Demonic_Spoon
2012-01-02, 10:47 AM
Righto, what I'm going to be trying to attempt here is a compilation of all the various ways of destroying world, as well as possibly one or two neato ways of conquering it that involves large amounts of collateral damage. While I am sure that there are many methods that I will miss, hopefully this will be a good starting point, and people can suggest more, which I will then add.
For the purposes of this guide, rendering the world as uninhabitable to most life, or at least terrestrial humanoid life, counts as destroying it. I will be assuming a standard earthlike world, though variations on this are of course possible.
As such:
Radius of world = 20 925 525 feet
Please note that math is not my strong point so I may have gotten some calculations wrong, please point out any mistakes you find.
Lowest Level Destroying the World Methods:
Method #19:
ECL = 1
Level 1 Dragonfire Adept or a Dragonborn of Bahamut(Bahamut will probably not pleased with you)with the Enlarge Breath Feat.
Method #3:
ECL = 1
Adventurer acquires brown mold in dungeon. Adventurer travel to nearest volcano, adventurer throws in brown mold. Brownsplosion!
Method #20:
ECL = 1
Level 1 Chicken Infested Commoner with a spell component pouch summons infinite chickens. World destroyed in chicken singularity.
Method #1: Epic magic
The Premise:
Not surprisingly(since epic magic is epic broken) it is perfectly possibly to destroy the world with epic spells, if you can pump your spellcraft high enough or get enough mitigating factors.
Note: I am using the example epic spells to determine how certain Factors should be applied, however please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
Example Spell:
Destroy the World
Spellcraft DC: Negative something
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 2 rounds
Range: 1 212 228 000 ft.
Target: 20 925 540-ft radius sphere of nonliving matter or one creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: Negative something gold and time to develop Seed: Destroy(DC 29) Factors: change area to 20-ft. radius(+2 DC), increase radius to 20 925 525-ft.(+4 185 104 DC), increase range to 1 212 228 000 ft.(+202 036 DC), decrease casting time to 2 rounds(+16 DC) Mitigating factors: decrease damage die by two steps(-10 DC), 7 additional spellcasters contributing epic spell slots(-133 DC), burn 20,000 XP per epic spellcaster(-1600 DC), 88 000 additional spellcasters contributing 1st-level spell slots(-88 000 DC), burn 1000 XP per 2nd-level spellcaster(-80 000 DC), 6000 additional spellcasters contributing 2nd-level spell slots(-18 000 DC), burn 3000 XP per 3rd-level spellcaster(-120 000 DC), burn 6000 XP per 4th-level spellcaster(-120 000 DC), 1600 additional spellcasters contributing 3rd-level spell slots(-8 000 DC), burn 10 000 XP per 5th-level spellcaster(-104 000 DC), Burn 15 000 XP per 6th-level spellcaster(-84 000 DC), 480 additional spellcasters contributing 4th-Level spell slots(-3360 DC), burn 20,000 XP per 7th-level spellcaster(-64 000 DC), burn 20,000 XP per 8th-level spellcaster(-32 000 DC), 80 additional spellcasters contributing 5th-level spell slots(-720 DC), burn 20 000 XP per 9nth-level spellcaster(-16 000 DC), deal 60d6 backlash damage to each participant in the ritual(-5 769 600 DC)
This spell deals 20d4 points of damage to the target. The damage is of no particular type or energy. If the target is reduced to -10 hit points or less (or a construct, object, or undead is reduced to 0 hit points), it is utterly destroyed as if disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of fine dust. Up to a 20 925 540-foot sphere of nonliving matter is automatically disintegrated. This spells affects even magical matter, energy fields, and force effects that are normally only affected by the disintegrate spell. Such effects are automatically destroyed. Epic spells using the ward seed may also be destroyed, though the caster must succeed at an opposed caster level check against the other spellcaster to bring down a ward spell.
Possible scenario:
A cabal of 4 omnicidal lunar Demiliches and their 4 lich cohorts develop a epic spell to reduce the world to dust. The Demiliches each rule a kingdom on the moon. All four of them are level 30 wizards with their cohorts ranging from levels 25 to 29. Each demilich has the leadership, epic leadership, legendary commander, extra followers, necrotic reserve and epic spellcasting feats. Each has a leadership score of about 40 or more.
They assemble their roughly 1 million assorted followers, all of which are casters of have been psychically reformed to be casters. All of the followers are tied to wooden poles so that they will remain standing as if casting even if they die. The ritual leader dons the most powerful magical items in the possession of the cabal, the Rhapsody of Pain. The ritual begins, and each of participants gives a spell slot to the ritual leader, large parts of their life experience is also burned up to fuel the spell, all are then wracked by a terrible backlash, receiving 60d6 damage. Many die, possibly even some of the cohort liches, however since they wee all tied to poles so that they remain standing as if casting, and the backlash does not count as a attack, they still contribute to the ritual. The ritual leader gains large bonuses thanks to the damage he has inflicted upon himself and upon the other participants. The second round begins and the ritual leader easily completes the spell, thanks to the various sacrifices made and bonuses received. All the participants once again take damage, with only the demiliches and some of the cohorts surviving. The demiliches survive thanks to their necrotic reserve The world which the moon once orbited is completely annihilated. The dead liches reappear 1d10 days later thanks to their phylactery's. All live creatures that once lived on the world soon die thanks to exposure to vacuum, only some undead, constructs and the strongest of the living surviving, but unless they have some sort of teleportation magic they're just going to be drifting through the void.
Further Notes:
This spell will possibly only destroy half of the world per casting, due to the fact that it hits on the surface of the world and the radius then only goes in about halfway into the world. To counteract this use the reveal seed to create a sensor in the middle of the earth through which you then cast Destroy the World.
If you want you could take the Might makes Right feat, the Cancer Mage prestige class, contract the appropriate disease and gain NI followers, while you're at it throw in the transport seed in the spell and take out large chunks of the multiverse at a time, though this may require ad hoc dc increases, consult your DM.
There is also some contention about whether participants who are killed during the spell still contribute, which is why this is just a example spell.
Alternate methods:
If you want to ditch the million sacrifices the above spell requires you could create a less powerful version of Destroy the World and destroy the worlds in smaller chunks at a time, like say a tenth at a time or whatever. Or you could use the omniscifer infinite loop to gain infinite spellcaft ranks. Or just gate in infinite solars.
There are of course other ways to destroy the world with epic spells, I only showed the most obvious and apparently most contested method.
Method #2: Global Flooding
The Premise:
The Decanter of Endless Water. While this may look like a useful but relatively harmless item at first, if one thinks about the long term effects, one will realize that even a single Decanter of Endless Water set to Geyser and left unattended, could eventually inundate the entire world. As such if one were to intentionally scatter decanters throughout the world and protect them against divinations to prevent those pesky heroes from locating them, one could much more rapidly bring about the Drowning of the world.
According to some possibly bull**** figures I acquired from the internets, one would need at least 5*10^20 gallons of water to flood most of the earth(the highest mountain peaks would still possibly stick out). A Decanter of Endless Water can provide up to 30 gallons of water every 6 seconds. This translates to 5Gal/s. As such it would require about 3*10^12 years for a single decanter to flood the world, or 3 000 000 000 millennia, as such it would take effectively forever for a single decanter accidentally left set to Geyser to flood the world. For the purposes of this handbook a reasonable timeframe for world destruction will be no longer than 10 millennia. As such roughly 300 000 000 Decanters of Endless Water would be required to flood the world within a reasonable timeframe.
Please note that most of the last math in the last paragraph are only rough estimates, I didn't want to type a lot of fractions. How would one go about acquiring such a arbitrarily large amount of magical items? The most obvious method would be through infinite wish loops, though various methods of avoiding paying xp costs could also allow them to be crafted in combination with various crafting feats and items to reduce gp costs and crafting time.
The process of global flooding can also be helped along by melting the polar ice caps, which can be done through a variety of means, the most obvious of which is permanced walls of fire.
Also you could set up gates to the Elemenal Plane of Water if you're feeling particularly lazy.
Possible Scenario:
The Aboleths have been saving up Aboleth Mucus for a century or so and by now have gathered extremely large stockpiles, large enough to flood entire caverns systems of the underdark. They then proceed to do just that, flooding the caverns containing the cities of their greatest rivals, the illithids and the drow. Most illithid and drow cities are completely decimated, the inhabitants suffocating to death. Those few who survive and those cities that were not flooded are quickly assaulted by the combined might of the entire Aboleth civilization, the remaining species of both races becoming loyal slaves to their aboleth masters thanks to the Aboleth enslave ability. With their place as undisputed masters of the Underdark now established, the Aboleth turn their malevolent gazes to the horridly dry surface world.
They come up with a plan, a plan so bogglingly long term that only a Aboleth mind could have come up with it. Psychically reforming any suitably powerful slaves into dedicated crafters, they then cast Eternity of Torture on some of the less powerful slaves, and attach Pain Extractors to them. With a endless supply of liquid pain now established, the Abloleths start to mass produce Decanters of Endless Water, making hundreds or possibly even thousands of Decanters per year. After about a century of dedicated production they start emplacing these bottles on the seafloor of the oceans of the world, especially in the various deep sea trenches, protecting them from divination through permenanced Mage's Private Sanctums. All the decanters are of course set to Geyser.
