DND Magic and WMD's

[Xar Zarath]

Have you guys and gals ever thought about it? In RW we have so many different WMD's from the NBC's (nuclear, bio, chems)

Has anyone ever thought about replicating some of it for some campaigns...I mean stuff like bios and chems can be done by wizards and alchemists etc...anyone ever try to do it in game terms?

[137beth]

Well, in Eberron there is the Mourning. It's suggested in one of the books that you could decide the Mourning was a weapon of mass destruction unleashed by [unknown].

[Kamin_Majere]

Apocalypse from the Sky was WotC version of a WMD. Its kinda pathetic but its used in at least one adventure hook they published.

Others have been made though, the locate city bomb (before everyone apparently realized it didnt quite work) was a big deal... but luckily it was replaced by something so much worse with the wightpalypse :smallfrown:

I did use the locate city bomb once though... the shock value of having PC's get hit on the very outskirts of that spell and seeing the city they were going to for safe haven almost totally devastated was pretty priceless lol nothing gets players moving quite like a BBEG that actually is crazy enough to depopulate the civilized world

One of the early Pathfinder adventure paths also had biological warfare. A plague was released on a city and it was pretty nasty and wasnt an easy thing to deal with due to the sheer number of infected and its resistance to healing magics

[Arbane]

Well, for starters, there's the Wightocalypse.

/thread

Okay, okay. There's also spells like Cloudkill, Fimbulwinter, various disease-spreading spells...

[JeminiZero]

A brief explanation of the Locate City Bomb


I couldn't find a link that explained both variants, so here is my attempt:

1: Take Locate City, a spell with a range of ten miles per level
2: Apply snowcasting (FB) - spell now has the cold descriptor
3: Apply flash frost feat (PHB2) - spell now deals 2 points of cold damage to all in area (and makes area slippery but we don't care about that)

Variant 1:
4: Apply energy substitution (electricity) (CArc) - spell now deals electricity damge
5: Apply born of three thunders (CArc) - spell deals half electric, half sonic, but what is important is that it now requires a reflex save, allowing us to...
6: Apply explosive spell (CArc) - all creatures/things in area that fail their reflex saves are shunted to the outside of the area of effect (10 miles/level) and take 1d6 damage per 10 ft moved!

Variant 2:
4: Apply Fell Drain (Libris Mortis). Any creature that takes cold damage (from Flash Frost) also gains a negative level. Humanoids with only 1 HD are instantly slain, and will rise as Wights.
5: When cast in the middle of a crowded population centre, where 99% of the people are level 1 NPCs, you effectively convert 99% of them into Wights.
6: What follows is carnage as the 99% attack the remaining 1% and turn them into Wights. The army of Wights can then move to the next city, and turn the entire populace there to wights. And the next city, and the one after that. This chain-reaction is also known as the Wightpocalypse.

Note: The problem with Variant 1 is that Locate City could arguably occupy a flat circle rather than a sphere. If it were a sphere, the "edge of the area" as per explosive spell would be miles away, and would cause hundreds of damage. Whereas if it were a flat circle, the "edge of its area" would be immediately adjacent, thereby causing no damage.

Besides that, there is also the Anti Osmium Bomb (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2010735#post2010735), which relies on some questionable physics abuse.

[Xar Zarath]

Those are some great ideas, I was also thinking in terms of like...

aerosol ghoul fever?...nothing like breathing in something that will turn all into ghouls

nerve agents ala cloudkill

radiologicals through certain spells (unfortunately my optimization skills are pretty crap so I would not know how to go about this)

[Gildedragon]

There's also the Rain of Colorless Fire and Invoked Devastation in Greyhawk between the Suel empire and some other guys. IIRC the RoCF is meant very much like an atomic weapon.

I think there is also a similar event in the Realms that ends up getting the kibosh put on 10th+ level spells

[Gemini476]

A brief explanation of the Locate City Bomb



Note: The problem with Variant 1 is that Locate City could arguably occupy a flat circle rather than a sphere. If it were a sphere, the "edge of the area" as per explosive spell would be miles away, and would cause hundreds of damage. Whereas if it were a flat circle, the "edge of its area" would be immediately adjacent, thereby causing no damage.
Besides that, there is also the Anti Osmium Bomb (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2010735#post2010735), which relies on some questionable physics abuse.

