Forgotten realms invades Earth RAR

[mr friendly guy]

That depends on the spell used, the base version is only rounds per level, but that's enough to easily get past the forces guarding the portal with either a simple teleport or you could take to the sky. Of course it might be easier to come through as a fly or something that won't be detected.

If their wasting resources blowing up decoys you win. Summoned creatures don't cost anything, nor do mirror images or illusions all of which can get the enemy to waste his ammo and get desensitized to things passing through the portal.

Plus, you assume that radar will detect an invisble person easily with radar. I'm not sure that we have radar sets that will work well enough to detect a person among ground clutter. Even if the area is defoliated and made flat, you could spoof the radar with decoys and then walk on past.

Uh, radar can detect moving objects via the doppler effect.

Who says you need to make the trip in a single spell? All you need to use it for is to get past the guards at the gate and then you can get where you need to go at leisure. Also Greater Teleport, which the higher level mages get, has unlimited range and you never arrive off target. Thus you can blink from your study back in Faerun, right to exactly the oval office or the last place your scrying saw the PotUS at.

Even if all things go your way, assassins rarely win the day alone. At worse humanity will adopt tactics used against say Kira in the Death Note series. People hide their faces and identities. The world's leaders (especially non democratic ones where the leaders are chosen by parties) take aliases.

You can't hide them from scrying and if this scenario is at all fair the books these guys get will show world leaders as they will appear to the people of the realms. Otherwise both sides clearly don't know about one another and the RAR is kind of stacked to one side as we'll know more about them than they'll know about us.

How have I given them more than what we know? In fact they know more about us than we know about them because real world history is pretty much always more fleshed out than fictional history.

As I said, all our pictures appear as Orcs to them. I thought that was pretty clear.

I'm pretty sure that's not how things work. You can scry on a target that is polymorphed into an entirely different kingdom after all. So nice dice there, if it exists and you know of it, you can scry on it.

Firstly from your own words, if it exists. As I said, Orcs on Earth don't exist.

You can scry on the leaders with ease.

Actually even in game mechanics, there is always a one in twenty chance of failure. Moreover super assassins rarely turn the tide especially when we can replace our leaders relatively easily.

Greater teleport says you won't arrive off target, plus you can always scan a wider area so that doesn't happen.

Ahem. From the description of Greater Teleport. You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination or a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. I might buy that he ends up somewhere close to say the White House. But right next to the president even if you knew what his room looked like (among the numerous rooms), that's just relying on writer's fiat.

It doesn't matter if it has a short duration if you cast the spell on the target you're looking for and teleporting less than ten seconds later. Plus you can always literally ask your god where person x is and get an answer.

I find that hard to believe since the Gods don't even know about us. This is getting into no limits fallacy isn't it.

Your scrying thing is a BS asspull that has no basis in D&D. You can scry on people who've cast illusions on themselves or even ones that have polymorphed so you can find the PotUS easy as anybody else.

Problem is
1. The person you are scrying for doesn't exist, or at least is nowhere near how you perceive it
2. Given the time limit, unless you catch them precisely discussing plans, its not going to help much.
3. Even if you can spy on them, sometimes they are too strong and it makes not much difference. Notice Szass Tam accomodated rather than opposed the Tuigan. He demonstrated scrying abilities in the Harpers series of novels.

Yeah, have you seen the AC boosting tricks Mages and Clerics can do? Not to mention damage reduction enough to stop a bullet cold based on the stats for modern weapons in the 3.5 DMG.

Great. Now all you have to do is prove they stop a bullet. Using science and logic as per board rules.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=26144

Hint if normal medieval weapons can hurt them, then modern weapons would wipe the floor with them.

It is if you use say an illusion to make the enemy see you as his best friend. Then you can talk to your new friend and have him understand you.

And this translation changes the military equation how exactly?

There is this wonderful thing called google out there, but effects range from simple stuff like charm person and calm emotions to stuff like Geas/Quest give the president a quest to lose the war/make peace/stop the invasion by any meansor you could just dominate him or modify his memories.

They have more than one option and this is only the core stuff, you can literally mind rape a person at higher levels.

There is this thing called the burden of proof and its not my job to do your homework for you.

Secondly only the more powerful ones could compel the president to do something stupid. And thirdly in modern day governments there are things called checks and balances. I think if the POTUS suddenly decided to do something unpopular, there would be consequences. Of course making peace depends on how far the conflict has gone. Hint if your opening gambit is to assassinate or brainwash the president, then oh boy its going to hurt.

Major Image Can make sounds, scents, and thermal effects which should fool most imaging systems at range.

Persistent Image Does the same, but can also be used to speak to the target as well.

There are examples of effects created by illusions that also recreate tactile feedback, but I can't recall the spell to create those at the moment.

From your own link
This spell functions like silent image, except that sound, smell, and thermal illusions are included in the spell effect.

Ok so radar will not detect anything. So hook if up with visual aids and the discrepancy will show up.

You want an example of what wish can do. It can summon objects up to 25,000gp. Now that gold is worth about $11,000,000, I'd bet that's enough bribe a few people. It's also enough to simply wish tanks, nuclear weapons, machine tools, and the like into existence.

Next you will tell me D & D can beat some lower lights in the Culture because they can summon objects up to 25 000 gp in existence, and since the Culture doesn't have money they produce infinite Culture ships. You know what's funny, its clear you didn't even think this through.

For example http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_ ... cle_id=300

There are currently nine countries with a total of over 20,000 nuclear weapons, spending $105 billion annually on their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems. That will amount to more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The US accounts for about 60 percent of this amount.

Sorry, that means the average nuclear weapon is a wee bit more than your $11 million dollars. Tanks do fall into that category though I am going to hazard a guess that you will very quickly reduce your levels. Yes because I am actually use some numbers which you no numbers types are loath to do. A level 20 Wizard has 190 000 exp. That accounts to 38 tanks assuming you lose 5000 XP each wish spell you cast. Actually it will be less because once you get too low, you won't be able to cast wish.

Oh wait, there is still the problem of petrol. Ok so you wish for petrol for the tank. That's another wish gone. What about the crew for the tank. Hmm. Problem there. You know what's even more funnier. Modern day nations have tanks in the thousands. Your trump card spell casters will quickly reduce their levels (thus rendering them no longer a trump card), desperately creating tanks the realms cannot use, and failing to match the numbers of tanks we already have, yet alone what we can produce.

]
That depends on the spell now doesn't it?

One example is a fairly basic one control weather. Do you really want to deal with natural disasters that can show up as needed and in places they can't normally happen?

Firstly they can't occur in places they can't normally happen? From your own link

You can call forth weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in.

Control Winds is another way to get storm force winds as desired.

