at what Lvl can a character destroy the moon?

[Phaederkiel]

I am interested in the lvl (and ways) a caster can accomplish that feat

but

I am even more interested in the lvl and way a meelee build can do that.
Bonus browny points for non-hulking hurlers,
extra bonus browny points if the meelee does it with a ToB / iaijutsu Master as classes.

I think bloodstorm blade is needed, but would rather use a anime-style cut-over-a-large-distance style.


so, Ideas, anyone?

[Answerer]

You need to specify more constraints. Pun-pun can do anything at level 1. The moon is trivial.

[Xervous]

Depending on your setting, a werewolf could IHS the moon... but with the same rulings the sun would be long gone

[Phaederkiel]

epic is okay, cheese is not?


mostly, it needs to be okay from a flavour-perspektive.
Say, in my world, the moon was destroyed and floats in a ring, saturn-style.
Players ask me: how did it happen? I say: recently, and a single woman did it.
They ask: how?

And i do not want to answer: cheese.

Mainly, I am interested in RAI possibilities to do that.

[Starbuck_II]

You need to specify more constraints. Pun-pun can do anything at level 1. The moon is trivial.

Pretty sure the Terminator build voids Pun-pun before he attains punness. Since he travels back in time and no one but him remembers that time was ever changed.

Uses Time Regression to go back.
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19861610/TGs_Pun-Pun_Challenger:_34;The_Terminator34;_(Finalized)?p g=1

[demigodus]

Depends on level of optimization.

Cancer Mage could get infinite strength.

Although if we are doing it by damage, assuming the moon is made of stone, it has a hardness of 8. It has 15 hp for every 5ftx5ftx1in volume, which is equivalent to 3600 cubic inches, or (by google) 0.059 cubic meters. According to wikipedia, it has a volume of 2.20x10^10 cubic km, or 2.20x10^19 cubic meters.

So it has about 3.7x10^20 chunks of 5ftx5ftx1in blocks. Giving it a total hp for 5.5x10^21.

So, the target is to deal 5.5x10^21 hp of damage to an object with a hardness of 8.

So once again, question is, what level of optimization is allowed? How cheesy can we get (anti-matter tends to be effective at doing a LOT of hp damage).

[Malroth]

Fairly easy to do as soon as you get 9th lv wizard casting, one quest to get a drop of the moon-god's blood later and a couple castings of Ice assassin and you've started a Deity vs 2 of himself war in the heavens that almost certainly will end with a destroyed moon.

But before lv 17 pretty much only cheese bad wording (Iron heart surge) or infinite loops

[AzazelSephiroth]

Also if we are going on destroying the actual Moon itself... not a god or personification of moon.

The distance a spell, weapon or attack must travel is 384,400 km or 238,855.086 miles or in D&D- 1,261,154,854.08 feet.

I have no idea what can make it that range, especially with range limits and of course the massive attack penalties!:smalleek:

[Phaederkiel]

okay, iron heart surge (against moonlight) gets a honorable mention and browny points :)

demigodus: thanks for the math :)
but i do not think you had to destroy it completely. Say you slice through it with your Incredibly Sharp Katana TM, and destroy only the particles you really cut. The moon falls in half and starts disintegrating by earth's pull.


btw: when it is only doable for a caster, then mrs Iaijutsu needs to have defeated that caster...

edit: at least the moon has its size mod against him, ac wise...

[toapat]

Assuming we are ignoring the precise wording, min lvl 8, as we need D2 infinite crusader, ignoring that the stance requires a shown, not modified, maximum roll

Realistically? impossible without the Materials Errata, Planets have such high Hardness and HP to actually be killed destroyed without using Other planets as the weapons is impossible.

[Malroth]

Did some math for a Lyric Thaumaturge using an extended,persisted, empowered, maximized Sympathetic Vibration on the moon buffed by sonic might. and only got up to 120 million damage, so the moon is probably not going to be destroyed by an awesome guitar solo :smallfrown:

[Answerer]

Assuming we are ignoring the precise wording, min lvl 8, as we need D2 infinite crusader, ignoring that the stance requires a shown, not modified, maximum roll
The d2 Crusader does roll the 2's he needs. What modification do you suspect he's making?

The d2 Crusader's one of the simplest infinite loops in 3.5. If you roll a 1, roll again. If you roll a 2, keep it and roll again. There's no "modifier" on any of these (except for whatever normal modifiers you might have that get added on after rolling the dice and are irrelevant in the face of the infinity they're being added to).

[Studoku]

Does the moon actually have to be destroyed or will knocking it out of its orbit count?

On that note, do we get bonus points if we can crash it into the earth?

[Ravens_cry]

If you are immortal, whatever level you can cast both Greater Teleport and Disintegration.:smallbiggrin:

[dascarletm]

I have no idea what can make it that range, especially with range limits and of course the massive attack penalties!:smalleek:

The character needs either UMD or casting to teleport to it. Not too big a deal.

[nedz]

You need teleport, and some means of not dying in space.
You can then use an immovable rod and a very long lever.
This is probably impractical.

[sreservoir]

The d2 Crusader does roll the 2's he needs. What modification do you suspect he's making?

The d2 Crusader's one of the simplest infinite loops in 3.5. If you roll a 1, roll again. If you roll a 2, keep it and roll again. There's no "modifier" on any of these (except for whatever normal modifiers you might have that get added on after rolling the dice and are irrelevant in the face of the infinity they're being added to).

is worth noting that there is an (admittedly slightly facetious) interpretation that, as the relevant loop provides no means of exiting the loop, the damage computation never halts and the attack can never resolve.

[toapat]

The d2 Crusader does roll the 2's he needs. What modification do you suspect he's making?

The d2 Crusader's one of the simplest infinite loops in 3.5. If you roll a 1, roll again. If you roll a 2, keep it and roll again. There's no "modifier" on any of these (except for whatever normal modifiers you might have that get added on after rolling the dice and are irrelevant in the face of the infinity they're being added to).

The Imbued Healing - Luck doesnt count as a 2 for the purpose of the Divine spirit stance. The stance requires a Facing 2, not a modified 2 like Imbued healing creates (Imbued Healing - luck does not state that the 2 is actually a 2, just treat the roll of 1 as a 2. It would require a "For all Intents and Purposes" clause to actually work).

I highly suspect there is a "Reroll the rolled 1s for one round" ability that would make Aura of Chaos go infinite either way

[Flickerdart]

Did some math for a Lyric Thaumaturge using an extended,persisted, empowered, maximized Sympathetic Vibration on the moon buffed by sonic might. and only got up to 120 million damage, so the moon is probably not going to be destroyed by an awesome guitar solo :smallfrown:
Well, nobody said you had to do it all in one go.

[AmberVael]

If you are immortal, whatever level you can cast both Greater Teleport and Disintegration.:smallbiggrin:

Immortality was what I was thinking! Here is my proposal:

Level 6 Warlock Warforged.
Relevant details:
-Fell Flight Invocation
-Eternal Wand of Endure Elements
-Cold Weather Outfit and/or fur clothing
-Adamantine Greatsword
-Power Attack Feat

Now, it'll take the poor guy quite some time to complete the task, but with at will magical flight, endure elements, and a cold weather outfit, the warforged can fly to the moon while suffering no ill effects. With the adamantine greatsword and immortality, our dear robo pal can slowly but inevitably carve the moon into pieces since the greatsword ignores hardness. :smalltongue:

[Solophoenix]

You need teleport, and some means of not dying in space.
You can then use an immovable rod and a very long lever.
This is probably impractical.

Very nice :P

[Starbuck_II]

You need teleport, and some means of not dying in space.
You can then use an immovable rod and a very long lever.
This is probably impractical.

Necklace of adaptation protects you in the vacuum of space it says.

[Answerer]

The Imbued Healing - Luck doesnt count as a 2 for the purpose of the Divine spirit stance. The stance requires a Facing 2, not a modified 2 like Imbued healing creates (Imbued Healing - luck does not state that the 2 is actually a 2, just treat the roll of 1 as a 2. It would require a "For all Intents and Purposes" clause to actually work).

I highly suspect there is a "Reroll the rolled 1s for one round" ability that would make Aura of Chaos go infinite either way
Huh, right you are. For some reason I thought it was "on a 1, reroll." As is, it's highly ambiguous. A statement like "for all intents and purposes" isn't really needed – it says "treat any die roll result of 1 as 2" which means that you should be treating it as a 2, period: it doesn't say "counts as a 2 for the purposes of damage" or whatever, it tells you to treat it as a 2. Aura of Chaos tells you how to treat 2s. Yes, normally things that let you treat one number on a die as something else don't allow you to activate things that only trigger on that die roll. But you cannot simply generalize that rule (which comes from nat-20s for critical hits) to all such cases. I see nothing in Imbued Healing that suggests there should be limits on how the roll gets treated as a 2.

So basically, I'm willing to stipulate that you're correct by RAI, and willing to call the RAW ugly, but ultimately I think you're wrong by RAW.

[Malroth]

Lv 3 Dragonfire Adept with power surge, lingering breath and enlarge breath.

Using Power surge gives your breath a 1 round recharge time qualifying you for metabreath feats

Enlarge Breath increases your breath weapon range by 50% for every round you add to your breath weapon recharge,

30 feet = 9.144 meters
Distance to moon. 384,403,000 M

adding 44 rounds of delay causes your breath weapon to have a range of
509,957,256 meters allowing you hit the moon even if it is slightly farther than earths

Lingering Breath causes your breath weapon to linger as a damaging cloud for 1 round for every 2 rounds you add to its recharge time, since your breath weapon deals 6.75 average damage per round to the moon you could cause your breath weapon to persist long enough to destroy the moon if you delayed your next breath attack by 33,485,540,334,855 days

[Wookie-ranger]

Lv 3 Dragonfire Adept with power surge, lingering breath and enlarge breath.

Using Power surge gives your breath a 1 round recharge time qualifying you for metabreath feats

Enlarge Breath increases your breath weapon range by 50% for every round you add to your breath weapon recharge,

30 feet = 9.144 meters
Distance to moon. 384,403,000 M

adding 44 rounds of delay causes your breath weapon to have a range of
509,957,256 meters allowing you hit the moon even if it is slightly farther than earths

Lingering Breath causes your breath weapon to linger as a damaging cloud for 1 round for every 2 rounds you add to its recharge time, since your breath weapon deals 6.75 average damage per round to the moon you could cause your breath weapon to persist long enough to destroy the moon if you delayed your next breath attack by 33,485,540,334,855 days


This is actually very viable imho. You could say that this person forever sacrificed her breath weapon to destroy the moon.

[Darth Stabber]

Say you slice through it with your Incredibly Sharp Katana TM, and destroy only the particles you really cut. The moon falls in half and starts disintegrating by earth's pull.

Unlikely, even if the katana was long enought to cut all the way through the moon, it has enough gravity to hold the two halves together. If the cut put a mile or two distance between the pieces however the resulting collision between the halves would likely shatter the rock componends of the moon in to small pieces. The resulting meteor shower would likely destroy all life on earth, leaving a relatively small lump of iron orbiting the holocaust below.

A smaller moon and/or closer orbit might help, but even with phobos or dimos sized moons I have my doubts, and if you get any smaller than that that I would hesitate to call it a moon.


This is actually very viable imho. You could say that this person forever sacrificed her breath weapon to destroy the moon.

Isn't there a spell that ticks down your breathweapon cooldown? Also DFAs don't qualify for metabreath feats (no natural cooldown), this would require a dragon shaman or dragon.

[Malroth]

The feat Power surge gives your breath weapon a 1 round delay in exchange for upping its damage by 1 die.

[Darth Stabber]

The feat Power surge gives your breath weapon a 1 round delay in exchange for upping its damage by 1 die.

I withdraw my objection.

[tyckspoon]

This is actually very viable imho. You could say that this person forever sacrificed her breath weapon to destroy the moon.

It doesn't actually work, tho. The first problem is actually doing enough damage- if the moon has any significant Hardness (rock is usually given 5 to 10), you need a lot more damage on the breath weapon to actually hurt it. Especially if your breath weapon is one of the energy types that gets reduced before it even begins to attack against the Hardness. That's fixable, at least, just add on more levels/improving magic items/whatever until your breath hits hard enough.

The other problem is that Lingering Breath only affects the original area of the breath. Said area stops at the surface of the moon- it won't grind inward once it burns off the very outermost layer. So you can't destroy the moon with that, at best you can make it be imperceptibly smaller than it was. But you *can* surround the moon in a nigh-permanent cloud of burning death, which is pretty cool in itself.

[toapat]

So basically, I'm willing to stipulate that you're correct by RAI, and willing to call the RAW ugly, but ultimately I think you're wrong by RAW.

I have to go check the SRD divine rules for the inherent R16+ Attribute (All rolls are considered their maximum possible result no matter what)

wait, found where you are wrong:


When one or more of your damage dice show a maximum value

So yes, you cant trigger it on modified values like Imbued healing.

but again, we are talking 3.5. There were/are 3 groups who were First party publishers working on it. There had to of been a Reroll Minimum values ability somewhere.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'm a fan of using some teleportation and a rebuke optimized cleric with the warforged domain to send the rebuked adamantine horror up there. Send some of his minion and he uses the moon's raw material to make more. You can now fluff the dust as the stranded horrors that didn't fall down after using all the material for reproduction.

EDIT: I'd say this is level 12ish. You'll need to be heavily optimized for rebuking, but I'm pretty sure you can get it high enough by then.

[Starbuck_II]

I'm a fan of using some teleportation and a rebuke optimized cleric with the warforged domain to send the rebuked adamantine horror up there. Send some of his minion and he uses the moon's raw material to make more. You can now fluff the dust as the stranded horrors that didn't fall down after using all the material for reproduction.

EDIT: I'd say this is level 12ish. You'll need to be heavily optimized for rebuking, but I'm pretty sure you can get it high enough by then.

Wait, there is only one adamantine horror in existance accordingto flavor text.

