So, this question has both a specific example, and a general question. I address both the specific case (the first two headings) and the general case (the rest of the answer). Unfortunately, the answer to the general case is there is no answer that applies generally. There is no one-size-fits-all, this-is-what-a-GM-should-always-do-for-every-situation answer to this question. Every response to unexpected effects has to be addressed on a case-by-case basis that is specific to the table, the characters, the game, and the plot. Ultimately, that's the only possible answer anyone can offer.
First, the spell explicitly bars you from doing that
This isnât an ex post facto houserule designed to fiat away your ingenuity; itâs literally just enforcing the existing rule that prevents this abuse.
Second, the cleric cannot summon orcas
The dolphin creature has specific stats, including a size and weight. It is somewhat generic, using the same stats for many related species, but ultimately what relates them is similarities in size, strength, behavior, and so on. The orca, though genetically a dolphin, is anomalous in most of those regards, being much larger. It is not appropriate to use the dolphin stats for an orca, nor is appropriate to treat the ability to summon a dolphin as the ability to summon an orca in particular.
Pathfinder, once again, explicitly says this. The orca is a separate creature from the dolphin, and the spell gets you a summoned version of the latter.
Third, adjudicating unforeseen, breaking uses of magic is one of the DMâs primary roles
Magic in 3.x is often vaguely defined and phenomenally powerful. It is common for magic to have unforeseen consequences, often greatly in excess of the expected power level for a given level. The DMâs judgment of such situations is often one of the most important reasons to have a human DM, rather than a computer that enforces the rules.
The DM should make these judgments almost always on a case-by-case basis, and the goal should be consistency and fun. Is dropping a dolphin, or a whale, or whatever, on someone âbad for the game?â I cannot tell you; itâs your game. The Pathfinder rules suggest that Paizo considered it bad for the game. 3.5 had the same rule, so Wizards of the Coast apparently felt the same way. But that doesnât mean it canât be a good thing for your game. Itâs a bit silly, a lot cruel, and potentially does way more damage than you should be capable of, but those things may not matter, or even may be good things for your game. That is up to your DM, who, if heâs doing things well, should be trying to make all of the players happy.
Everyone seems to have really gotten a kick out of the plan, be really amused by the idea. The DM quashing it may have seemed unfun. But I will point out that if this becomes a regular tactic, and youâre able to crush your opposition with it, that will possibly make the game even more unfun. It also may ruin the mood and tone, which may also make the game unfun. Or else the DM has to redo a lot of work, which is very unfun for him, plus it means that effort isnât going towards new things for you, which again reduces your fun.
So a DM has to make a judgment call on whether the problems an unforeseen interaction causes outweigh the enjoyment people get from it. This cannot be answered in a generic way, as every situation has different pros and cons. A DM definitely shouldnât ban all, or even most, unforeseen effects: thatâs what makes the game fun and interesting, and is a major source of reward for the players. To lose that would ruin the game. But eventually a line does need to be drawn, where the clever tactic, amusing though it is, is just not a good fit for the game.
Specific questions
Just for the sake of actually addressing each of your individual questions, despite their myriad false dichotomies. Please note that this is nothing like an exhaustive list of potential remedies! There are probably infinitely-many potential responses to these sorts of issues, all of them with their pros and cons and their situations where they are appropriate and their situations where they are horribly inappropriate. Which recourse is chosen depends on the group, the game, the characters, the situation, the work the DMâs already done, the things that have happened already within the game, and dozens of other factors that are impossible to list exhaustively.
- The GM can ban the spell.
- But then the players lose the intended functionality of the spell as well. If it's a particularly relied-upon spell (e.g. healing or resurrection) then the players are at a disadvantage for being creative.
A DM can, and should, ban a spell that cannot be used in a way except those that are bad for the game. In 3.x, there are quite a lot of those in my opinion, but thatâs for my game, not yours.
- And what about NPCs/enemies? Do they lose the spell? If not, the players are at a disadvanteage. If so, won't the NPCs be unbalanced due to losing a spell they relied on?
An NPC statted with a given spell can always be modified to use a different one. Banning a spell that has already appeared in the game is usually not a great idea unless you explicitly ret-con (which is, itself, an extreme choice to be avoided, but is nevertheless sometimes the right choice).
