What do they want with us?

[TrueJordan]

So I really want to do a campaign that involves an invasion from America into the regular DnD universe. Basically scientists accidentally open a portal to an alternate dimension, and they find a whole new world, and want to invade it. I already have enemies designed (based on TF2 characters, incidentally).
My question is: Why would they invade the DnD universe (RAW 3.5 if that matters)? Assuming, say, magic doesn't really operate on Earth but science does operate in the DnDverse. What would they want? How could they take advantage of magic and combine it with science in a way that people in the DnDverse wouldn't think of?

I was thinking of Magitek or something similar, but really, would that matter if you have a tank or a mechwalker?

Any advice on the setting or suggestions for the campaign would be much appreciated, thanks. I'm also thinking about running a full scale war, but don't really know what four level 15 guys would be able to do that an entire army at the king's disposal wouldn't be able to.
The party is

[Kazudo]

So I really want to do a campaign that involves an invasion from America into the regular DnD universe. Basically scientists accidentally open a portal to an alternate dimension, and they find a whole new world, and want to invade it. I already have enemies designed (based on TF2 characters, incidentally).
My question is: Why would they invade the DnD universe (RAW 3.5 if that matters)? Assuming, say, magic doesn't really operate on Earth but science does operate in the DnDverse. What would they want? How could they take advantage of magic and combine it with science in a way that people in the DnDverse wouldn't think of?

I was thinking of Magitek or something similar, but really, would that matter if you have a tank or a mechwalker?

Any advice on the setting or suggestions for the campaign would be much appreciated, thanks. I'm also thinking about running a full scale war, but don't really know what four level 15 guys would be able to do that an entire army at the king's disposal wouldn't be able to.
The party is

Permanent magical items would be my first thought. The question would remain though, if magic doesn't work, can the material wealth gained therein pass between realms? A mess of tanks invade and take a wizard's stronghold, binding him using superior technology and force him to cast WISH to get them a treasure trove of thousands upon thousands of gold pieces. The people then funnel the money back to Earth and fund a war effort there, depending on your views of whatever home country. I entertained the notion of the same thing happening but, naturally, with Nazis so that the players would know that they were doomed by canon, but their characters wouldn't. It also kept certain things from being a concern as well, like microcomputers being left behind, etc.

It would theoretically have been the prologue campaign for a heavy magitech system once the Nazis had to pull back upon concerns from...back home.

[Vhaidara]

It depends on how high power your world is. If characters in excess of level 10 are common, then they will simply drive through the portal and obliterate modern America. Imagine a single great wyrm dragon making it through. Now make it 10.

[Zanos]

As for things that they want, I'd imagine some of the special materials would be top of the list. I can think of a lot of industrial applications for materials like Mithral or Adamantine, not to mention some of the more exotic stuff.

I'm not really sure how any invasion of the D&Dverse could be met with any amount of success, though. I'd be hard pressed to consider anyone in the real world higher than level 5, and we obviously have no magic. If magic doesn't work in the real world, fine, but how are we supposed to invade into D&Dland with even one high level wizard opposing us?

[Squirrel_Dude]

If we aren't assuming the tippyverse: prepare for a medical and agricultural revolution in your typical D&D world. I can see spells like plant growth being mixed in with your typical fertilizer, and cure spells being mixed with a cough drop's placebo effect. Perhaps even using the dominate and charm person spells to improve psychiatric medicine.

[Slipperychicken]

My question is: Why would they invade the DnD universe (RAW 3.5 if that matters)? Assuming, say, magic doesn't really operate on Earth but science does operate in the DnDverse. What would they want? How could they take advantage of magic and combine it with science in a way that people in the DnDverse wouldn't think of?

Perhaps some D&D-land denizens (which can be anything from adventurers to warlocks to demons) slipped through a portal and started wreaking havoc. Such marauders might be misidentified as enemy agents, leading to large-scale violence.

Or perhaps some wizards (or other magic-users, such as succubi or fae) came in and used magic to trick world leaders into waging war against the D&D-verse.

[TrueJordan]

Right so that was another problem, what do high powered wizards care if there are tanks if the wizards could just wreck an entire army with a few spells? So I'm thinking of making everything from Earth magic resistant (i.e. SR: Infinite) so the party will have to rely more on melee or spells that have SR: nope. Even so, though, I still feel like a shapechanged wizard who is now a dragon could do significant harm, unless they're fighting like, an thermonuclear adamantine tank with missiles out the wazoo. Guess I'm gonna do that then (4 fairly-optimized level 15 party, btw).

More than that, though, I think that there'd be a constant threat of nuclear strikes, so anyone tempted to destroy them would have to do it sneakily otherwise millions of people would die horrible burny deaths.