If one wanted to they could use these spells + teleport to take chunks out of crops. Or just to really fuck with

Since you really don't like numbers lets do the maths for you. Control winds has a radius of 40 feet / level. So say a level 25 caster can affect 1000 feet or 304.8 metres. That gives an area of just under 292000 sq metres (rounding up). That's about 72 Acres. Sounds impressive until you use this useful thing called google.

linky

Large farms now dominate crop production in the United States. Although most cropland was
operated by farms with less than 600 crop acres in the early 1980s, today most cropland is on
farms with at least 1,100 acres, and many farms are 5 and 10 times that size.

This trick might work against some developing nations who struggle to feed themselves, assuming we don't band together and distribute food.

Master's Touch; Cheap enough to crank out enmass in the form of gloves and then your soldiers can use the weapons you wished for. (At average cost one wish can get you roughly 20,000 AK's per wish at world wide average prices.)

Actually no. From their description of wish
Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value.. Sorry single item allowed.

Moreover Master's Touch appears to be from a non Forgotten Realms D & D source. How likely are Faerunian wizards likely to know such spells. Very unlikely I would have thought.

Yeah, but a key general dead at the wrong time is still a pain. Same with a key leader of industry or a specific diplomat. Plus you can cast it while invisible, or while made impossible to hit after you stack buffs on yourself. Or you can cast it while you're polymorphed into a fly and sitting in a corner somewhere.

Actually to cast a spell while polymorph you must be able to speak it if it has a verbal component and move hands if it has a somatic component. Power word kill has a verbal component.

The US replaced Petraeus for having an affair even though he had great success in Iraq. I don't think a key general dead is going to bother us as much as say during medieval or classical times.

So? The president still knows battle plans, plus you always go after leading scientists, plant managers, and the like instead. Hell you could even just make them into loyal undead that still look human. See Necropoltians in Libris Mortis, and send them back home to live normal lives as your ally.

You would automatically know about leading scientists and plant managers because... Please note my book told them about our technological capability and history. I don't think plant managers even get an entry into an encyclopaedia.

Have you never heard of Disintegrate Most tanks cease to work with a 10ft cube taken out of them. The range is short, but again invisibility, or meld with stone or just making yourself impossible to hit.

Yes a case where game mechanics don't make much sense since an organic creature could potentially survive but a much larger and resilent inorganic one won't.

But playing along
1. I can go Spelljammer and argue tanks should have hit points, er I mean hull points like spelljamming ships and could potentially survive.
2. Tanks have longer range weaponry (see previous post)
3. Ok, so have infantry around. They either shoot the wizard or get disintegrated leaving the tank alone.
4. If I want to be a smart arse, I can do what Michael Shermer did to disprove firewalking. He stuck pieces of meat on his feet walked across the flaming coals and observed the meat wasn't burnt. Cover the tank with camouflaging plants covered with living insects. Disintegrate takes out the insects (hey I can use game mechanics against you too).

In theory, but there's a reason why they are considered broken after all. Hell they can literally make themselves impossible to kill with the right spells, or they could simply become Liches, or ghosts. How do you kill incorporeal undead without magic weapons?

With undead that have bodies, destroy the body and they won't bother us until they can reconstitute it.

With ghosts its a bit harder, until we study exactly how they work.

Might I also mention the infinitly powerful beings that can walk the D&D earth. What does Earth do when Pun-Pun shows up? Or the Omniscificer? Or the planet killer umm... thing... Yes that does say it can do 3.879e271 d6+2265 damage per throw. Plus, infinite actions and infinite damage loops exist in D&D as does the potential to violate thermodynamics.

How do you know D & D fanboys are getting desperate? When they invoke Pun Pun.

Firstly some of those items used to create pun pun are from non FR sources. So will these artifacts appear on Faerun? Also you need Sarrukhs, which are damn rare even in FR.
Two - no in universe character has created pun pun. Sorry, no one but humans on Earth know how to create Pun Pun. Guess who will be trying to create a Pun Pun now that we know D & D is real. Hint it won't be them.
Three - invoking Pun Pun is like Trekkies invoking alien of the week vs SW galactic empire.

Mr. Friendly guy seems to just want a scenario to wank to given that not only do we appear as orcs, but he also added this in a different post:

Just to make conflict more likely. I will have the Gods of Faerun warn their followers that these "orcs" ie us are dangerous and want to invade. This occurs due to plot device.

I guess he just wants to see spears versus tanks for some reason.

Frankly I've been showing off casters and what they can do, because that's interesting with or without a war. Plus, I do think a well played caster can win the war by making the right people 'his/her friend' and starting a nuclear exchange.

I already pointed out in the OP it was based on the Sauron vs Earth thread which was lopsided, so I chose an opponent somewhat more powerful. But I guess D & D fanboys become butt hurt and resort to telling me to google it instead of providing evidence and rely on a "no numbers" approach to debating.

[mr friendly guy]

Because D&D defines how those spells and abilities work in d20 terms and does the same for real world weapons? If you’re going to shrug your shoulders and say that guns do way, way more damage than d20 says they do you’re not talking about D&D spells and abilities anymore, now are you? You can’t just mix and match.

For reference: http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org ... apons.html

Granted it does define them as doing more damage than I remembered. It has been awhile.

Yeah, but we are on a board which has explicitly stated rules on how we should compare various fantasy universes. I mean what you going to do in a versus which has no d20 mechanics. Give up? Its better to simply convert to real world figures, the same way we do for sci fi. Otherwise if we use d20 numbers we would have a gold dragon = a borg cube (or at least that was the argument floated out a few years ago) which even Sir Nitram didn't buy.

[LaCroix]

One question - why is everybody assuming that an average Earth-human is Level 0/1 or alike?
What level would you place an politician with his years of experience? A factory worker? A football player? Or a combat-hardened earth soldier at?

Shouldn't we at first try to calculate their D&D stats and feats instead of making them non-stat random NPCs?

For example, what INT values would an average earthling have - I'm sure there is a text somewhere telling you how much INT you need to operate a certain technical device - we could extrapolate from there - It might just as well be that earth humans have pretty solid save rolls against spells/etc because we have a much higher INT/WIS than a D&D person due to education.

[Jub]

Uh, radar can detect moving objects via the doppler effect.

Okay, prove to me that current day militaries have the technology to acquire a man sized target at ground level, aim automated weapons at him, and destroy him in a way that's efficient enough to be considered practical.

Even if all things go your way, assassins rarely win the day alone. At worse humanity will adopt tactics used against say Kira in the Death Note series. People hide their faces and identities. The world's leaders (especially non democratic ones where the leaders are chosen by parties) take aliases.

These aren't simple assassins, those might be easy enough to deal with, even if they can find and reach you without error each and every time. They can also steal your thoughts, charm you to their side with a single spell, make themselves immune to weapons, and dish out (easily) hand grenade like damage with a simple word and wave of the hand.

How have I given them more than what we know? In fact they know more about us than we know about them because real world history is pretty much always more fleshed out than fictional history.

As I said, all our pictures appear as Orcs to them. I thought that was pretty clear.

Okay, but why bother with the whole 'they see us as orcs bit' at all then? Why not just say that they've been told by their gods to fight or die and leave us as is?

