Ironwood Manikin?

[taalismn]

Okay....Mysteries of Magic: Heart of Magic introduced Create Magic Manikin for making Wooden Golems.
Now, Create Ironwood in Rifts allows one to make ordinary wood into MDC material, but the spell only works on simple items, and not complex wooden mechanisms, so casting Ironwood on an assembled manikin is out of the question...but what about an UNassembled manikin?
Either make the parts first, then cast Ironwood on each part, or convert the stock material first, then shape the maniken parts from the MDC wood...should be easy enough using tools of megadamage ceramics or plastics, since you can't use iron or steel tools, and I assume power tools are right out...but using magic blades or magic strength enhancers to cut MDC wood okay maybe?
The goal is to create an MDC wood Manikin.
Plausible?
Or too much damned work when you could just buy a Stone Golem?

[Glistam]

Sounds plausible.

[Library Ogre]

I'd say it sounds reasonable. And, TBH, I'd probably allow it on an assembled but non-enchanted mannikin... it's not like they're built with a complex set of pulleys and levers. They can easily be wooden joints in wooden limbs (and, of course, wearing adorable lederhosen, which is not MDC)

[filo_clarke]

I believe lederhosen is MDC.

Always.

[Library Ogre]

I believe lederhosen is MDC.

Always.

You obviously didn't read Triax 3, where they go into the various kinds of magical lederhosen and schnitzel.

[drewkitty ~..~]

I would say each GM would have to come to their own decision about if the proposed was tried, if it actually works for their games.

I can see a couple arguments about why the use of the Ironwood spell would not work with the C.M. Manikin spell. A negative interaction between the two magics and that the wood that has been effected by the ironwood spell is not wood anymore. (see the vamp. per ironwwood enchanted wood canon ruling).

Meh. *shrugs*

[eliakon]

Okay....Mysteries of Magic: Heart of Magic introduced Create Magic Manikin for making Wooden Golems.
Now, Create Ironwood in Rifts allows one to make ordinary wood into MDC material, but the spell only works on simple items, and not complex wooden mechanisms, so casting Ironwood on an assembled manikin is out of the question...but what about an UNassembled manikin?
Either make the parts first, then cast Ironwood on each part, or convert the stock material first, then shape the maniken parts from the MDC wood...should be easy enough using tools of megadamage ceramics or plastics, since you can't use iron or steel tools, and I assume power tools are right out...but using magic blades or magic strength enhancers to cut MDC wood okay maybe?
The goal is to create an MDC wood Manikin.
Plausible?
Or too much damned work when you could just buy a Stone Golem?

I would say
1) I would rule that Ironwood renders the wood unusable for the spell, just like it supposedly makes wood 'less wood like' for vampires and the like
but
2) I would also say that the 120SDC is 12MDC in Rifts just like a golem is an MDC in Rifts and SDC in PF
Edit. On rereading the spell I would say it should be 120 MDC on rifts. The thing is a golem (six HP drain and all) after all and I see no reason it should be treated any differently than any other golem when being converted from the SDC version of the spell to the MDC game line.
Edit 2
It should be a MDC golem. Figure it has about the same MDC ratio as the SDC ratio as the PF golems do to it.
What ever those are, if your interested for your game, you can run the numbers.

[taalismn]

I believe lederhosen is MDC.

Always.

You obviously didn't read Triax 3, where they go into the various kinds of magical lederhosen and schnitzel.

I may have missed that part after the expanded chapter on beer...

[13eowulf]

What about using wood from a Steel Tree to make one?

[eliakon]

What about using wood from a Steel Tree to make one?

I am pretty sure that Steel Tree's are not 'wood'.
You can't smelt wood or 'forge' it and all.
It may be an alien material, and it may grow in tree format... but it is still metal not wood
My 0.02cr.

[taalismn]

I'd considered the Steel Trees as a 'grown' material...but, yah, one is probably better off using it in a conventional manner to armor or frame a tech-bot or more laboriously constructed TW steampunk automaton.

[Shark_Force]

so, having reviewed the ironwood spell... i don't know how complicated this manikin is supposed to be, but i doubt it's too complicated for ironwood to work. i mean, ironwood explicitly works for armour. you gotta have all kinds of joints in armour. so i can't really see why it wouldn't work on an assembled manikin, provided you're just looking at essentially making a wooden doll somewhat like a marionette.

as long as they aren't clockwork machines or something, i think you'd be fine.

[drewkitty ~..~]

I do believe the two things I brought up are the things would cause the plan not to work. Not many differten parts. (That can be gotten around with time and multiple applications.)

