D&D3.5 - Need to dig a canal; best solution?

[odigity]

My character has a long term goal to extend a 200 mile long canyon the last 20 miles to the ocean, thereby filling the whole thing up with water and creating new economic opportunity in a previously-barren region.

So, what's the best magical solution to digging a 20 mile long canal that may have to be several hundred feet deep? Bonus points for a method to make it happen overnight (the nation on the other side is hostile and may invade in the next few years, would be nice to plan and rig everything in advance so that we just hit the button and make it happen right as they get to the border - which would suddenly become the canal).

[watchwood]

Buy a few lyres of building, and hire some skilled bards to play them until they can't any more. Get a couple of clerics to cast some restorative conjurations on them on a regular basis to extend the length they can work for.

You'll have it dug in fairly short order.

[Icewraith]

Agree on lyre(s) of building being your best bet.

Other things to try:

Awakening/magically dominating a pack of landsharks.

Golems.

Earth Elementals

Depending on how the canyon's shaped and the local geography, you could control weather, fill the canyon up with water, and let nature take its course (unless there's some township or something in the way you don't want to obliterate with a flood.) or hasten nature's course with an earthquake spell.

Also: You may have your geography backwards- you want a freshwater river flowing all the way out to sea- due to the way land masses are generally shaped, you won't be doing the people by the canyon many favors unless there's water running in the canyon and it's just going into an underground reservoir instead of directly out to sea.

To get a freshwater river, build up a reservoir via control weather or similar, and add one of those eternal water bottles from the dmg, set to geyser.

[DarkestKnight]

commoner railgun a badger. bonus points if it is currently raging.

you could use a lot of summon spells to summon diggers, but my approach to this would be to mine the whole length with apocalypse from the sky spell items and detonate them all at the same time. this may in fact divide the continent but adventurers go big or go to the tavern.

[Chambers]

Getting it done overnight is the realm of epic spells, or a Wish/Miracle and very lenient DM.

Otherwise...maybe commission a Rod of Disintegration (custom item). Cast Disintegration at-will, once a round. Destroy a 10ft cube of earth every 6 seconds. It'll only cost you 132,000gp.

I have no idea how many 10ft cubes there are in a canal several hundred feet deep by 20 miles wide. But by rotating the person wielding the rod, you can have it being used every round of the day.

Quick Math!
6 seconds per round -> 10 rounds a minute -> 3600 rounds a hour -> 86,400 rounds a day. So assuming you time it so that people have readied actions to hand off/receive the wand (for maximum efficiency) you could disintegrate 86,400 10ft cubes per day.

[grarrrg]

Mindrape.
There is nothing Mindrape cannot fix.


Or Bears.
Summon a lot of Bears.
Nothing a lot of Bears cannot fix either.

[Gavinfoxx]

Lyres of Building, played by a Homunculus with maxed play (string), skill focus (string), and that musician feat.

Also an at-will item of Soften Earth and Stone.

[Hirax]

Persisted undermaster

[eggs]

Level 9 Conjurer wizard, you could spend a week Lesser Planar Binding a massive flock of Formian Taskmasters (3/day for 8 days... requires some dedicated buffing/debuffing to pull off, but shouldn't be unreasonable), use them to Dominate a herd of ankhegs (4 per taskmaster) and dig a 45ftx45ftx20mi channel over 8 hours. (Larger even, if you account for the dirt and debris moved by the water.)

Then just push your herd of giant angry bugs toward whichever kingdom you've got the biggest beef with. And maybe keep an eye open for Mechanus natives with a bone to pick

[Malroth]

hire 2 level 13 druids to cast the lv 6 spell move earth affecting an area 10 foot deep 10 foot wide and 10.6 miles long (which matches the spells maximum area of 562,500 square feet) total time to complete the project 4 hours and 10 minutes + the time to hire the casters, total cost 3,900 gp

[Elemental]

If you want to be truly epic about it, have your character invent a spell from scratch so you can do it by yourself in under an hour.

That way, you can stand there against a backdrop consisting of a stormy sky and lightning, with wind blowing through your hair (can't forget that), while you split the Earth asunder and let the oceans pour into the gap.
You will probably be remembered as the greatest practitioner of the arcane arts of all time.

[ahenobarbi]

...the nation on the other side is hostile and may invade in the next few years, would be nice to plan and rig everything in advance so that we just hit the button and make it happen right as they get to the border - which would suddenly become the canal...

Only idea I had (move earth) was already suggested, but I have a question:

Isn't canal easier to cross than canyon?

[Elemental]

The original poster clearly stated a desire to create a new shipping lane linking a previous inland region, and canyons don't make good shipping lanes.

[ahenobarbi]

The original poster clearly stated a desire to create a new shipping lane linking a previous inland region, and canyons don't make good shipping lanes.

Yes, but OP also wrote what I quoted "they attack us and... surprise a canal!" which doesn't really work I think...

If you don't want to change canyon to canal overnight it becomes easier/cheaper to achieve.

[Elemental]

Ultimately, if they do manage to put a canal in overnight just before an invasion, it doesn't matter whether or not it's easier to cross than a canyon.
You've still effectively foiled their plans (Who brings ships to a land war? Furthermore, how do you bring ships to a land war located miles from the sea?).

There's also the intimidation factor.
A single practitioner of the arcane arts awaits your army. Your sorcerers laugh at his, or her, foolishness at facing them all alone. However, the opposing practitioner (on their own) tears a huge crack in the land, pushing the two sides apart in a huge display of arcane power.
There'd be no way in the Nine Hells that even the most feared of tyrants would be able to convince his own sorcerers to face her, or him.

[Coidzor]

If the canyon is deep enough and sea level low enough, then there could still be a canyon gap that couldn't just have a barge go across even with the water from the ocean flooding on in and giving anything living in the canyon a really bad day.

On the other hand, if the canyon is easy enough to cross that going straight through it would be convenient for an army, I'd have to question why it's called a canyon or how far away from this proposed canal their crossing would be.

IIRC, a druid of sufficient level would be able to wildshape and burrow enough of a channel for the water to erode the rest of the way, especially if he had a burrowing companion or used his summons.

It's most likely that you'd want to make a series of dams and locks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_lock) before completely connecting the canyon and the body of water though, and that'd require either time or the lyre of building trick.

[Hyde]

Yes, but OP also wrote what I quoted "they attack us and... surprise a canal!" which doesn't really work I think...

If you don't want to change canyon to canal overnight it becomes easier/cheaper to achieve.

Clearly you've never played Age of Empires. "Suddenly a Canal" is a great tactic for dominating a battle, given that you have a stupidly huge navy that your friends were curious as to why you'd devote all your resources to "Oh God make the burning stop!"

Anyway, Mind control a Purple Worm? I think they're one of the few monsters that actually Does leave a useable tunnel.

Well, if not them, I know something exists that does. Won't really help with the shipping lane (immediately) but will get that canyon nice and flooded.

[Elemental]

It also makes sense from an economic point. If you do this at the right time, you'll have them empty their treasury.
Firstly, they've already spent a huge sum of money raising an army and equipping it, plus the cost of feeding and moving, etc. Then you slap them straight away with the need for a substantial navy. They'll be ruined.

And why is it I can never remember where to find the rules for spell development?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Wow. I was going to suggest the spell Excavate (SpC 85), but Disintegrate does it better, so... Seconded on the Rod(s) of Disintegrate.

[odigity]

A canal is easy to carry small groups of people or large piles of goods across, but not easy to take a large army across all at once. For that you'd have to amass a large number of rafts, which they weren't expecting to have to do.

So, large canal makes trade easier, but invasion harder. Hurray for a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Thanks for all the suggestions - hadn't though of most of them.

[Rejusu]

A canal is easy to carry small groups of people or large piles of goods across, but not easy to take a large army across all at once. For that you'd have to amass a large number of rafts, which they weren't expecting to have to do.

So, large canal makes trade easier, but invasion harder. Hurray for a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Thanks for all the suggestions - hadn't though of most of them.

You'll still have to find a way to flood the canyon unless you plan on digging down to sea level.

[Lonely Tylenol]

You'll still have to find a way to flood the canyon unless you plan on digging down to sea level.

Building a canal leading from a river would be the obvious answer here, but I honestly don't know the topography of odigity's game world.

Regardless, I just wanted to say that this sounds like a fun game. I don't think I've ever been in a game where people thought to use things like canal/road building to modify popular trade routes and influence local politics - sounds like quite the immersive experience. :smallsmile:

[gkathellar]

Persisted undermaster

Hirax has it right.