Firstly from your own words, if it exists. As I said, Orcs on Earth don't exist.

So you're handing the Earth side an advantage from the get go, by saying that they can't be scryed upon. Get fucked, if you want a versus debate you can't wave your hands and say, lol that doesn't work because I'm to stupid to think of a better way to make these sides fight than lol orcs.

Actually even in game mechanics, there is always a one in twenty chance of failure. Moreover super assassins rarely turn the tide especially when we can replace our leaders relatively easily.

Wrong again asshole, a caster in a nonstress situation could take ten on the skill check.

Ahem. From the description of Greater Teleport. You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination or a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. I might buy that he ends up somewhere close to say the White House. But right next to the president even if you knew what his room looked like (among the numerous rooms), that's just relying on writer's fiat.

Sorry but that isn't how the spell works. You can scry the president, and then teleport right to him without error. It's how it's played around official tables and it's how it works in the books.

I find that hard to believe since the Gods don't even know about us. This is getting into no limits fallacy isn't it.

Do clerics know about us? If so then their god does as well due to basically always keeping at least part of their attention actively on each person worshiping or serving them. If their god becomes aware of humanity they can literally bend reality to answer the question asked unless another divine being interferes.

Problem is
1. The person you are scrying for doesn't exist, or at least is nowhere near how you perceive it

Sorry, it isn't a fair debate if you cripple on side in such a way. I'm just going to ignore this point each time you bring it up, because it's blantant BS on your part.

2. Given the time limit, unless you catch them precisely discussing plans, its not going to help much.

Sorry, but scry, teleport, kill says otherwise. Or for intel, scry, teleport, insert magical spying device with less of a time limit. Solved.

3. Even if you can spy on them, sometimes they are too strong and it makes not much difference. Notice Szass Tam accomodated rather than opposed the Tuigan. He demonstrated scrying abilities in the Harpers series of novels.

Spying is of limited use if you don't follow it up, that much should be obvious. Szass Tam also had to deal with anti-scrying magics and an enemy that could also spy on him using the same means.

Great. Now all you have to do is prove they stop a bullet. Using science and logic as per board rules.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=26144

Hint if normal medieval weapons can hurt them, then modern weapons would wipe the floor with them.

Not true, given that AC isn't exactly a measure of just how armored you are, but also how hard you are to hit in the first place. Plus, D&D characters can take multiple sword swings or what have you, and stay in the fight.

And this translation changes the military equation how exactly?

You 'befriend' a ranking general, ask him to do something stupid, and capitalize over and over again. The trick literally works every time because a modern force has no way to stop it short of figuring out that a key person is compromised, changing him out, and hoping this trick doesn't happen again.

There is this thing called the burden of proof and its not my job to do your homework for you.

Secondly only the more powerful ones could compel the president to do something stupid. And thirdly in modern day governments there are things called checks and balances. I think if the POTUS suddenly decided to do something unpopular, there would be consequences. Of course making peace depends on how far the conflict has gone. Hint if your opening gambit is to assassinate or brainwash the president, then oh boy its going to hurt.

Sorry, but I assumed you knew the basics of the D&D setting before picking it to go up against.

They might start there and work their magic on other people after learning a few things. Perhaps they go after the sort of people that back major political campaigns instead, they might not even need magic for that. Think of how happy some ailing rich person would be if he was told you can literally cure every ailment he has with a wave of a hand. What would they give in exchange for that sort of miracle?

From your own link
This spell functions like silent image, except that sound, smell, and thermal illusions are included in the spell effect.

Ok so radar will not detect anything. So hook if up with visual aids and the discrepancy will show up.

Again, show me where radar has been used in the fashion you describe and prove that it's ready to go fast enough to keep enough people out to matter.

Next you will tell me D & D can beat some lower lights in the Culture because they can summon objects up to 25 000 gp in existence, and since the Culture doesn't have money they produce infinite Culture ships. You know what's funny, its clear you didn't even think this through.

For example http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_ ... cle_id=300

There are currently nine countries with a total of over 20,000 nuclear weapons, spending $105 billion annually on their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems. That will amount to more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The US accounts for about 60 percent of this amount.[/quote]
Sorry, that means the average nuclear weapon is a wee bit more than your $11 million dollars. Tanks do fall into that category though I am going to hazard a guess that you will very quickly reduce your levels. Yes because I am actually use some numbers which you no numbers types are loath to do. A level 20 Wizard has 190 000 exp. That accounts to 38 tanks assuming you lose 5000 XP each wish spell you cast. Actually it will be less because once you get too low, you won't be able to cast wish.

Oh wait, there is still the problem of petrol. Ok so you wish for petrol for the tank. That's another wish gone. What about the crew for the tank. Hmm. Problem there. You know what's even more funnier. Modern day nations have tanks in the thousands. Your trump card spell casters will quickly reduce their levels (thus rendering them no longer a trump card), desperately creating tanks the realms cannot use, and failing to match the numbers of tanks we already have, yet alone what we can produce.[/quote]

First of all, it says you get 25,000gp worth of items. It's not my fault that GP has a ton of value in our world and less value in others.

Second, most of that spending on nuclear weapons is going to be in upkeep on the weapons system and payment to personnel. This is especially true as most nations aren't exactly cranking out nuclear weapons. Now think of a mage ordering as much nuke as he can for the money, that surely wouldn't get him a modern ICBM with penetration aides, but it might get him a basic gravity bomb, or even multiple nuclear artillery shells instead.

Secondly, those were simple examples, it's obvious that just wishing for tanks is a bad idea (unless you set up a Djinn farm of course), but nothing in the wish spell says you can wish for a load of assault rifles and ammo. Or a load of modern medical supplies, or a pile of books on how to get from the tech they have to our tech.

Firstly they can't occur in places they can't normally happen? From your own link

You can call forth weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in.

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean much. Just because a tornado isn't likely to hit New York, doesn't mean it can't happen. You could also just go with hurricane force winds.

Since you really don't like numbers lets do the maths for you. Control winds has a radius of 40 feet / level. So say a level 25 caster can affect 1000 feet or 304.8 metres. That gives an area of just under 292000 sq metres (rounding up). That's about 72 Acres. Sounds impressive until you use this useful thing called google.

linky

Now how about we go with a druid with a 4.5 mile radius spell (if you're going to do this you might as well get a metamagic rod or two) that lasts 96 hours, again might as well go big. Now have him make something nasty, like summer hail, or really violent storms. Suddenly he's swinging for 2,020 acres a pop and removing entire large farms in a single go.

Actually no. From their description of wish
Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value.. Sorry single item allowed.

Moreover Master's Touch appears to be from a non Forgotten Realms D & D source. How likely are Faerunian wizards likely to know such spells. Very unlikely I would have thought.

Then wish for something exactly like thousands of AK-47's but connected to a plastic sprue. Or, you know, realize that wishes can summon more than a single item as you can stretch the bounds of a wish spell in such was with limited, if any, consequences.

