How would you kill an Aboleth? (esp if you had 20 golems?)

[unseenmage]

TLDR: Could 20x Advanced 27HD Shield Guardians beat an Aboleth Mage to death with their bare stone fists?

My DM just keep shaking his head and telling me this Aboleth has class levels too but I'm pretty sure my 20x Advanced to 27HD Shield Guardians can take it. The Aboleth is confined to a single Underdark lake less than a day's walk from the nearest surface city. I can request troops from the city but they'd be considered mooks. The Aboleth has Red Wizard and Drow minions/allies but I'm only tasked with the Aboleth's destruction.

I have 2,016,000gp and could buy up to 42 non-epic priced items or mindless constructs as-is from the books. I already have 20x Huge Shield Guardians, 3x Drakestone Golems, 30x 3HD Clockroaches, several Effigies, and a system of Ring Gates/Planar Ring Gates in the bottom of my Handy Haversack so I can grab whatever I want from back home.

On top of all that my character and 5 of the constructs are equipped as 20th level characters. Only my character and one of the constructs has 20th level armor and weapons though.

My idea was to go buy a bunch of Staffs/scrolls/whatevers of Rock to Lava and just start melting the ceiling over the lake. Then after I thought about it I started to wonder if the Shield Guardians couldn't just wade in and drag this thing out by the gills.

TLDR: Could 20x Advanced 27HD Shield Guardians beat an Aboleth Mage to death with their bare stone fists?

Edit: Because of -It's some other player's precious gameworld.- no Wish, Gate, Miracle, or arcane Genesis allowed. (Sorry Tippy. :smallwink:)

Edit again: Turns out it is an epic manifester AND an epic wizard, AND it has Thayan Red Wizard allies AND it has Drow allies.
So basically I'm boned. Should be fun though.

Edit again again: Draining the lake via summoned monsters coming up from underneath with Staffs of Excavate (U58) and/or Cubic Gate (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Cubic_Gate)s is the current plan. The Aboleth is still going to be a formidable foe but that water has got to go so it can even be engaged.

[Boci]

Depends on the spells the mage has avaiulable, both in level and choices. Theres an 8th level spell that lasts 1 round per level that makes all iron pass harmlessly through you, and what about teleport, can you be sure the mage simply won't retreat?

[Galvin]

The shield guardians could take it. They could just beat it to death. The guardians are immune to mind affecting spells and effects, rendering it immune to the aboleth's enlave ability. If one of them grappled it it couldn't cast. I think the shield guardian would probably destroy the aboleth in 3-4 rounds, tops.

[Galvin]

Depends on the spells the mage has avaiulable, both in level and choices. Theres an 8th level spell that lasts 1 round per level that makes all iron pass harmlessly through you, and what about teleport, can you be sure the mage simply won't retreat?

The aboleth mage is a 10th level wizard, not being able to cast 8th level spells, unless, of course, his DM advanced it's wizard level.

[Lord Haart]

If the aboleth is played cleverly as an aboleth should be played (and as it is played in my still unfulfilled dreams), then no and no again.

[unseenmage]

Depends on the spells the mage has avaiulable, both in level and choices. Theres an 8th level spell that lasts 1 round per level that makes all iron pass harmlessly through you, and what about teleport, can you be sure the mage simply won't retreat?

The Dragon who hired me just wants the Aboleth's territory, he doesn't much care how he gets it.

Not sure what "extra" levels the DM gave the thing. I know it has more than what's listed in the book. But then again, all the creatures in this world are Gestalt. The Shield Guardians probably have NPC class levels too.

It's a mess.

Edit: For you kind people he's informed me that it's an Elder Aboleth with, "elderaboleth creature lvls next to psion the lvls of psion and wizard up to 22." Quote directly from our chat conversation.

Edit again: DM says it's Gargantuan sized. And that he's not telling me anything else till next game. :smallsmile:
Insists he did plan for me having so much access to gp though so we'll see how it goes.

I am still curious as to how The Playground would handle the situation though. As a longtime DM the character knowledge vs player knowledge seperation trick is easily accomplished.

[Boci]

The Dragon who hired me just wants the Aboleth's territory, he doesn't much care how he gets it.

Not sure what "extra" levels the DM gave the thing. I know it has more than what's listed in the book. But then again, all the creatures in this world are Gestalt. The Shield Guardians probably have NPC class levels too.

It's a mess.

Edit: For you kind people he's informed me that it's an Elder Aboleth with, "elderaboleth creature lvls next to psion the lvls of psion and wizard up to 22." Quote directly from our chat conversation.

Wait it has 22 wizards casting a psionic manifestation? Then no. Well, maybe, but probably not. You could force it to reteat, but even then it can just return the next day at full power and chip away a bit more at your defences.

All depends on how smartly it will be played.

[Lapak]

First problems that occur to me:
- Shield Guardians obey the wearer of a particular magical amulet. How are you commanding dozens of them, since in practical terms you can only be wearing one magic amulet at a time?

- Shield Guardians don't have a swim speed or any special ability to see through water; if this lake is of any size to speak of finding the thing will be difficult and you'd have to enchant them or equip them to even engage it unless it's sitting on the floor of the lake for no good reason.

- Per your latest update, it's an epic-level caster/manifester. Anything other than buffs specifically cast to avoid being Dispelled are going to be kaput.

- It's an epic-level caster; engaging it in melee is likely to be near-impossible.

- It's an epic-level manifester; even if you got one of them to grapple it in melee it can manifest with no particular difficulty.

- It's an Aboleth; for every minion you've got it's probably a bunch of its own. (And they're more likely to be adapted to the environment of the lake.)

EDIT: Original plan is also sub-optimal; lakes have a lot of water in them. Like, a LOT of water. Rock to Lava transmutes what, a single 10' cube? It'll drop into the lake with a very impressive cloud of steam and then transmute quite naturally back into rock without having any real effect on the temperature of the lake.

[Fouredged Sword]

- It's an epic caster, it's not constrained to a lake. It can go literally anywhere and survive any environment, flying through space without a space suit if needed.

[unseenmage]

- Shield Guardians obey the wearer of a particular magical amulet. How are you commanding dozens of them, since in practical terms you can only be wearing one magic amulet at a time?

Rod of Construct Control and modified Shield Guardians so that the possessor of the Amulet commands them not the wearer. That or each Shield Guardian wears the Amulet of the another's with me wearing the one at the end of that chain. A little Sovereign Glue and that could work too. Honestly we'd just assumed "magic" at this point. Their gameworld's already borked to no end after all. That and my character's telepathic with all constructs within a goodly radius.


- Shield Guardians don't have a swim speed or any special ability to see through water; if this lake is of any size to speak of finding the thing will be difficult and you'd have to enchant them or equip them to even engage it unless it's sitting on the floor of the lake for no good reason.

For the wading in and fighting the Shield Guardians were just going to line up at one end of the lake and march to the other. But yeah, it might get deep enough for the Aboleth to swim over them that way. Good point.


