..More specifically, there's no way to stop the turning, effectively making this an engine with limitless torque generation potential. (Some may have already recognized this as an Axle from Discworld) My character is a level 10 artificer in Eberron; the artifact is a bit of a gift from the DM, since we had a session on my birthday. We found it in the basement of a semi-active volcano, running the pump room that kept the bottom of the crater free of lava.
I could Retain Essence on it for a likely huge amount of xp, but I'd rather find a crafty use for it. Thoughts?
More seriously, my impulse is to say that destroying anything running a pump room in a volcano is a categorically bad plan. Now, moving forward, crafty ways to use it. Can you tell us more about its current installation, and give us a compelling reason why you shouldn't turn that volcano into your secret evil villain || super hero lair? Because right now it sounds like the gift came with some pretty sweet wrapping paper, to me.
My go-to item for disturbing the way the world itself works is probably the Ring Gates. You'll note that objects only pushed through partially and then retracted do not count. This means that you can build a nice gantry around your Axle, rig it to drive a main crankshaft, and then send that crankshaft anywhere. Congratulations, you just bought yourself an airship. After all, you can use any gear ratio you want.
As for brakes, you'll brake by downshifting and re-routing torque if needed to other installations. Remember, gear ratios are the keys to this particular kingdom. It's time at long last to start point points into knowledge(architecture) and craft(clockwork)!
Never use it to make money or weapons.
Don't let anyone know if they haven't already guessed.
Keep it to one or two things every month of real time.
Remember, optimization is about making sure you and your party stay alive but still have fun. We have to hit the magic sweetspot where the party is excited about your terrifying toys, where the GM is feels like he has more options rather than less, and where you have more answers to life's pressing questions such as "Can I bore a hole through the city walls if I desperately need to?" or "Could I power a distillery if I wanted to?"
One crucial thing. Destroy, block, and disguise all entrances to the room with the Axle. You have a wizard in your party, most likely, and hopefully that wizard can cast teleport. If not, this is worth buying a scroll or three for. You want to never ever have anyone else get to your axle. This is by far the single most important thing your character will ever own, for a variety of reasons ranging from HOLYCRAPSOCOOL to the fact that if a warring nation gets its hands on this, the game world is completely borked. You must play it safe.
Also, something important to remember is that THIS ROTATION WILL NEVER SLOW DOWN NO MATTER HOW MUCH PRESSURE WE PUT ON IT. so use gears to turn a slow rotation into a gazzilion turns/second rotation, Then find something that could use that rotation.
Maybe make a tank, as already suggested, arming it with a wand-wielding UMD humunculus (or more than one :D ).
Other details: The artificer is already a prolific crafter, so I've got all the ranks in Kn (arch) I could ever want. As for braking/downshifting, it wouldn't be too hard to just disengage the driveshaft and roll to a stop.
(We were in the volcano to clear out a demon infestation before they corrupted/destroyed a protective gate. Once we'd shielded the gate, we were actively interested in covering the shield with a few hundred meters of rock, so disabling the pump room was a helpful move during our exit.)
First few ideas off the top of my head:
clockwork golem
giant tank/drill (for exploring Kyber, perhaps?)
UMD HOMUCULI-ARMED JETPLANES! DOUBLE YES!
+2 to flight!
I think we might not want to go jet plane, but a ducted fan->airship is made of nothing but win. It won't even stick out in eberron. As for portable hole, that won't work with the ring-gate trick. Different plane of existence. But as you said, that's planning for the future.
Man, now I'm itching to play an artificer.
If I ever get to, he's going to decimate the entire world searching for Axles.
Is your character named cid? If not, a hd-advanced homunculus named cid and an airship are in order!
After all, you can use any gear ratio you want.
That's not true - the gear ratio is still limited by the strength of the materials and structure you use, since if it becomes easier to tear the mechanism apart than it is to turn the gears, it will tear the mechanism apart.
(you still need to find a way to craft something from force, however)
Really dude, you have infinite electrical power at your hands. What can you NOT do?