I'm going to assume any and all spells from all books are allowed and that anybody with reason to have learned or researched them will have done so.

Actually to cast a spell while polymorph you must be able to speak it if it has a verbal component and move hands if it has a somatic component. Power word kill has a verbal component.

The US replaced Petraeus for having an affair even though he had great success in Iraq. I don't think a key general dead is going to bother us as much as say during medieval or classical times.

You have heard of things like still and silent spell right? You might also be aware that these metamagic feats can also come in item form so as to not raise the leave of a spell.

You would automatically know about leading scientists and plant managers because... Please note my book told them about our technological capability and history. I don't think plant managers even get an entry into an encyclopaedia.

Even in medieval times you'd have guys in charge of running places. It wouldn't be hard to look at a factory and figure that going after the guy in charge might be a good way to get some of what he's making.

Yes a case where game mechanics don't make much sense since an organic creature could potentially survive but a much larger and resilent inorganic one won't.

But playing along
1. I can go Spelljammer and argue tanks should have hit points, er I mean hull points like spelljamming ships and could potentially survive.
2. Tanks have longer range weaponry (see previous post)
3. Ok, so have infantry around. They either shoot the wizard or get disintegrated leaving the tank alone.
4. If I want to be a smart arse, I can do what Michael Shermer did to disprove firewalking. He stuck pieces of meat on his feet walked across the flaming coals and observed the meat wasn't burnt. Cover the tank with camouflaging plants covered with living insects. Disintegrate takes out the insects (hey I can use game mechanics against you too).

The mechanics make perfect sense if you rationalize that a living object resist the spell on a basic level by simply desiring to survive.

1. You could, but that wouldn't actually work. You see stone has hit points and hardness and still goes poof, so simply having hitpoints doesn't work.
2. You keep forgetting simple tricks like invisibility or meld with stone.
3. See 2
4. Fireball and then disintegrate. Same round too if you quicken one of them. Or you simply aim at the tank, after all bacteria on human skin are separate organisms and we can still be hit by the spell just fine.

With undead that have bodies, destroy the body and they won't bother us until they can reconstitute it.

With ghosts its a bit harder, until we study exactly how they work.

How does one exactly go about studying something that doesn't interact with non-magical matter unless it desires to and that can't be held captive?

How do you know D & D fanboys are getting desperate? When they invoke Pun Pun.

Firstly some of those items used to create pun pun are from non FR sources. So will these artifacts appear on Faerun? Also you need Sarrukhs, which are damn rare even in FR.
Two - no in universe character has created pun pun. Sorry, no one but humans on Earth know how to create Pun Pun. Guess who will be trying to create a Pun Pun now that we know D & D is real. Hint it won't be them.
Three - invoking Pun Pun is like Trekkies invoking alien of the week vs SW galactic empire.

Pun-pun could potentially exist, he wouldn't have much of a reason to make his presence known if he did. The same goes for the other broken outliers. They might, or might not, exist, but they could and they could only exist for one side.

Yeah, but we are on a board which has explicitly stated rules on how we should compare various fantasy universes. I mean what you going to do in a versus which has no d20 mechanics. Give up? Its better to simply convert to real world figures, the same way we do for sci fi. Otherwise if we use d20 numbers we would have a gold dragon = a borg cube (or at least that was the argument floated out a few years ago) which even Sir Nitram didn't buy.

Then suggest a better way to do things?

One question - why is everybody assuming that an average Earth-human is Level 0/1 or alike?
What level would you place an politician with his years of experience? A factory worker? A football player? Or a combat-hardened earth soldier at?

Shouldn't we at first try to calculate their D&D stats and feats instead of making them non-stat random NPCs?

For example, what INT values would an average earthling have - I'm sure there is a text somewhere telling you how much INT you need to operate a certain technical device - we could extrapolate from there - It might just as well be that earth humans have pretty solid save rolls against spells/etc because we have a much higher INT/WIS than a D&D person due to education.

People on earth obviously don't have class levels as hitpoints and saves can be demonstrated to not go up with training or life experience. Case in point take a voting age person, hand him a sword and have him attack a target dummy or something, measure his skill and send him on his way, now assuming he doesn't take an active interest in learning the sword no matter how much he learns about other things, he'll never get better with that sword. In D&D he would get better with that sword just by gaining experience. It's a simple fact that in D&D getting enough skill at what you do makes you both harder to kill and better with weapons and this is demonstrably not the case in our world.

[Ralin]

Yeah, but we are on a board which has explicitly stated rules on how we should compare various fantasy universes. I mean what you going to do in a versus which has no d20 mechanics. Give up? Its better to simply convert to real world figures, the same way we do for sci fi. Otherwise if we use d20 numbers we would have a gold dragon = a borg cube (or at least that was the argument floated out a few years ago) which even Sir Nitram didn't buy.

But what you're doing boils down to following D&D mechanics when they favor you and ignoring them when inconvenient. Like your AK-47 example. One “attack” in d20 doesn’t necessarily mean one bullet anymore than it means one blow from a hand weapon. It’s an abstract system. When a master swordsman deals 100+ damage in d20 terms it could just as easily mean that he rains down a half dozen deadly accurate blows that slip through his opponent’s guard as it could mean he cuts a stone pillar in half with one swing. Similarly, however many bullets an AK-47 can fire in six seconds that translates into one attack dealing 2d8 damage plus any relevant modifiers, or 4d8 on a lucky shot.

(d20 has rules for autofire letting you attack multiple targets in one round but honestly I don’t know them off the top of my head and it’s beside the point for this example)

Point is, you’re using rules as physics for things like spell range, casting times and so forth and crying foul the moment someone does the same to you. Given that you have no idea how Protection from Arrows or Stoneskin or whatever work disregarding the mechanics that tell us how they work in blocking attacks means that you’re tossing out the only numbers we have in favor of “Well OBVIOUSLY modern weapons are way more powerful and thus clearly overwhelm this magical effect.”

See the problem here?

One question - why is everybody assuming that an average Earth-human is Level 0/1 or alike?
What level would you place an politician with his years of experience? A factory worker? A football player? Or a combat-hardened earth soldier at?

Shouldn't we at first try to calculate their D&D stats and feats instead of making them non-stat random NPCs?

For example, what INT values would an average earthling have - I'm sure there is a text somewhere telling you how much INT you need to operate a certain technical device - we could extrapolate from there - It might just as well be that earth humans have pretty solid save rolls against spells/etc because we have a much higher INT/WIS than a D&D person due to education.

It’s been awhile since I read it, but I remember this essay giving a pretty good rundown of that line of thought. Short version is probably there’s no one higher than about 5th level in real-life

[Darmalus]

I just realized, we have a preception distortion on everyone on earth that makes us look like really nasty orcs.

Anyone disguising themselves is going to disguise themselves AS really nasty orcs, and stick out like a sore thumb.

