Massacring Peasants

[John05]

Are there any spells below 9th level that can massacre a thousand or more commoners?

Even at 9th level, Apocalypse from the Sky is the only one I know that could.

Is it possible to create a wizard or even cleric that can wipe out an entire village or small army in one spell? Without making him epic or even pre-epic. The lower the level the better, to make him a feasible antagonist for PCs to take on as early as 10th-11th. Basically, enough to make IC PCs and NPCs think "oh ****" without making the villain impossible to beat for mid-level PCs.

The only possibilities that come to mind are Locate City Bomb and a Fell Drain (metamagic) Dark Tide (Stormwrack).

Locate City Bomb is too iffy for me. It's debatable whether the "blast" is 2D or 3D (2D would be negligible damage and most people would just be knocked off their feet). The Wightpocalypse version using Fell Drain is a lot less debatable, but the sad thing there is that it still uses a ton of feats. Any villainous NPC using such a combo wouldn't be good for much else.

Even Dark Tide is iffy. The minute people see this spreading black liquid that seems to cause their fellow peasants drop like flies, they'll start running, and most peasants would be able to keep up with 100 ft per round (running is 120 ft per round unless they wear medium or heavy armor). It's also bothersome to me that it's a Blackwater domain specific spell. At least this would would only cost a couple of feats (Fell Drain and an easy metamagic to reduce the spell down to 8th level, making it accessible for a 15th level cleric).

So, GiTP, are there ways to make a caster kill thousands of people with a snap of his fingers without having him/her border on epic (17th+ level)? Any bright ideas that I missed?

I can't post links so here is Dark Tide:

Dark Tide
(Stormwrack)

Necromancy [Evil, Water]
Level: Blackwater (SW) 7,
Components: V, S, DF,
Casting Time: 1 full round
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: One-half mile radius spread
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes

You infuse the target area with the enervating essence of the blackwater depths, creating a tide of blackwater that spreads out from the designated point of origin at a rate of 100 feet per round until it fills the entire area.
The water is black and terribly chilling, and its touch causes a sense of fear in those affected by it.
Those within the area must make a Fortitude save when they first enter the blackwater (or when it first surrounds
them).
Failure indicates that they take 1 point of Strength damage.
Additionally, every creature in the area takes 1d6 points of negative energy damage for every hour they remain in the dark, murky waters (no save).
Spells that protect against negative energy damage will prevent the Strength damage.
Creatures who take damage from the dark tide are considered shaken as long as they remain in the area.
This spell is a favored first move by sahuagin and other blackwater-dwelling creatures before they attack the settlements of their enemies.

[Saintheart]

A casting of Blizzard (Druid 5) out of Frostburn could easily ruin a town of commoners' collective day. 100 feet radius per caster level means it's a, what, 2000 feet diameter spell at 10th level, that's about half a mile. Widen Spell makes that 4000 feet diameter, with one foot of snow falling every round per level, good luck digging your way out of a good 10 feet of snow while taking nonlethal damage (unless you make a Fort save, of course, which is kind of unlikely for a commoner given the level of the spell and/or the caster level involved. Wait, let's make that 20 feet of snow by just casting the spell again while the aforementioned 10 feet of snow is still on the ground. All flames go out, all ranged attacks fail, visibility drops to virtually zero. Temperature explicitly drops below freezing instantly.

Of course, since the range of the spell is only 400 feet + 40/CL, you have to put your winter woolies on before casting, but this is a pretty nasty nuke.

[Crake]

Contagion can mess up a closely knit community's population pretty easily.

[OgresAreCute]

An application of Fimbulwinter (Frostburn) will destroy crops and block roads for most medieval peasant villages. Lasts a long time, too.

[Cenric]

You could wight-ocalypse a major city, which to be fair is more a power of a wight than your BBEG but still if no one makes it out you did kill and entire city and turn them all into life sucking undead.

Step 1. Fell Drain Magic Missile a few commoners inside the city. (Or any other single negative energy level, this is just a default suggestion)
Step 1.5 Dying to a negative level raises you as a wight

Step 2. The raised wights are beefy enough that a quickly raised commoner militia wont kill them and every time a wight hits a commoner it kills them via it's energy drain effect, creating another wight. You can ensure that this chain properly goes off by creating more than a single wight in step 1.

Step 3. Now for the bigger issues, people fleeing the city. Assuming you are doing this in a reasonably large city arcane lock is an easy way to make sure all of the city gates remain closed for the wights to multiply off of the peasants.
Note on step 3. You will need to deal with any casters in the city who can dispel/knock open you locks. but assuming you're the bbeg this shouldn't be too tall a feat.

So for the cost of a 3rd level spell (fell drain magic missile) and a handful of 2nd level spells (arcane lock) you can kill off as many people as live within then walls of a city. Plus it has the added benefit of now having a large horde of undead who will remain relevantly dangerous until the party picks up resistance to negative levels.

[John05]

Thanks for the suggestion, and I understand it's a simple matter to wipe out a village over time for even low level wizards.

Problems with a Fell Drain Magic Missile for me are:

1. It's not cinematic.
2. By RAW, Wights rise the night after killed by negative level. Not close to, *Snaps Fingers; a thousand die*.

An 17th level wizard/sorc can create his own demiplanes, create teleportation circles that warp global economics, summon demigods, and yet even for them they struggle to wipe out a large area of mooks without sacrificing their lives/sanity (i.e. BoVD's Apocalypse). Am I just looking in the wrong places?

