Calling Water, how would you do it?

[eepjr24]

Another opinion question for how to do something. I am working on a spell for water mages to cause water to appear in a vessel that they have prepared for the purpose. Basically, after they dowse to find water, if it is within a certain range they can have it seep through the ground, porous rock, etc. and fill the container. 

 

Transform is a go to on things like this, so it could be used.

TK only versus water could work. This might be a broader spell eventually anyway.

Tunnelling, UAA, Invisible Power Effects could work, although that's more than a bit dodgy.

Teleport, see above for tunneling.

 

For transform, I am going to have to speculate a bit and assume that Steve was using Mass as his basis for Body Calculations in the materials list on 6e2, 171. A cubic meter of dirt is 10 Body, water is about 80% the density / mass of dirt, so a cubic meter of water is about 8 Body worth. A cubic meter of water is 1,000 liters or about 260 US Gallons. I am gonna go low and just shoot for 1 Body worth of liquid, giving up to 100 liters or 25 Gallons, depending on the size of the prepared container. I may have another version that does otherwise, but it's easy to compare that amount.

 

1d6 Minor Transform, unfilled prepared vessel to water filled prepared vessel. I am going with minor here because the water has to be actually present, it's not being created but essentially moved. If no local water was required, it would be a Major transform.

 

1d6 Minor Transform [5 CP]; OAF: Prepared vessel (inscribed with water sigils) of up to 100 liter capacity (-1), Standard Effect: 1 Body (-0), Water must be present within 32m (-.5), Water has same characteristics and quality of that locally present (-0), plus school specific limitations for -1.5. Probably would make it Gradual Effect (-.75) from 5er, I don't really like amount of discount Extra Time gives as it seems very all or nothing and this would truly be gradual. That gives us 1 RP, seems about right for the level of effect we are getting.

 

TK would be more like the mage manipulating the water over time to get it into the vessel. At 4 STR TK you could move 16 Liters 3m per phase. So 10 phases to move 16 L to the surface, 60 phases (6 minutes for SPD 2, 4 minutes for SPD 3) to move all 100L (if available). 

 

4 STR TK [6 CP];  Persistent (+.25); [7 AP] OAF: Prepared vessel (inscribed with water sigils) of up to 100 liter capacity (-1), Gradual Effect (-.75), Spell Lims (-1.5), Limited Range: 32m (-.25), Only versus Water (-1), Time Limit: 6 Minutes (-1). We end up at 1 RP again, but this time the caster is making an attack action every phase for several minutes. Not really what I was looking for but it could work for some situations. Maybe an apprentice or self taught version of the spell?

 

Tunneling has some interesting effects in that you could make spells that work easily versus sandy soil but not versus porous rock. Not really what I am looking for here, so I'll skip that one.

 

Teleport is going to get expensive pretty fast for such a minor effect, so I'll skip that one as well.

 

- E

[HeroGM]

Side effect of "summon coffee" or "summon cheap beer".

[eepjr24]

5 minutes ago, HeroGM said:

Side effect of "summon coffee" or "summon cheap beer".

100L is a heck of a lot of summon cheap beer side effect .

 

- E

[Christopher R Taylor]

Transform is probably the best option, a minor of 1d6 should be enough to summon a body or two of water into an urn.  If you want to fill a swimming pool, you'll need a lot of casts or one big Transform.

 

But yes, you can summon inanimate objects (and with GM permission they are effectively "permanent" as in, if you drink the water it doesn't disappear from your body after a time limit).  The trick to summoning inanimate objects is to have a cost, which in this case is minimal: life support vs thirst, 5 hour limited time.

 

Teleport would work, but you would need a source somewhere nearby and why bother using magic if you can just go scoop some up?   You can put megascale on it to get the water from a lake hundreds of kilometers away, but then you have range modifiers, so yeah it can get expensive.  Water is pretty heavy but you won't need a huge amount to fill an urn.