[Malroth]

Currently trying to think up a way to combine dark speech, draconic heritage battle dragon, Dragonfire inspiration, and the summon swarm spell to create hordes of evil sorcerous hive-minds to devour the moon but i can't think of a way to pull it off before lv 9

[Mithril Leaf]

Wait, there is only one adamantine horror in existance accordingto flavor text.

Yes. There is only one. The quest to find and rebuke it is the only issue.

[Rubik]

An Explosive Spell Explosive Runes can be cast at level 9 (or lower, with meta cost reducers and spell slot chicanery), and it can destroy the moon easily enough.

Explosive Runes is targetable on things due to weight, not mass or volume, and so if you take a massive tarpaulin into a weightless environment, you can make an Explosive Spell Explosive Rune visible from the moon. One person looking at it will set it off (with no save) and blow everything within visible range out to the point where it's no longer visible (taking 1d6 damage per 10' traveled), and since the rune is thousands of miles across, that's a LONG way.

Goodbye, moon.

[AmberVael]

An Explosive Spell Explosive Runes can be cast at level 9 (or lower, with meta cost reducers and spell slot chicanery), and it can destroy the moon easily enough.

Explosive Runes is targetable on things due to weight, not mass or volume, and so if you take a massive tarpaulin into a weightless environment, you can make an Explosive Spell Explosive Rune visible from the moon. One person looking at it will set it off (with no save) and blow everything within visible range out to the point where it's no longer visible (taking 1d6 damage per 10' traveled), and since the rune is thousands of miles across, that's a LONG way.

Goodbye, moon.
1) You don't get to determine the size of the explosive runes. The way the spell is written assumes a rather small font.
2) The explosive runes wouldn't actually deal damage to the moon. Even if you can make giant runes visible from the moon, and someone reads them, that person would take damage... and then, by raw, anyone 10ft near the runes would take damage. Nothing else would be hit by the effects.
3) Even if the moon would be hit, explosive spell is not an applicable metamagic for Explosive Runes, as it does not have one of the stated areas.
4) Even if explosive spell applied, the moon is not a creature, and thus is not affected by the extra damage.
5) Even if the above is ALL false... given the calculations of the moon's HP earlier in the thread, this will not actually deal enough damage to destroy the moon. At best, it plows the moon into an object that destroys it.

[toapat]

An Explosive Spell Explosive Runes can be cast at level 9 (or lower, with meta cost reducers and spell slot chicanery), and it can destroy the moon easily enough.

Explosive Runes is targetable on things due to weight, not mass or volume, and so if you take a massive tarpaulin into a weightless environment, you can make an Explosive Spell Explosive Rune visible from the moon. One person looking at it will set it off (with no save) and blow everything within visible range out to the point where it's no longer visible (taking 1d6 damage per 10' traveled), and since the rune is thousands of miles across, that's a LONG way.

Goodbye, moon.

One thing that has to be continuously pointed out:

Hitting a planet is easy, as the way ranged accuracy rules work, make it impossible to miss.

Damaging a planet with anything other then Earthmoving spells and equipment, is nigh-impossible, at least without errata/very recent edits. For the longest time, the material Hardness/HP rules had a massive error in them that made the effective damage resistance against not-Mining equipment nigh-infinite.

[Phaederkiel]

Unlikely, even if the katana was long enought to cut all the way through the moon, it has enough gravity to hold the two halves together. If the cut put a mile or two distance between the pieces however the resulting collision between the halves would likely shatter the rock componends of the moon in to small pieces. The resulting meteor shower would likely destroy all life on earth, leaving a relatively small lump of iron orbiting the holocaust below.



While you might well be right that the moon would not automatically fall apart by being precision cut, I am not as sure that it would actually shower down on earth. Perhaps it just drifts apart rather peacefully (while obviously still mucking heavily with earth, as in tides stop working, flow of oceans change, etc).


question: if a character is nigh immortal, how far does he get his age-dependent rise of mental atributes? Iaijutsu Master adds charisma mod damage to each die of iaijutsu (which are, unfortunately limited). So perhaps a wizened yoda-style swordsman...well would probably fall far short on damage, but would at least make a dent.:smallbiggrin:

[Rubik]

It'd work better if you inscribed some runes on the moon directly anyway, since it's auto-destroyed. And since the moon is hanging there, weightless, it still works.

So, yes. A wizard could do it by level 5, or by level 1 if he had a scroll.

[toapat]

It'd work better if you inscribed some runes on the moon directly anyway, since it's auto-destroyed. And since the moon is hanging there, weightless, it still works.

So, yes. A wizard could do it by level 5, or by level 1 if he had a scroll.

Even considering that the game doesnt account for the second law of momentum, that would only work to accelerate the planet, not break it.

A repeating spell Trap of Disintegrate aimed at the moon would be more effective, especially if you can get it down to 6 Disintegrates a round. Can we get tippy in here to tell us when that can be built

[olentu]

I have to go check the SRD divine rules for the inherent R16+ Attribute (All rolls are considered their maximum possible result no matter what)

wait, found where you are wrong:



So yes, you cant trigger it on modified values like Imbued healing.

but again, we are talking 3.5. There were/are 3 groups who were First party publishers working on it. There had to of been a Reroll Minimum values ability somewhere.

Interestingly that means that the trick works with most types of d4, a cube converted to a d3, etc. since the die will always be showing its maximum value even if that was not the result that was rolled. Huh, well you did disprove the d2 name but you have managed to make the trick even more efficient by removing the need for imbued healing completely.

[Malroth]

Unfortuneately, even a lv 16 half-fey/half primordial giant (+3LA) with a +6 item, who adds all 4 stat boosts to CHA, and gains a +5 inherent bonus from tomes or wishes is looking at only a CHA of 41 which only will add 150 damage max to an Iaijutsu strike, With a Warblade Dip after Iaijutsu master you could get 7th level manuvers so your best case scenario is using Ancient mountian hammer combined with a max power attack dump and Iaijutsu strike. With a large Katana you'll deal 2d8 weapon + 9 (22 str x 1.5) + 32( 16bab power attack x 2) + 10d6 (Iaijutsu strike) + 150 (10x Cha mod) + 12d6 for a maximum damage of 339 which would cut through only 22 inches of lunar substance

Edit: Forgot to enchant the weapon
a +5 Corrosive, Thundering Katana would add an extra 19 points of maximum damage raising the cut depth to 24 inches

Edit 2: Just to clarify, the sword strike is actually destroying 24 5 foot by 5 foot by 1 inch sections so it could actually be said to cut a 10 foot long, 5 foot deep gash in the moons surface 1 foot thick.

[Blue1005]

You need to specify more constraints. Pun-pun can do anything at level 1. The moon is trivial.

i have seen this before, what is pun-pun?

[Vaern]

i have seen this before, what is pun-pun?

Pun-Pun is the name of a character who was used to illustrate an infinite loop. Available from a very low level, this loop would allow him to raise all of his attributes as high as he wants. He could give himself enough strength to literally jump to the moon and punch it into dust with a single blow.

[Malroth]

"the Most powerful build ever" a theoretical kobald wizard who obtains a broken ability from a poorly written monster that allows him and his familliar to give each other arbitrarily high stats and any ability from any creature.

[Vaern]

It'd work better if you inscribed some runes on the moon directly anyway, since it's auto-destroyed. And since the moon is hanging there, weightless, it still works.

So, yes. A wizard could do it by level 5, or by level 1 if he had a scroll.

The moon is not zero-gravity. It has significantly weaker gravity than Earth, but it definitely weighs more than 10 pounds on its own. It would not be a valid target for Explosive Runes.

And even if it was, Explosive Runes doesn't automatically destroy what it's cast on.

You trace these mystic runes upon a book, map, scroll, or similar object bearing written information. The runes detonate when read, dealing 6d6 points of force damage. Anyone next to the runes (close enough to read them) takes the full damage with no saving throw; any other creature within 10 feet of the runes is entitled to a Reflex save for half damage. The object on which the runes were written also takes full damage (no saving throw).
I don't think 6d6 points of damage is enough to nuke a moon.

[mishka_shaw]

Explosive Runes is targetable on things due to weight, not mass or volume

The spell is restricted to pounds and pounds is the unit of measurement of mass.
Newtons is the unit of measurement for weight. So therefore no you cannot cast runes on the moon...than again the whole mass/weight thing is so sketched that who knows what Wizards was intending.

To OP: Are we factoring in radiation/age/air/heat with this? I mean many characters can just sunder 5ft blocks out of the moon but since each attempt is a 6-second round it would take a very very long time.

[Killer Angel]

Lingering Breath causes your breath weapon to linger as a damaging cloud for 1 round for every 2 rounds you add to its recharge time, since your breath weapon deals 6.75 average damage per round to the moon you could cause your breath weapon to persist long enough to destroy the moon if you delayed your next breath attack by 33,485,540,334,855 days

At this point, you only need to be immortal, and something to avoid beredom while you delay your breath weapon. :smalltongue:


Wait, there is only one adamantine horror in existance accordingto flavor text.

Well, in the old MERP RPG, accordingly to the encounters' table, you could face 1d10 Nazgul...

[Malroth]

Yeah Destroying a planet before 9ths are on the board is pretty much impossible without infinite loops. Its mostly a matter of which infinite loop has enough class to squeak by the GM and enough Legality to avoid holes being punched into it. After lv 21 however the answer becomes simple and elegant, epic magic can accomplish pretty much anything you need want or could imagine it to. Add in enough ritual participants lead by a lv 21 caster and you could blast apart the moon into a powder or turn it into a solid diamond or teleport it into the sun or whatever else you need for your story. You could even start massive Template Stacking the Katana weilding Melee guy to give him the tens of thousands of points of STR and CHA he'd need to slice through the moon like you imagine.

[PetterTomBos]

Lvl. 1 something that can use scrolls.
Scroll of teleport.
Immovable rod.

Place the rod (or rods) in the path of the moon. Watch it tear itself apart (or get knocked out of orbit, or, or... all sorts of fun things could happen!)

Teleport to return home is optional.

[Vaern]

This rod is a flat iron bar with a small button on one end. When the button is pushed (a move action), the rod does not move from where it is, even if staying in place defies gravity. Thus, the owner can lift or place the rod wherever he wishes, push the button, and let go. Several immovable rods can even make a ladder when used together (although only two are needed). An immovable rod can support up to 8,000 pounds before falling to the ground. If a creature pushes against an immovable rod, it must make a DC 30 Strength check to move the rod up to 10 feet in a single round.
Yet another plan foiled by the fact that its target is not weightless.

[PetterTomBos]

Yet another plan foiled by the fact that its target is not weightless.

I should have read up on that before posting! Still, the rule is weird, I'd say it should be 40k newtons instead (converting from stone age units in my head ;) ). Still, the plan is equally busted!

[Phaederkiel]

Unfortuneately, even a lv 16 half-fey/half primordial giant (+3LA) with a +6 item, who adds all 4 stat boosts to CHA, and gains a +5 inherent bonus from tomes or wishes is looking at only a CHA of 41 which only will add 150 damage max to an Iaijutsu strike, With a Warblade Dip after Iaijutsu master you could get 7th level manuvers so your best case scenario is using Ancient mountian hammer combined with a max power attack dump and Iaijutsu strike. With a large Katana you'll deal 2d8 weapon + 9 (22 str x 1.5) + 32( 16bab power attack x 2) + 10d6 (Iaijutsu strike) + 150 (10x Cha mod) + 12d6 for a maximum damage of 339 which would cut through only 22 inches of lunar substance



hmm. 41 Charisma is not exactly what we should aim for.
Unfortunately that number is already pretty high in comparision, Bahamut for example has a piddly 35 Cha. (even Kord, god of strenght ha only 55 str)
Even Worse is that the bonus damage of the dice is halved (I hope that does not include the cha bonus dmg) against objects.

After seeing Bahamuts stats, I think it is safe to say that cutting down a god is far easier than destroying a planet. Which I somehow think is wrong.



as to 9th lvl spells: which spells which do not borrow another beeings power would be able to do the deed?


and perhaps there is a possibility with lighning maces. There surely is a way to guarantee crits with that, is there not? Perhaps with blood in the water and that attack where you do not stop striking until you miss.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The spell is restricted to pounds and pounds is the unit of measurement of mass.
Newtons is the unit of measurement for weight. So therefore no you cannot cast runes on the moon...than again the whole mass/weight thing is so sketched that who knows what Wizards was intending.

To OP: Are we factoring in radiation/age/air/heat with this? I mean many characters can just sunder 5ft blocks out of the moon but since each attempt is a 6-second round it would take a very very long time.

You're way off on your units of measurement.

The pound is a unit of weight, unlike the others I'm about to list, it's not a part of the metric system and is almost never used in scientific calculations. It is a function of the interaction between mass and force exerted by gravity.

The killogram is the unit of mass.

The newton is the unit for force. IIRC, one newton is the force necessary to accelerate one killogram of mass by 1m/s2

[/science quibble]

IIRC, the moon's gravity is roughly 1/6th earth's gravity, meaning that it would weigh 1/6th as much as a similarly sized object at sea-level on earth. I don't know what that is in pounds, but it's a heck of a lot more than 10. It's also definitely way, way more than the 8K that an immovable rod can block. Calling it an immovable rod really is a terrible misnomer.

[Ravens_cry]

Yeah Destroying a planet before 9ths are on the board is pretty much impossible without infinite loops. Its mostly a matter of which infinite loop has enough class to squeak by the GM and enough Legality to avoid holes being punched into it. After lv 21 however the answer becomes simple and elegant, epic magic can accomplish pretty much anything you need want or could imagine it to. Add in enough ritual participants lead by a lv 21 caster and you could blast apart the moon into a powder or turn it into a solid diamond or teleport it into the sun or whatever else you need for your story. You could even start massive Template Stacking the Katana weilding Melee guy to give him the tens of thousands of points of STR and CHA he'd need to slice through the moon like you imagine.
Not so, hence why I said 'Immortality plus disintegrate'. Both are achievable long before level 9 and while they are slow, hey, you are immortal. You got time.:smalltongue:

[OracleofWuffing]

If we're going to bring real world physics terms into this, I'm just going to commoner railgun the moon.