- Per your latest update, it's an epic-level caster/manifester. Anything other than buffs specifically cast to avoid being Dispelled are going to be kaput.

- It's an epic-level caster; engaging it in melee is likely to be near-impossible.

- It's an epic-level manifester; even if you got one of them to grapple it in melee it can manifest with no particular difficulty.

Today's the first I knew it was epic. With that knowledge I'm figuring the Dragon asked me to do this so I'd throw $$$ at the problem and drain the Aboleth's resources for the day while the Dragon swooped in at the end and ate it whole. It's an epic Dragon too. He just finds my little Artificer amusing.


- It's an Aboleth; for every minion you've got it's probably a bunch of its own. (And they're more likely to be adapted to the environment of the lake.)

And that's what I'll be asking the soldiery of the nearby City to take care of. They benefit too if the Aboleth is taken out of the picture. They benefit a great deal. They'll probably even do it for free.


Original plan is also sub-optimal; lakes have a lot of water in them. Like, a LOT of water. Rock to Lava transmutes what, a single 10' cube? It'll drop into the lake with a very impressive cloud of steam and then transmute quite naturally back into rock without having any real effect on the temperature of the lake.

Figured all the Constructs each activating an item of Rock to Lava each all targeting the ceiling over the lake would equal boiled Aboleth. Or at least would equal hot-foot Aboleth flying out of the water through a rain of lava.
20+30+6 (the 6 is me and my 5 good constructs) = quite a lot of 15 foot pools of lava, even rolling for 20's with UMD.

Thanks for bringing all these issues up. Feel free to keep it coming. This is exactly the sort of discussion I was looking for.

[Lapak]

Rod of Construct Control and modified Shield Guardians so that the possessor of the Amulet commands them not the wearer. That or each Shield Guardian wears the Amulet of the another's with me wearing the one at the end of that chain. A little Sovereign Glue and that could work too. Honestly we'd just assumed "magic" at this point. Their gameworld's already borked to no end after all. That and my character's telepathic with all constructs within a goodly radius.Fair enough, I was just checking on that since you named the constructs specifically.
For the wading in and fighting the Shield Guardians were just going to line up at one end of the lake and march to the other. But yeah, it might get deep enough for the Aboleth to swim over them that way. Good point. See the end of this for my commentary on lakes, because it's going to be your single biggest problem (literally!) in pretty much every aspect of this question.

Today's the first I knew it was epic. With that knowledge I'm figuring the Dragon asked me to do this so I'd throw $$$ at the problem and drain the Aboleth's resources for the day while the Dragon swooped in at the end and ate it whole. It's an epic Dragon too. He just finds my little Artificer amusing. That's a whole different kettle of fish, to use an appropriate metaphor.
And that's what I'll be asking the soldiery of the nearby City to take care of. They benefit too if the Aboleth is taken out of the picture. They benefit a great deal. They'll probably even do it for free.Well, ok, but unless the local soldiery is pretty potent they're going to ADD to the Aboleth's forces rather than chip away at it. Mass Charm Person or Mass Suggestion, "Walk into the lake!", battle is 90% over, Aboleth has fun new people to play with.
Figured all the Constructs each activating an item of Rock to Lava each all targeting the ceiling over the lake would equal boiled Aboleth. Or at least would equal hot-foot Aboleth flying out of the water through a rain of lava.
20+30+6 (the 6 is me and my 5 good constructs) = quite a lot of 15 foot pools of lava, even rolling for 20's with UMD.

Thanks for bringing all these issues up. Feel free to keep it coming. This is exactly the sort of discussion I was looking for.It's an interesting question, and I'm glad to help!

Now, your Big Problem: Lakes. They are big. Let's take a middling-sized lake like Sebago Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebago_Lake) in Maine. It's not huge, as lakes go, but it spreads over 30,000 acres and is 300 feet deep at the deepest point. You would need one heck of a lot of Golems to execute plan 'Line up and march across the bottom' with any hope of success, even if Enemy Aboleth is kind enough to hang out on the bottom for them. It has 995 BILLION gallons of water in it. You can burn all the charges in all the staffs in your arsenal without making a dent in the volume or doing more than randomly scattershotting rocks at whatever is hidden below. It would be like chucking single chunks of charcoal into an Olympic swimming pool and trying to hit a particular tadpole swimming around, only worse.

Well, okay, Sebago isn't a small lake; maybe the Aboleth's lair isn't that big. Except that even small lakes aren't; let's take Walden Pond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Pond) as an example. That's an itty-bitty thing as lakes go, probably too small to be worthwhile to an Aboleth, but it's still 61 acres (a lot of territory) 100 feet deep, and measures its inflow/outflow of water in terms of hundreds of thousands of cubic meters per year. In a body of water that size, one of your plans might be feasible, but it's about as small a body of water as anyone is going to dignify with the term 'lake.' A lot of your strategy is going to revolve around how much water we're talking about and how willing the Aboleth is to come fight your forces directly.

[unseenmage]

It's an interesting question, and I'm glad to help!

Now, your Big Problem: Lakes. They are big. Let's take a middling-sized lake like Sebago Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebago_Lake) in Maine. It's not huge, as lakes go, but it spreads over 30,000 acres and is 300 feet deep at the deepest point. You would need one heck of a lot of Golems to execute plan 'Line up and march across the bottom' with any hope of success, even if Enemy Aboleth is kind enough to hang out on the bottom for them. It has 995 BILLION gallons of water in it. You can burn all the charges in all the staffs in your arsenal without making a dent in the volume or doing more than randomly scattershotting rocks at whatever is hidden below. It would be like chucking single chunks of charcoal into an Olympic swimming pool and trying to hit a particular tadpole swimming around, only worse.

Well, okay, Sebago isn't a small lake; maybe the Aboleth's lair isn't that big. Except that even small lakes aren't; let's take Walden Pond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Pond) as an example. That's an itty-bitty thing as lakes go, probably too small to be worthwhile to an Aboleth, but it's still 61 acres (a lot of territory) 100 feet deep, and measures its inflow/outflow of water in terms of hundreds of thousands of cubic meters per year. In a body of water that size, one of your plans might be feasible, but it's about as small a body of water as anyone is going to dignify with the term 'lake.' A lot of your strategy is going to revolve around how much water we're talking about and how willing the Aboleth is to come fight your forces directly.

For this, as I suspect my DM has finally deigned to get some sleep, I refer to the Underdark book and what it has to say on lakes.

"Lake: A standing body of water of any size. What upperworlders
might call a puddle may be a lake in the Underdark."

So it could be a true lake or it could just be a puddle. No way to know till next time we game. We could assume though that it's more on the small side as this is an Aboleth out of its element and relying on two different factions for help.

Good point about the soldiery and Mass Suggestion. Any way to guard against that? Maybe just keep them on archery duty?


