous casting was permanencied:
Shrink item can be made permanent with a permanency spell, in which case the affected object can be shrunk and expanded an indefinite number of times, but only by the original caster.This doesn't mean what you think it means. What it means is that once permanencied, you can use the command word to shirk and unshrink it at will, whereas the normal spell is dispelled when you unshrink it once. It doesn't let you stack shrinks.
u/capsless [+1] despiser of hpmor (a day later)
the affected object can be shrunk and expanded an indefinite number of times
u/JackStargazer [+0] Primordial Apologist (a day later)
Yes. By the effect of the spell.
Normal Object. + Shrink item = Shruken Object. Object can be 'expanded' (returned to normal object). Doing so ends the spell. If the spell is made permanent, the item can be expanded (returned to normal object) and Shrunk (back to Shrunken object) an indefinite number of times, instead of once. That's what that line means.
Your confusion comes from the fact that you think the RAW rules mean 'have the shrink item spell applied' when it says 'shrunk' and 'have the expand item spell applied' when it says expand.
This is impossible, because the expand item spell does not exist. It was created out of whole cloth by Jake in his wish for the rule of size. It does not exist by RAW, and thus could not possibly be referred to by RAW.
Also, you are selectively quoting RAW, which is a big nono. More important than that is the sentence at the beginning which reads:"You are able to shrink one nonmagical item"
An item with an active, permanent spell effect is not nonmagical, any more than an Animated Object is non-magical.
u/capsless [+2] despiser of hpmor (a day later)
i know that that is what the rule is supposed to mean. i am selectively interpreting it in a way that is still denotatively valid but wasn't what the author intended. that's, like, half of munchkining.
also:
EDIT: SI only affects nonmagical items, so the Rule cannot affect the Hourglass. You can put both an IEI and an ISI on the same thing because things that have had ISI or IEI put on them are not magical items; they are nonmagical items that have been enchanted, not inherently magical items.
u/rtkwe [+1] (3 days later)
You'd need the Hourglass otherwise after 1000 days all the items made with your generated materials and food consumed (and subsequently processed by the body) would shrink back to it's original size. There's no clear definition of what happens to say a chunk of brass made made of 50% Zinc and 50% IEI'd copper speck, but all the scenarios aren't very good. Sudden structural failure of everything made with just Rule multiplied materials is a given.
The same problem happens when the Soylent that's been magically produced shrinks back to it's original mass as well, sudden rupturing of cell walls, proteins falling apart of completely disappearing depending on how much of a person's diet is soylent. The only parts that would survive this process are cells or structures that don't get replaced very often, which would probably be bones and some form of neurons (not sure about these surviving it mainly depends on their replacement rate and if their structure is also largely permanent or is replaced with new materials).
TL;DR: Without the hourglass the civilization built on replicated materials would suffer collapse in ~2.75 years when everything starts to fall apart.
u/Shadawn [+3] (a day later)
Medicine
Well, multipliying precious elements were suggested already, but we're forgetting about chemistry (most important, medical chemistry). If a liquid in an open container counts as an object, you can IEI/Perma it. If it doesn't, you need to IEI/Perma crystallized forms. Some technology may need to be developed, but you have several billions by the time and can afford to hire best of the best, especially if it's for saving alot of people.
Science
By the way, there is THE question as to how exactly does IEI/ISI work at microlevel. It's important, because it can't just create 8 atoms in place of 1 - otherwise anything but pure elements, and for sure anything organic would transform into something (probably white and amorphous). Also, if it just multiplies subatomic particles, then we'll immediately be left with heavy elements (and IEIng anything heavier than Magnesium would surely result in explosive nuclear fission).
This question is important because it shows that IEI uses some arbitrary level at which is starts multiplication. For example, if IEI can enlarge corpses without turning them into biomass, then it's surely able to multiply cells. If we can figure out this "illusion of common sense", we would be able to, for example, IEI large complex of detachable apartments (built specifically for this purpose with our billions) to produce not rooms for giants, but more rooms for humans (because this is already happening with cells in corpses, which aren't fundamentally different from our rooms). Actually, we can start to multiply literally anything. IEI big organized storage facility, setting level of multiplication accordingly - get octuple it's contents. Assume smart automatization and exponential multiplication - we're going into post-scarcity pretty fast.
