scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2rc6ps.md

[MK][Q][BST] Munchkin the Rule and the Hourglass

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.

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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."

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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:

  The obvious one, just to get it out of the way:
  
  * Go to baking store, spend $5 to buy some [gold foil](https://img0.etsystatic.com/028/0/8574977/il_570xN.598658646_3kme.jpg).  Put IEI on it, sell it.  Boom, nigh-infinite money.
  

  • u/lsparrish:

    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:

      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/xamueljones:

    Until you devalue the market price of gold by introducing too much excess gold into the economy anyway.
    

    • u/CopperZirconium:

      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/capsless:

  '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](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal) 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:

    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/Shadawn:

  **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/ulyssessword:

  **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:

    > 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/MoralRelativity:

  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:

    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.
    

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