Edit: News from my insomniac DM,
"Lake is around Sebago size, in a long s shape with the bottom curl being the deepest part, and the part with no easy land entrance other then tunneling right to its edge. Even though its a s shape, it still is wider them 60 of those huge shield guardians arm to arm with 8 foot gaps between them. Visibility in the water is about 10 feet assuming you have a light source. " "A lot wider them them actually. I'd rather not map it out directly"
"You guys traveled for hours and saw it from multiple tunnels. Never saw more the the top curl of the s really, and a bit around its curl"

So yeah. Definitely going to need a better plan... Maybe I could find a Sphere of Annihilation lying around somewhere...

[Spuddles]

Make intelligent at will items that cast twinned repeated sculpted empowered maximized hail of stone at CL5. Use metamagic tricks to keep them cheap, so with sanctum spell, arcane thesis, practical metamagic, easy metamagic, we end up with a level zero spell times cl 5 as our base spell price.

Use mirror move and craft contingent chaos shuffles to reshuffle feats for metamagic needed for your item.

A single one does an average of 105 damage in a 20ft radius, no save, no sr, and no damage type.

The price is 0.5 x 5 x 2000 x 2 for a slotless at will, or 10,000. Not sure on tye price of making them intelligent, but I would just haunt shift homonculus into them.

At ten grand a piece, and 2million to play with, that's at least 200 of them you can make. With optimal crafting reduction, you can reduce the price of them by 95%. That increases the number you can have to 4,000. Hope you have a lot of things to haunt shift :)

Each round after the first you can fill 130 million cubic feet with 100 no save, no SR damage. Or you could target the same spot 4,000 times for 400,000 damage per round.

[unseenmage]

Make intelligent at will items that cast twinned repeated sculpted empowered maximized hail of stone at CL5. Use metamagic tricks to keep them cheap, so with sanctum spell, arcane thesis, practical metamagic, easy metamagic, we end up with a level zero spell times cl 5 as our base spell price.

Use mirror move and craft contingent chaos shuffles to reshuffle feats for metamagic needed for your item.

A single one does an average of 105 damage in a 20ft radius, no save, no sr, and no damage type.

The price is 0.5 x 5 x 2000 x 2 for a slotless at will, or 10,000. Not sure on tye price of making them intelligent, but I would just haunt shift homonculus into them.

At ten grand a piece, and 2million to play with, that's at least 200 of them you can make. With optimal crafting reduction, you can reduce the price of them by 95%. That increases the number you can have to 4,000. Hope you have a lot of things to haunt shift :)

Each round after the first you can fill 130 million cubic feet with 100 no save, no SR damage. Or you could target the same spot 4,000 times for 400,000 damage per round.

That is an excellent suggestion. However, I have only 2 weeks until this fight happens. For our game custom items are researched like custom spells only we replace SL with CL.

I suppose I could try to diplomacy the Dragon into giving me more time but that's more likely to get me eaten than anything else. (LE Shadow Dragon with an unknown number of caster levels and Gestalt caster alongside all of that. In case anyone was wondering.)

[Traab]

Make intelligent at will items that cast twinned repeated sculpted empowered maximized hail of stone at CL5. Use metamagic tricks to keep them cheap, so with sanctum spell, arcane thesis, practical metamagic, easy metamagic, we end up with a level zero spell times cl 5 as our base spell price.

Use mirror move and craft contingent chaos shuffles to reshuffle feats for metamagic needed for your item.

A single one does an average of 105 damage in a 20ft radius, no save, no sr, and no damage type.

The price is 0.5 x 5 x 2000 x 2 for a slotless at will, or 10,000. Not sure on tye price of making them intelligent, but I would just haunt shift homonculus into them.

At ten grand a piece, and 2million to play with, that's at least 200 of them you can make. With optimal crafting reduction, you can reduce the price of them by 95%. That increases the number you can have to 4,000. Hope you have a lot of things to haunt shift :)

Each round after the first you can fill 130 million cubic feet with 100 no save, no SR damage. Or you could target the same spot 4,000 times for 400,000 damage per round.

Hmm, what happens if He just uses that to fill in the deepest parts of the lake? He could basically remove the deep water it wants to hide in. Or to barricade it in a far more narrow section of the lake so it can only move around in a small portion of the lake. If he can pin it in at the smallest area of the lake, it should be easier to nail that sucker.

*EDIT* Responded before the reply came in. I am no expert, but is there some other way you can block the aboleth in a much smaller section of the lake?

[unseenmage]

Hmm, what happens if He just uses that to fill in the deepest parts of the lake? He could basically remove the deep water it wants to hide in. Or to barricade it in a far more narrow section of the lake so it can only move around in a small portion of the lake. If he can pin it in at the smallest area of the lake, it should be easier to nail that sucker.

*EDIT* Responded before the reply came in. I am no expert, but is there some other way you can block the aboleth in a much smaller section of the lake?

I had thought about just buying a bunch of Juggernauts, they have at will Forcecage and Wall of Force. But at it's level it'd just teleport out. Maybe a resetting trap of Teleport Object or somethign similar to actually remove the lake?

DM says the thing collapsed the waterway behind itself when it claimed this area... The Druid spell that raises and lowers water levels comes to mind too...

[Spuddles]

Hmm, what happens if He just uses that to fill in the deepest parts of the lake? He could basically remove the deep water it wants to hide in. Or to barricade it in a far more narrow section of the lake so it can only move around in a small portion of the lake. If he can pin it in at the smallest area of the lake, it should be easier to nail that sucker.

*EDIT* Responded before the reply came in. I am no expert, but is there some other way you can block the aboleth in a much smaller section of the lake?

It'd just raise the floor of the lake. I guess it's a way to drain the lake 130million cubic feet a round while slaughtering all the drow.

[Traab]

It'd just raise the floor of the lake. I guess it's a way to drain the lake 130million cubic feet a round while slaughtering all the drow. Well apparently that plan to create all those items wont work, I just wondered if there was another way to basically drop a dam into the lake to restrict the battlefield to something a bit more workable than "A gazillion square feet of open water"Pin him in his deep dark hole of water so 90% of the lake is blocked from his movement, then work on your other plans.


I had thought about just buying a bunch of Juggernauts, they have at will Forcecage and Wall of Force. But at it's level it'd just teleport out. Maybe a resetting trap of Teleport Object or somethign similar to actually remove the lake?

DM says the thing collapsed the waterway behind itself when it claimed this area... The Druid spell that raises and lowers water levels comes to mind too...

Hmm, any way to slap down a wide ring of antimagic fields or something similar then send in the ground troops to beat it till it goes squish? I figure, engulf it in antimagic fields, then place the walls of force and such just outside the antimagic so it cant cast anything and cant just swim out.

[Tanuki Tales]

Is it an Epic Spellcaster AND an Epic Manifester, or is it just Epic and a Spellcaster and a Manifester?

Because if this thing is rocking both 9th level powers and 9th level spells, you're going to have to out Tier 1 it.

[Spuddles]

1000 haunt shifted lyres of building?

[erikun]

DM says the thing collapsed the waterway behind itself when it claimed this area... The Druid spell that raises and lowers water levels comes to mind too...
Why not just open up the waterway and drain the lake that way? After all, you want to move the aboleth out; you don't care where it goes afterwards.

