acquiring expendable living sentients

[sreservoir]

(this may offend the moral sensibilities of some.)

BoVD sacrifice rules allow Nice Things. they also, perhaps slightly unfortunately, require the death of a living, intelligent creature.

in short, I need a steady supply (on average, one per day or thereabouts) of intelligent sentients to kill. preferably ones that breed quickly, so as not to have an overly horrible effect on the population over long periods of time.

[Flickerdart]

Get a bunch of rabbits and have an NE Druid Awaken one every day while you take yesterday's Awakened rabbit to the chopping block.

[sreservoir]

impractical, with the exp cost. a limited wish a day could replicate awaken to produce more, I guess, though, but that doesn't produce net gain.

[The Mentalist]

Get a bunch of rabbits and have an NE Druid Awaken one every day while you take yesterday's Awakened rabbit to the chopping block.

And if you can get a Druid with Reach Spell (or that Heirophant class ability that gives your touch spells reach) and hand him a Rod of Chaining you get mass production.

[Also: Fish breed faster, a lot faster.]

[sreservoir]

... bah, some constraints are clearly necessary: costs must be either negligible (using nothing more than spells and/or infusions of 2nd level or lower), or sufficiently low that one sacrifice allows for another sacrifice.

the point is sustainable evil.

[Flickerdart]

impractical, with the exp cost. a limited wish a day could replicate awaken to produce more, I guess, though, but that doesn't produce net gain.
It's okay, we've Thought Bottles of that too.

[The Mentalist]

Does it have to be permanently sentient? If Sentient is defined as Int 3+ a simple Fox's Cunning spell will fulfill requirements for the sacrificial fish.

[avr]

Killing kender could be seen as a public service ...

Or, awaken a tree & take cuttings.

[deuxhero]

Isn't that what Leadership is for?

You take a -3 penalty, but you are otherwise good. If you make your sacrifices at a "base" that is reduced to -1

Thrallherd removes the penalties.

[Emperor Tippy]

Polymoprh Any Object can turn chickens into people. Might need 2 castings for it to be permanent.

Get a magical resetting trap of awaken animal, run rabbits through it. It's best if you provide the XP for the trap from sacrifices, it's just so much more thematic (although you will have to sacrifice several thousand people to cover the cost).

[sreservoir]

It's okay, we've Thought Bottles of that too.

we also have wight + restoration shenanigans!


Does it have to be permanently sentient? If Sentient is defined as Int 3+ a simple Fox's Cunning spell will fulfill requirements for the sacrificial fish.

it doesn't have to be permanent, no. the relevant passage says "The main criteria are that the creature be alive and have an Intelligence score of 3 or higher."

main criteria.

[sreservoir]

Isn't that what Leadership is for?

You take a -3 penalty, but you are otherwise good. If you make your sacrifices at a "base" that is reduced to -1

Thrallherd removes the penalties.

... huh, it's only cohort death which has cumulative penalties. follower death is ... just expected? I guess they're treated more or less as cannon fodder, but.


Polymoprh Any Object can turn chickens into people. Might need 2 castings for it to be permanent.

Get a magical resetting trap of awaken animal, run rabbits through it. It's best if you provide the XP for the trap from sacrifices, it's just so much more thematic (although you will have to sacrifice several thousand people to cover the cost).

unfortunately, only one dose of dark craft rewards of each type into a single item. a pity, that, else things would be a lot easier.

[Darth Stabber]

Thrallherd

Lost believers are replaced in 24hrs and you just get them, they just show up. At wilder5/thrallherd1 with 18cha (which is leadership 10) will get 5 1st level sentient believers that replace themselves daily, and 1 7th lvl thrall that also replaces himself. That's 5 sacrifices and a body guard or 6 sacrifices. every level adds 1, thrallherd levels count double. Plus it doesn't matter how many die, there are no penalties to your score at all. You can kill your 6+ guys every day for a year, and you still get the same number of guys on new years day.