That annoys me. A circle only has one edge by definition. It also has two sides when put in a 3D space, but it only has one edge.
No, the real reasons not to use the LCB are the massive metamagic costs, two easy saves, reliance on people not being by walls, and vulnerability to energy resistance.
Especially since Wight Out/Wight Christmas (Fimbulwinter+Fell Drain) are so much more effective WMDs.

No, really. Fell Drain Flash Frost Snowcast Locate City is a 4th level spell and needs three feats. The LCB is also 4th level, but needs five feats. LCB works best in wide-open areas, preferably against armies, but will likely kill the caster unless they have some way around that. The Wight version is self-replicating, will kill anything within the radius with one or less HD (including Vermin and other creepy crawlies!) and honestly is just all-around better at being a weapon of mass destruction.

The LCB was scarier back when it was believed to affect objects as well, but as is? In a crowded city you'll maybe take 3d6+2 damage at most, and that's assuming you fail both a reflex and a fortitude save. DC 11+Stat, and the caster needs to be a Sorcerer for it to work so maybe DC 17 at level 8? That's a 36% chance of survival for a level one commoner (assuming they survive the initial 2 damage and ignoring the chance of survival from the explosion).

Oh yeah, there's also the kerfuffle regarding if a circle would actually affect anything, whether the parenthesis in Explosive Spell is examples or requirements, whether it actually affects the creatures within the radius to begin with, and whether or not you can add damage do a non-damaging spell with Flash Frost.
I think that's everything.

[Hanuman]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?291019-By-the-Inferior-Science-of-our-Enemies-Gramarie-Mark-II

Sunmetal bomb.

[Killer Angel]

Has anyone ever thought about replicating some of it for some campaigns...I mean stuff like bios and chems can be done by wizards and alchemists etc...anyone ever try to do it in game terms?

You can have something very interesting with byochemical warfare... if you pick devils as background.
The Creeping Cadre (a legion of Malbolge) is descripted as "disease and poison fester in the wake of this legion".
In the region of the Lakes of Bile, there are various poisonous and acidic lakes, and also "The Frother", which is no poisonous neither acidic, but its water is filled with fiendish bacteria (the idea is so cool, isn't it?) that devours victim with merely contact (no SR) and is collected by devils.

[Gemini476]

Oh wait right I almost forgot.

Binding WMD's for Fun and Profit
Sometimes material from Dragon Magazine is overpowered. Sometimes it's just awful instead, but that's not what we're here for. We're here for the DragMag equivalent of Serpent Kingdoms or the Player's Handbook - material that looks innocent at first glance, but allows you to crack the campaign in half once you actually read it.
Well, except for the first thing. It isn't that innocent.

In Dragon Magazine #336, they had a little article on demon-binding. More specifically, that article included a 9th-level spell - Implore - which functions as Planar Binding except it can summon things up to 24HD.
There are a lot of Outsiders with less than 24HD. Some of them outstandingly nasty - Father Llymic has 24HD, and as an Elder Evil has a Sign that shows that Things Have Gone Horribly Wrong; he blots out the sun and dooms the world to an eternal ice-age.
The Hulks of Zoretha have 16HD, but cause all NPC starting attitudes to drop two steps (if brought to Hostile you attack the offender until you do damage). Feel like dooming the world to eternal war? These five Outsiders are a good bet. (They will also cleanse the planet in preparation for starting a colony, but that's a separate issue.)
Want to bind an Aspect of an ancient Obyrith Lord? Sertrous is 23HD and will cover the world with serpents. (CR+2 encounters, 20% chance every hour.) He's also the best Elder Evil to worship, since he gives access to any domains in addition to the standard [Vile] feats - he's the snake that taught the world that they could worship ideals, after all. The first heretic.
How do you stand vis á vis binding Zargon the Returner, a devil that Asmodeus himself fears? He's most likely faking it, but whatever. Zargon will cause global weather to go haywire and his slime will start a slime-based 10HD Wightocalypse! Oh, and he wants to literally make the world into Hell on Earth.

That's it for Elder Evils. But what if you want to bind anything else? Something with more than 24HD?
Well, you're in good luck!
Dragon Magazine #340 had a rather interesting article on astrology and incorporating it in a game - amongst other things, it had the Master Astrologer prestige class.
At first glance the class seems somewhat weak - 9/10 advancement for spellcasting, the ability to prepare spells in half the time when stars are visible, bonus to Sense Motive, various astrology-related bonus feats, 1d6 levels of free metamagic... Oh hey, that's pretty neat.
And at 10th level, the capstone: The Stars are Right.

