Okay, so the Dragonball reference I referred to in my last post was:
‘Uh, I’m not really sure. Haven’t had it measured in a while, you know. It’s got to be over nine thousand by now.’
And here’s the scene on YouTube for those who haven’t a clue why it’s a Dragonball reference.
But, I was thinking about this over the last couple of days, and I thought, ‘What would a nine-thousand capacity get you?’ Is it really god-like? (Plus, doing a whole post to reply to myself seems silly.)
Answer: no. Well, a bit.
Believe it or not, I don’t make this stuff up. Obviously, it’s all made up, but there are rules. I know exactly how many Tammys (that’s the correct spelling) every spell takes, and so I can say with certainty which spells any of the characters can handle. And I can give you an idea of what capacity 9000 actually gets you.
- Fire Blast rank 1,200. Sounds really awesome, but it’s not exactly nuclear. It works out very nicely to a blast equivalent to 5 one of TNT. That’s a bit less than half the nominal yield of the GBU-43B (aka MOAB, Mother Of All Bombs), the most powerful conventional weapon in the US arsenal (11 tons of TNT).
- Armageddon rank 351. This works out as rather more impressive due to the scaling factor. Rank 24 could rain lasery death down on the entire surface of the Shinden. You’d need rank 25 to cover the Earth. Rank 351 covers an area with a radius of about 5×10105 metres. That’s larger than the observable universe…
- Weather Control rank 96. Weather Control has different area scaling (because reasons). As such, this only gives you a 9.6 mile (15.4 km) radius; barely even a big storm.
- Magic Burst rank 289. That’s Nava’s current Magic Burst, not the original one. That works out about 576 lbs of TNT, but the damage dispersion from Magic Burst isn’t the same as Fire Blast, making this a little more effective as you get further from the blast centre.
- Armour rank 817. Sounds a lot. It’ll stop a shell from a Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle or an M72A2 LAW without trouble, and no small arms round will touch it. A Javelin anti-tank missile, however, will rip through it 99% of the time and almost certainly kill whoever it’s protecting.
For the record, the lowest complexity spell seen in the books is the Umbrella cantrip (1 Tammy; anyone able to work magic can use it). The most complex spell is hard to define since the rank concept is open-ended. Active Recovery rank 3 is 243 Tammys (and rank 5 is 438; to be featured at a later date). The ‘base’ cost of Force Dome is kind of high; Class 3, Rank 1 Force Dome is 338 Tammys, and that’s what Nava used in The Aquaria Incident. There’s a spell coming up which will take the record for highest complexity by a mile at 2,242 Tammys. That’s the flat complexity, no ranks or anything. However, if I reveal much about it, it’ll spoil things, so you’ll just have to wait and find out what needs all that oomph.
Hope this has been informative. Back to getting Nava & Co. in trouble.
Witches and Ray-Guns 
And that was only the beginning. Let’s not forget that, by the end of that arc, Goku was up to a million.
And that, as they say, was not even his final form.
I have honestly never watched a single ‘Dragonball’ show, but it is the epitome of power creep, so I can imagine. One of the reasons I use a rules system for this stuff is to limit that kind of thing. Nava isn’t going to break 1,000. Mysara, a goddess, uses a different magic system, but even there she’s not 1,000,000! powerful. I think it only works in shonen stuff because OP is the default setting.
Honestly after a while they stoped mentionong powerlevels for the most part. They were cool as a tangeble indicator of strenght in the beginnen of the show, but later on the nummers became outragiously hight/ meaningless.
Gr Cloak
I imagine the upper limit would be the channeling and control part of the mage. It’s like overclocking your CPU. Increasing the voltage only works to a point where you get smoking ruin in place of an expensive chip. Numbers that high would probably be like trying to overclock by sending a 100 volts into the processor. Your head might literally explode.
Not an inaccurate analogy. Speed is also a factor. Try getting neurons to fire at too high a rate and all you get is saturated neurons.
I have no words to describe properly how happy I am that you are working on DH6. I’ve been thinking this was one my favorite series, I have since decided that was incorrect. This absolutely is my favorite series. I’ve read just about everything you’ve written, liked most of it a lot, but this one has them all beat.
So, Nava will not break 1000. Thats ok but i think Melissa will be disappointed as I suspect that means she won’t get to see Nava cast that class 5 rank something force dome that she indicated was just over 1000 Tammys. Oh well I was guessing that the 3rd shift would almost double her threshold and just about kill her. The 4th won’t add much but I was guessing somewhere in the low 900’s. Bet I’m wrong but hell it won’t be the first (or last) time.