Thrallherd is the way to go. Why this class doesn't require evil or non-good I'll never know.


Get a magical resetting trap of awaken animal, run rabbits through it.
Why do all of your plans start with "Get a magical resetting trap"?

[Chronos]

You could also use the Wu Jen spell Body Outside Body to create duplicates of yourself. The spell even states that they're willing to perform suicidal actions on your behalf.

Alternately, most creatures from the Summon Monster spells count as "sentient", though there's probably already some rule against those.

[Darth Stabber]

You could also use the Wu Jen spell Body Outside Body to create duplicates of yourself. The spell even states that they're willing to perform suicidal actions on your behalf.

Alternately, most creatures from the Summon Monster spells count as "sentient", though there's probably already some rule against those.

A summoned creature doesn't die if destroyed during the duration, it goes back to the plane from whence it came. The planar binding line could work, but there are some limits to doing that (and it's expensive).

[gomipile]

So, Fox's Cunning on an animal would work, then? If so, that seems to be the way to go.

[Ravens_cry]

Lost believers are replaced in 24hrs and you just get them, they just show up. At wilder5/thrallherd1 with 18cha (which is leadership 10) will get 5 1st level sentient believers that replace themselves daily, and 1 7th lvl thrall that also replaces himself. That's 5 sacrifices and a body guard or 6 sacrifices. every level adds 1, thrallherd levels count double. Plus it doesn't matter how many die, there are no penalties to your score at all. You can kill your 6+ guys every day for a year, and you still get the same number of guys on new years day.

Thrallherd is the way to go. Why this class doesn't require evil or non-good I'll never know.

i think it's was one of WotC better decisions.
Thrallherd is also an excellent way to represent the highly charismatic leader type. What you do with them is what defines the moral character, not the ability itself.

[sreservoir]

Lost believers are replaced in 24hrs and you just get them, they just show up. At wilder5/thrallherd1 with 18cha (which is leadership 10) will get 5 1st level sentient believers that replace themselves daily, and 1 7th lvl thrall that also replaces himself. That's 5 sacrifices and a body guard or 6 sacrifices. every level adds 1, thrallherd levels count double. Plus it doesn't matter how many die, there are no penalties to your score at all. You can kill your 6+ guys every day for a year, and you still get the same number of guys on new years day.

Thrallherd is the way to go. Why this class doesn't require evil or non-good I'll never know.


Why do all of your plans start with "Get a magical resetting trap"?

thrallherd is standard source for minions, yes, but I've pretty much locked myself into artificer for this build (which is more or less focused on using dark craft rewards to generate infinite scrolls) because of the need to grab spells from a bunch of lists.

and it's tippy. that said, awaken trap is a bit expensive, at 147500 gp + 1800 xp.


You could also use the Wu Jen spell Body Outside Body to create duplicates of yourself. The spell even states that they're willing to perform suicidal actions on your behalf.

Alternately, most creatures from the Summon Monster spells count as "sentient", though there's probably already some rule against those.

BOB ... hm, high level, but feasible.

SM things don't really die, yeah.


i think it's was one of WotC better decisions.
Thrallherd is also an excellent way to represent the highly charismatic leader type. What you do with them is what defines the moral character, not the ability itself.

that's not a very high standard, compared to some of their alignment decisions!

incidentally, I know beget bogun is a thing, though the thing it creates isn't living -- are there other spells which create life?

incidentally, perhaps Genius Loci (CM 105) to create an elder elemental to sacrifice, every day?

[Darth Stabber]

incidentally, perhaps Genius Loci (CM 105) to create an elder elemental to sacrifice, every day?

When defeated the elemental doesn't die it discorporates back into the area for 24 hours.

Without thrallherd you might have to do it the hard way, slave raids and/or some other kind of massive kidnapping campaign.