Safety
If you trust your goverment to have a better judgement on what to do with Rule and Hourglass (and if making people lives better is in your high priorities), you should probably give these items to them as fast as possible. If at least one of those statements are false, you'll need tohave some safety precautions against secret agents and sniper bullets, because even insane goverments would recognize immediate existencial threat.
So, you'll need to work some security features. "IEI the Earth if you try to take the Rule from me or if i die" could be a nice idea, but may not stop some radical group. You'll need some life detector on yourself as well. Good security personnel is a given, still may not help against combined effort of a large goverment. Perhaps showing them that you're serious may help - doubling some deserted island, or maybe some major construction (yes, i'm looking at you, Great Chinese Wall) is the most decent idea i have atm.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
You win all the Internets, good sir. Only quibble is that it only affects up to 2000 cubic feet, which I forgot to put directly in the challenge rules. (It was in the spell description that I linked.) That's workaround-able, though.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Oh, darn, that makes the whole grow the Earth thing a non-starter then.
OK, Pinky, we can't grow the Earth, we'll have to settle for ruling it.
u/ulyssessword [+5] (6 hours later)
Science!
Enlarge/shrink something that is made up of atoms. See what scientists can do with it (especially the LHC or someone with an electron microscope). Repeat with the cloth-like material.
Enlarge/shrink something larger than three Planck lengths. See what scientists can do with the edges of it, which change positions at FTL speeds.
Check whether cloth-like things are affected by normal processes. If not, it would be good for storing medical isotopes, blood/organs (or organ donors)/forensic evidence, food, antimatter, volatile chemicals, hazardous waste, or pretty much anything else.
What does an alloy of shrunken and normal metal act like after you cancel the spell? (and the same for an alloy with Enlarged metal)
See if it breaks the square-cube law. If so, start building out of enlarged materials.
Build Stuff
Make a reactionless(?) drive for a spaceship. Start with the item at the front of the ship, and enlarge it. Launch it at the back of the ship, which requires that a (large) opposite force pushes the ship forward. While the object is still going towards the rear of the ship, shrink it. Catch it at the back, absorbing the (small) amount of momentum it has. Launch it to the front again, slightly slowing the ship. Enlarge it, and catch it at the front, absorbing a large amount of momentum and speeding up the ship a lot. Repeat as needed.
Enlarge a factory one piece at a time (including the inputs). Use it to build very precise computer parts and other stuff. Optionally, shrink the stuff coming out the end. The stuff could be precise to a fraction of an atom-width.
Check all the definitions
Check out what the definition of "weighs" is (for pi/4 oz.). Is it calibrated for the buoyancy caused by Air (only)? For any fluid that it is in? Do centrifuges cause it to press against the outsides with more force? What about an accelerating car? What if the committee that decides these things changes the definition of an "ounce"?
Check what the definition of "volume" is. If you cast it on a (very large) piece of flat cardboard and then fold it into a 2001 cubic foot box, does it still work? What about casting it on the box then flattening it? Does casting IEI on an item that is currently Shrunk check its normal volume or its current volume?
Check what the definition of "item" is, both at casting time and throughout its life. From other answers, it looks like an object is defined by the matter that makes it up after the moment of casting, but what about when it is cast? Can you select a chip bag (but not the chips), or one board, but not the other one it's nailed to? What about if they are glued together as strong as plywood, or just sitting on each other, or two pieces of metal welded together?
Check what the definition of "speech" is. Is an MP3 player included? What about SIRI, text-to-speech programs, or phone calls? Do homophones trigger it? What about if the speaker has a strong accent?
other
Abuse the hardness-negating properties of Adamantium. A 2-inch thick iron door has 60 HP, meaning that a normal commoner could break completely through it in about 10-20 hits with an improvised weapon like the Rule.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (7 hours later)
Enlarge/shrink something that is made up of atoms.