Blizzard is great though. Seems like Druids are the true masters of disasters.

[Telonius]

A single casting of Blasphemy (or Dictum, Holy Word, or Word of Chaos) could potentially take out an awful lot of peasants, assuming they're close together and non-Evil. It's usually available at Cleric 13, so it would kill any 1- or 2-HD creatures starting then.

EDIT: You could Divine Metamagic Widen Spell to take out more of them. If they're all in a convenient circle, one peasant per square with you in the middle, you could get a bit over 750 of them.

Creative uses of Bluff and illusion spells could take out even more, but that kind of relies on non-cinematic elements and trickery. (i.e. falsify a royal summons for all the people in town to show up, illusion of a floor in the hallway over a big pit, Silence so no one can hear the thuds).

[Malphegor]

Magic trapped item that casts Create Trap when the number of people in its range is above X amount, resets once spell is done.

Have it be a coin, carved into with strange markings with a bit of a conjuration aura on it but just an ordinary coin or bit of card. If I'm reading things right, you've got a weird coin or card that waits in inventories until it's near a population base...

Then BAM! YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD! Scything blade trap appears in the town market, decapitation, eviceration! Unsuspecting danger!

If in a low-magic region of your world, you could easily take out a lot of people with that, as people would be looking for the wizard casting Create Trap, not checking the tills of the shops for coins that occasionally emit pulses of magical energy checking the nearby quantity of people.

(might be way more expensive than I'm assuming)



Blizzard is great though. Seems like Druids are the true masters of disasters.

Druids are basically 'what if Greenpeace at their worst had INFINITE COSMIC POWAAAAH' imo.

Eco-terrorists with a magic staff and a elephant companion, here to do one thing and one thing alone- end civilisation and ruin everything for everyone sane ever.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Erupt is a 9th-level cleric spell from Serpent Kingdoms. Radius 100'/level, damage 10/level, Fort half.
Cold snap before blizzard or frostfell is effective, perhaps with control weather and fimbulwinter on top.

Energy cone has a 120' range and deals 13d6 damage in a cone-shaped area. That's pretty big. Edit: Enlarge doesn't work on spells with a fixed range. Go figure.
A Widened boreal wind affects a 40'-wide area out to long range, dealing 1d4/CL cold damage, up to 15d4.

War spells are, of course, the official way to do this, but they're pretty limited, and often underwhelming. For example, a Widened War vortex of teeth might have a 240' radius (with a 30' radius safe zone in the middle), but you need a feat, the casting time is 1 minute, it's an 8th-level spell, and so on. Best used on a Dweomerkeeper.


The War Wizard of Cormyr improves your Widen Spell metamagic (at ECL 12), increasing the benefit from +50% to +100%. Since it's already +100% in 3.5, I would update the class from 3.0 by making it +150% or +200%, as appropriate for the campaign in question. At +200%, boreal wind would cover a 60'-wide area, or up to 2112 Medium creatures. I suggest finding a city with a nice long straight avenue.

[Silly Name]

Well, what kind of settlement are we talking about here? If it's a small village made of wooden houses built near to each other, a well-placed Enlarged Maximized Fireball can set a few buildings on fire, and then you just let poor urbanistic planning run its course and devastate the village.

In a roundabout way, Charm Monster or Summon Monster are also capable of destroying a settlement by using a single spell: just charm or summon something that can lay down devastation.

A Symbol of Death can probably decimate a small village. Horrid Wilting might be a better option, though, if there are too many peasants around.

[tyckspoon]

Am I just looking in the wrong places?

Blizzard is great though. Seems like Druids are the true masters of disasters.

First question: No, not really. The spells in the books are all focused around what is basically small-squad level combat (a 4-6 member combat unit taking on from 1 to roughly twice their own number of opponents) and have areas and target counts balanced to that. There basically aren't spells intended to operate on a wider scale than that outside of the area of weather control, which has been determined to be a Druid Thing. So you can wipe out a fair number of weak creatures if they're packed into something like a market square or gathered together to listen to a speech or watch a play or something, but there isn't very much that will affect an entire battlefield or flatten a village.

Blizzard is really nasty, although it's hampered by some of the oddities of the spell rules (one of which is that it's really easy for its Area to exceed its Range, but no spell effect can go beyond a spell's Range.. so you can lose a lot of the potential affected area.) The one that's most limiting for this kind of usage is that the spell doesn't specify that the snow dropped by it remains past the spell's duration, so by RAW the spell drops 10+ feet of snow in a minute.. and then it just disappears, which removes most of the actual harm you would cause by forcing people to deal with trying to dig out of that much snow or handle the flooding that would happen when all that snow started to melt.

[Vizzerdrix]

I think Ive seen what you want. It was spells modifoed so that they could be used against entire armies. I just cant remember where I saw them. It was either in a dragon mag, or heroes of battle, maybe. EDIT- war spells, as mentioned above and below.

[RaiKirah]

If you aren't wedded to being a caster there's the Desert Wind manuever Ring of Fire, which does 12d6 fire damage to everyone inside a ring defined by twice your move speed. It's possible to pump that high enough to run around a town (or the entire continental US; Google the Chuck-E-Cheese build), and 12d6 should kill every commoner there.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I think you're all thinking too big. There are a good few lower level spells that would be really hard for crowds of peasants to counter or live through...