- The GM can (sometimes) make the act impractical. Using the above example, the GM can simply rule that the dolphins are small and weigh very little.
- But sometimes the GM doesn't have that kind of wiggle-room. If our cleric were, for example, to summon a horse then we'd expect it to be the size and weight of a regular ride-able horse. And other spells might be even more specific.
- If the GM does make a ruling, this exception to the normal rules could itself be exploited. E.g. if the GM decreed our summoned horse weighs very little ("and is now impractical to drop on enemies, ha!") but it takes up the same volume, wouldn't it be extremely buoyant? So we couldn't drop the horses on people, but we could (as an example) use them to run across water?
As it turns out, horses are rather good swimmers, and have often been used to cross water.
Anyway, these examples are poor; itâs hard to imagine situations where these would be a good solution. But you can easily come up with more reasonable examples. For instance, setting the specific species of dolphin that you can get with the spell, to bar orcas (which are, in reality, already barred but for the sake of argument), would work without much in the way of âside-effects.â
But even with good examples, DMs should be careful about making such changes, because yes, side-effects are possible. That doesnât mean they should or shouldnât make such changes, just that they should do it carefully.
- The GM can threaten alignment penalties, having allies forbid the act, etc.
- This isn't always an option. If the usage of the spell doesn't violate your alignment in any way other then being unusual then it would be unfair to penalize the player.
Of course itâs not always an option. There isnât any âone-size-fits-allâ answer to these sorts of questions; the solution has to be tailored to the problem. Sometimes, this is the best option. Other times, itâs a bad option, or even not an option.
- Similarly, if the spell defeats the evil dark lord, why would allies forbid it? A mildly nasty act (sacrificing a defenseless dolphin) is certainly preferable to risking the lives of the villagers.
The latter point is extremely specific to a given personâs point of view. There are a lot of people who do not believe, or even categorically deny, that the ends justify the means. Paladins, for an obvious example. Also, how mildly-nasty that sacrifice is depends a lot on point of view, too; as a celestial dolphin, in particular, has an intelligence score that puts it above that of animals (and dolphins, themselves, are on the relatively high end of animal intelligence in the first place), that makes it a lot more dubious to consider the sacrifice âmildlyâ nasty. And then there are druids and the like to consider, who might treat any animal as sacrosanct and untouchable.
- The GM can ban the use of the spell "in that particular way", or simply say "it doesn't work."
- This is a frustrating cop-out, and won't stop certain types of players from experimenting with what they can get away with.
I donât see that this option, as opposed to all the others, is specifically a cop-out. Particularly in this case, where itât literally already a part of the rules; thatâs not a cop-out at all.
That said, yes, there is a risk here. The DM should be aware of that, and weigh that against the problems that heâs trying to fix by doing so. There is no categorical answer here; sometimes, yes, he will have to go with the frustrating cop-out for the good of the broader game.
- E.g. if our cleric can't drop dolphins from 100m up, can he drop them from 10m? 5m? 1m? Can he summon dolphins on top of a battlement and then push them off?
The rules state that a dolphin has to be summoned into an actual body of water, of a size large enough for the dolphin to fit in. Seems a pretty fair, consistent, and reasonable rule to me.
Best Answer
1930
Air Transport: Not much civil aviation. but rapidly growing; the 1932 DC3 will revolutionize air travel. Military aviation branching into three fields: Bombers, Transports, and Fighters; scout planes also used. Airships (Zeppelins, mostly) provide commercial long distance air travel.
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/passenger_xperience/Tran2.htm
http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/aircraft-1930-1939.asp
Cars: Stock cars tended to peak at about 50 MPH. Most were still open wheel, many open cockpit, but that was changing rapidly. Horseless carriages, however, where pretty much gone. The interstate system is still 25 years off, tho' it's being pushed for. The US Numbered Highways system is young. Most urban roads not yet cement nor asphalt; fit stone and brick typical. Unpaved roads quite common
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Highway has list of the 1925 US numbered highways.
Telephones: Direct dial not yet implemented in most areas, but rapidly being adopted. No long-distance networks for home phones in most areas, and where implemented, not universal access. Typical call involved picking up handset, cranking the handle to get the operator, requesting switch and line, and waiting for the switch operator(s) to connect you. Candlestick phones starting to fall from use. Households typically did not have phones; most calls were business to business, or payphone to business. Payphones existed in many neighborhoods; where direct dial not implemented, the operator had to listen for the coin tones. Phone booths becoming fairly standard in cities.