[Elemental]

Without further details on the topography of the region, we can't really make anything more than an educated guest.
Odigity did mention they were opening it out onto the sea, which would be the water source for our canal.
Secondly, no slope of any kind was mentioned. For all we know, the land is completely flat. Which means that opening the canal to the sea would easily fill it with water. Probably in a very dramatic way.

[Golkiwu]

Thoqqua

Low level summons - persisted or extended?

A high enough level caster could be hired to burn all of their spell slots to summon an army of them.

20 ft burrow speed leaves a useable tunnel, can burrow through solid rock.

20 ft per round = 60 ft per min = 1.37 mph.

With the correct instruction (ignan) and proper engineering this is functional, although it may take some time. It would be cost effective, as for the time it may take, it would cost you less to hire the caster than buy a fancy wand.:smallwink:

[Randomguy]

You could spam flashflood, a level 8 druid spell, to fill the existing canyon with water.

[ahenobarbi]

Ultimately, if they do manage to put a canal in overnight just before an invasion, it doesn't matter whether or not it's easier to cross than a canyon.
You've still effectively foiled their plans (Who brings ships to a land war? Furthermore, how do you bring ships to a land war located miles from the sea?).

Uh... no? Because if you had means to pass canyon you still have means to pass canon with some water in it.



There's also the intimidation factor.
A single practitioner of the arcane arts awaits your army. Your sorcerers laugh at his, or her, foolishness at facing them all alone. However, the opposing practitioner (on their own) tears a huge crack in the land, pushing the two sides apart in a huge display of arcane power.
There'd be no way in the Nine Hells that even the most feared of tyrants would be able to convince his own sorcerers to face her, or him.

Only none of suggestions work like that. It's "display of summoning/controlling" some digging monsters... not really impressive. Disintegrating would be a bit more impressive, but it's far from "one man breaking land with one spell".

Oh yeah, and don't forget the canyon will take a lot of time to fill with water...


Clearly you've never played Age of Empires.

I did. A bit. I don't really like RTSs.


"Suddenly a Canal" is a great tactic for dominating a battle, given that you have a stupidly huge navy that your friends were curious as to why you'd devote all your resources to "Oh God make the burning stop!"

That's very different from suggested solutions. What posters here said is "changing big hole to big hole full (or not even that) of water" if you did "change big hole to big hole full of water with my ships in it"... yeah, that would stop invasion.


It also makes sense from an economic point. If you do this at the right time, you'll have them empty their treasury.
Firstly, they've already spent a huge sum of money raising an army and equipping it, plus the cost of feeding and moving, etc. Then you slap them straight away with the need for a substantial navy. They'll be ruined.

Nope. Because:
- Flooding canyon does not stop them from crossing it.
- Suggested solutions don't allow your navy to come, so the other side has no need for their navy.


A canal is easy to carry small groups of people or large piles of goods across, but not easy to take a large army across all at once. For that you'd have to amass a large number of rafts, which they weren't expecting to have to do.

Anything that let's you cross canyon let's you cross canal. Canal may be better for trade though.


Low level summons - persisted or extended?


I don't think you can persist summons. And The longest summon can last is

20 rounds * 2 (extend) * 2 (malconvoker) * 2 (thaumaturge) = 160 rounds = 16minutes

well.. I'm not sure if it's worth hireing 20th level summoning-focused caster.

[gkathellar]

I don't think you can persist summons.

You can persist anything with a duration.

[Rejusu]

Building a canal leading from a river would be the obvious answer here, but I honestly don't know the topography of odigity's game world.

Well whatever the topography (unless there's some unlikely natural dam) they're going to have to dig down to sea level. What sea level is though is another matter.


Uh... no? Because if you had means to pass canyon you still have means to pass canon with some water in it.

- Flooding canyon does not stop them from crossing it.

Anything that let's you cross canyon let's you cross canal. Canal may be better for trade though.


I'm not really sure how you think crossing a body of water is the same as crossing a stretch of land. If you're going to cross a canyon then you either know of some path that will let you enter from your side and leave from the other or you've got the equipment to scale the canyon walls. If you brought equipment for hiking or rock climbing then you definitely don't have the means to cross a canal.

I mean I really don't get why you think that anything that lets you cross a canyon would let you cross a canal. About the ONLY thing that'd let you do both is a bridge. So unless they've packed one of those for their invasion they'd be in a bit of a pickle when they came to find a canal where they expected a canyon.

I think you may be thinking of this from an individual perspective. A person or a small group may not be too troubled by a canal and would just opt to swim it but you can't realistically have an army cross in the same way. The soldiers might be able to manage but what about their mounts? Their equipment? Their supplies? A wet and bedraggled army that had to leave their horses, siege equipment, food and pretty much everything else they couldn't swim across with isn't much of a threat.

[2xMachina]

Hmm, it might be like Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings canyons. The armies haul bridges to span canyons. It doesn't matter if it's filled with water, they bridge it.

EDIT: Though I suppose that canyon is more like large gaps in a plain.

[Rejusu]

Hmm, it might be like Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings canyons. The armies haul bridges to span canyons. It doesn't matter if it's filled with water, they bridge it.

EDIT: Though I suppose that canyon is more like large gaps in a plain.

Depends how wide it is too. But hauling a bridge around isn't that practical. Quite probably there's routes that'd allow them to cross on foot that wouldn't require one. If they came expecting to cross on foot then they wouldn't be packing a bridge.

[gkathellar]

More importantly, the issue is being confused as canyon vs. canal as a military blockade. It's not.

The issue is that there's a 20-mile stretch that isn't canyon.

Making said stretch into canyon will blockade potential invasions, while also causing the canyon to flood, bringing about new economic opportunities.

[caden_varn]

If my maths is right (which it quite possibly isn't), and assuming a canal 100 ft wide (to provide a decent deterent to crossing), 200 ft deep and 20 miles long will require removing over 2 million 10 foot square blocks. Doable with a disintegrate rod, but not in one day.
It would also be really really dull to do. Find someone with a lot of patience :smallsmile:

[ahenobarbi]

I'm not really sure how you think crossing a body of water is the same as crossing a stretch of land. If you're going to cross a canyon then you either know of some path that will let you enter from your side and leave from the other or you've got the equipment to scale the canyon walls. If you brought equipment for hiking or rock climbing then you definitely don't have the means to cross a canal.

I mean I really don't get why you think that anything that lets you cross a canyon would let you cross a canal. About the ONLY thing that'd let you do both is a bridge. So unless they've packed one of those for their invasion they'd be in a bit of a pickle when they came to find a canal where they expected a canyon.

I think you may be thinking of this from an individual perspective. A person or a small group may not be too troubled by a canal and would just opt to swim it but you can't realistically have an army cross in the same way. The soldiers might be able to manage but what about their mounts? Their equipment? Their supplies? A wet and bedraggled army that had to leave their horses, siege equipment, food and pretty much everything else they couldn't swim across with isn't much of a threat.

No, no, no. No sane army would even try to walk down canyon and then up. Because a bunch commoners with stones would have no problem slughtering your army.

So if you want to cross canyon you need to:
- Walk around it. Water does not help if they try this.
- Move above it (bridges, flight). Water does not help if they try this.

If you fight someone dumb enough to put their army on the bottom of the canyon... you could throw stones at them and kill their army with little to no risk or prevent them from crossing it... so your aggressive dumb neighbor can keep his(her?) army.

[Spacewolf]

I doubt crossing running water with armour on would exactly be an easy job considering that even if you could do it normally arrows would make it very difficult and theres problably some sort of spell to create a whirlpool such as summoning a water elemental then using votex

[Deepbluediver]

Jut how big and how advanced does this canal need to be? Are we talking about something like the Erie canal, which started out mostly for barges and other small cargo vessels, or do you want to carve a river in the landscape that climbs mountains? A.k.a., the panama canal, which almost bankrupted France before they gave up on the project.

My initial reaction, depending on how high level your characters are, is to just have the canal dug by hand. You can hire untrained laborers for a few silver pieces a day, with maybe 1 skilled surveyor and 1 engineer to oversee the project. You can adventure to fund your project!

[ahenobarbi]

I doubt crossing running water with armour on would exactly be an easy job considering that even if you could do it normally arrows would make it very difficult and theres problably some sort of spell to create a whirlpool such as summoning a water elemental then using votex

Again, if commander is dumb enough to send his troops down the canyon (not around it or above it) you need a bunch of commoners and many stones to defeat the army, not a lot of water. A lot of water might actually help the dumb commander by preventing him/her from sending army to (almost) sure death.