Summon swarm (2nd level) - bats deal 1d6 per round for being in the same space as the swarm, plus 1 bleed per round, flies faster than most peasants can run.
Insect plague (5th level) - multiple swarms of locusts deal 2d6
Cloudkill (5th) - cast at the top of a hill
Passwall (5th) - cast in the local dam
Blade barrier (6th) - cast in front of a moving river or sea vessel of similar: the force blades pass through the walls of the vessel, almost no-one can escape.

[Feantar]

Contagion can mess up a closely knit community's population pretty easily.

/thread

:smalltongue:

This is surprisingly difficult. I thought of contagion as well. Other than that...

Killing Kittens Methods: Minor Creation (Ricin) and dump it in the water supply, fabricate some huge explosive, or similar things that bring physics into the world of D&D.

Kittenic Genocide: Locate City Bomb

Creatures: Either using spawn bombs (Fell Drain or Enervation for Wights, Create Greater Undead for Shadows), or lesser planar binding for a demon or devil to just go nuts over the settlement.

Blasting: Just gather the villagers in the town square, then use an enlarged blast spell with a pretty large area.

There was also a series of war spells in Dragon, somewhere... Dragon 309! Those might work.

[Resileaf]

Only in a DnD forum can you post something like "I would like help in massacring peasants" and nobody will bat an eye.

Have you thought about homebrewing spells to have a wider AoE, but smaller damage to balance it out? Maybe it could be helpful to look outside the books for this particular event.
Plus it would make it possible for a few very lucky peasants to not die on the spot, allowing the players to help survivors rather than a single nuke killing everyone no matter what.

[Lotheb]

Control Winds, ideally at caster level 15+ but doable at CL 12, creates a big area of wind strong enough to destroy buildings and damage creatures. The damage isnt enough to intantly kill much, but the duration is long enough that you can destroy a village by walking (or flying) through it, and if you do an updraft anyone who gets caught in it will be blown in to the center of the effect, and keep taking damage. Fort save, druid 5, air domain 5

[SLOTHRPG95]

Even plain-old Control Weather is a great apocalypse tool. Extended, it's an average of about 4 days, 4 hours of tornadoes/hailstorms/blizzards/hurricane-force winds, depending on the season. Even not Extended, you only have to cast it every other day. Any peasant in a 2-mile radius (or 3-mile if you're a Druid) is SOL. Just make sure to not cast it in the Fall, or the best you can do is... sleet. Or fog. Wooooo.

[Thunder999]

Fell drain blizzard is your best bet, as others have mentioned the area is rather large, fell drain means everyone who fails the fort save loses a level, so that should be plenty of dead commoners right there, and the wights will handle those who got lucky.

[Necroticplague]

In Dragon 309, there are rules for 'war spells', which might help what you're looking for. They need a feat and two minutes to cast for most, but they have devastatingly larger effects that mostly scale with CL. While AoEss probably aren't the way to go,due to not scaling the areas up by enough, some of the other options can certainly approach this. Like turning any summon spell into something that summons 25 creatures instead. Per CL. So, you talked about how a Wightpocalypse isn't enough because it waits till night? How about a War Summon Undead 5, a sixth level spell that summons 25 wights per CL? The only difficulty is that such spells have expensive components (spell level*minimum CL*100, so this 'army of the hungry dead' costs 4000 in onyx).

EDIT: crap, missed that someone already suggested these.

[noob]

Even plain-old Control Weather is a great apocalypse tool. Extended, it's an average of about 4 days, 4 hours of tornadoes/hailstorms/blizzards/hurricane-force winds, depending on the season. Even not Extended, you only have to cast it every other day. Any peasant in a 2-mile radius (or 3-mile if you're a Druid) is SOL. Just make sure to not cast it in the Fall, or the best you can do is... sleet. Or fog. Wooooo.
A cool thing is that druids natively have the radius increased to 3 miles.

[Falontani]

Tsunami level 9 druid spell, range is 20 ft wide/CL, 40 ft tall/cl; CL 17 is 340 ft across 680 ft tall gives a huge spread of destruction; problem is that peasants will run out of range, which means it is ineffective unless you cast a wall spell (feasible)


Earthquake level 7 druid spell, range is 80 ft radius centered on a point within 920 ft. Knocks people down and has a 25% chance of killing them, destroys buildings and does a decent amount of damage (enough to kill peasants); problem is that it is far too situational and won't kill enough to matter most of the time

Plague level 7 druid spell, up to 13 creatures contract slimy doom, within 48 hours without Remove Disease you have devastated the area; problem is that it takes too long

Epidemic level 9 3.0 druid spell, one target immediately contracts Slimy Doom, all creatures within 30 ft of that target must make a save or contract Slimy Doom... this process continues until there is no one left to infect within 30 ft of any of them. uses spellcaster DC, they will all die within 48 hours; problem is that this again takes too long, although it is definitely a scary force to be reckoned with

Storm of Vengeance level 9 blighter spell means level 15 accessible, 360 ft radius means that it is fairly large, but not large enough

Sandstorm level 6 druid spell can affect a range of 40 ft radius/level, which is effectively 80 ft/level, which means at CL 11 that is 880 feet, if you need a larger radius then you may Widen the Sandstorm to be a 9th level spell at 80 ft radius/level this pushes it to 160 ft/level CL 17 puts that at 2720 foot spread which puts us at half a mile that we are targeting. Deals 1d3 points of damage per round, throws large or smaller creatures around and destroys non fortified buildings. This would be able to destroy a large area and kill many, however it would take a few rounds

Blizzard level 5 druid spell affects an 1800 ft range at CL 9, deals small amounts of damage that commoners can live through, but will kill them quickly enough. Not to mention over the course of 9 rounds 9 ft of snow falls, extending it pushes the range up by 400 ft, cl 11, and lasts for 22 rounds. 22 ft of snow will absolutely bury most people and will not be easy to get rid of even if the creatures survive due to buildings, upon an open field against an army, this will be your best bet.



other spells would work, but those are you best druid spells you could use. Summons will always be awesome.