However, with you mentioning armor….maybe applying a venier of wood changed by the ironwood spell to act as armor for the manikin would be a way to get around the two things that would block the use of the ironwood on the manikin as a whole. The armoring effect would not be all that great. But when in Rifts it would be MDC (*shrugs*…1D2 MDC…). Thus protected from casual harm from un-augmented mortals. But would still be toast if they were stomped by a FS Zent or Bot.

[Shark_Force]

I do believe the two things I brought up are the things would cause the plan not to work. Not many differten parts. (That can be gotten around with time and multiple applications.)

However, with you mentioning armor….maybe applying a venier of wood changed by the ironwood spell to act as armor for the manikin would be a way to get around the two things that would block the use of the ironwood on the manikin as a whole. The armoring effect would not be all that great. But when in Rifts it would be MDC (*shrugs*…1D2 MDC…). Thus protected from casual harm from un-augmented mortals. But would still be toast if they were stomped by a FS Zent or Bot.

again, i have to disagree here. look at some examples of RL armour (no really, just google "wood armour" or something like that, you'll see what i mean). there are *tons* of pieces all attached together in a variety of ways. same for most metal armours. to turn a rigid material into something wearable, you are talking about a lot of bits and pieces to provide anything like decent mobility and protection. but the ironwood spell *explicitly* can be used on wood armour.

it doesn't seem like it's about number of pieces. whatever "complexity" means (and i suspect it ultimately means "not an internal combustion engine" more or less), i rather doubt it means something anything like what i picture when i think "manikin". unless it involves a bunch of wooden gears and a wooden clockwork motor or something like that.

[eliakon]

The other consideration I would have as a GM is that I would be very leery of this.
The cost of a Manikin is rather low, so allowing this combination will allow rather easy production of MDC servitors.
If that will not be disruptive to your game, then by all means go right ahead and do it...
(for the record I would not allow this in my game in the first place as I would be ruling that the iron wood spell would 'mess up' the manikin spell, or any other wood based magic)

[13eowulf]

Couldnt you just put non-EBA MDC Body armour on them? I mean why go through all the Ironwood hastle?

[Shark_Force]

Couldnt you just put non-EBA MDC Body armour on them? I mean why go through all the Ironwood hastle?

indeed. in fact, since you can explicitly use ironwood to make MDC wooden armour, you can probably just give the manikin wood armour. i suppose there's the argument that you could stack it...

then again, i swear i can remember a relatively inexpensive splugorth "gun with legs" that has a basic AI and targeting system. again, i don't know what a manikin does... but is it worse than building up a small army of these guys?

[taalismn]

Magic community might not have the means to build tech-armor or robotic spider-guns, or the means to trade for them. But if they have the spells and materials, building manikin drones might seem awfully attractive.
Yeah, if you got automated FACTORIES in place, you can churn out technoweaponry faster and cheaper, but magic artificing tends to be more home industry.
Then again, technowizardry might emerge similar to WW2 Britain, where you had the larger armaments factories having dozens of subcontracting community workshops making components before assembly.

[Shark_Force]

Magic community might not have the means to build tech-armor or robotic spider-guns, or the means to trade for them. But if they have the spells and materials, building manikin drones might seem awfully attractive.
Yeah, if you got automated FACTORIES in place, you can churn out technoweaponry faster and cheaper, but magic artificing tends to be more home industry.
Then again, technowizardry might emerge similar to WW2 Britain, where you had the larger armaments factories having dozens of subcontracting community workshops making components before assembly.

i'm simply addressing the concern that ironwood manikins would (apparently - i still don't have access to the book in question) somehow unbalance things. if they would indeed unbalance things, i would say it is unlikely to be worse than some of the things that are already in the game.

if you prefer a more magic-oriented example, shifters can build up a fairly large number of minions that are probably quite frankly superior to an ironwood manikin, in a variety of ways (for example, i suspect these manikins cannot fly, turn invisible, cast spells, regenerate full health in minutes or hours, are not immune or likely even resistant to many if any damage types, probably aren't great at combat, most likely don't have easy ranged attacks, etc, while shifters can relatively easily summon and control a variety of creatures that can do any or all of those things).

likewise, in other magical communities, you might see relatively easy access to large numbers of less expensive (and therefore more expendable) and in many cases superior minions in the form of necromancy (zombies, mummies, animated dead, and bone magic) elementals (warlocks), energy constructs (nazca line magic or tattoo magic), or simply creatures summoned and controlled with regular invocation magic (which has spells that can allow you to summon and/or control all types of entities, minor supernatural beings, ghouls, worms of taut, possibly sea monsters, and a variety of beasts (potentially MDC) and lesser SDC creatures, as i recall).

with all of those things in the setting, i'm having a hard time feeling like a few manikins which probably aren't even that amazing whether they're MDC or not (and probably wouldn't even be that hard to supply with MDC armour regardless) are going to cause problems that don't already exist just because they're MDC instead of SDC (and need to wear MDC armour, which can be made with exactly the same spell you're proposing to enchant them with in the first place).

