Forgotten realms invades Earth RAR

[mr friendly guy]

Yet we never see radar used in this capacity by modern militaries even when it would be useful. You don't see military bases with radar dishes pointed at the ground to detect people sneaking up on them, nor do you see this technology used to point at roads to pick up insurgents planting IEDs. The burden of proof is on you to show that that we have radar that is used to specifically find man sized targets and target ground weapons systems at it. You can screech and point to planes and missile locks all you want, but that's ignoring the work and it takes to make a weapons system compatible with a plane's fire control systems. You literally can't just attach a radar set to a gun and have it work without millions of dollars of R&D going into the setup.

Ahem.

Yes, but you use your scenario to say, you can't scry on anybody on Earth because you think they're an orc, if you were making any attempt to be fair you would have allowed for scrying and disguise to work as normal. By not doing so you take away a major advantage that one side would normally enjoy. So don't use your contrived scenario to limit one side's abilities in what you've stated to be a versus debate.

I didn't create the scenario with the aim of being unfair. I read the description of scry and came up with that interpretation. I resent your bullshit accusation that I started this thread with the purpose of bashing FR and making things unfair.

Except that these spells are in sources stated to be compatible with the FR campaign setting. Hell, I could bust out shit from Dragon Magazine in this debate if I wanted and it would fit the cannon policy for the universe we're discussing.

The compatibility wasn't the problem. It was the likelihood they would know it. Which I kind of stated, but someone you strawman this isn't non canon (which I reserved for pun pun) Its like me saying every other country in the world gets F-22. When you object saying that they don't have the know how to build it, I then say but its compatible with the physics of planet earth. And it would
still fit into the canon of planet earth that F-22 exists.

Where did I ever state that he will fight for either side in the debate? I merely stated that such things as nigh infinite beings and infinite damage/action loops are possible using the spells in D&D. It was an example of their top end ability, not some statement that these beings show up and thus modern earth instantly gets wiped.

Ahem.

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.

So which side are they existing for? FR or Earth. Either way you are implying they will fight for a side. Why do people say they never said x on a message board, when someone can just go and show where they said X.

The fact that Clerics can cast spells and pray for new ones on our planet is proof that the gods are able to exert their power on our world. If the god can grant power and channel power through a follower it follows that they must be aware of and interact with that follower. Thus their reach extends to our world. There is also the fact that there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to see Earth when they can see into our Faerun from whichever home plane they happen to be resident on.

Awareness of their follower is on Earth, awareness that Earth exists doesn't explain how it translates to "know where person x" is on Earth which was where this original point started.

Then why even have the debate about scrying? Why not simply say, it works as normal, I just wanted to make this sort of like that one orc thread and am so uncreative that I had to literally make one side orcs?

I explained why in the very post you replied to.

We try that in real life and it doesn't always work, let alone against a being that can literally dodge or deflect projectiles. Hell some monks can scoop them out of the air and toss them back with roughly the same force you fired them at.

I think the pressure exerted by a bullet is bit different form the pressure on the blunt part of an arrow.

I've been backing them up thus far have I not?

Only after you have made sarcastic comments like "there is this thing called google" and "I expect people to know the basics of D & D" even though you got wrong (and admitted to being wrong) about some these "basics" like one of the weather control spells. This makes me think you're doing this to try and cowl people to not to ask too closely.

I've asked for proof that they've ever been used to detect invisible people or that the military would deploy this as a method of detecting things coming out of these portals.

Skimmer already provided the proof. However even if they didn't use such methods, you are literally assuming real world humans will never ever adjust tactics in the face of enemy with different capabilities.

Again show me an example of soldiers using this sort of kit in the field. You can't just asspull weapons systems that we don't have out of no where.

Ignoring for a moment that Skimmer already showed it, you are pretty demanding that if I were to postulate a solution combining existing technologies that would be disallowed unless they actually have done so. Yet with your powergaming examples you want everyone to accept that FR characters combine these existing capabilities without once showing an NPC having done so. Riiiight.

That may be so, but it doesn't make this any less possible. It merely makes it a tool that might not be used.

Trekkie - The Borg can assimilate and master any enemy technology it comes across including ones vastly more advanced than its own.
You - The magic user casting a Wish spell can create any enemy (non magical) technology it comes across, including ones vastly more advanced than his own race's technology.

You seriously cannot see anything wrong with this no limits fallacy.

I seriously doubt that there has been an official game where such an interaction has been possible. Also, in the Culture example, that 25,000gp would summon nothing as gold has no value to such a society.

Ha ha ha ha. Ok I am going to use this later on.

Mages and Clerics can't be everywhere at once, so gaining an additional advantage wouldn't be a terrible idea.

Cool. Waste the XP on modern medical supplies then.

That one book could doesn't need to be an exact copy of an existing book. You could instead wish for a combined, non-magical, tome of all knowledge on a subject. Given that, as per this link parchment is 1/5 of a gold piece you could get a tome containing 125,000 pages on any subject you desire. It might not be enough to bootstrap them anywhere, but it's going to give them some idea of how our world works.

That still doesn't over come the problem of how long it takes to get from a medieval society to one now.

Would you use this same argument to say that a mage couldn't summon a staff with a unique pattern on because that specific staff doesn't exist?

If that's the vein of your argument then its pointless. A Mage can beat the Culture. It can create technology millions of years in advance of his race (and our own world) even if it doesn't exist.

I would argue that against creating things that the other side has if the technological difference is vast just like how we can't assume the Borg will automatically assimilate Culture technology. Because it becomes a no limits fallacy. I did however chose not to press the tank issue or the AK-47 issue I thought it would be a waste of XP to create these things, and without the ammo and fuel even if it did succeed as opposed to simply fizzling.

However if you want to play a rules lawyer then what's to stop me saying and I am paraphrasing your "Culture" argument, the Earth trades in goods with fiat currencies, and not in gold pieces. Or an even more bullshit one but perfectly acceptable by your standards, we buy gold in bullion and not in gold pieces. Remember, you started this lawyering bullshit, so don't complain when I used that against you. I mean if say China builds a tank, its not paying its workers or the company in gold pieces right? Ha ha ha.

These spells are cannon to the universe and, in many cases, explicitly compatible with the FR campaign setting. Unless you have a reason to believe that they only get spells, feats, and classes from the books specific to the FR campaign, there is no reason to assume that these spells aren't known among the people of the realms.

Actually I do have a reason to suspect what is in non FR source books may not be known to Faerun. For example some of what's mentioned eg prestige classes are of religious orders of non Faerunian Gods. Lets say Ordained Champion from the book Complete champion. Sure a person from the FR can learn it but unlikely they would worship a foreign god or even be aware of them. Just like other countries might be able to build an F-22 equivalent eventually. There just isn't evidence to suggest they have.

They could pray to the gods and ask for advice on how to proceed. Or cast something like, say, find the path and set the destinations to be the most important factories to the world's war efforts. Then you get a literal glowing path that even gives advice on getting past mechanical obstacles (so much for that automated radar idea).

I can get past a radar encampment as well. Walk past it. Getting past the radio wave is another matter given how fast light travels in air and how extensive radar can be.

Again, humans are literally covered in microorganisms and the spell never fizzles because it accidentally hits one of them. So the burden of proof is on you to show an example of this technique working the way you claim it will.

I thought of that before I made my suggestion. Which is why I suggested organisms bigger than you know bacteria, like insects. A fly would be at least 500 000 times the size of E.coli. In any event I also had an idea of flanking the tank with good old beasts of burden like the good old day, which are significantly larger than humans and take the damage instead of the tank.

Does it interact with gravity? Does it interact with light? Does it interact with sound?

No. Only if it chooses to be visible. Only if it chooses to. You literally have no way of confining them or observing them if they don't wish to be observed.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. ROTFL.

Ok I am going to so much fun with this. Well since YOU stated a ghost doesn't interact with gravity here is what is going to happen when you create a ghost. Before the necromancer can say "I am your master" the ghost is going to disappear. After trying a few times, the Necromancer might work out the ghost appeared to be travelling at speed of 30 km / second, although from the ghost's perspective its the necromancer who is travelling at that speed.

Now of course since this doesn't occur on Faerun its most probably because of some magical property of Faerun.

Wait - you are going to say when you meant no to the question does it interact with gravity, you really really meant "only when it chooses too."

Yet we can't power game because, by the rules of D&D, it takes years of study to the near exclusion of all else to gain access to even first level spells.

So the limitation against power gaming also works on them as well. Good to know.




You know what. I wasn't going to pull this cannard, but in response to all these rules lawyering, the United States decides to come up with their own band of geeks who seek to find out how to nullify their advantages. Meanwhile real scientists work on how to utilise our advantages. Here is what they came up with.

You see, there is a D & D novel which just so happens to showcase a weakness most likely unknown to powergamers and D & D wankers. It's this novel. The Malestrom’s eye by Roger E Moore from the Cloakmaster cycle of Spelljammer. Not surprisingly its not well known because Spelljammer novels didn't make money for them (TSR), although as a teen I thought the books were pretty entertaining. Back to the book.

You see the hero Teldin Moore on his spelljamming ship tried to find the Ultimate Helm. To that end they sought out a sage on a crystal sphere which had interesting inhabitants. For one thing there are these giant megafauna (literally their foot is at least 120 miles wide) who create this anti magical lake. The property of the water extends several feet away from the lake, and even Teldin's legendary cloak while not destroyed was not able to use its magic once drenched in this water. BTW, the anti magical property persisted for at least years. Now here is the interesting part about how they create the lake

– chapter 13 page 212, 1992 edition (from my collection naturally)

The megafauna's tracks destroy all magical power beneath them, simply crush it out, voiding the dweomer. We are speaking of pressures greater than three point one four one five nine two six five three five nine times ten to the thirty-seventh power scruples per square acre, of course, far beyond any known magical tolerance levels, once the megafauna puts down its foot-a process which takes centuries, as you can imagine

Ok its well known to the Gnomes that immense pressure destroy magical power even without this megafauna example. Given that the megafauna and the anti magic lake was well known for years, its fair to say that water after undergoing this process seems to somehow retain this antimagic property in violation of all known laws of physics and sounds like homeopathy (but hey this is magic right?). Now its true we don't know what 3.14159265359 X10^37 scruples / square acre actually means in SI units, however we can reach an upper limit.

You see, water freezes at 0 degrees celsius at room temperature. However we know that we can freeze water at room temperature if we subject it to immense pressure. So at 27 Celsius a pressure of 10^9 pascals will freeze the water. We don't observe this with the megafauna. Thus we derive a upper limit which is really high and most likely much higher than the pressure exerted by this megafauna. Going on the pressure exerted by the megafauna is "far beyond any known magical tolerance levels", so the exact breaking point is actually much less. So I doubt FR will know about this weakness. Unless they are gnomes. And even then it might take them a while to figure out what we can do.

