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CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 12:34 AM
Can you control the direction of gravity in general in your plane? Also, is there a definite height listed in another book?

My thoughts were to beat the size limit by using the "wall" as a "floor" and build on that. would that work?

On a side note, is there ANY use for antigenesis? I can think of easier ways to destroy 20 feet of building/plant life that doesn't cost XP.

FelixG
2011-01-27, 12:39 AM
If you use the psionic genesis you cant control anything thats not listed, if you use arcane you could control gravity.

Antigenesis could make an interesting obstacle to avoid at the very least.

DragonOfUndeath
2011-01-27, 12:45 AM
You can control Gravity, Time, Magic anything not alive is fair game. You could make the whole place a Wild Magic Zone, or a Dead Magic Zone. Also it's a Sphere so it's a ball of whatever. You control whatever is inside.

Fable Wright
2011-01-27, 12:49 AM
You can control Gravity, Time, Magic anything not alive is fair game. You could make the whole place a Wild Magic Zone, or a Dead Magic Zone. Also it's a Sphere so it's a ball of whatever. You control whatever is inside.

Wrong. The psionic version prevents you from manipulating the time aspect, and any sane DM will apply the same ruling to the magic one. To the OP: it depends on the DM. It is not listed, but it's not like the other traits provided as an example.

DragonOfUndeath
2011-01-27, 12:57 AM
By RAW: Yes
By RAI: *Shrugs*
In a game with a Sane DM: NO! NO! NO!
In a game with an insane DM: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! (Insane laugh)

CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 01:09 AM
Thanks for the fast input! So then there's one question left: Does Antigenesis really do anything useful at all that a good disintegrate or fireball wouldn't do?

drakir_nosslin
2011-01-27, 02:03 AM
There was an old thread back at the wizards board that discussed the usefulness of psionic genesis. The consensus was that it was possible to direct gravity at the manifestation of the power. The same goes for the arcane version.

The interesting thing was when they started to see what they could do with it. Basically they suggested several ways of directing gravity to increase the area of livable space. The first was just to fill half of the sphere with dirt and live on top. Fairly standard and not very good. The next one was to have gravity pulling down towards the outer walls of the sphere, as you suggested.
The last one was to have gravity pull towards any wall that was thicker than 5 ft I think and that the demiplane spawned 10 ft thick spheres within 10 ft thick spheres as it grew, creating lots and lots of living space.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 09:48 AM
There was an old thread back at the wizards board that discussed the usefulness of psionic genesis. The consensus was that it was possible to direct gravity at the manifestation of the power. The same goes for the arcane version.

The interesting thing was when they started to see what they could do with it. Basically they suggested several ways of directing gravity to increase the area of livable space. The first was just to fill half of the sphere with dirt and live on top. Fairly standard and not very good. The next one was to have gravity pulling down towards the outer walls of the sphere, as you suggested.
The last one was to have gravity pull towards any wall that was thicker than 5 ft I think and that the demiplane spawned 10 ft thick spheres within 10 ft thick spheres as it grew, creating lots and lots of living space.

Makes sense. The only problem is there would be a point of zero-g, but it would be amusing to imagine something stuck there.

FelixG
2011-01-27, 09:51 AM
Makes sense. The only problem is there would be a point of zero-g, but it would be amusing to imagine something stuck there.

some how place a ball of energy there that expands 1 foot/day to a maximum diameter of the sun.

Then eventually you have your own Dyson-sphere of a plane :smallbiggrin:

Czin
2011-01-27, 09:53 AM
some how place a ball of energy there that expands 1 foot/day to a maximum diameter of the sun.

Then eventually you have your own Dyson-sphere of a plane :smallbiggrin:

Nitpick; the amount of time for said ball to reach the diameter of the sun at that rate would be so great that your character would have long ago crumbled into dust, and the setting's own sun would be in the white dwarf stage of life at the least.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 09:59 AM
Nitpick; the amount of time for said ball to reach the diameter of the sun at that rate would be so great that your character would have long ago crumbled into dust, and the setting's own sun would be in the white dwarf stage of life at the least.

Psionic Lichdom? You could live that long if you didn't go crazy. Do psionic liches even exist, anyways?

Czin
2011-01-27, 10:04 AM
Psionic Lichdom? You could live that long if you didn't go crazy. Do psionic liches even exist, anyways?

Acererak had to ascend to godhood soon or be destroyed by age even when he was a demilich at the age of 800. Even liches have a time limit to do things.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 10:19 AM
Acererak had to ascend to godhood soon or be destroyed by age even when he was a demilich at the age of 800. Even liches have a time limit to do things.

Unbodied then? Or Uncarnate?

FMArthur
2011-01-27, 10:29 AM
Unbodied then? Or Uncarnate?

I think waiting for that amount of time through any means is still an unimaginably bad plan even if you can.

FelixG
2011-01-27, 10:45 AM
Nitpick; the amount of time for said ball to reach the diameter of the sun at that rate would be so great that your character would have long ago crumbled into dust, and the setting's own sun would be in the white dwarf stage of life at the least.

Countered Nitpick: Use the Arcane version, speed up the time trait :smallbiggrin:

CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 11:09 AM
I think waiting for that amount of time through any means is still an unimaginably bad plan even if you can.

I do believe there is a power which allows you to enter a state of suspended animation. And if you are invincible in that, which I vaguely remember, then I figured out a way to go to other planets, or do time travel. Or both.

Chuckthedwarf
2011-01-27, 11:21 AM
If you're an elan, you pretty much live forever without any messing with lichdom and what not...