Upon gaining 10th level, you can, once per day as a standard action, force the stars to appear to realign themselves temporarily for your benefit. You then have until the end of the following round to cast a spell at a greatly enhanced effect. A spell affected by this ability is cast at +4 caster level and the DC to resist it increases by +4. In addition, all numeric effects of the spell are increased by one-half. The spell's range, duration, and are increase by half again as much as normal, it deals half again as much damage, cures half again as many hit points, affects half again as many targets, and so forth, as appropriate.
For example, a 5th-level wizard/10th-level master astrologer could cast a delayed blast fireball as a 19th-level caster for 150% x 19d6 points of damage with a DC +4 higher than it would otherwise have, a range of 1,740 feet (instead of the normal 1,160 feet), and affect a 30-foot-radius area (instead of the normal 20-foot radius).
This ability is Empower+Widen on steroids. If you use Uncanny Forethought (Exemplars of Evil) to cast Implore as a full-round action, you can now bind outsiders with up to 36HD.

If you add Infernal Bargainer (Races of Faerun, must be an Outsider, +2HD limit when binding Outsider(Evil)), that becomes thirty-nine hit dice.

Let me quote a previous post I've made on this subject:

I can't really think of much worth binding that has more than 28HD, honestly, not to mention more than 39 but less than 42. All of the Elder Evils are either below 24HD or above 50HD, all the Demon Lords have 27HD or less, and of the Archdevils only Belial, Baalzebub, Mephistopheles, and Asmodeus have more than 28HD. All of them are 32HD or less, however, so when the Stars Are Right they are right. The Archdevils are also Aspects, although that might be better when seen from a "will they get revenge?" perspective.


I guess that's a bit of a broken thing from Dragon? The other nine levels of Master Astrologer are so-so, though, and a 1/day ability to Empower/Widen/etc. a spell is not that great unless you really work for it. At level 16. Yeah.
(the 42HD thing is if you somehow manage to squeeze in 8 levels of Malconvoker, which I haven't found a way to do.)

Congratulations! You have become the BBEG summoner. Except the plucky heroes won't have time to stop you from calling forth an Aspect of Asmodeus, since that just takes two turns. Plus two turns for Magic Circle and Dimensional Anchor.

[Erik Vale]

There's also the spell someone made to blanket large chunks of the world with iceage levels of cold [fort save vs more HP than low levels have/hour]. Contagen I believe is a level 3-4 spell, hit a bunch of rodents/whatever with a highly contagious disease.

Tippy's fireball minigun [I don't have a link], actually, just about tippy anything.

Deepspawn [mass reproduction], Brown Mold, The Tarrasque [Theoretically], spell component pouches [Thank you AFTS]... The orb that destroys anything it touches is also pretty good... Oh, the Emerald Legion + Deepspawn.

[BWR]

The Blackmoor culture on Mystara tampered with a nuclear reactor and it blew up, shifting the planet's axis, causing the Great Rain of Fire which destroyed most of the hemisphere, wiped out countless cultures and the effects are still felt 5000 years later (like the core of the reactor becoming a technomagical artifact that slowly drains all magic from the world).
On a lesser scale, several adventures and places had gates to the Sphere of Entropy which did all sorts of nasty things to large areas (Death Cloud in "Death's Ride", Black Sands are in Ethengar). They were mostly stationary once in place (except for the killer cloud in Into the Maelstrom, which expanded killing most of the country before being nipped in the bud).

2e FR had a rumored spell called Sunshock which purportedly nuked entire cities in one go. Not stat'ed but it sounded like a ramped up version of Meteor Swarm.

Krynn has its gods - piss them off enough and they'll drop a giant meteor on your continent.

[Xar Zarath]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?291019-By-the-Inferior-Science-of-our-Enemies-Gramarie-Mark-II

Sunmetal bomb.

sorry but I cant seem to find it:smallredface:

[Darkweave31]

I developed an epic destruction seed spell that could be fired from 200 miles away (from my orbital castle). It had a 1 mile blast radius and dealt 200d20 because 200 is a nice arbitrary number to stop at. Just disintegrates everything within a 1 mile radius. Averthoth's Orbital Ray Bombardment (aka O.R.B. they always say that orbs are some of the best blase spells out there :smallbiggrin:)

That said epic magic is silly, and should only be used for silly.