So we first start by subjecting water to immense pressures. We eventually work out just how much pressure we need to breach the "magical tolerance levels". Eventually we figure out how much of this antimagical water we can mix with normal water and still retain effectiveness. Oops, some of the magical advantages don't work on us.

Oh, and the US waterboards a FR mage with anti magical water and then tries to justify it as needing to protect their troops.

Now I know some people are going to say I am just pulling shit of my arse. If only someone had uploaded a pdf copy of that novel just so we can check if its true.
Oh wait.

[mr friendly guy]

Ok AD, firstly I am going to say I am not going to have time to go through all your points, so I apologise in advance. As you can see I have been busy in this thread. I will however go through some of them which I find easier to answer.

Magic does not have this problem. It is fucking magic. So whether RADAR will work is an open question (because we dont know the mechanism of action. Whether it bends light, or more likely I think, prevents observation), and one for which the burden of proof would fall to you.

I disagree given what we know that what stops one wavelength of light doesn't necessarily do another. Presumably this spell makes light passes through or refract around. We know that what works for one wavelength doesn't necessarily. While I agree in the sense that its an open question, the burden of proof I feel lies on the other side.

However the other solution is sound. Sonar was originally used before radar. Some like SODAR are still used in air. If someone is going to silence one, put several in the area and the lack of reflection should clue us in.

Might work if they decided to face you on the open field. They wont. I wouldn't. They have to use field battles in their own world, because mages cancel out mages if they are evenly distributed and the battle comes down to the infantry (some of which are superhuman). In battles where there is a disparity in the presence of superhuman entities, it is a slaughter. All the time.

My idea was to frankly force them into an open battle with the Mahanian tactics.

Not the same thing. FTL at least pretends to operate by laws of physics that are manipulated with technology. We compare FTL based on travel speed. We compare weapons by estimating how much energy it takes to vaporize an object of known composition like an asteroid. We operate under a set of assumptions because we can assume the universes operate on a few basic rules like conservation of energy. They have power generation that requires fuel.

Magic, at least D&D magic, does not have that limit. Explicitly. A wall of force is a perpetual motion machine. A single mage casts disintegrate, and that spell has an arbitrary power output depending on its target because it vaporizes a set volume rather than input energy to vaporize a variable volume due to the properties of the target. And it does not take any more or less effort from the wizard to cast it, irrespective of target. And yet it cannot always vaporize a single human target.

If we were to calculate the energy output of disintegrate, it would range across several orders of magnitude (from the tons of TNT range for ice, just eyeballing it, to the KT range for iron, to higher for other metals like tungsten). But Disintegrate does not even work that way. Otherwise, it would never fail to disintegrate a human target.

I also had the same idea about disintegrate. However my initial thought was that rather than energy which ahem, magically varies, it works sort of like an inverse of NDF effects of phasers. So instead of being good against certain targets like organic (and some clothes) and weak against more denser materials, its weaker against organics. This is just an idea, and I haven't had time to go through all the pros and cons, but it would explain why living beings can survive it. Hence my idea to cover weapon systems with living things.

Lets compare the Borg adaptation by way of contrast. It takes energy to maintain a shield, so even if they optimize their shield matrix to repel specific attacks, there is bleedthrough, and they are still ultimately limited by power generation. This is why the feddies can take down a cube with sufficient raw energy output from multiple ships, and why a stardestroyer can do so effortlessly.

Magic is not subject to that. It is idiosyncratic. There are spells that have specific conditions for ending the spell, but raw energy input will not do it no matter how much you might want it to. A Wall of Force is like that Turn People to Stone spell in Gargoyles. There are conditions to end the spell. Either its duration ends, or specific other spells (or things that mimic those effects, if we want to be generous) are cast in the proper sequence to end the spell. So if we can develop a Disintegration Beam, we might be able to get through a wall of force.

In other words, it is not a No Limits fallacy to operate as if a thing which explicitly does not have a limit, has no limit. It is a No Limits fallacy to operate as if something has no limits, when that is not necessarily the case.

And even if we accept that a wall of force has some energy limit somewhere in the cosmos, the burden of proof is on YOU to show where that is.

I disagree with your accepting a no limits fallacy. At best you would say that we simply don't know how much a wall of force can withstand, so we really are at an impasse. Like when we compare and unknown with an unknown.

However since you ask nicely about me showing the limitation of a wall of force, I will gladly obliged.

From the novel Crown of fire chapter 11 page 199, 1994 edition. Written by Ed Greenwood the creator of the FR.
During the novel Shandril fought a Zhentarium allied mage who had erected a wall of force which covered her from the top reaching to the cliff behind her. Shandril used spellfire to fly and then launched numerous blasts from the air, all of which were deflected by the wall of force. She then blasted the cliff wall behind the mage and the rocks crushed the Zheng despite the wall of force. In fact all that can be seen is her hand protruding from the rocks.

Now I am not going to try and estimate the momentum or KE of that, but it clearly puts a limit on the wall of force.

Even with your prismatic wall idea, I feel there is still some way around even the last wall. For one thing if its anything like a prismatic sphere, a mage would have to be able to breathe when hiding in the sphere right? No I am not going to suggest a poison gas attack ala Darth Wong against phase cloak individuals. Something actually less subtle. You see presumably since oxygen can exist inside a prismatic sphere, presumably a prismatic wall wont' destroy subatomic particles. So we use the somewhat outdated neutron bomb, place it inside the portal just before reaching the barrier and detonate.

The range is less than conventional nukes and it would make things hard for both sides, although I think the US has a bigger land mass than say the Sword Coast so its less of a problem. Now you could argue the final wall stops all effects, but observation shows that subatomic particles are not destroyed by the final barrier.

Bacteria coat everything anyway, so that option does not actually work. Clever, but no dice. A person COULD suicide though.

The bacteria did occur to me. Which is why I selected things larger than bacteria like swarms of insects. I am sort of postulating that disintegrate is like a reverse NDF effect, so "living things" in the way might protect. The other option is to use beasts of burden like camels or horses, spaced them out from tanks to take the blast from fireball and disintegrate, giving your side time to fire back.

Also: Any wizard who is going to attack a tank will, given the OP, been briefed on what the tank is capable of, and would have warded himself with Ironguard (which is an FR specific spell) BEFORE casting spells at the tank.

Hmm. Depends on what constitutes a +3 enhancement bonus. Although I must admit since it works against metal, perhaps plastic bullets.

Observation.

Does it interact with gravity? Does it interact with light? Does it interact with sound?

Problem is, you wont know how it works with just observation. Also, the answers to those questions are

No. Sometimes. Sometimes. When it wants, or when magic is applied (and even casting fireball is a coin toss).

As I pointed out to Jub, if a ghost doesn't interact with gravity, you are going to run into problems. If the shadows also don't interact with gravity, they run into the same problem.

The Earth will simply orbit the sun at 30 km / second. The ghost is simply going to be left behind since gravity isn't there to keep it near Earth. Now if it doesn't interact with gravity and doesn't have the same problem in Faerun, we can chalk that up to something in the nature of Faerun.

However just memorising a few lines is enough to be useful for spells, and no doubt it will take longer to learn their principles so we can research.
No. It is not. If it were just a matter of rote memorization, anyone who picks up a spellbook or scroll could be a spellcaster. In universe, it takes years of study to be able to cast the most basic spells. You have to learn how to channel the eldritch forces of the universe through your body by act of will, with the words and gestures shaping the spell.

Even someone using a Use Magic Device skill are practicing an actual skill.

At minimum, you are looking at the equivalent of a K-12 education plus apprenticeship, but you dont have professors. The spellbooks themselves are also coded like the voynich manuscript in a lettering system that has no earthbound equivalents or linguistic connection, and particular to each wizard (such that other wizards have to use cryptography to read eachothers spellbooks). And that is JUST for the wizards who have books.

Ok, so we are both stuck at the metaphorical drawing board. I guess then it becomes a question of who will help us, and who among us will help them. My money is still on us managing divide and rule tactics and bribing someone who is willing to work with evil orcs. Maybe Thay. No doubt they will want to backstab us, but they won't know that we know their rulers are evil.

[LaCroix]

Just to nitpick - gp are used as a value indicator in spells - but gp in D&D are not quite valuable per se:

1 gp buys a 50ft hemp rope
2 gp buy you a crowbar or a shovel
3 gp vbuy a miner's pick

So, 25,000 gp isn't anywhere as much as people think. Comparing the value in D&D terms, its probably 40-50$ per gold piece in modern terms. So a Wish could only produce one nonmagical item of approx 1 to 1.25 million USD. Less then a tenth of the numbers thrown around.

[Jub]

Just to nitpick - gp are used as a value indicator in spells - but gp in D&D are not quite valuable per se:

1 gp buys a 50ft hemp rope
2 gp buy you a crowbar or a shovel
3 gp vbuy a miner's pick

So, 25,000 gp isn't anywhere as much as people think. Comparing the value in D&D terms, its probably 40-50$ per gold piece in modern terms. So a Wish could only produce one nonmagical item of approx 1 to 1.25 million USD. Less then a tenth of the numbers thrown around.

You have to consider that the value of individual things in a pre-industrial society is going to be higher than their value in an information age society. Thus I figured that for the purchase of modern items it would make sense to use the local value of a gold coin. Thus for GP to USD it would be best to compare the 1/3 ounce weight of a standard gold coin (there are 50 coins to a pound) to the current value of gold. The current value of gold is, roughly, $1,340 per ounce thus each GP is worth $446.66. Quick math gives us a value of $11.116 Million. Now there is likely to be some argument about the purity of gold coins and I can easily accept them only being as pure as a medieval coin would be.

Now before you decry this as unfairly using the system to favor the realms, consider that this also means that finding a diamond worth $470,00 USD to resurrect a person with or finding a pearl to cast identify with is going to be a lot tougher. Thus you'd have to get any corpses made on the Earth side of the portal back home or risk your reagents not being valuable enough to make your spell work. It also means that Earth could potentially attempt to devalue gold if it is deemed beneficial to lower the amount created by a wish spell.

Ahem.

Yes, because you did such a find job linking to said weapon system on your own...

I didn't create the scenario with the aim of being unfair. I read the description of scry and came up with that interpretation. I resent your bullshit accusation that I started this thread with the purpose of bashing FR and making things unfair.

So why argue about scrying at all? In terms of keeping the debate fair we should assume that disguise and divination spells that might be effected by this illusion compensate automatically so as not to cripple the FR side of things.

The compatibility wasn't the problem. It was the likelihood they would know it. Which I kind of stated, but someone you strawman this isn't non canon (which I reserved for pun pun) Its like me saying every other country in the world gets F-22. When you object saying that they don't have the know how to build it, I then say but its compatible with the physics of planet earth. And it would
still fit into the canon of planet earth that F-22 exists.

