The Power of SCIENCE

[Synthesse]

So an idea I have for a character type is a supernaturally powered scientist. A bizarre combination, I know. However, do you guys have any suggestions for how science would interact with magic in the following circumstances?

Evocation: The Elements
Obviously a scientist is going to have a more grounded view about how the elements work in the universe, and thus would draw his evocation ability from that. In the book, it gives examples of characters coming from different backgrounds using different element systems. How would you guys make this work? I suppose if you wanted to take element literally, you could divide the periodic table into parts (eg Radioactive metals, other metals, Anion-makers, Cation-makers, and noble gases?). Or perhaps, since you are looking at the smallest building blocks, go down to a theoretical physics level (eg Quarks, Leptons, Gravitons, Photons, and gluon/W and Z bosons?).

True Believer
I assume this is able to be flavor-changed to accomodate a belief in science? Even though the example is religious, I assume this is a 'belief in whatever', not a 'belief in god' (eg when Harry is able to channel power through his pentacle necklace through his belief in the order of magic).

Hexing
Obviously this scientist, in order to do his research, works with very fine equipment. How would you guys handle a supernatural ability that made it so a person is immune to accidental hexing? It seems a little tough to cost that at -1 refresh... Are there other options? Would exchanging the ability to hex on purpose with the accidental hexing be a fair trade, balance wise? Although now that I think about it, the book talks about how hexing relies on belief maybesorta? It wasn't really clear to me.

Thoughts?

[Lanodantheon]

If you're going to give him magic, use one of the aspects that has served me well: I Can't Find "Mana" On The Periodic Table

True Believer in Science would work just fine IMHO because Harry continually refers to it as a religion.

In game, accidental hexing is just a compel of your high concept. In fluff, you could say that he has really good concentration and then couple it with an aspect and/or even a stunt that prevents it. The "Murphionic Field" that surrounds Wizards to me is meant to reign in on Technomages and make Wizards more magicky. At the end of the day though it's up to the inerpretation of the Dresdenverse of your GM. If I were running I would okay the co9ncept if you agreed for emotional moments to kill your equipment.

But, Accidental hexing is only really an issue for full-blown spellcasters. If he were a True Believer, it wouldn't matter and minor talents wouldn't have it nearly as bad but once in a while Murphy's Law would have to bite you. That's the nature of Dresdenverse magic.

[John Galt]

Elements wise I'd break it into:
Gravity
Electromagnetism
Entropy
Quantum

I'll post examples tonight if you want

[Bruce Coulson]

Depends on the science; certain abstruse mathematics require more chalk and paper than instruments.  If he's a college researcher, perhaps he leans on his grad students more than most?

[smoore]

Elements wise I'd break it into:
Gravity
Electromagnetism
Entropy
Quantum

I'll post examples tonight if you want

I'd say you really should use the 4 fundamental forces:

Electromagnetism:  Just about every interaction we see in life except gravity including all chemical reactions because they are really interactions between charged particles,

Gravity: interacts with all particles that have mass,  always attracts and never repels, can't be shielded against, absorbed or transformed,  effects large bodies because their charges are effectively neutral other wise electromagnetism is much stronger.

Strong Nuclear Force
  Holds quarks together. the strongest force but very very small range (inside atoms only)

Weak Nuclear Force
   radioactivity beta decay

I have no idea how you would manage to do anything with the last 2 because of the way they work. Obviously the real power would be doing all the things with gravity that you can't do, and electromagnetism. Maybe you could divide those 2 up into more elements and ignore the nuclear forces.

[luminos]

Evocation Elements:
There are lots of good suggestions in this thread, so I'm not sure what I have to add.  Just remember, in the Dresdenverse, the elements are important because of their symbolic associations more than anything else.  So the way he divides the elements will involve symbolically representing the way he sees the world working in different ways.

True Believer: 
SCIENCE! doesn't exactly fit into the mold of True Believer, because thats not really how science works.  Now, if he is a devoted empiricist, or has a heavy investment in some branch of the Philosophy of Science, then he could be considered a true believer.  Non-scientists won't make those distinctions, but if the character is a hard core scientist, he should be making those kinds of distinctions, and would be very careful to avoid associating the everyman's perception of what science is with some kind of faith.  Ultimately though, its a moot point unless you want to give him the True Believer powers of Bless this House and Guide My Hand.  If that is the case, you should ask why it is that his faith, even if it is justified as a faith, would grant those types of powers.  My answer: it wouldn't.

Hexing:
Hexing is a result of the fact that the person uses magic.  Getting rid of accidental hexing is not a balance issue, but a consistency issue.  Its just the way things work in the Dresdenverse.  You can't have one person immune to accidental hexing no matter how much refresh is paid.  The scientist can still do his work even with accidental hexing, depending on what it is.  Getting assistants to do all of the expensive machinery work would do the trick, while he deals with the conceptual aspects of the experiments.

[fabulator]

I think the suggestions for elements on here already are really good and that's what I'd go with. You're going to have to be a bit more creative, or know much more about science than I do, to come up with the 'reasonings' behind your 'spells'. I mean, Harry launches a jet of flame because he pours some will into his blasting rod and shouts a word in Latin; a science-mage is going to be pointing at a big group of atoms and telling them all to jump up and down really fast.  Once you get into forces like the strong and weak nuclear force I'm not sure how you can apply them to spell effects but if you can work it out, go for it. I can't see True Believer being right for this concept unless you want to make new powers to replace Bless This House and Guide My Hand and if you do, why be a True Believer? I think the fact that science is called a religion in the Dresdenverse is more due to an unreliable or biased narrator than anything else. as for the Hexing, I agree that the science-mage should still have some trouble with hexing sensitive equipment. A lot of his work can be theoretical in nature so he uses pencil, paper, chalk, chalkboards which should be fine. You could also give him an aspect or a a focus/enchanted item that helps with the problem. Maybe a Technology is my Friend aspect or an enchanted item that 'soaks up' a hit of hexing with each use of the item. Enchanted lab coat perhaps?  Dang, new character idea!

