To boldly go where no PC has gone before

[Jowgen]

... these are the adventures of the adventurer Andy Price

A character who can, with complete impunity, go and comfortably explore the most inhospitable environments. It's not a build, it's not even a character concept, it's just an idea for a thing that I think would be cool and potentially useful for a PC to be able to do.

This thread is meant to gather information and ideas on two fronts.

1. In what ways can an environment be inhospitable? This is basically meant to be a collection of the multitude of ways in which simply being in a certain place can kill you. Swimming in Lava or Acid, for example, are rather straightforward examples straight out of the DMG. Going into the vacuum of space is covered in Elder Evils. All the potentially lethal planar traits also fall into this category. And of course there are entire books on It's hot outside and It's cold outside

2. How can a character comfortably counter the above with minimal effort? This is just to be a collection of convenient ways to avoid dying from simply being in the places collected above. It is not a simple "hey, lets make an immortal character!" exercise, but an effort to list effective counters to any environmental hazards one could possibly encounter.

The goal is to create a little tool-box of sorts that one can use when building a character to make sure a given PC can boldly go wherever he very well pleases. Ways to make sure that your PC can be dropped just about anywhere in the multiverse and still be perfectly fine (i.e. whistle "walking on the sun" while doing just that).

Any input appreciated as always. :smallsmile:

[Crake]

Well, one of the best items to counter hostile environments is a necklace of adaptation. Closest thing you'll find to a magical hazmat suit, and can arguably make you immune to submersion in acid, since it makes a thin bubble of air around you, allowing you to breathe while completely submerged, so you never actually come into contact with the acid. Also works for toxic environments and vacuums. Tack on a ring of endure elements, and you can comfortably move around most environmental hazards without issue.

[antoin]

Gheden Half-Black Dragon Human with a casting of Mantle of the Fiery Spirit gets us immune to damage. Awesome! This covers pretty much everything, and if your party members chip in from their WBL, you have this at ECL 5.
As for suffocation, if anyone can lemme know how to make a Warforged into a humanoid etc. type so we can put Gheden on that, that'd be great. Otherwise, the magic items listed by Crake or a Bottle of Air (it literally does what it says) would work so you don't suffocate. I don't really know of any other planar traits offhand that will kill you without dealing damage or suffocating you.

[Jowgen]

@Crake

Okay, so suffocation is clearly the easiest.

I agree that Necklace of adaptation seems to be the best thing to go for here, not because of a no-acid-contact argument, but because of how the explicit mention of a vacuum means that air-pressure is maintained. One could sink into the bottom of the ocean or to the heart of Saturn and not be crushed.

What I don't like about it is how much one would rely on it compared to how easy it is to counter. Too many eggs for one anti-magic field et al succeptible basekt.

Endure Elements is limited in its usefulness; providing only a heat/cold protection level of 3; which does not cover Unearthly Cold, Unearthly Heat, or burning heat. Fire and Cold resistance/immunity are afaik the best hard counters here.

@antoin

While technically workable, this sort of template/race approach is of fringe-usefulness here. It's hard to fit into an existing characters of varying levels of optimization/sourematerial access. If someone specifically wants to make a really hard to kill unkillable character and can use that combo it works, but for the purposes of letting most other-purpose characters go to places in a boldly fashion, it's hard to apply. I am a fan of Mantle of the Fiery spirit though. Comparatively cheat and goes great with things like Saint.

[Fii]

Psionic character with autohypnosis, survival, and hp regeneration added onto the previous ideas.

Go for the idea of simply healing the damage you take and staying conscious as a fallback.
Of note regarding Autohypnosis are the abilities to resist dying, willpower, and resist poison.
Survival offers the ability to avoid natural hazards.

[Âmesang]

Out of curiosity if you're hit with temporal stasis out in the middle of space would you be frozen at that particular point? Do you orbit with the galaxy (since I assume that, whilst on a planet, your character's feet remain planted firmly on the ground)?

[Jowgen]

Psionic character with autohypnosis, survival, and hp regeneration added onto the previous ideas. [...]Survival offers the ability to avoid natural hazards.

Never used psionics myself, but I shall assume that works. As for survival, it's interesting to muse what sort of things it could be used against, but at the end of the day, avoiding things is rather far from boldly going places .


Temporal Stasis

Interesting question. I'm not sure temporal stasis prevents movement in and off itself, but the "no force can harm" part does suggest it at least. Really, to answer that question we'd need to know how space-science works in a standard D&D setting, and info on that is rather scarce.

I recall there being some questions now and again in Afroakuma's question threads. He generally subscribes to a Spelljammer approach to cosmology, meaning that space is dived by "crystal spheres", and space-physics are more magic based than science based (e.g. sun =/= superhot plasma fusion).

I'd personally have to go with position being fixed in relation to whatever exerts the most gravitational pull on the temporal stasis creature. So, in oerth's orbit, the creature wouldn't be moving in relation to the planet, but it would be moving in relation to everything else. That's my instinct.

[Troacctid]

Be a ghost. That'll make you immune to physical hazards.