Did you miss the clause where I stated that only people that would have reason to know a spell would have such knowledge? It isn't unreasonable to think that some of the arcane spells, particularly the higher level ones, printed in supplemental material are at worst less common, perhaps even limited to certain mage colleges, where as the lower level ones, especially those that would be in demand by craftsmen and the like, are more common. Now for divine spells that is more of an issue as clerics are said to know every spell on their spell list, however some may simply be more commonly prepared than others.

So which side are they existing for? FR or Earth. Either way you are implying they will fight for a side. Why do people say they never said x on a message board, when someone can just go and show where they said X.

It's a simple statement of fact that Pun-Pun could only exist on one side of the portal. It doesn't assert that any such being would fight for either side, merely that one side has a chance of having discovered things like infinite action loops and the other can only dream of one day having that level of mastery over magic.

Awareness of their follower is on Earth, awareness that Earth exists doesn't explain how it translates to "know where person x" is on Earth which was where this original point started.

So you're claiming that certain Cleric spells that require divine knowledge, such as divination, won't work on Earth because that relies on a god knowing things about Earth? If that is the case clearly not all spells work on Earth and the versus debate is tainted by this assumption, if we assume that divination spells do work then we must assume that gods can view Earth as easily as they can any other spot on the material plane not effected by some strange magic.

I think the pressure exerted by a bullet is bit different form the pressure on the blunt part of an arrow.

20th level monks have natural DR, but even lower level monks could have buffs that mean that a caught bullet would be unlikely to harm them. However I think that some monks would have issues with the size and speed of a bullet and thus may be unable to deflect bullets.

Only after you have made sarcastic comments like "there is this thing called google" and "I expect people to know the basics of D & D" even though you got wrong (and admitted to being wrong) about some these "basics" like one of the weather control spells. This makes me think you're doing this to try and cowl people to not to ask too closely.

Where was I 'wrong' about the workings of a weather control spell? They can create weather that is theoretically possible in an area at that time of year, that includes things like tornadoes in areas that they are vanishingly unlikely but still possible. Or things like the effects of a hurricane that moved further inland than might normally be expected.

Skimmer already provided the proof. However even if they didn't use such methods, you are literally assuming real world humans will never ever adjust tactics in the face of enemy with different capabilities.

I never said that, I merely said that if such a device didn't exist, that you can't assume that it is deployed in time to prevent mages from getting through the portals undetected.

Ignoring for a moment that Skimmer already showed it, you are pretty demanding that if I were to postulate a solution combining existing technologies that would be disallowed unless they actually have done so. Yet with your powergaming examples you want everyone to accept that FR characters combine these existing capabilities without once showing an NPC having done so. Riiiight.

I'm simply saying that for a modern force with modern procurement times you'd need to show that such a device exists and is in use at the time the scenario starts in order for it to keep mages and the like from slipping through. You might also note that I merely stated the possibility of such powergamed characters, I never once postulated how they would be used, or even asserted that they definitely exist and will be used to fight us.

Trekkie - The Borg can assimilate and master any enemy technology it comes across including ones vastly more advanced than its own.
You - The magic user casting a Wish spell can create any enemy (non magical) technology it comes across, including ones vastly more advanced than his own race's technology.

You seriously cannot see anything wrong with this no limits fallacy.

Has wish ever been shown to have limits in what mundane objects it can produce? If not, the burden of proof is on you to show that a wizard can't just point to a captured weapon, or a description of a weapon from the knowledge they gained of Earth at the outset of this scenario and get them from a wish spell.

Cool. Waste the XP on modern medical supplies then.

How about using the 20,000gp magic item from Complete Adventurer to negate any xp loss beyond the 500xp used to craft the item? Surely this will occur to at least one mage capable of making use of this fact.

Here's a link to how the effect works.

That still doesn't over come the problem of how long it takes to get from a medieval society to one now.

It would take time, but with spells such as masters touch, and literally stealing the knowledge from a person's head, not as long for them as it would take for us to get magic.

If that's the vein of your argument then its pointless. A Mage can beat the Culture. It can create technology millions of years in advance of his race (and our own world) even if it doesn't exist.

I would argue that against creating things that the other side has if the technological difference is vast just like how we can't assume the Borg will automatically assimilate Culture technology. Because it becomes a no limits fallacy. I did however chose not to press the tank issue or the AK-47 issue I thought it would be a waste of XP to create these things, and without the ammo and fuel even if it did succeed as opposed to simply fizzling.

Again, why would a wish spell have an issue in creating a mundane object? Especially if an example of said object is captured or knowledge of the weapons is stolen from somebodies mind first? The fact of the matter is that a mage doesn't need to have any knowledge of how a thing is crafted, or there would be rules text stating that he needs the skill in order to create said object as there is for fabricate.

However if you want to play a rules lawyer then what's to stop me saying and I am paraphrasing your "Culture" argument, the Earth trades in goods with fiat currencies, and not in gold pieces. Or an even more bullshit one but perfectly acceptable by your standards, we buy gold in bullion and not in gold pieces. Remember, you started this lawyering bullshit, so don't complain when I used that against you. I mean if say China builds a tank, its not paying its workers or the company in gold pieces right? Ha ha ha.

Except that gold coins still have value in our world even if only for their gold content. We know that 50gp is equal to a pound of gold, thus one coin is roughly 1/3 of an ounce and is thus worth $466.66 based on today's gold market.

Actually I do have a reason to suspect what is in non FR source books may not be known to Faerun. For example some of what's mentioned eg prestige classes are of religious orders of non Faerunian Gods. Lets say Ordained Champion from the book Complete champion. Sure a person from the FR can learn it but unlikely they would worship a foreign god or even be aware of them. Just like other countries might be able to build an F-22 equivalent eventually. There just isn't evidence to suggest they have.

Indeed not every class will be used, though they could technically be used if a person could meet the requirements.

I can get past a radar encampment as well. Walk past it. Getting past the radio wave is another matter given how fast light travels in air and how extensive radar can be.

If that radar was connected to an automated turret the spell would guide you past the beam, the same as it would guide you past a pressure plate that activates a trap.

I thought of that before I made my suggestion. Which is why I suggested organisms bigger than you know bacteria, like insects. A fly would be at least 500 000 times the size of E.coli. In any event I also had an idea of flanking the tank with good old beasts of burden like the good old day, which are significantly larger than humans and take the damage instead of the tank.

Flanking a tank with oxen doesn't work against attacks from above. Even still, I see no proof that the disintegrate spell wouldn't be able to kill the tank through the insects as we're never given any proof that the size of the organism targeted has any effect on the spell, unless you use circular logic to try and prove your point.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. ROTFL.

Ok I am going to so much fun with this. Well since YOU stated a ghost doesn't interact with gravity here is what is going to happen when you create a ghost. Before the necromancer can say "I am your master" the ghost is going to disappear. After trying a few times, the Necromancer might work out the ghost appeared to be travelling at speed of 30 km / second, although from the ghost's perspective its the necromancer who is travelling at that speed.

Now of course since this doesn't occur on Faerun its most probably because of some magical property of Faerun.

Wait - you are going to say when you meant no to the question does it interact with gravity, you really really meant "only when it chooses too."

I suppose it would have been more accurate to say that it only allows itself to be effected by gravity as convenient.That still means that instruments that detect gravitational effects wouldn't interact with the creature.

Also, it's hard to study something that can't be contained except by effects that violate thermodynamics.

So the limitation against power gaming also works on them as well. Good to know.

Unless they already have the ability to use these techniques. Unlike with modern earth we don't know what a common cross section of spell knowledge looks like or what a common build would look like for any given hero. So how do we determine what any given mage does or doesn't know before coming into play?

You know what. I wasn't going to pull this cannard, but in response to all these rules lawyering, the United States decides to come up with their own band of geeks who seek to find out how to nullify their advantages. Meanwhile real scientists work on how to utilise our advantages. Here is what they came up with.

You see, there is a D & D novel which just so happens to showcase a weakness most likely unknown to powergamers and D & D wankers. It's this novel. The Malestrom’s eye by Roger E Moore from the Cloakmaster cycle of Spelljammer. Not surprisingly its not well known because Spelljammer novels didn't make money for them (TSR), although as a teen I thought the books were pretty entertaining. Back to the book.

You see the hero Teldin Moore on his spelljamming ship tried to find the Ultimate Helm. To that end they sought out a sage on a crystal sphere which had interesting inhabitants. For one thing there are these giant megafauna (literally their foot is at least 120 miles wide) who create this anti magical lake. The property of the water extends several feet away from the lake, and even Teldin's legendary cloak while not destroyed was not able to use its magic once drenched in this water. BTW, the anti magical property persisted for at least years. Now here is the interesting part about how they create the lake

– chapter 13 page 212, 1992 edition (from my collection naturally)

The megafauna's tracks destroy all magical power beneath them, simply crush it out, voiding the dweomer. We are speaking of pressures greater than three point one four one five nine two six five three five nine times ten to the thirty-seventh power scruples per square acre, of course, far beyond any known magical tolerance levels, once the megafauna puts down its foot-a process which takes centuries, as you can imagine

Ok its well known to the Gnomes that immense pressure destroy magical power even without this megafauna example. Given that the megafauna and the anti magic lake was well known for years, its fair to say that water after undergoing this process seems to somehow retain this antimagic property in violation of all known laws of physics and sounds like homeopathy (but hey this is magic right?). Now its true we don't know what 3.14159265359 X10^37 scruples / square acre actually means in SI units, however we can reach an upper limit.

You see, water freezes at 0 degrees celsius at room temperature. However we know that we can freeze water at room temperature if we subject it to immense pressure. So at 27 Celsius a pressure of 10^9 pascals will freeze the water. We don't observe this with the megafauna. Thus we derive a upper limit which is really high and most likely much higher than the pressure exerted by this megafauna. Going on the pressure exerted by the megafauna is "far beyond any known magical tolerance levels", so the exact breaking point is actually much less. So I doubt FR will know about this weakness. Unless they are gnomes. And even then it might take them a while to figure out what we can do.

So we first start by subjecting water to immense pressures. We eventually work out just how much pressure we need to breach the "magical tolerance levels". Eventually we figure out how much of this antimagical water we can mix with normal water and still retain effectiveness. Oops, some of the magical advantages don't work on us.

Oh, and the US waterboards a FR mage with anti magical water and then tries to justify it as needing to protect their troops.

Now I know some people are going to say I am just pulling shit of my arse. If only someone had uploaded a pdf copy of that novel just so we can check if its true.
Oh wait.

You'd need to show that this water does in fact retain it's anti-magical properties when moved from that location or significantly diluted? How about showing that it works in smaller quantities than lake sized? After all, it's a no limits fallacy to claim that even a single atom is as effective as an entire lake. You also need to show that we're capable to pressurizing water to this extent in a fashion where said water can be captured afterwards and used in a meaningful way. If it flashes to steam or constantly bursts containers when we try to create it then it's not so useful is it?