The Aboleths continue production and continue emplacing Decanters in various locations throughout the world. The terrestrial civilizations of the world eventually start noticing a rise in sea levels and start to investigate, but all they discover are bizarre reports that the Underdark has been completely flooded. Any investigators who get close to the truth are enslaved by the aboleths and set to producing even more decanters.
Meanwhile those Aboleths not involved in the Decanter Project have been busy conquering and enslaving the other aquatic races of the world, bringing them into the Aboleth fold and adding more crafters to help with the Decanter Project. Certain of these new slaves were however utilized to maintain a image of normalcy underwater, fooling the surfacers about the true state of underwater matters.
This all continues for another few decades, with the surface civilizations becoming more and more frantic, until the coastal civilizations eventually start devoting the majority of their resources to the dilemma facing them. By now great batteries of decanters have been set up underwater. Before the surface civilizations discover the entirety of the disaster facing them, undercover Aboleth slaves infiltrate the surface world and emplace batteries of up to a hundred decanters in many of the major cities of the surface world. One fateful day they are all activate. Cities for the most part being built in low depressions in the land surrounding rivers, many of them are quickly flooded, killing many and causing much disruption. The surfacers now know that what they face is not just a natural phenomenon however but another group bent on their destruction. They soon discover the scale of the problem facing them launch a desperate attack against the Aboleths. This large fails however, as the largest part of the Aboleth empire is underwater, and most surface polities are simply not equipped for large scale aquatic military campaigns, and their aquatic allies are already subsumed into the Aboleth empire. The counterattack for the most part fails miserably.
It is at this point that the Aboleths start creating permanenced walls of fire at the polar ice caps, speeding up the flooding progress greatly. More and more decanters are being installed and the surfacers seem helpless to stop the rising tide.
Another decade passes, the sea level is rising by roughly a meter per year now, more decanters having little addition effect on how long it would take to flood the world. Many of the lower lying coastal kingdoms have been completely flooded. Some of the higher lying kingdoms who had been blissfully ignorant of the danger facing them suddenly become very much aware of their approaching doom. But by now it is too late to stop the tide. Too many decanters have been made. To find and deactivate them all would be a almost impossible task without inside knowledge of their placement and a easy means to reach them. All the rulers of the surface world could do was watch their kingdoms being covered by a sea of neverending water.
Eventually all the world is underwater and the Aboleths reign supreme once more, most of the decanters are deactivated, and stored away, in case they may ever be needed again. Airbreathing races not adapted by their tentacled masters to serve their watery needs are but a memory, and the world is once more as it was and should be.
Method #3: The Oozening
The Premise:
The Venom Ooze from Drow of the Underdark has a nifty extraordinary ability called corrupt water, which makes 10 cubic feet of water in a body of water still, foul, poisonous and unable to support animal life for each hour that the Venom Ooze is submerged in the aforementioned body of water.
The world oceans consist of roughly 4.5*10^19 cubic feet of water. As such it would take a single ooze roughly 5*10^14 years to corrupt all of the water in the oceans. Since we want to do it much faster, we want a lot more Venom Oozes. The easiest and simplest way to acquire Venom Oozes would be to set up some resetting Clone and Polymorph Any Object traps, cloning the the oozes and then polymorphing them into live versions of themselves. Throw the multitude of oozes you should end up with in the world's various oceans and wait. Eventually the oceans will end up foul and lifeless, and large portions of life on the planet will soon die out without the lifegiving oceans to support them. Works well in conjunction with flooding the entire world. Add in some castings of the Befoul spell for extra fun and speeding it up a bit.
OR
Take a brown mold. Give it the cold subtype somehow, possibly through one of the rituals in SS, or make it immune to cold in some other way(This step isn't stricly necessary, more of a means of increasing the change of success). It may be necessary to awaken the slime first(Unsure if you can give the cold subtype to a nonintelligent inanimate being). Expose the slime to some permanent source of flame, watch as it continually doubles in size until it eventually covers the entire world. A permenanced wall of fire would be ideal.
Possible scenario:
Cult of jellies, oozes and slimes who worship Juiblex set out to destroy the world. The cult leaders are a awakenened Gelatinous Cube, a Sentry Living Disjunction Spell Ooze wearing a Headband of Intellect, a Reason Stealer, a Assassin Jelly and a Summoning Ooze.
The cult wishes to engulf the world in a tide of slime, and as such they begin to gather all the Venom Oozes and Brown Molds they can find. Eventually they build some traps of Cloning and Polymorph Any Object, churning out a multitude of Venom Oozes. They start dropping these into the world's oceans and then turn their attention to the Brown Mold. The Cult uses a Ritual of the Elements to give the Brown Mold the Cold Subtype, making it immune to cold, its only weakness. They then leave it in a cavern with with a permanenced Wall of Fire. They repeat this with all of the Brown Mold, leaving some in shaded places on the surface.
The world never knew what hit it, as it was suddenly engulfed in a wave of brown mold, while the oceans were becoming foul and lifeless.
Alternate methods:
Or you could do this(Though Gate and some buffs like Iron Body and Energy Immunity would probably work just as well):
Journey to the Center of the Earth
[Divination] [Conjuration]
Spellcraft DC: 58
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Radius: 70 ft. radius
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Reflex half
Power Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 522,000 gp; 11 days; 20,880 XP. Seeds: transport (DC 27), foresee (DC 17), reveal (DC 19), conceal (DC 17). Factors: unwilling target (+4 DC), change from touch to target (+4 DC). Mitigating Factors: 3 casters contribute 1,000 XP (-30 DC).
Journey to the center of the earth, when successfully cast, sends the unwilling target of the spell to the center of the planet, using the foresee and reveal seeds in order to guarantee a sufficiently accurate description of the destination for the spell in its entirety to work.
Here’s the second epic spell you need to do it:
Antigaea
[Transmutation]
Spellcraft DC: 48
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 300 ft.
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 432,000 gp; 9 days; 17,280 XP. Seed: transform (DC 21), transform (DC 21). Factors: increase size by 1 size category (+6 DC), make immune to pressure damage as an exceptional quality (+10 DC) cast 40 levels higher for the purposes of avoiding dispelling (+80 DC). Mitigating Factors: 6 casters contribute one 8th level spell slot (-90 DC).
Antigaea, when cast upon a creature, has two effects upon them. First, it makes them one size category larger. In the case of the life form upon which antigaea is cast, it turns a small, 5 foot in diameter sample of brown mold into a cube of brown mold five feet across in all dimensions. Secondly, it makes the mold created completely immune to pressure damage. Antigaea is also cast 40 levels higher for the purposes of avoiding dispelling.
Here’s how the strategy works.
Journey to the Center of the Earth transports the modified brown mold, now immune to pressure damage-and hence, cannot be killed by intense pressure, to the center of the planet. Every round that the modified brown mold takes 2d6 points of fire damage (in fact, it’d do a lot more than that), it doubles in size. However, being incompressible, while the matter surrounding it by definition, is not, the matter surrounding it must be displaced. Eventually so much of this displacement will take place as the mold grows in size in the core of the planet that it will start disrupting the structure of the planet itself, causing it to tear itself apart.
Or, assuming total planetary destruction will occur once the brown mold takes up an equivalent amount of space as the core and mantle itself-at which point the mold itself dies from the cold of space, leaving nothing but fragments of the planet itself floating around, this is how long it would take:
37,212,583,598,326,934,016 cubic feet. (Total volume of core and mantle)
125 cubic feet. (volume of initial sample of modified brown mold).
The brown mold is assumed to double every round it takes at least 2d6 points of fire damage, so:
37,212,583,598,326,934,016 = 125 x 2^n
Solving this equation gives 58.04664008 divisions (rounding up to 59 divisions). Since a round represents 6 seconds, from total casting, this gives 348 seconds, or rather, 5 minutes and 58 seconds for the specially adapted mold to grow-although utter devastation should occur much sooner than that due to phenomena such as shock waves arising from the center of the planet upwards.
Method #4: The Ultimate Hurl
The Premise:
A suitably optimised Hulking Hurler could hurl a sufficiently large asteroid or even the moon directly at the world, devastating all life on it. Heck a sufficiently cheesy Hulking Hurler can hurl the world into the sun. One easy way to accomplish this is via taking levels in the Cancer Mage prestige class and contracting the Festering Anger disease for NI strength which will allow you to throw pretty much anything.
Possible Scenario:
A Half-Ogre Cancer Mage Hulking Hurler becomes enraged because none of da pretty wimmens want to sleep with a disease ridden abomination of nature like him. Goaded beyond his ability to control his own actions, he throws the moon into the planet. When he realises that this has completely eliminated his chances of sleeping with any pretty wimmens ever, he becomes further incensed and throws the entire planet into the sun. Then he drifts aimlessly in the void for all eternity, playing billiards with some asteroids.
Method #5: Ice Age time
The Premise:
The DMG II introduces the very neat concept of Magical Rituals, and provides a ritual that can potentially entomb the entire world in endless cold. Its name? Killing Frost of Ghulurak(DMG II pg.115). This neat ritual has a 10 mile deep ring of 10-20 Fahrenheit cold along the outer edge, a middle ring of -20 Fahrenheit cold that grows by 1 mile radius per week and a innermost heart of cold of 1 mile radius that is -60 Fahrenheit. After the statue has been in place for a century the innermost cold area also starts to grow at a rate of 1 mile added to radius per month.