[imneuromancer]

Ankhegs are large creatures whose burrow can, at their option, create a tunnel. Have a team of 10 of them dig side-by-each so that you have a 100' wide and 10' deep tunnel underneath the ground. That ground would then sink by 10' when it collapses.

A 20 mile canal would be 5280 x 20 = 105,600 feet long. at 60 feet/round, that would mean (105,600/ (60 * 10) = 176 minutes to travel to go 20 miles.

So every 3 hours you could dig a 100' wide, 10' deep, 20 mile long canal. So if you want the canal to do just barges, that is probably OK. If you wanted a supertanker filled with oil, then you should probably make it about 100' deep.

So YMMV on how deep you want the canal.

[demigodus]

So if you want to cross canyon you need to:
- Walk around it. Water does not help if they try this.
- Move above it (bridges, flight). Water does not help if they try this.

If you fight someone dumb enough to put their army on the bottom of the canyon... you could throw stones at them and kill their army with little to no risk or prevent them from crossing it... so your aggressive dumb neighbor can keep his(her?) army.

Given what we know so far, I would venture to guess that walking around it isn't possible.

For flight, that could be pretty damn expensive, and they would need to move the army over small chunks at a time. Small chunks that could be taken out by a large army quickly. Maybe shooting down their means of flight.

Bridges, are actually easier to construct if there isn't water in the canyon. If they do manage to construct one though, a single rod of disintegrate could take out a ton of bridges very quickly. Although I get the impression the plan is to flood the canyon once the army is trying to get across... in which case their bridges might not be up to the task of dealing with sudden floods

[ahenobarbi]

Given what we know so far, I would venture to guess that walking around it isn't possible.

For flight, that could be pretty damn expensive, and they would need to move the army over small chunks at a time. Small chunks that could be taken out by a large army quickly. Maybe shooting down their means of flight.

Bridges, are actually easier to construct if there isn't water in the canyon. If they do manage to construct one though, a single rod of disintegrate could take out a ton of bridges very quickly. Although I get the impression the plan is to flood the canyon once the army is trying to get across... in which case their bridges might not be up to the task of dealing with sudden floods

I didn't write I know how to move army over canyon. Just that if the enemy army can cross it there are two possibilities:
- They walk through it, so you just throw stones at them and laugh at their stupid commander.
- They use some other way, so they don't care about water in canyon.



_____ _____
~~~~~/Land | |
Sea | canyon|
| |
| |
|_______|

And water will not fill entire canyon. Here is a picture:



_____ _____
~~~~~/Land |~~~~~~~|
Sea | canal |
| |
| |
|_______|

You will have some air between your bridge and water so the same bridge should work(and you could make it safer with some floating support).

Putting water in canyon will make it easier to invade, not harder.


EDIT: Fixed "pictures"

[Dayzgone]

I would actually go with the digging commoners as the best option here, if you don’t have means to such high lvl magic. 20 miles is not a hard job for a work force. It’s the cheapest and wont take very long.
Just some math off the top of my head but the Erie Canal was made in 8 years and is around 360 miles long. That means it should take only a few months for a 20 mile one. Not including all the minor magic that can be thrown in to speed things up.

Why take this longer more economical idea to build a canal you ask?

Well
1.The op said the other country wont attack for a few years
2.Chances that the op has access to high magic is not very good
3.A DnD army will not be stopped by canyons or canals…. EVER

So just to clear that last part up. If 1 country has the gold to buy high lvl wizards and druids. Then I’m going to bet that the other more aggressive country has the gold to.
Let’s say he does fill the canyon with water the moment the opposing army gets to it. Well now that high lvl druid they hired for the battle steps out and casts the tsunami spell destroying any and all defenses the op had.

[Darrin]

So, what's the best magical solution to digging a 20 mile long canal that may have to be several hundred feet deep?

Dig a very short canal, then cast teleportation circle.

Welcome to Tippyverse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007).

[eggs]

Ankhegs are large creatures whose burrow can, at their option, create a tunnel. Have a team of 10 of them dig side-by-each so that you have a 100' wide and 10' deep tunnel underneath the ground. That ground would then sink by 10' when it collapses.
I approve the Ankheg strategy, but they move 20 ft/round, and only leave a 5ft diameter tunnel.

That's not to say that approach isn't possible. 27 Ankhegs could dig a 60ft x 10ft x 20 mi channel in 8 hours, which is probably good enough for these purposes.

Getting those Ankhegs to dig it is the part that gets fun. I plugged Planar Binding Formians, because that's an easy solution to problems like this, but you could also do it with a modified Wild Empathy-based diplomancer, with more traditional animal training, or possibly something more narratively based (like finding some way to get a hive of Ankhegs to chase you 20 miles).

[Suddo]

Mindrape.
There is nothing Mindrape cannot fix.


Or Bears.
Summon a lot of Bears.
Nothing a lot of Bears cannot fix either.

Magma can fix all problems too. I'll have to think about how it can dig.

Oh you can just have it create an obsidian canal.

[nedz]

You can use a Sphere of Annihilation. I would recommend that you acquire a Talisman of the Sphere as well. All being well you should be able to make at least 10 foot a round. Which is 144,000 feet per day.

[jindra34]

ahenobarbi the big thing with the overnight canal is that it would stymy an invasion that planned to go through the land it occupied, not to make the canyon harder to cross. Crossing a canal is a lot harder if all you prepared to do was go across a plains.

[odigity]

Building a canal leading from a river would be the obvious answer here, but I honestly don't know the topography of odigity's game world.

Sorry, didn't realize there was so much ambiguity in what I was describing. Let me start from the top with a simplified topography:

Imagine a verticle east ocean coast. About 25 miles inland begins a rift in the ground heading due west, perpendicular to the coast. It quickly deepens and widens until it is over 1k feet deep and wide at most points. It stretches west for 200 miles before sloping back up and ending. The land in the region is generally flat otherwise.

Imagine that rift, and an imaginary line extending from the eastern tip of that rift to the coast, form a border. The nation to the south, A, is where I am based (I have a manor, fealty to the local duke, and a responsibility to aid in the defense of the land). The nation to the north is basically a hybrid of nazi germany and soviet russia, ruled by a Hextor worshipping king. Officially, the nations are at peace, but the king is expansionist, and is starting to lay the groundwork towards a pretense to move south in force.

I thought it might be a cool trick (and surprise the GM if we can avoid cluing him in until the end as to the long term plan), in case of eiminent invastion, to magically disappear enough earth along that 25 mile line to get to just below sea level, which would cause the ocean to rush in with great force, creating a modest canal and filling the great rift up to sea level, wherever that may be (I don't have exact elevation figures, though we're planning a survey mission).

It throws a monkey wrench into a conventional land invastion strategy, which is an expensive, multi-year endeavor to organize. It also opens up new opportunities for trade routes inland and across the rift, as well making previously worthless land more valuable - and if we can acquire rights to some of it beforehand, so much the better (the Lex Luthor plan).

I'm hoping the land along that 25 mile stretch is, on average, not more than 100-200ft above sea level. The rift certainly drops below sea level.

Building bridges is resource intensive, and nearly impossible when one end is held by enemy forces. Rafts are cheap, but while it generally takes an army to stop another army on land, it only takes one extended redneck family with a few catapaults and beer to stop a fleet of rafts. There's always magic, but you can say that about anything. It comes down to economics in the end, and they don't have access to anything we don't have, in theory. It's the same laws of magic on both sides of the line.

When defense is cheaper than offense, you have peace. When trade is more profitable than war, you have peace.


Regardless, I just wanted to say that this sounds like a fun game. I don't think I've ever been in a game where people thought to use things like canal/road building to modify popular trade routes and influence local politics - sounds like quite the immersive experience. :smallsmile:

Everyone involved in the game is a libertarian and member of the Free State Project, so it's not your typical mix of tastes. We've all done hack and slash before, but we're excited about this new opportunity to delve deeply into politics, economics, and entrepreneurship in a D&D environment. (The monk is an anarchist charting a career/class advancement path to get the skills to be able to assassinate tyrants.)

It would especialy be cool to come up with new rules for developing mass production techniques for magical item creation to bring costs down, leading to an industrial-magic revolution and overall quality of life increase. On the one hand, the rules are supposed to prevent that because it would be "unbalanced" in resulting power. But then again, so was electricity, the combustion engine, and transistors.