[Ralin]

Really guys? Pun-Pun? That's what you focus on?

Now before you decry this as unfairly using the system to favor the realms, consider that this also means that finding a diamond worth $470,00 USD to resurrect a person with or finding a pearl to cast identify with is going to be a lot tougher. Thus you'd have to get any corpses made on the Earth side of the portal back home or risk your reagents not being valuable enough to make your spell work. It also means that Earth could potentially attempt to devalue gold if it is deemed beneficial to lower the amount created by a wish spell.

Diamonds. Not a diamond

Also Spelljammer was a 2nd edition setting and you specified 3rd edition Faerun, by which point they had more or less abandoned the unified cosmology thing.

[Jub]

Really guys? Pun-Pun? That's what you focus on?

It is kind of pointless to be honest, but it bears bringing up for those that aren't aware of what can be done and serves as a benchmark for what magic could be used for. Plus it's something you have to consider, we don't know enough about the realms from the books to know that such optimal combinations of spells and aren't in use. So you need to factor in what you do in the event that some retired adventurer/random wizard did discover a way to get infinite wishes and has since used it to live out his days in comfort thus no stories were written of his deeds.

Diamonds. Not a diamond

Thanks for that, it hasn't come up in a while so I forgot.

Also Spelljammer was a 2nd edition setting and you specified 3rd edition Faerun, by which point they had more or less abandoned the unified cosmology thing.

I brought up Infravision so I think this could be fair game as well, but going strictly 3rd edition does simplify things greatly.

[LaCroix]

Just to nitpick - gp are used as a value indicator in spells - but gp in D&D are not quite valuable per se:

1 gp buys a 50ft hemp rope
2 gp buy you a crowbar or a shovel
3 gp vbuy a miner's pick

So, 25,000 gp isn't anywhere as much as people think. Comparing the value in D&D terms, its probably 40-50$ per gold piece in modern terms. So a Wish could only produce one nonmagical item of approx 1 to 1.25 million USD. Less then a tenth of the numbers thrown around.

You have to consider that the value of individual things in a pre-industrial society is going to be higher than their value in an information age society. Thus I figured that for the purchase of modern items it would make sense to use the local value of a gold coin. Thus for GP to USD it would be best to compare the 1/3 ounce weight of a standard gold coin (there are 50 coins to a pound) to the current value of gold. The current value of gold is, roughly, $1,340 per ounce thus each GP is worth $446.66. Quick math gives us a value of $11.116 Million. Now there is likely to be some argument about the purity of gold coins and I can easily accept them only being as pure as a medieval coin would be.

Now before you decry this as unfairly using the system to favor the realms, consider that this also means that finding a diamond worth $470,00 USD to resurrect a person with or finding a pearl to cast identify with is going to be a lot tougher. Thus you'd have to get any corpses made on the Earth side of the portal back home or risk your reagents not being valuable enough to make your spell work. It also means that Earth could potentially attempt to devalue gold if it is deemed beneficial to lower the amount created by a wish spell.

I think you are wrong - Magic doesn't know or care about gold, or the value of it - the gold value is given as an rough estimate of value of the object, in terms of material, and how complicated(in case of mechanic complexity/ or quality of make) the object is. The difference between a simple sword and a masterworks sword isn't the price per se, but the homogenity of the alloy, how evenly it was hardened, how complicated the hilt decorations are, etc.

If the value of gold would suddenly double in FR, the wish spell wouldn't suddenly allow for an object that was too expensive, before. You would get the same objects, it's just the limit to describe the value would change. Nor would you suddenly be unable to wish for something that was still ok, yesterday, if the value were cut in half.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as inflation in FR - and 25000gp is simply a value that has been experimentally observed over the centuries, just like it's 100gp of pearl for an identify spell.

Sending gold to FR to decrease the gold price would do nothing to magical limits - apart from having to edit the annotations in spellbooks, that it's now (e.g.) 200gp in pearls needed to cast to identify (due to the devaluation of gold) - or they would state a weight of pearls, since it is the physical amount of pearl that matters - not the price of it.

[Jub]

I think you are wrong - Magic doesn't know or care about gold, or the value of it - the gold value is given as an rough estimate of value of the object, in terms of material, and how complicated(in case of mechanic complexity/ or quality of make) the object is. The difference between a simple sword and a masterworks sword isn't the price per se, but the homogenity of the alloy, how evenly it was hardened, how complicated the hilt decorations are, etc.

If the value of gold would suddenly double in FR, the wish spell wouldn't suddenly allow for an object that was too expensive, before. You would get the same objects, it's just the limit to describe the value would change. Nor would you suddenly be unable to wish for something that was still ok, yesterday, if the value were cut in half.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as inflation in FR - and 25000gp is simply a value that has been experimentally observed over the centuries, just like it's 100gp of pearl for an identify spell.

Sending gold to FR to decrease the gold price would do nothing to magical limits - apart from having to edit the annotations in spellbooks, that it's now (e.g.) 200gp in pearls needed to cast to identify (due to the devaluation of gold) - or they would state a weight of pearls, since it is the physical amount of pearl that matters - not the price of it.

Magic obviously does care about value, otherwise why wouldn't it care about mass of diamonds instead of the ascribed value of said diamonds? Plus what happens if you buy a pearl that you think is worth 100gp, pay 100gp for it, but due to a poor appraise check you actually only get a pearl that was intended to sell for 90gp, does the spell fail or is the pearl now worth the 100gp you paid for it? Plus, in absolute terms, how can you ever know the true value of a pearl, is it purely size, or does color and luster also matter?

No, the magic must be based off of what we value things at because things don't have objective value.

[Ralin]

I brought up Infravision so I think this could be fair game as well, but going strictly 3rd edition does simplify things greatly.

Yeah, I'm guilty of it too, but if we're going to have this discussion we really do need to specify which Faerun we mean. The Faerun seen in the Spelljammer novels is not the same Faerun as in 3rd edition. Nor, as I said before, is novel-verse Faerun the same thing as D&D mechanics Faerun.

[LaCroix]

I think you are wrong - Magic doesn't know or care about gold, or the value of it - the gold value is given as an rough estimate of value of the object, in terms of material, and how complicated(in case of mechanic complexity/ or quality of make) the object is. The difference between a simple sword and a masterworks sword isn't the price per se, but the homogenity of the alloy, how evenly it was hardened, how complicated the hilt decorations are, etc.

If the value of gold would suddenly double in FR, the wish spell wouldn't suddenly allow for an object that was too expensive, before. You would get the same objects, it's just the limit to describe the value would change. Nor would you suddenly be unable to wish for something that was still ok, yesterday, if the value were cut in half.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as inflation in FR - and 25000gp is simply a value that has been experimentally observed over the centuries, just like it's 100gp of pearl for an identify spell.

Sending gold to FR to decrease the gold price would do nothing to magical limits - apart from having to edit the annotations in spellbooks, that it's now (e.g.) 200gp in pearls needed to cast to identify (due to the devaluation of gold) - or they would state a weight of pearls, since it is the physical amount of pearl that matters - not the price of it.

Magic obviously does care about value, otherwise why wouldn't it care about mass of diamonds instead of the ascribed value of said diamonds? Plus what happens if you buy a pearl that you think is worth 100gp, pay 100gp for it, but due to a poor appraise check you actually only get a pearl that was intended to sell for 90gp, does the spell fail or is the pearl now worth the 100gp you paid for it? Plus, in absolute terms, how can you ever know the true value of a pearl, is it purely size, or does color and luster also matter?

No, the magic must be based off of what we value things at because things don't have objective value.

Or it could simply be 'you need a pearl of a certain size, wich would mean of at least 70gp value, so be sure to buy one of about 100gp value - you know a dealer could rip you off, and you don't want to fail due to being a cheapskate, right?" It's not as if the identify wouldn't work if you use a 200gp pearl, right? I mean, the fact that you can be ripped off by a dealer and that a pearl might be of various qualities never, ever occurred to wizards?

But no, it is "SENTIENT MAGIC", and there certainly isn't any margin of error included in the material component description, and there certainly haven't been any occurrences, ever, that a wish spell hasn't given you an object that is less than 25000gp, and you never, ever got anything that could have been more valuable. Like, due to DM fiat. Which only occurs, like, all the time...

Remember, game mechanics arent 100% descriptions of real world, but only a rule of thumb of what should happen, and subject to interpretation by the DM. And funnily, I only see you thumping on strict literal interpretations when it suits your opinion.

[Jub]

Or it could simply be 'you need a pearl of a certain size, wich would mean of at least 70gp value, so be sure to buy one of about 100gp value - you know a dealer could rip you off, and you don't want to fail due to being a cheapskate, right?" It's not as if the identify wouldn't work if you use a 200gp pearl, right? I mean, the fact that you can be ripped off by a dealer and that a pearl might be of various qualities never, ever occurred to wizards?

But no, it is "SENTIENT MAGIC", and there certainly isn't any margin of error included in the material component description, and there certainly haven't been any occurrences, ever, that a wish spell hasn't given you an object that is less than 25000gp, and you never, ever got anything that could have been more valuable. Like, due to DM fiat. Which only occurs, like, all the time...

Remember, game mechanics arent 100% descriptions of real world, but only a rule of thumb of what should happen, and subject to interpretation by the DM. And funnily, I only see you thumping on strict literal interpretations when it suits your opinion.

What happens if you find a big pearl that has little value due to some sort of major flaw? Does the value of a pearl change if properly polished? How about for gems? Do wizards just buy them in bulk hoping to get a gem that will have value when cut? Does the diamond need to be cut, or is the fact that it could be worth 1,000gp if cut good enough? What if you scratch or otherwise tarnish the sale price of your pearl? If it's a mass thing, then why is a ton of junk diamonds just as able to cast raise dead as one nice diamond would be? There are just too many issues with assuming that some special property gives a gem some form of absolute value. Plus the rules never actually give us any sort of description of what 1,000gp worth of gems or a 100gp pearl look like, you'd think they'd do that if the properties of the object were more important than the value.

Where have I not gone with the literal interpretation of a spell or effect? I've been going strictly with what a spell says it does

[LaCroix]

Are you even listening to yourself? You sound like "THAT GUY"...

Maybe it's because its a GAME, and most people do not want to have to bother about such nitpicky stuff, second-guessing themselves all the time wether their materials are actually alright or they overlooked some tiny flaw for an everyday spell. It is ment to be a vague guideline to keep the game fun.

Nobody wants to look up tables on how much rust my sword gathers if I don't clean it after battle, polish and oil it every day. Or tables of how many hits against what kind of target a sword can endure before it gets blunt. Except for people like you, who seem to revel in following the rules to the last crossed t and dotted i.

For instance, the books also don't give us the exact motions and words to cast a certain spell, neither, only "somatic component". You, of course would demand of all players on the table that they know all the motions and words, and go through the complete song&dance routine so you can check if they did it right, before you let them roll the dice. And of course they need to do that without looking it up, because they should already have memorized that in the morning them in order to cast.