The biggest problem is just getting rid of all that water. At nearly one trillion gallons of water, there isn't going to be anything you can do to it directly. (No, you don't have enough money to Dust of Dryness the entire mass away.) Some kind of portal in a deep portion of the lake will help empty it out, and limit where the aboleth can go.

Perhaps try talking with the aboleth? If the dragon wants it out, and if there's someplace else the aboleth would rather be, then a simply Gate spell to the appropriate place would be the simplest solution to your problem.

[Boci]

Why do the dragon need the Aboleth lands? Just so we know what structural damage is acceptable.

[unseenmage]

Well apparently that plan to create all those items wont work, I just wondered if there was another way to basically drop a dam into the lake to restrict the battlefield to something a bit more workable than "A gazillion square feet of open water"Pin him in his deep dark hole of water so 90% of the lake is blocked from his movement, then work on your other plans.



Hmm, any way to slap down a wide ring of antimagic fields or something similar then send in the ground troops to beat it till it goes squish? I figure, engulf it in antimagic fields, then place the walls of force and such just outside the antimagic so it cant cast anything and cant just swim out.

Not sure. I've been looking for a list of 7th-9th level spells that could terraform the area. To my knowledge one could stack some Metamagic onto an Antimagic Field spell and cover quite an area, just not sure if it's be big enough to encompass the lake.


Is it an Epic Spellcaster AND an Epic Manifester, or is it just Epic and a Spellcaster and a Manifester?

Because if this thing is rocking both 9th level powers and 9th level spells, you're going to have to out Tier 1 it.

Yeah, it's both a Manifester and a Spellcaster. Or so I gather.
DM gave me nigh infinite gp via a Spell Turret of Distill Joy and Elation and the DM claims he's prepared for me to "go all moneybags on the situation".


1000 haunt shifted lyres of building?

This idea intrigues me, could you explain? Not sure what 'haunt shifted' means.



Why not just open up the waterway and drain the lake that way? After all, you want to move the aboleth out; you don't care where it goes afterwards.

The biggest problem is just getting rid of all that water. At nearly one trillion gallons of water, there isn't going to be anything you can do to it directly. (No, you don't have enough money to Dust of Dryness the entire mass away.) Some kind of portal in a deep portion of the lake will help empty it out, and limit where the aboleth can go.

Perhaps try talking with the aboleth? If the dragon wants it out, and if there's someplace else the aboleth would rather be, then a simply Gate spell to the appropriate place would be the simplest solution to your problem.

I diplomacy/planning-ed my way past the last Aboleth. But he was just trying to get outta town. The current Aboleth is actively involved somehow with the Drow and Red Wizards and trying to overthrow this nation I'm extra involved in the well being of.

So no, from what I know so far this Aboleth is here to stay if it has anything to say about it.


Why do the dragon need the Aboleth lands? Just so we know what structural damage is acceptable.

The Dragon found itself displaced by the Drow somehow. Something to do with he lost half his Hoard about the same time the surface city overtop this whole mess was pulled down into the Underdark and returned to the surface in a single night.
Since then two more cities have been pulled down in the allied nation to the North but not brought back up. The assumption is that they'll be returned to the surface when they've been conquered and repurposed. Mythals plus darkness equals Underdark invasion of the surface.

The Dragon just said it wants the Aboleth's "territory". Doubt it much cares about the condition of the area. It's perfectly capable of terraforming it into whatever it requires from what I've seen.

[Spuddles]

Haunt Shift, from Libris Mortis, let's you turn undead into haunting presences, which, among other things, allows them to possess and animate objects. It is the easiest way to get a flying ship, for instance. You can find the spell via google. Not sure how anal mods are about linking to certain dnd sites.

A lyre of building costs 13,000 gp. Using crafting tricks, you can make one a day at 5% of that price. PAO a bunch of animated objects into dedicated wright homunculi. Since you are their creator, they can each make a lyre a day. You should be able to afford a lot of lyres- 3,000 or so. The first half hour of playing should give you 30,000,000 man days of labor. That oughta be worth something, eh?

[unseenmage]

Haunt Shift, from Libris Mortis, let's you turn undead into haunting presences, which, among other things, allows them to possess and animate objects. It is the easiest way to get a flying ship, for instance. You can find the spell via google. Not sure how anal mods are about linking to certain dnd sites.

A lyre of building costs 13,000 gp. Using crafting tricks, you can make one a day at 5% of that price. PAO a bunch of animated objects into dedicated wright homunculi. Since you are their creator, they can each make a lyre a day. You should be able to afford a lot of lyres- 3,000 or so. The first half hour of playing should give you 30,000,000 man days of labor. That oughta be worth something, eh?


Wow. Just wow.
The only part of that that doesn't work is the multiple Dedicated Wrights. Whether its just our campaign or not I'm not sure off the top of my head but my character is only allowed one D.Wright.

The Profession Mining skill in Races of the Dragon would apply with that many man-hours of work but wouldn't you still make progress by number of days? Or does the Lyre pare that time down some?

[Spuddles]

Relevant RAW regarding the lyre:
"The lyre is also useful with respect to building. Once a week its strings can be strummed so as to produce chords that magically construct buildings, mines, tunnels, ditches, or whatever. The effect produced in but 30 minutes of playing is equal to the work of 100 humans laboring for three days. Each hour after the first, a character playing the lyre must make a DC 18 Perform (string instruments) check. If it fails, she must stop and cannot play the lyre again for this purpose until a week has passed."

So, it being magic, you get 300 man-days of labor after "but 30 minutes of playing."

[unseenmage]

Okay, I'm laying on the cheese but the DM is asking a 9th level Gestalt Artificer Techsmith/Cleric of Gond to take on an epic manifesting epic spellcasting gargantuan magic slugfish and his color coded alliance of terror.

Problems I'm having due to unfamiliarity:
- Will Megalodon Empowerment (St118) and Body of War (SC35) stack?
- How to get my unintelligent golems affected by Megalodon Empowerment?
- Can Metamagics be stacked onto staffs/scrolls say like Persist and Extend of a level 7 spell?
- What the heck are the rules for spellcasting at things in water?

Finding an NPC to buy Divine Metamagiced Persist Extend scrolls off of won't be a problem if it's possible. I can Planeshift and Greater Teleport to planar metropolises to buy what I need. Heck I even have extraplanar brokers on retainer to buy what I need for me.

If I can resolve the above I'll use (possibly metamagiced) Energy Transformation Field (MoF92) at the bottom of a Portable Hole to buff the local human army with Persist and Extend ME and BoW.
I'll hit the golems with similarly metamagiced Golem Immunity (RoE186) and ME.

I'll set up some of the elites of the military with a couple of overlapping ETFed Portable Holes. One hole targets with Deceptive Twin Repeat Binding and Temporal Stasis spells. The other hits the elite with Greater Construct Essence (183) or something similar so they don't qualify as a "living creature" for the ETF to target.

As for getting the Aboleth out of the water... that I'm still working on. So far using staffs of the Excavate (U58) spell to literally march up under the lake and Etherealness to escape the resultant deluge seems like the best plan. Just flush the problem away.

