I need to clear out a massive amount of shadows.

[Dominuce2112]

Long story short, my lizardfolk tribe is near extinction because a dark cleric used an eclipse stone and blocked out the sun.

I know for a fact he is in a weakened state (possibly even being held by lolth) and my scouts were able to find his main stronghold.

He 'defeated' my god, Semuanya but was shortly after deafeated by lolth. Before my god was vanquished, she turned into the bow I am using now (ancestral relic) I want to take over his stronghold and use it as a temple and try to regain my gods power.

However, I need to clear out a lot of shadows and a few greater shadows. I do have 20,000 troops and a high level druid and a high level cleric (that cant really do anything with the god being dormant as my bow)

Any suggestions on spells I should use to kill a large amount of shadows? Preferred classes I can spec some of my troops as? Items or relics that may be able to assist me (other than the sunstone, which I am unable to find right now). Any ideas or concepts to make this grand battle a little easier on my part.

Thanks!

[Inevitability]

Piece of cake. Make your troops all undead (necropolitian works best for this), then make then all 1st-level dragonfire adepts. Fire will only deal damage to the shadows 50% of the time, but the shadows can't do anything themselves (that is, unless they all suddenly gain class levels).

[Zanos]

Shadows have literally no offensive capabilities outside of their Strength Damage touch attack. A single raised skeleton with a +1 sword could destroy all of them eventually.

[Draken]

Have your druid cast Hallow on your camp, linking Death Ward to be cast on any of your soldiers who enter the zone. Your soldiers march through and get a few minutes of shadow immunity to go clear the things.

[Zanos]

I got bored at work and decided to do some math.
Animating a 1 HD warrior skeleton with animate dead costs 25gp and a corpse. If you're in the adventuring business, you'll not be short on those.
A mundane greatsword costs 50gp.
Extended Greater Magic Weapon costs nothing if you have someone who can cast it.

A human warrior skeleton has a 25%(50% AC, 50% concealment) chance to hit a shadow for an average of 9 damage. He inflicts approximately 2.25 damage per round. It takes him, on average 8.44 rounds to kill a shadow, or 50.33(repeating of course) seconds. The skeleton doesn't eat or sleep or need rest and there are 86400 seconds in day so he destroys 1705.26 shadows per day.

He only has a 22.5% chance to hit a greater shadow and it takes him 27.77 rounds to kill one, or 154.67 seconds. It can destroy 558.82 greater shadows per day.

If you can't cast animate dead, a scroll of divine animate dead is 650gp and will give you five of these unstoppable murder machines.
If you can't cast greater magic weapon, or having the skeleton come out to have it recast isn't possible, +1 Greatswords are 2200 gp.

More skeletons and higher greater magic weapon bonuses will speed this up, of course. If there are some dead orcs laying around they make great skeletons.

[Dominuce2112]

Using the undead to kill the undead, I was clearly overlooking the problem. Thats great

The hallowed thing might be a little more feasible for me now.

Any thoughts on how to protect my new stronghold once it us up? Protecting it from shadows seems easy enough, but Lolth is becoming a HUGE problem in this realm all of a sudden.

[Trasilor]

I got bored at work and decided to do some math.
Animating a 1 HD warrior skeleton with animate dead costs 25gp and a corpse. If you're in the adventuring business, you'll not be short on those.
A mundane greatsword costs 50gp.
Extended Greater Magic Weapon costs nothing if you have someone who can cast it.

A human warrior skeleton has a 25%(50% AC, 50% concealment) chance to hit a shadow for an average of 9 damage. He inflicts approximately 2.25 damage per round. It takes him, on average 8.44 rounds to kill a shadow, or 50.33(repeating of course) seconds. The skeleton doesn't eat or sleep or need rest and there are 86400 seconds in day so he destroys 1705.26 shadows per day.

He only has a 22.5% chance to hit a greater shadow and it takes him 27.77 rounds to kill one, or 154.67 seconds. It can destroy 558.82 greater shadows per day.