The circumference of the earth though the poles is roughly 24,860 miles. As such, if you do the ritual at each of the poles, each Killing Frost only needs to cover a 12,430 mile radius circle. The reason we're doing it at the poles is because this way it will take longer for the residents of the world to notice what is going on, and by the time they do it will be to late, with the residents of the polar regions already having fallen under the sway of Ghulurak(Did I mention that it also mind controls creatures that get to close? Yeah). The killing frost grows by 52 miles per year for the first century. And then by 64 miles per year after that. So that's a 5211 mile radius size after the first century, leaving 7219 miles to be covered in the following years. Assuming two killing frosts were made, it would take around 213 years for them to affect the entire planet.
Possible Scenario:
Two groups of Frost Mages, each living at one of the two poles, are competing fiercely against each other to be the undisputed masters of cold magic. They are called the Northies and the Southies. In their struggle for magical supremacy they each delve into forbidden ice lore. While studying Ghulurak they roll higher than 50 on their knowledge(history) checks and fail their will saves. The frost mages are then compelled to complete the ritual to summon the Killing Frost of Ghulurak. Thanks to the magical wards and protections surrounding their sanctums, no one in the outside world realises what has happened, until it is far too late.
After a few years pass, people start noticing that the polar regions are expanding, outward, encroaching on the rest of the world. Eventually the entire world is covered in ice.
Alternate methods:
A couple of casting of the epic spell Ice Age should have much the same effect. Add in some generous helping of the spell Flash-Freeze for good measure.
You could always obtain some body parts of the Xixecal abomination and use the clone+PaO/ice assassin/simulcrum trick to obtain a veritable army of them. Besides the benefits of having a army of epic-level monsters, there's also the facts that they cloak a good chunk of space around them in a permanent Dire Winter effect.
Or you could do something like this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9892.0)
Method #6: Summon a Elder Evil
The Premise
From the book of the same name these babies are specifically designed to pretty much break settings if they're not stopped. It's mostly their signs that do the most damage, which is rather ironic since the signs are apparently sent by the gods to warn of the coming of the Elder Evils. From Father Llymic who completely blots out the sun, to Pandorym who would obliterate all deities.
With enough knowledge checks and divination spells a character could learn enough about a Elder Evil to determine how they could unleash them on the planet. For example finding the location of Father Llymic's prison or learning how to lead Ragnorra to the world.
Possible Scenario:
The Society of Malshapers guides Ragnorra so that she comes to the specified world and crashes into it, transforming all who live on it into horrible abominations and aberrations.
Alternate methods:
Technically you could use the gate spell to summon one of the Elder Evils. Or you could design a epic spell using the Summon seed.
Method #7: Apocalypse from the Sky
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1349/apocalypsearmageddon.jpg
The Premise
So, the ultimate non-epic destroy everything spell(LCB doesn't work). Apocalypse from the Sky is a Corrupt spell from the BoVD, page 85. While very powerful it requires a artifact as a material component and damages your abilities. At level 20 this effects a nice 200 mile wide circle. Throw in some metamagic like widen spell, empower spell, maximize spell, explosive spell, energy admixture and twin spell. Use and abuse Sanctum spell and arcane thesis to lower spell level. Use some of the various methods available to to raise CL to make the area effected even larger. This includes using liquid agony as a additional component(+2), the orange prism ioun stone(+1), ring of arcane might(+1), terran brandy(+2), etc. Just these few examples will add another 60 miles to the spell. Circle magic, spellthief and earth node genesis cheese also provides hefty bonus, sometimes into the triple digits(teleport through time is advised to circumvent the growth time of a earth node created through the node genesis spell. Acorn of far travel cheese may be advisable.)
Cast this spell enough times and it is very possible to devastate the entire planet. How to get around that annoying material component cost of a artifact however, not to mention the corruption cost and the fact that you are also effected by the spell? The ability damage is easily taking care of by a Orb of Mental Renewal(Mic), or you could bind Naberius. As to the artifact, technically artifacts don't have a value, so eschew material should work. If you want a less cheesy solution however, the Phaerimm(Lost Empires of Faerun pg.187) can cast spells without any material components. 2 levels of arcane archer get around the pesky casting time and allows some very crude aiming. As for protecting yourself from the damage a casting of Protection from Energy should do it. The only reliable way to gain artifacts is via the Divine Salient ability to craft them, so yeah, to use this in the conventional way with any regularity you need to either be a god or have a god as your bitch.
Possible Scenario:
A Level 20 Phaerimm Spellcaster has learned the Spell Apocalypse from the Sky. He writes a arcane thesis about it and then, because Phaerimm are evil, he proceeds to devastate the world with his new toy.
Method #8: Wightocalypse
The Premise:
Creatures slain by negative levels become wights. Wights can constitution drain other creatures and turn them into more wights. Cue a scroll of enervation which a low level character then casts on a commoner. The commoner becomes a wight 24 hours later, the wight then proceeds to kill more commoners, growing more numerous. Soon the character's commoner infested hometown has been cleaned out by wights. The wights more on to a new town and then another, finally becoming a unstoppable ever increasing undead army. The wightocalypse occurs.
Possible Scenario:
A amateur necromancer living in a rural area, not knowing the great powers he is playing with, casts Enervation from a scroll onto a cat. Satisfied when the cat dies, he wanders off and promptly forgets about it. 24 hours later the Subject Alpha of the Wightocalypse rises from the cat's remains.
Rebuttal:
You've got the wrong version of the Wightocalypse. Just a scroll of Enervation is too easy for any random character with class levels to stop- you'd have to get lucky.
The best way to do it is with a Snowcasted Flash Frost Fell Drain Locate City. That's a mere 4th level spell at a base, and allows you to deal 2 cold damage and one negative level to everyone in the area.
As for a build, say you have a Focused Specialist Diviner 6 with Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Easy Metamagic (Fell Drain), Flash Frost, and Snowcasting. Your Locate City Wightbombs are 1st level spells- Locate City is 1st level, plus one for Flash Frost, minus one for Arcane Thesis, plus one for Fell Drain, minus one for Easy Metamagic, minus one for Arcane Thesis again, is a total +0 modifier. Let's say you have a 20 INT, so you have 7 1st-level spells, 6 2nd-level spells, and 5 3rd-level spells. That's 18 slots that could potentially contain Wightbombs- if you cast all of them on one city, you're pretty much guaranteed to turn even the strongest casters into wights.
As a 20th level caster, with... 26 INT, say, you have 66 spell slots before any feats or magic items used specifically to get more. Your higher-level slots can go to Quickened ones and Twinned ones- if you take Easy Metamagic (quicken) and (twin), all 5th-level to 9th-level slots are Quickened Twinned ones, and 3rd and 4th slots are Twinned, so that's 116 total wightbombs. If you can't destroy the entire world with 116 wightbombs, you aren't trying.
Further Notes + Minor Tangent:
Shadows would work better since they don't have daylight powerlessness.
A fell drain Fimbulwinter also works well for kickstarting the wightocalypse.
Method #9: Black Hole Time!
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg192/scaled.php?server=192&filename=vulcanimploding.jpg&res=medium
The Premise:
Acquire a Sphere of Annihilation, establish control over the sphere, send the sphere into the center of the world. Planet implodes as all of its matter is sucked into the sphere
Possible Scenario:
A entropomancer acquires a SoA and does what any self-respecting entropomancer would do at that point, namely destroying the world.
Alternate methods:
Locate a Umbral Blot, establish control over the Umbral Blot via the Master's Voice feat or a rod of Construct Control. If possible boost the size of the Blot, send the Blot into the centre of the earth.
Method #10: Hell on Earth
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8154/attachmenthk.jpg
The Premise:
Open a portal to the Abyss, in fact open several portals to the Abyss and some portals to Hell as well while you're at it. Watch as the world is consumed by the eternally raging Blood War between the Demons and Devils.
Possible Scenario:
Cabal of high level evil spellcasters die without securing their souls or assuring their resurrection somehow, or just generally avoiding going to hell. The fiends of the lower planes are of course delighted and utilize their new portalmakers as much as possible in order to invade da material planez.
Method #11: Infinite Solar Loop/Infinite anything wish based loop
The Premise:
Get a Candle of Invocation or similiar. Gate in a solar who then gates in a solar who then gates in a solar ad infinitum. Use infinite wish and storm of vengeance to destroy the world.
Possible Scenario:
All remaining scraps of sanity flee the D&D multiverse, solars are gated in left and right, ultimate cosmic power is now available at low low prices.
Method #12: Why is the sky raining acid?!
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5859/50106.jpg
The Premise:
The Skybleeder in the fiend Folio has the supernatural ability to rain acid down on those below them from miles up in the sky, and some spell-like abilities seemingly chosen for air superiority. A storm of a few dozen skybleeders could cruise around a few miles above a decent sized city and decimate it with their acid rain, without the city even realizing what was attacking them. Given enough of these babies you can destroy most surface based settlements with ease and no opportunity for retaliation. Make them Shadow Skybleeders so that the move faster and can plane shift to the Shadow Plane if things go south. Heck you could probably even attack the planet itself, dealing a decent amount of damage per round and slowly eating away at the planet's crust. The weather control special ability is especially nice as it can summon up hurricanes to wreak some more havoc and can create conditions which makes their lighting bolt spell-like ability more powerful.
A Windghost escort for each of your Skybleeder bombardment regiment would be ideal, since Windghost(MMIII iirc) are the bane of spellcasters, and can easily get rid of magical forms of flight.