That, or when they say "disguise me as so-and-so" they are going to be surprised when they now look like a human instead of an orc.

Assuming the people doing the infiltrating aren't blithering idiots, they are going to stop what they are doing and tell their allies something is terribly wrong and things are not what they seem. This would probably derail the entire war.

[Jub]

I say we ignore the stupid looks like orcs things, it serves no point and Mr. Friendlyguy is only using it to try and make things like scrying and disguise, two of things magic can do better than technology, worthless. If you wanted a battle just have ROB tell them they their fates both depend on this war or some such.

[Kingmaker]

A high-level 3.5E DnD wizard has access to a literally infinite number of wishes at no cost.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Uh, radar can detect moving objects via the doppler effect.

RADAR is light. If you are making the claim that RADAR will work on an invisibility spell, the burden of proof is on you to prove it. If there is no reflection, there is no doppler effect.

As I said, all our pictures appear as Orcs to them. I thought that was pretty clear.

Wont matter. Scry works through illusions. All that is required is knowledge that the person exists to scry. If you have studied the history of the subject, you will qualify for them only having a small bonus to their unconscious attempt to resist. The illusion is irrelevant. Aliases are irrelevant.

If the scry fails due to will save, you try again. There is no impediment. They dont even know they are being scried.

Ahem. From the description of Greater Teleport. You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination or a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. I might buy that he ends up somewhere close to say the White House. But right next to the president even if you knew what his room looked like (among the numerous rooms), that's just relying on writer's fiat.

That is why you teleport directly from the scry, which, incidentally, can be viewed by others.

1. The person you are scrying for doesn't exist, or at least is nowhere near how you perceive it

Does not matter. You dont even need the name. A title will suffice. Even if you fail, that is what apprentices are for.

Lets assume for a moment that Faerun unites to invade earth, that seems to be where you are going with your scenario. Thayan divination specialists. What good are they for? Intel gathering. Thay has a magic item construction industry. Make a bunch of scrying mirrors with unlimited uses, set the lower echelon wizards to work with row upon row of scrying mirrors. If one fails, they switch mirrors and try again with no impediment.

And this translation changes the military equation how exactly?

Espionage and Sabotage. Insert disguised as an insect. A few relatively cheap magical items let you pass for a local when you revert to human form, or you can rely on your own spells. From there you can do all sorts of shit. Shit that makes the SOE look like incompetent pussies. Single use Gate grenades in industrial areas for example. A ravening demon is a ravening demon (more on damage momentarily).

Firstly they can't occur in places they can't normally happen? From your own link

You can call forth weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in.

There is nowhere on the planet a tornado cannot occur. They even happen in Northern Europe. They are just rare. You can still arbitrarily use locally possible weather to fuck with all sorts of things.

Actually to cast a spell while polymorph you must be able to speak it if it has a verbal component and move hands if it has a somatic component. Power word kill has a verbal component.

Many many may spellcasters (druids in particular) are not burdened by that requirement. Baseline spell description that is true, but there are feats that permit otherwise routinely taken by spellcasters who like to change shape. In non game mechanical terms, some spellcasters have particular skills when it comes to polymorph effects.

Yes a case where game mechanics don't make much sense since an organic creature could potentially survive but a much larger and resilent inorganic one won't.

It is magic. It is allowed to be idiosyncratic. It could be that for that particular spell, it is just less effective against living tissue.

1. I can go Spelljammer and argue tanks should have hit points, er I mean hull points like spelljamming ships and could potentially survive.
2. Tanks have longer range weaponry (see previous post)

Spelljammer ships are magical constructs. No dice. Tanks may have longer range weaponry, but a mage of sufficient power to cast disintegrate who knows what they are up against will have defenses. Ironguard spells. Your shells (and shrapnel) go right through, no damage. Concussion? Fire? There are spells that grant flat out immunity to those as well. Even lower level versions will offer enough protection that the wizard (who has super-human endurance. More on that later) should be able to survive considerable punishment.

And that is if they give you a target at all. There are numerous ways to prevent that. Everything from invisibility to passwall to meld with stone (which gives them a no clip mod with respect to the ground). Or hell, a wand of Sanctuary, which makes it very difficult for anyone to attack the user while allowing them to use non-attack spells (like act as battlefield medics, use illusion spells to induce tank crews to shoot at phantasms, summon shit etc)

............................

Now for things like damage, and how game mechanics translate to the actual world.

D&D PCs should be modeled as superhuman.

We have a baseline for the average human peasant. Namely, having 4 HP, no stat bonuses (maybe +1 somewhere if they are particularly stubborn), and a smattering of skills that make them baseline competent at what they do (basketweaving or whatever). These do of course work on a multinomial distribution curve that more or less approximates a normal distribution. Thing is, virtually everyone on the upper end of the curve is a PC, and everyone on the lower end gets killed by the demonic basement rats (or sadistic PCs who throw baskets of angry kittens at them. For Justice).

This is the only way we can possibly get a baseline for comparison when it comes to things like spell effects.

There are two ways we can deal with this.

Either way, being a PC imbues them with...something...that lets them transcend human limits. They are basically superheros. Even non-PCs with character levels in an NPC class dont have the same numerical progression and it cannot be expected that we progress the same way. These are different universes.

But some things are the same.

A non-magical sword is a non-magical sword that imparts energy on a target. The same thing with bullets. Now, a M16 bullet has about 3.9 kj of force behind it, and it only may or may not kill a given person when it hits them. A crossbow bolt impacts with 80 or so. Both are comparably lethal (discounting range differences etc), despite multiple orders of magnitude in difference in KE.

So just positing that PC HP and various spells work by absorbing KE etc does not work, because the damage to the human body does not scale linearly with those things. Instead, anatomy, mode of delivery of the energy, all that stuff matters far more. But the capacity to absorb damage in D&D does not work that way.

Take disintegrate. It is enough to kill a baseline human (and disintegrate a 10x10 cube of an arbitrary material). It delivers an arbitrary quantity of energy to a target.

First of all, there is a baseline chance (sometimes) that by sheer will to survive, the spell will be less effective (not relevant for a baseline human). A PC of sufficient power can survive. Not by getting out of the way, but by some magical force protecting their bodily integrity over and above their HP, which may be sufficient to survive anyway.

This leads us to the conclusion that HP, (at least) Fort Saves, and various spells that protect them from damage do not act upon the energy of the spell, weapon strike etc. They act directly by preventing tissue damage irrespective of energy input. It does not matter how badass a person is in real life. In our world, we have no capacity to resist this. Not anymore than the average peasant, anyway. You can shoot Collin Powell, and his chance of death is identical to anyone else. You shoot Elminster, and the integrity of his tender flesh is maintained by magic. These are people who can survive falls from low earth orbit (you can say they are good at avoiding the worst of a sword cut, but not that).

