>a player tries to use their real-world knowledge to create

It's a fantasy world. There is no reason chemistry works the same way, or even exists.

They're trying to do something based on the periodic table? Tough luck, this world works on the classical greek elements, you just made a useless but expensive powder.

Trying to make penicillin? What the fuck is a bacterium? Life in this universe was literally created by the gods. Diseases are actually magical in origin, the way they were once believed, while herbal cures are based on symbolic magic to restore the wholeness of certain parts of the body.

If need be, establish these metaphysical rules up front, but if someone insists on being an arse feel free to pull it out of nowhere just to spite them.

>>52762818
No, that way's pretty good.

>>52762818
Have a reasonable conversation with them about the process of invention and the nature of powergaming? If they want to play a genius inventor and that's something that fits your setting, you can work out with them OOC what they can reasonably expect to accomplish during the game. (IE saying they can't invent a complete engine, but they can make great strides in many of the basic machine technologies at the time, improving mills and some architecture projects in the process)

>>52762818

Allow them to try because they don't have the proper tools, materials, or industrial base for it? That's one thing that always drives me nuts in those "modern human brings primatives the glories of technology" shit, is because half the time they wouldn't even have what they need to make the things they need to make the things to make what they are trying to make. Yes that was repetitive. Intentionally so.

>>52762818
Let them try. Then gently remind them that our current knowledge rests on armies of dead bodies of those who hard won our knowledge limb by fucking limb.

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Laugh at their silly attempts to metagame chemistry when there is no such thing as an atom in a fantasy world.

I mean assuming standard D&D/Pathfinder shit the various things in the material plane are combinations of elements and positive or negative energy in very exact and perfect balance.

Lightning isn't electrons due to disparate charges. It's the wrath of the gods.

>>52762859

This guy has the right of it.

>>52762818
Demonstrate in-game why these technologies didn't just spring up from nowhere historically.

If he goes to a village shopkeeper asking to buy sulfur, potassium nitrate, and carbon, the shopkeeper probably won't even know what that means. And if he manages to explain what these things are in medieval terms, what he'll get is something so lacking in chemical purity that it won't make a usable gun powder anyway.

Tell them they can create penicillin, then sideline them for four ingame years and have them roll nonstop to try and make a breakthrough while everyone else continues the adventure.

Make sure they pay up lots of gold for equipment and supplies too.

>>52762891
>rests on armies of dead bodies of those who hard won our knowledge limb by fucking limb.
then you send the zombie army after them

>>52762818
Which chemicals are reacting here to do what?

I usually make it very clear that while all of these things are probably possible somehow, the fundamental facts governing chemistry and physics are so scrambled in a fantasy setting that their experimentation can't rely on prior knowledge.

They're about as likely to produce gunpowder by mixing random herbs and limestone together as they are mixing charcoal and brimstone. They have to re-understand the underlying metaphysics of the setting, and the properties that things have. Once you have an explosive mixture, then sure, maybe you can find a strong material to act as a barrel, and something that can serve as a bullet, and then have a primitive cannon. But good luck getting that initial explosive mixture when you don't know shit about alchemy, or what anything does.

That mixture of charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur might be excellent for attracting ruin spirits though!

Eat the mould on bread to cure illness? It's poisonous, you dummy. Its fucking mould. Use it as a burnt offering and maybe you can appease the spirits haunting you with fever and coax them out into a properly prepared vessel.

You successfully invent a set of functioning lenses, and look very close at a sick persons blood. You are able to see the tiny, fanged demons shooting fire and consuming the vital energy in their blood with the naked eye! This is not the world you know.

>>52762818
Probably, but there's not a whole lot that beats a strong, firm "No."

>>52762935
And yet spells like shocking grasp are still affected by whether a target is wearing metal armor or not...

>>52763659
The lightning guy REALLY hates metal

>>52762846
That always struck me as being both really chesy and ass-pully, and something the people who made it would think is a really clever idea even though it's not.