Thoughts? Is my first attempt at applied cheese moldy and misinterpreted?

[Traab]

Can you open a rift to a demiplane or something that could drain even a portion of the lake? Im not sure on the math but a demiplane is 1 cubic mile, so if you could combine it with the dam option you could conceivably drain the portion of its lake it is trapped in.

[unseenmage]

Can you open a rift to a demiplane or something that could drain even a portion of the lake? Im not sure on the math but a demiplane is 1 cubic mile, so if you could combine it with the dam option you could conceivably drain the portion of its lake it is trapped in.

I don't think so. To my knowledge building gateways is like building a magic item, with progress measured in weeks per thousand gp of Market Price. That and the Gate spell itself is disallowed.

I found the Excavate spell (Underdark book) and was considering Scrying for an Underdark bottomless chasm beneath the lake, Greater Teleport in and send a large number of Celestial winged creatures up under the lake with Staffs of Excavate thereby draining the lake.

I just need the logistics on how fast a summoned flying creature can dig upwards with a Staff of Excavate and how far 50 charges will get them so I can compare it to other options.

[Traab]

Ok, easy fix. Get as many copies of water to wine as you can, then transmute the lake around the aboleth. It will become so drunk that it will fizzle all of its spells, and be far easier to kill. /nod :smallbiggrin:

[unseenmage]

Ok, easy fix. Get as many copies of water to wine as you can, then transmute the lake around the aboleth. It will become so drunk that it will fizzle all of its spells, and be far easier to kill. /nod :smallbiggrin:

That could be hilarious.
I so want a spell that inebriates creatures from afar now. (seriously adding to list of custom spells to research)

[Grayson01]

Is there a Spell that could Open a Gate to the Elemental Plane of Fire or Air right smack dap in the Middle of the Lake? That would drain the lake pretty well, or use wish to wish all the water out of the lake?

[chronomatophobe]

If nothing's off the table, there's always the Locate City bomb.

[LTwerewolf]

I believe the proper way to play an aboleth is to use all their abilities to their fullest. That means you're not fighting the aboleth, you're fighting his 800 closest friends.

[Canadian1dollar]

Gate key, Cubic gate - good bye water
volley of greater slaying arrow - 40% chance of this working
Mirror of Life Trapping - 45% of this working
Staff of Necromancy (Epic Magic Staff) 85% chance this working

?????

take the money and run?

[unseenmage]

Is there a Spell that could Open a Gate to the Elemental Plane of Fire or Air right smack dap in the Middle of the Lake? That would drain the lake pretty well, or use wish to wish all the water out of the lake?

I did mention in the OP that Wish, Gate, and arcane Genesis were off the table. Sorry.


If nothing's off the table, there's always the Locate City bomb.

Would that actually do anything against something immersed in that much water?


I believe the proper way to play an aboleth is to use all their abilities to their fullest. That means you're not fighting the aboleth, you're fighting his 800 closest friends.

I think I'll try recruiting the local military to fight them. Planning to equip the front line with a few Staffs of Energy Transformation Field w/Binding and a couple of Greater Construct Essence effects to keep the ETFields from targeting them. (I think that'll work.)


Gate key, Cubic gate - good bye water
volley of greater slaying arrow - 40% chance of this working
Mirror of Life Trapping - 45% of this working
Staff of Necromancy (Epic Magic Staff) 85% chance this working

?????

take the money and run?

Those... are some good suggestions. Thank you. Reading up on Cubic Gate and Gate Key now.

[LTwerewolf]

Remember that anyone you bring with you that isn't immune to mind affecting is likely to end up against you. Aboleths have lived for eons and don't stay alive by allowing people to know where they live. Keep in mind the place you think he is may not actually be where he is.

[unseenmage]

Remember that anyone you bring with you that isn't immune to mind affecting is likely to end up against you. Aboleths have lived for eons and don't stay alive by allowing people to know where they live. Keep in mind the place you think he is may not actually be where he is.

That is part of what the Energy Transformation Fields are for. Input magic effects, output Binding spells. :smallcool: That's the plan at least.

At a 40 foot diameter each and 50 charges per staff should be able to drop quite the quasi-antimagic area. Especially against the Red Wizards and Drow allies of that Aboleth.

[LTwerewolf]

Until you run into an antimagic field or dispel magic. Also requires quite a few actions to do, and who's to say the aboleth isn't into scry and fry? There's likely to be multiple battles, not one big one, when facing off against one, and if you start to win they'll have an exit strategy, probably before you ever see them. They've lived for eons, they're not careless.


Not trying to dissuade you or say it can't be done, just wanting to make sure you're taking care of every avenue.

[unseenmage]

Until you run into an antimagic field or dispel magic. Also requires quite a few actions to do, and who's to say the aboleth isn't into scry and fry? There's likely to be multiple battles, not one big one, when facing off against one, and if you start to win they'll have an exit strategy, probably before you ever see them. They've lived for eons, they're not careless.


Not trying to dissuade you or say it can't be done, just wanting to make sure you're taking care of every avenue.

Only two kinds of Dispel work against ETF and one is likely banned in this campaign. Which is especially good as this character is an Artificer, I have zero desire to lose every magic item I've so meticulously crafted with one spell. Ugh.

It's likely to be one battle. Just this DMs style. Not only that we've already walked right up to this lake once before. If all goes to plan we'll be able to get summoned or planar ally creatures to help drain the lake so we can actually attack it from any angle we choose thereby forcing the fight from the direction of our choice, not the enemies.

And I was only tasked with removing the Aboleth so the Dragon can claim it's territory, nothing more. So forcing its exit strategy is an awesome plan.

[LTwerewolf]

If the dragon can't oust the aboleth, then forcing the exit strategy doesn't prevent him from coming back.

[Coidzor]

Now, your Big Problem: Lakes. They are big. Let's take a middling-sized lake like Sebago Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebago_Lake) in Maine. It's not huge, as lakes go, but it spreads over 30,000 acres and is 300 feet deep at the deepest point. You would need one heck of a lot of Golems to execute plan 'Line up and march across the bottom' with any hope of success, even if Enemy Aboleth is kind enough to hang out on the bottom for them. It has 995 BILLION gallons of water in it. You can burn all the charges in all the staffs in your arsenal without making a dent in the volume or doing more than randomly scattershotting rocks at whatever is hidden below. It would be like chucking single chunks of charcoal into an Olympic swimming pool and trying to hit a particular tadpole swimming around, only worse.

Well, okay, Sebago isn't a small lake; maybe the Aboleth's lair isn't that big. Except that even small lakes aren't; let's take Walden Pond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Pond) as an example. That's an itty-bitty thing as lakes go, probably too small to be worthwhile to an Aboleth, but it's still 61 acres (a lot of territory) 100 feet deep, and measures its inflow/outflow of water in terms of hundreds of thousands of cubic meters per year. In a body of water that size, one of your plans might be feasible, but it's about as small a body of water as anyone is going to dignify with the term 'lake.' A lot of your strategy is going to revolve around how much water we're talking about and how willing the Aboleth is to come fight your forces directly.