So... the original question was, what clever plan can we come up with in the next year or two to make this canal appear very quickly once we pull the trigger? Because it's much more fun that way, rather than having thousands of people dig for a year while actively repelling massive attacks. It's not like the king is just going to sit and watch that happen...

[RedWarrior0]

Lots and lots of permanent illusions and something to dispel them all.

[TechnoScrabble]

commoner railgun a badger.

Can't.
Stop.
LAUGHING!

[TechnoScrabble]

commoner railgun a badger.

Can't.
Stop.
LAUGHING!

[ngilop]

My group did something similar to this a while ago, though instead of making a canyon into a canal. we just dug out a place where we knew that an humanoid hrode was going to pour forth.. that alos happened to be above a big cavern,


long story short we spent a few months (maybe up to 2 years?) diggin all of this out and putting in support posts that then had explosive runes engraved on them, 9 modified of course by myself)

blah blah horde chages command word is spoken runes explode whole field caves in and horde dies!


if you know you have time, go right ahead and just do a lot of digging and set up support posst then enact some kind fo spell that blows all the support beams up thereby creating your ncala and drowning the amry of the communazis


and I thought that every group played this immersively? at least the ones ive alwasy been a part of has.

[Malroth]

Well a magical solution is going to be MUCH cheaper than a mundane solution.

Assume a horde of generic laborers each capable of moving 200lbs of sand/dirt/gravel onto a wagon per minute and are willing to do this for 12 hours a day for 5 silverpieces per day.

density values of sand and gravel i found were in kg/m^3 so units will be converted to metric

200lbs/min X 1kg/2.2lbs X 60 min/hr X 12 hrs/workday = 65,454.5 kg moved per work day

assuming density values are the same as on earth a loose mixture of sand and gravel weighs 1922 kg/m^3 meaning that our laborer just moved 34m^3 in his 12 hour work day. and that our financeer got himself 6.8 m^3 of fill moved away for every silver piece spent.

now our strech of future canal is 20 miles long which translates to around 32,000 meters, and if the canal was a mere 5 meters wide and 5 meters deep
it means we have 800,000 cubic meters of earth to move at a total cost of 11,764 gold pieces, not counting the cost to feed, house, organize and supply tools to the laborers or the cost of the wagons needed to transport the fill to a more desirable location.

compare to the cost of hiring a caster to cast move earth. Move earth is a 6th lv spell and requries a 13th lv caster and comes with a market value of 780gp. It can move over the course of 4 hours, an amount of earth equivilent to a 750ftx750ftx10 foot volume, or 159,468 cubic meters at a cost of 20.5 m^3 for ever silver piece spent

[eggs]

Is there any reason you can't grapple while burrowing?
Because this might be yet another problem solved by jet-speed giant badger scrums.

Looking for a 45ftx10ftx20mi canal:

A scrum of 80 dire badgers wrestling could zigzag the 360 miles in 8 hours.
A scrum of 634 dire badgers wrestling could zigzag the distance in 1 hour.
A scrum of 380160 dire badgers wrestling could dig it in 1 round.

So the answer is clearly to use a Candle of Invocation to open a Gate to the Elemental Plane of Feisty Badgers.

[Coidzor]

heh. scrum of the earth. :smallamused: good one.

Aren't some dragons capable of digesting inanimate, inert earth, stone, and metal, sort of like some kind of bizarre Mr. Fusion?

[2xMachina]

They don't need to build a bridge on the canyon. They can build portable bridges, and have slaves haul them.

The evil empire should have slaves to spare, and wouldn't give a damn if they strain a muscle.

[Coidzor]

And if they're planning a land-based invasion, they'd probably anticipate having a force come to meet them in that 20 mile stretch of land between the sea and the canyon. A force that might even be capable of halting their advance, depending upon how stupidly hubristic they are.

So it is not implausible that they would have chosen one or several crossing points of the canyon for either assembling at the site or transporting ready-made bridges to the site. Especially considering that if they picked out their crossing points, they'd have the distance they needed to span accounted for and probably had some surveying done if it was to be done using mundane means.

[Rejusu]

No, no, no. No sane army would even try to walk down canyon and then up. Because a bunch commoners with stones would have no problem slughtering your army.

This would be more credible if you'd said soldiers with bows. Because frankly unless your campaigns regularly feature naked soldiers with no AC and commoners with tons of BAB and DEX I'm not sure how you envisaged a commoner stone bombardment working against an army. If faced with commoners throwing rocks any sane army would advance in formation with their shields above their heads.

Really I don't see what you'd expect the commoners to do except mildly annoy the opposing army. Maybe if they were rolling boulders into the canyon or there were archers instead. But commoners with stones aren't much of a threat.

Secondly you're making a silly assumption, that the defending forces actually know where the attacking army would try to cross. Unless they know this then they can't set up an ambush, and there's no way they can defend the entire stretch. And yes, a sane army would walk down a canyon and then up again if it needed to do so to get where it was going.

A sane army wouldn't however walk into an ambush. But venturing into risky terrain is not the same as walking into an ambush. Any sane army sends scouting parties ahead of it to root out ambushes. If the canyon was a trap they wouldn't go down into it, but if the coast is clear then there's nothing stopping them.


So if you want to cross canyon you need to:
- Walk around it. Water does not help if they try this.
- Move above it (bridges, flight). Water does not help if they try this.

If you fight someone dumb enough to put their army on the bottom of the canyon... you could throw stones at them and kill their army with little to no risk or prevent them from crossing it... so your aggressive dumb neighbor can keep his(her?) army.

Again that assumes they came prepared to go over it. If they came expecting to cross through the canyon then they're not going to be prepared to go over it. Also if you actually look at the original posters comment this is about extending the existing canyon and flooding it so they can't move around it. In this case all the advancing army would have been prepared for would have been an overland march, not crossing a canyon or a canal.


Putting water in canyon will make it easier to invade, not harder.

You're missing the point, it's meant to delay an invasion by presenting the opposing army with something they weren't prepared for, not stop it completely.

[ahenobarbi]

ahenobarbi the big thing with the overnight canal is that it would stymy an invasion that planned to go through the land it occupied, not to make the canyon harder to cross. Crossing a canal is a lot harder if all you prepared to do was go across a plains.


This would be more credible if you'd said soldiers with bows. Because frankly unless your campaigns regularly feature naked soldiers with no AC and commoners with tons of BAB and DEX I'm not sure how you envisaged a commoner stone bombardment working against an army. If faced with commoners throwing rocks any sane army would advance in formation with their shields above their heads.

Even commoners could do it. Because:
- It's really hard to miss if you are throwing stone at army.
- They have plenty of time (because army has long way up)(so you can just wait for natural 20).
- Object falling a few hundred meters will cause damage if it hits (rulles on damage from falling objects (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary&term=Glossary_dnd_fallingobjects&alpha=)).
Of course soldiers rolling boulders and throwing heavy objects (to more damage to multiple targets at once) would be more effective.



Secondly you're making a silly assumption, that the defending forces actually know where the attacking army would try to cross.

OP made assumption that he knows enemy army is attacking. If you know a large army is walking through plain terrain (before they reach canyon) it's quite easy to learn where they go.


A sane army wouldn't however walk into an ambush. But venturing into risky terrain is not the same as walking into an ambush. Any sane army sends scouting parties ahead of it to root out ambushes. If the canyon was a trap they wouldn't go down into it, but if the coast is clear then there's nothing stopping them.

Walking into canyon is walking into ambush. Really single commoner on top of the canyon has all the time it takes you to walk up (let's say 1 hour). Every round he throws a 1lb stone at you, hits 1 in 20 times, deals 14d6 (when you are at the bottom) to 1d6 (when you are close to him) per hit. So he has 600 rounds, hits you about 30 times, for average 26.25 damage (7.5d6) each each hit. Total average damage 787.5. From single commoner throwing stones...

And you can not hurt that commoner at all most of the time.

Walking into terrain that hard is walking into a trap. It's almost like charging on your opponent through petrol river, hoping he will not notice you and will not set it onfire.


Again that assumes they came prepared to go over it. If they came expecting to cross through the canyon then they're not going to be prepared to go over it. Also if you actually look at the original posters comment this is about extending the existing canyon and flooding it so they can't move around it. In this case all the advancing army would have been prepared for would have been an overland march, not crossing a canyon or a canal.

Again. I don't know how to lunch invasion. I'm just saying that sending army through canyon is about as poor tactics as ordering them to swim through canal in full plates.