Possible Scenario:
The Kaorti have been saving up Skybleeders for a long long time. Not just any Skybleeders, but Shadow Skybleeders, transformed into fiendish creatures by the Kaorti's Vile Transformation ability. Each Skybleeder carries seven dromite warlocks, capable of casting eldritch spear, equipped with Icicle Rods, Circlets of Major Blasting, Rings of Fire Command and orbs of weather control.. The skybleeder itself also has a ring of of Fire command, and each storm of 12 SKybleeders are escorted by a Fiendish Shadow Windghost.
The Kaorti have managed to muster around 40 such storms, and now unleashes them on the world to cause great havoc. Unless they come up with effective countermeasures, and soon, the races inhabiting the world are doomed.
Further Notes:
Giving some sort of earthglide to the skybleeders would mean that not even underground cites would be safe.
Method #13: The world never existed!
The Premise:
Use divination magic to determine when the world was formed. Go to outer space. Use eschew materials or another way to dodge needing material components and use the Teleport Through Time (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) spell to send you, a large riverine container filled with quintessence(Hereafter referred to as stasis pod), some immoveable rods(coated by a layer of riverine), sovereign glue and a warforged psion thrall back in time to a thousand years or so before the world was formed. You might want to have some ability damage healing methods in hand in case of a mishap occurring. Have a warforged thrall with a activated immoveable rod waiting at the location you teleported from.
Have the warforged psion that you teleported back in time with you manifest forced dream(Magic of Ebberon pg.104). Place him in the stasis pod. Attach immoveable rods with sovereign glue. Activate immoveable rods.
The warforged you left back in your original time should see the stasis pod popping into existence. He then opens the pod and removes the psion thrall. The psion thrall activates forced dream.
The universe resets to the beginning of the of the warforged's turn, which was back before the the world was formed.
Bonus:
After all this set up a resetting forced dream trap with a stasis pod warforged in it and some sort of clock set to reset time every century or so. Stable time loop. The universe now replays the same century, before the world was formed, over and over again with no progress being made.
Credits:
Credit goes to Fishy's awesome Dream of Metal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121334) for the basic idea. I just expanded the scale.
Method #14: True Creation Bomb
The Premise:
The True Creation spell can create permanent completely real matter of any sort whatsoever as long as it is nonmagical and then gives a volume limit per level but no weight limit. Create antimatter, strangelets, strange matter, Neutronium, Uranium etc. Destroy world in a orgy of high level physics. Use Phaerimm, Shadowcasting or Eschew Materials to dodge the Material Component requirements.
Further reading:
Some guy calculated the damage for a anti-osmium bomb (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2010735#post2010735).
685 quadrillion hp damage anyone?
Method #15: Orbital Walls of Force
The Premise:
Walls of Force are completely immoveable, unlike those moveable "immoveable" rods. Cast a few permanenced Walls of Force in the orbital path of the planet. Watch fireworks as the planet grinds up against a immoveable object.
Notes:
This ruling of how Walls of Force works could make using them in the conventional manner...interesting to say the least.
Method #16: Fun with extradimensional spaces
Notes:
Due to lack of rules on extradimensional spaces this may or may not work. This requires a broad interpretation of the "hazardous" nature of putting extradimenional in a rope trick as described in the said spell's description.
Another possible method is putting a portable hole inside a bag of holding inside portable hole inside a bag of holding or something similiar.
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8937/1301963533553.jpg
Method #17: IRON! HEART! SURGE!
The Premise:
A sufficiently broad reading of the Iron Heart Surge Maneuver(Tome of Battle pg.68) can see it remove pretty much anything bothering you. The sun shining in your eyes? IHS the sun away! Gravity getting you down! IHS the planet away! No more planet!
Method #18: Sun Gate Cannon
The Premise:
While most teleport spells limit themselves to creatures, preventing the passage of unattended objects and the like, the gate spell is a notable exception to this. As such you could open a gate from the material plane to a intermediary plane(gates only function between planes) and then open a gate from that plane to the heart of the sun.
The Gate network sun cannon works as follows:
1: Open a gate to the plane of fire
2: Open a parallel gate to the heart of the sun
3: Observe million mile long 30 million degree plasma lance impact and likely ignite the atmosphere and melt through the crust
4: Wake up on your demiplane with a massive headache
Method #19: Metabreath
The Premise:
Certain of the metabreath feats in the Draconomicon allow you stack their effects without limit, but increases the recovery times between uses of your breath weapon each time you apply the feat. As such some creature with a breath weapon could stack the Enlarge Breath feat ad nauseam to engulf the entire planet in a massive energystorm, though at the cost of probably never using their breath weapon ever again, but that's the price one has to pay for destroying the world.
Bonus points for using it in conjunction with Lingering Breath to make said energystorm last a few centuries/millennia. Further bonus points for adding in the Breath Weapon Admixture power to also effect those creatures that are immune to your breath's energy type. Even more bonus points for using a Pyroclastic Dragon's disintegrating breath instead.
The build:
Bobo the Mouth Breather
Level 1: Human Dragonfire Adept (from Dragon Magic) with Enlarge Breath (Draconomicon p70) and Clinging Breath (also from Draconomicon). We'll give him an 18 Con, and pick a breath weapon with a cone shape. No magic items or anything else is important. We'll give him minimum stats in everything else, just because it's funny.
Level 4 (alternate build): Human Dragon Shaman (from PHB2) with Enlarge Breath, Clinging Breath, and Lingering Breath.
Alternatively, we can play as any other class or race that gets breath weapons.
At higher levels, we'll take (in order): Heighten Breath, Shape Breath, Spreading Breath, Maximize Breath
The Nova Round (literally):
We breathe. Our breath weapon covers the world, and the world dies. End of story.
Explanation:
Enlarge Breath is a metabreath feat that explicitly allows itself to stack any number of times. Each time you do it, you get to increase the range of your power by 50% in exchange for waiting another round for your breath weapon to recover. For something the size of the Earth, it will need 48 million stacks of Enlarge Breath (yes, I calculated it), and then we will have to wait 5 years to be able to do it again.
At level 1, this will deal roughly 1d6(+1d3 from Clinging Breath) fire damage to all things on the surface of the earth. People with full cover naturally won't be affected, but this will set fire to all buildings, kill most low level creatures, destroy all the farms in the world, and generally be a world-ending event. All Caused by a level 1 adventurer.
...who will probably gain significant amounts of XP from killing all that stuff, and so will be better prepared for the retribution headed his way. Oh, and he's immune to his own breath weapon, so that's not a worry, either. Though he should probably pack some lunch.
At level 4, we gain lingering breath, which allows us to leave behind a cloud that deals half the damage of the original attack (2d6 now) in the same area. The cost is two rounds of cooldown per one round of duration added. So if we had 5 more years of duration, we gain 10 years of cooldown. Not bad - the world becomes a burning firescape for 5 years, with all creatures on the surface taking 1d6 damage. Eventually it will burn though most enclosed spaces, leading to a more total devestation. The only survivors on the surface will be people with evasion (and no need to sleep) and/or those with at least 6 points of fire resistance.
Also, since we'd be a dragon shaman at this point, we can choose acid or cold as our breath weapon. (As the poet said: Will the world end in fire or in ice? You decide!)
Method #20: TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!
Variant on the infinite-wish/solar summon loop: TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!
The difference is that with the infinite solar loop, we eventually "cash in" on all those wishes. With TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!, the summons are their own reward.
Simply continue loop until the number of summons fills up the entirety of the breathable atmosphere. Assuming earthlike conditions, this is less than 4 *10^19 (4 billion billion).
Assume that each solar occupies 4 cubic meters. We only need to summon a billion billion of them.
.... actually, forget solars. Efreeti give us 3 wishes and they're ON FIRE. Assuming that they take up a square meter each, we only need to summon 500 million million. (Yes, I just used the word "only" with a straight face.) I also hereby dub this new approach FLAMING TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!
Summons in Round n +1 = Summons in Round n + summons in Round n -1. (The summons by those that were made in round n-2 are negated by the fact that these efreeti go back home once they're summoned) The total population at the end of round n+1 is the sum of these three values.
So population at round n = 2*population at round n-1 + 2*population at round n-2 + population at n-3. This means we are more than tripling our population every 3 rounds. The sequence would look like this:
1 2 6 15 44 124 351 ...
As you can see, we're slightly-less-than-trippling the population every round. At this rate, we'll reach our "mere" 5 million million efreeti... sometime around round 30. THREE MINUTES AFTER WE STARTED SUMMONING. At this point every point on the surface of the world is jam-packed with a fire elemental. All crops burn, all people burn, oceans boil, everything that doesn't absorb fire as HP dies, and the efreeti keep summoning. In practice, of course, some adventurers grab their swords and wands and put a dent in the population growth.... but really, you can't fight exponential growth.
At some point there's just so many at once that the entire world collapses into a star... and then a black hole. (Of course, by this point most of the efreeti are dying and unsummoning before granting all three wishes, but by this point the point is moot.)
Recommended method: Planar binding (with dimensional anchor, magic circle, etc) for the first Efreeti, all of which should be quite accessible for a wizard/sorceror at level 13. No material cost at all.
Open problem: Finding a way to relay your wishes to all the Efreeti at once. Should be possible with a carefully-worded Wish -- perhaps that the Efreeti are summoned "knowing" that they are your captive and "knowing" what your wishes are.
