Planet Killer Challenge

[Frostthehero]

This is going to be a one time thing. The idea is I want to see what the lowest level destroying earth becomes a possibility at.

Rules
1. The winner of this contest is the person who beats the challenge at the lowest level. There is no end date.

2. You are limited to a collection of books. Specifically, core books, psionics handbook, the complete series, and the PHB2.

That's pretty much it. Have fun with it.

[Flickerdart]

Elan Commoner 1.

Step 1: You are immortal, and can sustain yourself on your natural power points alone. Make infinite Profession checks to earn infinite money.
Step 2: Buy infinite Candles of Invocation.
Step 3: Yes.

[5ColouredWalker]

And we have game in 3 minutes. The real question is now, how many wishes would you need to destroy the world, and therefore what is the average time required after becoming an Elan.

Things might go slightly faster as a Killoren, but then you need to pay for sustenance.

[Brova]

Elan Commoner 1.

Step 1: You are immortal, and can sustain yourself on your natural power points alone. Make infinite Profession checks to earn infinite money.
Step 2: Buy infinite Candles of Invocation.
Step 3: Yes.

You don't actually need infinite candles. You need one, because then you can start wishing for more candles. You're actually best off as whatever race matures first, or possibly a race that matures slightly later with a Wis bonus. I assume the answer is Human, but it might be something else.

[Naez]

Level 1 Binder Bind naberius daily, Contract Festering Anger, Gain Infinite Strength, punch world in half/throw into sun/etc.

[Flickerdart]

You don't actually need infinite candles. You need one, because then you can start wishing for more candles. You're actually best off as whatever race matures first, or possibly a race that matures slightly later with a Wis bonus. I assume the answer is Human, but it might be something else.
The challenge awards no points for speed, or for that matter style. Only levels, and there's hardly a level lower than Commoner 1.

Unless we can get some kind of fractional-HD shenanigans going with animals, that is.


Level 1 Binder Bind naberius daily, Contract Festering Anger, Gain Infinite Strength, punch world in half/throw into sun/etc.
Sadly, neither BoVD nor ToM are allowed sources for the challenge. You could do some kind of trick where you have a way to turn Constitution into damage, and get a Shambling Mound's immunity to electricity ability, though.

[5ColouredWalker]

The challenge awards no points for speed, or for that matter style. Only levels, and there's hardly a level lower than Commoner 1.

Unless we can get some kind of fractional-HD shenanigans going with animals, that is.

There's an inteligent flying [I think] cat that wizards can get as a familiar, that might get you fractionals.

[Razanir]

Level 1 Binder Bind naberius daily, Contract Festering Anger, Gain Infinite Strength, punch world in half/throw into sun/etc.

Yes, punching the world... I was going to suggest shenanigans with the Muscle Wizard, but that works better.

[AmberVael]

Similar to Flickerdart's idea-

Elan Commoner 1

Step 1: You are immortal, make profession checks to earn some money.
Step 2: Buy an adamantine weapon.
Step 3: Stab the earth until it is gone.
Step 4: You're probably not actually on step 4 yet, go back to step 3 and stab more.
Step 5: Its gone.

Particularly plausible? No. But if you have a lot of time and can ignore hardness, you can do a surprising amount of damage to a planet. Plus the image is hilarious. :smalltongue:

[ben-zayb]

^ i've considered something similar, until I asked myself, "what's water's HP?"

EDIT: Which RL particle can hypothetically destroy matter with as minimum amount as possible, and not affect an Elan Ghost? Creation of antimatter would require a crapton of time.

[AmberVael]

^ i've considered something similar, until I asked myself, "what's water's HP?"


Luckily, you don't have to disintegrate something for it to be destroyed. That said, the adamantine hammer plan would probably run into a lot of problems- but it entertains me and you could still level mountains with it and deface entire continents. You know, theoretically.

[golentan]

Lowest LEVEL or Lowest ECL?