[Jowgen]

Be a ghost. That'll make you immune to physical hazards.

Ghost incorporeality is limited to planes with an ethereal, i.e. the material. Also, any Incorporeal undead winks out in an antimagic field. :smallfrown:

[MisterKaws]

I recall seeing tons of abilites that let you 'attune' yourself to a plane to get full immunity to whatever hazards there are in that plane, so you could swim in lava as easily as in your typical pool, and some of those let you re-attune at-will.

[Tvtyrant]

Aninated riverine box can take you anywhere. Use an anklet of translocation to get in and out of the box.

[Jowgen]

I recall seeing tons of abilites that let you 'attune' yourself to a plane to get full immunity to whatever hazards there are in that plane, so you could swim in lava as easily as in your typical pool, and some of those let you re-attune at-will.

Sounds good, happen to recall any specific examples? :smallsmile:

[Jack_Simth]

Ghost incorporeality is limited to planes with an ethereal, i.e. the material. Also, any Incorporeal undead winks out in an antimagic field. :smallfrown:
Ah, but fun stuff: Ghosts (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ghost.htm) are not incorporeal on the Ethereal Plane! So if you're a ghost and you wander into an AMF... your Manifestation winks off, but you're otherwise unaffected. This is very specifically called out in he Manifestation entry, but it's touched on in several other spots (AC, Attack, Full Attack, Damage, Corrupting Touch, Draining Touch; also of note is that Strength isn't turned into a nonability under Ability scores).


Sounds good, happen to recall any specific examples? :smallsmile:
It's a spell line in Spell Compendium: Avoid Planar Effects, page 19, is the one from which the others inherit (and they run quite the gamut on duration - Attune Form lasts 24 hours, Avoid Planar Effects is minutes/level, Planar Tolerance is hours/level; Elemental Body is hours/level, personal, and grants Attune Form with respect to an elemental plane based on what you turn into). Just aspects of the plane itself, though; you're not burned wandering around on the plane of fire, and you're not deafened in Pandemonium, you don't go boom on the PEP, you don't suffocate on the Plane of Earth... but if you jump into a pool of lava on the elemental plane of fire, or get hit by a fire elemental, or some such, the spells don't help (in general - Elemental Body might).

There's also a Feat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/spelltouchedFeats.htm#naturalizedDenizen) that makes you count as a planar native wherever you happen to be - but for the most part, that doesn't do much of what you want.

[tadkins]

This thread is awesome. I've thought about this sort of thing before. It's cool to picture a character just zooming about the planes and cosmos, exploring its vastness, visiting the weirdest planets out there and surviving it all.

The capstone power of the Starsoul Bloodline sorcerer and the fluff around it seems to suggest that sort of path for a character.

Starborn (Ex): At 20th level, you gain immunity to cold and blindness, and you can see perfectly in natural or magical darkness. In addition, you gain fast healing 1 when you are outdoors at night.

I've often wondered how such a thing can be done on other characters that don't have as much access to spells as a wizard or sorcerer. A Magus star-warrior seems particularly cool. So I greatly appreciate the existence of this thread and all the ideas that come about it. xD

[Jowgen]

Came across 2 intersting places that are rather unusually hazardous. The first is the soul-fog surrounding the Demonweb Pits (detailed in that adventure module). As written, undead could technically be argued immune, but I doubt that reading would fly. From what I can tell, the only real way to reliably counter the stuff is to have a Fort save of at least +19 and the Steadfast Determination feat.

The other is what looks like a plane of Vacuum, described on page 113 of Fiendish Codex I. Obviously, a necklace of adaptation helps here, but what's interesting is that the rules for Vacuums presented here differ from those in Elder Evils.

@Jack_Smith

Not gonna lie, incorporeality does seem like a rather priceless thing for the Andy Price to have. Being able to phase through most solids goes such a long way in ensuring mobility in certain places, the obvious one being the elemental plane of earth. Also, the "immune to all nonmagical attack forms" clause, which I think applies to almost all sources. I just don't think Ghost is a particularly good way to go about it, since, as you mentioned, Ghost's only get their incorporeality while manifesting onto the material from the ethereal.

To my knowledge, the best kind of incorporeality comes from the Phantom template (MMV I think), but that doesn't have a listed LA or specified acquisition method.

@tadkins

I am pleased you appreciate the thread :smallsmile:

[tadkins]

Like even when talking about RL, wouldn't it be cool for a single person to do stuff like breach Jupiter's atmosphere and just poke around in there a bit? Travel to that strange diamond planet, live, maybe even grab a few souvenirs?

Just being able to explore and study the universe without having to worry too much about the million or so ways it can kill you. xD

[Jowgen]

Just being able to explore and study the universe without having to worry too much about the million or so ways it can kill you. xD

That is in line with my reason for making this thread. Lets do a little space scenario, for funsies.

