[gurps] Entombment spell question

[All Hail Discordia]

Hal wrote:
[snip]
> As for myself?  Prolonged use of the Bless Plant spell results in soil
> depletion in rapid order.  Doubling the yield of a crop results in the soil
> depleting twice as fast.  Using the Earth to Stone spell results in the
> creation of a stone that is effectly sandstone and pretty useless as a
> building material unless the spell caster uses the spell "Destroy Air" on
> the section of earth to be transformed.

Earth "dirt" is actually closer to shale than sand stone, unless you are 
casting your spell at the beach or in a desert.

 > This way, the newly transformed
> earth approximates more closely, the actual structure of granite or other
> such stone types.  Also, Create Stone is not capable of creating Marble in
> my game worlds ;)

Marble is metamorphosed Limestone so I can agree with you. However 
casting your spell on one of those, white "sand" beaches in the tropics 
would more accurately create limestone than sand stone. Calcium 
dissolved in cold water precipitates in warm water and makes those 
beaches nice and white.

Oxygen, carbon and nitrogen do get fixed into various minerals deposits 
anyway, so Destroy Air should be unnecessary except as a prerequisite.

More accurately the spell should read. Earth to Stone creates the 
sedimentary version of the base material. Sand -> Sand Stone, "Common 
dirt" -> Shale, and white "tropical sand" -> Limestone. Cast on a bucket 
of sea water -> rock salt.

Then if you want to transform them up the scale, say a "Sedimentary to 
Metamorphic" rock spell with some prerequisites from the Movement and 
Fire collages for "heat and pressure" Throw in Volcano and you get a 
"Create Igneous Rock"

> There are a lot of "fiddly bits" in GURPS MAGIC that can and are customized
> by various GMs.  The fun part is that many GMs strive to be self-consistent
> with themselves rather than necessarily conform to group consistency.  If
> you like the way you've ruled the spell to work, who cares what Brandon,
> Jeff, myself, or anyone else thinks ;)

Of course. :)