>_>

And can provide your own food and water even without being a psionic class...

So if you're totally into it, you could be a wizard and stay on your plane as long as you want.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-27, 11:45 AM
If you're an elan, you pretty much live forever without any messing with lichdom and what not...

>_>

And can provide your own food and water even without being a psionic class...

So if you're totally into it, you could be a wizard and stay on your plane as long as you want.

Air, I'm pretty sure Elans need air, and I'd run out eventually, unless they generate air automatically.

Also, what book(s) is(are) the rules for Sigil(?), the city with the portals and crap, in?

FMArthur
2011-01-27, 11:57 AM
I wasn't saying that it can't be done, in any way at all. I'm just saying that waiting millions of years for a new empty home is an absurdly bad deal. Remaining in stasis until then is just as bad if not worse - millions of years of events in a D&D multiverse are the opposite of trivial or ignorable circumstances, and only your local time period even holds the context for your reasons for wanting anything in the first place.

Stegyre
2011-01-27, 12:21 PM
Nitpick; the amount of time for said ball to reach the diameter of the sun at that rate would be so great that your character would have long ago crumbled into dust, and the setting's own sun would be in the white dwarf stage of life at the least.
Let's see:

Sun's diameter: 1,380,000 km (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/AmyChan.shtml)

As a first-level approximation, 3 m. = 10 ft, so converted to feet: 4.6 billion (thousand-million) feet.

At the rate of 1 ft/day expansion, the sphere will be sun-sized in 12.6 million years. An Elan or lich would still be around, but not many other characters. The original sun, which measures its life span in billions of years, should still be alright. (But since the new demi-plane is essentially another universe, who cares?)

So, technically half-right, but since the real gist was, "You're going to have to wait a very, very, very long time," I'd upgrade that to "essentially correct." :smallwink:

I'm not a physicist, but I am cruel to cat girls, so I'll posit that another problem is that this growth rate may well be too fast. The volume of the demi plane grows at twice this rate (+1' radius/day), so for every foot the "star" grows, the "planet surface" is getting a net one foot further away.

Light (and heat) decrease at the square of the distance, so something twice as far away will receive only 1/4 the light. However, from what I'm reading on the web, the energy output of a star seems to depend upon its mass, which will generally relate to the volume of the star, which increases as the cube of the radius.

That cubic progression is going to overtake that square digression, and you know what will happen then?

Burn, little cat girls! BURN!

Oh dear, I feel so evil.

Darklady2831
2011-02-02, 02:42 PM
Acererak had to ascend to godhood soon or be destroyed by age even when he was a demilich at the age of 800. Even liches have a time limit to do things.

Correction, 2 millenia old.
Liches have a time limit of several thousand years; Demiliches do not.

twas_Brillig
2011-02-02, 03:42 PM
Correction, 2 millenia old.
Liches have a time limit of several thousand years; Demiliches do not.

On the other hand, after several million years you'd probably get bored of watching the sun expand.

And that is why so many liches flunk the Evil Overlord List.

Czin
2011-02-02, 04:14 PM
If you're an elan, you pretty much live forever without any messing with lichdom and what not...

>_>

And can provide your own food and water even without being a psionic class...

So if you're totally into it, you could be a wizard and stay on your plane as long as you want.

Mmm...isolation induced psychosis...

Czin
2011-02-02, 04:16 PM
Correction, 2 millenia old.
Liches have a time limit of several thousand years; Demiliches do not.

Then why is Acererak almost universally described as needing to employ his scheme or risk destruction by the weight of his years?

Darklady2831
2011-02-02, 04:20 PM
Then why is Acererak almost universally described as needing to employ his scheme or risk destruction by the weight of his years?

I don't know, and I admit, I've never really done anything other than 3.5e. So I'm really just going off of some books about undead and liches I've read from 3.5. So maybe it was different in other editions?

Czin
2011-02-02, 04:40 PM
I don't know, and I admit, I've never really done anything other than 3.5e. So I'm really just going off of some books about undead and liches I've read from 3.5. So maybe it was different in other editions?

I think even the ToM spoke of how Acererak needed to pull off his plan or be drawn into the abyss where Orcus would torment his soul in mane form for as long as it amused him, then proceed to ship him off to the blood war or Orcus's wars with Grazz'zzt and Demogorgon.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-02, 04:55 PM
I think even the ToM spoke of how Acererak needed to pull off his plan or be drawn into the abyss where Orcus would torment his soul in mane form for as long as it amused him, then proceed to ship him off to the blood war or Orcus's wars with Grazz'zzt and Demogorgon.

All I remember the ToM saying is that Acererak tried his plan to increase his power. I don't remember it saying anything about his power being lost if he never attempted it. Of course, because of the way his plan failed, he ended up dead, but that's another issue entirely.

Czin
2011-02-02, 05:22 PM
All I remember the ToM saying is that Acererak tried his plan to increase his power. I don't remember it saying anything about his power being lost if he never attempted it. Of course, because of the way his plan failed, he ended up dead, but that's another issue entirely.

Hmm, I must be thinking of other Acererak fluff.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-02, 05:34 PM
I just reread the ToM section on Acererak. It does mention that he wrote in his diary that "he fel the forces animating his body wane." However, it also says that the diary was part of his plot to fuse with the Negative Energy Plane (by acting as a lure for greedy adventurerers, i.e. fuel for the process.)

So, ToM seems like a retcon replacing the idea that demiliches have a finite lifespan with the idea that Acererak wanted adventurerers to think this was the case so he could use their sould for more power.