[Rubik]

MOOOOOOOOON! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7KWykbYNqs)

Now, let's figure out what level he was when he did that.

[Phaederkiel]

You surely do realize that Muten-Roshi did the deed about 7 lvls earlier?
(as in, volume 5 of DB)

[Answerer]

Can we abuse the fact that the rules talk about "weight" which is... not well defined (to my knowledge) for orbiting objects? The moon clearly isn't massless, but since it's operating in orbit, its movement due to gravity in the radial direction is 0... it still has that acceleration, though, I suppose.

[Wookie-ranger]

what about a custom weapon?
Colossal Riverine Keen Vorpal great-sword of planet bane and moon slaying?
Figure out the cost and compare that to the WBL.
Or you could make it an Artifact that lost its planet bane and moon slaying ability in the attack and let the PCs find it somehow.

[Phaederkiel]

Or you could make it an Artifact that lost its planet bane and moon slaying ability in the attack and let the PCs find it somehow.


Now that is a really cool idea.

"starbane - made from the metal that cut through the moon"

sounds indeed snappy.

I do not know if I can give them such a thing (the campaign beeing lowlvl), but i like the flavour enough to fit it in somewhere.
I mean, I will fit in the swordswoman who either cut the moon herself (and afterwards came to rue it) or killed the man who did it. A Sword which is connected somehow will not make matters worse.:smallcool:

[Rubik]

Awaken Object the moon and Disintegrate it, or PAO it into a cow and watch it splat as its orbit deteriorates. (It's a really small moon.)

[Razanir]

The spell is restricted to pounds and pounds is the unit of measurement of mass.
Newtons is the unit of measurement for weight. So therefore no you cannot cast runes on the moon...than again the whole mass/weight thing is so sketched that who knows what Wizards was intending.

To OP: Are we factoring in radiation/age/air/heat with this? I mean many characters can just sunder 5ft blocks out of the moon but since each attempt is a 6-second round it would take a very very long time.


You're way off on your units of measurement.

The pound is a unit of weight, unlike the others I'm about to list, it's not a part of the metric system and is almost never used in scientific calculations. It is a function of the interaction between mass and force exerted by gravity.

The killogram is the unit of mass.

The newton is the unit for force. IIRC, one newton is the force necessary to accelerate one killogram of mass by 1m/s2

[/science quibble]

IIRC, the moon's gravity is roughly 1/6th earth's gravity, meaning that it would weigh 1/6th as much as a similarly sized object at sea-level on earth. I don't know what that is in pounds, but it's a heck of a lot more than 10. It's also definitely way, way more than the 8K that an immovable rod can block. Calling it an immovable rod really is a terrible misnomer.

Pounds measure force. And for the record, the imperial system does have a unit for mass. It's called the slug, and is about 14 grams.

Also, interpreting the rules strictly as force moves the rod, the applicable force varies roughly sinusoidally from 0 to GMm/r², where G=6.67*10^-11, M is the mass of the sun, m is the mass of the moon, and r is the distance from Earth to the sun

[Ravens_cry]

what about a custom weapon?
Colossal Riverine Keen Vorpal great-sword of planet bane and moon slaying?
Figure out the cost and compare that to the WBL.
Or you could make it an Artifact that lost its planet bane and moon slaying ability in the attack and let the PCs find it somehow.
Well, that depends. Does the moon have a head and does it count as a creature? Face jokes aside, I really doubt either count.

[nedz]

Get hold of lots of paint.
Paint a smiley face on it.
The moon will be devastated.

[MesiDoomstalker]

A single Resetting Disintegrate Trap would take a very long time. Several would still take a long time. However, compounding work. Create one trap, that fires off 1 Disintegrate per round, endlessly. Then start crafting another.

As per the DMG rules, a Resetting Disintegrate Trap would cost 33,000 GP a piece, requiring a level 11 Wizard/Sorcerer or Artificier. This would cost 1320 EXP and take 66 days to complete.

Warning: Math below
24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute, so 10 rounds per minute. 600 rounds per hour, 14,400 rounds per day. So, in the time it takes to create the second trap, the first trap will have dusted 950,400 10 ft cubes, or 9,504,000 cubic feet of lunar substances destroyed.

The moon's volume is 2.1958 × 10^10 km3, converting to imperial, that is 7.75439452 × 10^20 cubic feet. So, in the time it takes to create the second trap, you would have destroyed 1.23 x 10^-28% of the moon. Not impressive. By the time you've built the third, you would have destroyed 3.68 x 10^-28% of the moon. Still not impressive. Fast forward a bit to lets say 20 traps.

That first trap would be working for 1254 days (nearly 3.5 years). That is 180,576,000 cubic feet
Trap 2: 171,072,000 cu ft
Trap 3: 161,568,000 cu ft
Trap 4: 152,064,000 cu ft
Trap 5: 142,560,000 cu ft
Trap 6: 133,056,000 cu ft
Trap 7: 123,552,000 cu ft
Trap 8: 114,048,000 cu ft
Trap 9: 104,544,000 cu ft
Trap 10: 95,040,000 cu ft
Trap 11: 85,536,000 cu ft
Trap 12: 76,032,000 cu ft
Trap 13: 66,528,000 cu ft
Trap 14: 57,024,000 cu ft
Trap 15: 47,520,000 cu ft
Trap 16: 38,016,000 cu ft
Trap 17: 28,512,000 cu ft
Trap 18: 19,008,000 cu ft
Trap 19: 9,504,000 cu ft
Trap 20 just got completed, so has done no work yet.
Massive summation later, we get 1,796,256,000 cu feet, or 2.3164x10^-10% of the moon. That is still a small portion of the moon's total volume.


Since I'm very tired of crunching numbers, I won't say how long (and how many traps) it would take to completely dust the moon. However, lets say you stop at 100 traps (3,300,000 GP, into Epic WBL). That is 14,400,000 cu ft per day, or 1.857x10-12% per day. That would take 5.385x10^13 days or several millennia to completely dust the moon.

Now, if we had two (!) people crafting these traps, that square these rates. 3? Cube them. A single person would take a long time. Several would expedite the progress amazingly.

EDIT!: I just remembered that a 10 ft cube is not the same as 10 cubic feet. So all those numbers get moved another decimal place, but I'm not gonna bother fixing it. My apologies :smallredface:

[Malroth]

each trap would take 33 days to make not 66 would dust 1,440,000,000 cubic feet per day, and even so would still be less than a billionth of a percent of the moons volume.

a better option would be to make a self resetting trap of shapechange set to beholder and hire 5,100 lv 1 commoners to step into it one at a time once per round, become beholders for 170 minutes Destroying 1.7 Million cubic feet per use of your trap, destroying 2,448,000,000,000 per day

Now for some cheese
Assuming there's air on the moon, doesn't work on our moon but could work in a fantasy game

Human Draconic heraitage sorcerer 1 Bard 8 with Melodic Casting, Draconic Heritage Battle Dragon, Song of the Heart, Darkspeech and Dragonfire Inspiration, who owns a vest of legends, a badge of valor, a wand of lesser restoration that he gives to his familliar to UMD and an Alphorn. The Bard knows the spells Summon Swarm and Inspiration boost. He uses Darkspeech on the moon to reduce its hardness by 2, then begins his alphorn performance for +6d6 sonic damage to all attacks for every ally within a 7 mile radius which at the moment is only himself and his familliar. He then casts summon swarm to create a neutral 4 square spider swarm which he then uses Darkspeech to give 90 sorcorer levels to , evil intelligence and the objective to multiply and destroy the land. This lv 90 sorcorous intelligence also knows summon swarm and the darkspeech feat and can maintain concentration via a move action via the swift concentration skill trick. This evil swarm also passively deals a 1d6 physical+ 6d6 sonic attack (since it now counts as your ally) for every square it occupies for an average of 88 damage per round. This swarm Summons 2 other swarms and uses darkspeech to give them the same stats as itself and the same objective.

Round 1, 1 intelligent swarm that can summon, 88 dmg/rnd 88 total dmg
Round 2 3 intelligent swarms 2 can summon 264 dmg/rnd 352 total
Round 3 7 intelligent swarms 4 can summon 616 dmg/rnd 968 total
Round 4 15 intelligent swarms 8 can summon 1320 dmg/rnd 2288 total
round 5 31 Intelligent swarms 16 can summon 2728 dmg/rnd 5016 total
round 4 63 intelligent swarms 32 can summon 5544 damage/rnd 10568 tot

this exponential growth of vibrating death bugs will eventually max once they fill up the 7 mile radius your Alphorn bardic music fills, maxing out at 184,912,836 swarms at round 28 dealing 16,272,329,568 dmg per round or 2,343,215,457,792,000 per day. You will however have 134,217,728 swarms not mantaining concentration so are still free to cast as 90th lv sorcorers.

[nedz]

What you need is a self resetting trap of crafting self resetting traps of disintegration.
With one of these firing once per round you would be able to make 14,400 self resetting traps of disintegration per day.
This would shorten the process considerably.

Edit:
You could instead make a self resetting trap of Polymorph any Object set to turn moon rocks into Beholders. Whilst controlling the Beholders would be difficult, they would eventually disintegrate the moon — unless they got the trap first. It would make a trip to the moon quite exiting in the interim.

[toapat]

each trap would take 33 days to make not 66 would dust 1,440,000,000 cubic feet per day, and even so would still be less than a billionth of a percent of the moons volume.

a better option would be to make a self resetting trap of shapechange set to beholder and hire 5,100 lv 1 commoners to step into it one at a time once per round, become beholders for 170 minutes Destroying 1.7 Million cubic feet per use of your trap, destroying 2,448,000,000,000 per day

Problem: a Moon is well outside the range of anything reasonable for hitting with the disintegrate spell from beholders

[jokeaccount]

I don't know if anyone has thought of this and it is not what you're looking for but you can always wish for a huge comet to fall on the moon and destroy it... :smallcool:

[Thiyr]

and perhaps there is a possibility with lighning maces. There surely is a way to guarantee crits with that, is there not? Perhaps with blood in the water and that attack where you do not stop striking until you miss.

If you can manage to find some way to get an infinite bag o' rats (or, if you're destroying the moon, you could be EEEEEEEEEEEVILLLLLLL and use puppies), and do it with a combo of war mind and bloodstorm blade.

...and now i'm curious, so when i'm not in a rush i'll be looking into specifics for my own curiosity

[toapat]

If you can manage to find some way to get an infinite bag o' rats (or, if you're destroying the moon, you could be EEEEEEEEEEEVILLLLLLL and use puppies), and do it with a combo of war mind and bloodstorm blade.

...and now i'm curious, so when i'm not in a rush i'll be looking into specifics for my own curiosity

you need a Divine Rank16 Paragon Tarrasque to get 95% crit range with Aptitude weapon enchantment and blessed weapon, as well as Improved critical.

This gets you about 13 attacks with each of his attacks. I dont know how to get his critical threat range from 2-20 to 1-20 though.

[Flickerdart]

I don't know if anyone has thought of this and it is not what you're looking for but you can always wish for a huge comet to fall on the moon and destroy it... :smallcool:
Way outside of the spell's power guidelines, meaning that the best case scenario is a partial fulfillment, probably along the lines of hitting the moon for 1d6*CL damage.

[TopCheese]

1: Get to said moon in one piece.. But make sure you are a Bard.

2: Write on the surface of the moon something offensive that is bashing a very powerful nation. Perhaps something about the king of said nation is impotent or something.

3: Go to said nation and convince the king/govt that the moon must be destroyed so that no one could do that again...

4: Sit back and watch the moon get destroyed by other people even though you are a low level Bard.

5: Get ready for a beat down by some moon god/goddess/cult/church

6: Laugh in CG heaven

[Kane0]

It depends on how far away and hospitable the moon is.

- Bloodstorm Blade is a possibility.
- Some Tiger Claw stuff may allow some neat jump/claw at the moon approaches.
- As the point above, Shadow Hand could TP to the Moon for an attack
- Stone Dragon and Devoted Spirit both have good Item (Moon) breaking capabilities, but getting them there may be a problem.

Also consider a Warlock with Hammer Blast + Eldritch Spear and a few other invocations that might get him within range of the moon, like Fell Flight and Flee the Scene. He could cut a swathe in the moon with blasts until it tears itself apart.

[Khosan]

I recall one of the ludicrous damage tricks involving Major Creation, Eschew Materials and anti-Osmium.

Assuming travel isn't an issue, you can manage it at level 9, when you can actually cast Major Creation. If travel's an issue, you have to wait until level 13 when you can pick up Greater Teleport (standard Teleport itself won't have enough range).

[OracleofWuffing]

It comes to mind that if you destroy the Earth, the Moon will have nothing to orbit around and there's a fairly good chance it'll eventually destroy itself. So, if getting to the moon is a problem, just destroy the Earth instead.

Alternatively, you could convince your DM to play in the DragonMech campaign setting, and just, um, sleep on it. :smalltongue:

[Malroth]

Antimatter just isn't heavy enough, The detonation energy of 9 cubic feet of anti-osmosium is only about 400x that of the worlds nuclear arsenal, or about half the damage of the Impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, it would kill everything on the moon but its crater would only be about 10 miles across. Neutronium has a much lower reaction efficiency but has several trillion times the mass and its massive fission yeild would reduce both the moon and the earth to plasma.

Edit: However Both run smack dab into the list of things Major creation can make, Neither Antimatter nor Neutronium qualifies as any of ;vegatable matter, common minerals, gems, base metals or precious metals and also are thwarted by the "cannot make intrinsicaly valuable materials" clause of true creation.

[gomipile]

Pounds measure force. And for the record, the imperial system does have a unit for mass. It's called the slug, and is about 14 grams.


One slug is 14.59 kilograms. Making 14 grams a bit less than a microslug.

[Crasical]

Provided they have a way to hit the moon, can a Tiger Claw stylist using the Sleeping Raven technique pull this off without having to prep for hundreds of years?