And I like the idea of them coming to the DnDverse and mining for precious materials, and I probably will do that, and that'd make a whole slave thing going so that they can definitely be pointed out as evil, but I dunno, it kinda strikes me as a bit mundane. Or maybe connecting an electrical wire between portals and building a perpetual motion machine in the DnDverse and have it transfer energy to Earth? Hm. Or maybe I should just make it that magic is allowed on Earth so they could want to bring back powerful artifacts or something.

[Ghost Nappa]

Plus now you have to distinguish between multiple common tongues. There's no guarantee Earth-humans are working together or all speak the same language!

[Slipperychicken]

Plus now you have to distinguish between multiple common tongues. There's no guarantee way in hell Earth-humans are working together or all speak the same language!

Fixed that for ya. Also, it would be kind of funny if everyone on earth suddenly automatically knew Common in addition to their regional languages.


Also, PF has statblocks for WWI soldiers, and they have "Russian" listed as their language.

[Coidzor]

Right so that was another problem, what do high powered wizards care if there are tanks if the wizards could just wreck an entire army with a few spells?

They don't. That's why you don't throw your army against high level, high powered wizards.


Also, PF has statblocks for WWI soldiers, and they have "Russian" listed as their language.

Well that's just bizarre. I wonder why they picked Russia as the most indicative of WWI's tech level. :smallconfused:

[Squirrel_Dude]

Well that's just bizarre. I wonder why they picked Russia as the most indicative of WWI's tech level. :smallconfused: They didn't. It's from a specific adventure path that does a bit of time traveling. It's the same AP that has the trench fighter archetype in it.

[TrueJordan]

Interesting, thanks all.
@Coid, assuming I wanted to do a campaign like this anyway, let's say Earth people have wizards fighting our party, what impetus would they have? Like, why would the wizards fight for Earth? What would they possibly have to gain?

[Arbane]

Ever play Disgaea? Obviously, they're invading Fantasyland its natural resources, having used up theirs.

[Zanos]

Plumbing, so they have a toilet to encrust with their mountains of gold.


Honestly I'm having trouble thinking of anything a Wizard would actually want. There's very little arcane magic cannot do with some applied effort and a decent intelligence score. Maybe they would be interested in modern science since it would allow them to bend the universe over a bit more with their spells.

[Coidzor]

Well, the knowledge for knowledge's sake sort of T1s would be interested, though without some kind of regression putting a lid on knowledge worse than what we currently have, they'd be able to get most of what they wanted to know after interrogating/mind-ripping a few people and gaining access to the internet or a decent library which would speed them on their way.

Of all of them though, Artificers would be the most curious, I think, because nice toys that don't even require them to expend their XP mojo and thus can be handled by their horde of dedicated wrights would be very relevant to their interests

@TrueJordan: The best bet would be to have Earth at least 5 minutes into the future if not the full 15 for greater flexibility and avoiding the problem of mundanes not being able to have nice things combined with unrealistic reality while also allowing for greater suspension of disbelief.

That both allows for a force that can't be easily slaughtered by magic, broken up and defeated in detail by magic, or starved because magic just messed up their entire logistics network as well as allowing for that force to have something that could be conceivably offered to even the locals at the top of the heap.

A GOD Wizard wouldn't want to work with them as they'd have nothing to offer of interest, but then, a GOD Wizard wouldn't also really care about the material plane at that point either. For those less than incarnate gods, as long as they are able to be a relevant force and have some unique schtick then they can at least have some form of arrangement or another.

[Slipperychicken]

Honestly I'm having trouble thinking of anything a Wizard would actually want. There's very little arcane magic cannot do with some applied effort and a decent intelligence score. Maybe they would be interested in modern science since it would allow them to bend the universe over a bit more with their spells.

To someone as smart (and one presumes, intellectually curious) as the archetypical wizard, real-life nonmagical appliances would be massively interesting, even if they were just a hobby.

And it's hard to imagine a wizard collecting weird/obscure (the very definition of arcane) objects and lore, but passing up the seemingly-boundless mysteries of a smartphone.

Besides, maybe the wizard could discover a new spell which needs a laptop worth at least 1000gp as a material component.

[unseenmage]

Even with magic not functioning on our side of the portal there are two things in D&D-verse that can not happen in our world that we would dearly love to utilize the effects of on their side then transport the mundane result of back to our side.
a) Matter can be created.
b) Matter can be destroyed.
With an optional c) The dead can be brought back, but that's only helpful if the soul of the dead person gets worked into the cosmology of the D&D-verse side, might happen to our-side travelers who die there, definitely no good for resurrecting Hitler/Ghandi or somesuch (though one assumes cloning tech Simulacrum spell on the D&D-verse side could still do it).

Make raw materials via True Creation on the D&D-verse side and transport them home = infinite wealth.
Create portals on the our-side side strategically so your enemies fall into Sphere's of Annihilation = potentially useful. Depending on the portal tech.