You're missing the point, it's meant to delay an invasion by presenting the opposing army with something they weren't prepared for, not stop it completely.

But this surprise will not matter to them at all. Because if they are sane they will not try to walk through canyon.

Now that OP explained how terrain looks I think most reasonable to launch invasion would be trying to walk around canyon. Now if you create fast-flowing, narrow, deep river (water flowing from ocean to canyon) it will stop them. For short. Maybe for a few round (wall of stone), maybe for a few hours (need to prepare wall of stone or build temporary bridges). And yes, regular armies (as opposed to barbarian hordes) take engineers with them since ancient times.

[jindra34]

ahe, I was talking about the 20 mile section between the canyon and the sea/ocean which really should be assumed to be a good invasion point (the other is 200 some miles in the other direction) and probably doesn't have much more terrain than rolling hills. Suprise big river there would be a problem. And a bridge would have to be built quickly id there were sides or things would get messy.

[Rejusu]

Even commoners could do it. Because:
- It's really hard to miss if you are throwing stone at army.
- They have plenty of time (because army has long way up)(so you can just wait for natural 20).
- Object falling a few hundred meters will cause damage if it hits (rulles on damage from falling objects (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary&term=Glossary_dnd_fallingobjects&alpha=)).
Of course soldiers rolling boulders and throwing heavy objects (to more damage to multiple targets at once) would be more effective.


Well here's where you have a problem. A thrown weapon (which is what a stone would be) has a MAXIMUM range of five range increments, and only a 10ft range increment. This means the commoner cannot throw the stone more than 50ft. And going from the OP's description it's about 1000ft deep and 1000ft across. Meaning it's impossible under RAW for the commoner to hit even on a natural 20 and do the kind of damage you're describing.

Also it's debatable whether the damage from falling objects rules would even apply to a projectile. A ranged attack is different from a falling object. Even if you were to use a sling your max range would still only be 500ft. And since sling bullets weigh 1/2lb each they don't qualify for the falling objects damage rules anyway.

Now if you were to try and argue this outside of RAW and argue that max range should only apply to horizontal distance rather than vertical then you'd also have to acknowledge that the falling objects rules don't account for terminal velocity.

So no, under RAW you can't kill an opposing army in a canyon with a commoner throwing stones.

And even if we say that they only have to be within the horizontal difference rather than the vertical then by the time the commoner gets into a range he can actually hit the soldiers at they'll be able to close the distance and kill him within 1-2 rounds. Considering he's using a thrown weapon an enemy archer (who has a much larger range) could actually just pick him off before the army even comes within range.

Also by no means would it take an opposing army an hour to cross, the entire army maybe but the front lines could be on the other side a lot sooner. Let's assume they have a base land speed of 30ft, and are wearing heavy armour which reduces it to 20ft. This means that for 1000ft wide canyon it would take (at walking speed) 50 (1000/20) move actions to cross the canyon. A round is 6 seconds so it'd take them 5 minutes to cross the canyon floor (50*6/60).

Now depending on the terrain and whether there's any natural passes or not they may have to climb up or down the canyon walls. If we assume they're straight vertical walls 1000ft tall then this means they'd take 20 minutes to scale (((1000/5)*6)/60) at a normal rate and 10 minutes if they were using accelerated climbing. The speed will obviously be dependant on how well they do on their climb checks but all in all you'd be able to get soliders to the other side in 25 to 45 minutes.

And there's plenty of ways to get across faster.


OP made assumption that he knows enemy army is attacking. If you know a large army is walking through plain terrain (before they reach canyon) it's quite easy to learn where they go.

He's assuming they'll attack and assuming where they'll attack. But he doesn't know from where. If we make the likely assumption the other side of the canyon is hostile territory then tactical information is going to be limited. Secondly this is a 200 mile long canyon. Guarding the entirety of it isn't really feasible. You might be able to post watchers along it but then you've got to account for the fact that by the time your scout has spotted the enemy army, and rode to inform you that by the time your army is mobilised to where they're crossing they may already be on the other side.


Every round he throws a 1lb stone at you, hits 1 in 20 times, deals 14d6 (when you are at the bottom) to 1d6 (when you are close to him) per hit. So he has 600 rounds, hits you about 30 times, for average 26.25 damage (7.5d6) each each hit. Total average damage 787.5. From single commoner throwing stones...

As I've already shown it's not possible under RAW, but just to note that while it may be a lot of damage but one commoner can take out a maximum of 30 soldiers in this time (which since it won't take an hour for the first troops to get across it's time they probably don't even have). Which means you need one commoner for every thirty soldiers. But more importantly you need SIX HUNDRED stones per commoner.

So short of unlikely piles of stones of uniform weight just lying around these are going to need to be carried by the commoner. Since there's no way a commoner could carry a 600lb load he'd need a mule (and it'd be a heavy load for a mule) with saddlebags. So for every thirty soliders you needed to kill you'd need 600 stones of roughly uniform weight, one mule with saddlebags, and one commoner.

Even for a relatively small army of three hundred you'd require ten commoners, ten mules and a whopping six thousand stones. Again this is if the commoner could even hit the army in the first place, which he can't.


Walking into terrain that hard is walking into a trap. It's almost like charging on your opponent through petrol river, hoping he will not notice you and will not set it onfire.

Again. I don't know how to lunch invasion. I'm just saying that sending army through canyon is about as poor tactics as ordering them to swim through canal in full plates.

It's only a trap if a trap has actually been set. I've already explained to you that any sane army will always send scouting parties ahead of it. Commanders often have to send their troops into risky areas to reach their goals, this has been true since ancient times. But knowledge is one of the weapons in a strategists arsenal. And even if the road ahead would normally be risky if you walk into it armed with the knowledge that the coast is clear you can walk it with confidence.

Any sane commander would not send his troops into a canyon if he had't thoroughly scouted for ambushes. However any sane commander that had scouted the area would have no problem sending them across it. If you've checked for traps and found none are you just going to turn around and decide that opening the chest is too risky? You'll never eliminate the risk of course, but you can reduce it to the point where the risk is minimal and worth taking.

[ahenobarbi]

I wrote "throw a stone" not "use sling to lunch projectiles" to use falling object damage. While they climb up canyon wall (since it's a canyon it has close-to-vertical walls). Maybe in d&d if object is thrown it will only deal thrown damage and it will not deal any more damage even of it falls a few hundred feet (if DM says so I think it's dumb but commoners wont work).

1) Player somehow learns that enemy army is on move.
2) Player asks DM about throwing stones

If DM says throwing stones from couple hundred feet doesn't do any more damage then my suggestion doesn't work. You flood canyon, buy some time.

If DM says throwing stones from a few hundred feet above deals falling object damage. You can flood canyon and buy some time. Or you can:

3) Learn where army is going (divination or fly up and see, big armies in desert are easy to spot).
4) Get a lot of stones and creatures to throw stones (or chicken infested commoners throwing chickens created on the fly :smallbiggrin: )
5) Wait above place where army will be climbing up.
6) When army stars climbing have your creatures throw stones.
7) Don't buy time but massacre army.

Moving your stones and stone-throwers will be a little problem, solution depends on DM. Possible solutions range from casting teleportation circle to getting item of Mount-at-will for mere 2000 gp.

And I think sending your army to terrain where an enemy commoner could kill 30 solders is poor idea.

And climbing 500ft in 20 minutes (well if enemy solders get to use magic you will have to put into defense a bit more than against non-magical soldiers (+some casters to backup))... pretty impressive.

[jindra34]

Ahe:
1. Your suggesting dropping rocks not throwing them.
2. After 150 feet of falling a rock takes more than one round to fall giving plenty of dodging time.
3.Cave-ins (the nearest thing to dodge falling debris in Core) allow a DC 15 save to avoid, and spells like wind-wall completely nullify the dropped stones.
and finally
4. The only portable bridges capable of spanning the chasm are rope bridges which means going across on bridges requires getting squads of forces across the chasm in first place and making sure no one sneaks up and burns them anywhere along the length. Counter-levering plank bridges won't work over this distance because part of the way across the levering force would break the stone wall of the chasm and cause the whole bridge to collapse. Which means your either flying (very fricking costly), using a bridge built during peace times (predictable attack point) or going around the chasm (time consuming and costly) if your trying to get your army past it.

Oh and you still haven't addressed the main reason for using the canal in war time which is delaying (or stopping) an army trying to invade over the canal's (not chasm's/canyon's) path.