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>>52763249
>You successfully invent a set of functioning lenses, and look very close at a sick persons blood. You are able to see the tiny, fanged demons shooting fire and consuming the vital energy in their blood with the naked eye! This is not the world you know.

I wouldn't even be mad

>>52762818

Player is using OOC knowledge in order for personal gain in a game designed around role-playing.

Unless he/she could justify their understanding of technology/mathematics/chemistry/physics with in-character examples, I wouldn't allow it to be played and I'd be having a side-conversation with the player about trying to game a system that really is just about group-collective-creation of a story.

Honestly, YOU are the game-master. Act like it.

>>52762818
>"Jeffrey, stop being a little shit."

Done.

>>52763249
>You are able to see the tiny, fanged demons shooting fire and consuming the vital energy in their blood with the naked eye!

>Fantasy vaccinations involve injecting tiny angels into the bloodstream
>This is why Paladins are immune to disease

>>52763204

Hydrogen Peroxide and Potassium Iodide create the foam, the gasoline they added creates the big boom

>>52762818
>roll int, oh look you failed

>>52762818
The rules can't cover those items, and more importantly in clashes with the tone.

>>52762818
>"You can't, retard"
Here, better

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>>52762818
"But anon, they already exist in the setting."

>>52764409
Bloodborne?

>>52762818
Metagaming

>>52762818
I talk to him OOC about his expectations and rest of the party's expectations about the game.

Then i remind him how long such research would take - you cannot roll INT and invent a gun instantly. And time is important - there's a lich on the loose and he tries to prohibit gay marriage.

>>52764568
Christ, that's the most perfectly passive-aggressive move to make on a group trying to pull this kind of thing.

>>52762818
Alchemy was fucking dangerous. even the most famous alchemists poisoned themselves or blew themselves up accidently. Early Chinese recipes for gun powder included warnings not make it because of how easily it could kill the alchemist. Let him make a few batches of whater and then have him roll some dex saves. Fail those dex saves then roll for force and fire damage. Roll up a new character. lesson learned.

>>52762973
just going to throw this out there but first writing of guns in Europe is from 1300 and and guns were know to European like 25 years before that. Guns became common among German free state around 1342, with the rest of German taking about 10 more years. The reason you do read much about there use in field battles of the 14th century is because European were very aware of the limits if the designs of the era. However they still loved them in a defense role in sieges, like say guarding gates.

Making a useful gun for a PC is likely well out of reach. Making gunpowder for a petard on the other is very doable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbdrJeTlVIE

Why are you telling him he can't in the first place? While I have no problem with these solutions
>>52762846
>>52762935
There is technically the option of just letting the player have his fun, as long as his Intelligence is high and you make plain up front that his applications are going to be limited to the setting.

I see nothing THEMATICALLY wrong with a PC deciding to be Archimedes or Leonardo Da Vinci cranking out Greek Fire and early rockets and other things of that nature.

>>52762818
>"if you can explain to me right now how you would obtain the materials, manufacture the parts and how to create gunpowder. Then we'll talk"

>>52764059
No, it's actually consistent. The typical creation stories and setting aspects like magic, superpowers etc. don't mesh at all with real-world knowledge. You get to choose the point where such expectations start to apply completely arbitrary, because, unlike our world, nothing has to follow from first principles, physically.

>>52764778
For most typical fantasy settings, I think that works out better when they stick with the existing Alchemist stuff and focus on making potions that explode and then delivering them via crossbow or wrist-mounted slingshot or something appropriate.

The issue is when they're trying to bypass the expected rules for being an alchemist and crafting things by gathering up a bunch of stuff and then using knowledge from wikipedia to try and make something modern for advantages.

I mean, just because you know what magnets and copper do doesn't mean you can form a railgun out of some of that and some lodestone. It's a similar principle.

>>52762818
"How does the character have that knowledge?"

>>52764836
>not playing Chemistry graduates

>>52764836
Is this supposed to be difficult? I know you want to be clever, but...

