Walking on water with cryomancy

[hadesfire]

I haven't thought of a name, but it's exactly what it says on the tin. By maintaining one(?) cryomancy channel, the caster can walk around safely on deep water. Of course, once the channel is no longer maintained, the caster would fall into the water.

I don't know how this would extend to parties. Perhaps opening more channels allows you to support more people?

Requirements:
-Freezing Aura
-Cryomancy 50

[Fayne]

Just one problem with this: you either have to freeze a solid pillar of ice down to the bottom of the lake or river or whatever, or you need to be standing on a huge ass piece of ice that displaces enough water to float with you on it. This would take a lot of energy, and I don't really think it'd be worth it. I assume your original idea was freezing the water under the person's feet to walk on, but they'd just cause the piece of ice created to sink underneath their weight. So, while a cool idea, I just don't think it's be possible.

[hadesfire]

What if you froze a thick but small piece of ice right under you? Kinda of like a mixture of the two. I imagine that a pillar to the bottom is a bit much, but a patch a couple feet into the water would work, right?

[Fayne]

Not exactly. It'd have to be big enough to displace the same weight of liquid water as the piece of ice itself, plus the weight of your body on top of it. A small piece just wouldn't have the amount of surface area needed to support you.

[hadesfire]

I don't see why a cryomancer couldn't do that. From what I understand of buoyancy, there are two mains forces. Upwards (from pressure differential) and downwards (from gravity). Because pressure increases as depth increases, a piece of ice taller than it is wide would be more buoyant, correct? So, by making the ice taller and just above the surface, couldn't it support the caster? Or are you saying that the piece of ice would have to be so massive that keeping it frozen properly wouldn't be worth the effort?

[Fayne]

Well, actually, the pressure difference isn't quite great enough to help a piece of ice float better. In fact, making it longer and longer would actually make it harder for it to stay afloat, assuming you could keep it straight up and down. I believe it'd eventually reach a point where it would float below the surface of the water, actually. But more likely all that would happen is the bottom would swing out and float up, causing the whole thing to float sideways. It'd actually float bettter that way too.

The way bouyancy works is the pressure of the water being displaced presses up on whatever is floating. In the case of a long, thin piece of ice, the area it can press up against is quite small, thus reducy the bouyancy of it. However, if you turn that same piece sideways, suddenly you have a much larger area for the upward force to press against, and thus increases the bouyancy. So really, your best bet is going to be a wide piece that extendeda down into the water underneath in a roughly conical shape. That would provide the most bouyancy and stability. It might be doable depending on the ambient tempurature though.

But, I really don't see this happening. I could be wrong though!

[hadesfire]

Oh, I see. Okay, that makes sense, thank you. That does seem like a massive energy drain. If anybody has any ideas on how this would work, please speak up, because I can't think of anything.

[Sneaky]

How are you going to stabilize a piece of ice enough for you to stand atop it all while atop moving water. While I can suspend physics for this to be used across still water like ponds and the like, I can't really see it happening for river crossings.

[hadesfire]

The original idea was the you'd just form the ice platform as you walked, so you'd have to move relatively quickly. You'd step and create (or extend) the platform and the pieces behind you would break away.

[Fayne]

The original idea was the you'd just form the ice platform as you walked, so you'd have to move relatively quickly. You'd step and create (or extend) the platform and the pieces behind you would break away.

Cryomancy does not make ice. It makes cold. So the ice would stay until it melted.

[hadesfire]

I misspoke, but yeah, the same concept. And unless the water was already frozen, the ice left behind would melt too quickly to be reused.

[Sneaky]

The easiest way to do this then would be to make large ice plates on the bottom of your feet, the trick being to use the surface tension rather than the buoyancy to support yourself as you moved across. The tricky part for this is the fact that ice weighs quite a bit, so you wouldn't be able to run all that well. Also, it'd more than likely fail as walking across say a river, no matter how fast, would be akin to trying to run side ways on a tredmill.

[Lae]

As fast as rivers move, the cryomancer would be leagues away from where they meant to cross, or drowned before they got there.

[Kunren]

I don't think there is any way for someone to cross a river with cryomancy alone. (A pond or lake MIGHT be a different story but..). Now, if someone were to contest rich some sort of lock? Not sure if that's the right term or not, but I mean construct some sort of apparatus that allowed a sort of "water bridge" a cryomancy could freeze, it might be possible. But if you go to all the trouble to build that sort of thing, which only a tiny tiny percentage point of the population MIGHT be able to cross with a ton of effort...why not just build a bridge? I think bridge building could be something fun to add in maybe. Have the bridges collapse occasionally and fall into total disrepair without constant love of course. Sorta like mines I guess. River crossing is already not too difficult though, bridges or other forms of crossing are strategetically placed at crossing points already in the wilderness.

[merin]

I believe the keep it simple, stupid method will work great here:
swimm north.