[ahenobarbi]

jindra34, I'm suggesting taking advantage of high ground if enemy gives it to you by sending army through canyon. Commoner throwing rocks and killing about 30 soldiers is just an example. That extremely poor combatant using extremely poor weapon can cause a lot of damage.

Best method of taking advantage depends on specific situation. In some situations commoners throwing stones may work. If enemy uses casters to protect from that you have to counter that (for example roll down big boulders, not throw small stones). Also wind wall will give just 30% miss chance (see spell description - only arrows and bolts are deflected).

I don't know enough to write a detailed plan (like map, expected army size, expected enemy casters numbers and power....) so I just gave an example.

Also it is possible to go around canyon, so I don't understand why any sane commander would put his army in unfavorable position when [s]he doesn't have to.

[jindra34]

Ahe: Yeah triggering an avalanche is a good way to wipe out an army going up a steep incline. That is why you send people ahead to secure the ground before you move your army. Dropping small or medium sized stones is about as effective as using crossbows, and can be countered by having archers/crossbow-people provide cover fire. And an avalanche can only be triggered once per section of cliff reliably so you better make sure you get the entire army or you will leave a nice crossing point. Historically large chasms, mountains, canyons and such were borders because to get any advantage on a defender you already had to have bypassed it with a significant force, and if you were capable of getting a significant force past it why bother going over it. And that still holds in DnD.

[ahenobarbi]

Also let me address specific points:

1. Your suggesting dropping rocks not throwing them.
Well I suggest items doing falling damage.

2. After 150 feet of falling a rock takes more than one round to fall giving plenty of dodging time.

Well my physics says rock will fall

9.81[m/s^2, gravitiational acceleration] * 6^2[s^2, squared time] /2 = 176 [m]
[/QUOTE]
in one round, but it doesn't really matter, till it takes more than one round.


3.Cave-ins (the nearest thing to dodge falling debris in Core) allow a DC 15 save to avoid

Then you don't need an attack roll, even better (you target area with many enemy solders in it).


4. The only portable bridges capable of spanning the chasm are rope bridges which means going across on bridges requires getting squads of forces across the chasm in first place and making sure no one sneaks up and burns them anywhere along the length...

I never said I have a good plan for attacker. Only that walking down the canyon is horrible plan.


Oh and you still haven't addressed the main reason for using the canal in war time which is delaying (or stopping) an army trying to invade over the canal's (not chasm's/canyon's) path.

My reasoning is:
- If flooding canyon stops them it means they are walking through canyon.
- If they are walking though canyon you can massacre them.
- Why stop them for some time if you can massacre them?
I'm not sure if I understood what you meant though.

[jindra34]

There is a strip of 20 miles of open land between canyon and sea. That is the ideal invasion point. The plan is to cut the canal there while the enemy is mid march, thereby completely changing the terrain across which they intended to attack into something they were not prepared for. Thus slowing and maybe stopping the army and buying them more time to setup a proper defense. Not too hard to understand is it?

[ahenobarbi]

Ahe: Yeah triggering an avalanche is a good way to wipe out an army going up a steep incline. That is why you send people ahead to secure the ground before you move your army.

But why do it if you can walk around?


Dropping small or medium sized stones is about as effective as using crossbows
No because stones should cause falling damage. And again it was example, I know it can be countered. But with as little info as we have it's not possible to design a proper plan.


and can be countered by having archers/crossbow-people provide cover fire.
No, because defenders throw stones down. They don't care much about vertical distance. Attackers shoot up, they care a lot about vertical distance (at least in reality... maybe d&d ranged weapons don't care about silly stuf like gravity).


Historically large chasms, mountains, canyons and such were borders because to get any advantage on a defender you already had to have bypassed it with a significant force, and if you were capable of getting a significant force past it why bother going over it. And that still holds in DnD.

Kind of my point. Canyon gives great advantage to defenders. More advantage than canal.

[ahenobarbi]

There is a strip of 20 miles of open land between canyon and sea. That is the ideal invasion point. The plan is to cut the canal there while the enemy is mid march, thereby completely changing the terrain across which they intended to attack into something they were not prepared for. Thus slowing and maybe stopping the army and buying them more time to setup a proper defense. Not too hard to understand is it?

Ah, so I misunderstood you. Yes, I agree creating deep, fast-flowing water in middle of plain terrain will stop army for some time.

For how long it will stop them depends on how wide your water will be and what means attackers have. Some rounds if they can cast stone walls over it, some hours if they can build bridge (levitate + ropes...), some hours if they have to prepare spells to cross it. Some days if they mus fetch equipment. And of course they are more vulnerable when crossing.

I thought you were arguing crossing channel was harder than crossing canyon.

[Coidzor]

This would be more credible if you'd said soldiers with bows. Because frankly unless your campaigns regularly feature naked soldiers with no AC and commoners with tons of BAB and DEX I'm not sure how you envisaged a commoner stone bombardment working against an army.

I think it was an attempt to invoke ye olde "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies."

[Rejusu]

I wrote "throw a stone" not "use sling to lunch projectiles" to use falling object damage. While they climb up canyon wall (since it's a canyon it has close-to-vertical walls). Maybe in d&d if object is thrown it will only deal thrown damage and it will not deal any more damage even of it falls a few hundred feet (if DM says so I think it's dumb but commoners wont work).

I know, the only reason I brought slings into it is because I pointed out that it's IMPOSSIBLE under RAW for a commoner to hit the army with a thrown weapon until said army is close enough to be able to kill commoner within a few rounds. As I already pointed out a thrown weapon has a MAXIMUM range of 50ft. Now if we accept that vertical distance doesn't matter to the attacker as they have the high ground this means that said commoners cannot actually hit the army until they are already climbing up the opposite side. The only reason I brought a sling into it was because they have a larger max range, but their projectiles don't qualify for falling object rules due to being too light.


And I think sending your army to terrain where an enemy commoner could kill 30 solders is poor idea.

Except they can't. Not under RAW anyway. And as I've pointed out NUMEROUS times now, it's not a poor idea if you've already confirmed the area is secure. This is what scouting parties and advance parties are for. Obviously if the enemy had laid a trap then crossing it would be a bad idea. But if you've already sent a party ahead to check the coast is clear then there's absolutely nothing wrong with crossing it. It's ONLY ever a poor idea when you enter into areas like this blind. With the proper knowledge though you can cross with confidence. You've continually ignored this point.


And climbing 500ft in 20 minutes (well if enemy solders get to use magic you will have to put into defense a bit more than against non-magical soldiers (+some casters to backup))... pretty impressive.

It's actually 1000ft in 20 minutes, 10 minutes if you use accelerated climbing. With no magic. Climb speed is a quarter base land speed, 5ft per round for a 30ft speed character in heavy armour. 200 rounds to climb 1000ft at 5ft per round and 200 rounds is 20 minutes. Accelerated climbing lets you climb at half speed at a -5 penalty to the climb check so it'd take half as much time.

Now this assumes that a soldier passes his climb check every round. In a sufficiently large army there'll be at least a few soldiers that can do this, and all they really need to do is get one to the top to finish off the commoners. This is also assuming normal speed creatures in heavy armour. Someone in light armour could climb it in roughly 6-7 minutes. And of course chances are increased if you have ways of lowering the climb DC (using rope for example).

Now since your commoners cannot hit the army until they are at the foot of the canyon wall this means that your commoners only in fact have 67 to 200 rounds to attack the army in before someone reaches the top and slaughters them. Not the 600 you estimated. Which means each commoner will hit a solider between 3-10 times, not 30 times.

However since a stone only deals 1d6 per 70ft fallen we have to adjust these figures to check how many effective hits each commoner would score. Now since it deals no damage if it falls less than 70ft each soldier only needs to climb 930ft before the stones become harmless. Now if we assume that the soldiers are level 1 warriors then this means for the commoners to score a kill they have to do at LEAST 2d6 damage as the warrior has a d8 hit die.

This means that the soldiers only have to climb 860ft before each stone can no longer one hit kill. So now it takes between 57 and 172 rounds (15ft to 5ft climb speed) for the soldiers to get up the cliff. So each commoner can only score 2.85 to 8.6 potentially killing blows. Significantly less than the 30 you estimated. And if the army is higher level then these figures are reduced even further. It's also worth noting these are POTENTIAL killing blows too. For a guaranteed killing blow on a level 1 warrior you'd have to do 8d6+ (depending on the warriors CON) which can only be done if the stone falls 560ft. Once the climbers pass 440ft then they can potentially survive a stone hit. And their survivability increases the further they climb.