>>52763659
But Lightning Bolt isn't. So it's rather a case of the spell inventor tailoring this specific magical formula to mess with metal wearers. Nothing inherent about electricity, or "lightning damage" or whatever.

>>52764847
It kind of depends on the system and how far they're taking it.

If I was playing 5e and a Wizard [who wasn't an Artificer] wanted to play around with that stuff, I'd have no problem letting him design Archimedes Claws or those primitive steam engines or astronomical computers.

Basically things that are clearly fantasy or early technology I'd allow.

>>52762818
what exactly is happening here?

>>52762818
"Sure, you have a +5 bonus to Int and a +3 to Dex?
You need to Roll 25 to figure it out, and 24 to not blow yourself up when you attempt to create it."

>>52762818
We ask them politely yet firmly to leave.

>>52764778
The problem is, most players do not want early guns. They don't want to create a working prototype of a flying machine and go down in history as pioneers of technology.

They want to make an INT roll and create a contemporary [gun of choice], free of charge and then go shooting "those dumb fantasy races haha look at how dumb they are".

I had players like that. They didn't last long, but they tried to pull their bullshit. A shining example of that was a guy with terminal /k/omrade syndrome who tried to bullshit dwarves having M16, modern attack helicopters and hollywood SWAT tactics in conan-esque fantasy setting.

>>52764931
HastuGHSAEGfcssgsgr

>>52764928
I suppose, but it's a matter of them being idle inventions he's making or if he's trying to do it to gain some big edge or kickstart the industrial revolution.

If he makes one Steam engine, that's fine. It'll probably be really inefficient and more of a novelty to show off to guests. If he tries to make a bunch to power cars and uses Everburning Torches to boil water from Decanters of Endless Water, then he'll probably run into trouble when planar wars wage between water and fire over the sudden mass of steam.

>>52764847
>using knowledge from wikipedia

Who the fuck has to use wikipedia to know how to create things like guns, explosives, and penicillin? Is this not common knowledge by adulthood?

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>>52762818
Sometimes the best ideas are the old ones.
You players try and make gunpowder, the Paladin's god comes down and steals it because he doesn't want anyone else to be able to pull off his favorite celestial party trick.

>>52764947
That's not /k/, that's him wanting to play Warcraft dwarves.

>>52764971
Typically, the players who do this are the retards who just want an AK in D&D, so of course they don't know anything like that.

>>52764931
Coke+mentos+fire=that

>>52764947
"MUH GUNS" is the worst thing that ever happened to online fantasy communities, especially 4chan.
Hopefully the /a/ backlash against GATE is enough to propel us back to the good old days where people where smart enough to recognise that it's "dragons and weather control, gg"

>>52764947
Never had a PC like that. Thats pretty fucking retarded in most settings.

>>52762818
>Is there a better way to handle this than saying "You can't"?

Sure: Have it kill them.

Not joking, either. The invention of proper gunpowder is the long history of people who died to teach the next generation another thing to be cautious about.

"I eat the moldy bread" Ok great you die. It was unfortunately not spores of Penicillium Expansum but of some different, poisonous mold. How unfortunate that your character did not know the difference! The other mold is normally not very dangerous, but in your already-diseased state, it was too much for your strained system.

Etc./

Engineering work isn't child's play. Yeah today you can make a gun that won't blow up from pipe picked up at wally-world. That's because modern steel is really good, not because guns aren't dangerous.

>>52764971
>Who the fuck has to use wikipedia to know how to create things like guns, explosives, and penicillin? Is this not common knowledge by adulthood?

I know how to make black powder: Carbon, sulfur and salpeter.

I know how to make pure carbon powder through charcoal, from a standing start buck naked in a forest.

But pure sulfur? Pure salpeter? I haven't the foggiest. I seem to recall you can mine sulfur in some volcanoes and get salpeter from piss but man, I would not even begin to know which volcano or how to treat the piss.