EDIT: Some quick calculations hash it out as +7,200 damage every day of performing the ritual, if that helps.

EDIT 2: If you have a troll assisting you, you can just coup-de-grace every round of the day without having to summon a raven, increasing it to +14,400 damage a day. If someone can find a way to make this all poetical by making the Tiger-Claw stylist trollblooded and able to do this to himself while staying awake, that would be nice.

[Ravens_cry]

Way outside of the spell's power guidelines, meaning that the best case scenario is a partial fulfillment, probably along the lines of hitting the moon for 1d6*CL damage.
Miracle for an Ideals cleric, whose dogma is "Find a way to blow up the moon.":smallbiggrin:

[Darth Stabber]

While you might well be right that the moon would not automatically fall apart by being precision cut, I am not as sure that it would actually shower down on earth. Perhaps it just drifts apart rather peacefully (while obviously still mucking heavily with earth, as in tides stop working, flow of oceans change

If the moon was shattered with 1 mile's worth inertia it would impart enough energy on to at least some of the chunks with enough kinetic energy to reach the moon's rather small escape velocity. If the percentage if chunks that had tha energy was any where near half the earth's gravity would capture approximately 1/4-1/3 of the moon's mass.

[Acanous]

Couldn't you (Theoretically) Awaken Object the moon, then attack it with a Vorpal blade with a Destruction III crystal in the hilt?

Nat 20 the Moon to death that way.

[nedz]

If the moon was shattered with 1 mile's worth inertia it would impart enough energy on to at least some of the chunks with enough kinetic energy to reach the moon's rather small escape velocity. If the percentage if chunks that had tha energy was any where near half the earth's gravity would capture approximately 1/4-1/3 of the moon's mass.

So essentially destroying the moon by smashing it into little pieces and then scattering them, would destroy the earth also — well anything trying to live on it.

[Phaederkiel]

I still think that in the moment, blood in the water is the way to go.

bad math spoiler ( I am a graphic designer, not a mathematican, so I will probably be wrong somewhere)

The bonus damage stacks as long as you let no minute go without missing a crit. with 8 to 12 attacks per 6 seconds and two keen kukri, it is quite improbable that you will go 60 seconds without a critical.

Let us add avalanche of blades (the one that does not stop attacking 'til you miss) and some "reroll a missed hit" items /maneuvers as a contigency if you have problems hitting.

Add lightning maces on top, and i think you will deal about

attacks per round (let us say 8, conservatively) x (chance to crit, about 1/4) = about 3 crits per round, or 30 per minute, of which about 1/4 will crit themselves = another 7,5, of which....

about 40 crits per minute.

If we only count the 40 Crits (which deal dmg x2), we will deal 82x20: 1640 Bonusdmg. in the first minute. Without counting the 70 plus attacks (natural ones already subtracted) we hit without critting. 41x35= 1435 dmg.

3075 dmg first minuteB], weapon damage, enhancements, etc not counted. And this will rise quadratically.



At some point, you will fall out of blood in the water, but you can restart with nearly no resources lost.

The probability for falling out of BITW should be something around
(14 in 20, the chance not to hit a crit) with an exponent of (attacks in the round, we said 8) x 10.

about: [B]4,0536215597144386832065866109017e-13, says my calc. I am not exactly sure, that I typed everything in correctly, but the number seems to be pretty small.

The avalanche joker (which will offer about 40 hits in one round, if you can reroll)lessens that probability even further.

so, while one cut seems improbable, some hours of dedicated hacking away will probably be able to destroy the moon.

[Malroth]

Getting to the moon is a trivial problem to anyone with lv 6+ WBL who isn't afraid of a little fall damage so your Martial adepts are i pretty good shape that way. However the Moon has proven itself to be able to take several Trillion Damage per round for quite a while and even heavily optimized Martial strike builds aren't going to top 1000 a hit without any blood in the water boosting.

Even with Blood in the water stance boosted by Coup-De-Grace ing a troll every round for a century will have you dealing only 525,600,100 damage per round which is less than 1/30th the damage the evil bard got from only 28 rounds of prep time.

[Forrestfire]

Step 1: Get Necklace of Adaptation
Step 2: Teleport to the moon (via scroll or spell)
Step 3: Cast Animate Objects on the moon. You need caster level 32 to do this, so you probably want a scroll.
Step 4: Cast Disintegrate on the moon. Because it's a fortitude save spell that also affects objects, it works. If you roll well enough, it will reduce the moon to 0hp and turn it to fine dust. Otherwise, repeat.

Level needed to do this: 32, or lower with items.

Scroll of Teleport: 1125gp
Necklace of Adaptation: 9000gp
Scroll of Animate Objects with CL 32: 4800gp
Scrolls of Disintegrate: 1650gp each
(Optional) Second scroll of Teleport: 1125gp

Total: 17,700gp + optional 1125gp + 1650 per extra disintegrate

So, doable by level 8 if you can get your use magic device high enough.

[Malroth]

The Moon is not Colossal, hence cannot be animated by a caster lv 32 spell, the moon is Collosal +16 which would require a caster level of 2,097,152 to animate.

[toapat]

*snip*

your math is entirely off. the size of a planet would have to be noted in scientific notation for it's Colossal+ size

[Forrestfire]

By RAW, doesn't that apply only to Dragons?

[Malroth]

Note for people trying this, 1 disintegrate spell destroys as much rock as 7205 hp in damage so if you can't deal that much in 1 hit you might as well take the 1sp in daily wages the commoners lining up to the polymorph trap are getting and turn yourself into a beholder.

[Flickerdart]

The Moon is not Colossal, hence cannot be animated by a caster lv 32 spell, the moon is Collosal +16 which would require a caster level of 2,097,152 to animate.
There is no such category. Things max out at Colossal, with epic dragons getting a virtual "Colossal+" size category that is exclusive to them. Unless you involve the Epileptic Monkeys Handbook, Colossal is the largest size an object can be treated by the system. Something the size of the moon is not an object at all, but terrain.

[toapat]

Note for people trying this, 1 disintegrate spell destroys as much rock as 7205 hp in damage so if you can't deal that much in 1 hit you might as well take the 1sp in daily wages the commoners lining up to the polymorph trap are getting and turn yourself into a beholder.

The beholder plan doesnt work. Spells dont have the range, unless you can get a massive ring gate and get the other one Immovable Rodded in the moon's gravity well the Advantage of the disintegrate trap.

Also, beholders breath

[Threadnaught]

Has anyone made any Epic Spell calculations yet?


Alternatively if you can find a Namekian, they could use "MOOOOON! Beam" and blow it up... Failing Namekians, any eunuch will do.

[toapat]

Has anyone made any Epic Spell calculations yet?


Alternatively if you can find a Namekian, they could use "MOOOOON! Beam" and blow it up... Failing Namekians, any eunuch will do.

You need Solars equal to something like 22 billion, and you still wont be able to fully destroy a planet with such research

[Malroth]

Since getting to the moon is so much easier than destroying it, I was just assuming anyone crazy enough to build a self resetting trap of shapechange could fairly easily kidnap or hire a couple thousand warforged commoners or undead and send them to the moon to start disintegrating things.

[tyckspoon]

You need Solars equal to something like 22 billion, and you still wont be able to fully destroy a planet with such research

Depends on the seed you use. I think a Transform-based spell could actually do it pretty easily- it has no maximum size limit, just a modifier to the Spellcraft DC based on how drastic a size change you want to make and how much Hardness the subject object has. Which are both pretty trivial numbers to beat if you're really exploiting the Epic Spell mechanics..

So: Transform the moon into a 1 HD Humanoid. Disintegrate the resulting Commoner. Moon destroyed.

[toapat]

Depends on the seed you use. I think a Transform-based spell could actually do it pretty easily- it has no maximum size limit, just a modifier to the Spellcraft DC based on how drastic a size change you want to make and how much Hardness the subject object has. Which are both pretty trivial numbers to beat if you're really exploiting the Epic Spell mechanics..

So: Transform the moon into a 1 HD Humanoid. Disintegrate the resulting Commoner. Moon destroyed.

That is to animate the Crust of the moon.

[Vaern]

Perhaps you should try considering ways of destroying the moon that don't involve destroying the moon.

The topic may be to create a character who can destroy the moon, but it appears to me that the purpose of the thread is to explain a feature of a campaign's setting. The world's background falls completely under the DM's power, and there are a lot more resources that class features, spells, and equipment at his disposal for this purpose. There are mechanics that are specifically up to the DM to define which could allow a seemingly insignificant individual to have an effect on a cosmic scale.

[Rubik]

Planar Bind an efreeti and Wish for a resetting Wish trap that creates resetting Wish traps of resetting Chained Disintegrate traps.

[edit] Oh dear. I just noticed I was swordsage'd last page.

[edit 2] Be a necropolitan commoner 1/cleric X with some DoT AoE spell, Fell Animate, Quick Draw, and that feat that causes undead you create to explode when killed. Start Quick Drawing grains of sand from your pockets, watch the resulting zombie chickens explode when exposed to your AoE, and let the resulting negative energy dissolve the moon rocks into dust. Quick Draw enough chickens in one round and you should be able to destroy much of the moon in a couple of rounds.

[Phaederkiel]

Perhaps you should try considering ways of destroying the moon that don't involve destroying the moon.

The topic may be to create a character who can destroy the moon, but it appears to me that the purpose of the thread is to explain a feature of a campaign's setting. The world's background falls completely under the DM's power, and there are a lot more resources that class features, spells, and equipment at his disposal for this purpose. There are mechanics that are specifically up to the DM to define which could allow a seemingly insignificant individual to have an effect on a cosmic scale.

well, you are half right. I thought quite hard about how to explain a campaign feature, then became intrigued in how to actually do it.

I mean, if I need a solution (and we did not find one until then), I will have the swordwoman say: "the moonlight ailed me, so I Iron heart surged it. After that, I saw that it was broken.":smallbiggrin:

But I am genuinly intrigued into ways to really do it.



As far as I gather, it is not very easy for a spellcaster either, needing some complex setups at least. I had hoped it was possible to destroy the moon in some spur-of-the-moment, rage-and-vanity way.

[Pilo]

You can hide it in a fluff.

A level 1 rogue go in adventure in an old ruin temple of a evil civilization that thought the moon was a good god who protect their foes. They had build a one-use only powerful artefact that can destroy the moon.
Hopefully, this has been prevened by some good adventurers back then.

Now, the rogue found out about the artefact and has been tricked for thinking the artefact will make the bad lychantropes that regulary attack her village powerless.
A succesful use magic device check later: No more moon.

[Vaern]

Well, look at the divine possibilities.

What grants gods their power in your campaign? Did they simply obtain godlike powers on their own? Or do they depend on the faith of their followers to grant them power, and in turn give a portion of that power back to their clerics and paladins?

If a deity is dependent on his worshipers for power, what would happen if, for example, there was some sort of religious war and he found himself losing followers? Most likely, he would begin losing power, then die and fade away once his followers became too few.

What happens when a god dies in your world? If a god of the sun dies, does the sun become dim and plunge the world into an ice age? Or if a god of the moon dies... if the moon no longer has a divine being to watch over it, does it simply crumble into dust?

This one woman who "destroyed the moon" may have been an assassin who was hired to take out the higher-ranking clerics of a moon deity, traveling across the land and striking one temple after another. Thrown into chaos by the loss of their leaders, the rest of the deity's followers may have lost faith and turned to other deities. She may have destroyed the moon without ever even intending to, depending on how your world functions.

(Not exactly a spur-of-the-moment method, though the actual destruction of the moon itself may be a sudden event that signifies the final breath of the dying god.)

[nedz]

The world's background falls completely under the DM's power, and there are a lot more resources that class features, spells, and equipment at his disposal for this purpose.

The giant space butterfly hatches out of the egg which was the moon.

[Rubik]

The giant space butterfly hatches out of the egg which was the moon.And then it has to fight a giant radioactivemagical undersea lizard.

[Phaederkiel]

I love the butterfly Idea :smallbiggrin:

I rather think that my campaign has no gods, only principles and causes.

The closest things to gods are epic characters that walk the earth. Or rather: the one epic character that walks the earth. The swordswoman. She is really old (about 4000 years, in this world power means aging slowly), and the reason that there are no other epics is simple: She kills them.

Her reason for killing everybody above, say, lvl 16, is either:

that she cut down the moon, just to test her strength, and does not want anybody else become as powerful as her, lest they destroy the planet;
or :
that some really powerful other guy destroyed the moon, just to see if he could, and she cut him down. And wants to stop others from becoming as powerful.

Having power means the temptation to use it. This is some underlying theme of the story.

so, spur of the moment would be pretty nice, actually.

[Rubik]

I love the butterfly Idea :smallbiggrin:

I rather think that my campaign has no gods, only principles and causes.

The closest things to gods are epic characters that walk the earth. Or rather: the one epic character that walks the earth. The swordswoman. She is really old (about 4000 years, in this world power means aging slowly), and the reason that there are no other epics is simple: She kills them.

Her reason for killing everybody above, say, lvl 16, is either:

that she cut down the moon, just to test her strength, and does not want anybody else become as powerful as her, lest they destroy the planet;
or :
that some really powerful other guy destroyed the moon, just to see if he could, and she cut him down. And wants to stop others from becoming as powerful.

Having power means the temptation to use it. This is some underlying theme of the story.

so, spur of the moment would be pretty nice, actually.Unless she's got magic of her own I'm fairly sure even a level 17 wizard could prevent being killed. They can be utterly immune to anything that isn't magic, after all, and immune to most things that are. There are tons of ways to do so, too.

Even epic WBL can't do everything.

[Vaern]

Hm. No gods, and any character capable of casting 9th-level spells within the past four millenniums has been hunted down and killed. Well, that makes it extremely difficult to explain via the use of an artifact or godslaying...