Alternate Methods:
Have a Chicken Infested Commoner summon infinite chickens as a free action. CHICKEN APOCALYPSE!
For the purposes of this guide, rendering the world as uninhabitable to most life, or at least terrestrial humanoid life, counts as destroying it. I will be assuming a standard earthlike world, though variations on this are of course possible.
As such:
Radius of world = 20 925 525 feet
Please note that math is not my strong point so I may have gotten some calculations wrong, please point out any mistakes you find.
Lowest Level Destroying the World Methods:
Method #19:
ECL = 1
Level 1 Dragonfire Adept or a Dragonborn of Bahamut(Bahamut will probably not pleased with you)with the Enlarge Breath Feat.
Method #3:
ECL = 1
Adventurer acquires brown mold in dungeon. Adventurer travel to nearest volcano, adventurer throws in brown mold. Brownsplosion!
Method #20:
ECL = 1
Level 1 Chicken Infested Commoner with a spell component pouch summons infinite chickens. World destroyed in chicken singularity.
Method #1: Epic magic
The Premise:
Not surprisingly(since epic magic is epic broken) it is perfectly possibly to destroy the world with epic spells, if you can pump your spellcraft high enough or get enough mitigating factors.
Note: I am using the example epic spells to determine how certain Factors should be applied, however please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
Example Spell:
Destroy the World
Spellcraft DC: Negative something
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 2 rounds
Range: 1 212 228 000 ft.
Target: 20 925 540-ft radius sphere of nonliving matter or one creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: Negative something gold and time to develop Seed: Destroy(DC 29) Factors: change area to 20-ft. radius(+2 DC), increase radius to 20 925 525-ft.(+4 185 104 DC), increase range to 1 212 228 000 ft.(+202 036 DC), decrease casting time to 2 rounds(+16 DC) Mitigating factors: decrease damage die by two steps(-10 DC), 7 additional spellcasters contributing epic spell slots(-133 DC), burn 20,000 XP per epic spellcaster(-1600 DC), 88 000 additional spellcasters contributing 1st-level spell slots(-88 000 DC), burn 1000 XP per 2nd-level spellcaster(-80 000 DC), 6000 additional spellcasters contributing 2nd-level spell slots(-18 000 DC), burn 3000 XP per 3rd-level spellcaster(-120 000 DC), burn 6000 XP per 4th-level spellcaster(-120 000 DC), 1600 additional spellcasters contributing 3rd-level spell slots(-8 000 DC), burn 10 000 XP per 5th-level spellcaster(-104 000 DC), Burn 15 000 XP per 6th-level spellcaster(-84 000 DC), 480 additional spellcasters contributing 4th-Level spell slots(-3360 DC), burn 20,000 XP per 7th-level spellcaster(-64 000 DC), burn 20,000 XP per 8th-level spellcaster(-32 000 DC), 80 additional spellcasters contributing 5th-level spell slots(-720 DC), burn 20 000 XP per 9nth-level spellcaster(-16 000 DC), deal 60d6 backlash damage to each participant in the ritual(-5 769 600 DC)
This spell deals 20d4 points of damage to the target. The damage is of no particular type or energy. If the target is reduced to -10 hit points or less (or a construct, object, or undead is reduced to 0 hit points), it is utterly destroyed as if disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of fine dust. Up to a 20 925 540-foot sphere of nonliving matter is automatically disintegrated. This spells affects even magical matter, energy fields, and force effects that are normally only affected by the disintegrate spell. Such effects are automatically destroyed. Epic spells using the ward seed may also be destroyed, though the caster must succeed at an opposed caster level check against the other spellcaster to bring down a ward spell.
Possible scenario:
A cabal of 4 omnicidal lunar Demiliches and their 4 lich cohorts develop a epic spell to reduce the world to dust. The Demiliches each rule a kingdom on the moon. All four of them are level 30 wizards with their cohorts ranging from levels 25 to 29. Each demilich has the leadership, epic leadership, legendary commander, extra followers, necrotic reserve and epic spellcasting feats. Each has a leadership score of about 40 or more.
They assemble their roughly 1 million assorted followers, all of which are casters of have been psychically reformed to be casters. All of the followers are tied to wooden poles so that they will remain standing as if casting even if they die. The ritual leader dons the most powerful magical items in the possession of the cabal, the Rhapsody of Pain. The ritual begins, and each of participants gives a spell slot to the ritual leader, large parts of their life experience is also burned up to fuel the spell, all are then wracked by a terrible backlash, receiving 60d6 damage. Many die, possibly even some of the cohort liches, however since they wee all tied to poles so that they remain standing as if casting, and the backlash does not count as a attack, they still contribute to the ritual. The ritual leader gains large bonuses thanks to the damage he has inflicted upon himself and upon the other participants. The second round begins and the ritual leader easily completes the spell, thanks to the various sacrifices made and bonuses received. All the participants once again take damage, with only the demiliches and some of the cohorts surviving. The demiliches survive thanks to their necrotic reserve The world which the moon once orbited is completely annihilated. The dead liches reappear 1d10 days later thanks to their phylactery's. All live creatures that once lived on the world soon die thanks to exposure to vacuum, only some undead, constructs and the strongest of the living surviving, but unless they have some sort of teleportation magic they're just going to be drifting through the void.
Further Notes:
This spell will possibly only destroy half of the world per casting, due to the fact that it hits on the surface of the world and the radius then only goes in about halfway into the world. To counteract this use the reveal seed to create a sensor in the middle of the earth through which you then cast Destroy the World.
If you want you could take the Might makes Right feat, the Cancer Mage prestige class, contract the appropriate disease and gain NI followers, while you're at it throw in the transport seed in the spell and take out large chunks of the multiverse at a time, though this may require ad hoc dc increases, consult your DM.
There is also some contention about whether participants who are killed during the spell still contribute, which is why this is just a example spell.
Alternate methods:
If you want to ditch the million sacrifices the above spell requires you could create a less powerful version of Destroy the World and destroy the worlds in smaller chunks at a time, like say a tenth at a time or whatever. Or you could use the omniscifer infinite loop to gain infinite spellcaft ranks. Or just gate in infinite solars.
There are of course other ways to destroy the world with epic spells, I only showed the most obvious and apparently most contested method.
Method #2: Global Flooding
The Premise:
The Decanter of Endless Water. While this may look like a useful but relatively harmless item at first, if one thinks about the long term effects, one will realize that even a single Decanter of Endless Water set to Geyser and left unattended, could eventually inundate the entire world. As such if one were to intentionally scatter decanters throughout the world and protect them against divinations to prevent those pesky heroes from locating them, one could much more rapidly bring about the Drowning of the world.
According to some possibly bull**** figures I acquired from the internets, one would need at least 5*10^20 gallons of water to flood most of the earth(the highest mountain peaks would still possibly stick out). A Decanter of Endless Water can provide up to 30 gallons of water every 6 seconds. This translates to 5Gal/s. As such it would require about 3*10^12 years for a single decanter to flood the world, or 3 000 000 000 millennia, as such it would take effectively forever for a single decanter accidentally left set to Geyser to flood the world. For the purposes of this handbook a reasonable timeframe for world destruction will be no longer than 10 millennia. As such roughly 300 000 000 Decanters of Endless Water would be required to flood the world within a reasonable timeframe.
Please note that most of the last math in the last paragraph are only rough estimates, I didn't want to type a lot of fractions. How would one go about acquiring such a arbitrarily large amount of magical items? The most obvious method would be through infinite wish loops, though various methods of avoiding paying xp costs could also allow them to be crafted in combination with various crafting feats and items to reduce gp costs and crafting time.
The process of global flooding can also be helped along by melting the polar ice caps, which can be done through a variety of means, the most obvious of which is permanced walls of fire.
Also you could set up gates to the Elemenal Plane of Water if you're feeling particularly lazy.
Possible Scenario:
The Aboleths have been saving up Aboleth Mucus for a century or so and by now have gathered extremely large stockpiles, large enough to flood entire caverns systems of the underdark. They then proceed to do just that, flooding the caverns containing the cities of their greatest rivals, the illithids and the drow. Most illithid and drow cities are completely decimated, the inhabitants suffocating to death. Those few who survive and those cities that were not flooded are quickly assaulted by the combined might of the entire Aboleth civilization, the remaining species of both races becoming loyal slaves to their aboleth masters thanks to the Aboleth enslave ability. With their place as undisputed masters of the Underdark now established, the Aboleth turn their malevolent gazes to the horridly dry surface world.
They come up with a plan, a plan so bogglingly long term that only a Aboleth mind could have come up with it. Psychically reforming any suitably powerful slaves into dedicated crafters, they then cast Eternity of Torture on some of the less powerful slaves, and attach Pain Extractors to them. With a endless supply of liquid pain now established, the Abloleths start to mass produce Decanters of Endless Water, making hundreds or possibly even thousands of Decanters per year. After about a century of dedicated production they start emplacing these bottles on the seafloor of the oceans of the world, especially in the various deep sea trenches, protecting them from divination through permenanced Mage's Private Sanctums. All the decanters are of course set to Geyser.
The Aboleths continue production and continue emplacing Decanters in various locations throughout the world. The terrestrial civilizations of the world eventually start noticing a rise in sea levels and start to investigate, but all they discover are bizarre reports that the Underdark has been completely flooded. Any investigators who get close to the truth are enslaved by the aboleths and set to producing even more decanters.
