Magical MagLev

[AstronaughtAndy]

Alright so I'm working on a swords and sorcery campaign setting thats going to be fairly high magic, and I'm looking for a bit of advice/input. One of the main methods of magical transportation will be sort of a magical MagLev but possibly without the rails. The idea is that you use some Earth magic to magnetically repulse the vehicle off the ground propel it. I want the drivers/operators of these vehicles to be a profession, so they will require said operator to use an Earth ritual whenever they want to use it.

So my thought is that to model this, its basically a very high Might check combined with an Athletics check. The Running the Game section lists a small car as Legendary to lift with great effort and suggests that Legendary +4 would be required to move easily with it. With that in mind, I'm thinking that 12 shifts for weight would be the smallest of these vehicles, with 18 wheeler and train car sized being in the 16 to 20 range. Athletics wise, I'm thinking that Fantastic is a decent speed; not necessarily faster than a person could go, but certainly faster than a person could go all day.

That being said, I realize we're looking at an 18 shift ritual minimum. The vehicles themselves might be very large focus items for the specific spell and give the driver complexity and control bonuses. The driver's would probably also have a Lore stunt to increase their effective Lore for this spell. Honestly, NPC driver's will just make it happen, but put flying boats and the PCs will want one.

So thoughts/feelings/opinions/wishes/hopes/dreams/questions/darkest desires?

[Tedronai]

If that's the way you want to go:

I wouldn't bother with the 'lift the train' shifts.  That's just part of the narrative methodology, not the mechanical effect, which is what you should be paying for.
I'd charge (shifts of effective athletics for desired distance travelled [this will be a large number for long trips; I imagine short layovers and driver swaps being commonplace on major long routes]) + (2*number of train 'cars' [each car representing one zone; I imagine that these 'cars' would be relatively smaller than those of actual modern trains, and that these trains would endeavor to fill each car or to separate it so that they would not be lugging dead weight]).

I do agree that treating the trains as 'focus items' for this spell is likely desirable, if not necessary.  I'd model them at somewhere around +2 control+Complexity.
That would put the minimum requirements for safely opperating such a vehicle at 3 Discipline (for the safe total control of 5), 4 Lore (to be able to use such a focus; though you might be able to get away with passing that requirement off to someone else who 'maintains' the vehicles)

[GryMor]

Zone+ drive or athletics 'for movement' replacement with a fixed duration. Primary factors on the complexity of the ritual are how many zones (aka, how many cars), the duration, and the most difficult portion of the prepared path.

If I were setting it up I'd personally do most of the work as infrastructure along the paths with the 'engineer' profession being a combination of piloting and dealing with outages and gaps, keeping the heavy lifting (engineer does all the work) case for full up airships/landships.

[Tedronai]

I wouldn't charge for duration (because going faster should not be cheaper).
I might charge difference on the time scale.

[AstronaughtAndy]

As far as the vehicles go and their value as focus items, the kingdom/guild/organization that uses it will be using their Lore to determine the strength.

I like just using zones for the vehicles themselves. So we'll do that. And then I think part of the ritual will be a maneuver to place an aspect like Flying Boat onto the vehicle which is then invoked to bypass most difficult terrain, although I see most of the larger/multicar vehicles almost exclusively riding leylines for maximum efficiency.

Tedronai, when you say "charge distance on time scale" do you mean comparing how long the journey would take via horse/walking on the time scale and the number of shifts to move it down the time scale and charging that number of shifts?

[Tedronai]

Tedronai, when you say "charge distance on time scale" do you mean comparing how long the journey would take via horse/walking on the time scale and the number of shifts to move it down the time scale and charging that number of shifts?

That is precisely what I mean, yes.
The faster the train moves -> the more the difference on the time scale -> the more shifts are required.

[AstronaughtAndy]

I like that. It reduces the need for me to know exact distances between places in the setting, and I often say, "It'll take x long to get there" rather than "it's x miles from there to here."

[Sanctaphrax]

I wouldn't charge for duration (because going faster should not be cheaper).
I might charge difference on the time scale.

I think he meant that if I spent 10 shifts on a ritual, I could move at Superb speed for 15 minutes, Good speed for an hour, etc.

Basically, you buy up speed and duration separately and travel at X speed for Y time.