[wyvern]

For reference, I've got a PC in a game I'm running who is doing something pretty similar to this.  I let him buy Rituals, and base it off of his Scholarship skill instead of Lore.  Where a spellcaster might draw up a runed circle and focus their will on it, he builds some kind of fancy hyper-tech device.  The scope of this is fairly limited, as he's got to have some sort of at least pseudo-scientific explanation for how it works (which is why what he's got is rituals, not thaumaturgy) - in practical terms, he's going to be getting the most use out of his "enchanted item" slots, for things like electrolasers, etc.

An alternative is to go for a sponsored magic instead of straight-on wizardry; I remember someone a while back posted a scion of Hephaestus with a sponsored magic for what amounted to technowizardry.  Since it's not human magic, it doesn't suffer from accidental hexing.
(Footnote: There have been a number of discussions over whether or not purely sponsored magic triggers accidental hexing.  My ruling is that it does not, but some people have different opinions, and you'd need to run this past your gaming group to make sure they're ok with it.)

[finnmckool]

I'd let him resist accidentally frying equipment but only through discipline rolls (thus restraining himself). Harry tries to run a suppression spell in one of the books while he's on a TV show (it ultimately fails but that was due to some extreme social stress). But Harry's not particularly good at that sort of thing and he's not terribly motivated, more's the point, to be good at that sort of thing. To a person who believes deeply in SCIENCE! they may have found something that works somewhat, necessity after all being the yadda yadda yadda...

So bottom line, make him roll discipline and increase the target due to stress/susceptibillity of the equipment. And give him some minions.

[Malivotti]

Well just my $0.02, but check out Girl Genius by the Foglio's. Sure it's more Mad Science with Gaslamp but if you can't get a few ideas out of a quick read it's likely because you are 1) Out of breath from laughing to hard 2) Mopping out your keyboard/screen from laughing to hard.

BTW the capitals in your topic keep thinking that way when you play the character and you'll be fine. Every Wizard/Mad Scientist has to think in capitals when designing the Fiendish Thingy^tm.

Thaumaturgy could be the careful design/build approach, Evocation could be the frantic kitbash ala David Tennant's Doctor Who.     

[blues.soldier]

I wouldn't make the character *immune* to accidental hexing, but giving him an aspect like "Exceptional Focus" would be good to help him master the situations where emotion-hexing could occur. Depending on GM, an aspect like "Weak Murphyonic Field" that the PC could use for Declarations would be good too. I think the concept of hexing is too iconic for the Dresdenverse to remove entirely, but having a character who was better at controlling it than others could be a good PC hook.

On the other side of that, I'd also make sure I compel the ever lovin crap outta that PC if they ever try to deliberately hex something or use hexing to their advantage in some way. Gotta keep it balanced.

[CptCliff]

Just a thought about Science vs. Magic.  How about having technology work the opposite way for a specific character.  Being within so far of a computer will drain someone's ability to perform magical skills.  What really makes computers run anyway?  It sure seems to be some form of magic to most people, and programing the damn things is a form of evocation...

[ralexs1991]

For the "no-more-accidental-hexing" thing I think I would allow it in my game if you would come up with something equally inconviencing that that would be helpful like taking a crappy accpect or something would be enough for me

[exploding_brain]

Elements wise I'd break it into:
Gravity
Electromagnetism
Entropy
Quantum

I'll post examples tonight if you want

I'd say you really should use the 4 fundamental forces:

Electromagnetism:  Just about every interaction we see in life except gravity including all chemical reactions because they are really interactions between charged particles,

Gravity: interacts with all particles that have mass,  always attracts and never repels, can't be shielded against, absorbed or transformed,  effects large bodies because their charges are effectively neutral other wise electromagnetism is much stronger.

Strong Nuclear Force
  Holds quarks together. the strongest force but very very small range (inside atoms only)

Weak Nuclear Force
   radioactivity beta decay

I have no idea how you would manage to do anything with the last 2 because of the way they work. Obviously the real power would be doing all the things with gravity that you can't do, and electromagnetism. Maybe you could divide those 2 up into more elements and ignore the nuclear forces.

I tried to do something with EM, Gravity, Strong and Weak, but I couldn't figure out what to do with the last two.  Instead, I divided things up according to the disciplines of phyiscs.

- Classic Newtonian - Speed, Kinetic Energy, Potential Energy, Moving stuff around, brute force sorts of things
- Electromagnetic - Magnetism, Light, Veils, Hexing Electronics, (Working with Electronics?)
- Relativistic - Distorting time, Distorting space, Changing gravity, (Wormhole Teleportation?)
- Quantum - Probability, Mind magic, Sympathetic action at a distance, going insubstantial/phasing through walls, visiting "alternate universes" i.e. the Nevernever, unpredictable behavior in general
- Thermodynamic - Moving heat and cold, order and entropy, could move all the air to one side of a room, or separate two thoroughly mixed liquids,

Not sure where to put predictive magic in there, probably Quantum, but maybe Relativistic.  Clairvoyance is probably Quantum.

[exploding_brain]

Another approach might be to divide things up into more general scientific disciplines, such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Pure Math, Engineering, Etc.