This series just keeps getting better with each book and I like that you aren’t letting Nava get totally OP’d, hell she took a really bad hit in this one. I also love what you’re doing with the rest of the trio, ie Mel and Suki. They are coming along wonderfully. I cheered with the ‘new’ uniform. I also cheered when Suki realized that she wasn’t doing as well as she could be or even thought she was.
You have managed to keep the main characters real in this unreal world you’ve built.
And I really like that!
I think it’s obvious that Nava will get a third shift. I still haven’t decided about a fourth. I’d need to have a good plot justification for it happening, and there isn’t one in any of the story arcs I have in the works.
Nava and Suki are going to get some big changes in their future plans in book 6. Particularly for Suki, that’s going to affect what happens in book 7. And I still won’t be writing book 7 straight after book 6. 🙂
Excellent! Though I, of course, hope you will get to 7 quickly. To say nothing of 6. I’m a greedy bastard when reading really good stories.
I’m glad to hear that Nava and Suki will getting big changes….love big changes. I just hope you don’t leave out Mel, cause she’s great.
You know, I actually hope you find a good plot reason for the 4th. Just because that means I get more great story.
Told you I was a greedy bastard. Lol 😆
Waiting for DH6!
Oh! I totally forgot. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the call back on Zayden Hillan Berg. I absolutely love it when an author does that. I really wish that it happened a little more often but I’ll take what I can get.
It was a thing of beauty 😍
Zayden nearly got cut. Now I’m glad he didn’t. 🙂
Sigh….just a big fat sigh. I had to go and spell the name incorrectly.
It’s Monday right? Yeah that’s the problem, it’s Monday.
Ok, so I do have a question or 2. I’m trying to figure out how to ask them without potentially causing an issue. I’m wondering if you are being even more sneaky than usual.
Is there a specific reason that, other than Nava & Co, everyone else seems to be rather unsophisticated in the use of magic?
Courtney is a graduate of the school with a manipulation threshold of 170, yet when Kyle was taken there was no mention of trying to reach him via the long range telepathy spell. Which Nava, Mel and Suki were unaware of at that time point in the story.
Nobu uses technology to contact Rhianna instead using the telepathy spell. As explained, the local (planetary) version isn’t too complex.
I could mention other points in the different books.
The
Am I seeing a conspiracy where there isn’t one?
So I almost expect this post to disappear. If I am correct you’re going to be at this series for a while because, man do you have fodder for lots of story.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought about Telepathy to contact Kyle. Not going to lie. However, I can happily justify it using some form of scrying screen, which would have been employed because they were supposed to be hidden.
I can also justify it based purely on knowledge-at-the-time. Courtney is unlikely to know it’s possible; she was combat stream and, even if she had more interest in support spells than most, her electives tended to focus on combat. Nava and Melissa hadn’t covered communications magic by the time of the Beherbergen incident.
Nobuyuki uses technology to contact Rhianna because it’s easier to do it that way. His capacity is 190, by the way, so he’s quite capable of handling Telepathy, though it’s not one of his extensive list of memorised spells. (Rhianna has Telepathy 2 memorised.)
And all that being said, there’s no conspiracy, as such. There is a lack of sophistication in the use of magic in the military, especially the marines, because they don’t trust it that much and haven’t developed it. There are moves to change this, but it’s an uphill struggle. Some commercial applications of magic, especially illusion magic, are pretty sophisticated. The public only really knows as much about what magic can do as commercial entities provide as a service or whatever, so they aren’t much better.
Most magicians use a ketcom to talk to their friends, even if they know about Telepathy and can cast it. It’s easy and convenient, and less intrusive. Think about how annoying getting a phone call when you don’t want it is. Now imagine that someone can talk straight into your head whenever they want. (It’s lucky that cold calling isn’t possible. Can you imagine how much magic would be hated if you could get junk telepathic calls!)
Hope that’s helpful.
This is exceptionally helpful thank you. I hadn’t realized it but I actually was referring to the military application of magic. Your point is well made, actually in the story and my dumb ass missed it. I suppose the reason I was thinking telepathy instead of technology in that case was for security reasons. No way of intercepting the message.
Damn, was almost hoping for the conspiracy. 😆
Cold call telepathic contact….brrrrr! Don’t even! 🥶🥶🥶
Thank you 😊
So, my mind stays active especially when the story is good. It occurs to me to wonder if or when one of the others is going to have a threshold shift? Wouldn’t that be cool? I hope it’s Melissa. Why? Because I think she is going to realize what we’ve already seen. She is made to be a Combat Support Specialist, not a Support magician. She walks, without hesitation, into battle beside marines to keep them alive and in 1 piece. I can see her suddenly working hard to push her abilities, maybe pushing hard enough to shift? They now know that normal humans can have a threshold shift, wonder if that knowledge can figure into having it happen? 🤔
Yeah, sometimes my mind just wonders off into a world of its own.