Well my physics says rock will fall

9.81[m/s^2, gravitiational acceleration] * 6^2[s^2, squared time] /2 = 176 [m]
in one round, but it doesn't really matter, till it takes more than one round.

If we're going to bring physics into it then terminal velocity comes into play and so the falling object rules go out the window as they're based on the assumption that an object is constantly accelerating.

Quite simply you couldn't stop an invading army with a bunch of commoners armed with stones. Not under RAW anyway. A DM might allow it, but if we're going to go into what DM's would allow and disallow then that opens up a whole other can of worms. If I was DMing I'd cap the damage on a falling stone at 1, maybe 2d6 to account for terminal velocity.

You'd need an army to stop them or some other method. Triggering an avalanche would work because it'd force a save or die situation, but you'd need some way of triggering it. But no way a bunch of commoners could do it on their own. For one you'd probably need nearly as many commoners as the enemy had soldiers (even though there's probably no way all the commoners could actually attack, since it's unlikely the army will be that spread out) and even then you'd have to rely on the army having absolutely no magic to aid them. A potion of fly (a relatively cheap 750GP) or a 5th level wizard would be all that'd be needed to dispose of any commoners on the other side.

So no, no way commoners could do it. Unless your DM just decides to ignore the rules and let you. You could easily stop an opposing force climbing through a canyon, but you'd need a competent force to do it. A peasant brigade couldn't manage it.

And again you'd have to know where the opposing army was attacking from with enough time to mobilise to meet them before they got across. I cannot stress the importance of information when it comes to strategy enough. If the other army is a good deal closer to the canyon than your army is by the time you spot them then they would be able to cross it before your army would be able to intercept them.

Similarly if the army scouts the other side of the canyon and finds there's no enemies there then they can cross safely. How you expect commoners to rain stones on the army when they'd only cross the canyon if the other side was clear I don't know. I mean I guess you could make them all invisible, but then the moment they broke it the scouting party (already on the other side of the canyon) would just slaughter them.

[ahenobarbi]

I know, the only reason I brought slings into it is because I pointed out that it's IMPOSSIBLE under RAW for a commoner to hit the army with a thrown weapon until said army is close enough to be able to kill commoner within a few rounds.

Nope. It's unclear what rules you should use. There are situations about which game creators didn't think and then it's up to DM to decide how to handle the situation. You can insist that "commoners throw stones, so thrown rules apply!" I can repeat as long as I want "commoners drop stones so reflex save or falling damage!" all we we want. But we have no DM to decide how to handle this (unless you can quote rules that doubtlessly apply in this situation - I know I can't).

By the way: there is a good example of "creators didin't think about this".
You get tired from running (so you need to rest) but climbing is apparently effortless in d&d.

As for climbing... base DC 15... and AC penalty -6 (for heavy armor), how many do you think will fall and die off falling damage if they can't take 10 (and possibly -3 or -6 for load)?


And again you'd have to know where the opposing army was attacking from with enough time to mobilize to meet them before they got across.

OP assumes it's given information. Transporting your troops on time is easy. OP assumes there are a few hours for this and if you need force a few tens times smaller than attacker...


I cannot stress the importance of information when it comes to strategy enough. If the other army is a good deal closer to the canyon than your army is by the time you spot them then they would be able to cross it before your army would be able to intercept them.
Yes, but OP assumed he will know enemy army is on move and he will have a few hours to put water in canyon.


Similarly if the army scouts the other side of the canyon and finds there's no enemies there then they can cross safely.

Only, you know they don't have radio. So when they come back information is kind of outdated.


How you expect commoners to rain stones on the army when they'd only cross the canyon if the other side was clear I don't know.

I'll repeat this again: I do not suggest actually using commoners. Commoner was only proof-of-concept. Actual implementation of concept depends on may factors I don't know.

Concept I mention is: "you can take advantage of terrain to massacre enemy army".

[ngilop]

I have 2 points that make me confused here.

1) so a commoner is not allowed to throw a rock off the edge of a cliff onto soembody trying to climb 1000-ish feet up a certicle incline accord to rules as written?

2) SO if RAW is the end all be all of everyting that does mean that you allow in your games that one PrC that gets 20-3rd level spells a day at 6th level I think, could be wrong though.

actually i got 3 points, where does it say in any of the book at all that a commoner is barred from throwing rocks off a cliff face?

[Johel]

Delver

A delver is about 15 feet long and 10 feet wide. It weighs about 6,000 pounds.
Delvers speak Terran and Undercommon.

Corrosive Slime (Ex)
A delver produces a mucuslike slime that contains a highly corrosive substance. The slime is particularly effective against stone. A delver’s mere touch deals 2d6 points of acid damage to organic creatures or objects. Against metallic creatures or objects, a delver’s slime deals 4d8 points of damage, and against stony creatures (including earth elementals) or objects it deals 8d10 points of damage. A slam attack by a delver leaves a patch of slime that deals 2d6 points of damage on contact and another 2d6 points of damage in each of the next 2 rounds. A large quantity (at least a quart) of water or weak acid, such as vinegar, washes off the slime. An opponent’s armor and clothing dissolve and become useless immediately unless the wearer succeeds on a DC 22 Reflex save. Weapons that strike a delver also dissolve immediately unless the wielder succeeds on a DC 22 Reflex save. A creature attacking a delver with natural weapons takes damage from its slime each time an attack hits unless the creature succeeds on a DC 22 Reflex save. These save DCs are Constitution-based.

Stone Shape (Ex)
A delver can alter its slime to temporarily soften stone instead of dissolving it. Once every 10 minutes, a delver can soften and shape up to 25 cubic feet of stone, as a stone shape spell (caster level 15th).

--------------------

Find one.
Persuade him to work for you.
Have him dissolve a tunnel where you plan the canal to be.
This way, everything is done in secret.
Then have him dissolve the roof.

Stone is Hardness 8
And has 15 hp per inch of thickness.
The Delver deals an average 44 damage points to stone just by touching it with its body.
So every round, he is dissolving a Huge-sized patch of stone, 2 inch thick.

1 round is 6 seconds.
600 rounds per hour
14.400 rounds per day
28.800 inch per day.
2,2 days per miles.
You can dig 20 miles in around 44 days.
If you are in a hurry, just find more Delvers.

Charm Monster or Dominate is an option.
Delvers got Will +11
So you want to cast your spell with at least DC 22

[Coidzor]

Good catch there. They're even in the SRD. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/delver.htm) :smallbiggrin:

[Rubik]

It wouldn't do much for stone, but you can have Prestidigitation clean a cubic foot of dirt or sand away into nothingness.

It's slower but cheaper than Disintegrate; one-hundred people with an item of constant or at-will Prestidigitation will do what Disintegrate does, but at a fraction of the cost.

Again, though, it doesn't do much against stone.

[edit] Also, anyone with the various Stone Dragon strikes, preferably a crusader or warblade.

[Augmental]

Ahenobarbi, I had some trouble reading your posts because of the lack of the word "the". If it's not too much of a problem, could you please try and use "the" in your posts? It would make it easier for me to read them.

[Coidzor]

It wouldn't do much for stone, but you can have Prestidigitation clean a cubic foot of dirt or sand away into nothingness.

It's slower but cheaper than Disintegrate; one-hundred people with an item of constant or at-will Prestidigitation will do what Disintegrate does, but at a fraction of the cost.

Again, though, it doesn't do much against stone.

[edit] Also, anyone with the various Stone Dragon strikes, preferably a crusader or warblade.

Heh. That's pretty nifty. Makes a wizard handy for digging too.

[jindra34]

I have 2 points that make me confused here.

1) so a commoner is not allowed to throw a rock off the edge of a cliff onto soembody trying to climb 1000-ish feet up a certicle incline accord to rules as written?

The issue isn't throwing/dropping. Its that short of setting of an avalanche they have an effective range of 150-ish feet vertically and only do 1d6 damage per full 70 feet they fall. And so most of the time they end up doing a piddly 1d6 damage with the falling stones while potentially exposing themselves to crossbow users who can do 1d10 damage with a more reliable effective range. So some posted snipers ends up shutting down the commoners unless the trigger something drastic. Assuming the slope of the canyon is even steep enough to make dropping things on people's heads viable.

[OracleofWuffing]

Well, if you want to get a book thrown at you, you use the spell Rockburst from Shining South. It deals 1d4 plus 1 per caster level to creatures in a 20ft area burst, by exploding a stone object with a volume of at least 8 cubic feet. Note the absence of a ceiling on that volume.