NOW for my favorite, Storm of Vengeance is normally a 9th level spell, however an heir of siberys with the mark of storm may cast this spell as early as level.. 13. it effects as much as 720 ft of space, and will destroy any commoners in the area.

[King of Nowhere]

Even Dark Tide is iffy. The minute people see this spreading black liquid that seems to cause their fellow peasants drop like flies, they'll start running, and most peasants would be able to keep up with 100 ft per round (running is 120 ft per round unless they wear medium or heavy armor). It's also bothersome to me that it's a Blackwater domain specific spell. At least this would would only cost a couple of feats (Fell Drain and an easy metamagic to reduce the spell down to 8th level, making it accessible for a 15th level cleric).

So, GiTP, are there ways to make a caster kill thousands of people with a snap of his fingers without having him/her border on epic (17th+ level)? Any bright ideas that I missed?

I can't post links so here is Dark Tide:

Dark Tide
(Stormwrack)

Necromancy [Evil, Water]
Level: Blackwater (SW) 7,
Components: V, S, DF,
Casting Time: 1 full round
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: One-half mile radius spread
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes

You infuse the target area with the enervating essence of the blackwater depths, creating a tide of blackwater that spreads out from the designated point of origin at a rate of 100 feet per round until it fills the entire area.
The water is black and terribly chilling, and its touch causes a sense of fear in those affected by it.
Those within the area must make a Fortitude save when they first enter the blackwater (or when it first surrounds
them).
Failure indicates that they take 1 point of Strength damage.
Additionally, every creature in the area takes 1d6 points of negative energy damage for every hour they remain in the dark, murky waters (no save).
Spells that protect against negative energy damage will prevent the Strength damage.
Creatures who take damage from the dark tide are considered shaken as long as they remain in the area.
This spell is a favored first move by sahuagin and other blackwater-dwelling creatures before they attack the settlements of their enemies.

Well, consider this realistically. A fit adult can make that speed. Can a child? an elder? A cripple? No, they can't, and in a preindustrial society, those make up a good half of the pupulation. How many of the fit adults would try to carry a child or loved one to safety, thus falling back and falling to the spelll themselves? And how many would be able to sustain the speed over half a mile? I wouldn't.

So while that spell would leave survivors, it would still kill most of a community, and I think it makes for some very cinematic sequence. I mean, describe a mother reaching safety but coming back to try and help her children. Someone trying to help their elderly father limp away. Somebody else almost making it, and then succimbing to exhaustion. Have the pcs who witness this be able to help some of the people.
It would make for a powerful sequence, I think

[John05]

If you aren't wedded to being a caster there's the Desert Wind manuever Ring of Fire, which does 12d6 fire damage to everyone inside a ring defined by twice your move speed. It's possible to pump that high enough to run around a town (or the entire continental US; Google the Chuck-E-Cheese build), and 12d6 should kill every commoner there.

I can just picture the swordsage flashing in the eyes of the doomed army, before they all burst into flames. "Omae wa mou shindeiru". lol

I looked up Chuck-E-Cheese (thanks for suggestion). Seems like Footsteps of the Divine got errata'd to include "discharge" so it won't work with persistant spell anymore. Without perstistent spell, I'm finding that Footsteps generally just gives you a few thousand feet of movement burst in a round. That's a circumference since we close the loop for Ring of Fire with largest area in mind (circle being default loop for largest area), the radius/diameter is likely going to be in the same order as the other suggestions (radius approx 500-1000 ft). I'm legit surprised a meleeist is capable of such a large AoE, even a cheesy one.


I think you're all thinking too big. There are a good few lower level spells that would be really hard for crowds of peasants to counter or live through...

Summon swarm (2nd level) - bats deal 1d6 per round for being in the same space as the swarm, plus 1 bleed per round, flies faster than most peasants can run.
Insect plague (5th level) - multiple swarms of locusts deal 2d6
Cloudkill (5th) - cast at the top of a hill
Passwall (5th) - cast in the local dam
Blade barrier (6th) - cast in front of a moving river or sea vessel of similar: the force blades pass through the walls of the vessel, almost no-one can escape.

Passwall on the local dam is really creative. I'll have to calculate/guestimate the rate of water flow when I get home from work though, because I'm skeptical that a 5-ft by 8-ft opening alone will be enough to drown a small army or even a mid-sized village.

Cloudkill moves at 10ft a round doesn't it? Does it just move faster down a hill? I suppose that could be ad hoc / houseruled.


