what is this? a question thread for newbies (or the uninformed)

[Stake A Vamp]

so, I have noticed, since I started frequenting this forum, that there are a significant number of references than someone new to the forum, or someone who was not there when it started. so i think it would be useful to have a questions thread (if there already is one, then please direct me to it.)

I shall begin:
What is ice assasin?
What is Djiin farming?
What in the nine is Pun-Pun?

[Urpriest]

Ice Assassin is a spell from Frostburn. It's sort of like an improved version of Simulacrum. While it was designed to just give you a perfect duplicate of an enemy to go off and assassinate them, the wording lets it give you a perfect duplicate of any creature that obeys your commands absolutely. I'll let you work out the problem with that.

Djinn farming isn't some sort of special term, presumably it just refers to using Noble Djinn or Efreets or whatever for their wishes, presumably for a low cost per Wish and/or using Wishes to get more Wishes via calling things that grant Wishes.

Pun-Pun isn't from around here. (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19869366/The_most_powerful_character._EVER.)

[ArcturusV]

Ice Assassin is a spell out of Frostburn, one of the "Enviromental" books in 3.5 DnD. It's basically a ridiculously broken spell that allows you to make a snowman Balrog. "Balrog's power is to have all the powers he wants."

Dunno about the Djinn Farming for certain. What I imagine that it is, is using the cheesy, any DM will smack you down hard for this "Wishing for more Wishes" sort of thing. So you summon a Djinn for three wishes. Get two things you want, and the third being a Scroll of Planar Binding/Gate/etc, to summon another Djinn to get another three wishes, etc.

Pun-Pun is a Theoretical Optimization build out there. I've run into a player who tried to pull it off on me, that allows a character to become not only a God, but immortal to even Overdeities and basically to turn any setting in a multiverse into their personal playthings. I forgot most of the details of it. Candle of Invocation was used, and I think Master of Many Forms. It's something that, as I recall from how he tried to explain his plans to me as he set it up that it'd require a very permissive DM to actually allow. When we sat down between adventures and said "Okay, you got 8 months in character to do stuff before the next session" and he tried to explain it, I noped it pretty hard.

[Malroth]

1) Ice assassin is a 9th lv sorcerer/wizard spell that allows you to create an exact duplicate loyal to you of any creature you can get a sample of complete with all levels and abilities.

[Vedhin]

Ice Assassin (http://wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/fw/fw20030124a) is a spell on the WotC website that essentially gives you a duplicate of any creature.

Djiin farming is abusing the fact that Efreeti (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/genie.htm#efreeti) can grant wishes-- typically using one wish to "wish for more wishes"

Pun-Pun is a Kobold who abuses a bunch of things to get the ability Manipulate Form, and then he uses it to give himself every ability ever, and infinite or arbitrarily high numbers in everything.

[Stake A Vamp]

RULE ZERO!:eek: RULE ZERO!:eek: RULE ZERO!:eek:

gods I hope my players never discover these things :smalleek:

[karkus]

I'll get the ball rolling with abbreviations.

IIRC is "If I Recall/Remember Correctly."
OP is "Original Poster," but can alternatively be used as "Original Post" (kind of obvious, but meh).
IMO is "In My Opinion."

What's BBEG? "Big Bad Evil Guy?" That's my best and only guess on that one...

[ArcturusV]

Solutions about it for though Stake A Vamp. One is just realizing when something insanely broken is about to happen and cut it off at the knees. Making it so things like Candles of Invocation are not available. Or just reminding players things like "Oh, we're not in Faerun, there are no _______s here", etc.

[123456789blaaa]

The pun pun thread over on the WOTC boards has got really messed up formatting. I made a new version with vastly improved readability here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6637.0).

Actually I see a lot of people linking to stuff on the WOTC boards. Before you do that I would recommend checking if there is a version over on the minmaxboards (because that one is probably being updated or has been updated from the WOTC version).

[Big Fau]

RULE ZERO!:eek: RULE ZERO!:eek: RULE ZERO!:eek:

gods I hope my players never discover these things :smalleek:

Realistically speaking, no one in their right mind is going to use that in-game. If your players are trying, you need to talk to them OOC and find out why they are trying to ruin the game. Ice Assassin's existence is fairly difficult for the un-initiated to find (even though it is on the web, a majority of the Google hits will show people on the forums talking about the spell instead of the spell itself).