Cuz we can template stack this up pretty easy... I gotta give more credit to a commoner, but this is a 1st level challenge with proper optimization regardless...

Level 1 commoner, chicken infested, spell component pouch is the funniest way to do it (just keep pulling chickens out of it until everyone is crushed under the weight of your chicken pile), but I know chicken infested is ruled out by the rules of the challenge... Related, if you can create a self-resetting trap of create water at CL 3 (which you need for the Create Wondrous Item Feat, can we manage early access shenanigans with the allowed books?), time trigger... If you make an elf, assuming you can make 1 trap every 2 days for say 400 years (sacrificing people to get the XP to build them, presumably), you can manage to complete 73,000 traps... at 1 gallon per second (caster level 3 = 6 gallons per round), you will double the volume of an earthlike world's surface water in a mere ~153 million years, flooding the land long before then!

Alternate plan, self resetting trap of locate object (object type in this case being "rock") with an acid substitution feat chain. Should ideally, if sheltered from heat and falling damage, eat its way through the entire rocky mass of the planet. Eventually.

[Frostthehero]

I think flickerdart pretty much wins this one. Again.

My personal favorite is throwing a box of brown mold into a volcano.

[Crake]

I think flickerdart pretty much wins this one. Again.

My personal favorite is throwing a box of brown mold into a volcano.

Only problem with that is that magma doesn't actually deal fire damage, so the mold would just die

[golentan]

Only problem with that is that magma doesn't actually deal fire damage, so the mold would just die

Doesn't it though? It's listed under the Heat and Fire headings, and it specifies immunity to Fire Damage makes you immune to lava. Sure it describes the damage dice as "2d6 damage" rather than "2d6 fire damage," but acid is listed as "1d6 damage" rather than "1d6 acid damage."

And brown molds don't boost their size from fire damage, but from being near heat sources and fire...

[Sagetim]

Elan Commoner 1.

Step 1: You are immortal, and can sustain yourself on your natural power points alone. Make infinite Profession checks to earn infinite money.
Step 2: Buy infinite Candles of Invocation.
Step 3: Yes.

I think this would still require someone of high enough level to make the candle(s) of invocation. So would that still count?

I do agree that an elan is the way to go, however, I think the plan might be better pulled off by an Elan Psion (Shaper) 1 using Minor Creation (Psionic). How? By using the power to create cubic feet of poison and dumping it on people. Alternatively, you could go around with your magic murder monkies (level 1 astral constructs shaped to look like vile little monkeys with freddy kruger esque claws) and have them kill people in the middle of the night. It's not like there's CSI: Faerun or something, their best clues are going to be things like casting speak with dead on the corpse, and if you do it right the only answers will be 'I don't know, it killed me as I slept'.

Admittedly, it's going to take a really long time to kill people one by one like that. And this is where using minor creation to make poison that only lasts for an hour comes in. You just need the poison to stick around long enough to affect someone, the damage they take from it will stick around even if the poison disappears. As well, if the dm adjucating things is willing to accept the logic that oil is a type of nonliving plant matter, then you could manifest up cubic feet of crude to drop on people passing in the street to mess with their health (and day).

Alternatively, a level 3 Telepath could pick up Missive, Mass and walk around using it to give 'divine instructions' to people who now hear voices in their heads telling them to do things. With it's massive area of effect (long range and hitting everything Within long range with the messages) you could really do some damage to people's mental well being.

If you want to go just magic items though, 5 immovable rods, boots of levitation, and a decanter of endless water could eventually end a world with climate change. You would wear the boots of levitation to get you up as high as you care to go (you know, probably stopping before you're having too hard a time of breathing). The five immovable rods allow you to lock the decanter of endless water into position in the sky, and turning it on to gyser will constantly spew water out. It may take an obscene amount of time and water, but eventually that decanter is going to cause issues with the amount of water it's put out. This plan requires only 10 caster levels to craft the items, as opposed to the candle's 17.