So, we get to something like a demon. Say, a Pit Fiend summoned using a gate spell. None of our guns can touch it. With HP alone, it can take enough bullets to kill 57 people (so, at best a pair of 30 round mags, if everything hits, which they wont, see armor class discussion below) which is not much. However, its damage reduction is sufficient to stop cold anything not guaranteed to kill 3-4 baseline humans outright. Per hit. It also regenerates at a rate sufficient that physical trauma sufficient to kill a baseline human outright is regenerated every few seconds.

Now, we get to armor class. Baseline human is 10. So a baseline human trying to punch a baseline human in the face has a 50% chance of success, which is not unreasonable. We can use this as a baseline for comparison. Now, this is a combination of armor penetration and actually hitting them. So this is hitting the other person AND getting through whatever protections they have such that their explicitly magical defenses apply. If someone is wearing plate armor, the chance of being able to do them damage with hand weapons is low. Now, this does not unfortunately take the armor penetrating capabilities of guns into account. But lets assume that guns and other things have an armor reduction value or something like that which reduces the effectiveness of armor.

So, lets assume that plate armor (AC Bonus of is a continuous sheet of steel with a toughness of 2000 j/cm^3 to penetrate. A pit fiend has an natural armor bonus of 23 we will even it out to 24 to give a toughness of 6000 j/cm^3 to penetrate, with 3 mm of thickness. We will assume a 43 g round with a cross sectional area of 506.7 mm^2

6000*(.03)*5.067=912.06=.5*(.043)*v^2
912.06/.5=.043*v^2=1824.12
1824.12/.043=v^2=42421.4
42421.4^(1/2)=205 m/sec
a .50 cal round easily penetrates, but still has to deal with DR and HP. As well as the summoned pit fiend's supernatural abilities. This is also making certain assumptions, like the plate steel thing. Real armor does not work like that, and most of the ability of a human to penetrate plate armor is due to getting into gaps. Still, I doubt the difference is so good to completely invalidate the calculation.

But this does not take into account the fact that despite its large size, a pit fiend has a superhuman capacity to dodge attacks. AC bonus from dex is 7, which is double what the maximum "normal" human limit is. So it has a Matrix-like ability to avoid incoming attacks. Sort of like a cockroach.

Now, other forms of AC boost dont work that way. They enhance the ability of the subject to avoid attack. Dodge bonuses are pretty straight-forward. Deflection causes attacks to go off course. Luck bonuses cause serendipitous things to occur such that attacks dont hit (sneezing opponents, slips and falls whatever), Insight Bonuses give precog. We will lump these in probabilistically.

Now, the cumulative probability curve for armor is supposed to be somewhat normal. So we will set hitting AC 10 as the mean with an SD of 7 (which is approximately where it should be given the cumulative probabilities). So, lets take a reasonably powerful wizard equipped by communal effort or LOTS of money (because why not?), ring of protection +6, dex of 16 magically enhanced to 22, dodge bonuses stacked to a total of +5, and a luck bonus of 1.

Total AC of 28.

Now take 10 of (our world) badass marines on the upper end of our distribution curve (so Dex of 18, and years of training giving a BAB of +5. i have to abstract this somehow) have total bonus of 9. More than enough to make mincemeat of a bunch of average iraqis, for example.

This puts their mean at 19, SD of 7. Which puts our mage just inside their second SD bracket. 90% or so of their shots will miss. MUCH less if he is in any way intelligent (and he has a super-human intellect) and casts something nice and simple like Displacement, takes cover, or just takes the simple expedient of casting Ironguard upon himself.

Given the superhuman endurance, it is unlikely they can bring him down in the 3 seconds they have before he obliterates them (30 rounds, 3 will hit on average, which should be enough to reliably take down 1-3 people, while he should have the capacity to endure 10-20 humans worth of punishment without protection).

And that is if he ever presents a target. Incorporeal undead are a bitch.

...............

The problem you are not grasping, is that while some things can be directly compared, we are talking about people who, as far as we are concerned, are not subject to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology as we understand them. A wall of force DOES violate the laws of thermodynamics as far as it matters to us. They can control the time and place of any engagement such that there is no reason to EVER suspect that they will give us a standup fight.

We cannot even counter-attack for fuck's sake. It is a 5 KM cube, but they only have to defend one face. They can put up anti-intrusion wards big enough for that with ritually cast epic spells easily enough, and even if they cant, standard spells will work just as well. It would only take 300 10th level wizards to completely hedge out anything we might send, in perpetuity. Wall of force + Permanency. Done. Leave door open so they can send things through, leave some guards with staffs of Prismatic Wall to close the door on us if we counter-attack. Done. And even through that, they can send casters in at will to just... fuck with us.

Will they be an existential threat to us? Not if they use the tactics mostly discussed above. That would just create chaos and pain. But there are other ways. Necromancy would be Fucking Horrible. What with controlling incorporeal undead that spread exponentially in a populated area. Opening up a permanent portal to Hell somewhere with a covert insert would just be horrendous from the thermal flux alone. To say nothing of the Horrors that would come through.

[Ralin]

This is probably as good a time as any to mention that gunpowder canonically does not work in Faerun. Smoke powder, the Faerun equivalent, is an alchemical/magical substance that costs 25 gp to create and only a relatively small number of people knows how to make.

I can't find an online source for that with a few minutes' googling, but I know I've heard from multiple sources that Ed Greenwood has written articles saying as much. If someone can name them I'd appreciate it.

[Jub]

Thanks for that AD, that post, the last section especially, was what I was trying to come up with yesterday before I ran into a mental wall.

[Alyrium Denryle]

We cannot even counter-attack for fuck's sake. It is a 5 KM cube, but they only have to defend one face. They can put up anti-intrusion wards big enough for that with ritually cast epic spells easily enough, and even if they cant, standard spells will work just as well. It would only take 300 10th level wizards to completely hedge out anything we might send, in perpetuity. Wall of force + Permanency. Done. Leave door open so they can send things through, leave some guards with staffs of Prismatic Wall to close the door on us if we counter-attack. Done. And even through that, they can send casters in at will to just... fuck with us.

Ghetto Edit, that should be a 1 km cube.

[LaCroix]

I believe going by hitpoints alone is a fallacy - We have "normal" peope who survived being hit by ~20 gunshot wounds - which means they would have 20 hitpoint dice. And counting the number of bullets that miss in a routine firefight, people seem to have very high AC, definitely high above the 10 of a NPC...

Also, when people duelled, still fighting on after recieving a couple of HARD Rapier hits (with wich I mean not scratched, but completely run through, with the blade exiting the back, which is pretty much maximum damage" was considered normal.

All these people demonstrated Hitpoints compareable to PCs. It's very much possible that it is due to the plane we are on - It might very well be that a Lvl12 fighter finds himself baffled that he can be struck down with a single hit in our world. Maybe we live on a plane "OF PAIN" where base critical strike is from 5 -20 for all weapons? Maybe they find magic impeded on our plane and it won't work at all, unless you have a very high level?