>>52762818
Let them do it, then when they test something, have it not work. Physics is not necessarily consistent in world of gods, magic, and monsters. If they ask why, simply say "You don't know, do you?"

Their characters have no reason to have that knowledge. You have no reason to illuminate why they failed.

>>52762818
I think a simple "how does your character know this?" would suffice.

You can't just suddenly invent shit as a dumb soldier who's never done anything like this before, obviously.
If they can come up with something good, just let em.

>>52762818
Do you normally let people metagame wildly?

I'm not entirely averse to letting people make guns if they want to. Have you seen the rules for those things? They suck ass.

Naturally, this would require a workshop, blacksmithing and alchemy skills, and years of grueling and expensive work to turn your "inspired idea" into reality. Afterwards, you will have the glory of seeing what happens to brilliant adventures in a world without patents.

Although assuming the character in question is intelligent, I would warn him about these easily anticipated consequences ahead of time.

>>52764971
You know it isn't. Stop trying to brag on an anonymous aboriginal shadow puppetry board.

>>52764841
Don't bother anon. The same guy spams all of these threads with the same contrarian argument.

>>52764214
>>52764409
Speaking as the guy who posted, I did in fact do something similar. When raiding a wizard tower they came across a discarded magic item that had some minor research notes attached. It was developed as a potential cure to all diseases, and functioned by summoning millions of tiny shades of the hungry dead, who are compelled as penance for their sins in life to consume impure substances. This results in them devouring any of the disease causing spirits in the body, also purifying it of pus, gangrene, and faeces. If left in for more than a few hours they begin devouring the blood as well, then the entire body of the patient, before bursting forth as a ravenous mass. This was why it didn't subsequently leave the tower in any form, since who has the time to invent a device that exorcises millions of ghosts at once harmlessly?

>>52762818

Ask 'how does your character know these things?'

>>52762818
Depends on the setting but generally you can apply purity rules for chemistry.

You don't have access to pure chemicals and proper instruments. People can try alchemy stuff up but most likely end up wasting time outside of critical success.

Same goes antiobiotics, no one is stopping you from having a mold farm but how do you prove that it is antibacterial and not poisonous? Even in the best case scenario you end up with potent but slow as ass and hard to make wound salve.

>>52762818
HERE LET ME CHANGE ANGLE 20 000 TIMES SO YOURE BRAIN CAN'T REGISTER SHIT.
Seriously fuck whoever was in charge of editing that.

>>52764971
No anon, it's not common knowledge. Are you seriously telling me that where you live, if you approached a hundred different people in the area and asked them how to create guns, explosive and penecillin, more than five people out of that hundred would be able to give you a correct answer for all three?

It's pretty irrelevant knowledge unless you're a chemist or one of those apocalypse survivalists.

>>52765133
This. Knowing how something is done in theory is a very different thing from praxis. Finding those components, then refining them, determining their purity, then mixing them in correct ratios and conditions, there's several steps which aren't covered by general knowledge of thr process that can result in failure and are invariably handwaved away by those 'clever' players.

>>52762818
Why does it look like there's Ghostbusters electricity running through it in the end?

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>>52765368

>who has the time to invent a device that exorcises millions of ghosts at once harmlessly?

>>52762973
And is missing a key ingredient.
Dragon urine.

>>52762818
>Is there a better way to handle this than saying "You can't"?

yes, by saying, "you can't, and also never come back you metagaming little turdgolem"

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>>52764971
Those are all pretty fucking hard, mate. The Jin manga, for example, shows all the elaborate steps you need to make usable penicillin in a pre-industrual setting if you're interested.

>>52762818
About 10,000-50,000 years ago the sentient races rose up and killed the god of technology. Explains why the world has fractured anachronisms and ruins scattered everywhere from races that were ancient but barely inferior in technological progress.

>>52762818

Knowledge checks. He might know that sulfur can start fire when rubbed and that charcoal burns, but how would he figure out that saltpeter is required for the mix to function properly? Saltpeter was used as a food preservative during that period: why would you mix it with charcoal and sulfur?

