Flickerdart
2014-08-09, 10:49 PM
Let's take a bunch of level 1 guys, and put them on a continent with ten million people. Let's say one tenth of these ten million people live in densely packed cities (10 cities, 100,000 people per city) and the other 90% are distributed around the countryside,surrounding each city with 100 towns of 1000 people and 8000 villages of 100 people. Each major city is 100km apart from the nearest other, each town is 10km away from the nearest town, and villages are typically 1km apart or even adjacent. Communications between population centres are reliable.
These level 1 guys each start in the vicinity of one of the villages. Without resorting to outside help, what PC race-class combination can become powerful enough to rule (or alternatively, slaughter) over this whole mess the fastest? What about just one city, or just one town? Assume standard DMG demographics, WBL, etc. Also assume that CR-appropriate encounters are readily available, just enough to get you to level 20.
For the purposes of the challenge, outside help means the following:
Commissioning magic items, custom or otherwise. If you need a magic sword, you will probably loot some type off a monster, but as soon as you need to go buy a specific amulet, you fail.
Buying services from another character. No spell purchases, no hirelings to fall into traps for you.
Binding, commanding, or otherwise compelling or using wandering monsters. Creating them is okay, though. So yes golems and animate dead, no planar binding or rebuking Wights, even if you indirectly cause the Wights by level-draining somebody (or having other Wights level-drain somebody - so no Shadowpocalypse). Monsters are there so you can kill them for XP and loot. I'm leery of allowing the rearing of animals with Handle Animal, because someone is going to bring up Bubs. Awakening a bunch of trees, I'm also not thrilled about, but it's technically creating them since they weren't creatures beforehand.
Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu. You must not treat with any higher being, including sacrifice rules or other deific intercessions. Gold for items exchanges are a-ok.
Also, LCB is out, just because it's unsportsmanlike.
Remember that the minimum caster level rules exist (at least, in RAI) - you can get 9th level spells at level 1, but you're gonna need that CL17 to fire 'em off.
As a benchmark, ye olde adventurer timetable (4 encounters per day) attains level 20 in just over two month (66.5 days). A 20th level spellcaster doesn't need very much help to kill or mind control every living creature in the scenario. How easy is it to beat this time?
These level 1 guys each start in the vicinity of one of the villages. Without resorting to outside help, what PC race-class combination can become powerful enough to rule (or alternatively, slaughter) over this whole mess the fastest? What about just one city, or just one town? Assume standard DMG demographics, WBL, etc. Also assume that CR-appropriate encounters are readily available, just enough to get you to level 20.
For the purposes of the challenge, outside help means the following:
Commissioning magic items, custom or otherwise. If you need a magic sword, you will probably loot some type off a monster, but as soon as you need to go buy a specific amulet, you fail.
Buying services from another character. No spell purchases, no hirelings to fall into traps for you.
Binding, commanding, or otherwise compelling or using wandering monsters. Creating them is okay, though. So yes golems and animate dead, no planar binding or rebuking Wights, even if you indirectly cause the Wights by level-draining somebody (or having other Wights level-drain somebody - so no Shadowpocalypse). Monsters are there so you can kill them for XP and loot. I'm leery of allowing the rearing of animals with Handle Animal, because someone is going to bring up Bubs. Awakening a bunch of trees, I'm also not thrilled about, but it's technically creating them since they weren't creatures beforehand.
Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu. You must not treat with any higher being, including sacrifice rules or other deific intercessions. Gold for items exchanges are a-ok.
Also, LCB is out, just because it's unsportsmanlike.
Remember that the minimum caster level rules exist (at least, in RAI) - you can get 9th level spells at level 1, but you're gonna need that CL17 to fire 'em off.
As a benchmark, ye olde adventurer timetable (4 encounters per day) attains level 20 in just over two month (66.5 days). A 20th level spellcaster doesn't need very much help to kill or mind control every living creature in the scenario. How easy is it to beat this time?