...can you provide an example of something that you could enlarge / shrink that isn't made of atoms?
Enlarge/shrink something larger than three Planck lengths. See what scientists can do with the edges of it, which change positions at FTL speeds.
Well, for one thing, you can make the entire Nobel committee cry as relativity and thermodynamics go out the window.... :>
Check whether cloth-like things are affected by normal processes. If not, it would be good for storing medical isotopes, blood/organs (or organ donors)/forensic evidence, food, antimatter, volatile chemicals, hazardous waste, or pretty much anything else.
Ooh, yeah, good one.
What does an alloy of shrunken and normal metal act like after you cancel the spell? (and the same for an alloy with Enlarged metal)
That would be interesting...I think it would look like metal with holes in it, but the holes would likely be (sub)microscopic.
Make a reactionless(?) drive for a spaceship. Start with the item at the front of the ship, and enlarge it. Launch it at the back of the ship, which requires that a (large) opposite force pushes the ship forward. While the object is still going towards the rear of the ship, shrink it. Catch it at the back, absorbing the (small) amount of momentum it has. Launch it to the front again, slightly slowing the ship. Enlarge it, and catch it at the front, absorbing a large amount of momentum and speeding up the ship a lot. Repeat as needed.
Ooh, clever.
Check all the definitions
Nice. I hadn't thought of those.
Abuse the hardness-negating properties of Adamantium. A 2-inch thick iron door has 60 HP, meaning that a normal commoner could break completely through it in about 10-20 hits with an improvised weapon like the Rule.
Hey, no fair! This is the real world, you can't play RAW games out here! ;>
u/ulyssessword [+1] (8 hours later)
...can you provide an example of something that you could enlarge / shrink that isn't made of atoms?
More specifically: Something that "being made up of atoms" is a relevant feature of it.
This was inspired by a rationalist idea I heard (and lost track of). It basically goes "on Monday, phones work by [Electromagnetism, radio waves, etc.]. On Tuesday, phones work by magic. How is the world observably/testably different between Monday and Tuesday?" Apply this to enlarged/shrunk objects, and get "On Monday, they are made of atoms. On Tuesday, they are made of magic. How is the world observably different between Monday and Tuesday?" and then test anything that would be different between "Monday" and "Tuesday".
Examples:
Material for a particle accelerator: They can measure individual atoms (or smaller pieces).
Something iridescent: It interacts with light on a single-wavelength scale. Would it still result in the same colors at 16x the size, or would it change?
Presumably a bag with 1000 marbles turns into a bag with 1000 very large marbles. Would a bag with 1 mol of buckminsterfullerenes turn into a bag with 1 mol of very large buckminsterfullerenes, or a bag with 4096 mol of them? If 1 mol, then see if it can enlarge atoms on their own (and find the limit for how small something can be). If 4096 mol, then find the limit the other way. Does a bag of 1 000 000 very very tiny salt crystals turn into a bag of 1 000 000 large salt crystals or a bag of 4 096 000 000 very very tiny salt crystals (etc, etc.)
Basically anything "nano-" would work for the tests as well.
u/MoralRelativity [+2] (an hour later)
What counts as an Item? If the definition was loose enough then I'd like make the LHC (including tunnels) double in size and see what physicists could do with it.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (an hour later)
Check the stat block for Shrink Item:
"One touched object of up to 2 cu. ft./level"
Caster level from the Rule is 1000, so the target can't be more than 2,000 cubic feet.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (an hour later)
OK, thanks. Not nearly enough then.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (23 minutes later)
Here's a couple interesting ideas for the Rule. Cast ISI on radioactive waste, cast ISI on cargo to make transportation easier (can be used to help out the space program), and you can probably discover some new laws of physics through some investigation.
Can you cast IEI on food without harming people, since they will have pooped it out of their bodies by the time the magic wears off? Or will they absorb the materials into their bodies and die when the magic wears off causing their bodies to expand in lethal ways? Remember kids. Professor McGonagall says to never transmutate anything into food!