/thread
:smalltongue:
This is surprisingly difficult. I thought of contagion as well. Other than that...
Killing Kittens Methods: Minor Creation (Ricin) and dump it in the water supply, fabricate some huge explosive, or similar things that bring physics into the world of D&D.
Kittenic Genocide: Locate City Bomb
Creatures: Either using spawn bombs (Fell Drain or Enervation for Wights, Create Greater Undead for Shadows), or lesser planar binding for a demon or devil to just go nuts over the settlement.
Blasting: Just gather the villagers in the town square, then use an enlarged blast spell with a pretty large area.
There was also a series of war spells in Dragon, somewhere... Dragon 309! Those might work.

Ah yeah, I mentioned Locate City Bomb. I think the main version uses around 6 feats. The wightpocalypse version (using fell drain) only has to use 3-4.


Even plain-old Control Weather is a great apocalypse tool. Extended, it's an average of about 4 days, 4 hours of tornadoes/hailstorms/blizzards/hurricane-force winds, depending on the season. Even not Extended, you only have to cast it every other day. Any peasant in a 2-mile radius (or 3-mile if you're a Druid) is SOL. Just make sure to not cast it in the Fall, or the best you can do is... sleet. Or fog. Wooooo.

I've been wondering for a while if there was an application of Control Weather that allowed for it to do damage? A specific weather? I understand that certain manifestations can create tornadoes, but is there a type of weather that just deals 1-2 damage throughout the entire area? That would be nice, because then I could make it a Fell Drain Control Weather to guarantee all low level soldiers and/or peasants are killed.


Well, consider this realistically. A fit adult can make that speed. Can a child? an elder? A cripple? No, they can't, and in a preindustrial society, those make up a good half of the pupulation. How many of the fit adults would try to carry a child or loved one to safety, thus falling back and falling to the spelll themselves? And how many would be able to sustain the speed over half a mile? I wouldn't.

Won't someone please think of the children?

You are so right. How could I forget the children?

And I'm glad you described it so visually and viscerally. It makes me think "What about the kids that DO get abandoned by their parents in those situations?" Bad parents exist, after all. They could come back as Slaymates. Very useful for any necromancer.

[Elkad]

If you can get them all to line up for the parade, or in a canyon, or similar, a cloudkill (especially with widen and/or invisible spell) will do a fine job. After the initial area, it only moves to cover 16 new people a round, unless they are packed in tighter than one per square. But it's 1min/level, so even at a basic CL9 you'll cover nearly 1500 squares during the duration.

If there was a way to make it move faster (say 40'/round while using the widened version, which also hits twice as many squares horizontally) you could up it's killing potential significantly. Or convince the commoners to all walk through it, but the pile of bodies would give it away, even if it was invisible.

A widened incendiary cloud, actively concentrated on, would do a decent job as well, as you can move it around at 60'/rnd. Some would survive due to a combination of a lucky save and low damage rolls though. Of course you could always have the cloud double-back to hit them again.

[Segev]

An evil cleric with DMM:Persist greater contagion could walk around town, slaughtering everybody with 9 hp or less as they come within something like 20 feet of him (I forget the radius on the spell).


edit: Crap, that's not the name of the spell, but I can't remember the name, now. It's in Spell Compendium, and it has a lesser version thta kills things at 0 or fewer hp. The greater version kills anything below 10 hp. You add their HD to your caster levle for the duration of the spell. Also get a strength boost for your murders.

[King of Nowhere]

Won't someone please think of the children?

You are so right. How could I forget the children?

And I'm glad you described it so visually and viscerally. It makes me think "What about the kids that DO get abandoned by their parents in those situations?" Bad parents exist, after all. They could come back as Slaymates. Very useful for any necromancer.

I'm surprised myself, I'm generally not that good at making visceral descriptions. But the imagery is just so good. Having the people flee for safety but being slowed by children and elders has such a strong emotional impact.

Also, I wouldn't call the parents who abandon the children "bad". To quote roy greenhilt, "you're not helping anyone if you get yourself killed in the process". And most families at the time had a half dozen children anyway, too many to carry. The cloud spreads too fast to give the time to pick up anyone, anyway.

[OgresAreCute]

An evil cleric with DMM:Persist greater contagion could walk around town, slaughtering everybody with 9 hp or less as they come within something like 20 feet of him (I forget the radius on the spell).


edit: Crap, that's not the name of the spell, but I can't remember the name, now. It's in Spell Compendium, and it has a lesser version thta kills things at 0 or fewer hp. The greater version kills anything below 10 hp. You add their HD to your caster levle for the duration of the spell. Also get a strength boost for your murders.

Greater Consumptive Field

[Sto]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but rather than explosive spell or whatever it is that theoretically causes the locate city bomb to do tons of damage, just use fell drain, and maybe even slap a fell resurrection or whatever it's called to get both wights and zombies out of the deal. Snap your fingers and Bam! Instant undead apocalypse. You might also be able to add that Meta Magic that causes your animated dead to explode. I might have some of the names wrong.

[noob]

If you aren't wedded to being a caster there's the Desert Wind manuever Ring of Fire, which does 12d6 fire damage to everyone inside a ring defined by twice your move speed. It's possible to pump that high enough to run around a town (or the entire continental US; Google the Chuck-E-Cheese build), and 12d6 should kill every commoner there.

You can cheeze your move speed with repeated application of templates.
Apply shadow creature 1000 times to a creature thus obtaining 1,2338405969061734792274390994868e+176 times the base speed of the creature and then make an effigy of it and then use mind jar into it and use ring of fire from that body and harm everything in the known universe.