Special dedicated phone systems called Police Call boxes in use in many major cities. Often, they have a direct line to an operator, and a light for officers to know to call in.
Computers & Electronic Logic: Mechanical tabulators used in some industrial and government applications. A general purpose programmable computer designed but not implemented. In short, a missed opportunity due to lack of foresight. Dedicated mechanical computers being built into warships for fire solutions.
The earliest semiconductors are being developed; 1925 sees the first semiconducting Transistor patented in Canada.
Most electronic logic functions use vacuum tubes. The standard tubes being the diode (one way flow) of 1904, triode (source, output and grid/control leads - the amount of power to the control determines the fraction of the source flowing to the output), and Tetrode (which is a more stable gate than a triode). Fuses and mechanical relays were also in use in some cases.
While the technology was in fact sufficient to build many more complex circuits, including radio squelch circuits and electronic calculators, actual design of these was still a decade or more away.
Telegraphy: Mostly hand-keyed, still, but moving to strip-output. Teletype also in use, uppercase and a few symbols, 5-bit ITA-1 Modified Baudot code used, often printing to strips. (A telegram often would be teletyped, then the strips glued onto the telegram pad.) ITA-2 code was just being released in 1930. All transmissions in uppercase. Radiotelegraphy and radioteletype both known and in military use. Early facsimile transmissions for news wire photographs. In 1930, 3 designs in competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioteletype
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax
Audio Recording: Wire-recording known, but expensive. It's heyday was 1940-1945 (after which, tape replaced it). Direct to disk cutting of phonographs typical; phonographs mostly discs, not cylinders. Audio tape about to be invented in Germany. Optical encoding of sound on film developed; sound quality poor, but easily edited. Radio extremely common for entertainment; serials on phonograph disk pretty much the norm for national programs. Local production of radioplays from scripts also fairly common.
Video Recording: Almost exclusively on film, tho' television could have been recorded on wire. Television known, but not common, in the cities. Sets large, screens small (10+ cu ft for a 5" screen), monocrome, and usually live broadcasts. Films in theaters, often dual use with both stage and screen. Most had an organ or piano, as well, for accompanying the silent films, and many also had an amplified phonograph for playing the accompaniment discs.
Printing: Short runs (<500 copies) typically done using mimeographs (ink forced through a cut stencil onto paper) or the relatively new spirit duplicator, aka ditto machine (wax-ink on back of a master partially disolved by an alcohol solvent and physically deposited on the target page). Optical transcription for mimeographs known but rare, and possible but not documented for ditto.
Offset printing fairly standard for long runs, as is intaglio printing.
Dime novels common, in the now standard pocket format. Comics are often sci-fi or action oriented; some pretty brutal. Many news magazines.
Film & Photo: Talking pictures available, silent films still being made, but no longer drawing large crowds.
Color photography using several different methods possible; the two commonly available in 1930 were tripack film (3 layers of film, each sensitized to one color), and bipack (which was good for flesh colors, but not full spectrum). A third, the screen method, involved a filter with 72 colored (Red, Green, Blue) stripes to the inch, and rendered by a similar color overlay on the resulting B&W film. Also, 3-camera processes also used. If you see early color films, the three camera process was the standard in Hollywood well into the 50's.
Kodachrome is still 6 years off... so decent color cinema also 5 years off.
Color offset printing works best from the three-camera (or 3-strip) process.
Early color cinematography using three-strip negatives was being experimented with, but was not very successful.
Trains: Most trains are steam reciprocating engines, still. Some steam turbine engines developed, but not common use. Electric rail used in some systems, and some turbine-electric engines used. Diesel-Electric still 5 years off.
Boats: Some coal-fired boilers still in use; most commercial now using oil-fired boilers. Turbine-Electric possible, but not typically used. Metal hulls common; smaller boats often wood hulled. This is the heyday of liners for transport. (In 20 years, transatlantic air travel collapses the industry, resulting in cruise lines replacing travel lines.)
Portable Power Sources: small loads, especially portable radios and flashlights, use disposable batteries. Rechargeable batteries in use have a high tendency to be lead-acid batteries, exemplified by automotive batteries.