The portal tech and how it works becomes key to some serious exploits too. The magic might not work, but if the portal transmits physics then just a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire creates infinite heat. Matter of fact, there's a letter d) added to my above list. We don't have infinite anything here in our world, especially time. There are planes with infinite space/energy/time in D&D-verse. Heck just the promise of simple immortality would evacuate every person from our world into theirs.

One last bit, we have some of the blindest religious zealots evar (yes that's supposed to be an exaggeration for comedic effect); the thought of all those legit deities on the other side of the portal would be the final reason to go to war.


Now, from the other side of the fence such as it were. Without magic on our side a creature from D&D-verse could still seek asylum from god-wizards, gods, the hordes of hell, the Inevitables.
Basically any wrongdoer, and especially the one's whose nonmagical bodies are powerful in our world regardless, would flock to our world to escape magical crimefighting.
No divinations here.
No undeath either.
No Thrallherds/psions/mindrape.
No Angels/Demons/Devils/Inevitables.

Heck maybe even normal mundanes from D&D-verse would find our world inviting. No magic adventuring parties tromping through their lives blowing up their town and killing their guards.
No cultists who can actually summon anything.
No fervent clergymen who can literally change your faith with two Diplomacy rolls (Power of Faerun book in the religious leaders section). (Diplomacy might still work but it's best friend the Guidance of the Avatar spell wouldn't.)

Sure demons, dragons, and such might have functioning bodies on our side of the portal but those bodies would be susceptible to disease, poison, and bullets without any of the magic healing these creatures are normally used to. And no afterlife means they might just not want to come over anyway.


Which brings me to the war itself. Our side would waste no time in either training their own Clerics or buying/taking their own magic items that allow the revolving door afterlife to work in their favor. On the other hand, the deities and other powers that be are more used to how the revolving door afterlife system works and could very likely cut it off at the source if provoked too far.

On the other other hand, True Creation + Antimatter will definitely be a tax on the D&D-verse's people's ability to utilize the revolving door afterlife.



In the end we lose. We have finite resources, the Elemental Planes, the Godly Realms, heck even the hells have infinite resources. Just demons swarming infinitely through a portal wipes us out given enough time.

[Feralventas]

As for things that they want, I'd imagine some of the special materials would be top of the list. I can think of a lot of industrial applications for materials like Mithral or Adamantine, not to mention some of the more exotic stuff.


More than the materials, the ability to Establish industry using magical means, even to craft mundane objects, would be a godsend as far as production speed goes. Time-manipulation, time-plane travel to get more accomplished in a shorter time, and the like. 3dprinting can revolutionize by making production possible on a small-scale local level, but temporal manipulations could make mass-production be done in a fraction of the effective real-time, meaning you could get 10,000 orders for an item and have it done within a day and shipped out from there. More so, if the gate being used is not the Only one, or doesn't Need to be the only one, you could set up extraordinarily fast transit across the glob in moments.


Our world [Gate at point A] D&D world [Gate to point B] Our World.

Being able to set up a system in which everywhere on earth is literally within walking distance of everywhere else would be a global economic shock and provide financial and employment opportunities the likes of which have never been seen before. Globalization in an instant via magic without needing to draw magic into the world at large.

Then there's the potential of the numerous different kinds of fauna that can be found in a D&D world. If a hydra's regeneration functioned outside of a magical setting, having a few of them, while clearly cruel and unusual, would allow for solutions to food-shortages in numerous locales so long as the creature could be kept under control.

Poisons and medicinal substances of all kinds can be found in the D&Dverse.

Magical materials like Glassteel would likely retain their properties as mentioned above, allowing for various new applications of existing technology.

I'm not proud to say it, but there's also the fact that an entirely new world might be in huge demand if it were revealed. Current estimations on the current global rates of consumption of materials, resources and common goods like water, farmland, and atmosphere would require that we have two or three or more worlds to maintain over the course of the next century. The knowledge that there is in fact another world within reach to exploit might make it an imperative goal to get access to the new world's mundane resources as well as the magical ones. On top of that, the idea that there are entirely new populations and markets to trade with would further expand economic opportunities in terms of people to sell to and buy from, which of course benefits the corporate conglomerates that operate huge swaths of the world's financial system.

At the same time, there may well be positives that come from a D&D world's influences on our's; Monsanto corporation owns a large majority of the food production for the US and around the world, and if they learned that by respecting nature and taking to semi-mystic faiths or philosophies, they could gain druidic powers over the growth of animals and plants, they'd work day and night to make that system work for them in granting higher crop yields and cheaper production means. Urban druids setting up multi-story green-houses churning out a season's worth of raw growth every week would pretty much result in the first company figuring this out owning their corner of the market and on their way to owning three more.