I love how you’ve made these characters in a way that I can identify with, in some ways much like real people. They are growing…not too fast. They are learning as we are. Suki is not happy with herself, she has realized that she is not as good as she thought. Nor is she as good as she should be. I don’t recall you doing this before with your characters. Perhaps you have and I just missed it. I’m over 60, so I keep missing things.
Can’t wait for the next one, I love trying to guess where you will take them next.
I won’t say I haven’t considered having someone else go through a shift. And Melissa is a prime candidate owing partially to the system I use for describing spells. It’s a lot easier to blow things up then defend, so Suki can grow a little and have fearsome assault powers, but Mel needs considerably more power to create impenetrable Force Walls.
Whether I will actually do it is another matter. It seems like a kind of cheap way of powering her up. If I can come up with an interesting way to have any of them go through a shift, I’ll be more likely to do it than otherwise. We’ll see.
Cool! Is it really a cheap way though? If it hurts her as much as it does Nava? Ouch not sure I’d call that cheap, but I understand what you mean. Maybe you’re right, after all, you’re already doing it to Nava. I understand not wanting to over use a “gimmick”. So I’ll wait to see if you find that interesting way.
I love it when I get surprised 😮.
I keep rubbing my hands together in anticipation. I need to stop before I grind the skin off. 😆 🤣 😂
Wait…..
Don’t read anything into that please.
Just watched a YouTube video of one of my favorite bands. It’s an all Japanese girl band called BandMaid. They all dress in different styles of Japanese maid outfits. My favorite is the bass player, she dresses in an all black maid outfit. She is referred to as the assassin maid. Every time I see her now I think of Carina when she asked them to get her goth maid outfit. 😳
How are things across the pond?
I know BandMaid. YouTube recommends various Japanese bands to me from time to time, and they’ve come up. Not bad. I’ll keep an eye out for the drummer next time they come up.
I have an aweful lot of stuff in my playlists I can’t understand without subtitles.
Over here, it’s spring. So, it’s raining a lot.
I’m in Florida USA, it seems like it can’t make up its mind if it’s spring or not.
I read a lot. According to the Kindle app. I have read 95 titles so far in 2022. Most of them are on Kindle Unlimited because I live on a very fixed income. I’m 63 and was forced to retire early due to arthritis. I live alone, well, me and my 3 rescue cats. My wife was taken by cancer 5 years ago. Not looking for pity here or anything, just some info on who you’re communicating with.
There are very few authors that I am willing to pay money and buy their books. You are one of them. You are, in fact, the odd one in the list. Why odd? Because I have read (purchased) just about everything you’ve written. What is off about that is that you have so many that I thought would be good. Were they? Well, mostly, there were a couple that just didn’t click with me (Ultrahumans) But thats to be expected and I would consider normal. Another author I like took YEARS to finish a series and has written a ton of stuff, only that series interested me. There are several other author that are the same way for me. I consider this normal. So, that you have written so much that I like sets you apart from the rest.
I loved Anika Jansen. Loved Thaumautology. The magical misfits, , fox meridian, and the list goes on. There is something about this one that really clicks with me. I just can’t get enough of Death’s Handmaiden.
So, thank you for writing so many great stories that I have enjoyed so much. Do I wish you were on Kindle Unlimited? Sure, but you’re not and that’s just the way life rolls sometime.
Long time no speak! Been too busy with educating teens to write much, but I’m still reading your stuff (and found myself re-reading some of the old CoH fic!) Recently went through all of Death’s Handmaiden and now re-reading the Misfits books. From one Ward to another!
Why do I imagine you have some GURPS style rulebook for the DH series kicking about for these spell stats?
Keep writing the good stuff – Z
Hey! Nice to see you here again.
The reason it seems like I have a GURPS-style rulebook for the DH stuff is that I use GURPS to model the characters. 🙂 The spell list for Death’s Handmaiden is long enough that I had to divide it up into sections so I could find things easier.
Definitely a neat way to do it. Never quite had the head for doing that with my own characters. Hope the writing and life in general is going well, I’ve certainly been enjoying it (The Empress’ Mage especially, love that book.)
Well, I’m getting old, but aside from that, I guess it’s all going okay. 🙂