[Emperor Tippy]

Get a Fabricate trap that produces a human sized and shaped dummies made out of human remains. Add a Polymoprh Any Object trap to turn the products of the fabricate trap into Humans (same kingdom, same size, related gives you permanent duration). Follow that up with a Mind Rape trap set to fill their minds with a genuine desire to willingly sacrifice themselves (and give them a good alignment).

Congrats, you can produce up to 14,400 willing, good, sacrifices every day.

[Ranting Fool]

Why spend all that time and money and magic on making things living.... if you are the big bad just get a few tribes of Goblins and kill one a day :smallbiggrin: I mean dying is what the little green gits are FOR! Low level heroes often wipe out small tribes of the buggers for no other reason then "Some bloke in a pub told us they were raiding and stealing cattle" :smalltongue:

[Emperor Tippy]

Too much effort. You can use your Sacrifice-o-matic 3000 to turn out superior sacrifices at will with no effort or ongoing cost. And you don't have to worry about pesky adventurers coming after you for sacrificing all those goblins.

[Curmudgeon]

Get a magical resetting trap of awaken animal, run rabbits through it.
From Dungeon Master's Guide, page 74:
PC-Designed Magic Traps: If a player character wants to design and construct a magic trap ... When you and the player have agreed on what spells and other elements the trap contains, you can determine the cost of the raw materials for the trap and the CR of the trap. Any PC-designed trap is a non-starter if the DM doesn't agree. In play with dozens of DMs, I've only come across 1-2 who might agree to a trap with beneficial properties.

[Madara]

Too much effort. You can use your Sacrifice-o-matic 3000 to turn out superior sacrifices at will with no effort or ongoing cost. And you don't have to worry about pesky adventurers coming after you for sacrificing all those goblins.

This needs to be a thing. Seriously. It does.

[Ranting Fool]

@Trippy

Aye but then you have the joy of random heroes bringing you free items and any spare gold they have on them.

Better then that though is the joy of having an army of cowardly Minions! :smallbiggrin:

Also when/if you start to lose too many of the little blighters to those pesky heroes and they brake you fave Object of Evil you can just curse and shout to the heavens/lower hells "No this CANNOT be I am INVINCIBLE!"

[Flickerdart]

Well, a Spell Clock (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a) is pricy at 130k, but it'll give you an hourly casting of "relatively non-violent spells". So if you can't get the traps to fly, this is the premium version.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Thugs4less.

No really, hire loads and loads of cheap mercenaries.

[Jack_Simth]

Why do all of your plans start with "Get a magical resetting trap"?Efficiency, I'd imagine.

[sreservoir]

When defeated the elemental doesn't die it discorporates back into the area for 24 hours.

Without thrallherd you might have to do it the hard way, slave raids and/or some other kind of massive kidnapping campaign.

bah. although amusingly, sacrifice doesn't explicitly require death, only killing.


Get a Fabricate trap that produces a human sized and shaped dummies made out of human remains. Add a Polymoprh Any Object trap to turn the products of the fabricate trap into Humans (same kingdom, same size, related gives you permanent duration). Follow that up with a Mind Rape trap set to fill their minds with a genuine desire to willingly sacrifice themselves (and give them a good alignment).

Congrats, you can produce up to 14,400 willing, good, sacrifices every day.

a bit excessive -- only one per day actually has any effect, and the extras ... count as observers, I guess.

the fabricate is probably unnecessary -- human corpses are more or less related to humans at least as much as wolf fur is to a wolf, and just same kingdom, same class, same size, related gets us up to a duration factor of 11, which is good enough.


Why spend all that time and money and magic on making things living.... if you are the big bad just get a few tribes of Goblins and kill one a day :smallbiggrin: I mean dying is what the little green gits are FOR! Low level heroes often wipe out small tribes of the buggers for no other reason then "Some bloke in a pub told us they were raiding and stealing cattle" :smalltongue:

not really sustainable. mind, depending on reproductive rate, herding a population would provide a steady stream of sacrifices. institute a sort of tradition as in Jackson's "The Lottery" and it should go well. and with a suitably "savage" race, others in the area probably won't even bat an eye.

will have to develop that idea sometime.


