Iron + Mechanus

[LordOfCain]

What would happen if you attempted to stop the cogs of Mechanus from turning? Such as by placing many tons of iron in between two cogs?

[FocusWolf413]

I think the gears are more metaphysical than physical. You need more than some mundane iron to stop magical gears that are powered by the purest form of law.

[LordOfCain]

I think the gears are more metaphysical than physical. You need more than some mundane iron to stop magical gears that are powered by the purest form of law.

Adamantium might work... or obdurium... What is the strongest material in DnD?

[Florian]

Adamantium might work... or obdurium... What is the strongest material in DnD?

Ah, no. And outside of Unobtainium, no chance.

[Belzyk]

I would say the very fabric of reality and law would unravel and the inevitable would wage war on all

[Rusvul]

That's how you get all of the Modrons to come after you. Destroy the interloper and then remove the offending material. If I were the DM in that situation, I would keep throwing Modrons at the players until they eventually fled or died. Strength in numbers is kind of their whole thing, and to keep an infinite plane running they have to have a lot of numbers. I might actually run this some way other than a combat encounter, because otherwise it would take a very long time and be very boring.

Wait. Modrons aren't in 3.5, are they? Hmm. Formians, then? I doubt Inevitables would get involved, they all have very specific purposes to which this is unrelated. Point is, you'd be crushed by (literally) endless swarms of weak creatures. (In my game, at least.)

[Zaq]

This is the point at which you basically invoke Summon Bigger Fish. The gears on Mechanus aren't like the gears in a machine. They're made of, and powered by, Law itself. Iron isn't going to do anything to them. Adamantine isn't going to do anything. It doesn't matter what you stick in there—they're just going to keep grinding away. I don't think even a Wall of Force would work—and if it were to try, there'd be a squad of Modrons sent out to Disjunction it before it could cause any problems. (I mean really, you think you're the first person who tried to screw with Mechanus? They've seen it before. They have a very specific protocol for dealing with such troublemakers.)

Now, what might be interesting would be putting a major artifact in there. Those can't be destroyed by basically anything short of their specific plot-related weakness, so that might be an immovable object/unstoppable force situation. But anything smaller than a major artifact? The gears of Mechanus are more unstoppable than your object is immovable.

Yes, I recognize that this boils down to "GM says no," but really, you're not dealing with some punk Wizard's private demiplane here. You aren't dealing with just a big Artificer's gizmo. You're dealing with a major plane. Just because it looks like it can be sabotaged doesn't mean that your mortal hands have the means to do it. You can't extinguish the Elemental Plane of Fire by opening a Gate to the bottom of an ocean—there's more fire than you have water. (Even if you open a Gate between the Elemental Plane of Fire and the Elemental Plane of Water, you wouldn't succeed in extinguishing one or draining the other—they're infinite.) And just because the gears of Mechanus look like, well, gears, that doesn't mean that you can stop them the way you stop regular gears.

I mean, if you had Divine Rank and were an agent of the primal forces of Chaos, then maybe we could talk. Or if you used Epic-level means of weakening the belief in Law for a major section of the multiverse, then you might be able to start sabotaging the gears (because you'd have started weakening the plane itself). But no mortal is going to be able to use physical means (even a Wall of Force is physical in this sense) to interfere with a major plane.

[Âmesang]

Wait. Modrons aren't in 3.5, are they? Hmm. Formians, then? I doubt Inevitables would get involved, they all have very specific purposes to which this is unrelated. Point is, you'd be crushed by (literally) endless swarms of weak creatures. (In my game, at least.)
Try "Return of Modrons" in DRAGON #354. :smallbiggrin:

Could these gears be polymorphed into metal? Could rust monsters do a number on 'em?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Wait. Modrons aren't in 3.5, are they? Hmm. Formians, then? I doubt Inevitables would get involved, they all have very specific purposes to which this is unrelated. Point is, you'd be crushed by (literally) endless swarms of weak creatures. (In my game, at least.)

Behold! (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20010921a) 3.5 Modrons.

[Milo v3]

http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/4583494.jpg

[Cruiser1]

Modrons aren't in 3.5, are they?
Modrons are described in MotP in the section on Mechanus, so they exist in 3.X. However (unlike 2.X) stats for specific Modron creatures aren't given outside of the Web enhancement.


I think the gears are more metaphysical than physical.
MotP says the gears "are composed of stone, earth, and metal ores". That means they should be able to be damaged by hard metals, people can dig within a gear, and so on. The gears won't stop, since they're indeed powered by Law itself, however one could conceivably destroy a small gear, or at least remove its teeth so it no longer makes the gear next to it turn. Presumably Modrons or other forces of Law repair gears as needed (and of course prevent Devils or pesky adventurers trying to manipulate the natural Law of things).