[eliakon]

Magic community might not have the means to build tech-armor or robotic spider-guns, or the means to trade for them. But if they have the spells and materials, building manikin drones might seem awfully attractive.
Yeah, if you got automated FACTORIES in place, you can churn out technoweaponry faster and cheaper, but magic artificing tends to be more home industry.
Then again, technowizardry might emerge similar to WW2 Britain, where you had the larger armaments factories having dozens of subcontracting community workshops making components before assembly.

i'm simply addressing the concern that ironwood manikins would (apparently - i still don't have access to the book in question) somehow unbalance things. if they would indeed unbalance things, i would say it is unlikely to be worse than some of the things that are already in the game.

if you prefer a more magic-oriented example, shifters can build up a fairly large number of minions that are probably quite frankly superior to an ironwood manikin, in a variety of ways (for example, i suspect these manikins cannot fly, turn invisible, cast spells, regenerate full health in minutes or hours, are not immune or likely even resistant to many if any damage types, probably aren't great at combat, most likely don't have easy ranged attacks, etc, while shifters can relatively easily summon and control a variety of creatures that can do any or all of those things).

likewise, in other magical communities, you might see relatively easy access to large numbers of less expensive (and therefore more expendable) and in many cases superior minions in the form of necromancy (zombies, mummies, animated dead, and bone magic) elementals (warlocks), energy constructs (nazca line magic or tattoo magic), or simply creatures summoned and controlled with regular invocation magic (which has spells that can allow you to summon and/or control all types of entities, minor supernatural beings, ghouls, worms of taut, possibly sea monsters, and a variety of beasts (potentially MDC) and lesser SDC creatures, as i recall).

with all of those things in the setting, i'm having a hard time feeling like a few manikins which probably aren't even that amazing whether they're MDC or not (and probably wouldn't even be that hard to supply with MDC armour regardless) are going to cause problems that don't already exist just because they're MDC instead of SDC (and need to wear MDC armour, which can be made with exactly the same spell you're proposing to enchant them with in the first place).

This entire thread though is predicated on the (to me) false supposition that for some bizarre reason a magical construct will remain SDC when virtually every other example of magic turns MDC. Especially since this is a kind of golem and every other golem becomes MDC... so the chances that this will stay SDC seem pretty darn remote.
On rereading the spell though I would say that it would probably just flat across get you a 120MDC Manikin per casting.

However, just out of completeness here I would say there are three problems with the arguments you pose.
1) this spell is a general invocation spell and thus is available to all forms of caster, and does not rely on rare or exotic specialist magic that is not avalaible to most casters,
2) This does not require the dangerous (and frankly evil) act of summoning and hoping that you can successfully enslave it. nor does it require the ethically questionable act of animating a dead body.
3) The argument that something can wear armor is never a justification for why that thing should be granted the same protection. After all humans can wear armor, so logically game balance is the same if we just grant all humans some MDC right?
Note that I would say none of these matter in this time. Just make your Manikin and revel in its already inherently MDC nature.

[taalismn]

[
Note that I would say none of these matter in this time. Just make your Manikin and revel in its already inherently MDC nature.

Chippedwell Manikins, armored in Chipwell, an Ironically Winning Combination......

[Shark_Force]

This entire thread though is predicated on the (to me) false supposition that for some bizarre reason a magical construct will remain SDC when virtually every other example of magic turns MDC. Especially since this is a kind of golem and every other golem becomes MDC... so the chances that this will stay SDC seem pretty darn remote.
On rereading the spell though I would say that it would probably just flat across get you a 120MDC Manikin per casting.

However, just out of completeness here I would say there are three problems with the arguments you pose.
1) this spell is a general invocation spell and thus is available to all forms of caster, and does not rely on rare or exotic specialist magic that is not avalaible to most casters,
2) This does not require the dangerous (and frankly evil) act of summoning and hoping that you can successfully enslave it. nor does it require the ethically questionable act of animating a dead body.
3) The argument that something can wear armor is never a justification for why that thing should be granted the same protection. After all humans can wear armor, so logically game balance is the same if we just grant all humans some MDC right?
Note that I would say none of these matter in this time. Just make your Manikin and revel in its already inherently MDC nature.

i thought the book included rifts conversions by default. guess i remembered wrong.

anyways...

