Damian Magecraft wrote:gonna have to spell this one out for me I am not seeing it
It's nothing world-shattering, but, as I said in my initial post here:
If it's caster's choice, then you could create 50 lbs of skin, which could be tanned. Or 50 lbs of meat, which could be eaten. Or 50 lbs of organs, which could be eaten... or, if you can choose the species of flesh, could be used as spell components.
Of course, if you choose the species, that opens up a lot of doors, because you could run a fine eatery with this one spell stocking the smokehouse with everything from Aardvark to Zebra.
Arguably, you could even pick 50 lbs of MDC flesh, by picking a MDC species as the kind of flesh.My assumption is that you might create (or refer to) yet another house rule on the part of the MDC flesh bit, to prevent people from crafting MDC Leather/hide/meat armor.
So let's just look at the basic ability to be able to create any kind of SDC meat, for now.
Think for a moment what YOU would do if you had that kind of power today.
Personally, I'd become wealthy.
Kobe Beef costs about $300 per pound, and there is significant demand for it.
The demand would be even MORE if I could undercut Japan's Kobe ranchers by selling and equal product for only $200/lb.
Assuming that I'm only First Level, I could "only" make 50 lbs of Kobe Beef per casting (30 PPE), which would gross me $1,000.
And I could cast this up to 4x per day, for a total of $4,000 per day.
Over the course of a year, using this one spell alone, I could make about $1.46 million dollars.
And that's
without making any blood sacrifices, or borrowing other people's PPE, or otherwise really
trying.
Of course, this increase in available product would assuage some of the demand for the product, which would result in lowering the price.
Which would mean that the longer I did this, the less money I'd make.
It would also mean that I'd be putting a lot of Japanese out of business, because the non-magical means of creating that level of quality of product is quite time-consuming and expensive, and most likely they couldn't compete with my low prices.
It would also mean, in the long term, that I'd be putting a few normal ranchers out of business, simply by putting out large amounts of high-quality beef at more affordable prices. Some people who could afford it would upgrade, buying less lower-quality beefs in favor of my product.
Long term consequences would be impossible to predict, except that a significant number of businesses would go under, and a lot of people would be unemployed.
GRANTED, the sheer amount of beef in the world would mean that it might take a while for me to create drastic impact, so only real immediate consequence of me knowing this
one spell would be that I could earn well over a million dollars a year with little effort... but also remember that the above numbers are assuming that I'm not really trying hard, and that I'm only first level.
It wouldn't be tricky to boost those numbers by staggering amounts, even at first level... and I'd probably quickly level up, doubling my output at level 2, and so on.
Also remember that in this scenario, I'm the ONLY person on the planet that knows this spell, and that this planet has 7 billion people on it.
Neither of these will be the case in most Palladium settings.
In the world of Rifts, 50 lbs of beef (per level) goes a much longer way.
In beef-heavy America, the average person eats
67 lbs of beef per year.
And a first level mage who happens to know this spell can create 200 lbs per day, without trying.
On average, a single slaughtered cow from today's rather efficient beef industry nets
about 568 lbs of beef.
So one (level 1) mage, operating by himself, could effectively create more than a cow's worth of beef in 3 days.
A level 2 mage could do it in 1.5 days.
A level 3 mage could do it in 2 days.
A level 4 mage could do it in less than one day.
A rancher can do it in
1 to 1.5 years.
Yes, a rancher can raise multiple cows at once... but, again, I'm not talking about a mage who's really
trying.
Or, at least, I
haven't been talking about that.
Let's take a look, though, in case the implications haven't fully set in.
For one thing, the mage could operate on a ley line, which would allow him to draw 10 PPE per melee round (PFRPG 2 standards).
Every 3 melees, he could cast that spell.
Which means that in a single 8 hour work day (minus a half hour for lunch), a single first level mage could cast the spell roughly 600 times, creating about 30,000 lbs of beef.
Or, in more accessible terms, almost 53 cows worth.
In two 5-day work weeks, this
lone mage could create 530 cows worth of beef. At first level.
A single 10th level mage, for perspective, could create 530 cows worth of beef in a single day.
Of course, all of this beef has to come from
somewhere. From stone, precisely.
Which could be a problem in areas without significant amounts of stone... but I'm not sure where those would be.
In any area where mining or tunneling is required, this "cost" would be a benefit, because you could do double-duty by magically removing stone at the same time you're creating beef- earning two paychecks at once. Simultaneously earning the mage more money, and putting more laborers out of work.
Now think for a bit on the sheer number of mages on Rifts Earth, or on Palladium, and ask yourself: how many ranchers would actually be able to make a good living (outside of CS territory or similar places)?
And it's not just beef. It's any kind of meat.
Anything from Aardvark to Zebra.
. If your character has any issues with certain types of meat, it is up to them (or their Church) to decide whether to include 'mystical meat' in their list of prohibited foods or risk eating it anyway.