[Phaederkiel]

let us not open that can of worms, yes? She surely takes them down before they get to their 9th lvl spells, and some of the very cheesy things just do not exist. Celerity, for instance. contingency is limited. She uses her Iaijutsu skill as iniative even out of iaijutsu duels. Let us say, she has a way to get Antimagic going. Most squishies are unexpectedly...squishy, should meelee ever get the drop on them. Let us not open that can of worms any further.



Hm. No gods, and any character capable of casting 9th-level spells within the past four millenniums has been hunted down and killed. Well, that makes it extremely difficult to explain via the use of an artifact or godslaying...

well, she started hunting only afterwards.

[Malroth]

About the only way to spur of the moment destroy the moon is casting true creation to make exotic forms of matter (antimatter, electron degenerate matter, neutronium, etc) which may or may not be rules legal in your world. Otherwise you're going to have to be a caster or live for quadrillions of years if you're trying to take it out as a melee character. Your best bet is to have it be destroyed by some long dead wizard with a custom moon nuking epic spell who for some reason diddn't bother being completely unkillable by lv 13 like most normal wizards.

[Vaern]

well, she started hunting only afterwards.
I suppose you did say that the moon's destruction was recent...
What about ritual magic? I don't know if there are actually any rules for it, but it's not uncommon for DMs to have cultists or other low-level casters performing rituals that have effects beyond their normal spellcasting ability. The concept is much more abstract than conventional magic, so you may be able to do something with it that the players would not be tempted to recreate.

[Phaederkiel]

yes, recent as in planetary development. some 2000 years ago?
sorry if I was not clear.

[TopCheese]

You can hide it in a fluff.

A level 1 rogue go in adventure in an old ruin temple of a evil civilization that thought the moon was a good god who protect their foes. They had build a one-use only powerful artefact that can destroy the moon.
Hopefully, this has been prevened by some good adventurers back then.

Now, the rogue found out about the artefact and has been tricked for thinking the artefact will make the bad lychantropes that regulary attack her village powerless.
A succesful use magic device check later: No more moon.

+1

I might send my players into a dungeon that has something like this in it.... Perhaps murals on the wall explaining about some stuff... Hmmm Not sure if it will destroy the moon or something else though...

[Nizaris]

Level 21 for any martial character. Pick up an adamantine returning balanced speedthrowing weapon and the Distant Shot feat. You have LoS to the moon meaning you can throw said weapon (I prefer the hammer) all the way to the moon, AC 0 for size modifiers, with no ranged penalty. On any night with a full moon you'll have 10-12 hours (on the equator) or so to throw your hammer at a rate of 5 attacks every 6 seconds, or 3000+ throws. Since the moon never rotates, you can keep throwing at the same hole. That means you can destroy 3000+ section of the moon a night, or every 12 hours since the moon's visible during the day as well when it's a new moon. Too lazy to do the math but it would let you cut the moon in half given enough time.

*edit* Grab greater two weapon fighting at 21 as well and a similar off-hand throwing hammer and you have 10 attacks a round, the 5 off-hand attacks each destroying another section on average, or minimum every-other, for 75-100 sections a minute, 4500-6000 sections an hour.

[Answerer]

Hitting the same spot repeatedly would not have nearly the size penalties as would hitting "anywhere on the moon."

[Hecuba]

One slug is 14.59 kilograms. Making 14 grams a bit less than a microslug.

Pound is actually force or mass: it's use in science is largely outdated, but when it was used, it predated the clear distinction between mass and weight. When distinction is needed and it must be used, it's typically noted as lbf (pound-force) and lbm (pound-mass).

This is, all of course, very silly: everyone knows the moon has a mass of 1 ML


___________________________________________
EDIT:

As to actually disassembling the moon, 2 gates (one to send chunks to the other plane, one to immediately send them back to create a pretty ring around the planet).

Presuming it has similar size and orbital velocity to our moon, this will take about 67 billion rounds of gate (a little over 33 billion, doubled to bring the rubble back to the original plane). Eyeballing a level 20 caster just for this purpose (but without infinite loops)*, we're looking 19 million days worth of spells.

That is, of course, an upper limit: at some point, you will be able to start cutting this down by placing the removed portion in the path of the moon to cause impacts (particularly effective if you can maintain velocity without frame of reference when you bring the chunks back to the original plane^).

But still, it gives and upper bound.

Sounds like a job for a spell clock or a resetting trap to me. Put some in Lunar Synchronous orbit.

*Wizard 10\Halruaan Elder 4\Sacred Exorcist 1\Archmage 5, Familiar concentration, extend, echoing, repeating, dmm, arcane thesis. Pump WBL into +CL, a nightstick, and a reliquary holy symbol.

^This can become fairly effective even early on. The moon's orbital velocity is a bit over 1 km\second, so a 60 round (Caster level 30, extended) gate introduces a 22 cu. km asteroid. It will, however, be oddly shaped moving much slower than most asteroids.


Double Edit: above numbers wrong, likely overestimated volume per day by 35-40 % (because I forgot you can't change the target of a repeated spell). Won't quite be 50% though, as I didn't presume the kind to nightstick availability necessary to repeat each echo. It will also free up 3 feats, which can somewhat offset this by increasing caster level.

The general point stands though: gate is an unusually effective option for meticulous deconstruction if you can manage to scale it through automation.

[Phaederkiel]

Level 21 for any martial character. Pick up an adamantine returning balanced speedthrowing weapon and the Distant Shot feat. You have LoS to the moon meaning you can throw said weapon (I prefer the hammer) all the way to the moon, AC 0 for size modifiers, with no ranged penalty. On any night with a full moon you'll have 10-12 hours (on the equator) or so to throw your hammer at a rate of 5 attacks every 6 seconds, or 3000+ throws. Since the moon never rotates, you can keep throwing at the same hole. That means you can destroy 3000+ section of the moon a night, or every 12 hours since the moon's visible during the day as well when it's a new moon. Too lazy to do the math but it would let you cut the moon in half given enough time.

*edit* Grab greater two weapon fighting at 21 as well and a similar off-hand throwing hammer and you have 10 attacks a round, the 5 off-hand attacks each destroying another section on average, or minimum every-other, for 75-100 sections a minute, 4500-6000 sections an hour.


yes, that are the 10 to 12 attacks I mentioned in my blood in the water outline. The trowing prestige from ToB can do this with anything, throwable or not. Kukris, for example. Removes the need for returning on the weapon, too. This deals a LOT of damage, and quite fast. Unfortunately, it does not qualify for spur-of-the-moment very well, since you have time to think about what you are doing for some hours at least.

One single cut would be better. But it seems, it cannot be achieved, hmm?

[Arcanist]

Depends on the seed you use. I think a Transform-based spell could actually do it pretty easily- it has no maximum size limit, just a modifier to the Spellcraft DC based on how drastic a size change you want to make and how much Hardness the subject object has. Which are both pretty trivial numbers to beat if you're really exploiting the Epic Spell mechanics..

So: Transform the moon into a 1 HD Humanoid. Disintegrate the resulting Commoner. Moon destroyed.

If you're using Epic Spellcasting Shenanigans you aren't even trying here :smallconfused:

Just chain gate in a few trillion Solars for an Epic Ritual that disintegrates the entire moon with a Destroy seed (Hell, you can even make the DC to resist it impossible to resist).

[Emperor Tippy]

Leaving aside epic spell casting (because then it becomes trivial), you need the following:

Step 1: Use Shapechange to become a Zodar.
Step 2: Use Wish to Wish yourself to the Moon, use a free action to change your form to a Shadesteel Golem.
Step 3: Use a free action to change your form to become a Zodar.
Step 4: Wish up an automatic resetting trap of Disintegrate Gun (a metal gun that is activated by pulling the trigger and shoots a Disintegrate out the front).
Step 5: Shapechange into a Shadesteel Golem, wait one round, Shapechange back into a Zodar.
Step 6: Wish up an automatic resetting trap of create Rudimentary Intelligence Shadesteel Golem that has orders to grab a Disintegrate Gun from the trap next to it and then use it to Disintegrate the moon.

Every day another 14,400 Shadesteel Golems are created, each of which will fire 14,400 Disintegrates at the ground per day and thus remove 144,000 cubic feet of the moon every day. Or 2,073,600,000 cubic feet per 24 hour period for a days worth of Shadesteel production.

After a thousand days a little over 2 trillion cubic feet of the moon will disappear every day.

Total cost: 0 GP, 0 XP, 1 9th level spell slot

EDIT: Added steps to get to the moon.

[toapat]

Leaving aside epic spell casting (because then it becomes trivial), you need the following:

Step 1: Use Shapechange to become a Zodar.
Step 2: Wish up an automatic resetting trap of Disintegrate Gun (a metal gun that is activated by pulling the trigger and shoots a Disintegrate out the front).
Step 3: Shapechange into anything else, wait one round, Shapechange back into a Zodar.
Step 4: Wish up an automatic resetting trap of create Rudimentary Intelligence Shadesteel Golem that has orders to grab a Disintegrate Gun from the trap next to it and then use it to Disintegrate the moon.

Every day another 14,400 Shadesteel Golems are created, each of which will fire 14,400 Disintegrates at the ground per day and thus remove 144,000 cubic feet of the moon every day. Or 2,073,600,000 cubic feet per 24 hour period for a days worth of Shadesteel production.

After a thousand days a little over 2 trillion cubic feet of the moon will disappear every day.

Total cost: 0 GP, 0 XP, 1 9th level spell slot

thank you for the /Thread of how to do it with spells.

you forgot how you get them to the moon though/are getting the Disintegrate Gun the range needed.

[Arcanist]

thank you for the /Thread of how to do it with spells.

you forgot how you get them to the moon though/are getting the Disintegrate Gun the range needed.

Just imagine that at Step 0 he turned into a Zodar and got a Scroll of Wish and used it to Teleport to the Moon or something like that :smallsigh:

[tyckspoon]

you forgot how you get them to the moon though/are getting the Disintegrate Gun the range needed.

Wish up an automatic resetting trap of Greater Teleport/Establish a Teleport Circle leading from your production facility to the moon, of course. (Or save a step, Greater Teleport yourself to the moon, and establish your army-maker + Disintegrate Widget factory up there.) Although personally I think 'Spell-like Wish for arbitrarily expensive magic items' is about as trivial (and cheesy) a solution as 'Use infinite Epic Magic mitigation', it just happens to be doable at pre-Epic levels.

[Malroth]

Epic Bloodstorm blades get mentioned as a way to do it but they're not realy putting any math behind it, From builds i've seen if they're running a high STR thow build they might get up to 2000 damage per round but since the moon has 5 Septillion HP 2000 damage a round would take longer to destroy the moon than the expected lifespan of the universe.

[Doug Lampert]

your math is entirely off. the size of a planet would have to be noted in scientific notation for it's Colossal+ size

The moon is Colossal, no plus needed. The size table in the SRD Movement, Position, and Distance section says colossal is Size 64'+. No upper end to the range. The moon is in that range.

If you extrapolate the table then colossal is 64'-128'.
Colossal+ 128'-256'
Colossal++ 256'-512'
Colossal+++ 512'-1024'
Colossal++++ 1024'-2048'
Colossal+++++ 2048'-4096'
Colossal++++++ 4096'-8192'
Colossal+++++++ 8192'-16384'
Colossal++++++++ 16384'-32768'
Colossal+++++++++ 32768'-65536'
Colossal++++++++++ 65536'-131072'
Colossal+++++++++++ 131072'-262144'
Colossal++++++++++++ 262144'-524288'
Colossal+++++++++++++ 524288'-1048576'
Colossal++++++++++++++ 1048576'-2097152'
Colossal+++++++++++++++ 2097152'-4194304'
Colossal++++++++++++++++ 4194304'-8388608'
Colossal+++++++++++++++++ 8388608'-16777216'

The moon is approximately 11,400,000' in diameter.
Which is in the final listed range.
Which is colossal followed by 17 + signs. Who needs scientific notation?

Now the claim that destroying a 1 mile plane through the center of the moon would throw a substantial fraction of the moons mass out at more than lunar escape is outright silly, the moon is BIG, but D&D size rankings ARE an exponential scale already, it doesn't take that many to reach really big sizes.

[toapat]

That is still 2^22

which is the rather unreasonable CL of 4,194,304

so ya, no notation, just rediculously huge for that strategy

[Quietus]

I'm a fan of the "An artifact did it" method here. Crazy epic swordswoman had to kill some crazy epic swordsman because he had <insert god/primal power/whatever here> forge a sword that was capable of destroying the moon. She took him out for doing something so incredibly obscene, and has hidden the sword for fear of what else it might be capable of. Plot hook left hanging.

[nedz]

Leaving aside epic spell casting (because then it becomes trivial), you need the following:

Step 1: Use Shapechange to become a Zodar.
Step 2: Use Wish to Wish yourself to the Moon, use a free action to change your form to a Shadesteel Golem.
Step 3: Use a free action to change your form to become a Zodar.
Step 4: Wish up an automatic resetting trap of Disintegrate Gun (a metal gun that is activated by pulling the trigger and shoots a Disintegrate out the front).
Step 5: Shapechange into a Shadesteel Golem, wait one round, Shapechange back into a Zodar.
Step 6: Wish up an automatic resetting trap of create Rudimentary Intelligence Shadesteel Golem that has orders to grab a Disintegrate Gun from the trap next to it and then use it to Disintegrate the moon.

Every day another 14,400 Shadesteel Golems are created, each of which will fire 14,400 Disintegrates at the ground per day and thus remove 144,000 cubic feet of the moon every day. Or 2,073,600,000 cubic feet per 24 hour period for a days worth of Shadesteel production.

After a thousand days a little over 2 trillion cubic feet of the moon will disappear every day.

Total cost: 0 GP, 0 XP, 1 9th level spell slot

EDIT: Added steps to get to the moon.

We are trying to do this at minimal level — or at least I think that's what the OP asked. Can we not just craft these traps rather than reaching for the cheese gun ? Optimising skills is somewhat easier than casting 9ths. What are the craft DCs for the above traps ?

[Nizaris]

Hitting the same spot repeatedly would not have nearly the size penalties as would hitting "anywhere on the moon."