[AmberVael]

I do agree that an elan is the way to go, however, I think the plan might be better pulled off by an Elan Psion (Shaper) 1 using Minor Creation (Psionic). How? By using the power to create cubic feet of poison and dumping it on people.

The goal is to destroy the planet, not the people on the planet.

But I dunno, maybe you could interpret that a little differently and use Minor Creation to become a pollution and poison themed supervillain, Captain Planet style?

[Flickerdart]

Similar to Flickerdart's idea-

Elan Commoner 1

Step 1: You are immortal, make profession checks to earn some money.
Step 2: Buy an adamantine weapon.
Step 3: Stab the earth until it is gone.
Step 4: You're probably not actually on step 4 yet, go back to step 3 and stab more.
Step 5: Its gone.

Particularly plausible? No. But if you have a lot of time and can ignore hardness, you can do a surprising amount of damage to a planet. Plus the image is hilarious. :smalltongue:
Unfortunately, this won't help you that much - no matter how much you stab the planet, it will always have the same amount of mass, and still stay together through gravity. You couldn't even churn up continents unless you buy a shovel and a cart, and cart away the rubble to somewhere.

I had a brief thought regarding a disintegrate spammer, but domain wizard isn't in the allowed sources.

A 1st level sorcerer can use a Dragon's Blood Pool (CM) and Sanctum/Heighten/Versatile Spellcaster/Precocious Apprentice/whatever shenanigans to get 2nd level spells. Arcane Disciple into the Earth domain gets him Soften Earth and Stone, which forever turns a 10ft square (and 1-4 feet deep) per level into mud, sand, or clay. You can also compound the shenanigans and get 3rd level spells, summon something nasty, and have it do things for you, but I don't want to run through lists right now.

[LoyalPaladin]

There's an inteligent flying [I think] cat that wizards can get as a familiar, that might get you fractionals.
The Tressym (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tressym)? I love them.

[Brookshw]

I had a brief thought regarding a disintegrate spammer, but domain wizard isn't in the allowed sources.



What's wrong with mobile resetting disintegrate traps? I'm kinda digging on the idea of a flying fortress of doom and just flies around the world disintegrating everything underneath.

[ben-zayb]

Apparently someone's yet to point out this obligatory link (http://qntm.org/destroy). Using Telekinesis to hurl Earth to the Sun (or the other way around) should be possible if either of them can be proven by RAW as an object. Perfect job for a ghost due to Incorporeality and at-will Telekinesis!

[Flickerdart]

Apparently someone's yet to point out this obligatory link (http://qntm.org/destroy). Using Telekinesis to hurl Earth to the Sun (or the other way around) should be possible if either of them can be proven by RAW as an object. Perfect job for a ghost due to Incorporeality and at-will Telekinesis!
Telekinesis has a hard cap of 375 pounds, so good luck with that - but telekinetic thrust (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/telekineticThrust.htm) is uncapped so long as you have the ML and PP necessary to augment it. Of course, given that the Earth has a weight of 1.317 × 1025 lbs you're going to need a very high ML indeed.

[Jormengand]

Telekinesis has a hard cap of 375 pounds, so good luck with that - but telekinetic thrust (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/telekineticThrust.htm) is uncapped so long as you have the ML and PP necessary to augment it. Of course, given that the Earth has a weight of 1.317 × 1025 lbs you're going to need a very high ML indeed.

...

But does it? The earth has an astonishingly high mass, but probably not that high weight, right? Because the whole "Sun is eight light minutes away" thing?

Of course, the spell tries to measure weight in pounds, so we're not sure how that resolves.

[marphod]

Can we come up with a definition of what it means to destroy the planet first?

Are we looking for turning the planet into a lifeless husk, into an asteroid field, into nothing larger than a grain of dust, or something else?