P.S. Can we use the Rule on the Hourglass and/or vice versa?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (40 minutes later)
Can you cast IEI on food without harming people,
Probably not a good idea to eat something with an IEI or ISI on it; the command words would remain active throughout the duration, so if someone used one of them around you then something inside your body would either shrink or grow.
P.S. Can we use the Rule on the Hourglass and/or vice versa?
Nope. I've added that one (and the explanation) to the original post.
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (3 hours later)
Easy enough to fix, you can choose the command words so just make them very long and hard to hit on by chance.
"Reducio, command word for enlarging: skabadapadoopabliddliddladdlapadapadoob."
u/kaukamieli [+2] (13 hours later)
Then you never remember it again. I have this 4 number door code I don't remember...
u/Chronophilia [+2] sci-fi ≠ futurology (15 hours later)
Why would you want to remember it? If you've eaten magically enlarged food, you don't want anyone saying the command word accidentally or deliberately.
I guess you need to remember it once, to actually activate the spell... unless I'm misunderstanding how Enlarge Item and IEI work.
u/CopperZirconium [+1] (an hour later)
Can you shrink and grow living things safely? If so, enlarging cells and viruses could be beneficial to studding microbiology and treating diseases. Not to mention you could become Ant Man.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)
Nope, nothing living. Has to be an "item", not a "creature."
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 hours later)
Does dead creatures count as an "item"?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 hours later)
Yep. Shrink all the corpses you like. :>
u/lsparrish [+1] (7 hours later)
Does this sterilize the corpse, or are the viruses and bacteria contained within it shrunk?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (8 hours later)
The magic doesn't work on living things, so if you try to IEI a bacteria it won't work. Despite that, if you IEI a corpse, all of the bacteria inside it will expand along with the corpse because magic!
Or maybe it sterilizes. I don't think there really is a good answer at this point. Go with whichever you like better.
u/Chosen_Pun [+2] The Chosen Ones (15 hours later)
Could you still embiggen viruses, seeing as how A) their aliveness is questionable, and B) diseases aren't really creatures, but
status effectsspecial abilities?
u/Sceptically [+1] (a day later)
So if some bastard cuts you off in traffic you can ISI his car while he's in it?
u/Chosen_Pun [+1] The Chosen Ones (5 hours later)
Screw the enlarging spells; with a 10-foot indestructible crowbar/tape measure in your pocket you could still fight crime as Fore Man or Archimedes.
u/therearetoomanydaves [+1] (an hour later)
Creating (nearly) perfect vacuum quickly. Can be used to make a high-capacity pump using both the suck-in-during-shrink and expel-during-grow phases. With a bit more work, a voice-activated electricity generator.
Overweight bag fees? We don't need to pay no steenking bag fees.
The 'cloth' function can bypass any weapon detection system.
Explosives-free demolition. (What happens when you unshrink a metal sphere in an area too small to contain it, or let shrunken water seep into a rock formation?)
Ballast on a submarine ("Dive... make that Unshrink-50-feet")
u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)
Explosives-free demolition. (What happens when you unshrink a metal sphere in an area too small to contain it, or let shrunken water seep into a rock formation?)
It expands from its shrunk size to its normal size in 1 Planck time. Whichever is stronger (the surroundings or the unshrinking item) gets broken.
Yeah, that would make for some pretty effective demolitions.
u/ulyssessword [+0] (6 hours later)
Yeah, that would make for some pretty effective demolitions.
Assuming that phone calls, recordings, and the like don't work, you may need someone brave or suicidal to be within 10 feet of it.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 hours later)
Nope, those things work fine. Anything that can make a voice recognizable by a human is good enough -- tape recorder, phone call, recording, etc.
u/bbrazil [+1] NERV (an hour later)
There's no limit on how quickly you can say a command word. So it can be arbitrarily short, as long as there's enough energy to be around 60dB (but no requirement to be discernible).
Apply the rule and hourglass to the head of a piston, put a speaker within 10 feet of it, have the speaker repeat the command words at a high rate. Hook up to a generator, and there's free energy.