And you did claim, for example, that invisibility works against Radar even though the spell doesn't say it does. Not a single mention of the word "RADAR" in the description.

[Jub]

Are you even listening to yourself? You sound like "THAT GUY"...

Maybe it's because its a GAME, and most people do not want to have to bother about such nitpicky stuff, second-guessing themselves all the time wether their materials are actually alright or they overlooked some tiny flaw for an everyday spell. It is ment to be a vague guideline to keep the game fun.

Nobody wants to look up tables on how much rust my sword gathers if I don't clean it after battle, polish and oil it every day. Or tables of how many hits against what kind of target a sword can endure before it gets blunt. Except for people like you, who seem to revel in following the rules to the last crossed t and dotted i.

For instance, the books also don't give us the exact motions and words to cast a certain spell, neither, only "somatic component". You, of course would demand of all players on the table that they know all the motions and words, and go through the complete song&dance routine so you can check if they did it right, before you let them roll the dice. And of course they need to do that without looking it up, because they should already have memorized that in the morning them in order to cast.

At least my system is usable with real world objects. If we assume inherent value to things, the how exactly does your system assign inherent value to modern objects? How does a spell with a GP component interact with newly discovered items? How much is a car worth in GP, does the brand or model matter, just the materials, or is it perhaps what the vehicle is capable of? What about wish in the information age, how does it value a computer? Does it account for obsolescence or does it always create a given number of processors per GP never to improve again after the first computer is wished for? You proposed that we not go by the current value of gold in a given market, so please, explain how exactly new technology is valued against a gold piece.

And you did claim, for example, that invisibility works against Radar even though the spell doesn't say it does. Not a single mention of the word "RADAR" in the description.

I've yet to see an evidence that RADAR should beat invisibility just as there is no evidence that invisibility beats RADAR. We have no information as to what modern EM spectrum technologies defeat invisibility so it's just as likely to work one way as it is to work the other.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Ok AD, firstly I am going to say I am not going to have time to go through all your points, so I apologise in advance. As you can see I have been busy in this thread. I will however go through some of them which I find easier to answer.

No problem. My responses are HUGE and I do feel that I need to make up for Jub...

I disagree given what we know that what stops one wavelength of light doesn't necessarily do another. Presumably this spell makes light passes through or refract around. We know that what works for one wavelength doesn't necessarily. While I agree in the sense that its an open question, the burden of proof I feel lies on the other side.

However the other solution is sound. Sonar was originally used before radar. Some like SODAR are still used in air. If someone is going to silence one, put several in the area and the lack of reflection should clue us in.

The more I think about it, the more I think we are actually using the wrong paradigm for comparison. That, and I have been re-reading The Laundry (Charles Stross. Spy/Espionage thriller meets Cthuhlu and Quantum Physics + Computer Science).

We have been assuming that Invisibility works by bending light or otherwise preventing reflection. Just making someone transparent, for example. If they were doing that, they would not work on explicitly physics-breaking forms of sight like Darkvision, where light is not being perceived at all.

The most elegant solution is, I think, that spells like invisibility work by directly blocking visual perception by functioning as an observer-subject quantum disintermediator (read: it basically puts the subject inside schrodingers box as far as vision is concerned). Spells that permit an observer to see invisible things either override the spell's effect by placing objects on the subject that can be observed, or by inhibiting the effect for one or more observers (see invisibility, for example).

What this means as far as mechanical observers like cameras are concerned, I dont know. I never touched D20 Modern (I moved on to better systems for RPGs years ago. Earthdawn for example.), so I dont know (nor do I think it should necessarily be admitted because D20 Modern works on different metaphysical and thus physical laws, I should think)

However the other solution is sound. Sonar was originally used before radar. Some like SODAR are still used in air. If someone is going to silence one, put several in the area and the lack of reflection should clue us in.

That could work. Though SODAR systems are designed to detect and study atmospheric turbulence, not finding an actual target, and it is tight beam not omindirectional, so you would need to have a search area, and some time spent on R&D to get a system that would work for target detection. There may be design tradeoffs there that are prohibitive.

And it wont stop someone who comes in polymorphed as a small object. Invisible centipede, for example.

Even with your prismatic wall idea, I feel there is still some way around even the last wall. For one thing if its anything like a prismatic sphere, a mage would have to be able to breathe when hiding in the sphere right? No I am not going to suggest a poison gas attack ala Darth Wong against phase cloak individuals. Something actually less subtle. You see presumably since oxygen can exist inside a prismatic sphere, presumably a prismatic wall wont' destroy subatomic particles. So we use the somewhat outdated neutron bomb, place it inside the portal just before reaching the barrier and detonate.

I suspect that radiation sickness would be more treatable by magic than modern medicine. Pick your poison, so to speak. It would depend on how we model radiation sickness in FR what would be effective, but between cure disease, regeneration, and restoration I think the bases are covered. While earth forces have to deal with the explosion, fallout etc. See below.

That said, your premise is flawed. A 10 ft radius sphere contains about 4188 cubic feet of air(837 cubic feet of pure O2). The spell lasts for 10 minutes per caster level, so for a 20th level wizard, about 3 hours and 20 minutes. Humans breath about 19 cubic feet of pure oxygen per day. Or, about 2.3% od the available oxygen. In other words, it will take about 2 days in a full sphere (a full day in a hemisphere) before a human begins noticing symptoms of anoxia. So there is no need for gas exchange across the sphere or wall. Additionally, the third layer of the spell (the one that requires disintegrate to get through), explicitly stops poisons and gases. Fallout (as opposed to a burst of neutrons) is formed by radioactive gas and particulates, so that would be stopped.

Now, nothing that I know of uses a neutron radiation attack, but if you are basing this avenue of attack on necessary permeability to gases, you are SOL.

As for direct destruction of the cliff, I pulled out my copy of Crown of Fire. The mage in question basically created a quarter dome, with the cliff shielding half of her. If you render the structural integrity of the cliff questionable, rock and earth are somewhat more fluid than one might...expect. By which I mean, the Wall of Force was not shielding the entire cliff face, and when the cliff shatters, it will collapse and part of it will crush the mage between rock and her own defenses.

That is how I read it anyway.

Hmm. Depends on what constitutes a +3 enhancement bonus. Although I must admit since it works against metal, perhaps plastic bullets.

That would work, though it would also affect the properties of the bullet such that magical defenses that block attacks (as opposed to making it so they dont hit in the first place) would be more effective than calculated above. Because, depending on the plastic, it would likely fracture into a powder before penetration.

Heh. Plastic bullets for mages, metal for demons... problem is, the two are not mutually exclusive

The bacteria did occur to me. Which is why I selected things larger than bacteria like swarms of insects. I am sort of postulating that disintegrate is like a reverse NDF effect, so "living things" in the way might protect. The other option is to use beasts of burden like camels or horses, spaced them out from tanks to take the blast from fireball and disintegrate, giving your side time to fire back.

Problem is, disintegrate is not affected by "soft cover" like bushes or for that matter the armor and equipment of a person struck. Almost as if there is a toggle switch inside the spell casting or something. It is fucking strange.

Fireball is also not really a blast that can be absorbed like that. A pillar or wall will block the effect(or be destroyed by it), but another person provides no shielding. In that respect, it is a lot like certain wavelengths of light. Some materials absorb it, some partially absorb, some are completely transparent...

As I pointed out to Jub, if a ghost doesn't interact with gravity, you are going to run into problems. If the shadows also don't interact with gravity, they run into the same problem.

The Earth will simply orbit the sun at 30 km / second. The ghost is simply going to be left behind since gravity isn't there to keep it near Earth. Now if it doesn't interact with gravity and doesn't have the same problem in Faerun, we can chalk that up to something in the nature of Faerun.

But I dont wanna talk about the astrophysics of FR *cries*

It might just be conditional, to be honest, or there is just an automatic...station-keeping property. They do not apparently have to expend energy to move against gravity. They do interact with electromagnetism....somewhat. They can pass through objects, but this ability is limited. If a wall is thicker than they are on any one dimension, they cannot pass completely through it, though they can enter it entirely. So if the walls of a concrete bunker are sufficiently thick everywhere, they could not get inside, but they could move through the walls until they find a thinner section or a ventilation passage.

So they wont just pass through the earth

Now to deal with Jub.

You have to consider that the value of individual things in a pre-industrial society is going to be higher than their value in an information age society.

No. Stop. *squirts you with squirt bottle*

Bad!

What is being specified by the Wish spell is not a subjective evaluation. It is an objective one. A rough estimate for the power of the spell/entity granting the wish or miracle to conjure up an object ex nihilo. The value of currency in FR is objective, but even if it were not, it would not change the items the spell could produce. If Cormyr suddenly had Zimbabwe Inflation, the items producible by a Wish spell would not change.

If you want to argue that a Wish spell could produce a nuclear device (which you should not, because it is pointless), the best way to do it would be the creation of a Magical Nuke. A device that does a 1 time use of an Epic Spell called "City Annihilation". Here.

Note for everyone: I am not proposing this as actually being a thing. But it is better than what Jub has come up with.

You will need three spell seeds to do it. Energy, Destroy, Afflict. Lets set the yield to Hiroshima (16 kt)
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) of 2.1 km, air-blast radius of 1.8 km (we will call this 40d6 of sonic damage), lethally ionizing radiation radius of 1.4 km. Subsequent fallout and radiation sickness, not sure. Say, 5 km.

The lucky thing is that we will use the largest radius for the base seed. Things like Radius are non-additive that way.


Base Seed: Afflict base DC of 14. Factors: additional target type (plants) (+10 DC). change target to area (+10 DC), change 20-ft. radius to 15,000-ft. radius (+3000 DC), disease effects (as per contagion spell) (ad hoc +21 DC), change range to 30000 feet (+200 DC). Contingent on trigger (+25)

Seed: Energy(fire) base DC of 14, change target to area (+10), change radius to 6300 ft (subordinates to base seed)

Seed: Destroy, base DC of 29, change target to area (+10), change radius to 4200 feet (subordinates to base seed)

Subtotal: Spellcraft DC to develop of 3122.

I know. It is insane. However, in the absence of mitigating factors, there is a way. Namely, apprentices. Lots and Lots of Apprentices, assisting with the spellcraft check. This is an Act of Scholarship afterall, and subject to having minions look things up and proofread your arcane formula etc etc. So, it is possible to have a sort of magical Manhattan Project. You would need a large organization like the entire church of mystra, or perhaps the Zhentarim or Red Wizards to do it, but it is entirely possible to get the 1550 or so wizards together who would be necessary to make this feasible.

It would take 28,098,000 gp to develop, and this would require 562 days. So... about the Manhattan Project...

If we want mitigation....