Looking at stats - the picture is much more even:
Weight lifters routinely lift weights in excess of 400 pounds, meaning they have STR 20+, bench press record is about 1000lbs, which is STR27 or thereabouts.
Archers routinely hit miniscule targets, just like in D&D, martial arts experts do rival monks, and much more.

I propose the following theory - we do have people with levels just as high as D&D people, we just didn't have magic - since now the planes are connected and their magic flows freele into our world (we are now able to learn their magic), it will affect us just like it does in their world. So why wouldn't it automatically give all these superhuman feats to all people living in our world if they fulfill the level and other requirements?
Soldiers would suddenly have fighter feats, and martial artists, especially the shaolin monks, will become even more awesome, priests will be able to turn undead and evil, just like their books taught them, and spiritualists will be VERY surprised...

[Ralin]

I generally play on the assumption that hit points represent the fact that the game is running on action movie physics and that damage means different things to different people. Meaning that when a normal person takes fifteen points of damage from an arrow it hit him right in the heart but when a 20th level fighter takes fifteen points of damage the arrow scrapped some skin off as it whizzed by him. Hit points can represent things like knowing how to lessen blows, plot armor, etc as much as physical toughness. Pretty sure this was explicitly stated in the rules at some point, either in 2nd edition or 3rd edition.

[Jub]

LaCroix and Ralin, the thing about your arguments is that they fail to take into account the fact that a character with high hit points can literally survive a drop through orbit each and every time. There is also the fact that no matter what level of injury they have taken, if they have one or more hit points left, they function as if they were fighting fit. So while we do have cases where people have survived an impressive number of wounds, until we have people that can swim through lava and come out unscathed, saved for minor hit point loss with no other mechanical penalties, it can be shown that we don't have class levels as D&D defines them.

This proof can also be done another very easy way. A person of experience in our world, say a head of state or that Olympic class weight lifter, should have enough experience that they are now better at combat, in spite of the fact that they never trained to be better at such. They are also no more resistant to disease or outright poison than they were at a younger less experienced age. This is yet more proof that people, as we know them, don't have class level.

Plus, the Forgotten Realms are on the same plane of existence as us that being the Prime Material Plane. So no, we don't suddenly get huge bonuses due to this portal opening as we've been on the same plane as they are the entire time. It's just that for whatever reason nothing even remotely magical happens to us. maybe we're just exceptionally dull, or are being used as some sort of control for a grand experiment.

[LaCroix]

I agree with that, Jub, but these are obviously magical effects, since you gain class levely by simply doing stuff and gaining experience. I'm postulating that the hitpoint increase and the feats in D&D are due to the fact that the whole world has magic. For all other stuff, our worlds function the same - you gain experience, and you level your skills.

But after the worlds got connected , we are now able to gain levels - as per the OP

Humans from Earth can learn magic the same speed humans in Faerun can under the same conditions

- we are able to learn their magic, which is impossible if we can't gain levels. And if people learning magic can gain levels, then all people can now gain levels.

While we certainly do already have certain feats present in people (for example, weapon/armor proficiency, acrobatic feats, various physical feats), and people do have lots of skill points, already, they simply start out on level 1 when the portals are opened.

But from that very moment on, they gain experience and levels, just like people in the Forgotten Realms do.

So soldiers will suddenly get tougher and tougher while going through training missions and combat, martial artists will find themselves getting much better after a certain number of training fights. (Remember, D&D experience is mostly gained by combat, that's why most NPCs are Level 1...)

Thus, the longer the portals are open, the more high-level characters we get.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I believe going by hitpoints alone is a fallacy - We have "normal" peope who survived being hit by ~20 gunshot wounds - which means they would have 20 hitpoint dice. And counting the number of bullets that miss in a routine firefight, people seem to have very high AC, definitely high above the 10 of a NPC...

Also, when people duelled, still fighting on after recieving a couple of HARD Rapier hits (with wich I mean not scratched, but completely run through, with the blade exiting the back, which is pretty much maximum damage" was considered normal.

Which is why I used HP as an abstract for "an amount of tissue damage sufficient to cause death". When Henry IV was shot in the face, it ended up missing everything vital in his face and the back of his head and neck my mm.

You absolutely have to abstract everything somehow, because save for a few spells, there are precisely zero means by which we can otherwise quantify damage. Even spells that have a specified effect against non-living material do something else to living material.

So what can you do? Every bit of evidence we have gives credence to the idea that people with PC character levels are super-human, because once you compare them to a baseline human... They can drop from low earth orbit and live.

All we need to make is one assumption. A baseline human is the same in both universes. Then we can get an idea for the superhuman endurance. Is it perfect? Not strictly speaking. In reality, the damage from a bullet operates on a continuous rather than discrete curve. A bullet can hit, and miss every vital organ and blood vessel, causing negligible damage. Glance of the skull causing only minor bleeding. But there is a mean. That mean is to be able to reliably kill or maim someone with a single shot. The same thing with sword cuts, and most other things we have used as weapons through the ages.

Looking at stats - the picture is much more even:
Weight lifters routinely lift weights in excess of 400 pounds, meaning they have STR 20+, bench press record is about 1000lbs, which is STR27 or thereabouts.

Two issues

1) In reality, and the realms, everything is REALLY on a continuous curve. The stats given for a baseline peasant is an average, and the mechanics take that out so far in the probability distribution. But there probably are peasants running around with a strength of 22 (unless they became Adventurers). They just start to get rare the farther away from the mean one gets.

2) No. That is not how it works. 1000 lbs is max sustainable carry weight. IE. What someone can put on their back and carry around for a sustained period. Max bench press would be twice someone's heavy load, or a heavy load of 500 lbs, which is STR of 22, readily achievable by a statistical anomaly.

Archers routinely hit miniscule targets, just like in D&D

But they cannot do so with a rate of fire equivalent to an M16 rifle. Nor can they survive a fall from LEO.

martial arts experts do rival monks, and much more

They cannot jump arbitrarily high, dodge the concussive blastwave of an RPG, actually kill someone with a death touch, run at cheetah speed, not need vaccines ever, be immune to cyanide, or become incorporeal. Sorry.

I propose the following theory - we do have people with levels just as high as D&D people, we just didn't have magic - since now the planes are connected and their magic flows free into our world (we are now able to learn their magic), it will affect us just like it does in their world. So why wouldn't it automatically give all these superhuman feats to all people living in our world if they fulfill the level and other requirements?

Because at that point, honestly, the whole matchup is completely pointless.

It goes from "Us as we Understand Ourselves" vs "The Realms, as Written"
to
"Us + All the Properties of the Realms" vs "The Realms, as Written"

Which is not a matchup worth having or considering, unless you want a circle jerk.

I would hazard Mr. Friendly Guy is just shitty at thinking that sort of thing through.

That, and we are already supposedly on their plane of existence and have no magic that seeps into us like the spice melange in dune. Just because we can learn their magic (which definitionally we must already have been ABLE to do, just have not done yet for whatever reason), it does not follow that all the other effects of magic are a "thing" for us. For whatever reason.