How do these work at the atomic level? Are more atoms added/removed? What if you grew something, changed one atom, and shrunk it again? Would it return to normal? There's probably something you can do to get free energy/matter.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)
I've been assuming that they create matter -- there is suddenly more gold / steel / whatever in that spot than there was before.
What if you grew something, changed one atom, and shrunk it again? Would it return to normal?
If you, e.g., grew a pebble into a boulder, then chipped off a piece of the boulder, then shrank it, it would be the same as if you had chipped off the equivalent piece of the pebble.
u/bbrazil [+1] NERV (an hour later)
it would be the same as if you had chipped off the equivalent piece of the pebble.
What about the limit case, where what I've altered maps back to less than one atom?
u/bbrazil [+1] NERV (2 hours later)
I've been assuming that they create matter -- there is suddenly more gold / steel / whatever in that spot than there was before.
At the same temperature? Heat it up, grow it, drop it in water and you're got yourself steam to run a turbine. You could do similar for refrigeration.
Also, how would this work with quantum entanglement?
u/Nepene [+1] (5 hours later)
See what happens when you shrink sentient people. Stop their heart, make them clinically dead, shrink them, wake them up.
Make a rail gun. Shrink a metal tube, put it in a foam circle, surround that with a metal cannon, have some object at the top of the cannon that it can expand into. When you expand the metal tube it will with great force expel whatever is above to the great beyond.
Fly. Get a helium balloon, expand and contract the balloon as needed.
Attack any forces still opposing my rulership. Expand buildings around them, shrink the ground beneath them.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (5 hours later)
Keep in mind that you only get to choose one of two sizes: normal, and "1/4096th the volume of normal". The helium balloon is going to have some issues.
u/Nepene [+1] (5 hours later)
You can get a couple of balloons then and shrink them in turn.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (5 hours later)
Clearly the first thing I'd do would be go pick up some loose diamonds with a bit of savings, increase their size, then make the change permanent and resell them.
After that, I'm not entirely certain. Probably get a metal melting setup, buy things made of gold, melt them down, then enlarge them and sell the resulting gold. Once I'm independently wealthy, own a substantial chunk of land that's paid for, then I'll probably get down to !!Science!! dwarf fortress style, but with fewer cats and less gore.
Will have to think on it for a bit :)
u/eaglejarl [+2] (7 hours later)
Down at the bottom I suggested doing this with cheaply-available 24k gold foil, available from your favorite baking supply store. You give me an interesting idea though:
- Buy gold thing (coin, necklace, whatever)
- Enlarge
- A coin the size of a quarter is now about 8" across and 1" thick. Dig into the side of it, scoop the gold out from the inside of the object.
- Shrink it down again -- your digging site is now not even a scratch. Unless someone checks it with a microscope, it's undetectable!
u/rtkwe [+1] (3 days later)
Why scam people with a hollowed coin when you can just make bullion though?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
No reason, I was just noting a possibility.
u/lsparrish [+2] (7 hours later)
Nice thing with diamond is you can make it from regular carbon, so you wouldn't need to use the hourglass. Just craft a large high pressure container (using the converting to cloth and tailoring trick, maybe) from scrap metal, put some pure graphite inside, and shrink it to pressurize it...
Probably make sure the graphite is pre-shrunk, so once it is crystallized to diamond form it can can be expanded by canceling the spell to create huge diamond chunks. These can then be converted to cloth and back again as needed to craft them into usable machinery and so on.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (5 hours later)
Firstly, I ask this because it specifically states that it's me, in the real world.
Has anyone considered the forces that would be imparted by the rule if it were touched against an object that then changed size to make it larger? That's a whole lot of acceleration. Your hand would probably be vaporized by the energy transfer. The shockwave through your body might cause hydrostatic damage to organs.
Heck, those things might happen due to the items expanding even if you don't have to touch them with the rule. Think on the forces acting to accelerate the air around the object away from it. The larger the object, the more air displaced.
Unless there's built-in munchkin values to prevent real world physics from applying?