[ngilop]

The issue isn't throwing/dropping. Its that short of setting of an avalanche they have an effective range of 150-ish feet vertically and only do 1d6 damage per full 70 feet they fall. And so most of the time they end up doing a piddly 1d6 damage with the falling stones while potentially exposing themselves to crossbow users who can do 1d10 damage with a more reliable effective range. So some posted snipers ends up shutting down the commoners unless the trigger something drastic. Assuming the slope of the canyon is even steep enough to make dropping things on people's heads viable.



oh wow, so in 3rd ed i cna throw a rock down a 1 thousand foot cliff and it just hangs in mid air after 150 feet?.. what odd physcis Monte and the rest cooked up.

[jindra34]

oh wow, so in 3rd ed i cna throw a rock down a 1 thousand foot cliff and it just hangs in mid air after 150 feet?.. what odd physcis Monte and the rest cooked up.

well no. It takes a full round to fall 150 feet so anyone look up will be able to simply step out of the way and never risk getting hit.

[2xMachina]

What size is it? Small stones are around tiny, so the spot check at that range is horrible.

If it's boulders, it'll be easier to spot, but that's not gonna help them much. The soldiers will try to dodge it all right, by screaming and running around hoping they're right about the trajectory. Probably bumping into each other, since they're so intent looking up.

[ahenobarbi]

well no. It takes a full round to fall 150 feet so anyone look up will be able to simply step out of the way and never risk getting hit.

Not really


While climbing, you can’t move to avoid a blow, so you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC (if any).

[Rejusu]

Nope. It's unclear what rules you should use. There are situations about which game creators didn't think and then it's up to DM to decide how to handle the situation. You can insist that "commoners throw stones, so thrown rules apply!" I can repeat as long as I want "commoners drop stones so reflex save or falling damage!" all we we want. But we have no DM to decide how to handle this (unless you can quote rules that doubtlessly apply in this situation - I know I can't).

No, I accept that you can DROP stones on the army. However as I already pointed out this means you can ONLY attack them when they are at the foot of the canyon wall. You cannot attack them when they are walking along the bottom of the canyon or when they are climbing down the opposite side because this would require the stone to be thrown. In which case the rules would deem that you can't hit them as they're outside a thrown weapons maximum range. This means that the time with which you can actually attack the army is cut down by a significant number of rounds.

As for whether it's against reflex saves or AC, you initially posted that the commoners were throwing stones down into the canyon and said it'd be against AC (so 1 in 20 chance of hitting) which is where you got your "1 commoner can kill 30 soldiers" numbers. That would use throwing rules. Now if we're talking about dropping stones, that's unclear under RAW. Some sources make it an attack against AC (rules for falling objects traps in the DMG) and some places don't specify whether there's any way to avoid it at all (falling objects rules).


OP assumes it's given information. Transporting your troops on time is easy. OP assumes there are a few hours for this and if you need force a few tens times smaller than attacker...

OP also assumes he knows where they're attacking from, namely the open plains between the canyon and the ocean. Which means that most of his forces will be positioned to repel an attack from that direction. This is the only reason why an enemy commander would consider crossing the canyon, as it'd allow them to launch a surprise attack and catch the enemy off guard.


Yes, but OP assumed he will know enemy army is on move and he will have a few hours to put water in canyon.

Again also assumes he knows where they're coming from.


Only, you know they don't have radio. So when they come back information is kind of outdated.

Only you know, ways of sending signals have existed for hundreds and hundreds of years before the invention of the radio.


I'll repeat this again: I do not suggest actually using commoners. Commoner was only proof-of-concept. Actual implementation of concept depends on may factors I don't know.

How can you repeat something you haven't said before? You've suggested using commoners in nearly every single post you've made in this thread. How you can claim you don't actually suggest it now is beyond me.


Concept I mention is: "you can take advantage of terrain to massacre enemy army".

But again it'd require the enemy commander to send their army into a trap. And as I've pointed out many times, venturing into dangerous terrain is not the same as walking into a trap. Walking into a trap requires a trap to have actually been laid.


I have 2 points that make me confused here.

1) so a commoner is not allowed to throw a rock off the edge of a cliff onto soembody trying to climb 1000-ish feet up a certicle incline accord to rules as written?

They can throw it off the cliff or drop it off the cliff. But they can't hit someone that's more than 50ft away horizontally as that's the maximum range of a thrown weapon. A level 1 commoner could propel a stone no more than that distance. Really it should apply to an extent for vertical distance too, but there's no rules that I know of for determining the accuracy of someone dropping an object. I'd think that anything over a certain vertical distance should incur a miss chance though.


2) SO if RAW is the end all be all of everyting that does mean that you allow in your games that one PrC that gets 20-3rd level spells a day at 6th level I think, could be wrong though.

The only reason I discuss things in terms of RAW is because with D&D it's impossible to know how a situation would actually resolve as it'd be entirely dependant on the DM running the game. RAW however is universal. Not everyone may follow RAW, but the rules are written the same no matter whose book it is. The thing is if you start going into what a DM would and wouldn't allow then it just becomes purely subjective. Discussing RAW keeps things vaguely objective.

For instance I'd never let a bunch of commoners with tiny stones kill an army if I was DMing. I'd cap the falling damage of the stones at 1d6, have it be an attack against flat-footed AC while they were climbing, and add a miss chance. I'd also probably have the invading army have at least one wizard who can just fly over there and roast the commoners.

[ahenobarbi]

How can you repeat something you haven't said before? You've suggested using commoners in nearly every single post you've made in this thread. How you can claim you don't actually suggest it now is beyond me.

Yes I know I was discussing commoners dropping stones in most of my posts in this thread. But I wrote that I used commoners as demonstration-of-tactical-advantage:


jindra34, I'm suggesting taking advantage of high ground if enemy gives it to you by sending army through canyon. Commoner throwing rocks and killing about 30 soldiers is just an example./QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ahenobarbi;12825561]... it was example, I know it can be countered. But with as little info as we have it's not possible to design a proper plan.




No, I accept that you can DROP stones on the army. However as I already pointed out this means you can ONLY attack them when they are at the foot of the canyon wall. You cannot attack them when they are walking along the bottom of the canyon or when they are climbing down the opposite side because this would require the stone to be thrown.

Yes. You can drop rocks on attackers when they climb up. That's what I had in mind all the time. Maybe I didn't express this clearly enough. And I know I did used "wrong" estimate on climbing time. But you forgot damage taken by soldiers that fall of when climbing (if we want to stick to RAW).


As for whether it's against reflex saves or AC, you initially posted that the commoners were throwing stones down into the canyon and said it'd be against AC (so 1 in 20 chance of hitting) which is where you got your "1 commoner can kill 30 soldiers" numbers.

I made estimate using my best knowledge (but I am no D&D expert). If you think you can give us a better estimate please do.


OP also assumes he knows where they're attacking from, namely the open plains between the canyon and the ocean.

Yes. My point is: most (if not all) suggested solutions did not change plains but they filled canyon with water. This does nothing to stop army walking through plains and helps army walking through canyon.


Only you know, ways of sending signals have existed for hundreds and hundreds of years before the invention of the radio.

As I recall communication was a big problem. It was slow and/or unreliable. In d&d there is additional problem of Enchantment school spells being used on your scouts (Charm Person is level 1 spell...).


But again it'd require the enemy commander to send their army into a trap. And as I've pointed out many times, venturing into dangerous terrain is not the same as walking into a trap. Walking into a trap requires a trap to have actually been laid.

The terrain gives so much advantage that it is possible to setup a trap without you knowing it.


The only reason I discuss things in terms of RAW is because with D&D it's impossible to know how a situation would actually resolve as it'd be entirely dependant on the DM running the game. RAW however is universal. Not everyone may follow RAW, but the rules are written the same no matter whose book it is. The thing is if you start going into what a DM would and wouldn't allow then it just becomes purely subjective. Discussing RAW keeps things vaguely objective.

Ack.


For instance I'd never let a bunch of commoners with tiny stones kill an army if I was DMing. I'd cap the falling damage of the stones at 1d6, have it be an attack against flat-footed AC while they were climbing, and add a miss chance. I'd also probably have the invading army have at least one wizard who can just fly over there and roast the commoners.

I would agree on everything with exception of damage capping. [Even] small stones falling long distance can be pretty lethal. They are not accurate but you are dropping stone at an army, so if you miss one soldier there are are some more close by to hit.