You're forgetting that this is the Underdark we're talking here. A "Lake" could be anything from a largish pond to something the size of an ocean.

[Seffbasilisk]

Stormwrack has Water to Acid as a 3rd level spell, but that's only 1 cubic foot/level.

Raining negative levels on them?

Or steal a move from Gygax, and have one of your constructs carry in an AMF with as many retributive strike staves that you can break in there. The aboleth brings down the AMF the second it threatens it, which brings it in the AoE of the retributive strikes. WHABOOM!

[Garwain]

I read this kind of discussion already. I don't remember the outcome though, all I remember is that I suggested to cast Water Walk on the creature. If the beast is submerded, I'll surface, making your job somewhat easier.

[Traab]

That could be hilarious.
I so want a spell that inebriates creatures from afar now. (seriously adding to list of custom spells to research)

Spell has several effects.

1) Creature effected by this spell has its movement rate cut in half, with a high chance to trip while moving

2) Mind is befuddled, adding a concentration check to all spellcasting.

3) Upon recasting this spell, target will have to make a saving roll to avoid death from alcohol poisoning. If successful, a followup check to avoid blacking out will be made. Each recast increases check needed to survive both effects.

[Lapak]

You're forgetting that this is the Underdark we're talking here. A "Lake" could be anything from a largish pond to something the size of an ocean.Apparently it was clarified to be a pretty darn big lake.

Those... are some good suggestions. Thank you. Reading up on Cubic Gate and Gate Key now.The direct-assault methods are indeed good suggestions, especially if you can somehow catch the thing un-Contingencied and un-buffed.

Now it's time for more of Lapak's No Fun Theatre: Lakes Have A Lot Of Water In Them Edition.

A few suggestions have been made to drain the lake using gates (either direct-cast, Cubic Gate-generated, Teleportation Circles, etc.) but the problem is that lakes already (usually) have great big drains in them. They're called rivers, and your typical river mouth leading out of a major lake is going to be way bigger than a 20' circle area-wise. That is to say, lakes are already undergoing constant drainage at a greater pace than most proposed solutions would provide and their intake is quite capable of keeping up with it. So any plan to drain the water must necessarily either include a truly MASSIVE drain system - you'll want something like multiple dozens of Gate-sized drains, minimum - and/or a way to block whatever inflow feeds the lake on the other end.

Neither of those makes it impossible to drain a lake; we've done it in the real world before as well as created vast lakes. But doing either is a large-scale long-term project and you need to throw a lot more than a single Gate at the problem. :smallwink:

[Mithril Leaf]

Two questions:
How far into the rabbit hole are you willing to go as far as cheese?
Is Dragon Magazine content allowed?
If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then I think I might have a solution.

EDIT: I also have a solution if you wish to pursue the first only.

[The Glyphstone]

Open a Gate to the Alemental Plane of Beer, and fill the lake with enough booze to get the Aboleth hopelessly drunk.

[unseenmage]

Spell has several effects.

1) Creature effected by this spell has its movement rate cut in half, with a high chance to trip while moving

2) Mind is befuddled, adding a concentration check to all spellcasting.

3) Upon recasting this spell, target will have to make a saving roll to avoid death from alcohol poisoning. If successful, a followup check to avoid blacking out will be made. Each recast increases check needed to survive both effects.

Was just going to use Bestow Curse and the getting drunk rules from the Arms and Equipment Guide. Maybe, 'the target is considered to have had one drink per CL.'

Definitelly going to work your suggestions into the Greater Inebriation spell.


Apparently it was clarified to be a pretty darn big lake.
The direct-assault methods are indeed good suggestions, especially if you can somehow catch the thing un-Contingencied and un-buffed.

Now it's time for more of Lapak's No Fun Theatre: Lakes Have A Lot Of Water In Them Edition.

A few suggestions have been made to drain the lake using gates (either direct-cast, Cubic Gate-generated, Teleportation Circles, etc.) but the problem is that lakes already (usually) have great big drains in them. They're called rivers, and your typical river mouth leading out of a major lake is going to be way bigger than a 20' circle area-wise. That is to say, lakes are already undergoing constant drainage at a greater pace than most proposed solutions would provide and their intake is quite capable of keeping up with it. So any plan to drain the water must necessarily either include a truly MASSIVE drain system - you'll want something like multiple dozens of Gate-sized drains, minimum - and/or a way to block whatever inflow feeds the lake on the other end.

Neither of those makes it impossible to drain a lake; we've done it in the real world before as well as created vast lakes. But doing either is a large-scale long-term project and you need to throw a lot more than a single Gate at the problem. :smallwink:

The way the lake was described to me it has been cut off from it's inflow and outflow. I'll double check with the DM, not sure when he'll get back to me though.
I did find a couple of spells that will allow me to answer gegraphy questions without misinformation or actual adventuring. Lay of the Land and Find the Path. Between the two the lake and it's environs should be easily mappable.

If you don't mind my asking; Are you fairly sure that "multiple dozens" of drains would work? If so that gives me a starting number which is always helpful. :smallsmile:


Two questions:
How far into the rabbit hole are you willing to go as far as cheese?
Is Dragon Magazine content allowed?
If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then I think I might have a solution.

EDIT: I also have a solution if you wish to pursue the first only.

Dragon Magazine is allowed yes. As for cheese, allow me to describe the gameworld.
- Forgotten Realms.
- Every creature is Gestalt.
- No Wishes, Gate, Miracle, or arcane Genesis.
- No coming back from the dead, even if I could Plane Shift to the realm of the dead and have tea with the dead character.
- Dragons have fiat bonuses to make them epic.
- All monsters get fiat bonuses for any reason what so ever.
- Monty Haul campaign.
- Most of the other characters already have their own kingdoms and artifacts.
- One of the other characters has Spellfire, another has Mythals.
- My character already has an infinite Ambrosia Spell Turret.
- My planned character is chaining Thrallherd.
- Any source allowed with DM permission. (I have permission for anything WotC already)
- No epic. (Edit: To clarify, the Players get no epic, epic stuff is all over the place for the DM)
- Custom Magic Items are researched like Custom Spells replacing SL with CL. (I only have 2 weeks to play with so a CL2 item is the best I could research not counting crafting time)

So yeah, bring on the cheese.


Open a Gate to the Alemental Plane of Beer, and fill the lake with enough booze to get the Aboleth hopelessly drunk.

I did homebrew a Dwarven Booze Golem some years ago. It inebriated with it's slams and Swallow Whole attacks. I should talk the DM into letting me custom research it into his gameworld.

[Lapak]

If you don't mind my asking; Are you fairly sure that "multiple dozens" of drains would work? If so that gives me a starting number which is always helpful. :smallsmile:Hah! Unforunately, it still depends on the situation. And what time-frame you have; if the dragon is going to pop by next week and expect you to have his fish n' chips ready, lake-draining is pretty much right out.