Targeting a square has a generic AC of 10, quite achievable, with a Strength score of 30+ (it's epic) that's an auto hit.


yes, that are the 10 to 12 attacks I mentioned in my blood in the water outline. The trowing prestige from ToB can do this with anything, throwable or not. Kukris, for example. Removes the need for returning on the weapon, too. This deals a LOT of damage, and quite fast. Unfortunately, it does not qualify for spur-of-the-moment very well, since you have time to think about what you are doing for some hours at least.

One single cut would be better. But it seems, it cannot be achieved, hmm?

I was writing in a rush so I left out the Bloodstorm bit on accident. If you play Tri-Kreen you can have 4 arms throwing and Perfect multi-weapon fighting then it would be 20 attacks a round, which, by dealing 15 points of damage to a section with each attack against a AC 10 (targeting a space) at 20 attacks/6 seconds, after 942.76333 days of 12 hours of constant throwing you can put a 5ft x 5ft hole through the moon. Dungeon #136, Obah-Blessed, nets you a bonus set of arms for +2LA or 4 extra arms for +4, though the +4LA is a bit steep, though 40 attacks per round at anything you see could be fun and cuts the blasting down to a year and a half so you can start on the next tunnel sooner.

[Emperor Tippy]

We are trying to do this at minimal level — or at least I think that's what the OP asked. Can we not just craft these traps rather than reaching for the cheese gun ? Optimising skills is somewhat easier than casting 9ths. What are the craft DCs for the above traps ?

Considering that to craft a Wish trap you need to be able to cast Wish already and that said trap is far beyond WBL and takes a very long time to create and more XP than god, Wish is far easier.

IIRC I can do my entire plan at level 7 (level 5 actually I believe) without breaking the rules or using a single thing that is RAW dubious.

All you need is one scroll of shapechange and the ability to UMD it (and you can UMD a Shapechange Scroll as a Monk at level 7).

[toapat]

so a lvl 1 can destroy the moon using the Fiend Folio, unless there is some reason why a monk has to be used instead of anyone else that i havent read

[Wings of Peace]

Level 1 Domain Elven Generalist casting Major Creation: Cube of nothing but electrons.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Level 1 Domain Elven Generalist casting Major Creation: Cube of nothing but electrons.

Think of the catgirls!

[Origomar]

Can't a war hulk hulking hurler get into the millions of damage pretty easily?

[gomipile]

Can't a war hulk hulking hurler get into the millions of damage pretty easily?

Except that he needs ammunition that weighs enough to do that damage. Ammunition is the practical limit of Hulking Hurler builds.

[Amidus Drexel]

Except that he needs ammunition that weighs enough to do that damage. Ammunition is the practical limit of Hulking Hurler builds.

Throw the earth.

[Arcanist]

Throw the earth.

If tossing the Earth at the Moon doesn't destroy it then I officially declare that the Moon is made of Magically Hardened Adamanatine that is twice as hard as Force (and is immune to Distintegrate).

[Malroth]

"cube of nothing but electrons" is the most dubious use of true/major creation to date, If they were "packed in solid" which no force in the universe could do without it already being inside a black hole, It would be 100x the amount of electrons in the universe and like the much easier to justify antimatter is not a plant based material, nor a common mineral, nor a gem, nor a base metal nor a rare metal.

Idea. Evil Travel and planning domain cleric With a scroll of greater teleport first rebukes as many low lv ghosts as his HD cap can control, then uses the scroll to teleport to an asteroid. He Devine metamagic persists a "find the path" spell and then directs the ghosts to use their at will telekenesis to accelerate the asteroid.

Edit: Yes Hulking hurler combined with cancer mage or war hulk could do this pretty easy by lv 11 or so, so much so it probably could have been the second post but i thought the OP specifically mentioned not to use Hulking hurler builds.

[Amidus Drexel]

"cube of nothing but electrons" is the most dubious use of true/major creation to date, If they were "packed in solid" which no force in the universe could do without it already being inside a black hole, It would be 100x the amount of electrons in the universe and like the much easier to justify antimatter is not a plant based material, nor a common mineral, nor a gem, nor a base metal nor a rare metal.


No force in the universe? How about magic? :smalltongue:

Plus, if it makes a black hole, then I think destroying the moon is taken care of.

[Kelb_Panthera]

No force in the universe? How about magic? :smalltongue:

Plus, if it makes a black hole, then I think destroying the moon is taken care of.

I -think- that a solid cube of electrons would create a black-hole, but someone who knows how would need to calculate just how massive a black-hole it is.

The black-hole that results from this rather dubious use of major creation may or may not be powerful or large enough to meaningfully effect the moon.


Hulking Hurler shennanigans were indeed outlawed in the OP, since all that would take is for the hurler to get ahold of the moon then toss it into the sun. Poof, no more moon.

[Mandrake]

I ain't good at this kind stuff, nor with a lot of knowledge behind me, but I heard something like this somewhere:

If she multiclassed to a Wizard for one level and get the usage of Prestidigitation and if we assume that she is really smart and somewhat revolutionary in thinking, with means to get into range to cast the said Prestidigitation, she could use her spell to split an atom of the moon, shattering the atom's core, making a big wild *blast*blast* that might just be enough.

Well, I hope someone can add on to this or refute it, whatever.

[Flickerdart]

I ain't good at this kind stuff, nor with a lot of knowledge behind me, but I heard something like this somewhere:

If she multiclassed to a Wizard for one level and get the usage of Prestidigitation and if we assume that she is really smart and somewhat revolutionary in thinking, with means to get into range to cast the said Prestidigitation, she could use her spell to split an atom of the moon, shattering the atom's core, making a big wild *blast*blast* that might just be enough.

Well, I hope someone can add on to this or refute it, whatever.
Prestidigitation can't split an atom. It has a very specific list of effects that has the following restrictions at the end:

"It cannot deal damage or affect the concentration of spellcasters...Finally, a prestidigitation lacks the power to duplicate any other spell effects. Any actual change to an object (beyond just moving, cleaning, or soiling it) persists only 1 hour."

So not only can it not be used to split an atom, but even if it was, it would do no damage to anything, and the effects, such as they are, would only last an hour.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I ain't good at this kind stuff, nor with a lot of knowledge behind me, but I heard something like this somewhere:

If she multiclassed to a Wizard for one level and get the usage of Prestidigitation and if we assume that she is really smart and somewhat revolutionary in thinking, with means to get into range to cast the said Prestidigitation, she could use her spell to split an atom of the moon, shattering the atom's core, making a big wild *blast*blast* that might just be enough.

Well, I hope someone can add on to this or refute it, whatever.

Splitting a single atom produces an explosion on par with what a relatively small amount of conventional explosives could match. That's not even going to scratch the moon. I'm also nearly certain that is way outside the power of prestidigitation.

[Kazyan]

Be a high-level Earth Dreamer. Get a tricked-out move speed. Earth Glide into the center-ish of the moon. Disintegrate, Celerity to give yourself time before moon's pressure crunches the gap, Prismatic Wall. Wait. Permanency the wall. Leave.

The violet wall will gradually destroy the entire moon, which is funneling itself in via pressure, and you don't have to d anything more.

[toapat]

Be a high-level Earth Dreamer. Get a tricked-out move speed. Earth Glide into the center-ish of the moon. Disintegrate, Celerity to give yourself time before moon's pressure crunches the gap, Prismatic Wall. Wait. Permanency the wall. Leave.

The violet wall will gradually destroy the entire moon, which is funneling itself in via pressure, and you don't have to d anything more.

only works if the moon is like earth. Most planets are not like earth.

[Kazyan]

only works if the moon is like earth. Most planets are not like earth.

True. I will say, though, that Earth Glide is pretty permissive about the kind of earth it will let you flow through, and minerals native to the moon have been found on earth.

I'm sure there's a better way to stick a Prismatic Wall down there anyway.

[toapat]

True. I will say, though, that Earth Glide is pretty permissive about the kind of earth it will let you flow through, and minerals native to the moon have been found on earth.

I'm sure there's a better way to stick a Prismatic Wall down there anyway.

im not talking about earthglide, im talking about the fact that most Rocky planets are not pressure vessels like earth.

[Kazyan]

im not talking about earthglide, im talking about the fact that most Rocky planets are not pressure vessels like earth.

...Yeah, if you make a cavity under gigatons of rock, it doesn't particularly matter what kind of rock we're talking about. It's going to collapse.

[jindra34]

Whats the lowest level you could run around the moon in two moves? Because at that point you can use a Desert Wind maneuver to just slag the entire thing in a giant AoE.

[Malroth]

which would set it on fire but wouldn't do any more than its base damage unless we rule that AOE's deal damage for each square. (please oh please oh please rule that AOE's deal damage for each square)

[CIDE]

If we use D20 Future figures (which depending on how you read it is still a viable supplement to D&D and vice verse) and scaling up from the space objects table the moon should have around 2,792,686,478,220,216,000,000 hit points with a hardness of 8.

I know it's not D&D but Silver Age Sentinels has figures for HP for planets as well as hardness.

Just another figure to possibly go with.

Edit:

Also, for something the fraction of the size of the moon it has a -3 AC. So just don't roll a 1 and you're sure to hit something the size of the moon.

[Wings of Peace]

Warforged Wizard 9/Cancer Mage 1/Dweomerkeeper 10. Get infected with festering anger. Teleport into the far past. Wait for the moon to form. Fly to the moon. Punch it.

[gomipile]

Warforged Wizard 9/Cancer Mage 1/Dweomerkeeper 10. Get infected with festering anger. Teleport into the far past. Wait for the moon to form. Fly to the moon. Punch it.

I maintain that Binder 1 binding Naberius is almost always a superior choice to Cancer Mage 1. Especially given the feat tax for Cancer Mage.

[Endarire]

Warforged Warblade1 (who manages to get there) with an item that grants him Mountain Hammer as a maneuver known. Very slowly destroys said moon.

[Zale]

So, Dragons can be colossal+ but the moon is not?

In which case, get a dragon to eat the moon.

[Phaederkiel]

Obviously area effects deals their damage to each field involved.

What kind of desert wind trick did you want to use?



about the bloodstorm blade dmg : A bloodstorm blade build for the purpose deals about 3000 dmg in the first round, but some 100 rounds later, he deals that amount with each hit, crits applying. I did as much of the math as I was confident I could do, but I am not confident to really compute the damage potential of an hour, or a day. (Those numbers which raise by probability and reset by probability, too, are too difficult for me to handle)

[TuggyNE]

So, Dragons can be colossal+ but the moon is not?

In which case, get a dragon to eat the moon.

I doubt this will work; Swallow Whole requires, generally speaking, a difference of at least one size category between swallower and swallowee.
Although there is no size category larger than Colossal, the oldest epic dragons deal more damage with their attacks than other Colossal dragons, as shown on the Epic Dragon Face and Reach and Epic Dragon Attacks tables below. In addition, the breath weapon of the oldest epic dragons is a larger cone than most Colossal dragons possess. The size modifier for these dragons remains -8. And then it goes on with a chart that notes that space and reach remain the same as Colossal. (The same rules are used for epically advanced regular dragons.)

[gomipile]

Obviously area effects deals their damage to each field involved.

What kind of desert wind trick did you want to use?



about the bloodstorm blade dmg : A bloodstorm blade build for the purpose deals about 3000 dmg in the first round, but some 100 rounds later, he deals that amount with each hit, crits applying. I did as much of the math as I was confident I could do, but I am not confident to really compute the damage potential of an hour, or a day. (Those numbers which raise by probability and reset by probability, too, are too difficult for me to handle)

Which Bloodstorm Blade combo are you using? I might be able to make a computer simulation if I know the abilities and synergies you are using.

[jindra34]

Obviously area effects deals their damage to each field involved.

What kind of desert wind trick did you want to use?

The aptly named Ring of Fire.

[toapat]

The aptly named Ring of Fire.

Chuck doesnt work anymore though, so that maneuver to set a planet on fire doesnt work anymore.

[jindra34]

Chuck doesnt work anymore though, so that maneuver to set a planet on fire doesnt work anymore.

Part of my original positing of that was querying about when a character could run around the moon. Didn't post a level as I don't know what would work.

[Telonius]

Hallucinatory Terrain has the material components, "a stone, a twig, and a bit of green plant." If the moon counts as a stone (they never did specify a size limit, did they? :smallwink:) it's obliterated during the casting.

[Malroth]

Well the surface area of the moon is 14,658,000 square miles and each square mile is 1,115,136 5 foot squares so if AOE attacks that hit half the moons surface deal 16,345,663,488,000 times their standard damage. and since the moon moves at a speed of 1,023 m/s, each square will enter 4027 seperate 5 foot cubes per round of an ongoing damaging area of effect.

So a lv 3 dragonfire adept with power surge, enlarge breath and lingering breath who uses his acid breath to hit the moon from earth could deal 1,777,247,645,386,752,000 initial damage and 888,623,822,693,376,000 damage the following round once every 50 rounds this would take the character a little over 7 days of constant uses to completely destroy the moon.

[gomipile]

Would someone please point me to a description of this Bloodstorm Blade ramping damage trick? I've searched through this thread using the term "Bloodstorm Blade" a few times and cannot find it.

[Darth Stabber]

I -think- that a solid cube of electrons would create a black-hole, but someone who knows how would need to calculate just how massive a black-hole it is.

The black-hole that results from this rather dubious use of major creation may or may not be powerful or large enough to meaningfully effect the moon.

A solid cube of electrons would not cause a black hole since electrons have zero mass.

A solid cube of neutrons (neutronium), even if only a cubic centimeter, would easily destroy the earth and the moon as well. For neutrons to remain stable they need either the strong force (as in atomic nuclei) or a LOT of gravity (as in a neutron star). And since neutronium interacts only weakly with normal matter, but normally with gravity, it would be drawn to the center or the moon, giving off the energy of >1000 h-bombs every second. And neutronium also would not collapse into a black hole (otherwise we wouldn't have neutron stars).