DESU, an easier way to make explosives in a fantasy setting would be to just grab a lot of flour and pack it together tightly, adding a fuse as the end. Wouldn't be useful for guns, but can be used to make crude bombs, including bombs to be lobbed from a slingshot, catapult, or ballista.

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>>52762818
This has come up more than once in my games over the years. And I've always handled it the same way:

"Sure YOU know how to do it, but does your CHARACTER know how to do it?"

Most of the time, they don't. The player often tries to justify it with a high intelligence score, but I require skill points spent in the specific disciplines required to produce those things.

The one and ONLY time a player had the right skills to make stuff above the technology level of the world, they discussed it with me before the game even started, and I let him.

Pic not related

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>not playing in a fantasy where guns and explosives are already a thing
>nor in a fantasy settings where people just didn't abandon mundane medicines.

>>52762818
I have a standing rule - they can invent firearms in a medieval fantasy setting as soon as they provide me with a working plasma cannon or cast prestidigitation. If they can't, then I remind them character knowledge and player knowledge are separate, and that the technology they want to create is only obvious if you already know it exists.

>>52764409
>>Fantasy vaccinations involve injecting tiny angels into the bloodstream

To make a sufficient number of angels tiny and inject them, you first need to get them to dance on the tip of a needle. Your bard better be real good.

>>52766833
In what watt range does the plasma gun need to be?

>>52762818
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l285JDSiOOo

>>52762818
Ask him to show that chemistry and biology work the same in the campaign world as the real world. When he insists that they do, ask him to explain the mechanics of magic such that they are consistent with the laws of physics.

>>52762818
While the player "thinks" they know what they are doing, unless they have been trained to make that shit, it ain't happening. Their character is going to have even less of a clue, and will probably fuck themselves and others up in the process.

>penicillin
The whole party has to make fortitude saves
>guns
Reflex saves
>explosives
More reflex saves

>>52764895
Your average person just doesn't know that man.

>>52766968
Obviously more than 40 watts. That's more of a hot fart than a plasma cannon.

>I want to make gunpowder
"Ok, sure. Roll knowledge alchemy"

>I don't have knowledge alchemy
"Then you can't make any fucking gunpowder can you?"

>I have knowledge alchemy
"Fantastic, isn't it great that you invested points into that skill which otherwise might have been sidelined and not made a big influence in the campaign?
>I want to make a gun now
"Roll knowledge metalcraft"


and so on.

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>>52764606

If you want your character, who is knowledgeable about chemistry and such, to have an epiphany, sure. If your dumb as rocks barbarian thinks of it, fuck off.

Your character is literally going to spend the rest of his life learning metallurgy, how to mix powder, what kinds of powder he needs, etc. So make a new character.

"Why would your character know to do that?"

>>52762818
>Is there a better way to handle this than saying "You can't"?
Yes.
'You can't, and get the fuck out of my game for trying to'

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>>52764971
>>52764971
>Who the fuck has to use wikipedia to know how to create things like guns, explosives, and penicillin? Is this not common knowledge by adulthood?
No, the preparation of penicillin is not common knowledge. It's not just a matter of rubbing some moldy bread on an infected cut m8. Even growing sufficient mold so that you had enough extract to save a fucking mouse was a subject of multiple research publications.

>>52762818
Ask them whether they want to play a fantasy, swords and sorcery game or not.

>>52762818
You remember what happened to Prometheus when he gave man fire?

>>52764947
Eh, i've once had players that was as autistic as that, but i counterbalance their fuckery with a bit creative invention that always follow their lattest attempt at game breaking, like ballistic lamelar that can disrupt ballistic geometries, or ether shield generator that can stop or deflect bullets and explosive energies, super aerogel made from a recent breakthrought of alchemistry, insta-cast homing magic missiles, and even creatures that always adapt their bodies with the recent asspull that party's triying to pull.