1) not a balance concern. rarity is irrelevant for balance. you can play a T-man, or a nazca line walker, or a warlock, or whatever, regardless of rarity. it's already in the game, and while it may be rare in the setting, for a given group's game it is likely no more rare than someone wanting to play one provided it doesn't completely conflict with the campaign (rare in a CS campaign? sure. then again, in a CS campaign, access to skelebots may be available upon request, which isn't that different).
2) not a balance concern. evil or not, it's already in the game, as are non-good alignments. players are under no obligation to play a good alignment. additionally, i'm not convinced that animating corpses is inherently evil, though the creation of actual undead may or may not be... palladium is a bit unclear on that, really). that said, to address both 1 & 2 at the same time, here are some standard invocation magic spells that can give you (potentially) MDC minions without morally questionable spells: magic warrior, id alter ego, tame beast, phantom mount, realm of chaos, influence the beast.
3) MDC creatures can wear armour too. it is possible to play an armoured MDC creature in the game already (for example, a full conversion 'borg, straight out of the original book), so again... not a balance concern.

now, if you just want to run it differently, no problem. but i'm not really seeing the strength of the arguments, with the possible exception of your argument that it should be MDC already since the ironwood spell is intended to convert SDC wood to MDC wood, it should have no effect on wood that is already MDC (though i would disagree with the specific value you proposed; 120 MDC is more than an unaugmented iron golem, and more than an augmented stone golem. if i was going to throw out a value, maybe 20 or so MDC)

[eliakon]

This entire thread though is predicated on the (to me) false supposition that for some bizarre reason a magical construct will remain SDC when virtually every other example of magic turns MDC. Especially since this is a kind of golem and every other golem becomes MDC... so the chances that this will stay SDC seem pretty darn remote.
On rereading the spell though I would say that it would probably just flat across get you a 120MDC Manikin per casting.

However, just out of completeness here I would say there are three problems with the arguments you pose.
1) this spell is a general invocation spell and thus is available to all forms of caster, and does not rely on rare or exotic specialist magic that is not avalaible to most casters,
2) This does not require the dangerous (and frankly evil) act of summoning and hoping that you can successfully enslave it. nor does it require the ethically questionable act of animating a dead body.
3) The argument that something can wear armor is never a justification for why that thing should be granted the same protection. After all humans can wear armor, so logically game balance is the same if we just grant all humans some MDC right?
Note that I would say none of these matter in this time. Just make your Manikin and revel in its already inherently MDC nature.

i thought the book included rifts conversions by default. guess i remembered wrong.

anyways...

1) not a balance concern. rarity is irrelevant for balance. you can play a T-man, or a nazca line walker, or a warlock, or whatever, regardless of rarity. it's already in the game, and while it may be rare in the setting, for a given group's game it is likely no more rare than someone wanting to play one provided it doesn't completely conflict with the campaign (rare in a CS campaign? sure. then again, in a CS campaign, access to skelebots may be available upon request, which isn't that different).

Ummm
I don't think you get the argument in the slightest
What a PC can do with the blessing of the GM as an exotic character is utterly different than what is available to the average magical community.

2) not a balance concern. evil or not, it's already in the game, as are non-good alignments. players are under no obligation to play a good alignment. additionally, i'm not convinced that animating corpses is inherently evil, though the creation of actual undead may or may not be... palladium is a bit unclear on that, really). that said, to address both 1 & 2 at the same time, here are some standard invocation magic spells that can give you (potentially) MDC minions without morally questionable spells: magic warrior, id alter ego, tame beast, phantom mount, realm of chaos, influence the beast.

Again I you are missing the point
The point is that every one of the options you listed is only available to evil alignments.
That means that places like Lazlo can't use them.

3) MDC creatures can wear armour too. it is possible to play an armoured MDC creature in the game already (for example, a full conversion 'borg, straight out of the original book), so again... not a balance concern.

Again your missing the point
The claim was that since it can wear armor that it should just be allowed to be MDC itself.
That is a specious argument.

now, if you just want to run it differently, no problem. but i'm not really seeing the strength of the arguments,

My arguments are that claiming that just because you can use sift through 100+ books to find some rare and exotic ways to do something doesn't mean that they are evidence that it should automatically be a simple and easy task for anyone and everyone to do the exact same thing simply because they want to.

with the possible exception of your argument that it should be MDC already since the ironwood spell is intended to convert SDC wood to MDC wood, it should have no effect on wood that is already MDC (though i would disagree with the specific value you proposed; 120 MDC is more than an unaugmented iron golem, and more than an augmented stone golem. if i was going to throw out a value, maybe 20 or so MDC)

The exact SDC to MDC value is something that I have not really bothered to sit down and run the percentials for.
If I was really bored I could run the percentage values to see what the conversion rates for the other golems are to find out what the ballparks are and then apply that to the Manikin.
But frankly... its not my monkey and not my circus.
On that note though I have corrected my post to reflect this.