A solid cube of electrons however could very conceivably destroy the moon, since a large portion of them would bind to atoms in the moon, causing each atom to no longer be conjoined in a chemical bond, while simultaneously repelling the also negatively charged ions around it, causing it to simply drift apart as dust either whole or in part. I haven't done the math, but I would imagine that the moon has no where near enough gravity to stop that much EM force.

Any object that you want to have collapse into a black hole must be smaller than it's shwartzchild radius ((2Gm)/c^2 where m is it's mass). Luckily, for those of us that like being alive, it is very hard for an object to meet those requirements (the earth would have to be smaller than a postage stamp).

I've clearly done my part to end the cat girl menace.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Huh. I was not of the impression that electrons had no mass, just such an infinitessimally small amount that it wasn't worth putting into most calculations. I could very easily be wrong about that though.

In any case, if the question is just about removing the moon, rather than necessarily destroying it, it should only need a good push from the earthward side, yes? My understanding is that the moon's orbit is already in decay, just at such a slow rate that all of humanity's civilizations will have crumbled to dust or moved into the stars before it actually "falls" away completely.

Does anyone have any ideas in that direction?

Also, I like catgirls. By the gods, what have we done to all those poor catgirls. :smallfrown:

[gomipile]

A solid cube of electrons would not cause a black hole since electrons have zero mass.

An electron does have a mass, it is just very small. In fact, I replicated J.J. Thomson's experiment which measured the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron for a physics lab class when I was in college.

[Amidus Drexel]

A solid cube of electrons would not cause a black hole since electrons have zero mass.


Electrons do have mass; it's just negligible (Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron) puts it at appx. 1/1836 the mass of a proton) in comparison to the rest of the atom.

Edit: ninja'd

Rest in peace, poor catgirls. You lived a good life. :smallfrown: :smallbiggrin:

[nedz]

Everything has mass, even neutrinos — though for a long time it was thought that they didn't. Basically if it has energy it has mass; I believe that there is a famous equation regarding this.

Except Catgirls — because they no longer exist.

[Darth Stabber]

An electron does have a mass, it is just very small. In fact, I replicated J.J. Thomson's experiment which measured the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron for a physics lab class when I was in college.

I sit corrected. I am guessing that they still do not have enough mass to cause a gravitational collapse, and with the electromagnetic force pushing them apart, the instant they were created they would fly apart with great force, averting anything but the most instantaneous of of collapses.

I maintain however that neutrons are better for lunar annihilation, and a solid mass of them has more real life precedent than a solid mass of electrons (neutron stars vs ???). Thunderf00t did an enlightening video about neutronium on youtube if you are curious. this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_EBqZPCZdw)

[Malroth]

I believe they're relying on Blood in the Water stance that gives you a cumulative +1 to attack and damage every round in which you get a crit and ends when you stop getting crits. However the moon is an object and immune from critical hits so you'd have to build up using some else. Thus a high dex warforged Chicken infested commoner/warblade/disciple of Disapater with perfect 2 weapon fighting weilding 2 Keen Kukris could build up a cumulative +4 attack and damage on average per round by summoning chickens as free actions then slicing them down. However even then he'd need to build up power for a trillion years slaughtering chickens to be able to take down the moon in another trillion.

[Astral Avenger]

No force in the universe? How about magic?

Plus, if it makes a black hole, then I think destroying the moon is taken care of.
I -think- that a solid cube of electrons would create a black-hole, but someone who knows how would need to calculate just how massive a black-hole it is.

The black-hole that results from this rather dubious use of major creation may or may not be powerful or large enough to meaningfully effect the moon.


Hulking Hurler shennanigans were indeed outlawed in the OP, since all that would take is for the hurler to get ahold of the moon then toss it into the sun. Poof, no more moon.

OK, lets make a couple assumptions.
1) lets assume I have an adequate understanding of math to not loose a large number of decimals in the following
2) Electrons are acting as particles while created. (thus allowing me to figure out just how many there would be)
3) Electrons are spheres with radius 2.8x10^-15m
4) Electrons are packed in the sphere as if they were cubes with side length (S) of 5.6x10^-15 (this makes the math so much easier than close packing spheres)
5) Electrons have a mass of 9.1x10^-31kg
6) Above numbers are accurate in this particular universe.

Math (may not be sutable for people studying for finals):
1m/S= electrons per meter = 5.6*10^15e/m
a cubic meter therefore contains (5.6*10^15)^3e= 1.75616x10^47e
Multiply this by the mass of each electron to get total mass:
1.75616x10^47e * 9.1x10^-31kg/e = 1.5981056x10^17kg

Using an escape velocity calculator (http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/escape_velocity), the escape velocity of this from .5m away from the center would be 6.88992x10-14c, which is less than the speed of light.

This means that it does not have an event horizon outside of the cube itself, so it is not a black hole.

This does mean that the outer electrons would be able to leave the cube, and would in fact be repelled extremely strongly away from the cube.

No math has been done to support the following hypothesis:
This would probably cause an extremely powerful explosion that would destroy a large amount of the moon.
If this happened on or near the surface of the moon it would likely act to propel the moon into a different orbit/ out of orbit.
This would create a huge amount of dust and rock chunks that would eventually form a ring around earth/ what is left of earth.

Note:I know somewhere on this forum (different thread) I saw someone post about this, but managed to pack in significantly more mass and I believe they concluded that with their method of calculation it would form a black hole.

[Darth Stabber]

snip

Impressive. I didn't even consider the explosive force of the electron cube dispersing (it would be rather violent), only the chemical consequences of the introduction of a massive number of free electrons (which would pale in comparison to the blast).

Trying to figure out a RAW way to aquire neutronium, which on the surface seems easier that aquiring a mass of free electrons (though a highly metamagic'd lightning bolt could be construed as such).

If we operate under the assumption that large celestial objects are planes, and we could find a neutron star, we could destroy another entire plane quite easily by opening a gate to a neutron star (or a black hole), and if large celestial objects are planes, then the path to the moon is a planeshift away. This assumes that moons and sun (and solar remnants) qualify as planes of existance in addition to planets, following some sketchy evidence from 2e spelljammer, combined with some suspect extrapolation, so take it with a grain of salt. I feel reasonably confident that both black holes and neutron stars possess the graviation force needed to shatter and/or consume a planet/moon/asteroid/main sequence or smaller star. The only real question is how the gate will react to the massive pressure of sucking a spaghettified mass of rock through it, and how does time dialation interact with a non-permanacied gate's duration?

[Kazyan]

That is all moot except as a catgirl-killing exercise because you are using a spell that creates a material, and a solid cube of electrons is not a material because it cannot exist. Not before magic, anyway, but using "True creation can create it" as an argument to support True creation creating it is circule logic. I'm certain that the Pauli Exclusion Principle would say "lol...no" no matter how much energy you pumped into compressing a cloud of minuses.

[nedz]

A small amount of Anti-Neutrons would do the job.

I won't apologise for the Catgirls, they all died a long time ago.

[toapat]

A small amount of Anti-Neutrons would do the job.

I won't apologise for the Catgirls, they all died a long time ago.

There are no anti-neutrons

There are negatrons though, which are the opposite of protons.

As would a cubic cm on neutronium

[Rubik]

There are no anti-neutrons

There are negatrons though, which are the opposite of protons.

As would a cubic cm on neutroniumMegatrons are cooler, though. About 20% cooler. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8er83h9Bbn8)

[nedz]

There are no anti-neutrons

Discovered in 1956 at Berkeley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antineutron)

I'm curious why you thought that they didn't exist ?

[Kazyan]

I'm curious why you thought that they didn't exist ?

One of the common perceptions is that antimatter has an inverted charge as its defining feature (besides the 'asplodes' part), so if the particle is neutral, then it shouldn't have an antiparticle.

[Darth Stabber]

That is all moot except as a catgirl-killing exercise because you are using a spell that creates a material, and a solid cube of electrons is not a material because it cannot exist. Not before magic, anyway, but using "True creation can create it" as an argument to support True creation creating it is circule logic. I'm certain that the Pauli Exclusion Principle would say "lol...no" no matter how much energy you pumped into compressing a cloud of minuses.

If the electrons were brought into existance at the same moment already position then it would stand to reason that it might be a way around the pauli exclusion principle (or cause a massive spacetime destroying paradox). You can't really argue "magic can't do that because the laws of physics won't allow it" because magic specifically circumvents what is otherwise natural law (and arguably is part of the natural law of the setting). That being said using magic to set up effects that require a modernish understanding of physics in a midevalish setting is probably just as bad.

Creating a mass of bosons wouldn't violate pauli, so photons, gluons, W, Z, and higgs are still in. Any one want to run the figures on how many photons fit in a cubic foot? Because, given that photons are always traveling at the speed of light, and assuming you could control their initial heading, that could lead to some spectacular results.

[Talionis]

There is a Bloodstorm Blade technique "Bloodstorm?" (I think its the level ten ultimate) that hits every target in range. Its fairly easy to massively increase your range with magical items, etc. I can't think of a way to create infinite targets, but people here are smarter than me.

Combine that with Cleave and you could potentially hit thru the targets and do damage behind them. If you are running Blood in the Water you would increase damage by all your targets hit with crits even in that round.


Duskblade 13 can channel spells into your weapon, so it could be the weapon doing whatever. Everytime it hits the spell goes off. Without Gestalt you can't merge this with level 10 Bloodstorm Blade for infinite hits, but someone else may think of something. Don't forget there are lots of ways to cheat spells on to a spell list and that if necessary there is also Enlightened Fist 7 that can turn rays into touch attacks to be used by Duskblades Channel ability.


I still think an appropriate Magical Weapon can add a lot to this build and helps with your storyline because it would most likely be the weapon carried by your Swordwoman.

[Kazyan]

You can't really argue "magic can't do that because the laws of physics won't allow it" because magic specifically circumvents what is otherwise natural law (and arguably is part of the natural law of the setting).

But under that reasoning, Major Creation can create phlebotnium, dilithium crystals, and self-contradictrium. None of those things exist or can exist, but it's magic, so...

It has to actually be a material before Major Creation can make it. Imaginary materials don't count because they're imaginary, similar to why Heroics can't give you the imaginary fighter bonus feat that grants you Manipulate Form.

[Darth Stabber]

But under that reasoning, Major Creation can create phlebotnium, dilithium crystals, and self-contradictrium. None of those things exist or can exist, but it's magic, so...

It has to actually be a material before Major Creation can make it. Imaginary materials don't count because they're imaginary, similar to why Heroics can't give you the imaginary fighter bonus feat that grants you Manipulate Form.

We're talking about a non-video game, therefore even the iron of your sword and the wood of your shield is imaginary. However we've inceptioned into things that are imaginary within an imaginary construct.

But ultimately what is the point of being a wizard if you can't force the laws of physics to sit in a corner and cry softly? That is the appeal of playing a spellcaster, you are constrained by metaphysics, not physics. The key is learning which law is physics and which is meta, if the pauli exclusion principle is physics, magic can ignore it, if it is metaphysical, magic can't. Heroics is bound by the metaphysical definition of what is a fighter feat, where as conjuration (creation) spells are free to ignore the purely physical law of conservation of mass.

[Phaederkiel]

@ gomipile

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14267468&postcount=85


most important parts are (in order of importance):

the stance blood in the water
A Lot of attacks per round, 12 are easily doable.
Keen aptitude adamant kukris
the feat lightning maces (used with kukris)

safety nets to stop blood in the water expiring:
1) avalanche of Blades (has more strikes than your normal routine)
2) bracers of agile striking (use reroll to go on with avalanche)
3) Iron heart lvl 4 Maneuver lightning recovery (reroll as above)

bloodstorm is nice, but not even needed. It just helps when you want to stand on earth.


On the other hand, Blade Storm, the Bloodstorm capstone, might be exactly whats needed to destroy the moon with meelee in FAR less time than thought. You need to get a big enough Blood In The Water going (some 1000 plus, probably), big enough to make sure that you can hit a single 5ft field on the moon AND destroy it by attacking it once. Then you use Blade storm, designating every field of the moon you can see as a target, and adding newly revealed fields as targets during execution.

The adding part might be a little shaky (as does deciding to make 5 ft panels of the moon targets targetable by Blade Storm), but the whole thing is decidedly less cheesy than using self-resetting traps.


what do you think:Is The Way Found?

[Malroth]

However you'd need either 16,345,663,488,000 throwing weapons or 8,172,831,744,000 Maneuvers readied since you need to spend a maneuver readied each time a weapon returns to you.

[Talionis]

However you'd need either 16,345,663,488,000 throwing weapons or 8,172,831,744,000 Maneuvers readied since you need to spend a maneuver readied each time a weapon returns to you.

Not if you use Bloodstorm, the tenth level capstone. "You hurl your weapon and make it seem it is hitting a dozen foes at once... You make a ranged attack with a thrown weapon at your highhest attack bonus against as many targets as you wish..." Within range and cover of you.

The cover part is the problem, but if your range far enough...

[TuggyNE]

Not if you use Bloodstorm, the tenth level capstone. "You hurl your weapon and make it seem it is hitting a dozen foes at once... You make a ranged attack with a thrown weapon at your highhest attack bonus against as many targets as you wish..." Within range and cover of you.

In any case, gloves of endless javelins or similar should be fine for this. Free action activation, no limit on +1 force javelins.

[Greyfeld85]

You have to be at least level 9000.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7KWykbYNqs

[toapat]

You have to be at least level 9000.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7KWykbYNqs

or an Intensified Awakened Fruit Bat whose' DM decided to let you port in the Mouse Cart magic item from previous editions.

who needs +10 weapons when the party Hampster is using a +1 sewing Needle for 115 damage an attack?

[Zetapup]

Duskblade 13 can channel spells into your weapon, so it could be the weapon doing whatever. Everytime it hits the spell goes off. Without Gestalt you can't merge this with level 10 Bloodstorm Blade for infinite hits, but someone else may think of something. Don't forget there are lots of ways to cheat spells on to a spell list and that if necessary there is also Enlightened Fist 7 that can turn rays into touch attacks to be used by Duskblades Channel ability.