[RaiKirah]

Apply shadow creature 1000 times to a creature thus obtaining 1,2338405969061734792274390994868e+176 times the base speed of the creature

It does have LA +2, so 1000 times is likely a little high :)

But there are definitely ways to icrease speed with templates and feats. I think a Jumplomancer build would probably be a good resource for this. Also getting Cheetah Speed (either through the feat or a Swift Hunter of Ehlonna) gives you a nice 1 round x10 to your speed, though you probably need a Belt of Battle to get the charge in during your full round Manuever.

[noob]

It does have LA +2, so 1000 times is likely a little high :)

But there are definitely ways to icrease speed with templates and feats. I think a Jumplomancer build would probably be a good resource for this. Also getting Cheetah Speed (either through the feat or a Swift Hunter of Ehlonna) gives you a nice 1 round x10 to your speed, though you probably need a Belt of Battle to get the charge in during your full round Manuever.

except you do not gain levels while mind jarred you mind jar after the creation of the construct for destroying stuff then you get out and resume your usual activities.

[Necroticplague]

It does have LA +2, so 1000 times is likely a little high :)

Thus, making an Effigy of such a creature, instead of being one on your own.

[Bohandas]

Contagion

Create Undead (ghoul or ghast)

Create greater undead (shadow, wraith, or specter)

[RaiKirah]

except you do not gain levels while mind jarred you mind jar after the creation of the construct for destroying stuff then you get out and resume your usual activities.



Thus, making an Effigy of such a creature, instead of being one on your own.

Ah, I misunderstood. You are technically correct that this is possible... :P

[unseenmage]

War Magic Study from Dragon Magazine was already mentioned BUT there's a link in my sig to a thread chock full of already worked up versions.
Enjoy.


What's the spell that makes black fire that is contagious?


Also, Awaken Sand from Sandstorm on some Black Sand is brutal as everyone it kills becomes more black sand...

[Jack_Simth]

Passwall on the local dam is really creative. I'll have to calculate/guestimate the rate of water flow when I get home from work though, because I'm skeptical that a 5-ft by 8-ft opening alone will be enough to drown a small army or even a mid-sized village.It doesn't have to. If you've got a tall dam, any unexpected low hole will kill the dam. The water going through the tunnel erodes the walls of the tunnel, widening it. VERY quickly. Disintegrate will of course work well for this, as will Earthquake.

[Goaty14]

What's the spell that makes black fire that is contagious?

If only the developers had better naming conventions for spells. Alas, the spell called Blackfire (CArc) that makes black-fire is an exception :smalltongue:

[RoboEmperor]

If i had to massacre peasants I'd bind a Paeliryon for at-will meteor swarm.

[Doctor Awkward]

Are there any spells below 9th level that can massacre a thousand or more commoners?

Even at 9th level, Apocalypse from the Sky is the only one I know that could.

Is it possible to create a wizard or even cleric that can wipe out an entire village or small army in one spell? Without making him epic or even pre-epic. The lower the level the better, to make him a feasible antagonist for PCs to take on as early as 10th-11th. Basically, enough to make IC PCs and NPCs think "oh ****" without making the villain impossible to beat for mid-level PCs.

The only possibilities that come to mind are Locate City Bomb and a Fell Drain (metamagic) Dark Tide (Stormwrack).

Locate City Bomb is too iffy for me. It's debatable whether the "blast" is 2D or 3D (2D would be negligible damage and most people would just be knocked off their feet). The Wightpocalypse version using Fell Drain is a lot less debatable, but the sad thing there is that it still uses a ton of feats. Any villainous NPC using such a combo wouldn't be good for much else.

Even Dark Tide is iffy. The minute people see this spreading black liquid that seems to cause their fellow peasants drop like flies, they'll start running, and most peasants would be able to keep up with 100 ft per round (running is 120 ft per round unless they wear medium or heavy armor). It's also bothersome to me that it's a Blackwater domain specific spell. At least this would would only cost a couple of feats (Fell Drain and an easy metamagic to reduce the spell down to 8th level, making it accessible for a 15th level cleric).

So, GiTP, are there ways to make a caster kill thousands of people with a snap of his fingers without having him/her border on epic (17th+ level)? Any bright ideas that I missed?

I can't post links so here is Dark Tide:

Dark Tide
(Stormwrack)

Necromancy [Evil, Water]
Level: Blackwater (SW) 7,
Components: V, S, DF,
Casting Time: 1 full round
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: One-half mile radius spread
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes

You infuse the target area with the enervating essence of the blackwater depths, creating a tide of blackwater that spreads out from the designated point of origin at a rate of 100 feet per round until it fills the entire area.
The water is black and terribly chilling, and its touch causes a sense of fear in those affected by it.
Those within the area must make a Fortitude save when they first enter the blackwater (or when it first surrounds
them).
Failure indicates that they take 1 point of Strength damage.
Additionally, every creature in the area takes 1d6 points of negative energy damage for every hour they remain in the dark, murky waters (no save).
Spells that protect against negative energy damage will prevent the Strength damage.
Creatures who take damage from the dark tide are considered shaken as long as they remain in the area.
This spell is a favored first move by sahuagin and other blackwater-dwelling creatures before they attack the settlements of their enemies.

