Zaq
2019-03-18, 01:20 AM
Okay, you need to go read the Wikipedia page for Olga of Kiev (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev). It has a legend in it that, while likely not completely true, is nonetheless extremely entertaining. I'll quote from what's on Wikipedia right now:
With the best and wisest men out of the way, she planned to destroy the remaining Drevlians. She invited them to a funeral feast so she could mourn over her husband's grave. Her servants waited on them, and after the Drevlians were drunk, Olga's soldiers killed over 5,000 of them.[4] She then placed the city under siege.[4] She asked for three pigeons and three sparrows from each house; she claimed she did not want to burden the villagers any further after the siege.[4] They were happy to comply with the request.
Now Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or a sparrow, and ordered them to attach by thread to each bird a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth. When night fell, Olga bade her soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So the birds flew to their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the sparrows under the eaves. The dove-cotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows were set on fire. There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames because all the houses caught on fire at once. The people fled from the city, and Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them. Thus she took the city and burned it, and captured the elders of the city. Some of the other captives she killed, while some she gave as slaves to her followers. The remnant she left to pay tribute.[7]
I mean, is that not incredible? It's pretty incredible. Sure, it's almost certainly not true, but it's hella entertaining. So let's talk about how to achieve something like this in a D&D setting, because we're geeks and that's what geeks do.
To define this a bit, let's say that the goal is to burn down a town of decent size this way.
As I see it, there's two or three primary components to this endeavor. We need a way to convince a whole bunch of birds to do our bidding at once, we need something that can catch fire on something of a time-delay, and we need that fiery something to be sufficiently fiery to ignite buildings. This is, well, remarkably challenging by strict RAW.
The animal part seems like a good match for animal trance, but animal trance only has a duration of Concentration, and it only affects 2d6 HD of critters at once. That's enough to burn down a campsite, but not a proper major town.
Animal messenger is closer: long duration, the animal explicitly lets you tie something to it, and it'll go where you tell it to go. But animal messenger only affects one critter at once. We'd need a way to get it cast over and over. Maybe Chain Spell?
I guess there's always good old wild empathy checks, but given that these animals are basically going on unwitting suicide missions, wild empathy seems unethical, or at least unsporting.
(Okay, Olga did it without magic by getting animals that already were nesting in the homes she wanted to burn down and just letting them find their way home, but still.)
Then there's the fire part. What do we want to use as our source of flame? I like the idea of using fire seeds to make holly berry bombs, since you get more than one at once, they wait until you say a command word, they all go off at once, and they explicitly ignite combustible materials nearby. The downside is that you have to be within 200 feet, which seems kind of extremely close for this sort of thing, and we'd also want to make more than 8 at once if at all possible. On the nonmagical side, there's alchemist's fire, but it's got a downside: it's heavy for birds to carry and also doesn't want to just ignite itself once the bird takes it to the nest. Ditherbombs are unreliable, do the wrong damage type, and don't last long enough.
I feel like there's gotta be more tricks out there that could make this scheme plausible. Thoughts?
With the best and wisest men out of the way, she planned to destroy the remaining Drevlians. She invited them to a funeral feast so she could mourn over her husband's grave. Her servants waited on them, and after the Drevlians were drunk, Olga's soldiers killed over 5,000 of them.[4] She then placed the city under siege.[4] She asked for three pigeons and three sparrows from each house; she claimed she did not want to burden the villagers any further after the siege.[4] They were happy to comply with the request.
Now Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or a sparrow, and ordered them to attach by thread to each bird a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth. When night fell, Olga bade her soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So the birds flew to their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the sparrows under the eaves. The dove-cotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows were set on fire. There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames because all the houses caught on fire at once. The people fled from the city, and Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them. Thus she took the city and burned it, and captured the elders of the city. Some of the other captives she killed, while some she gave as slaves to her followers. The remnant she left to pay tribute.[7]
I mean, is that not incredible? It's pretty incredible. Sure, it's almost certainly not true, but it's hella entertaining. So let's talk about how to achieve something like this in a D&D setting, because we're geeks and that's what geeks do.
To define this a bit, let's say that the goal is to burn down a town of decent size this way.
As I see it, there's two or three primary components to this endeavor. We need a way to convince a whole bunch of birds to do our bidding at once, we need something that can catch fire on something of a time-delay, and we need that fiery something to be sufficiently fiery to ignite buildings. This is, well, remarkably challenging by strict RAW.
The animal part seems like a good match for animal trance, but animal trance only has a duration of Concentration, and it only affects 2d6 HD of critters at once. That's enough to burn down a campsite, but not a proper major town.
Animal messenger is closer: long duration, the animal explicitly lets you tie something to it, and it'll go where you tell it to go. But animal messenger only affects one critter at once. We'd need a way to get it cast over and over. Maybe Chain Spell?
I guess there's always good old wild empathy checks, but given that these animals are basically going on unwitting suicide missions, wild empathy seems unethical, or at least unsporting.
(Okay, Olga did it without magic by getting animals that already were nesting in the homes she wanted to burn down and just letting them find their way home, but still.)
Then there's the fire part. What do we want to use as our source of flame? I like the idea of using fire seeds to make holly berry bombs, since you get more than one at once, they wait until you say a command word, they all go off at once, and they explicitly ignite combustible materials nearby. The downside is that you have to be within 200 feet, which seems kind of extremely close for this sort of thing, and we'd also want to make more than 8 at once if at all possible. On the nonmagical side, there's alchemist's fire, but it's got a downside: it's heavy for birds to carry and also doesn't want to just ignite itself once the bird takes it to the nest. Ditherbombs are unreliable, do the wrong damage type, and don't last long enough.
I feel like there's gotta be more tricks out there that could make this scheme plausible. Thoughts?