If it IS cut off from the inflow, your life gets a lot easier; one Gate would eventually be sufficient (provided you placed it in an appropriate spot, of course, and didn't end up just draining a subsection) but it would take a long time. Working out exactly how long would be tricky. Grabbing another real-world example, NYC apparently pulls ~1 billion gallons of water in per day through its vast supply system. Of the big tunnels that are used for this, some of the biggest sections are about on par size-wise with the upper end of what a Gate can be; there are a few major waterways running down from the upstate water sources, two massive ones (but still in the neighborhood of Gate dimensions), a third under construction, and there's a bunch of subsidiary systems as well. So, without getting into actual calculations, let's guesstimate that half-a-dozen Gates would be roughly on par with the NYC system in terms of moving water as a vague benchmark. This is all purest off-the-top-of-my-head speculation, now, because I'm not doing any actual water-flow calculations and don't have the background for it, but Gates more closely emulate pipes than rivers anyway so let's run with that.

We've already established that the lake has in the neighborhood of a trillion gallons in it, so to completely drain the thing - assuming no inflow and no other outflow - with half a dozen Gates would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 days. Unless you want to wait almost three years (and think that the Aboleth will just sit there twiddling its fins while the lake slowly dries up around it) you'll need to cut that down. A dozen Gates gets you to 500 days; two dozen gets you down to under a year; four dozen is starting to seem almost reasonable (in the neighborhood of four months)...

[Spuddles]

Apparently it was clarified to be a pretty darn big lake.
The direct-assault methods are indeed good suggestions, especially if you can somehow catch the thing un-Contingencied and un-buffed.

Now it's time for more of Lapak's No Fun Theatre: Lakes Have A Lot Of Water In Them Edition.

A few suggestions have been made to drain the lake using gates (either direct-cast, Cubic Gate-generated, Teleportation Circles, etc.) but the problem is that lakes already (usually) have great big drains in them. They're called rivers, and your typical river mouth leading out of a major lake is going to be way bigger than a 20' circle area-wise. That is to say, lakes are already undergoing constant drainage at a greater pace than most proposed solutions would provide and their intake is quite capable of keeping up with it. So any plan to drain the water must necessarily either include a truly MASSIVE drain system - you'll want something like multiple dozens of Gate-sized drains, minimum - and/or a way to block whatever inflow feeds the lake on the other end.

Neither of those makes it impossible to drain a lake; we've done it in the real world before as well as created vast lakes. But doing either is a large-scale long-term project and you need to throw a lot more than a single Gate at the problem. :smallwink:

Well, putting an outlet on the bottom will drain the lake much, much faster, thanks to pressure/gravity. It would still have to be quite large, but a lake drains down an incline of only a few degrees and a relatively small cross-sectional area. The outlet is also higher than the lake bed, which means basically the flow in = flow out. Otherwise the lake would have already drained!

Opening a hole in the bottom of the lake should drain a column of water 30ft high every second. With a 20ft radius, that's 37,700 cubic feet drained a second, or a flow of 282,000 CFS. Using the previous estimate of 0.995 trillion gallons, it will take 3.53 million seconds to drain the lake with a single 20ft radius hole in the bottom. That's assuming the entire lake was a 20ft wide column of water that didn't accelerate via gravity, both of which of course are false. But all we need is a ballpark figure.

3.5 million seconds is about 41 days. Opening 5 gates will drain the lake in under a week, and, more realistically, approaches the assumptions of having a non-accelerating column of water draining at 9.84m/s (or 30ft per second).

[unseenmage]

Hah! Unforunately, it still depends on the situation. And what time-frame you have; if the dragon is going to pop by next week and expect you to have his fish n' chips ready, lake-draining is pretty much right out.

If it IS cut off from the inflow, your life gets a lot easier; one Gate would eventually be sufficient (provided you placed it in an appropriate spot, of course, and didn't end up just draining a subsection) but it would take a long time. Working out exactly how long would be tricky. Grabbing another real-world example, NYC apparently pulls ~1 billion gallons of water in per day through its vast supply system. Of the big tunnels that are used for this, some of the biggest sections are about on par size-wise with the upper end of what a Gate can be; there are a few major waterways running down from the upstate water sources, two massive ones (but still in the neighborhood of Gate dimensions), a third under construction, and there's a bunch of subsidiary systems as well. So, without getting into actual calculations, let's guesstimate that half-a-dozen Gates would be roughly on par with the NYC system in terms of moving water as a vague benchmark. This is all purest off-the-top-of-my-head speculation, now, because I'm not doing any actual water-flow calculations and don't have the background for it, but Gates more closely emulate pipes than rivers anyway so let's run with that.

We've already established that the lake has in the neighborhood of a trillion gallons in it, so to completely drain the thing - assuming no inflow and no other outflow - with half a dozen Gates would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 days. Unless you want to wait almost three years (and think that the Aboleth will just sit there twiddling its fins while the lake slowly dries up around it) you'll need to cut that down. A dozen Gates gets you to 500 days; two dozen gets you down to under a year; four dozen is starting to seem almost reasonable (in the neighborhood of four months)...




Well, putting an outlet on the bottom will drain the lake much, much faster, thanks to pressure/gravity. It would still have to be quite large, but a lake drains down an incline of only a few degrees and a relatively small cross-sectional area. The outlet is also higher than the lake bed, which means basically the flow in = flow out. Otherwise the lake would have already drained!

Opening a hole in the bottom of the lake should drain a column of water 30ft high every second. With a 20ft radius, that's 37,700 cubic feet drained a second, or a flow of 282,000 CFS. Using the previous estimate of 0.995 trillion gallons, it will take 3.53 million seconds to drain the lake with a single 20ft radius hole in the bottom. That's assuming the entire lake was a 20ft wide column of water that didn't accelerate via gravity, both of which of course are false. But all we need is a ballpark figure.

3.5 million seconds is about 41 days. Opening 5 gates will drain the lake in under a week, and, more realistically, approaches the assumptions of having a non-accelerating column of water draining at 9.84m/s (or 30ft per second).


The lake IS in fact blocked from inflow and outflow. DM says my character finds it odd that the fish would lock itself in like that, I laughed and said for a spellcaster escape is always just a spell away.

[Spuddles]

I am going to go offer a prayer to Brodin, but when I get back I'll recalculate drainage time with gravitational acceleration taken into account. It should decrease time by like a factor of 4 to 6. What was the lakes dimensions?

[Lapak]

Well, putting an outlet on the bottom will drain the lake much, much faster, thanks to pressure/gravity. It would still have to be quite large, but a lake drains down an incline of only a few degrees and a relatively small cross-sectional area. The outlet is also higher than the lake bed, which means basically the flow in = flow out. Otherwise the lake would have already drained!You're quite right; I always forget to take physical impossibilities (like 'water draining into nowhere') into account, but that IS what magic is for and I shouldn't have forgotten it.

In that, you just have to
- get to the bottom of the lake (which is the enemy's home base)
- create your Gate
- defend it from an epic-level caster/manifester long enough to drain.

But it does resolve the problem of the Aboleth just hiding from you!