He said provisionally that a tank or suit of armor would be okay, but that he wanted me to be more creative. I'm a little annoyed with the seemingly random restrictions, but since he's not usually random, I'm willing to chalk it up to the vagaries of IM communication.
Any more creative ideas that don't involve large vehicles?
What you need, is a Mech.
Complete with wands of magic missle, wands of fireball, scorching ray, and any other wands you want.
Make it either large size or the next size up (I forget what comes next) So you can fit into it. Key it to workfor only you, or an artificer of a certain level (You)
Then proceed to go to town on monsters.
a) I would lose all access to the technology (and the point of the gift was for me to make something cool for myself), and
b) You could only ever make one, considering the device was one of only a handful made by Merrix d'Cannith, and the secret has been subsequently lost.
I think the clear answer to No AeroPlanez is to build a submarine, which has the distinct advantage of opening up an entirely new set of adventure options. Normally, this would be virtually impossible, but we have the technology.
Ready?
Please turn in your sourcebooks to page 105 of stormwrack. There you will find the diving bell, which will cost you a tiny 4k. We only need the bell, after all. We have propulsion. We also have a good bit more space to work with than we should, thanks to your portable hole.
We'll need a way to shore it up so it can deal with truly ridiculous amounts of pressure. There's plenty of ways, but let's stay in this book, and avoid any serious costs if we can.
Take a look at the spell transformation of the deep. It doesn't specify typing limitations on what we can cast it on, just that we only get one subject per three levels. That's probably only 3-4 subjects. That doesn't seem to useful, until you wrap your diving bell in living coral or a similar material and then cast it on the coral. If we use the living coral armor, which costs the same for most reasonable sized things, listed in the gear section this will cost about 16k. You can probably get it cheaper, however, or just animate the diving bell if you're determined enough. Voila! Unlimited depth diving for Caster-Level Hours, and now we just need to rig up our apparatus for propulsion, which is your job, Sir Artificer.
The general options I'm seeing so far are:
1. Motive power, aka a vehicle of some kind. Our party already has charter of a rather nice airship for most of what we need, but a siege engine or submersible would be feasible.
2. Running machinery. Factory for free, money galore, etc. The other players tend to be combat-oriented, so something that mundane would have trouble flying in this group (and yes, I know I'm in the wrong group).
3. Making a "gadget" of some kind. The big problem here is that most existing gadgets require Craft Construct. In addition, the cube is ten inches on a side, making it useless for anything smaller than about Small-sized. This is where I think the DM was expecting me to go, and from mecha-armor to a gatling-gun crossbow, to automating my entire laboratory (cup of tea? just pull the lever!), there's a lot of possibilities there.
Combat oriented is fine and good but don't rule out the factory because of it. You can just hire or make (via a homunculus) an overseer for the factory. We're not talking massive income. You don't want anything disruptive. But it'd be nice to come back from a dungeon knowing that you won't have to eat your profits fixing broken gear. Further, there are Things And Stuff that an artificer needs to function, particularly if you want to really use infusions readily, and this might be a nice way to keep in supply for those without completely blowing away your wealth level. Finally, a factory is a great way to get standing in house cannith, particularly if you very very carefully disguise its power-source. Standing is good, particularly when you can parley mechanical advantage into social advantage.
Even a barbarian appreciates nice things, especially if they're nice things that can cut people.
Final note about ring-gates:
Portable Holes dodge their weight requirements all together. It's a great way to make money.
I think the real problem will be finding a material that can deal with that torque, perhaps a sculpt spell wall of force (blades of force?)
Great idea on the immovable rods! The Axle is a major artifact, so it'll probably break even them if we use them to stop it, but they make a perfect mounting.
As far as a force mounting, it'd require DM houseruling. There's no reason a caster couldn't cook up either a custom feat or spell well within the rules, but it would likely have to be homebrewed. If I was the DM, I'd do it with a combination of force spells, Sculpt Spell, Craft checks, and Permanency, but since I'm unlikely to need anything beyond adamantine, the discussion's likely irrelevant.
Theft? The greater good demands that I use your loot to kill evil men.
Property Damage? The greater good brooks no hesitation!
Freshly made city gates? The great good demands immediate evac!