[Shark_Force]

- exotic? according to siege on tolkeen, pretty sure there were actually quite a large number of warlocks. they're not the least bit exotic. t-men can easily end up anywhere due to the splugorth's megaversal reach. nazcan line walkers are only exotic outside of their home area. and in any event, shifters are not the least bit exotic, but depending on pact can easily access all kinds of different magic.

- uhhh... actually, that second list i gave you isn't evil in the slightest. magic warrior and phantom mount are energy constructs like what nazcan line walkers make more or less. you could do evil things with them, but you can do evil things with just about anything. id alter ego could easily be used to gather information about an evil person by having their good-aligned copy tell good people all kinds of useful information. realm of chaos is another that is neither good nor evil; it transports you to an astral kingdom and populates that kingdom with the enemy (or enemies) of your enemy (or enemies) that you bring along with you. tame beast and influence beast are both spells that essentially grant you friend status with a wild animal or animal-intelligence creature. nothing remotely evil there. they're all completely 100% available to any standard invocation caster of any alignment that has access to them. you'll be fully accountable for what you do with them, of course, so if you use your magic warrior to mass murder children and harvest their PPE to create a magical plague, you'll have the same alignment as if you had done that yourself, but another ley line walker could just as easily use a magic warrior to try and stop you. places like lazlo could easily use these.

- the complaint was made that it would be too powerful to give them MDC. i was addressing that complaint. i don't know why you're getting so hung up on it. if you don't feel that it's a balance issue, then don't bother addressing the question of whether it's a balance issue. if you do feel that it's a balance issue, then this is a legitimate point to address it; this kind of thing is already in the game. you're not going to imbalance the game by making weaker versions of stuff that's already in it, so this is not a balance issue. if you feel it is somehow a thematic issue, then i would argue that a spell that transforms wood into MDC wood being used to transform enchanted wood into MDC wood is perfectly thematic. (though again, if the manikin was inherently MDC on rifts earth, the spell would indeed have no effect since the wood is already MDC in that case. though you could, of course, still create ironwood-enchanted armour just as you could for anything else).

- i gave you a list of stuff that isn't rare or exotic at all. stuff that is available using bog-standard invocation magic that is available to the bog-standard magic users found in the core book. in fact, 3 of the spells i listed that have no alignment-based hangups are available to any random shifter starting at level 2 (phantom mount, influence the beast, and tame beast), and arguably at least one more should probably be included because they're allowed any summoning spell other than weather summoning to be included in that list too (if phantom mount counts as a summoning spell to be included in the list, magic warrior probably should as well since it's basically the same thing except with a humanoid warrior instead of a horse-shaped mount).

[ShadowLogan]

...The goal is to create an MDC wood Manikin.
Plausible?
Or too much damned work when you could just buy a Stone Golem?

I don't have MoM:HoM so I cannot comment directly. However in general...

The Ironwood Spell (R:BoM pg145) description states "This spell transforms regular S.D.C wood ino Mega-Damage material". This would seem to restrict Ironwood from being cast onto the Manikin post creation. As I don't have MoM:HoM I don't know if a similar phrase might restrict it to being cast on "regular wood".

There is also precedent that it might convert to MDC automatically (Golem), but not necessarily at 1:1 (see Create Golem for Ex). However there is also precedent that it would not as the Rifts/PF2E spell versions are practically identical (and both are SDC) when you consider "Animate & Control Dead", "Create Zombie", "Create Mummy" which are derived from a former living creature (bones, corpses), unlike the "Create Golem" that uses clay as the basis (which wouldn't be considered a former living creature). This would seem to make a Manikin closer to the A&CD/CM/CZ than a CG in terms of end product IMHO with the information I have available.

What about using wood from a Steel Tree to make one?

I am pretty sure that Steel Tree's are not 'wood'.
You can't smelt wood or 'forge' it and all.
It may be an alien material, and it may grow in tree format... but it is still metal not wood
My 0.02cr.

Text in WB26 seems pretty clear that it is very dense wood/bark from a "natural, if extremely durable, tree from an unknown alien world" (WB26 DS pg77), text on pg77-82 and pg134-5.

That said I could see restricting/limiting it to the use of unforged Steeltree wood, which still requires MD attacks to cut the tree down, to get an MDC Wood Manikin