Large loads generally are produced either by gasoline engine dynamos (DC) or alternators (AC).
Field Radio: the first man-pack field radios are in development. Police radio-cars have receivers only; they still use the call-boxes &/or payphones to call the station. Most commercial boats rely upon field radios; most military battalion and higher HQ's have portable radio transceivers. Almost all field radios powered by batteries.
Home Radio: By 1925, mains powered radio receivers were available. Tetrode radios were replacing Neutrodyne triode radios, as well, resulting in much cleaner radio signals. Most household radios are still battery powered, but not for long.
Word Processing: The manual typewriter with inked ribbon is the norm. Correction typically by erasure. Carbon paper common.
Most documents hand written.
Forms common; local forms often mimeographed. City and state forms often bound offset-printing; a carbon sheet needed for duplicates. Some forms use up to 8 sheets, requiring heavy pressure. Ball-end nibs can be used on carbon forms, but produce a blotchy top copy; pencils used frequently. Typically, carbon using forms typed, then the individual copies hand-signed.
Pens almost exclusively fountain pens. Various nib types, including a ball-end nib, commonly available.
Pencils include the standard wooden pencil (with or without eraser), carpenter's pencils, and the lead-holder (now typically considered a drafting tool). Some early screw-type mechanical pencils also used.
Photocopies: called photostats, they are literally a photograph of a document. Special notaries offered notarized photostats, doing the developing themselves to maintain chain of custody until bound and notarized.
Electricity: Typically AC, and only in urban areas. Gaslight replaced with electric lamps. Rural areas usually still using kerosene lanterns and candles. Electricity mostly used for lights, radios, and motor-appliances (especially washing wringers and agitators in washtubs).
The electric refrigerator is often commercially used, but only just becoming common in houses. Frozen foods rare. It's replacing the icebox (which placed a block of ice above an insulated chest).
Cooking: a variety of types of oven and range top exist.
Urban users tend to gas ovens burning natural gas and/or propane, and similar stove-tops. Electric stoves and ovens exist; they are just starting to make it into homes.
In rural areas, and poorer urban ones, wood and coal are used in iron stoves for cooking; some had oven compartments; if no oven compartment, a large lidded cookpot of cast iron, called a "Dutch Oven" was used. This author has personally seen a 1' deep, 2' wide, 3' long dutch oven used at camping events to bake turkeys...
Fine cookware is usually cast iron and/or copper. Tin and steel is also used.
Motorized electric mixers are available, as are blenders. Few foods are frozen; refrigeration is common, but not universal.
Buildings: the steel-frame stone-facade skyscraper is known. Elevators are available, but only common in tall (5+ stories) buildings. Handicapped accessibility is practically non-extant.
Medicine: Limited antibiotics, limited anesthesia, limited valid pharmacology. Surgery is common, and survivable. Germ theory well known. The flu still kills; polio is deadly. Sexual diseases known and preventable, but most not treatable.
What this all means for Magitech
To replicate with magic, locomotion will be essentially unchanged on the ground, save for how the power is generated. If cheap enough, magic heating for steam engines will be commonplace. If movement magics are cheap enough, the whole engine will cease to exist.
Airships will be more like naval vessels if magic exists which can lift them; otherwise, magic motors on zeppelins will result in indefinite range...
Cars will probably be much more evolved; horseless carriages will have been developed earlier, and aside from a lack of engine, the development is likely to be about 50-100 years ahead, simply due to lack of powerplant constraints.
Electricity can be replaced with stand-alone magic items, IF magic is cheap enough. If electricity can be reliably produced via magic in units the same size as dry cell batteries, most electronics will be magically powered. If magic can produce steady mechanical force, then portable dynamos will replace many battery applications. (Remembering that AC was chosen because of lower transmission losses; most actual uses of electricity are best with DC.)
Radio and TV may or may not be replaced by magic items, depending upon how magic transmissions happen. Films, however, are likely to still exist unless image recording magics are common and tamper-proof.
If illusions are photographable, expect modern level SFX in B&W movies.
Written communication is likely to still be pretty much the same, save that automatic transcription is likely to be much better than real 1930's...
Medicine will likely be about the same point, or perhaps worse. With healing magics, many diseases will be treated by magic instead of medicine, and most physical ailments as well, at least for those who can afford it.