In short, there's no measures without counter-measures.

>>52764059
It seems about as cheesy and ass-pully as someone claiming they could make gunpowder, a railgun, penicillin, or equivalent. But more reasonable.

Have another mad inventor working to foil their plans.

>notices new medicine is eradicating certain diseases
>also notices certain infections require more effort to cure
>waits thirty years for general immune system strength to wane from antibiotic abuse and unleashes an antibiotic-resistant superbug that kills four fifths of the world's population

>>52762818
Gunpowder is very difficult to get the correct percentages for efficient combustion. Plus the components do not naturally mix and separate easily.

>>52768661
As an addition, use the player's inventions against them. They won't think they're so smart when a few sessions later some cunt with a blunderbuss blasts apart their pelvis after another inventor spied on what they were doing and invented guns too.

If you're really mean, you have the enemy have better guns.

>>52768713
Been watching Avatar, have we?

>>52769466
No?

Stealing people's innovations and using them against them is an old game.

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>>52762818
>a player tries to use their real-world knowledge to create guns, explosives, penicillin, etc. in a setting where those haven't been invented yet

Would penicillin bullets be okay? Or alchemical bullets that contained cure disease or healing potions? You could go around mowing people down and curing them of all their ills.

>>52762818
Player knowledge and character knowledge are not the same thing and they should not be letting it get to that point. They would likely have no concept of it, unless they spend years in a lab and got enormously lucky. Besides, most fantasy settings have magic that works better, anyways.

>>52762818
>in a fun campaign
allllrighty I'll try to keep it more or less balanced

>in a serious campaign
No, this is 4th century AD, you cannot manufacture a flintlock, I don't care how high your tinkering skill is.

At worst, give them a "one tier" bump.

No gunpowder? Let them make a simple rocket with an absurdly high skill. They're a pioneer.

Still healing with roots and berries? They can figure out how to roll an herbal doob and give temp hitpoints or something. I dunno.

>>52764436
How is he getting gasoline, hydrogen peroxide, and potassium iodide? All of those have to be manufactured. To even get gas, you first have to somehow find oil, then somehow extract it, then build a refinery for it, then make gas, then hope the gas doesn't go bad by the time you find a use for it.

>>52764059
No. The faggot who is trying to make explosives and penicillin in D&D thinks it is a really clever idea even though it is not.

>>52765622
That's a flame front passing through the foam as the combustion spreads.

>>52772744
>create a microscope strong enough to show single-cell organisms
>look at a shitton of samples, make a shitton of drawing and eventually figure out that some of the shit you're seeing are "bacteria" while others are not.
>realize that they actually do not spontaneously generate out of dirt and water
>identify a couple of diseases caused by them
>find out how to raise them in a petri dish away from the infected spot
>find out that certain moulds seemed to affect their growth negatively
>identify exactly which mould
>figure out how to farm that mould
>figure out ways to make pills from that mould that still contain the agent you're looking for

Congratulations, the PC jumped through most of the hoops required.

>>52773200
Do you know how much luck and how many years it took people to figure out all of that? None of it happened overnight and it wasn't one person who did everything. It took hundreds of years and dozens of different people to discover all this. Most of it was done through sheer luck and happenstance. Penicillin, for example, was discovered completely by accident by a random scientist who just happened to have a petri dish that a rare strain of that mold happened to grow on, and he randomly decided to look at it closely instead of just tossing it.

All this shit makes sense to someone from our time who knows history and who takes all this shit for granted. But one person deciding to do all of this just makes no sense.