Mitigating factors: casting time increased by 3 days (-6), additional PhDs casters contributing various spell slots 9 Epic ,18 9th , 27 8th ,36 7th ,45 6th ,54 5th ,63 4th, 63 3rd (-3087)


Total: 35 which is trivially easy for anyone capable of developing epic spells in the first place.
It would take 315k gp to develop (not to cast, mind you), and take a week to develop. This is kinda lame, not nearly as cool as the magical manhattan project, but is doable.

Obviously a delivery system is required. The spell is cast on a thing, and triggered. So that is one way to create magical 16 kt nukes.

Now for the really really sick thing. Epic Magic Items. Single Use Nuke spell in a wonderous item, spell triggered.

The cost comes to 11,500 gp. Well within the bounds of a wish spell, once the spell is developed.

There.

[mr friendly guy]

Yes, because you did such a find job linking to said weapon system on your own...

You asked for evidence radar can detect things on the ground. I gave an example. You then change the goalposts from "whether its possible to construct such a device" to "whether its been done and integrated into a weapons platform". So I answered your original query, and this is just you going nah nah nah nah someone else answered the second part before I did.

Did you miss the clause where I stated that only people that would have reason to know a spell would have such knowledge?

No. Which is why I attacked it as deliberately and arbitrarily giving FR ad advantage you want while at the same time hypocritically accusing me of doing the same.

It isn't unreasonable to think that some of the arcane spells, particularly the higher level ones, printed in supplemental material are at worst less common, perhaps even limited to certain mage colleges, where as the lower level ones, especially those that would be in demand by craftsmen and the like, are more common. Now for divine spells that is more of an issue as clerics are said to know every spell on their spell list, however some may simply be more commonly prepared than others.

I don't have a problem with that per se. However its on you to show they exist in FR especially when some of these organisations mentioned in the sourcebooks clearly give one reason or another to suspect they don't (again the aforementioned religious orders to non Faerunian gods).

It's a simple statement of fact that Pun-Pun could only exist on one side of the portal. It doesn't assert that any such being would fight for either side, merely that one side has a chance of having discovered things like infinite action loops and the other can only dream of one day having that level of mastery over magic.

I think you are a little young for dementia, lets take you back down memory lane.

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.

So let me get this right. You aren't saying Pun Pun exists for FR, you are just saying a being which has similar powers to Pun Pun exist could exist for FR? What should we call this being. Run-Run?

So you're claiming that certain Cleric spells that require divine knowledge, such as divination, won't work on Earth because that relies on a god knowing things about Earth? If that is the case clearly not all spells work on Earth and the versus debate is tainted by this assumption, if we assume that divination spells do work then we must assume that gods can view Earth as easily as they can any other spot on the material plane not effected by some strange magic.

Not so much the spell won't work, its that the Gods don't know everything. Which can clearly be seen in the novels where the Gods take centre stage.

Where was I 'wrong' about the workings of a weather control spell? They can create weather that is theoretically possible in an area at that time of year, that includes things like tornadoes in areas that they are vanishingly unlikely but still possible. Or things like the effects of a hurricane that moved further inland than might normally be expected.

The part where you then change to discussing a different weather manipulating spell because your original spell wasn't quite as clear cut as you made it out in able to do what you claim.

I never said that, I merely said that if such a device didn't exist, that you can't assume that it is deployed in time to prevent mages from getting through the portals undetected.

Except you also said they won't use the attack first option. Thus rendering the need to set up such a device in such a short time less important.

I'm simply saying that for a modern force with modern procurement times you'd need to show that such a device exists and is in use at the time the scenario starts in order for it to keep mages and the like from slipping through. You might also note that I merely stated the possibility of such powergamed characters, I never once postulated how they would be used, or even asserted that they definitely exist and will be used to fight us.

Unless you are reserving the term powergaming to apply to only ridiculously powerful characters, you pretty much mentioned a druid stack with metamagic stuff. So the same principle remains. FR NPCs get to combine abilities for powergaming, but real world humans doing the same thing is apparently hard to fathom.

Has wish ever been shown to have limits in what mundane objects it can produce? If not, the burden of proof is on you to show that a wizard can't just point to a captured weapon, or a description of a weapon from the knowledge they gained of Earth at the outset of this scenario and get them from a wish spell.

That is a no limits fallacy. You are saying because it hasn't hit a limit in certain respect, its unlimited. I suggest you read the sticky thread in fantasy, particularly the second post.

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

Again, why would a wish spell have an issue in creating a mundane object? Especially if an example of said object is captured or knowledge of the weapons is stolen from somebodies mind first? The fact of the matter is that a mage doesn't need to have any knowledge of how a thing is crafted, or there would be rules text stating that he needs the skill in order to create said object as there is for fabricate.

1. See above
2. Most things are not manufactured in one factory, so getting one piece of knowlege from someone isn't going to help. A lot of goods have parts which are manufactured in several different countries and then assembled. The country that assembles it gets the "made in country x" on the item. Even in the same factory, different workers have different specialised roles for making the same good, the classic example being motor vehicles. That is one worker will know how to do one part of the manufacturing process and has only a little idea on the other part.

Except that gold coins still have value in our world even if only for their gold content. We know that 50gp is equal to a pound of gold, thus one coin is roughly 1/3 of an ounce and is thus worth $466.66 based on today's gold market.

Don't like the lawyering do you now? Or how about the governments of earth forbid all trade with Faerun for now, thus Faerun gp pieces are worthless for the purpose of buying earth goods? We only accept gold mined on Earth damn it. This lawyering bullshit is fun.

Indeed not every class will be used, though they could technically be used if a person could meet the requirements.

That misses the point that this suggests that Faerun doesn't know about whats in these non FR sourcebooks.

If that radar was connected to an automated turret the spell would guide you past the beam, the same as it would guide you past a pressure plate that activates a trap.

How do you walk past the beam when its already there? Remember the portal allows things to go through including radio waves.

Flanking a tank with oxen doesn't work against attacks from above. Even still, I see no proof that the disintegrate spell wouldn't be able to kill the tank through the insects as we're never given any proof that the size of the organism targeted has any effect on the spell, unless you use circular logic to try and prove your point.

If the size of the organisms has no effect on the spell, then bacteria would prevent an object being destroyed on account that its covered in it (as you pointed out). Meanwhile a man with insufficient hit points can step in the path of disintegrate while his back is touching that object, and would be destroyed but leave his armor intact, and of course the object the poor sod threw himself in front of. So clearly its not just a matter of putting any organism in front. It has to be a certain size. Clearly greater than say, halfling size would do it, but I am simply testing how small we can go before its too small to be the sacrifice.

I suppose it would have been more accurate to say that it only allows itself to be effected by gravity as convenient.That still means that instruments that detect gravitational effects wouldn't interact with the creature.

Oh please. You made the statement that it doesn't interact with gravity without thinking through the consequences. Now you are choking on it and back tracking and saying it interacts with gravity when convenient. Unfortunately for you, you again make a statement without thinking through the consequences. For example, the ghost should be able to move very fast in the opposite direction to the planet's simply by turning off its interaction with gravity. But we both know they can't travel at 30 km / second.

Unless they already have the ability to use these techniques. Unlike with modern earth we don't know what a common cross section of spell knowledge looks like or what a common build would look like for any given hero. So how do we determine what any given mage does or doesn't know before coming into play?

How about we observe what NPCs can do and what levels and skills they have?

You'd need to show that this water does in fact retain it's anti-magical properties when moved from that location or significantly diluted? How about showing that it works in smaller quantities than lake sized?

The fact that Teldin's cloak still hadn't regained its magic when wet. Just saying maybe it doesn't need an entire lake to make a man wet.

After all, it's a no limits fallacy to claim that even a single atom is as effective as an entire lake.

I didn't. Which is why I want industrial production of it. I did imply though that if we don't need 100% of the water (ie if it can be mixed with regular water) we would be able to produce more.

BTW - water isn't a single atom. Its a single molecule.

You also need to show that we're capable to pressurizing water to this extent in a fashion where said water can be captured afterwards and used in a meaningful way.

Er we know water freezes ice at high pressures from experimentation.

But since you are going to nit pick here is an experiment where they subject frozen specimens of micro organisms to high pressure. If read the equipment section you will note that the equipment had a maximum pressure of 1GPa. Which just happens to be the upper limit in my example.

If it flashes to steam or constantly bursts containers when we try to create it then it's not so useful is it?

Why the hell would you think it becomes steam when I just said at high pressures it freezes?

[LaCroix]

At least my system is usable with real world objects. If we assume inherent value to things, the how exactly does your system assign inherent value to modern objects? How does a spell with a GP component interact with newly discovered items? How much is a car worth in GP, does the brand or model matter, just the materials, or is it perhaps what the vehicle is capable of? What about wish in the information age, how does it value a computer? Does it account for obsolescence or does it always create a given number of processors per GP never to improve again after the first computer is wished for? You proposed that we not go by the current value of gold in a given market, so please, explain how exactly new technology is valued against a gold piece.

And that's why your system doesn't work - unlike in the game, the magic can't look up an universally valid price-list, somewhere. (Also, this list is not subjected to inflation.)
Where does magic "look up" the value? The only reference point would be the caster - if he doesn't value diamonds, or thinks they are more valuabe. Or if you find someone willing to give you a stolen car for 100$ - is the car value now a 100$? You can't calculate value like this.

To know what a wish spell can produce, we have to look up the maximum complexity it is able to produce, and then take these objects as a guideline. Not simply lawyer some rule trying to come up with what you want to come up with.

The pragmatic answer would be that Magic simply can't produce a modern car, because it's technical complexity measured against the known limits of the spell is simply too high.

It could also be simple because it's too many parts for still fulfilling the "one object" criterium - wishing for a oxen cart would technically also be against the rule of one single object, because of the many moving parts, but it seems there is some leeway, but a car is simply too much. Even a crossbow with string would technically be in violation, if we are strict. Remember, I'm ust going by the rules here - it explicitly says "one object".

And you did claim, for example, that invisibility works against Radar even though the spell doesn't say it does. Not a single mention of the word "RADAR" in the description.

I've yet to see an evidence that RADAR should beat invisibility just as there is no evidence that invisibility beats RADAR. We have no information as to what modern EM spectrum technologies defeat invisibility so it's just as likely to work one way as it is to work the other.

The creature or object touched becomes invisible , vanishing from sight, even from darkvision. If the recipient is a creature carrying gear, that vanishes, too. If you cast the spell on someone else, neither you nor your allies can see the subject, unless you can normally see invisible things or you employ magic to do so.

Items dropped or put down by an invisible creature become visible; items picked up disappear if tucked into the clothing or pouches worn by the creature. Light, however, never becomes invisible , although a source of light can become so (thus, the effect is that of a light with no visible source). Any part of an item that the subject carries but that extends more than 10 feet from it becomes visible.

