Awakened engineer, engineering the imposible Options

[Badmoodguy88]

Consider this. What would a pistol from the year 2400 look like. A more clever design, for sure, but it would I think mostly be capitalizing on newer materials available. Stronger, more heat resistant, wonder materials. What would the gunsmiths of 2070 do with steel that is strong as diamond, radiates away heat like it was in a freezer, and weighed next to nothing. I am not all that sure, there is already and upper limit to what a human can handle firing, but I still thing much could be done. If I were a mage living in 2070 here is how I would make a wonder material.

Making a hard thing harder is easy enough.

Reinforce (Physical)
Type: P • Range: LOS • Duration: S • DV: (F ÷ 2) + 1
This spell increases the structural integrity of an object
no larger than caster’s Magic in square meters. Each hit increases
both the Armor and Structure rating by 1 for the duration
of the spell.

Reinforce quickened on armor is about all you would need to make a suit of magic armor. Reinforce cast on a gun would make a gun that is very resistant to damage, wear, and could probably be loaded with much heaver charges, or the gun could be made with less steel or of nontraditional softer materials.

For engineers in all sorts of fields finding ways to radiate away excess heat becomes the name of the game, especially for electronics where cumulative heat damage is often what eventually kills them.

Alter Temperature Type: P • Range: LOS (A) • Duration: S • DV: (F ÷ 2) + 1
--this could have a non area, touch version.
Alter Localized Temperature Type: P • Range:T • Duration: S • DV: (F ÷ 2) -3

As alter temperature raises or lowers temperature it might be combined with a detection spell at the time of its quickening, to regulate the temperature up or down to try to reach some ideal.
Thermographic vision may be appropriate enough, so might analyze device, which could provide information for and be tied into other spells cast on the device. Logically a simple detection spell to determine the temperature of a inanimate object probably already exists in the Shadowrun universe, it is just not that useful to shadowsrunners or anyone else.

The reasons this could be useful are many but for example, automatic guns need to vent away a lot of heat, but at the same time steal that has been heat treated becomes more brittle in cold temperatures. The higher the temperature the steel has been treated to the harder the steal is, and the more brittle it is in lower temperature. If alter temperature were simply used to endlessly lower the temperature of a gun, then when not in use it would eventually get extremely cold, and fairly brittle. When combined with reinforce the brittleness might not be an issue, but the ideal would still be for the gun to be heated or cooled to room temperature.

Making something weigh next to nothing is more tricky. In shadowrun of course you can not mess with gravity. Levitate for example does not remove gravity it just lifts an object up. The mass, and inertia of an object being lifted is unchanged. Think of heavy steel girder suspended on pulleys so that it can easily be pushed back and forth. To the pusher the girder effectively weighs nothing because he needs no effort to lift it, the pulleys have it already lifted, but the girder still has a lot of mass. It takes a lot of effort to get the girder moving backwards or forwards, and a lot of effort to stop it.

Levitate or some modified version of levitate could be used to constantly exert some force directionally, linked to a detection spell. The detection spell would be to locate earth, likely by searching for the larges astral object or some thing like that. The modified levitation spell would be constantly pushing away from the direction of earth found by the detection spell, with the goal of zeroing out the weight by balancing forces. The result in may ways would be more useful than something that simply weighs next to nothing. Something that has lots of inertia but is not hard to lug around could be very useful for both ranged and melee weapons.

Large amounts of mass helps cut down on recoil. Using tungsten weights (hard, high melting point, and denser than lead) a fairly small pistol could be very heavy and the recoil from the gun greatly reduced. Massive melee weapons could also be made. A super sledge comes to mind. Relatively easy to wield and striking with the force of several hundred pounds swung as fast as you can manage.

A levitation spell might also be used to create directional force in an item that is constantly meant to go in only one direction. Such as a car, or an axe, adding a little extra speed.
===============================================
I deliberately left out any in game bonuses this might give. In game you have to worry about game balance, which this could upset. I simply used this as a thought exercise. I think it started with thinking about how swords and sorcery style magical weapons and armor might be made in Shadowrun. As if Shadowrun mages had simply not rediscovered how to make such magic artifacts. That said I think that if magic existed an awakened engineer could probably make some crazy things. Things like endlessly combusting car engines and flying yachts.

The in game limitations to this (disregarding it not being an efficient use of karma) is the same for all quickened spells. Cost, magic attacks from astral, background count and so on. Still, Someone would do it, even if just for research/the heck of it.

I guess this is all fairly pink mohawk.