[Florian]

MotP says the gears "are composed of stone, earth, and metal ores".

Your characters head is composed of soft flesh and brittle bone. We can actually forfeit talking about your characters HP as the values of Flesh and Bone are known.

[FocusWolf413]

MotP says the gears "are composed of stone, earth, and metal ores". That means they should be able to be damaged by hard metals, people can dig within a gear, and so on. The gears won't stop, since they're indeed powered by Law itself, however one could conceivably destroy a small gear, or at least remove its teeth so it no longer makes the gear next to it turn. Presumably Modrons or other forces of Law repair gears as needed (and of course prevent Devils or pesky adventurers trying to manipulate the natural Law of things).


Your characters head is composed of soft flesh and brittle bone. We can actually forfeit talking about your characters HP as the values of Flesh and Bone are known.

Yes, they're technically just stone, but just as a fighter is more than a stack of meat and a wizard is more than a squishy pink monkey, the gears of Mechanus are more than the sum of their parts. They're a constant of the multiverse. They're a fundamental. They just ARE. No matter what happens in the multiverse, what pesky little mortals do in their spare time to make themselves feel important, who kills the former god of death and ascends, or what ephemeral war wages between the great gods across the planes, until the very idea of order in any form has been completely destroyed and erased from history, they grind on.

[Deadline]

Adamantium might work... or obdurium... What is the strongest material in DnD?

If we are talking about the Planescape setting, the strongest material is belief.

[KillianHawkeye]

Also don't forget that the gears of Mechanus are like the size of an entire city at least, and many of them are more like continents. We aren't talking about normal-sized gears here. I really don't see how anybody could expect to wield the wrench big enough to muck up mechanical workings of that magnitude.

Like, picture the scene from Star Wars where the Super Star Destroyer crashes into the second Death Star, but then imagine that it is made out of solid metal rather than being hollow and having rooms and barracks and fighter bays and whatnot. That is more like what you would need to physically wedge the gears of Mechanus.

[Bullet06320]

This is the point at which you basically invoke Summon Bigger Fish. The gears on Mechanus aren't like the gears in a machine. They're made of, and powered by, Law itself. Iron isn't going to do anything to them. Adamantine isn't going to do anything. It doesn't matter what you stick in there—they're just going to keep grinding away. I don't think even a Wall of Force would work—and if it were to try, there'd be a squad of Modrons sent out to Disjunction it before it could cause any problems. (I mean really, you think you're the first person who tried to screw with Mechanus? They've seen it before. They have a very specific protocol for dealing with such troublemakers.)

Now, what might be interesting would be putting a major artifact in there. Those can't be destroyed by basically anything short of their specific plot-related weakness, so that might be an immovable object/unstoppable force situation. But anything smaller than a major artifact? The gears of Mechanus are more unstoppable than your object is immovable.

Yes, I recognize that this boils down to "GM says no," but really, you're not dealing with some punk Wizard's private demiplane here. You aren't dealing with just a big Artificer's gizmo. You're dealing with a major plane. Just because it looks like it can be sabotaged doesn't mean that your mortal hands have the means to do it. You can't extinguish the Elemental Plane of Fire by opening a Gate to the bottom of an ocean—there's more fire than you have water. (Even if you open a Gate between the Elemental Plane of Fire and the Elemental Plane of Water, you wouldn't succeed in extinguishing one or draining the other—they're infinite.) And just because the gears of Mechanus look like, well, gears, that doesn't mean that you can stop them the way you stop regular gears.

I mean, if you had Divine Rank and were an agent of the primal forces of Chaos, then maybe we could talk. Or if you used Epic-level means of weakening the belief in Law for a major section of the multiverse, then you might be able to start sabotaging the gears (because you'd have started weakening the plane itself). But no mortal is going to be able to use physical means (even a Wall of Force is physical in this sense) to interfere with a major plane.

I suppose if you would forge wrenches made out of pure chaos it would be a start, you are talking epic epic level stuff here unless your just trying to cause a momentary hiccup as a distraction

[Florian]

I suppose if you would forge wrenches made out of pure chaos it would be a start, you are talking epic epic level stuff here unless your just trying to cause a momentary hiccup as a distraction

Not really. Magic, even epic magic, is so small and unimportant, it can´t change anything of the scope and size we´re talking about here. Raw belief is the only thing that has an effect on the level we talk about here.