[ben-zayb]

Telekinesis has a hard cap of 375 pounds, so good luck with that - but telekinetic thrust (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/telekineticThrust.htm) is uncapped so long as you have the ML and PP necessary to augment it. Of course, given that the Earth has a weight of 1.317 × 1025 lbs you're going to need a very high ML indeed.

If we're even going by the "Earth actually weights a lot" route, which may not necessarily be the case, what would a Time Hop on earth do instead? It only requires a mere ML152, compared to Telekinetic Thrust, so if Time Hop could bring earth's destruction, that'd be a better alternative.

[Flickerdart]

If we're even going by the "Earth actually weights a lot" route, which may not necessarily be the case, what would a Time Hop on earth do instead? It only requires a mere ML152, compared to Telekinetic Thrust, so if Time Hop could bring earth's destruction, that'd be a better alternative.
I don't think it would work, for two reasons.
1) The planet is an attended object - attended by everyone who lives on it, no less! That's a lot of natural 20s passing the save.*
2) Even if it works, the planet winks out and then reappears. You killed everybody, but the planet is fine. This runs into some point-of-reference problems with "reappears in the same place" - same place relative to the Sun? Galactic center? Middle of the universe?

*Technically, the line "Saving Throw: Will negates" does not allow the power to affect objects, even though they can be targeted. It should be "Saving Throw: Will negates (object)."

[Sagetim]

I don't think it would work, for two reasons.
1) The planet is an attended object - attended by everyone who lives on it, no less! That's a lot of natural 20s passing the save.*
2) Even if it works, the planet winks out and then reappears. You killed everybody, but the planet is fine. This runs into some point-of-reference problems with "reappears in the same place" - same place relative to the Sun? Galactic center? Middle of the universe?

*Technically, the line "Saving Throw: Will negates" does not allow the power to affect objects, even though they can be targeted. It should be "Saving Throw: Will negates (object)."

Well, let's play with this line of reasoning a little. If you can remove the earth from time for a particular period, that's time that it isn't moving along it's regular trajectory within the expanding universe. If it's returned to the point that it was removed from, then it's now lagging behind where it once was even if it maintains it's previous momentum. However, dnd settings don't generally operate on real world physics, so we don't have to worry about an expanding universe or account for those kinds of movement. In that case, the earth winks out and some amount of time later shows back up on it's previous course and heading. It is now behind on it's orbit by however long it was removed from time for. There's bound to be a few people who managed to survive it's absence through sheer preparedness by wearing necklaces of adaptation and rings of sustenance or what have you. However, the people left behind when the earth winks out are going to keep moving on the orbital path that the planet was previously carrying them on. They don't suddenly come to a stop or something, they just don't have something under their feet anymore. So the few people who survive the sudden absence of a planet to be standing on are going to be tumbling through space for a while. When the Earth shows back up and moving in it's orbit a few minutes behind them, they are going to need some means of getting back to it. The most prepared of these handful of survivors are going to have access to greater teleport. So when they see the planet wink back into existance, a rather distant blue orb, they can teleport their way back onto the planet's surface. Since they'll have the same orbital speed and direction as the planet, they won't paste themselves on arrival. However they will be rather lonely. There will be like, a handful of high level mages, maybe some liches whose phylacteries were carried along for the ride, and a whole lot of trees and buildings that counted as being part of the earth. Oh, and the one jackass that managed to manifest time hop on the planet successfully.

It seems like it could be a really interesting start to a campaign. The board has been wiped and you're a high level mage. Are you a bad enough dude who doesn't afraid of anything?

[Flickerdart]

Oh, and the one jackass that managed to manifest time hop on the planet successfully.
Him and his cronies - he can affect additional targets for extra PP spent.

The sorcerer ladder is probably gonna be the most effective, though. We can trivially get summon mirror mephit, then create one or more 16 HD simulacra (of Efreet or Black Ethergaunts) per day for eternity. Then use infinity wishes.