Pun-Pun is trivial to stop (disallow the Sharruhk), and infinite wishes can have serious repercussions (just twist the wishes as much as possible to dissuade them).


What's BBEG? "Big Bad Evil Guy?" That's my best and only guess on that one...

Correct.

[eggynack]

I'll get the ball rolling with abbreviations.

IIRC is "If I Recall/Remember Correctly."
OP is "Original Poster," but can alternatively be used as "Original Post" (kind of obvious, but meh).
IMO is "In My Opinion."

What's BBEG? "Big Bad Evil Guy?" That's my best and only guess on that one...
I don't think he asked for abbreviation stuff, but if he needs it, this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18512) has just about all of them. It's a pretty cool resource for folks that aren't up on all of the site and culture specific terminology.

[Urpriest]

The pun pun thread over on the WOTC boards has got really messed up formatting. I made a new version with vastly improved readability here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6637.0).

Actually I see a lot of people linking to stuff on the WOTC boards. Before you do that I would recommend checking if there is a version over on the minmaxboards (because that one is probably being updated or has been updated from the WOTC version).

In general, I agree. However, I was trying to make the point that Pun-Pun is a WOTC meme, not a minmaxboards meme or a giantitp meme.

[elonin]

I'm sure that if you go to any role play forum they'll know of pun-pun. I've even seen it mentioned on the bethsoft forum.

[Urpriest]

I'm sure that if you go to any role play forum they'll know of pun-pun. I've even seen it mentioned on the bethsoft forum.

Precisely. It's an old, ubiquitous meme from the old WotC boards, not a meme indigenous to this community.

[Malroth]

Ice assassin isn't that bad without using wish cheese to get around its highly restrictive material components. Normally the spell requires a part of the creature being cloned (usually implying that they already defeated it once) and 200,000 GP worth of diamonds (almost 1/3 their expected WBL). Its only when they use the much cheaper candle of invocation to gate in an Efreeti lord and wish for a scroll of Ice Assasin to get around its cost that the truly cheesy uses start happening.

[Eldariel]

Ice assassin isn't that bad without using wish cheese to get around its highly restrictive material components. Normally the spell requires a part of the creature being cloned (usually implying that they already defeated it once) and 200,000 GP worth of diamonds (almost 1/3 their expected WBL). Its only when they use the much cheaper candle of invocation to gate in an Efreeti lord and wish for a scroll of Ice Assasin to get around its cost that the truly cheesy uses start happening.

Even then, the only restricting factor is the part of creature being cloned. Which isn't really a good restriction since e.g. the eternal war between heaven and hell has many casualties, there are dead deities as islands on the Astral Plane and so on. It's not terribly hard to find something worth cloning for 20k + 5k XP in any setting with powerful creatures period.

It's not as strong as getting it for free but still, loyal deity for 20k gp isn't really within the paradigms for a 9th level spell; at the very least divine ranks and such need to be disallowed (again, restricting access to components is just highly impractical and determines too many aspects about the settings that you should be free to decide). And Ice Assassin's idea suggests it should require for the target to still be alive.

[TuggyNE]

Ice assassin isn't that bad without using wish cheese to get around its highly restrictive material components. Normally the spell requires a part of the creature being cloned (usually implying that they already defeated it once)

You don't need wish cheese, but you do need cheese. Specifically, the observation that there is no listed price for the component, combined with the ability of the Core spell component pouch to supply any component without a listed cost for free, indefinitely.

… Yeah. :smallsigh:

[ArcturusV]

Yeah, that's one thing you might want to consider in your own games. Most people combine "Priceless" and "Valueless" into one thing. The eyelash of a God (As required for making an Aleax), is Priceless. You can't put a price on it. There's nowhere near enough of them floating around to have a market for it. Compare to Bat Guano for a Fireball. There's a lot out there. Basically every cave complex and dungeon in the world. And DnD history shows us any village, hamlet, or major city is within a few day's hike of at least 4 such locations.

It's like claiming I can cast Apocalypse from the Sky (Requires an Artifact as a material component) because all of them have no GP price (They're Priceless)... and since Apocalypse from the Sky doesn't actually destroy the material component (Artifacts can only be destroyed in certain ways, and Material Component isn't one of them), I can basically pull any artifact I could ever want out of a small pouch on my belt for the cost of a single level 9 spell slot.