If you can't cast animate dead, a scroll of divine animate dead is 650gp and will give you five of these unstoppable murder machines.
If you can't cast greater magic weapon, or having the skeleton come out to have it recast isn't possible, +1 Greatswords are 2200 gp.

More skeletons and higher greater magic weapon bonuses will speed this up, of course. If there are some dead orcs laying around they make great skeletons.

genius...if this was my campaign, I would def award XP for such a simple solution.

[Dorian Gray]

What level are the doodad and the cleric? Because if the cleric can cast Polymorph Any Object, you could just have him PAO a 15 kg block of stone under the offending castle into positrons and launch the castle (and a large portion of the rest of the continent) into space.

Actually, why stop there? Some shadows might escape- at 15th level, a cleric can affect 1500 cubic feet of rock. That's about 249000 pounds of rock, or about 113000 kg. That's 101559335197260393320000 newtons of energy, or 24273263 megatons of TNT.

I don't know what exactly a 24273263 megaton explosion would do, but I have a feeling it would probably kill all the shadows, seeing as the earth is only 5*10^24 kg, and the explosion is about 10^26 newtons. It would most certainly blow the continental shelf the castle is on into space, and might just vaporize it. The shockwave would cause earthquakes all over the world that dwarf the strongest we have ever recorded by several orders of magnitude, and the atmosphere would be ripped off the earth.

The trick there is to get that as a nonlethal spell- playground, suggestions?

[Lord_Jord]

If you can craft wonderous items, and your DM allows custom magic items, I once thought of a Torch of Daylight for battling shadows. I forget how much it costs, but there is a pretty simple equation for creating magic items in the Magic Items chapter in the DMG.

[Yogibear41]

Skeleton idea won't work. Shadows are intelligent as soon as the skeleton hits one and they realize they can't hurt it they will just fly into the nearest wall and hide were the skeleton can't get them.
You might be able to get a few of them but definitely not all of them.

[khachaturian]

think of the poor catgirls!

[Zanos]

Skeleton idea won't work. Shadows are intelligent as soon as the skeleton hits one and they realize they can't hurt it they will just fly into the nearest wall and hide were the skeleton can't get them.
You might be able to get a few of them but definitely not all of them.
Sweet, 75 gp haunted castle. Even better!

[Pilo]

Use some summon monster (II and +) spells to summon vivacious creatures (planar handbook p134), they have an aura of positive energy, no strength score and they can fly.

[Dominuce2112]

Use some summon monster (II and +) spells to summon vivacious creatures (planar handbook p134), they have an aura of positive energy, no strength score and they can fly.

How does one add a template to a summoned creature? I do have a charmed hydra, is there a way to add it to that?

[Gildedragon]

Using the undead to kill the undead, I was clearly overlooking the problem. Thats great

The hallowed thing might be a little more feasible for me now.

Any thoughts on how to protect my new stronghold once it us up? Protecting it from shadows seems easy enough, but Lolth is becoming a HUGE problem in this realm all of a sudden.

Well from future shades: 5'1" outer walls.
Or if you want to be more thorough: Wall of force + Fabricate to get bolts of riverine wallpaper. Slap the stuff on everything, doors, windows, walls, floor...
then plaster over the stuff and decorate as you see fit.
As paper has no listed weight, reams and reams of the stuff ought have no cost. :P

Now being a bit more thorough: taking a 10'x10' wall as our baseline: it ought cost 1,000gp to wallpaper it using bible paper, which has a roughly 25g/m^2 density.
If you make it out of tissue paper (10g/m^2) you get the cost down to about 400gp per wall
You might want to use the skeletons to apply it. They don't breathe so less snaffus until the sov. glue is applied.

[Inevitability]

Skeleton idea won't work. Shadows are intelligent as soon as the skeleton hits one and they realize they can't hurt it they will just fly into the nearest wall and hide were the skeleton can't get them.
You might be able to get a few of them but definitely not all of them.

