Powers coming together.

Just a quick update before heading to bed. I spent some time slogging through the powers chapter today. I think almost all of the powers are in a first draft stage now. Just a few more powers that need details added. Most of the time I spent today was on the beginning of the chapter about different power sources like magic, psionics (and its little brother, mentalism), supernatural martial arts, alchemy, etc. I wrote up Vancian Magic and Mentalism/Psionics today. I also started thinking about super science, mad science, and alchemy: the kind of power sources that put powers into a device or potion to use them and had an interesting idea.

If a mad scientist knows how to make a death ray, he could make an energy pistol with cool rings and tail fins. What if he built the same thing but much bigger and mounted it on his rocket ship? It would be simple to say that it just works on the larger scale. He won't be able to use it to hunt Venusian tigerphants on safari, but if he runs across any Venusian warships on his way then he could shoot at them (just as he could use his pistol against the Venusian marines that try to board his rocket). It occurred to me that the same "scaling up" could be applied to the other power sources too. A wizard who can teleport himself short distances with a few seconds of mumbling and handwaving  could cast a scaled up version of that spell to teleport vast distances by using a much longer ritual. Why do powerful wizards live in big towers? Because a wand or a dagger or a staff is a sufficient focus for a small scale spell, but if you want to be a spellcaster on the international stage then you'll need a much bigger phallic object as a focus. A diviner with a dowsing rod can find a lost item in his village, but if he has a big wizard tower then he can find it anywhere in the whole country or even in neighboring countries. If you lead a group of soldiers to attack a wizard out in the world, he'll blast one of your spearmen with a lightning bolt or hit a handful of them with a fireball. If you lead your army against his tower, he'll blast a whole unit of spearmen with lightning and then devastate your left flank with a blazing inferno. Of course, while he's operating on that larger scale, he suffers the Death Star vulnerability: a small single-man fighter could get through the defenses and strike a vulnerable spot.You can't swat insects with a cannon, so it's a trade-off.