You could use the illithid savant to gain the duskblade's channel ability. I believe such a build would still be able to reach Bloodstorm Blade's capstone. I think polymorph any object would work for qualifying, but it smells like cheese.

Edit: Oddly enough, this might also work for the OP's request that the moon's destruction be a passion of the moment sort of thing. Also, I can't believe I just recommended illithid savant for a build. Can't get the cheesy aftertaste out of my mouth :smallyuk:

[Rubik]

You could use the illithid savant to gain the duskblade's channel ability. I believe such a build would still be able to reach Bloodstorm Blade's capstone. I think polymorph any object would work for qualifying, but it smells like cheese.

Edit: Oddly enough, this might also work for the OP's request that the moon's destruction be a passion of the moment sort of thing. Also, I can't believe I just recommended illithid savant for a build. Can't get the cheesy aftertaste out of my mouth :smallyuk:Them'sa gouda brainsa.

[Wings of Peace]

Any one want to run the figures on how many photons fit in a cubic foot? Because, given that photons are always traveling at the speed of light, and assuming you could control their initial heading, that could lead to some spectacular results.

I can't give you the figures for photons but I can give you (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9617348&postcount=21) the figures another post gave a long time ago in another thread electrons came up in.

Edit: This may also be the thread Astral Avenger referenced earlier.

[Astral Avenger]

If the electrons were brought into existance at the same moment already position then it would stand to reason that it might be a way around the pauli exclusion principle (or cause a massive spacetime destroying paradox). You can't really argue "magic can't do that because the laws of physics won't allow it" because magic specifically circumvents what is otherwise natural law (and arguably is part of the natural law of the setting). That being said using magic to set up effects that require a modernish understanding of physics in a midevalish setting is probably just as bad.

Creating a mass of bosons wouldn't violate pauli, so photons, gluons, W, Z, and higgs are still in. Any one want to run the figures on how many photons fit in a cubic foot? Because, given that photons are always traveling at the speed of light, and assuming you could control their initial heading, that could lead to some spectacular results.

Photons cannot have volume as they travel at the speed of light. ( http://www.spacetimetravel.org/tompkins/node1.html) Let’s assume for a moment that do have a finite radius on a plane(they behave like waves hence this assumption), this means that as long as the radius is less than 6” (so that the diameter fits in the 1’ square) we can pack an infinite amount of photons into that 1’ cube. (math is not being explained here due to time constraints. Basically you just keep adding 0 an infinite number of times until you get 1. Because calculus works like that). Each photon caries energy, so we can say you can pack in an infinite amount of energy. Direct this at the moon and we cause a fast enough release of energy that the moon will be vaporized instantly.
So will the earth.
The sun will be blasted away creating a nebula.
The core of the Milky Way will probably also be blasted into a larger nebula.
Seeing as it is an infinite amount of energy, the explosion will still have infinite energy when it gets to Andromeda. That is destroyed too (2,538,000 years later (speed of light delay))
Good job, you (eventually) destroyed the universe.


I can't give you the figures for photons but I can give you (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9617348&postcount=21) the figures another post gave a long time ago in another thread electrons came up in.

Edit: This may also be the thread Astral Avenger referenced earlier.
Yep, that's the one.:smallsmile:



But ultimately what is the point of being a wizard if you can't force the laws of physics to sit in a corner and cry softly?
Mind if I put this in my signature?

[Darth Stabber]

Photons cannot have volume as they travel at the speed of light. ( http://www.spacetimetravel.org/tompkins/node1.html) Let’s assume for a moment that do have a finite radius on a plane(they behave like waves hence this assumption), this means that as long as the radius is less than 6” (so that the diameter fits in the 1’ square) we can pack an infinite amount of photons into that 1’ cube. (math is not being explained here due to time constraints. Basically you just keep adding 0 an infinite number of times until you get 1. Because calculus works like that). Each photon caries energy, so we can say you can pack in an infinite amount of energy. Direct this at the moon and we cause a fast enough release of energy that the moon will be vaporized instantly.
So will the earth.
The sun will be blasted away creating a nebula.
The core of the Milky Way will probably also be blasted into a larger nebula.
Seeing as it is an infinite amount of energy, the explosion will still have infinite energy when it gets to Andromeda. That is destroyed too (2,538,000 years later (speed of light delay))
Good job, you (eventually) destroyed the universe.

Nothing exceeds like excess
But since light is both a wave and particle, shouldn't the particle have some dimensions? If not let's assume we have one photon for each cubic planck's length (round up to 1.6*10^-35M), if we have 1.6 cubic meters then we have 10^35 photons. Each photon has 1eV, and we round 1 eV to 1.6*10^-19 joules that would be 10^16 joules. 1 joule will propel 10kg at 1 meter per second, so we could propel that 10kg at 10,000,000,000,000,000 m/s, which is well in exess of the speed of light, meaning it can't happen, but it's just to give scale. That is more than enough power to wipe out the moon, and every other object in the solar system.

Mind if I put this in my signature?
Don't mind at all

[Astral Avenger]

Nothing exceeds like excess
But since light is both a wave and particle, shouldn't the particle have some dimensions? If not let's assume we have one photon for each cubic planck's length (round up to 1.6*10^-35M), if we have 1.6 cubic meters then we have 10^35 photons. Each photon has 1eV, and we round 1 eV to 1.6*10^-19 joules that would be 10^16 joules. 1 joule will propel 10kg at 1 meter per second, so we could propel that 10kg at 10,000,000,000,000,000 m/s, which is well in exess of the speed of light, meaning it can't happen, but it's just to give scale. That is more than enough power to wipe out the moon, and every other object in the solar system.

1. 1 joule will propel 1kg at 1 meter per second, not 10kg. However, I think we have passed the point where a factor of 10 will make any serious difference.
2. I don't have enough physics training to know if this is horribly wrong or not, but I assumed that light was either a wave (no exclusive area) or a particle traveling at the speed of light. The second would mean that the photons are two dimensional. This allows the infinite number of photon particle/planes in the space. I would say that the Planck length would be a likely radius or diameter of the two dimensional photon circle thingy.

[Wookie-ranger]

I don't have enough physics training to know if this is horribly wrong or not, but I assumed that light was either a wave (no exclusive area) or a particle traveling at the speed of light. The second would mean that the photons are two dimensional. This allows the infinite number of photon particle/planes in the space. I would say that the Planck length would be a likely radius or diameter of the two dimensional photon circle thingy.

You just discovered why quantum physics is ... strange (to say it nicely)
To give you a quote:

If you say, you understand quantum physics and you say that you are not confused, means that you do not understand quantum physics

He is right though, Light is both a particle and a wave at the same time or at least sometimes. It does not make much sense, but it has both characteristics of being a measurable entity as well as the movement of a wave.

See it from this side:
If everything you know, and everything you have ever see is either a solid (such as a rock) or a gas (such as air) our world is pretty simply.
You can define Solids with 'they keep their shape', 'i cannot see though them', 'they fall down' and 'i cannot walk through it'
You can define Gasses with 'they expand as much as they can', 'i can see through the', ' they are not affected by gravity' (i know they are, but lets just go with that) and 'i can walk through them'

so someone brings you a glass of water...
It does not keep its shape,
it will expand but only down and to the sides,
I can only sort of see through it,
It does fall down,
I can walk though it, but with resistance.


Here are some links on the subject:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKS3-npxgls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

[Traab]

Lv 3 Dragonfire Adept with power surge, lingering breath and enlarge breath.

Using Power surge gives your breath a 1 round recharge time qualifying you for metabreath feats

Enlarge Breath increases your breath weapon range by 50% for every round you add to your breath weapon recharge,

30 feet = 9.144 meters
Distance to moon. 384,403,000 M

adding 44 rounds of delay causes your breath weapon to have a range of
509,957,256 meters allowing you hit the moon even if it is slightly farther than earths

Lingering Breath causes your breath weapon to linger as a damaging cloud for 1 round for every 2 rounds you add to its recharge time, since your breath weapon deals 6.75 average damage per round to the moon you could cause your breath weapon to persist long enough to destroy the moon if you delayed your next breath attack by 33,485,540,334,855 days

Will your dragonfire adept live long enough to do that? That many days equals just over 91,993,242,678 YEARS. Im pretty sure by then the moon would have been engulfed by the nearest sun going supernova.

[Forrestfire]

Will your dragonfire adept live long enough to do that? That many days equals just over 91,993,242,678 YEARS. Im pretty sure by then the moon would have been engulfed by the nearest sun going supernova.

I believe the intention is to delay the breath weapon by that many years.

Basically, giving it up to destroy the moon.

[Traab]

I believe the intention is to delay the breath weapon by that many years.

Basically, giving it up to destroy the moon.

You can do that? It sounds a little dubious that you could set it up for that many rounds, even though you would have died billions of years before then and the planet itself wouldnt even exist for billions of years before you reach that point. All of that aside, what stops the attack from doing nothing more than drilling a hole through the moon? Oh sure, now you can see straight through to the other side of it, but its still intact.

[Forrestfire]

You can do that? It sounds a little dubious that you could set it up for that many rounds, even though you would have died billions of years before then and the planet itself wouldnt even exist for billions of years before you reach that point. All of that aside, what stops the attack from doing nothing more than drilling a hole through the moon? Oh sure, now you can see straight through to the other side of it, but its still intact.

Yes, you can, because of how the stacking rules work. Delaying the breath weapon's recharge time can be done however much you want, with the only downside being the extra time.

Also, since it's a cone, it will always be proportional to the length of the breath weapon, so drilling a hole isn't an issue.

[Wookie-ranger]

What if it did not happen recently, but a long long time ago? may be even through natural causes?
And back then a might mage or something created an Illusion of the moon being whole.
Then along comes your mighty sword swinger and waves her sword of dispelling in the wrong direction and BAM no more moon.

you know, just an idea.

[nedz]

He is right though, Light is both a particle and a wave at the same time or at least sometimes. It does not make much sense, but it has both characteristics of being a measurable entity as well as the movement of a wave.

It is a long time since I was fully up to speed on QM, but I came to regard De Broglie's Wave Particle Duality as just a sop to the Grognards.

There's a Feynman quote which goes something like:
If you assume a photon is a particle, and you do the maths, you may get the right answer; but if you assume a photon is a wave, and you do the maths, you will get the right answer.

Photons spend most of their time as energy bound to an atom anyway, time dilation at the speed they move means that they find another atom almost immediately.

[gomipile]

What if it did not happen recently, but a long long time ago? may be even through natural causes?
And back then a might mage or something created an Illusion of the moon being whole.
Then along comes your mighty sword swinger and waves her sword of dispelling in the wrong direction and BAM no more moon.

you know, just an idea.

So The Swordswoman™'s destruction of the moon would be the fantasy equivalent of Mr. Furious lifting a bus in Mystery Men? I like it.

Edit: also, photons are bosons, meaning that an infinite number of them can occupy the same quantum state, which furthur implies that an infinite number of photon wavefunctions can occupy the same area of space. Ultra high photon density is a key feature of space in the moments immediately following the Big Bang.

[PetterTomBos]

Debating particle/wave-duality in D&D propoably kills an infinite amount of catgirls...

You can stack photons, that's excactly what a laser does (has a "make-photons-thingy between two mirrors.) So what you'd make is a giant "one shot" laser.

I disagree with the "ending universe"-thingy. Even if you managed to get them beam completely uniform (with speeds and direction) it would spread somewhat in the atmosphere, and start to get non-uniform with travelling length, and just spread out over a (large) area.

Even if you managed to have an infinite strength laser-beam in one direction, you would only hit a very small fraction of space. Why would it hit the sun? (Unless you aimed it at the moon under a lunar eclipse...)

[Darth Stabber]

Yeah, I realized that after I made my previous post, so I instead just assumed a density of 1 photon per cubic Planck's length. I still say if we are going to use particle physics to destroy celestial objects, we should use neutrons. 1 gram of neutronium would be 6.02*10^23 neutrons, and will be about the size of a pinhead. Neutrons have a half life of 10 minutes, an release 1 MeV when they decay (into one proton and one electron). 1 MeV = 1.6*10^-16 J. Multiply that by the number of neutrons in 1 gram of neutronium (avagadro's number) 1.6*10^-16 * 6.02*10^23 = 96,320,000 joules, which is the equivlent of 22933g of TNT. Keep in mind that only half it will detonate within 10 minutes, making this a more lasting energy release.

Every gram of neutronium = 22933g of tnt (about 50 pounts).

keep in mind all of the figures are rounded off approximations, but on the brightside the catgirls are now gone forever.

[Telok]

A first level warforged commoner and 8,400 gp.

8,400 gp = Candle of Invocation = Gate = Wishes
First wish is for a Necklace of Adaptation
Second wish is for a adamantine weapon
Third wish is to teleport to the moon

This will, eventually, turn the moon into a huge pile of loose gravel that meteorite impacts will scatter out of orbit. Barring, naturally, a meteorite impact on the warforged.
I hope you can wait a very long time.

You know, the OP only said "level" not ECL, a ghost character wielding a gargantuan adamantine shuriken as an improvised melee weapon is both level 1 and is within L1 WBL.

[Traab]

Yes, you can, because of how the stacking rules work. Delaying the breath weapon's recharge time can be done however much you want, with the only downside being the extra time.

Also, since it's a cone, it will always be proportional to the length of the breath weapon, so drilling a hole isn't an issue.

Ah, ok then. You know though, there should by fluff or crunch be a restriction on this, since it seems to me that there are a large number of sore losers out there in canon who would use this mechanic in an instant to destroy the world around them or something as a suicide technique. Or who would be evil enough to destroy the world because world destruction seems to pop up alot on evil plots. Or who would do stuff like, Build up a half a days worth of charges each time they attack so its lethal instantly and they have to wait like a week after they wipe out the party before they can do it again. Which would be a pretty safe gamble generally. A dragon in its cave isnt going to have a lot of random encounters after all. Even if he can only do it once he could still insta gib the most dangerous target then mop up the rest.