Earthquake (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/earthquake.htm):
Druid 8, Earth Domain 7
-At 160-ft. diameter, you can level a decent-sized village with a couple of castings. Note that the damage it does to buildings ignores hardness.

Control Winds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlWinds.htm)
Air Domain 5, Druid 5
-An 80 ft. PER LEVEL diameter cylinder of air 40 ft. high. For every three caster levels, you can increase the local wind strength by up to 5 steps. This means at level 12 you can generate hurricane-force winds from perfectly calm conditions, and at level 15 you get tornado strength. You can adjust the effect with concentration. At 10 minutes per level this is begging to be extended, and can easily level a large city.

[Jack_Simth]

How do you feel about cheddar? An Elven Generalist Domain Wizard can - in theory, at least - have a 9th level spell slot at 1st level.



Control Winds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlWinds.htm)
Air Domain 5, Druid 5
-An 80 ft. PER LEVEL diameter cylinder of air 40 ft. high. For every three caster levels, you can increase the local wind strength by up to 5 steps. This means at level 12 you can generate hurricane-force winds from perfectly calm conditions, and at level 15 you get tornado strength. You can adjust the effect with concentration. At 10 minutes per level this is begging to be extended, and can easily level a large city.
Couple of notes...
1) That's Caster Level 15, rather than level 15. It's a Divine spell, and a Bead of Karma increases your caster level by 4.
2) Despite what it does to buildings... there's no direct lethal damage to creatures for tornado-force winds unless an actual funnel is present, and even then, it's just what gets picked up by the funnel. You could knock out a lot of commoners and leave them homeless, though. If the local environment is even a little unfriendly (hot desert, winter snows, hungry rats, et cetera), that'll kill a lot of folks... eventually.

[Doctor Awkward]

How do you feel about cheddar? An Elven Generalist Domain Wizard can - in theory, at least - have a 9th level spell slot at 1st level.


Couple of notes...
1) That's Caster Level 15, rather than level 15. It's a Divine spell, and a Bead of Karma increases your caster level by 4.
2) Despite what it does to buildings... there's no direct lethal damage to creatures for tornado-force winds unless an actual funnel is present, and even then, it's just what gets picked up by the funnel. You could knock out a lot of commoners and leave them homeless, though. If the local environment is even a little unfriendly (hot desert, winter snows, hungry rats, et cetera), that'll kill a lot of folks... eventually.

The spell description quite specifically states at caster level 15 you create an actual tornado. For 10 minutes per caster level.
Intelligently directed, that is 100% mortality rate to commoners below 5th level.

[Jack_Simth]

The spell description quite specifically states at caster level 15 you create an actual tornado. For 10 minutes per caster level.
Sort of. While it does just say "Tornado" there, the pattern is obviously wind strength. Even if you do get an actual tornado... there's no mention of where such a tornado might actually form, who guides it, and so on.

However, the sucking effect of picking updraft makes a great half of a one-two punch with another spell that deals damage with time. Wall of Fire (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wallOfFire.htm), perhaps, as you can keep that up for the entire duration. Druid-11 activates bead of karma, casts Control Winds (Updraft), and uses a Rod of Quicken Spell on Wall of Fire, then sits there and waits for everyone to burn (folks caught at the edge of that 6000 foot radius area will take an average of... 240 rounds to reach the center (assuming they fail all saves... 252.63... assuming they roll 20's at the expected rate), at which point they'll have taken 600d4 nonlethal damage. Which is a great time to start taking a small amount of fire damage every round.

The Blown Away (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/weather.htm#winds) effect moves folks towards the center and applies nonlethal damage. The Wall of Fire adds lethal on top.

[Saintheart]

It doesn't have to. If you've got a tall dam, any unexpected low hole will kill the dam. The water going through the tunnel erodes the walls of the tunnel, widening it. VERY quickly. Disintegrate will of course work well for this, as will Earthquake.

Crumble, (Druid 6), maybe. Its target is one structure or object, although the spell is badly written and talks about how the size of the object that can be affected depends on your level. Maybe if the dam wall is made of blocks concreted together you can get around this by hitting one large block at the base of the wall.

[Eno Remnant]

Seeing this reminded me of an old thread that has a number of viable, dramatic options for mass destruction of the innocent - naturally, Red Fel started it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?361628-Collateral-Damage-Man).

[John05]

Seeing this reminded me of an old thread that has a number of viable, dramatic options for mass destruction of the innocent - naturally, Red Fel started it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?361628-Collateral-Damage-Man).

Oh, I've read a couple threads like that (I think even that one). But that one seems focused on doing collateral/physical/economic damage.

This one, I'm hoping, is more focused on killing as many people in as short of time as possible. It's strangely difficult using RAW rules without creating custom spells. I guess tyckspoon has a point in that everything mechanical is balanced around "small-squad level combat". Large scale cinematic effects are more the realm of DM fiat, I suppose.

It's sort of disappointing. I was pretty excited the first time I read Storm of Vengeance. It seemed relatively useless for contained, epic combat, but useful in general for "war". Then I looked on googlemap to get an idea of what the area actually covered. It's hardly anything! It's not even going to kill the first thousand solders/villagers. :smallmad: It might hurt a small block/neighbourhood.

That being said, I should probably find those "war spells" others have mentioned here from Dragon mags.