Adamantine Tanks. Hollow-point bullets with liquid pain in them. Magic items and equipment designed specifically to work in anti-magic fields in hopes that they'll suffice on their own internal power and start leaking magic into our world.

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Honestly I'm having trouble thinking of anything a Wizard would actually want. There's very little arcane magic cannot do with some applied effort and a decent intelligence score. Maybe they would be interested in modern science since it would allow them to bend the universe over a bit more with their spells.

The internet. Seriously.

Wizards, archivists and so forth are entirely dependant on what they know in order to accomplish their goals. The internet would provide spells, but access to an entire civilization's global network of information at a moment's notice with easier access than divination spells and the only major risks involved being that you might need a new computer if you catch a virus or have to do some minor fact-checking would be an incredible boon to any intelligence-based spellcaster. Most divination spells can answer questions, but require to to spend spell-slots to do so, may be innacurate, and if you ask the wrong question you'll be worse of for preparing the wrong thing.

On the other hand, google just takes time and an understanding of a language and basic computer use. Wield Skill+Tongues and you're all set to gather from thousands of year's worth of knowledge from hundreds of cultures.

[HaikenEdge]

In one of the campaigns I DMed previously, I had a character from our "real" world travel to the D&D verse (kind of an accident); another party member, an archivist/wizard gestalt, became intrigued with the character's smartphone, and after some cajoling (and developing a spell that would recharge said smartphone), turned it into the archivist/wizard's spellbook of sorts by taking photos of the pages in the archivist/wizard's spellbook, which the character would then hide using a sleight of hand check, all while carrying around a normal spell book as well, kind of as bait.

This is just one example of the things a D&D-type character would be interested in, in regards to our "real" world; I'm sure there are other examples that my players at the time didn't think of.

[delenn]

I really like this concept, though I think it might work better if you make it a private corporation (Magitek Co), or super-secret branch of the government (where there are some questions about who is really in charge/what can be authorized) rather than a major public invasion, because I think the latter will just lead to in-game headaches.

Do you want the invaders to be antagonists, helpful NPCs, or some combination? What if the portal is one-way, so the scientists and soldiers who come through want to reap the benefits of magic in the D&D world, but first they need to figure out how/if they can get back. They came through knowing it might be a one-way ticket, and though they were well-supplied at the start, some of the tools and weapons they're accustomed to having, like bullets or computers, are rapidly diminishing or outright useless. Being stranded in an alien world, they've split into at least two factions, one looking to conquer the D&D world and find their way home at any cost, the other trying to find a way for both worlds to mutually benefit without causing unnecessary harm to either.

[Mnemnosyne]

In one of the campaigns I DMed previously, I had a character from our "real" world travel to the D&D verse (kind of an accident); another party member, an archivist/wizard gestalt, became intrigued with the character's smartphone, and after some cajoling (and developing a spell that would recharge said smartphone), turned it into the archivist/wizard's spellbook of sorts by taking photos of the pages in the archivist/wizard's spellbook, which the character would then hide using a sleight of hand check, all while carrying around a normal spell book as well, kind of as bait.

This is just one example of the things a D&D-type character would be interested in, in regards to our "real" world; I'm sure there are other examples that my players at the time didn't think of.
By the rules, I do not believe this would actually work. Spellbooks have to be written with special inks and such, so the information contained therein is definitely not entirely visual, so a picture of a spellbook would not help a wizard memorize his spells, just as an exact duplicate of the spellbook's text made with normal inks would not be functional. The secret page trick works only because secret page has specific text that says that you can replace the hidden text with a spell.

As to the OP, keep in mind that a lot of things do not go away without magic. Regeneration is usually an (Ex) ability, damage reduction doesn't go away, neither do type or subtype-granted immunities, and so on. This isn't anywhere near as powerful in 3.5 as it was in 2nd Edition where creatures were flat out immune to things that didn't meet the magical requirements to damage them, but it is still fantastically strong. For instance, according to the DMG stats for modern weapons, an automatic rifle deals 2d8 damage...which makes a creature with DR 20/magic completely immune to anything but a critical hit from such a weapon. It basically takes explosive weapons or futuristic weapons to deal damage except on a crit. All feats as well, are Ex, unless otherwise stated. Hell, because of specific wording in the antimagic field text, incorporeal creatures that are not undead don't even wink out in antimagic, and dead magic zones reference antimagic field for their effects. The Emerald Legion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?101587-D-amp-D-3-5-The-Emerald-Legion-Mass-Producing-Ikea-Tarrasques) is still nigh-indestructible when you turn the magic off, to give an extreme example. If a group of powerful wizards actually found their interests threatened, or simply wanted to conquer the earth in order to learn about the technology, they could produce an Emerald Legion-like group of creatures to handle it.