You are your average Ex-flight material plane dweller, and you want to go to the heart of not-Saturn. First off, you'd need protection from "the void" (as per elder evils) as well as the pressure inside the gas planet, which your necklace of adaptation should cover with its shell of air. Second, you'd need max cold protection or cold damage immunity. Now, depending on what the inside of not-saturn is like, you might need acid immunity to avoid acid rain stormy things, electricity immunity to avoid getting sapped by the lighting you might encounter, and of course fire immunity in case it gets real hot inside.

So essentially, for proper space exploration, all 4 basic energy types must be accounted for, and you flat-out need the necklace of adaptation to avoid being killed by (lack of) pressure. Now, the greatest hazard you might encounter in my opinion is a random pocket of dead magic. The energy immunities can be gotten as Ex, but the necklace's air shell is very much vulnerable to this sort of stuff.

And then of course there is the issue of how to actually get from A to B. When on a cosmic scale, any speed measured in ft/6s is useless. There is spell-jammer type magic, but that's for ships. Teleportation can work, but that's a cop-out imo.

No, in my opinion, what is needed is proper space-propulsion. Since its space, one should have newton's opposite&equal-reaction thing working for us. So, once we clear Oerth's gravity, what we need is something to create a massive momentary burst of energy to create the appropriate acceleration. Something puny like the backlash from a decanter of endless water wouldn't be enough. We'd need some sort of massive explosion with a really meaty knock-back effect...

[tadkins]

While looking into Pathfinder info I read mention of something called "Aetherships" for space travel.

I couldn't find any more info beyond that though.

[Sian]

lets throw this guy into the positive plane ... its not damage yet he'll likely still go boom if he doesn't keep hitting himself enough

[Âmesang]

We'd need some sort of massive explosion with a really meaty knock-back effect...
Ask an Elder Treant War Hulking Hurler to show you its fast ball? :smalltongue:

[CrazyNoob]

In the Planer Handbook, there is the Planar tolerance armor enhancement, which grants planar tolerance while worn for a flat + gp cost.

[AnonymousPepper]

You could always be a Planar Shepherd. That always works. :smallcool:

My suggestion to you would be the necklace of adaptation+ring of sustenance plus a couple mobility items (swim speed, fly speed, burrow speed, climb speed?). Wait, but that's a lot of magic items, you say! An antimagic field would ruin me, you say! That, my friend, is where the ultimate defensive tool in D&D comes in: the Selective Spell antimagic field. Expensive as hell? Sure. The absolute best your money can buy? Also yes. The list of mortal things that can turn off your magic items drops to just one - Disjunction, and that's a caster level check whose rate of success at just breaking the AMF is a percentage equal to CL (aka, generally maximum 20%).

[Jowgen]

While looking into Pathfinder info I read mention of something called "Aetherships" for space travel.

I checked, and it's Dungeon 92 that has the 3rd edition update for spelljammer spaceships and such. Although, really, Eberron Airships outfitted with something to maintain atmospheric pressure are far superior (minus the lack of a Spelljamming Helm of course).

However, I did find something of interest in that issue: air suits. For 100 gp and a -2 ACP, you get protection from the void of space. If you can MW it and make it out of some material that further reduces ACP, I think it would make a great second layer of defense in addition to the necklace of adaptation (which, btw, I found explicity RAW stating that it works against crushing damage), in case you space-fly into a null-magic zone in the middle of space. The seperately available alchemical air-recylcer is only 12 hours though. Might need something better.


lets throw this guy into the positive plane ... its not damage yet he'll likely still go boom if he doesn't keep hitting himself enough

I recall a bracelet-type device that you wind up and that then cuts you each turn to counteract the positive energy exploding thing. I think it was from some online article, but can't seem to find it though.


Ask an Elder Treant War Hulking Hurler to show you its fast ball?

Not the sort of thing I had in mind. :smalltongue:


In the Planer Handbook, there is the Planar tolerance armor enhancement, which grants planar tolerance while worn for a flat + gp cost.

I checked it. 24k is a tad on the pricey side, and while a lot of its effects can be duplicated with things like fire immunity; the fact that its kinda catch-all makes it rather useful. I mean, things like the entrapping traits of Hades are an example of a weird planar trait you won't nessecarily be able to anticipate; so I'd say its a worthwhile just-in-case investment.


You could always be a Planar Shepherd. That always works.

My suggestion to you would be the necklace of adaptation+ring of sustenance plus a couple mobility items (swim speed, fly speed, burrow speed, climb speed?). Wait, but that's a lot of magic items, you say! An antimagic field would ruin me, you say! That, my friend, is where the ultimate defensive tool in D&D comes in: the Selective Spell antimagic field. Expensive as hell? Sure. The absolute best your money can buy? Also yes. The list of mortal things that can turn off your magic items drops to just one - Disjunction, and that's a caster level check whose rate of success at just breaking the AMF is a percentage equal to CL (aka, generally maximum 20%).

Planar Shepherd is handy, but the Planar Tolerance armor enchantment is probably the better investment here for exploration purposes.

And yes, Selective Spell Antimagic Field is about as good as it gets but... I don't think it's good enough. It can counter your average AMF, but I don't think it'll do jack if you find yourself in a dead magic plane, as the AMF on there essentially emanates from everywhere.