Of course, the subject is not magically silenced , and certain other conditions can render the recipient detectable (such as stepping in a puddle).

The spell never says you bodily disappear- it only becomes invisible to sight (as the text mentions, they mean eye-sight). You still interact with objects, touch things and put them into your pockets. It even mentions stepping in a puddle might still give you away.

So why should radar not work, as it interacts with the body and is reflected of it, and is not visible as in "see". You are just decreeing that your interpretation is the only valid, with NO evidence at all. You are the one saying that invisibility works against radar even though it is not even mentioned, and to the contrary, it is explicitly stated that you do not disappeare to touch, which is what radar operates on - you will have to prove your claim, not sit here and demand that everybody else disproves you...

[LaCroix]

To expand on my above post (I got interrupted by my wife wanting to drive home, and then the server went down... )

What you don't realize is that you are currently brutally meta-gaming. There spellbooks you know & use are Player-knowledge. The gp values in there are to help clarifying the problem and give an expense guideline for the DM and player. I can guarantee you that in the Character-owned spellbook, for Identify, there is a long description of color, size and weight of the pearl. If there is a mention of a gemstone, the spellbook will tell you the color, clarity, size, cut, etc that are the minimum to make it work. If there is a value mentioned, it's most probably in the appendix, in the form of (Usually, such an object has a market value of X, if purchased from a vendor.)

With Wish, there is almost certainly no mention of "the object will have a maximum value of X gp". What will be there is a long list of examples of objects wished and recieven, and things that didn't work.

The gp value is player-knowledge to help the DM determine if the object is ok or not. It boild down to complexity. If you create anything in D&D, the cost is usually quite easy to calculate - (base value for the craft category x skill value needed) - casting a spell is usually the same formula : spell level times base cost (+ eventually times caster level).

So the 25000 gp are a tool to calculate the complexity.

When creating an item via Wish, magic simply crafts that thing for you. For magic items, it simply gets the template from an existing object of the same type, and imprints that aura onto the new item (which it will also create if it's of 10000gp or less value).
For a non-magic item, it creates all necessary parts and assembles them.

Let's ignore material and just go by the complexity:

For an example, a simple horse cart:
Two wheels, each a craft check of (i don't know - let's say 5)
The axle - a 10, because it has to me done well to spin evenly
the body itself, another check of 5-10, depending on style
the other stuff, some more checks, bringing the total "skill needed" up to 30-40

A finely done carriage?
Four perfect weels, a check of 6 each
Finely done axles - 12 each
Suspension for the axles another 5
the body of the carriage - 15
Fine decorations on the doors - 15 each
well done curtains for the windows 10
seat cushions... gold inlays, etc..

You pretty quick end up in the 100 - 1000 total skill needed, and that's without making everything a masterpiece. In Game terms, this is calculated in gp.

Now, I'm going to ignore the "Terry Pratchet DEATH" problem that DEATH wasn't able to create a bathroom because he didn't know pipes were hollow. I'm simply going with the theory that since the worlds are now connected, magic can copy from an existing car. (As far as I know, Wish can only create things that do exist or have existed, you can't Wish for an never-seen-before item unless you already drew plans for it or something.)

For a simple modern car, it is pretty much impossible to even make an engine without investing a million in tools, alone. The complexity in terms of making a single piston would demand an impossible skill check of for a crafter- it just needs to be that precise in order to work. Now add the other 3 pistons, the block, the valves, the crank (which is a horror in terms of precision needed), and you end up with doing hundreds of skillchecks against values in high double or even triple digits. A human is simply unable to even drill a hole a cylinder block without highly refinded machinery. It's just not doable in terms of skill check.

We can do this only because we made a machine of the complexity of, say, 1000 to make a machine of the complexity of a million in order to make a machine of the complexity of a billion, which is now able to easily produce items of the complexity of 1000 in mass. Magic can't simply borrow a CNC lathe to make stuff for you.

Can you Wish for a (simple) modern lathe that would make a D&D crafter sell his soul? Probably. Can you Wish for a Ford Model T engine? I'd say yes, it's small and much easier to make. Now,can you Wish for all the parts of a Ford model T? Yes, if you use a Wish for each major group. You might need someone to assemble the thing, though - i don't think you can do that with Wish, but I'm sure about the fine print in that case.

[mr friendly guy]

No problem. My responses are HUGE and I do feel that I need to make up for Jub...

Now I have some time to discuss things.

1. Ok the variation in what some PCs can take in damage

Clearly some NPCs are tough and some even though have several levels can be killed by a knife in crucial places. Given that in game its up to the DM to describe the matter for the players you can do it in the following ways

1. Characters withstand damage like knife in organs etc as long as their hit points are still greater than zero. Once it reaches zero even a non penetrating injury that merely causes a bruise will kill them / knock them out. When a character in novels is seen to die because of knife through vital organs, it just so happens that they also reached zero hp.

2. The damage finally kills a character in a particular round corresponds to a serious injury eg a penetrating injury to vital organs. All other blows suffered even though they could reduce more hit points earlier in the battle didn't correspond to this type of injury. It just so convenient that the final blow is a serious one. Maybe all those other attacks just failed to succeed at such a blow, maybe the character's armor, dexterity etc managed to avoid it until then. Maybe they are just tiring at the end of the battle and this allows their opponent to strike a crucial blow rather than a glancing one.

If we could reverse real world descriptions into game mechanics, this would be an example of the optional rule regarding critical hits.

None of these solutions are ideal. Two will explain better why we see in novels characters with several levels can be killed with blows which would kill real world humans. Going on from that it means that if we can increase the probability of getting a serious injury / critical hit, we could kill them.

2. Invisibility spells

The more I think about it, the more I think we are actually using the wrong paradigm for comparison. That, and I have been re-reading The Laundry (Charles Stross. Spy/Espionage thriller meets Cthuhlu and Quantum Physics + Computer Science).

We have been assuming that Invisibility works by bending light or otherwise preventing reflection. Just making someone transparent, for example. If they were doing that, they would not work on explicitly physics-breaking forms of sight like Darkvision, where light is not being perceived at all.

The most elegant solution is, I think, that spells like invisibility work by directly blocking visual perception by functioning as an observer-subject quantum disintermediator (read: it basically puts the subject inside schrodingers box as far as vision is concerned). Spells that permit an observer to see invisible things either override the spell's effect by placing objects on the subject that can be observed, or by inhibiting the effect for one or more observers (see invisibility, for example).

What this means as far as mechanical observers like cameras are concerned, I dont know. I never touched D20 Modern (I moved on to better systems for RPGs years ago. Earthdawn for example.), so I dont know (nor do I think it should necessarily be admitted because D20 Modern works on different metaphysical and thus physical laws, I should think)

I have no idea whether that would work, although the only thing quantum about Schrodinger's box was the isotope which was supposed to set off the geiger counter which in turn releases the poison that kills the cat. AFAIK all those claims about human's consciousness collapsing probabilities etc are just speculation which a lot of quantum theorists most probably don't care about. But its an interesting theory.

3. Radar and SODAR

That could work. Though SODAR systems are designed to detect and study atmospheric turbulence, not finding an actual target, and it is tight beam not omindirectional, so you would need to have a search area, and some time spent on R&D to get a system that would work for target detection. There may be design tradeoffs there that are prohibitive.

And it wont stop someone who comes in polymorphed as a small object. Invisible centipede, for example.

That's a good thought with small objects. I am still convinced on the radar thing though and radar has been used to study individual insects in swarms.

4. Prismatic wall

That said, your premise is flawed. A 10 ft radius sphere contains about 4188 cubic feet of air(837 cubic feet of pure O2). The spell lasts for 10 minutes per caster level, so for a 20th level wizard, about 3 hours and 20 minutes. Humans breath about 19 cubic feet of pure oxygen per day. Or, about 2.3% od the available oxygen. In other words, it will take about 2 days in a full sphere (a full day in a hemisphere) before a human begins noticing symptoms of anoxia. So there is no need for gas exchange across the sphere or wall.

Hmm. That's a very good thought. What would happen if someone made a prismatic sphere permanent and stayed there for > 2 days. While its clearly canon in game mechanics to make prismatic spheres permanent, the only other example I can think of it being done is during the Avatar trilogy in the final book (Waterdeep) when midnight does it. I guess this just needs to be fully tested and is unknown.

Additionally, the third layer of the spell (the one that requires disintegrate to get through), explicitly stops poisons and gases. Fallout (as opposed to a burst of neutrons) is formed by radioactive gas and particulates, so that would be stopped.

In which case only the initial neutron radiation will go through, which might kill things on the other side. I must say though, if it poisons our side, any one coming across will still have to put up with the poisoning. The other limitation is that AFAIK only the US and the PRC have demonstrated a neutron bomb.

Now, nothing that I know of uses a neutron radiation attack, but if you are basing this avenue of attack on necessary permeability to gases, you are SOL.

I was thinking we could replicate the things to destroy the first two walls (ie cold and using a jet engine to generate the gust of wind). The third wall deals electricity damage, so maybe we could ground it. I have no idea how thick each wall is, but perhaps if its thick enough a drone can survive it and pass through it before detonating.

5. Wall of force

As for direct destruction of the cliff, I pulled out my copy of Crown of Fire. The mage in question basically created a quarter dome, with the cliff shielding half of her. If you render the structural integrity of the cliff questionable, rock and earth are somewhat more fluid than one might...expect. By which I mean, the Wall of Force was not shielding the entire cliff face, and when the cliff shatters, it will collapse and part of it will crush the mage between rock and her own defenses.

That is how I read it anyway.

My interpretation was also a quarter dome. However I did not get the impression the mage's back was to the cliff wall and the wall of force was touching the cliff wall. So to me the rock will have to fall through the wall of force.

6. Plastic bullets

That would work, though it would also affect the properties of the bullet such that magical defenses that block attacks (as opposed to making it so they dont hit in the first place) would be more effective than calculated above. Because, depending on the plastic, it would likely fracture into a powder before penetration.

Heh. Plastic bullets for mages, metal for demons... problem is, the two are not mutually exclusive

The solution would be to do what RPG parties do. Have soldiers take assign roles. A few target the demons and a few for mages.

7. Disintegrate and fireball

Problem is, disintegrate is not affected by "soft cover" like bushes or for that matter the armor and equipment of a person struck. Almost as if there is a toggle switch inside the spell casting or something. It is fucking strange.

Fireball is also not really a blast that can be absorbed like that. A pillar or wall will block the effect(or be destroyed by it), but another person provides no shielding. In that respect, it is a lot like certain wavelengths of light. Some materials absorb it, some partially absorb, some are completely transparent...

I am still thinking of the living organism protecting the armor rather than the other way round, like a suicide jumping into the range of the blast. Only this time its insects. Although I don't expect the camouflage trees to protect from disintegrate just because the spell works less effectively against "living" things, and branches being pulled off a tree to provide cover might not count as living. Although you are right in the sense its still organic, so I would have to admit that if it is an NDF effect, it somehow gains effectiveness if the material is "no longer living."