[eepjr24]

1 minute ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

But yes, you can summon inanimate objects (and with GM permission they are effectively "permanent" as in, if you drink the water it doesn't disappear from your body after a time limit).  The trick to summoning inanimate objects is to have a cost, which in this case is minimal: life support vs thirst, 5 hour limited time.

Yeah, but it requires GM permission and it gets weird to figure the points on since it's a fractional point to start with (some portion of Diminished Eating once a week, so 1 CP), but then you start adding Amicable (+1) which is required for object summons, UOO, x100 (+2) as 1L is about the minimum a person can drink a day and survive... it ends up being about the same cost but makes less sense when written down.

 

2 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Teleport would work, but you would need a source somewhere nearby and why bother using magic if you can just go scoop some up?   You can put megascale on it to get the water from a lake hundreds of kilometers away, but then you have range modifiers, so yeah it can get expensive.  Water is pretty heavy but you won't need a huge amount to fill an urn.

The reason for teleport would be if you have dowsed the water, but it is 15-30 meters under the ground. Same for the transform, but for transform it's just part of the special effect.

 

- E

[archer]

It sound like a Transform but is limited to the amount of water which is within a certain distance.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The simplest way I used is Life Support with limited charges in a focus, with the special effect: summoned water.  You hand someone the water in a container that you "summoned" and they can drink it, to give them LS for the time period of the charges in it.

[archer]

5 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The simplest way I used is Life Support with limited charges in a focus, with the special effect: summoned water.  You hand someone the water in a container that you "summoned" and they can drink it, to give them LS for the time period of the charges in it.

 

Life Support works okay unless you're wanting to do something else with the water like put out a fire or transform dirt to mud.

[Thia Halmades]

So this is actual “Magic,” right? You are effectively, mechanically, calling something out of nothing. Like. Bang. There’s water now. Both of the canonical ways to do it have already been covered: LS & Transform. And of course, neither of those is how I would do it.

 

Call Forth the Wetness: Skill, Survival (14-). This spell allows you to call forth wetness from the ground, or in certain cases, from the very air around you. The wetness you call forth is specifically potable water; container sold separately. For every point the roll succeeds by, X amount of water is called forth (as an Advantage on the power; so at base, I would say 1 liter/per point; then 2 liters (+1/4), then 4, and so on, each doubling of effect doubling the cost). 

 

Call Forth the Wetness; As Survival (14-); Environmental Modifiers apply to roll (-1/4), Extra Time (1 Turn), Costs END (-1/2); Wetter is Better (4 liters per point the roll succeeds by, +1/2), RSR (-1/2, as the roll can fail and no water summoned; you can remove this), Enhanced Effect Roll (+1/4; every point the roll succeeds by adds one volume of water), Container not included (-0; the water “springs forth” or, if a basin is carved in advance, flows into it as reasonability allows). Plus Life Support (Potable Water), even if filthy swamp water full of weird bugs, parasites and alien diseases is used, the water provided is pure, clear and potable. — While the Survival skill already makes it clear that the point is to summon potable water, the nature of this Compound pushes it into the realm of magic and avoids any additional fuss or arguing.

 

Season to your liking, but that’s how I would handle this. And pardon my notes, I’m writing off the top of my head because my iPad doesn’t JAVA and there’s nothing I can do about that currently.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I could see a high survival skill filing the "makes water in a pot".  You're just so good you find water anywhere.

[Thia Halmades]

16 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah I could see a high survival skill filing the "makes water in a pot".  You're just so good you find water anywhere.

 

In this case I’m specifically using the skill as a spell. Oh, I forgot; Only to Find Water (-1/2). That was important. But ultimately it’s a spell that finds water, and I used Survival as the most reasonable way to get there. Not actually a skill, but a spell the uses the mechanic of the skill to generate results.

 

Although, this is HERO; you can call it whatever you want as long as you pay the points for it and adhere to the special effect, but the IDEA was “write me a spell that summons water.” So that’s what I did.