[Silva Stormrage]

sorry but I cant seem to find it:smallredface:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?291019-By-the-Inferior-Science-of-our-Enemies-Gramarie-Mark-II&p=15557420&viewfull=1#post15557420

The second Alchemetry spoiler has it.

[Slipperychicken]

Apocalypse from the Sky was WotC version of a WMD. Its kinda pathetic but its used in at least one adventure hook they published.


Really? 10d6 over a 17 170 mile radius will depopulate a major city small country and destroys basically anything inside of it which has less than 35 hit points, which IIRC is better than most any known real-life WMDs in terms of kill-count.

EDIT: Forgot that it's 10 miles/CL. It should be 170.

[137beth]

Really? 10d6 over a 17 mile radius will depopulate a major city and destroys basically anything inside of it which has less than 35 hit points, which IIRC is better than most real-life WMDs in terms of kill-count.

Well, yea, but now you are comparing a D&D WMD to real life WMDs, so obviously D&D wins. It's weak compared to other D&D WMDs:smallsmile:

[Silva Stormrage]

Really? 10d6 over a 17 mile radius will depopulate a major city and destroys basically anything inside of it which has less than 35 hit points, which IIRC is better than most real-life WMDs in terms of kill-count.

I think the thing is that you can do a lot better if you can cast 9th level spells and have a spare artifact lying around… Getting a metamagic rod of rapid spell and getting a way to negate the material component makes it pretty good at destroying things though.

[Incanur]

Well, for starters, there's the Wightocalypse.

Shadows are even worse, being incorporeal and all. A single shadow in the slums of a metropolis could become a vast shadow army in a matter of minutes.

As far as spells go, I recommend control winds and earthquake.

And apocalypse from the sky does the mass-destruction job fine thanks to the huge radius. Unless you cast it in the middle of nowhere, it's actually likely to kill way more people than a real-world nuke. It's 10 miles of radius per caster level. Little Boy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy#Physical_effects_of_the_bomb)'s lethal radius was 1.1 miles. 10d6 damage is of course a joke compared with 15 kilotons up close, but the inverse-square law makes apocalypse from the sky a better WMD. Also, it's not a burst or spread or emanation, just a huge radius in which all creatures and objects take the damage. RAW it seems like there's no way to avoid the damage even if you're in a castle or whatever. The fluff says it levels mountains, which would make it more like an extinction-event asteroid strike, but I'm not sure how this works RAW.

[Afgncaap5]

Well, in Eberron there is the Mourning. It's suggested in one of the books that you could decide the Mourning was a weapon of mass destruction unleashed by [unknown].

There's a few other examples in Eberron, actually. For instance, one of the low-level introductory premade adventures (the one that's a direct follow up to the "Forgotten Forge" adventure in the campaign setting, actually) has the players visit a small town that was the unfortunate testing ground for a hydra-shaped cannon that could launch pure molten glass several miles to kill most living things. The glass-covered remains of the town made the balance check rules a lot of fun, and the glass-coated zombies that the Emerald Claw made from the town's former population had a fun property that made their DR change types as they lost hp (due to the glass on them initially providing some protection.)

[Slipperychicken]

And apocalypse from the sky does the mass-destruction job fine thanks to the huge radius. Unless you cast it in the middle of nowhere, it's actually likely to kill way more people than a real-world nuke. It's 10 miles of radius per caster level.

Ack. I swore I was going to remember that.

For an easy visualization about how much a 170 mile radius circle is, you can use this website (http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm), type "170" into the miles box, and click a point on the map. You can depopulate a small country with a single casting: Easily tens of millions dead if you center it on a large metropolitan area.

[Hanuman]

Little boy is just that, 170miles is more like the tsar bomba.

[Incanur]

Little boy is just that, 170miles is more like the tsar bomba.

Nope. Inverse-square law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law). A 50-megaton bomb would only have a fatal blast radius of about 6 miles according to this calculator (http://stardestroyer.net/Resources/Calculators/NuclearExplosions.html). You'd need either multiple bombs or something well into the gigatons if not higher.

[Slipperychicken]

I think of Apocalypse From the Sky less like a bomb, and more like that element (Fire, Acid, Sound) raining down from the heavens in a sphere of destruction.