>>52771309
Just make an automatic crossbow with syringe bolts, each with whatever payload wanted

>gming fantasy game
>party has great idea to equip remote settlement with gunpowder to better defend itself
>spend the next several sessions clearing areas with the resources they need
>take out loans to hire workers and buy equipment
>after irl and ingame months they finally are ready to start mass producing gunpowder
>when they try and trigger there concoction nothing happens
>they rolled well so they know the mixture was exact
>leader of the settlement asks why it isn't working
>they just stare at me
>he asks them why they thought it would work, and where they learnt how to make it
>realzing I wasn't going to talk to them OOC they just looked at eachother not sure how to awnser
>after several minutes of nothing the settlement leader just storms off calling them idiotic adventures
>ask them what they want to do next

Never had them meta game after that. I did a similar thing when a group encountered a rust monster and failed to identify it in game with there characters not having experienced it before. They stashed away all metal objects and used makeshift wooden spears to attack it, only for it to burst into flames and turn out to be a fire monster that eats wooden weapons for breakfast.

>>52773352
I was thinking of syringe stiletto daggers too. That or blades coated with healing salve.

>>52773306
I know. We had the tech to create lenses strong enough to show single-cell organisms back in antiquity already, but nobody ever bothered to identify any or enough of them to create a classification scheme as far as we can tell from surviving records.

Classification of single-cell organisms alone was a transnational venture that sucked up a couple of scholar's lifetime. The research and the time required to argue against their generation ex nihilo that lays the groundworks for a theory of bacteria probably cost about as much time. This isn't a highschool science project.

Blackpowder has the same issues - it basically takes a lot of cooking and burning all sorts of shit in various liquids just to figure out how to produce and identify all the chemical components.

>>52773554
Only problem is you dont want to really stab people to heal them, unless it's guaranteed to heal more HP than take

Alternatively, have your setting on the cusp of a magic based industrial revolution and let your players go wild.

Sounds more fun.

I had an artificer make a gun by magically providing the explosions necessary to propel the bullet. I ended up just reflavoring a handheld crossbow with slightly extra damage.

>>52774761
> I had an artificer make a gun by magically providing the explosions necessary to propel the bullet. I ended up just reflavoring a handheld crossbow with slightly extra damage.

Honestly this is probably how it would happen, you'd have people making spearguns with flasks of air or water and some sturdy pipe, or you'd end up with wizard crafted artillery shells that utilize folded paper sheets of explosive runes as the propellant charge.

Hell, any force that can turn a gearbox (probably bound spirits or tiny demons) can make one of these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbKGjRoSofA
fully functional and elegant enough to stop people from fooling around with achemical firearms for the next couple centuries (or at least until the empire using them collapses when the pixies or tiny devils they bound to make them work are really keen on creeping into your ear at night an chewing their way through your frontal lobe for all those decades of enslavement.)

>>52767164
I know this greentext.

>>52773559
The main factor there isn't so much the scholar's required time: DO remember that in most RPGs a character can be multiple times more intelligent than the typical genius. Think about how those wizards in D&D might have 24+ intelligence; that's literally beyond the mortal limits of humanoid intelligence.

Rather, what's most difficult is not getting it done once: Blackpowder appeared and disappeared many times.

What's most difficult is changing all the stupid people's minds about how useless and worthless anything that isn't "how we've always done it" is.

The character can create black powder rockets if he fucking wants, just like ancient china did. The real issue is that half the people who see it think "OH SHIT FUCK A WITCH", the other half think "that's annoyingly loud", and it actually takes that entire organizational structure, some of the top of which FINALLY one day go "hey could I use this?" to FINALLY EVENTUALLY get the shit adopted.

The creation isn't the problem.
It's
>I will ignore all ideas for new works and engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvement I see no further hope

>Another popular fallacy is to suppose that flying machines could be used to drop dynamite on an enemy in time of war.

>To affirm that the aeroplane is going to 'revolutionize' navel warfare of the future is to be guilty of the wildest exaggeration.

>Pershing won without even looking into an airplane, let alone gong up in one. If they had been of such importance he'd have tried at least a ride… . We'll stick to the army on the ground and the battleships at sea.

>640k should be enough for everybody

>>52773200
Considering that almost every single one of those took an entire life time to achieve, you aren't making a good case.

>>52772720
Probably abused the fabricate spell.