I am also thinking that a beat of burden gets destroyed by fireball, but if someone was going to try and cast disintegrate at the same round the body of the animal might still be alive (not for much longer) after taking the fireball, and then it will take the disintegrate instead of the tank.

8. Ghosts and gravity

But I dont wanna talk about the astrophysics of FR *cries*

It might just be conditional, to be honest, or there is just an automatic...station-keeping property. They do not apparently have to expend energy to move against gravity. They do interact with electromagnetism....somewhat. They can pass through objects, but this ability is limited. If a wall is thicker than they are on any one dimension, they cannot pass completely through it, though they can enter it entirely. So if the walls of a concrete bunker are sufficiently thick everywhere, they could not get inside, but they could move through the walls until they find a thinner section or a ventilation passage.

So they wont just pass through the earth

If there is a limit to how far they can pass through, they must interact with electrostatic forces albeit weakly. Presumably they can past through a thick body of water. So its not so much thickness, but the strength of the electrostatic forces.

[Andras]

Anyone familiar with the "Locate City" Bomb?

The first version kills nearly everything in a 200 mile radius (assuming CL20), the second raises them as undead.

http://community.wizards.com/content/fo ... ic/3299921

Take Locate City. AOE, no save, radius 10 miles per CL. (Really, any low level large area spell works.)

Add Snowcasting (frostburn). Adds a snow material component, and gives the spell the Cold descriptor.

Add Flash Frost Spell (PHB2) . modifies any Cold spell with an area to slick that area in ice, for a short duration Grease effect and 2 cold damage, no save.

Add Energy Substitute (CA). Modify any spell with an energy descriptor to use another energy type from the list. Here that list is Electric. It deals 2 electric damage in its area but lacks a save. [EDIT: If you think this prevents the system from working because it's no longer [cold] for flashfrost (despite order of operations on metamagic producing different results), you can also use Energy Admixture and get around the problem.]

Add Born of Three Thunders (CA). Modifies any damaging electric or sonic spell to be both electric and sonic. It also gives the spell a Fortitude save for deafening and a Reflex save for prone, similar to the Great Thunderclap spell. Our spell is now an AoE [Electric/Sonic] (or [Electric, Sonic, Cold]) effect with, among other things, a Reflex save.

Use Explosive Spell (CA). Mmodifies any AoE spell which has a reflex save, which you'll note we now have. Subjects in the area are pushed to the nearest unaffected square. They take 1d6 damage per 10 feet moves this way, due to the FEAT (ie not reducable by evasion). The spell has a radius of MILES. That's a lot of 10' increments before the creatures stop.

See why it works?


A variant adds Fell Drain to the mix. Any creature in the area still takes 2 damage, no save, and thus a Negative level, which will kill any creature with 1HD or less instantly, including all the commoners and most of their livestock. These creatures will rise as wights the following night. This creates a bonafide zombie apocalypse following your nuclear bomb if you want. (The true "zombie" apocalypse needs Fell Animate, but you aren't killing a lot of targets with just 2 damage.)

[Alyrium Denryle]

Anyone familiar with the "Locate City" Bomb?

The first version kills nearly everything in a 200 mile radius (assuming CL20), the second raises them as undead.

http://community.wizards.com/content/fo ... ic/3299921

Take Locate City. AOE, no save, radius 10 miles per CL. (Really, any low level large area spell works.)

Add Snowcasting (frostburn). Adds a snow material component, and gives the spell the Cold descriptor.

Add Flash Frost Spell (PHB2) . modifies any Cold spell with an area to slick that area in ice, for a short duration Grease effect and 2 cold damage, no save.

Add Energy Substitute (CA). Modify any spell with an energy descriptor to use another energy type from the list. Here that list is Electric. It deals 2 electric damage in its area but lacks a save. [EDIT: If you think this prevents the system from working because it's no longer [cold] for flashfrost (despite order of operations on metamagic producing different results), you can also use Energy Admixture and get around the problem.]

Add Born of Three Thunders (CA). Modifies any damaging electric or sonic spell to be both electric and sonic. It also gives the spell a Fortitude save for deafening and a Reflex save for prone, similar to the Great Thunderclap spell. Our spell is now an AoE [Electric/Sonic] (or [Electric, Sonic, Cold]) effect with, among other things, a Reflex save.

Use Explosive Spell (CA). Mmodifies any AoE spell which has a reflex save, which you'll note we now have. Subjects in the area are pushed to the nearest unaffected square. They take 1d6 damage per 10 feet moves this way, due to the FEAT (ie not reducable by evasion). The spell has a radius of MILES. That's a lot of 10' increments before the creatures stop.

See why it works?


A variant adds Fell Drain to the mix. Any creature in the area still takes 2 damage, no save, and thus a Negative level, which will kill any creature with 1HD or less instantly, including all the commoners and most of their livestock. These creatures will rise as wights the following night. This creates a bonafide zombie apocalypse following your nuclear bomb if you want. (The true "zombie" apocalypse needs Fell Animate, but you aren't killing a lot of targets with just 2 damage.)

Ok. While that works in the rules as written, there is such a thing as the spirit of the rules and setting. Power-gamey exploits of that sort by definition cannot work, because if they did, they would be utilized by every necromancer or Zhentarim thug ever.

It breaks SOD. Moreover, utilizing rules exploits of that sort is like trekkies invoking intervention by Q. They are not part of the universe. They are the attempts of munchkin douches to exploit a large ruleset so as to ruin gaming for others.

[eyl]

That's a good thought with small objects. I am still convinced on the radar thing though and radar has been used to study individual insects in swarms.

AFAIK radar detection of individual insects applies to insects in the air. Something at ground level won't be detected. Also, I suspect that individual insects not part of a swarm will be filtered out; otherwise you're going to get a shitton of false alarms. This assumes the Faerun wizards don't have an understanding of radar's operational capabilities, if they do there's a whole bunch of shit that can be done (simple way - frequently send insect swarms through the portal, occasionally send your wizard disguised as one. All sorts of other fun options as well).

Etherealness will also let you waltz right past.

[Jub]

I'm stepping out of this debate, I'm honestly pretty terrible at thinking things through long game without getting bogged in little details. Plus, I tend to think in terms of stats and CharOp even when I'm running a story based game. The strength of my DMing style is in the encounter design and allowing players freedom to use literally any book the group has access to with the understanding that if they push I'll push back. I'm also of the stance that it's easier to change fluff than write new rules, so I tend to get bogged down in the technical aspects of what can be done rather than what will or should be done.

I enjoyed the chance to think through this sort of scenario and see what all of you came up with.

[Simon_Jester]

2. Invisibility spells

The more I think about it, the more I think we are actually using the wrong paradigm for comparison. That, and I have been re-reading The Laundry (Charles Stross. Spy/Espionage thriller meets Cthuhlu and Quantum Physics + Computer Science).

We have been assuming that Invisibility works by bending light or otherwise preventing reflection. Just making someone transparent, for example. If they were doing that, they would not work on explicitly physics-breaking forms of sight like Darkvision, where light is not being perceived at all.

The most elegant solution is, I think, that spells like invisibility work by directly blocking visual perception by functioning as an observer-subject quantum disintermediator (read: it basically puts the subject inside schrodingers box as far as vision is concerned). Spells that permit an observer to see invisible things either override the spell's effect by placing objects on the subject that can be observed, or by inhibiting the effect for one or more observers (see invisibility, for example).

What this means as far as mechanical observers like cameras are concerned, I dont know. I never touched D20 Modern (I moved on to better systems for RPGs years ago. Earthdawn for example.), so I dont know (nor do I think it should necessarily be admitted because D20 Modern works on different metaphysical and thus physical laws, I should think)

I have no idea whether that would work, although the only thing quantum about Schrodinger's box was the isotope which was supposed to set off the geiger counter which in turn releases the poison that kills the cat. AFAIK all those claims about human's consciousness collapsing probabilities etc are just speculation which a lot of quantum theorists most probably don't care about. But its an interesting theory.

The main problem with this idea of Alyrium's, if you ask me, is that if it operates by breaking the observer-observed relationship on a causal level, then arguably by D&D standards it's an "illusion" spell. They already have spells that can influence what the observer sees by changing perception without changing tangible reality. Typically such spells get a Will save; Invisibility doesn't.

[Gaidin]

The main problem with this idea of Alyrium's, if you ask me, is that if it operates by breaking the observer-observed relationship on a causal level, then arguably by D&D standards it's an "illusion" spell. They already have spells that can influence what the observer sees by changing perception without changing tangible reality. Typically such spells get a Will save; Invisibility doesn't.

Could that be because Invisibility comes with the fact that the person that's invisible can interfere with it by default and make themselves visible if they attack, so to speak? Where most illusions 'stick', unless you see through them with a Will save?

[Thunderfire]

Note for everyone: I am not proposing this as actually being a thing. But it is better than what Jub has come up with.

You will need three spell seeds to do it. Energy, Destroy, Afflict. Lets set the yield to Hiroshima (16 kt)
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) of 2.1 km, air-blast radius of 1.8 km (we will call this 40d6 of sonic damage), lethally ionizing radiation radius of 1.4 km. Subsequent fallout and radiation sickness, not sure. Say, 5 km.

The lucky thing is that we will use the largest radius for the base seed. Things like Radius are non-additive that way.


Base Seed: Afflict base DC of 14. Factors: additional target type (plants) (+10 DC). change target to area (+10 DC), change 20-ft. radius to 15,000-ft. radius (+3000 DC), disease effects (as per contagion spell) (ad hoc +21 DC), change range to 30000 feet (+200 DC). Contingent on trigger (+25)

Seed: Energy(fire) base DC of 14, change target to area (+10), change radius to 6300 ft (subordinates to base seed)

Seed: Destroy, base DC of 29, change target to area (+10), change radius to 4200 feet (subordinates to base seed)

Subtotal: Spellcraft DC to develop of 3122.

I know. It is insane. However, in the absence of mitigating factors, there is a way. Namely, apprentices. Lots and Lots of Apprentices, assisting with the spellcraft check. This is an Act of Scholarship afterall, and subject to having minions look things up and proofread your arcane formula etc etc. So, it is possible to have a sort of magical Manhattan Project. You would need a large organization like the entire church of mystra, or perhaps the Zhentarim or Red Wizards to do it, but it is entirely possible to get the 1550 or so wizards together who would be necessary to make this feasible.

It would take 28,098,000 gp to develop, and this would require 562 days. So... about the Manhattan Project...

Just research a 3rd edtion version of the 2nd Edition psi power wormhole. It has interplanetary range - and there are some nice city/country killers in the asteroid belt. Abeir Toril is also part of the spelljammer universe. Some people are able to summon a monster called constellate. A constellate is able to destroy planets.