Mysterious new traffic patterns? The greater good cannot tolerate situations involving non-deterministic flow!
Force objects would be nice because they'd allow us to provide unlimited directed torque. Funny what that does in cases of soft body collisions. The reasons I am no longer a physics major are only partly related to academic pursuits.
Repead ad infinitum for your clockwork monstrosities.
Something else I'd advocate is making it impossible for anyone else to get into the room with the Axle. I'm not just talking sealing physical access off, but sealing off teleport access as well (Halaster's Teleport Cage would do nicely)
Then you can keep connecting things via the ring gate works, which would be stored at a separate location, but nobody would actually be able to get at the axle.
Even then, it will be quite pricey to use riverine for things, but it should be worth it in the few cases where we'll want it.
Kerrus's idea is also marvelous. Can force ladders be moved? Most force stuffs are immovable. If we can do the large gears with that spell, which I'm naming Kerrus's Mobius Ladder, Riverine will let us do the fine gearing and the actual device, giving us basically unlimited directed force. Jesus.
Now, normally this would make a straight ladder of force, but I wouldn't see it outside the realm of possibility to 'research' into making a ladder of force that circularly connects with itself. One permanency and you've got an indestructable gear.
You cannot persist the Force Ladder spell, and it is immobile, so making a version that could function as a gear would be significantly more powerful. However, the proper version of the spell could prove useful if you are building a wheeled vehicle, as it would let you summon 60 feet of rack-type railway track of infinite strength and inertia. That would make it significantly easier for a correctly designed vehicle to cross difficult terrain, or to unbog itself.
it will speed up the game greatly as well
:D
a) Im sure you can find a more powerful use than anything a 10th level artificer could craft. i mean, this is ****ing INFINITE force.
b) making a mech suit/venichle/whatever is MUCH cooler than anything a level 10 artificer can craft.
:D
a) The campaign's only going to last another month or two, so we're going pretty fast, and
b) We're relatively optimized (lvl 9 party tearing through CR 14's in a few rounds each), so each level lasts only two sessions or so, meaning a I'd never have time to spend the huge surfeit of xp before leveling and losing it.
Passing some ideas on the my DM today, will report what he thinks.
Besides, you're wrong about the exp being better, since crafting items still requires expensive raw materials that he may never have. Bear in mind that every single exp point you want to spend on crafting means 25 gold you have to dig up from somewhere. If we were talking about a nice legacy item (oxymoron, I know) or a really nice relic that no one could use immediately, I'd be yelling retain essence. But we're not. I'm afraid rule of cool and the short length of the remaining portion of the campaign demands that we not retain essence the artifact.
*contradicting carnivore
(Friends visit the next day)
"Hey, where's the Gearhead?"
"No idea, he was chattering about all the extra essence he was going to get off this gear and rubbing his hands like a maniac. Seemed to think he'd struck a motherlode."
"Isn't that his clothes on the ground next to the workbench?"
"Dude~! Was it me or did that gear-thing just burp?!?"
==Aelryinth
Yeah, I can see an Artificer taking an artifact to his shop to Retain Essence on it.
(Friends visit the next day)
"Hey, where's the Gearhead?"
"No idea, he was chattering about all the extra essence he was going to get off this gear and rubbing his hands like a maniac. Seemed to think he'd struck a motherlode."
"Isn't that his clothes on the ground next to the workbench?"
"Dude~! Was it me or did that gear-thing just burp?!?"
==Aelryinth
Massive LULZ for this.
Have a cookie
Massive LULZ for this.
Have a cookie
+2
That's not true - the gear ratio is still limited by the strength of the materials and structure you use, since if it becomes easier to tear the mechanism apart than it is to turn the gears, it will tear the mechanism apart.
Sorry to bring this back up...
Speaking as an engineer: you could definitely have any gear ratio that you wanted even if you were making it out of wood or wax, you'll need a gear train to accomplish especially high ones though. It just depends on the force your creating and depending on how fast you're spinning your gears they could be liable to fall apart.
If you could expand on that a little more, I'd be grateful, since my 'fu has clearly grown weak