Then give the skeleton something to break through walls. Shouldn't a greatsword be enough for that?

[Yogibear41]

You might be able to break a few smaller walls but most definitely not the bigger ones. However even if the Skeleton could break down every single wall, what would be the point? As then there would be no castle left afterwards.

[Khedrac]

Have your druid cast Hallow on your camp, linking Death Ward to be cast on any of your soldiers who enter the zone. Your soldiers march through and get a few minutes of shadow immunity to go clear the things.
You might want to see if you can link Sheltered Vitality instead - unlike Death Ward it actually protects against Strength Damage, otherwise an excellent idea, and by far the best one offered.
(Why do most of the playground each straight for "evil" solutions to any problem? http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0192.html)



What level are the doodad and the cleric? Because if the cleric can cast Polymorph Any Object, you could just have him PAO a 15 kg block of stone under the offending castle into positrons and launch the castle (and a large portion of the rest of the continent) into space.
If you read the OP you might notice that the aim is to use the castle as a temple. That's going to be slightly difficult if you destroy it...

[gomipile]

A psionic character could manifest Psionic True Seeing or another sight/detection spell with Burrowing Power applied to it to see the shadows in walls, etc. Then that same character could use a damage power with Burrowing Power applied to kill each shadow.

[Zanos]

You might want to see if you can link Sheltered Vitality instead - unlike Death Ward it actually protects against Strength Damage, otherwise an excellent idea, and by far the best one offered.
(Why do most of the playground each straight for "evil" solutions to any problem? http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0192.html)
I don't really consider Undead evil by default. Skeletons, at least, do absolutely nothing unless ordered otherwise. There's a whole other thread about people disagreeing with undead = bad though, so I'll leave it at that.

And Death Ward protects against negative energy effects, which a shadow's strength drain is explicitly.

[Talya]

Druid?

Three words: Vortex of Teeth.

Kills shadows dead. (Really, this time.)

[Eldariel]

You need something incorporeal or able to force the Shadows into corporeality to weed them all out. Incorporeals might have trouble hunting them down in a reasonable timeframe. There's a level 6 Cleric/level 7 Wizard spell "Ghost Trap" which is an emanation of 5'/CL that forces all incorporeals in the area into corporeality. That might be fairly efficient though as an emanation you'd still have to deal with problems as objects. You can of course use magic to temporarily remove and replace every wall of the castle as necessary, or indeed turn the whole castle into dust and rebuild it or something. Spells-to-Powers version with Burrowing Power would of course work in a pretty comprehensive way. You could also have your hireling dorks poke a hole into every 5' square of the castle walls, floor, etc. making the immediately adjacent wall subject to your Ghost Trap thus ousting the shadows out.

The shadows themselves aren't that much of a threat because Death Ward makes them completely incapable of harming even living things, let alone the alternative of using non-living things (whatever you do, don't send a bunch of your unwarded troops in; you'll just be looking at 20000 more Shadows afterwards and that'll take forever to clean up). It's more a matter of hunting them down while not getting careless.

[gooddragon1]

Have the cleric planeshift the skeleton with the +1 weapon to the ethereal plane of existence as close as he can to the area where the shadows are. Walk the skeleton over there and start the organized execution. Order the skeleton to kill all shadows it sees. Check back in some time maybe with a death ward. Now that doesn't mean the skeleton might not wander off but you can use divination to find out where it went. This works because incorporeal creatures are partly on the ethereal plane of existence. I don't think they have any offensive capabilities other than strength drain there but you might want to double check.

[Zanos]

Have the cleric planeshift the skeleton with the +1 weapon to the ethereal plane of existence as close as he can to the area where the shadows are. Walk the skeleton over there and start the organized execution. Order the skeleton to kill all shadows it sees. Check back in some time maybe with a death ward. Now that doesn't mean the skeleton might not wander off but you can use divination to find out where it went. This works because incorporeal creatures are partly on the ethereal plane of existence. I don't think they have any offensive capabilities other than strength drain there but you might want to double check.
They have strength scores on the ethereal as I recall, which means that they could maybe make non-proficient unarmed strikes. Nice save, though.