Well, on second thought, you also want to:
- make sure your Gate goes somewhere open enough to absorb the water; if you open a Gate into a small valley on another plane it may fill up and balance out pressure-wise before the lake is drained
- make sure your Gate is not placed somewhere that will get you worse enemies that the Aboleth; kicking the water into the Elemental Plane of Fire sounds awesome until the armies of the City of Brass turn up wondering who is intent on wrecking local property values

[Spuddles]

Opening the gate into the plane if fire would create some sort of boiling geyser of super heated water. Plane of air might work best.

And I did the math again- it's not a six fold difference; it's a 60% difference at best. A 300ft column of water will drain in 4 seconds taking acceleration into account 10 seconds otherwise. So if the lake can be approximated as a set of 300 foot columns, it should take 10 days for a single gate to drain it. Well probably slower, because as soon as lake drops below 30ft in depth, it will no longer be in free fall.

But if you had 20 golems with portable gates teleporting to a random spot every 4 seconds, and the gates had a radius of 20 feet, you could drain the lake in 12 hours.

[unseenmage]

Opening the gate into the plane if fire would create some sort of boiling geyser of super heated water. Plane of air might work best.

And I did the math again- it's not a six fold difference; it's a 60% difference at best. A 300ft column of water will drain in 4 seconds taking acceleration into account 10 seconds otherwise. So if the lake can be approximated as a set of 300 foot columns, it should take 10 days for a single gate to drain it. Well probably slower, because as soon as lake drops below 30ft in depth, it will no longer be in free fall.

But if you had 20 golems with portable gates teleporting to a random spot every 4 seconds, and the gates had a radius of 20 feet, you could drain the lake in 12 hours.



My DM on the lake's stats, "Lake is around Sebago size, in a long s shape with the bottom curl being the deepest part, and the part with no easy land entrance other then tunneling right to its edge. Even though its a s shape, it still is wider them 60 of those huge shield guardians arm to arm with 8 foot gaps between them. Visibility in the water is about 10 feet assuming you have a light source."

From earlier in the thread,


Sebago Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebago_Lake) in Maine. It's not huge, as lakes go, but it spreads over 30,000 acres and is 300 feet deep at the deepest point. You would need one heck of a lot of Golems to execute plan 'Line up and march across the bottom' with any hope of success, even if Enemy Aboleth is kind enough to hang out on the bottom for them. It has 995 BILLION gallons of water in it. You can burn all the charges in all the staffs in your arsenal without making a dent in the volume or doing more than randomly scattershotting rocks at whatever is hidden below. It would be like chucking single chunks of charcoal into an Olympic swimming pool and trying to hit a particular tadpole swimming around, only worse.


I also potentially have the assistance of a however many mages a Large port city on the southern coast of Aglarond in Faerun would have. It's not a metropolis but there should still be some mages willing to help. Not sure how many of those would be part of the local military though.

My thought on the actual draining is to use the Lay of the Land spell to determine the closest Underdark chasm (potentially bottomless) and have some summoned or called flying creatures burrow up under the lake with Staffs of metamagic-ed Excavate.

Right now I'm not sure how many summons/staffs I need to get the job done or whether it's any cheaper than the Gates idea.

[Traab]

They dont have to be part of the military, so long as they have the appropriate spells, you have the cash to hire them to do several tasks for you. You could buy out the entire magical population with enough cash, though with all your expenses I dont know if you would have enough to do that and setup all your stuff.

[Skrobo]

Polymorph any object into a shrimp, let the Aboleth eat you, polymorph into whatever you feel like.

[Spuddles]

Alright, I stand by my assessment of 12 hours drainage with 20 golems and 20ft radius gates.

[unseenmage]

Alright, I stand by my assessment of 12 hours drainage with 20 golems and 20ft radius gates.

How many gates to get that from hours down to rounds?

Also, does anyone know how fast a creature would move through stone using the Excavate spell from Underdark? Barring that, is there a Burrowing creature I can summon to lay the gates across the bottom of the lake?

[Traab]

Alright, I stand by my assessment of 12 hours drainage with 20 golems and 20ft radius gates.

Now the tough part is figuring out how long it has to drain before the aboleth becomes vulnerable to attack? The lake doesnt have to be completely emptied after all. Just enough to make attacking the aboleth possible. I also am still in favor of the idea of figuring out where in the lake it is, walling it in, then quick draining THAT section of the lake. After all, 12 hours is an insane amount of time to give a big enemy like that to come up with a counter. So if you can think of a way to wall off a section of the lake that it cant just tear right down, that would really speed things up.

[Tvtyrant]

Why don't you just dig out tunnels deep beneath the lake and keep at it until you have enough tunnels you can simply open them up to the lake and drain it out into the tunnels? No more giant lake and the Aboleth either has to squeeze into the tunnels or be left dry on the ground.

Use Rock to Mud and Move Earth as needed to hurry up the process.

[zlefin]

If you have 2 million gp to spend, how about throwing money at the problem? Just offer the aboleth 2 million gp to move somewhere else.
If that doesn't work, find some epic-level adventurers who would kill the aboleth for 2 million gp.

[unseenmage]

Now the tough part is figuring out how long it has to drain before the aboleth becomes vulnerable to attack? The lake doesnt have to be completely emptied after all. Just enough to make attacking the aboleth possible. I also am still in favor of the idea of figuring out where in the lake it is, walling it in, then quick draining THAT section of the lake. After all, 12 hours is an insane amount of time to give a big enemy like that to come up with a counter. So if you can think of a way to wall off a section of the lake that it cant just tear right down, that would really speed things up.

As it's a spellcaster I've been assuming that walling off and draining wouldn't work since it would just teleport to a new un-drained portion of the lake.


Why don't you just dig out tunnels deep beneath the lake and keep at it until you have enough tunnels you can simply open them up to the lake and drain it out into the tunnels? No more giant lake and the Aboleth either has to squeeze into the tunnels or be left dry on the ground.

Use Rock to Mud and Move Earth as needed to hurry up the process.

This has/is been/being discussed. I've edited the OP to reflect.

Thanks for the Move Earth and Rock to Mud suggestions though, I hadn't considered how those might help yet.


If you have 2 million gp to spend, how about throwing money at the problem? Just offer the aboleth 2 million gp to move somewhere else.
If that doesn't work, find some epic-level adventurers who would kill the aboleth for 2 million gp.

I had considered just putting a bounty out on the thing. But I didn't know how much would be appropriate nor whether it'd be an alignment changer if I did. Also, as I stated earlier, the players in this game do not have access to epic stuff. One assumes that includes the hiring of epic NPCs as assassins.

[Spuddles]

Why don't you just dig out tunnels deep beneath the lake and keep at it until you have enough tunnels you can simply open them up to the lake and drain it out into the tunnels? No more giant lake and the Aboleth either has to squeeze into the tunnels or be left dry on the ground.

Use Rock to Mud and Move Earth as needed to hurry up the process.

Better yet, get simulacra of beholders. They can make a 10ft cube of earth disappear each round.