This needs to be a thing. Seriously. It does.


@Trippy

Aye but then you have the joy of random heroes bringing you free items and any spare gold they have on them.

Better then that though is the joy of having an army of cowardly Minions! :smallbiggrin:

Also when/if you start to lose too many of the little blighters to those pesky heroes and they brake you fave Object of Evil you can just curse and shout to the heavens/lower hells "No this CANNOT be I am INVINCIBLE!"

eh, those heroes would be somewhat annoying. too many of them and they'll kill off enough of your population to make daily sacrifices unsustainable.


Thugs4less.

No really, hire loads and loads of cheap mercenaries.

not really sustainable, would deplete local populations pretty quickly.

[gomipile]

I understand that the baroque solutions have a certain appeal, but why wouldn't Fox's Cunning cast on animals work?

A resetting trap of Fox's Cunning would only cost 6000 gold. A normally priced custom wondrous item of Fox's Cunning would only be 12000 gold.

These are both much cheaper than all of these Awaken-based methods, yes?

I think the rules say only one boon may be had per day, so I suppose you could have several followers, each with their own temple. They bring their animal to sacrifice for the day to your trap/item of Fox's Cunning and make it sentient, then they have 3 minutes to make it to their personal temple to sacrifice the thing for Dark craft XP.

Then you use the rules for splitting the XP cost of item creation to split the cost of creating whatever stuff between you and your minions.


Once again, is there a reason that Fox's Cunning would not turn an animal into an appropriate sacrifice?

[Johel]

story-wise, I'm all for the "capture goblins" idea.
On short term, it is a very cheap way to get your raw material :
Close to zero initial investment, large and quick return.
You might even getting PAID by local towns to get rid of the green pests.

If you want something a bit more long-term...
Have you ever considered godhood ?
Not the "I arose in a higher plane of existance and amuse myself with punny mortals" kind.
The "I got 10.000 idiots who worship the tree on which I use to pee when I visited them"

As soon as you got enough power to face a whole goblin tribe on your own, do so.
Wipe the flour with their warriors.
Then make The Speech to the survivors.
Torture their priests in front of everyone and sacrifice them on the spot with a "Where is your god, now ?!!" for added dramatic effect.
After that, order that a temple be built in your name.
And that one healthy goblin be delivered to your "temple" at every full moon to be sacrificed.
Failure to meet quota means annihilation.

Do the same to 30 tribes and there you go...

[sreservoir]

I understand that the baroque solutions have a certain appeal, but why wouldn't Fox's Cunning cast on animals work?

A resetting trap of Fox's Cunning would only cost 6000 gold. A normally priced custom wondrous item of Fox's Cunning would only be 12000 gold.

These are both much cheaper than all of these Awaken-based methods, yes?

I think the rules say only one boon may be had per day, so I suppose you could have several followers, each with their own temple. They bring their animal to sacrifice for the day to your trap/item of Fox's Cunning and make it sentient, then they have 3 minutes to make it to their personal temple to sacrifice the thing for Dark craft XP.

Then you use the rules for splitting the XP cost of item creation to split the cost of creating whatever stuff between you and your minions.


Once again, is there a reason that Fox's Cunning would not turn an animal into an appropriate sacrifice?

it ... works fine. actually, even more cheaply, a headband of intellect +2 costs 4000 gp, and can be placed on each animal to be sacrificed, right before the sacrifice, bringin it up to 3 or 4 int, just enough to be "sentient."

(well, except by this logic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10232297#post10232297))

the more baroque solutions do have their appeal, though; I see you understand.


And that one healthy goblin be delivered to your "temple" at every full moon to be sacrificed.

well, there's no need for healthy, only intelligent. and, well, living. it can be venerable and drowning and unconscious and it wouldn't matter, though.