[Doctor Awkward]

Sort of. While it does just say "Tornado" there, the pattern is obviously wind strength.

Yes, underneath which, at the strongest level, it says, "A tornado (175+ mph) destroys all nonfortified buildings and often uproots large trees."

I don't mean to harp but I really have a hard time seeing how one could possibly construe that sentence as anything other than exactly what it states.



Even if you do get an actual tornado... there's no mention of where such a tornado might actually form, who guides it, and so on.



You alter wind force in the area surrounding you. You can make the wind blow in a certain direction or manner, increase its strength, or decrease its strength. The new wind direction and strength persist until the spell ends or until you choose to alter your handiwork, which requires concentration. You may create an “eye” of calm air up to 80 feet in diameter at the center of the area if you so desire, and you may choose to limit the area to any cylindrical area less than your full limit.

Wind Direction
You may choose one of four basic wind patterns to function over the spell’s area.

A downdraft blows from the center outward in equal strength in all directions.
An updraft blows from the outer edges in toward the center in equal strength from all directions, veering upward before impinging on the eye in the center.
A rotation causes the winds to circle the center in clockwise or counterclockwise fashion.
A blast simply causes the winds to blow in one direction across the entire area from one side to the other.


As the spell description clearly states, you stand in the middle and form it around you. You can make the funnel as large as you wish up to your limit. And through concentration and your own movement you can tell it where to go.
As the highlighted portion states, you can explicitly create identical wind conditions to those found in any naturally occurring tornado.

This spell essentially does everything but send you directly to the rules for environmental effects in the DMG.

[mabriss lethe]

While it won't kill anyone, a high level Shadowcaster could cast the 9th level mystery, Black Labyrinth for fun and profit.

[Zaq]

Isn’t there a spell that draws people found in a relatively large area into a relatively small area if they fail a Will save? That could be a way of clumping them up to kill them with a regular Fireball or otherwise big-but-not-measured-in-miles AoE. I thought it was Sympathy, but that doesn’t do quite what I was thinking of.

[ericgrau]

1. Make a plot to get the village in a tightly clustered place. Perhaps simply wait for an event.
2. Area spell.

Wall of fire can tag 200'x20' at level 10. Or a 50' diameter circle.

[Knaight]

Well, consider this realistically. A fit adult can make that speed. Can a child? an elder? A cripple? No, they can't, and in a preindustrial society, those make up a good half of the pupulation. How many of the fit adults would try to carry a child or loved one to safety, thus falling back and falling to the spelll themselves? And how many would be able to sustain the speed over half a mile? I wouldn't.

On top of that there's the matter of crowds and traffic. Every individual member of the crowd might be able to escape something - that doesn't mean they can do so simultaneously, as their movement interferes with each other.

[Bohandas]

soften earth and stone used to trigger a mudslide, rockslide, or avalanche

[ericgrau]

Hmm, druid does seem to have all the large effects. Spike stones covers 10 20' squares, same as wall of fire but more shape-able. It should be enough to kill most peasants. Spike growth too, but with less damage.


On top of that there's the matter of crowds and traffic. Every individual member of the crowd might be able to escape something - that doesn't mean they can do so simultaneously, as their movement interferes with each other.
The easy d&D answer for this is to say half speed because of people in the way. If you want to micro it one by one it could get more complicated, but I think it's simpler to assume they all shuffle together at half speed.

[Talverin]

Do you have to absolutely have a by-the-rules made NPC? You could just have an NPC-only version of Cloudkill that's huge and sweeps over the town. Or a supermaximized megafireball that just blows it away in one hit. You're the DM. You don't have to explicitly follow every rule in the books, especially when story is as stake.

[JNAProductions]

There’s a general assumption in 3rd that there is PC/NPC transparency.

If the bad guy can do it, so can the players, with the right investment.

[John05]

There’s a general assumption in 3rd that there is PC/NPC transparency.

If the bad guy can do it, so can the players, with the right investment.

Yea. That's my preference as well. I like keeping "DM fiat" to a minimum.

Besides, if a PC has a high enough spellcraft check, he should be able to at least understand what spell it is.

If a villain can wipe out civilizations on their own at 15th+ level, what's to stop PCs from doing the same thing once they reach that level given the right (wrong?) incentives and some corruption? They're free agents, after all.

[Ruethgar]

Severely Tainted Necropolitan Elf who made a Pact Incideous. That’s up to 4-6 feats depending on reading before chaos shuffling the four elven without needing a level, I think you could manage a Locate City Bomb Wightpocalypse with that.

[Bohandas]

There’s a general assumption in 3rd that there is PC/NPC transparency.

If the bad guy can do it, so can the players, with the right investment.

There are some spells that are creature-type only, that's functionally similar

[noob]

There are some spells that are creature-type only, that's functionally similar
There is tons of ways to get them.
A beholder is in fact someone who took class levels in the beholder class.
It is true for most monsters.
Even for monsters for which that is not true you can usually gain their powers and their type with spells.

[Bohandas]

There’s a general assumption in 3rd that there is PC/NPC transparency.

Yes. The game doesn't cheat.

[Goaty14]

Severely Tainted Necropolitan Elf who made a Pact Incideous. That’s up to 4-6 feats depending on reading before chaos shuffling the four elven without needing a level, I think you could manage a Locate City Bomb Wightpocalypse with that.

...He also worships an elder evil, which he chaos shuffles away too.