[AnonymousPepper]

Isn't Holy Word the standard mass kill everything evil spell?

Does that affect incorporeal?

[Psyren]

Isn't Holy Word the standard mass kill everything evil spell?

Does that affect incorporeal?

Yes. The question is whether it is positive energy or not. I would argue that a [Good] evocation or conjuration would have to be.


This works because incorporeal creatures are partly on the ethereal plane of existence.

This is false, shadows only exist on the material.

[AnonymousPepper]

Yes. The question is whether it is positive energy or not. I would argue that a [Good] evocation or conjuration would have to be.

Then to me at least the way to go would be to find some method of equipping your army en masse with scrolls of - and the ability to cast from those scrolls - Holy Word.

A few high-level clerics or ideally artificers whipping out scrolls of it, plus level 7 or higher bards with max UMD ranks and with the Magic Savant (http://dndtools.eu/spells/complete-mage--58/magic-savant--802/) spell, should, assuming they have good charisma scores, be easily capable of ruining waves of Shadows reliably and without difficulty. Even without bards+magic savant, anybody, particularly a cleric or somebody else who actually has the spell on their list somewhere, with a sufficiently strong +UMD item (and those things are cheap for what they do) can cast Holy Word off a scroll. Since shadows have very low HD, they will get absolutely nuked by any casting of Holy Word regardless of CL. Greater Shadows may require the personal attention of a high-level cleric or alternatively a high CL scroll (those ARE a thing, aren't they?), as Holy Word requires a minimum 10CL difference to instagib.

Edit: Oh, yeah, and for maximum scrolls in the minimum time, have a fast-flowing time demiplane (in 3.5 this can be NI-speed, but crank it too high and you'll regret it unless your crafters are in some way immortal - i.e. Elan, Warforged, have the Wedded to History feat, etc.) and/or the Research Aid spell (Dragon 342, p55).

[137beth]

Then to me at least the way to go would be to find some method of equipping your army en masse with scrolls of - and the ability to cast from those scrolls - Holy Word.

A few high-level clerics or ideally artificers whipping out scrolls of it, plus level 7 or higher bards with max UMD ranks and with the Magic Savant (http://dndtools.eu/spells/complete-mage--58/magic-savant--802/) spell, should, assuming they have good charisma scores, be easily capable of ruining waves of Shadows reliably and without difficulty. Even without bards+magic savant, anybody, particularly a cleric or somebody else who actually has the spell on their list somewhere, with a sufficiently strong +UMD item (and those things are cheap for what they do) can cast Holy Word off a scroll. Since shadows have very low HD, they will get absolutely nuked by any casting of Holy Word regardless of CL. Greater Shadows may require the personal attention of a high-level cleric or alternatively a high CL scroll (those ARE a thing, aren't they?), as Holy Word requires a minimum 10CL difference to instagib.

Although, if any of your troops are Neutral or Evil, you'll have to make sure they spread out enough so as not to kill each other with holy words.

[Pilo]

How does one add a template to a summoned creature? I do have a charmed hydra, is there a way to add it to that?

I don't think you can add it to a creature.

The planar handbook (p134) has a paragraph regarding new creature to add to your summon monster spells. As if it were new creatures.

[Psyren]

How does one add a template to a summoned creature? I do have a charmed hydra, is there a way to add it to that?

You don't; rather, there are specific creatures on the base and expanded summon lists that have templates already, e.g. celestial X and fiendish X.

[gooddragon1]

Yes. The question is whether it is positive energy or not. I would argue that a [Good] evocation or conjuration would have to be.



This is false, shadows only exist on the material.

Seems only ghosts do this then.