Meanwhile those Aboleths not involved in the Decanter Project have been busy conquering and enslaving the other aquatic races of the world, bringing them into the Aboleth fold and adding more crafters to help with the Decanter Project. Certain of these new slaves were however utilized to maintain a image of normalcy underwater, fooling the surfacers about the true state of underwater matters.
This all continues for another few decades, with the surface civilizations becoming more and more frantic, until the coastal civilizations eventually start devoting the majority of their resources to the dilemma facing them. By now great batteries of decanters have been set up underwater. Before the surface civilizations discover the entirety of the disaster facing them, undercover Aboleth slaves infiltrate the surface world and emplace batteries of up to a hundred decanters in many of the major cities of the surface world. One fateful day they are all activate. Cities for the most part being built in low depressions in the land surrounding rivers, many of them are quickly flooded, killing many and causing much disruption. The surfacers now know that what they face is not just a natural phenomenon however but another group bent on their destruction. They soon discover the scale of the problem facing them launch a desperate attack against the Aboleths. This large fails however, as the largest part of the Aboleth empire is underwater, and most surface polities are simply not equipped for large scale aquatic military campaigns, and their aquatic allies are already subsumed into the Aboleth empire. The counterattack for the most part fails miserably.
It is at this point that the Aboleths start creating permanenced walls of fire at the polar ice caps, speeding up the flooding progress greatly. More and more decanters are being installed and the surfacers seem helpless to stop the rising tide.
Another decade passes, the sea level is rising by roughly a meter per year now, more decanters having little addition effect on how long it would take to flood the world. Many of the lower lying coastal kingdoms have been completely flooded. Some of the higher lying kingdoms who had been blissfully ignorant of the danger facing them suddenly become very much aware of their approaching doom. But by now it is too late to stop the tide. Too many decanters have been made. To find and deactivate them all would be a almost impossible task without inside knowledge of their placement and a easy means to reach them. All the rulers of the surface world could do was watch their kingdoms being covered by a sea of neverending water.
Eventually all the world is underwater and the Aboleths reign supreme once more, most of the decanters are deactivated, and stored away, in case they may ever be needed again. Airbreathing races not adapted by their tentacled masters to serve their watery needs are but a memory, and the world is once more as it was and should be.
Method #3: The Oozening
The Premise:
The Venom Ooze from Drow of the Underdark has a nifty extraordinary ability called corrupt water, which makes 10 cubic feet of water in a body of water still, foul, poisonous and unable to support animal life for each hour that the Venom Ooze is submerged in the aforementioned body of water.
The world oceans consist of roughly 4.5*10^19 cubic feet of water. As such it would take a single ooze roughly 5*10^14 years to corrupt all of the water in the oceans. Since we want to do it much faster, we want a lot more Venom Oozes. The easiest and simplest way to acquire Venom Oozes would be to set up some resetting Clone and Polymorph Any Object traps, cloning the the oozes and then polymorphing them into live versions of themselves. Throw the multitude of oozes you should end up with in the world's various oceans and wait. Eventually the oceans will end up foul and lifeless, and large portions of life on the planet will soon die out without the lifegiving oceans to support them. Works well in conjunction with flooding the entire world. Add in some castings of the Befoul spell for extra fun and speeding it up a bit.
OR
Take a brown mold. Give it the cold subtype somehow, possibly through one of the rituals in SS, or make it immune to cold in some other way(This step isn't stricly necessary, more of a means of increasing the change of success). It may be necessary to awaken the slime first(Unsure if you can give the cold subtype to a nonintelligent inanimate being). Expose the slime to some permanent source of flame, watch as it continually doubles in size until it eventually covers the entire world. A permenanced wall of fire would be ideal.
Possible scenario:
Cult of jellies, oozes and slimes who worship Juiblex set out to destroy the world. The cult leaders are a awakenened Gelatinous Cube, a Sentry Living Disjunction Spell Ooze wearing a Headband of Intellect, a Reason Stealer, a Assassin Jelly and a Summoning Ooze.
The cult wishes to engulf the world in a tide of slime, and as such they begin to gather all the Venom Oozes and Brown Molds they can find. Eventually they build some traps of Cloning and Polymorph Any Object, churning out a multitude of Venom Oozes. They start dropping these into the world's oceans and then turn their attention to the Brown Mold. The Cult uses a Ritual of the Elements to give the Brown Mold the Cold Subtype, making it immune to cold, its only weakness. They then leave it in a cavern with with a permanenced Wall of Fire. They repeat this with all of the Brown Mold, leaving some in shaded places on the surface.
The world never knew what hit it, as it was suddenly engulfed in a wave of brown mold, while the oceans were becoming foul and lifeless.
Alternate methods:
Or you could do this(Though Gate and some buffs like Iron Body and Energy Immunity would probably work just as well):
Journey to the Center of the Earth
[Divination] [Conjuration]
Spellcraft DC: 58
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Radius: 70 ft. radius
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Reflex half
Power Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 522,000 gp; 11 days; 20,880 XP. Seeds: transport (DC 27), foresee (DC 17), reveal (DC 19), conceal (DC 17). Factors: unwilling target (+4 DC), change from touch to target (+4 DC). Mitigating Factors: 3 casters contribute 1,000 XP (-30 DC).
Journey to the center of the earth, when successfully cast, sends the unwilling target of the spell to the center of the planet, using the foresee and reveal seeds in order to guarantee a sufficiently accurate description of the destination for the spell in its entirety to work.
Here’s the second epic spell you need to do it:
Antigaea
[Transmutation]
Spellcraft DC: 48
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 300 ft.
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 432,000 gp; 9 days; 17,280 XP. Seed: transform (DC 21), transform (DC 21). Factors: increase size by 1 size category (+6 DC), make immune to pressure damage as an exceptional quality (+10 DC) cast 40 levels higher for the purposes of avoiding dispelling (+80 DC). Mitigating Factors: 6 casters contribute one 8th level spell slot (-90 DC).
Antigaea, when cast upon a creature, has two effects upon them. First, it makes them one size category larger. In the case of the life form upon which antigaea is cast, it turns a small, 5 foot in diameter sample of brown mold into a cube of brown mold five feet across in all dimensions. Secondly, it makes the mold created completely immune to pressure damage. Antigaea is also cast 40 levels higher for the purposes of avoiding dispelling.
Here’s how the strategy works.
Journey to the Center of the Earth transports the modified brown mold, now immune to pressure damage-and hence, cannot be killed by intense pressure, to the center of the planet. Every round that the modified brown mold takes 2d6 points of fire damage (in fact, it’d do a lot more than that), it doubles in size. However, being incompressible, while the matter surrounding it by definition, is not, the matter surrounding it must be displaced. Eventually so much of this displacement will take place as the mold grows in size in the core of the planet that it will start disrupting the structure of the planet itself, causing it to tear itself apart.
Or, assuming total planetary destruction will occur once the brown mold takes up an equivalent amount of space as the core and mantle itself-at which point the mold itself dies from the cold of space, leaving nothing but fragments of the planet itself floating around, this is how long it would take:
37,212,583,598,326,934,016 cubic feet. (Total volume of core and mantle)
125 cubic feet. (volume of initial sample of modified brown mold).
The brown mold is assumed to double every round it takes at least 2d6 points of fire damage, so:
37,212,583,598,326,934,016 = 125 x 2^n
Solving this equation gives 58.04664008 divisions (rounding up to 59 divisions). Since a round represents 6 seconds, from total casting, this gives 348 seconds, or rather, 5 minutes and 58 seconds for the specially adapted mold to grow-although utter devastation should occur much sooner than that due to phenomena such as shock waves arising from the center of the planet upwards.
Method #4: The Ultimate Hurl
The Premise:
A suitably optimised Hulking Hurler could hurl a sufficiently large asteroid or even the moon directly at the world, devastating all life on it. Heck a sufficiently cheesy Hulking Hurler can hurl the world into the sun. One easy way to accomplish this is via taking levels in the Cancer Mage prestige class and contracting the Festering Anger disease for NI strength which will allow you to throw pretty much anything.
Possible Scenario:
A Half-Ogre Cancer Mage Hulking Hurler becomes enraged because none of da pretty wimmens want to sleep with a disease ridden abomination of nature like him. Goaded beyond his ability to control his own actions, he throws the moon into the planet. When he realises that this has completely eliminated his chances of sleeping with any pretty wimmens ever, he becomes further incensed and throws the entire planet into the sun. Then he drifts aimlessly in the void for all eternity, playing billiards with some asteroids.
Method #5: Ice Age time
The Premise:
The DMG II introduces the very neat concept of Magical Rituals, and provides a ritual that can potentially entomb the entire world in endless cold. Its name? Killing Frost of Ghulurak(DMG II pg.115). This neat ritual has a 10 mile deep ring of 10-20 Fahrenheit cold along the outer edge, a middle ring of -20 Fahrenheit cold that grows by 1 mile radius per week and a innermost heart of cold of 1 mile radius that is -60 Fahrenheit. After the statue has been in place for a century the innermost cold area also starts to grow at a rate of 1 mile added to radius per month.