Or, to put it another way:

We gain levels. We have this whole time. However, the various numerical progressions are just different for us, because while magic must definitionally exist in our world already, we dont have the exact same access to it. Witnessed by the fact that....we cannot fall from LOE and live.

If we do not do this, there is no point in having the vs debate, because at that point we might as well have a debate of "Faerun now, vs Faerun when it has reached our level of technology" which is no debate at all.

[Gaidin]

I was going to comment, AD's fairly detailed and cool post seemed to only address the casters, and as far as if they only decided to set up a defense on the portals and an intelligence operation or maybe a few operational pushes. But, what if a lot of other high levels of all the other classes decided to do something. The same principles in effect would still apply wouldn't it? Even a high level Fighter would be a nasty thing to see, much less a well balanced party treating New York City as a dungeon while they look for treasure?

Also, what was with trying to pretend the Underdark doesn't exist? That was kind of lame, kind of cutting off half the world just because you wanted to. Personally I'm picturing the Duergar messing with industry everywhere, but that's me.

[Jub]

I don't even want to think of what would happen if our oceans gained some of the horrors of the deep from the D&D universe or if suddenly the drow started to boil up out of many of the world's mines.

[Gaidin]

Well, I honestly think the Drow are underrated because as a surface race, they are literally nothing too big of an expansive threat. They'd do raids, sure. But they never did more than that in FR, culturally. I can see them expanding into Mammoth Caves or similar places, but the surface won't see more than raiding parties and in the dark anyway. Places like that are places the Drow could theoretically live once they forced their way in. I mentioned the Duergar because they could make mining a nightmare where they wanted to. The Drow, mostly, would they really want to?

[Jub]

Well, I honestly think the Drow are underrated because as a surface race, they are literally nothing too big of an expansive threat. They'd do raids, sure. But they never did more than that in FR, culturally. I can see them expanding into Mammoth Caves or similar places, but the surface won't see more than raiding parties and in the dark anyway. Places like that are places the Drow could theoretically live once they forced their way in. I mentioned the Duergar because they could make mining a nightmare where they wanted to. The Drow, mostly, would they really want to?

The Drow could force us to seriously rethink some of our shaft mines if the raids were bad enough, but really any of the under dark races messing with the surface would be bad. Especially as they'd be attacking places that we'd never even thought of defending before once they got stuck in there.

[Gaidin]

The Drow could force us to seriously rethink some of our shaft mines if the raids were bad enough, but really any of the under dark races messing with the surface would be bad. Especially as they'd be attacking places that we'd never even thought of defending before once they got stuck in there.

Yea, but the places the Drow are really interested, something they can culturally invest in, and live in before they even try to really get involved, aren't really near anything that I can tell. They're a non issue but for the small surface raiding party in the dark, and then their gear probably disintegrates or becomes useless in the sun. It's all they ever did. And that's assuming you can convince them to work with the other races without backstabbing someone for this campaign anyway. The deurgar that are actually interested in mining are where we'd have to really rethink protecting our industry in the middle of all this.

This whole thread so far has been talking about PC power, but it's still a World vs World thread at the same time so we still have to account for race culture at the same time. If Llolth(sp?) did tell them to get involved, they'd have to find places to live once they stepped through or their gear is useless, assuming they weren't handed an equivalent replacement for fighting during the day. And that's setting aside they've literally evolved to live in the dark. They'd be blind except for the rare purple-eye. And with how them and their goddess work, they will end up backstabbing someone anyway. And everybody knows it. Whoever's doing anything worthy of sending people places will want to send them somewhere where they can do the least damage when they start making a power grab. Which means they're about as sidelined as they can be.

[Jub]

Yea, but the places the Drow are really interested, something they can culturally invest in, and live in before they even try to really get involved, aren't really near anything that I can tell. They're a non issue but for the small surface raiding party in the dark, and then their gear probably disintegrates or becomes useless in the sun. It's all they ever did. And that's assuming you can convince them to work with the other races without backstabbing someone for this campaign anyway. The deurgar that are actually interested in mining are where we'd have to really rethink protecting our industry in the middle of all this.

This whole thread so far has been talking about PC power, but it's still a World vs World thread at the same time so we still have to account for race culture at the same time. If Llolth(sp?) did tell them to get involved, they'd have to find places to live once they stepped through or their gear is useless, assuming they weren't handed an equivalent replacement for fighting during the day. And that's setting aside they've literally evolved to live in the dark. They'd be blind except for the rare purple-eye. And with how them and their goddess work, they will end up backstabbing someone anyway. And everybody knows it. Whoever's doing anything worthy of sending people places will want to send them somewhere where they can do the least damage when they start making a power grab. Which means they're about as sidelined as they can be.

I'm ignoring the snub that the OP gave to the below ground races and assuming that the underground cultures get their own portals to places deep within the Earth that are suitable to them. They don't really need to work with the surface folk to be interested in expanding into a new world. I'd also give the underwater cultures their own portals beneath the waves as well. It's pretty PC race centric to only allow the main kingdoms to have easy access to Earth.

So assuming the the Drow, Duergar, Mind Flayers, et al. come up in deep caves suitable to them and the Aboleths, Merfolk, Sahuagin, and the like get portals to suitable ocean sites, what will they do and what do we try to do about them?

[Gaidin]

We might run into mysterious mass murders that investigators can't solve as far as the drow are concerned. They'd even look similar enough that they try to link them as far as MO is concerned. Who knows. But like I said, if they're portaled directly where they need to be they may not try to really get involved. They're where they need to be. The deurgar are the biggest threat because they can find interesting resources and learn interesting methods from us all the while making our lives a pain in the ass where it usually isn't. As for underwater races, I'm not sure what they're normally like, but to start we may just be bumping into things as naval forces that force us to draw lines on oceanic maps. 'This site is theirs, that site is theirs' etc. This would be an interesting experience all it's own. Would there be an equivalent of sovereign airspace(waterspace?) for them if their settling somewhere relative to the ocean floor and they've got their own wizards that can casually launch something up at a submarine or ship above their people? I don't ever see something so formal as a treaty, but hell if there wouldn't quickly be an understood 'don't go there for now, you'll get burned' policy. If they get interested in expanding, I'm not sure what would really happen.

[PKRudeBoy]

Two issues that I've noticed so far:
One, people assuming Forgotten Realms characters will act like powergamers, despite a wealth of information to the contrary. While I've only read 30 or so out of the 150+ FR novels, I can't remember a single instance of scry and die. Furthermore, spellcasters in Faerun who aren't loners off in a tower are divided up into countless squabbling factions with mutually incompatible goals who couldn't unite if they tried.
Two, the probably thousands of powergamers IRL who are immediately going through the portal, saying "Pazuzu" three times, and embarking on their quest for godhood with an infinite supply loop of candles of invocation. Because I know that's exactly what I would do.

Oh, and Ed Greenwood probably becomes Director of National Security.