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (6 hours later)
Unless there's built-in munchkin values to prevent real world physics from applying?
That's called cartoon physics!
u/eaglejarl [+2] (7 hours later)
Feh. That would kinda cause an issue, wouldn't it?
Ok, assume that the magic somehow makes it so that the direct act of shrinking / enlarging something doesn't kill you. You can still die from secondary effects later -- put a shrunken car on your head, enlarge it, you'll be squished. But while you are actually in the process of using the Rule you are protected from the effects of that use.
u/lsparrish [+1] (7 hours later)
Rule of Size would be really useful for designing nanomachines. You could IEI the materials, create small motors and such, cancel the spell to shrink them, then ISI the devices to make them smaller still.
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (9 hours later)
shrink item
You are able to shrink one nonmagical item
...
This item is made of magically unbreakable adamantite
I think this world needs debugging?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (10 hours later)
The Rule itself is magical, yes. Its powers
- Cast ISI and IEI on nonmagical things
- Change its own size in a way totally different from IEI / ISI
- Be unbreakable.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (9 hours later)
Let's see. Double the radius of Earth whenever we want to launch anything into orbit. Doubling the radius of Earth and keeping the composition the same yields an 8x multiple of mass. 8x the mass with double the radius creates a planet with roughly 2g surface gravity.
So, increase planet size, then toss whatever we want into the air, and shrink the planet again.
Of course, I'm not entirely certain what would happen after the entire atmosphere of Earth is pushed into orbit at 6378km
u/rtkwe [+2] (a day later)
Just throwing it up wouldn't get it into orbit, orbits aren't that easy. It'd just be @ 1 earth radius with just the upwards velocity of your throw. To orbit you need sideways velocity, in the case of this orbit at 6371 km (3959 miles), ie 1 Earth radius away from the surface, you need 5592 meters per second (or 12510 miles per hour) parallel to the surface.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
You're definitely right, but giving anything a 6371km boost out of Earth's gravity well would be a rather big boost, even if you did have to add on some delta-v to keep it all from falling back to Earth again.
To get it into a stable orbit, it would probably just be easier to boost the payload into a geosynchronous orbit from there, rather than accelerating parallel to Earth's rotation. Not going to do the math for it though :)
u/rtkwe [+1] (3 days later)
If you were able to grow the Earth to 2x radius, launch, then shrink the Earth again it would reduce the launch fuel required. You'd still need a lot of deltaV to get to a stable orbit.
There's an additional problem with that though, the expansion of the Earth would completely destroy anything not affected by the IEI when the surface expands 3.6k km in an instant. There might be interesting affects with the gravity waves as well because of speed of light propagation. At the very least it'd be a smooth but fast transition from 1G to 2G of gravity as the amount of Earth attracting you expanded at the speed of light.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (3 days later)
Meh, details, details. Who needs all those bridges and tall buildings anyhow?
u/rtkwe [+1] (3 days later)
I also forgot about the size limit on IEI and ISI you're limited to 2*caster level cubic feet which for the rule is 2000 cubic feet. No Earth enlarging.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (3 days later)
Indeed. I noticed that too, after it was mentioned elsewhere, so I wrote off the idea of Earth enlarging and pulled out a good Animaniacs quote instead.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (3 days later)
It's a magical ruler. Do I have to tell it a number, or can I use it for divination?
For instance, command the ruler to change length to a number of inches equivalent to the first drawn number in tomorrow's lottery...
After divining the Powerball numbers on a big lottery pot, go spend a couple dollars at the convenience store, and you would never have to try to figure out how to keep the ruler a secret. Once you're worth a couple hundred million, you can start playing the stock market carefully.
Ruler, based on the page of characters in front of me, change to a length that corresponds to the first character of tomorrow's top performing publicly traded stock...
After that, well, it's time to start asking questions about real unknowns, like codifying a system to determine if there is alien life, where it is, how smart are they, are they dangerous, etc.
Somehow, I doubt the ruler's capable of divination though.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
It wasn't in the creation description, but it's very Munchkinly. I like it. :>