The circumference of the earth though the poles is roughly 24,860 miles. As such, if you do the ritual at each of the poles, each Killing Frost only needs to cover a 12,430 mile radius circle. The reason we're doing it at the poles is because this way it will take longer for the residents of the world to notice what is going on, and by the time they do it will be to late, with the residents of the polar regions already having fallen under the sway of Ghulurak(Did I mention that it also mind controls creatures that get to close? Yeah). The killing frost grows by 52 miles per year for the first century. And then by 64 miles per year after that. So that's a 5211 mile radius size after the first century, leaving 7219 miles to be covered in the following years. Assuming two killing frosts were made, it would take around 213 years for them to affect the entire planet.
Possible Scenario:
Two groups of Frost Mages, each living at one of the two poles, are competing fiercely against each other to be the undisputed masters of cold magic. They are called the Northies and the Southies. In their struggle for magical supremacy they each delve into forbidden ice lore. While studying Ghulurak they roll higher than 50 on their knowledge(history) checks and fail their will saves. The frost mages are then compelled to complete the ritual to summon the Killing Frost of Ghulurak. Thanks to the magical wards and protections surrounding their sanctums, no one in the outside world realises what has happened, until it is far too late.
After a few years pass, people start noticing that the polar regions are expanding, outward, encroaching on the rest of the world. Eventually the entire world is covered in ice.
Alternate methods:
A couple of casting of the epic spell Ice Age should have much the same effect. Add in some generous helping of the spell Flash-Freeze for good measure.
You could always obtain some body parts of the Xixecal abomination and use the clone+PaO/ice assassin/simulcrum trick to obtain a veritable army of them. Besides the benefits of having a army of epic-level monsters, there's also the facts that they cloak a good chunk of space around them in a permanent Dire Winter effect.
Or you could do something like this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9892.0)
Method #6: Summon a Elder Evil
The Premise
From the book of the same name these babies are specifically designed to pretty much break settings if they're not stopped. It's mostly their signs that do the most damage, which is rather ironic since the signs are apparently sent by the gods to warn of the coming of the Elder Evils. From Father Llymic who completely blots out the sun, to Pandorym who would obliterate all deities.
With enough knowledge checks and divination spells a character could learn enough about a Elder Evil to determine how they could unleash them on the planet. For example finding the location of Father Llymic's prison or learning how to lead Ragnorra to the world.
Possible Scenario:
The Society of Malshapers guides Ragnorra so that she comes to the specified world and crashes into it, transforming all who live on it into horrible abominations and aberrations.
Alternate methods:
Technically you could use the gate spell to summon one of the Elder Evils. Or you could design a epic spell using the Summon seed.
Method #7: Apocalypse from the Sky
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1349/apocalypsearmageddon.jpg
The Premise
So, the ultimate non-epic destroy everything spell(LCB doesn't work). Apocalypse from the Sky is a Corrupt spell from the BoVD, page 85. While very powerful it requires a artifact as a material component and damages your abilities. At level 20 this effects a nice 200 mile wide circle. Throw in some metamagic like widen spell, empower spell, maximize spell, explosive spell, energy admixture and twin spell. Use and abuse Sanctum spell and arcane thesis to lower spell level. Use some of the various methods available to to raise CL to make the area effected even larger. This includes using liquid agony as a additional component(+2), the orange prism ioun stone(+1), ring of arcane might(+1), terran brandy(+2), etc. Just these few examples will add another 60 miles to the spell. Circle magic, spellthief and earth node genesis cheese also provides hefty bonus, sometimes into the triple digits(teleport through time is advised to circumvent the growth time of a earth node created through the node genesis spell. Acorn of far travel cheese may be advisable.)
Cast this spell enough times and it is very possible to devastate the entire planet. How to get around that annoying material component cost of a artifact however, not to mention the corruption cost and the fact that you are also effected by the spell? The ability damage is easily taking care of by a Orb of Mental Renewal(Mic), or you could bind Naberius. As to the artifact, technically artifacts don't have a value, so eschew material should work. If you want a less cheesy solution however, the Phaerimm(Lost Empires of Faerun pg.187) can cast spells without any material components. 2 levels of arcane archer get around the pesky casting time and allows some very crude aiming. As for protecting yourself from the damage a casting of Protection from Energy should do it. The only reliable way to gain artifacts is via the Divine Salient ability to craft them, so yeah, to use this in the conventional way with any regularity you need to either be a god or have a god as your bitch.
Possible Scenario:
A Level 20 Phaerimm Spellcaster has learned the Spell Apocalypse from the Sky. He writes a arcane thesis about it and then, because Phaerimm are evil, he proceeds to devastate the world with his new toy.
Method #8: Wightocalypse
The Premise:
Creatures slain by negative levels become wights. Wights can constitution drain other creatures and turn them into more wights. Cue a scroll of enervation which a low level character then casts on a commoner. The commoner becomes a wight 24 hours later, the wight then proceeds to kill more commoners, growing more numerous. Soon the character's commoner infested hometown has been cleaned out by wights. The wights more on to a new town and then another, finally becoming a unstoppable ever increasing undead army. The wightocalypse occurs.
Possible Scenario:
A amateur necromancer living in a rural area, not knowing the great powers he is playing with, casts Enervation from a scroll onto a cat. Satisfied when the cat dies, he wanders off and promptly forgets about it. 24 hours later the Subject Alpha of the Wightocalypse rises from the cat's remains.
Rebuttal:
You've got the wrong version of the Wightocalypse. Just a scroll of Enervation is too easy for any random character with class levels to stop- you'd have to get lucky.
The best way to do it is with a Snowcasted Flash Frost Fell Drain Locate City. That's a mere 4th level spell at a base, and allows you to deal 2 cold damage and one negative level to everyone in the area.
As for a build, say you have a Focused Specialist Diviner 6 with Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Easy Metamagic (Fell Drain), Flash Frost, and Snowcasting. Your Locate City Wightbombs are 1st level spells- Locate City is 1st level, plus one for Flash Frost, minus one for Arcane Thesis, plus one for Fell Drain, minus one for Easy Metamagic, minus one for Arcane Thesis again, is a total +0 modifier. Let's say you have a 20 INT, so you have 7 1st-level spells, 6 2nd-level spells, and 5 3rd-level spells. That's 18 slots that could potentially contain Wightbombs- if you cast all of them on one city, you're pretty much guaranteed to turn even the strongest casters into wights.
As a 20th level caster, with... 26 INT, say, you have 66 spell slots before any feats or magic items used specifically to get more. Your higher-level slots can go to Quickened ones and Twinned ones- if you take Easy Metamagic (quicken) and (twin), all 5th-level to 9th-level slots are Quickened Twinned ones, and 3rd and 4th slots are Twinned, so that's 116 total wightbombs. If you can't destroy the entire world with 116 wightbombs, you aren't trying.
Further Notes + Minor Tangent:
Shadows would work better since they don't have daylight powerlessness.
A fell drain Fimbulwinter also works well for kickstarting the wightocalypse.
Method #9: Black Hole Time!
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg192/scaled.php?server=192&filename=vulcanimploding.jpg&res=medium
The Premise:
Acquire a Sphere of Annihilation, establish control over the sphere, send the sphere into the center of the world. Planet implodes as all of its matter is sucked into the sphere
Possible Scenario:
A entropomancer acquires a SoA and does what any self-respecting entropomancer would do at that point, namely destroying the world.
Alternate methods:
Locate a Umbral Blot, establish control over the Umbral Blot via the Master's Voice feat or a rod of Construct Control. If possible boost the size of the Blot, send the Blot into the centre of the earth.
Method #10: Hell on Earth
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8154/attachmenthk.jpg
The Premise:
Open a portal to the Abyss, in fact open several portals to the Abyss and some portals to Hell as well while you're at it. Watch as the world is consumed by the eternally raging Blood War between the Demons and Devils.
Possible Scenario:
Cabal of high level evil spellcasters die without securing their souls or assuring their resurrection somehow, or just generally avoiding going to hell. The fiends of the lower planes are of course delighted and utilize their new portalmakers as much as possible in order to invade da material planez.
Method #11: Infinite Solar Loop/Infinite anything wish based loop
The Premise:
Get a Candle of Invocation or similiar. Gate in a solar who then gates in a solar who then gates in a solar ad infinitum. Use infinite wish and storm of vengeance to destroy the world.
Possible Scenario:
All remaining scraps of sanity flee the D&D multiverse, solars are gated in left and right, ultimate cosmic power is now available at low low prices.
Method #12: Why is the sky raining acid?!
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5859/50106.jpg
The Premise:
The Skybleeder in the fiend Folio has the supernatural ability to rain acid down on those below them from miles up in the sky, and some spell-like abilities seemingly chosen for air superiority. A storm of a few dozen skybleeders could cruise around a few miles above a decent sized city and decimate it with their acid rain, without the city even realizing what was attacking them. Given enough of these babies you can destroy most surface based settlements with ease and no opportunity for retaliation. Make them Shadow Skybleeders so that the move faster and can plane shift to the Shadow Plane if things go south. Heck you could probably even attack the planet itself, dealing a decent amount of damage per round and slowly eating away at the planet's crust. The weather control special ability is especially nice as it can summon up hurricanes to wreak some more havoc and can create conditions which makes their lighting bolt spell-like ability more powerful.
A Windghost escort for each of your Skybleeder bombardment regiment would be ideal, since Windghost(MMIII iirc) are the bane of spellcasters, and can easily get rid of magical forms of flight.