>>52765133
>I would not even begin to know which volcano
Even if you did, have fun trying to mine it without dying a horrible death of burning and sulfur dioxide poisoning.

>>52762818
Just like with real life inventions: Lots of red herrings everywhere. Everytime the player thinks he solved something it is at least partially wrong for reasons he doesn't know/understand.

>>52775479
Even then, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work. From the wording of the spell, fabricate just lets you do something like turn a shit ton of silk fabric into a silk dress. I can't imagine it would let you refine crude oil into gasoline. You're supposed to end with the same quality you started with, and the quality of gasoline is very wildly different from that of crude oil.

Unless I'm reading the spell's text wrong.

>>52762818
>Alright, you succeed. You spend the next ten years developing and perfecting the process, getting it to the people who can actually put it to use. You acquire wealth, power and fame as a famous inventor, but your adventure is over.
>Are you sure you want to do that?

>>52763659
Metal, as everyone knows, is an unusual earth base that has an extraordinary affinity and acts a conduit for air. Hence why the finest wind instruments are dwarven-made brass. Learn your alchemy scrub.

>>52775568
>>52775516
All of those are nothing more than "lolnoyoucant".

>>52775607
Well, the red herrings lets your player play out his inventor fantasy through trial and error, puzzles and shit and earn his place in the historybooks.

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>>52762818
Don't have Penicillium mold/give it a different name.

Elements are either not known, unavailable, or work under different principles. Magick is always an easy explanation for physics not working rjght.

Most of all reiterate that their character doesn't know what any of this shit is or understand how to connect it, nor why they'd want to.

>>52775607
That's because really, >>52762859 is right. The only way you need to expand on that is
>because it's not that kind of game. I'll keep that in mind, and maybe next time I'll do a "modern people in a fantasy world" type of deal.

>>52775673
See this is why I like this and similar mentioned approaches. It let's the player play out his little side-story for his character if that's what he is really going for. It's only a "lolnoyoucant" if the player is trying to be a cheating meta-gaming little faggot.

>>52773503
>>when they try and trigger there concoction nothing happens
>>they rolled well so they know the mixture was exact
>>leader of the settlement asks why it isn't working
>>they just stare at me
>>he asks them why they thought it would work, and where they learnt how to make it
>>realzing I wasn't going to talk to them OOC they just looked at eachother not sure how to awnser
Brilliant.

>>52762818

Here's the thing, sometimes saying more than just no will cause the player to want to argue it. The key is to talk to your player playing the "mad science" man ahead of time to get a mutual understanding of what is and isn't okay. Then discuss that what is and isn't okay can change if it would cause others to stop having fun, or invalidate any further challenges.

But like I mentioned before, if they can't handle talking it out like an adult, just tell them no.

>>52762818
>Not being the player that creates space filling foam instead
>Not filling every dungeon with foam then mining the monsters out one at a time for pure battlefield control.

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>>52773594
Aside from creeping people out with my "healing knives", it's just an excuse to stab people.

>a player tries to use their real-world knowledge to create guns, explosives, penicillin, etc. in a setting where those haven't been invented yet
>DM then springs "Geta-Maming" on them: the dimension-bending, lolsorandum xD god of fourth-wall breaking, who proceeds to possess the DM so he can justifiably reach across the table and rip up the player's character sheet

There's a big difference between "player knowledge vs. character knowledge" and "taking advantage of meta knowledge to disrupt the setting's verisimilitude". It's kind of like when your players halt the game when the PCs reach what they believe to be a boss room so they can craft some kind of fucking SEAL Team Six infiltration. Not only would the characters doubtlessly NOT have the time or knowledge for such a strategy, but you can be damn sure at least one of those characters has some kind of mechanical or self-imposed "I ALWAYS rush blindly into combat" flaw they conveniently forget for that moment.

>>52775258

I don't...

>>52762818
Ask him how his character knows this stuff in character and if he can't come up with decent explanations I tell him to fuck off.

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>>52779000