[malonkey1]

Oh, this one came out of a thread involving the Pig-Bound flaw. Find a way to have sufficient strength (74 STR should be enough, roll a Kobold) to get you pig up to solar mass. This should be plenty for a black hole, or at the very least, some serious gravitational mayhem. Heck you can get the pig up to lunar mass with STR 62 and go to town.

[137beth]

There's a few other examples in Eberron, actually. For instance, one of the low-level introductory premade adventures (the one that's a direct follow up to the "Forgotten Forge" adventure in the campaign setting, actually) has the players visit a small town that was the unfortunate testing ground for a hydra-shaped cannon that could launch pure molten glass several miles to kill most living things. The glass-covered remains of the town made the balance check rules a lot of fun, and the glass-coated zombies that the Emerald Claw made from the town's former population had a fun property that made their DR change types as they lost hp (due to the glass on them initially providing some protection.)

And then there are Eldritch Machines...
yea, Eberron is pretty darn dangerous in terms of WMDs.

[Hanuman]

Nope. Inverse-square law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law). A 50-megaton bomb would only have a fatal blast radius of about 6 miles according to this calculator (http://stardestroyer.net/Resources/Calculators/NuclearExplosions.html). You'd need either multiple bombs or something well into the gigatons if not higher.

Is that fact checked vs. the data collected on the tsar bomba test?

[Xar Zarath]

Oh, this one came out of a thread involving the Pig-Bound flaw. Find a way to have sufficient strength (74 STR should be enough, roll a Kobold) to get you pig up to solar mass. This should be plenty for a black hole, or at the very least, some serious gravitational mayhem. Heck you can get the pig up to lunar mass with STR 62 and go to town.

Wait, wait wait, you telling me...a pig can cause a black hole?:smalleek:

[Doorhandle]

There's a thread on these very forums about how to destroy the world.

Says a lot when the LEAST efficient method is an epic spell, doesn't it? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?227513-Destroying-the-world-as-we-know-it-a-Handbook&highlight=skybleeder)

[malonkey1]

Wait, wait wait, you telling me...a pig can cause a black hole?:smalleek:

Yep. By RAW. whil the pig's weight increases to always be your maximum load, its size is never stated to increase. Therefore, as STR approaches infinity, the pig will become a black hole.

[Incanur]

Yep. By RAW. whil the pig's weight increases to always be your maximum load, its size is never stated to increase. Therefore, as STR approaches infinity, the pig will become a black hole.

Are black holes RAW? :smallwink:

[malonkey1]

Are black holes RAW? :smallwink:

Sorry, that was supposed to be "By RAW ," with a comma, making it part of the next sentence.

[Gildedragon]

Yeah, no one' sever figured a way to cook them without summoning Orcus

Also: yeah, spheres of annihilation function pretty much like a pocket black hole

[Emperor Tippy]

Tippy's fireball minigun [I don't have a link], actually, just about tippy anything.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?286544-so-we-have-the-technology-to-make-it

There you go. ;)

[malonkey1]

Okay, Major Creation 20 cu. feet of francium (that's 2.3 tons!), drop into town well. Release massive explosion. FWOOSH.

[Xar Zarath]

Okay, Major Creation 20 cu. feet of francium (that's 2.3 tons!), drop into town well. Release massive explosion. FWOOSH.

Is that similar to anti-osmium? Correct me if im wrong but anti-osmium trick is to fabricate osmium, its antimatter and then have both hit each other at incredible speed, yes?

[Erik Vale]

Thank's Tippy. Now try his link with a different spell that effects a larger area... Or don't.

Wouldn't work properly. The Francium would already be reacting with the water in the air.

And not really. Anti-Osmium involves high end physics, Francium/Water Bomb involves basic chem/youtubing.

Though I'd prefer to create anti-protons/neutrons/electrons under high pressure. Or just protons/neutrons/electrons depending on if the DM allows you to use radiation to kill people/large swaths of land.

[malonkey1]

Is that similar to anti-osmium? Correct me if im wrong but anti-osmium trick is to fabricate osmium, its antimatter and then have both hit each other at incredible speed, yes?

Francium is a highly reactive metal, similar to sodium but much more powerful. It has the benefit of a massive explosion, without the radiation from a matter-antimatter reaction.