Possible Scenario:
The Kaorti have been saving up Skybleeders for a long long time. Not just any Skybleeders, but Shadow Skybleeders, transformed into fiendish creatures by the Kaorti's Vile Transformation ability. Each Skybleeder carries seven dromite warlocks, capable of casting eldritch spear, equipped with Icicle Rods, Circlets of Major Blasting, Rings of Fire Command and orbs of weather control.. The skybleeder itself also has a ring of of Fire command, and each storm of 12 SKybleeders are escorted by a Fiendish Shadow Windghost.
The Kaorti have managed to muster around 40 such storms, and now unleashes them on the world to cause great havoc. Unless they come up with effective countermeasures, and soon, the races inhabiting the world are doomed.
Further Notes:
Giving some sort of earthglide to the skybleeders would mean that not even underground cites would be safe.
Method #13: The world never existed!
The Premise:
Use divination magic to determine when the world was formed. Go to outer space. Use eschew materials or another way to dodge needing material components and use the Teleport Through Time (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) spell to send you, a large riverine container filled with quintessence(Hereafter referred to as stasis pod), some immoveable rods(coated by a layer of riverine), sovereign glue and a warforged psion thrall back in time to a thousand years or so before the world was formed. You might want to have some ability damage healing methods in hand in case of a mishap occurring. Have a warforged thrall with a activated immoveable rod waiting at the location you teleported from.
Have the warforged psion that you teleported back in time with you manifest forced dream(Magic of Ebberon pg.104). Place him in the stasis pod. Attach immoveable rods with sovereign glue. Activate immoveable rods.
The warforged you left back in your original time should see the stasis pod popping into existence. He then opens the pod and removes the psion thrall. The psion thrall activates forced dream.
The universe resets to the beginning of the of the warforged's turn, which was back before the the world was formed.
Bonus:
After all this set up a resetting forced dream trap with a stasis pod warforged in it and some sort of clock set to reset time every century or so. Stable time loop. The universe now replays the same century, before the world was formed, over and over again with no progress being made.
Credits:
Credit goes to Fishy's awesome Dream of Metal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121334) for the basic idea. I just expanded the scale.
Method #14: True Creation Bomb
The Premise:
The True Creation spell can create permanent completely real matter of any sort whatsoever as long as it is nonmagical and then gives a volume limit per level but no weight limit. Create antimatter, strangelets, strange matter, Neutronium, Uranium etc. Destroy world in a orgy of high level physics. Use Phaerimm, Shadowcasting or Eschew Materials to dodge the Material Component requirements.
Further reading:
Some guy calculated the damage for a anti-osmium bomb (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2010735#post2010735).
685 quadrillion hp damage anyone?
Method #15: Orbital Walls of Force
The Premise:
Walls of Force are completely immoveable, unlike those moveable "immoveable" rods. Cast a few permanenced Walls of Force in the orbital path of the planet. Watch fireworks as the planet grinds up against a immoveable object.
Notes:
This ruling of how Walls of Force works could make using them in the conventional manner...interesting to say the least.
Method #16: Fun with extradimensional spaces
Notes:
Due to lack of rules on extradimensional spaces this may or may not work. This requires a broad interpretation of the "hazardous" nature of putting extradimenional in a rope trick as described in the said spell's description.
Another possible method is putting a portable hole inside a bag of holding inside portable hole inside a bag of holding or something similiar.
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8937/1301963533553.jpg
Method #17: IRON! HEART! SURGE!
The Premise:
A sufficiently broad reading of the Iron Heart Surge Maneuver(Tome of Battle pg.68) can see it remove pretty much anything bothering you. The sun shining in your eyes? IHS the sun away! Gravity getting you down! IHS the planet away! No more planet!
Method #18: Sun Gate Cannon
The Premise:
While most teleport spells limit themselves to creatures, preventing the passage of unattended objects and the like, the gate spell is a notable exception to this. As such you could open a gate from the material plane to a intermediary plane(gates only function between planes) and then open a gate from that plane to the heart of the sun.
The Gate network sun cannon works as follows:
1: Open a gate to the plane of fire
2: Open a parallel gate to the heart of the sun
3: Observe million mile long 30 million degree plasma lance impact and likely ignite the atmosphere and melt through the crust
4: Wake up on your demiplane with a massive headache
Method #19: Metabreath
The Premise:
Certain of the metabreath feats in the Draconomicon allow you stack their effects without limit, but increases the recovery times between uses of your breath weapon each time you apply the feat. As such some creature with a breath weapon could stack the Enlarge Breath feat ad nauseam to engulf the entire planet in a massive energystorm, though at the cost of probably never using their breath weapon ever again, but that's the price one has to pay for destroying the world.
Bonus points for using it in conjunction with Lingering Breath to make said energystorm last a few centuries/millennia. Further bonus points for adding in the Breath Weapon Admixture power to also effect those creatures that are immune to your breath's energy type. Even more bonus points for using a Pyroclastic Dragon's disintegrating breath instead.
The build:
Bobo the Mouth Breather
Level 1: Human Dragonfire Adept (from Dragon Magic) with Enlarge Breath (Draconomicon p70) and Clinging Breath (also from Draconomicon). We'll give him an 18 Con, and pick a breath weapon with a cone shape. No magic items or anything else is important. We'll give him minimum stats in everything else, just because it's funny.
Level 4 (alternate build): Human Dragon Shaman (from PHB2) with Enlarge Breath, Clinging Breath, and Lingering Breath.
Alternatively, we can play as any other class or race that gets breath weapons.
At higher levels, we'll take (in order): Heighten Breath, Shape Breath, Spreading Breath, Maximize Breath
The Nova Round (literally):
We breathe. Our breath weapon covers the world, and the world dies. End of story.
Explanation:
Enlarge Breath is a metabreath feat that explicitly allows itself to stack any number of times. Each time you do it, you get to increase the range of your power by 50% in exchange for waiting another round for your breath weapon to recover. For something the size of the Earth, it will need 48 million stacks of Enlarge Breath (yes, I calculated it), and then we will have to wait 5 years to be able to do it again.
At level 1, this will deal roughly 1d6(+1d3 from Clinging Breath) fire damage to all things on the surface of the earth. People with full cover naturally won't be affected, but this will set fire to all buildings, kill most low level creatures, destroy all the farms in the world, and generally be a world-ending event. All Caused by a level 1 adventurer.
...who will probably gain significant amounts of XP from killing all that stuff, and so will be better prepared for the retribution headed his way. Oh, and he's immune to his own breath weapon, so that's not a worry, either. Though he should probably pack some lunch.
At level 4, we gain lingering breath, which allows us to leave behind a cloud that deals half the damage of the original attack (2d6 now) in the same area. The cost is two rounds of cooldown per one round of duration added. So if we had 5 more years of duration, we gain 10 years of cooldown. Not bad - the world becomes a burning firescape for 5 years, with all creatures on the surface taking 1d6 damage. Eventually it will burn though most enclosed spaces, leading to a more total devestation. The only survivors on the surface will be people with evasion (and no need to sleep) and/or those with at least 6 points of fire resistance.
Also, since we'd be a dragon shaman at this point, we can choose acid or cold as our breath weapon. (As the poet said: Will the world end in fire or in ice? You decide!)
Method #20: TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!
Variant on the infinite-wish/solar summon loop: TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!
The difference is that with the infinite solar loop, we eventually "cash in" on all those wishes. With TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!, the summons are their own reward.
Simply continue loop until the number of summons fills up the entirety of the breathable atmosphere. Assuming earthlike conditions, this is less than 4 *10^19 (4 billion billion).
Assume that each solar occupies 4 cubic meters. We only need to summon a billion billion of them.
.... actually, forget solars. Efreeti give us 3 wishes and they're ON FIRE. Assuming that they take up a square meter each, we only need to summon 500 million million. (Yes, I just used the word "only" with a straight face.) I also hereby dub this new approach FLAMING TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!
Summons in Round n +1 = Summons in Round n + summons in Round n -1. (The summons by those that were made in round n-2 are negated by the fact that these efreeti go back home once they're summoned) The total population at the end of round n+1 is the sum of these three values.
So population at round n = 2*population at round n-1 + 2*population at round n-2 + population at n-3. This means we are more than tripling our population every 3 rounds. The sequence would look like this:
1 2 6 15 44 124 351 ...
As you can see, we're slightly-less-than-trippling the population every round. At this rate, we'll reach our "mere" 5 million million efreeti... sometime around round 30. THREE MINUTES AFTER WE STARTED SUMMONING. At this point every point on the surface of the world is jam-packed with a fire elemental. All crops burn, all people burn, oceans boil, everything that doesn't absorb fire as HP dies, and the efreeti keep summoning. In practice, of course, some adventurers grab their swords and wands and put a dent in the population growth.... but really, you can't fight exponential growth.
At some point there's just so many at once that the entire world collapses into a star... and then a black hole. (Of course, by this point most of the efreeti are dying and unsummoning before granting all three wishes, but by this point the point is moot.)
Recommended method: Planar binding (with dimensional anchor, magic circle, etc) for the first Efreeti, all of which should be quite accessible for a wizard/sorceror at level 13. No material cost at all.
Open problem: Finding a way to relay your wishes to all the Efreeti at once. Should be possible with a carefully-worded Wish -- perhaps that the Efreeti are summoned "knowing" that they are your captive and "knowing" what your wishes are.
Alternate Methods:
Have a Chicken Infested Commoner summon infinite chickens as a free action. CHICKEN APOCALYPSE!