The best nuke

[Anthrowhale]

A recurring topic is: "What is the best nuke?", so after the Last Resort (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?619390-Mycontil-Last-Resort-Eldritch-Spellblast) thread, I started wondering what the best overall nuke is. I'm presently at 50680 damage in a ~2.75 mile radius after incorporating ideas in this thread. Does anyone see further improvements? I'm thinking of a nuke as doing a large amount of damage to many people/things in an area as a result of a single action.

Throughout, I made ruthless use of the abstract multipliers rule (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#multiplying) and generally tried to use as conservative-as-possible rules.

There are several vital ingredients here and a bunch of minor elements that add up.

Erupt is the key seed. At a basic level, it does 10 points of fire damage per caster level in a 100'/level burst. The description of Erupt is a bit messed up---for this exercise, I'm assuming that the area is a burst of 100'/level even though Erupt is listed as a touch spell. It's of course less powerful and more usable as a touch spell, but in this case the text of the spell is quite clear about it affecting a large area.

Obviously, increasing caster level is critical to success. One element which must be settled immediately is how Consumptive Field and Greater Consumptive Field accumulate. I assume they do not accumulative multiplicatively, but they do accumulative additively off of a non-[greater]-consumptive-field caster level. Hence, caster level 20 x1.5 x1.5 = caster level 40. Caster level can also potentially be increased a great deal using Node Genesis, Node Spellcasting, and waiting a really long time. I've avoided leveraging this because "wait a long time" is probably not viable in most campaigns.

Another key element is mixing spell lists, which is viable with the Dragonblood Spell-pact spell. Note that any two casters with known spells can exchange a spell known as long there is access to polymorph, since polymorph can provide the dragonblood subtype. For this purpose, I'm just using spontaneous casters with known spells---a bard, a favored soul, and a sorcerer. Sorcerer seems to be the best class for this due to various sorcerer-only spells and abilities.



Feats:
H. Extend Spell //prerequisite for Persistent Spell
1. Sanctum Spell //Enables early entry into Incantatrix, reduces metamagic with Arcane Thesis, and adds +50% damage via Mark of the Enlightened Soul / Touch of the Blackened Soul
3. Spell Thematics //Halruaan Elder prerequisite and adds +1 caster level
Otyugh Hole: Iron Will //Incantatrix prereq
Planar Sorcerer 5: Force-Charged Energy //Lose second level spell, half damage is force
6. Reserves of Strength //add 3 to caster level
Incantatrix 1. Energy Substitution[Fire] //Prereq for energy admixture and reduces metamagic cost with Arcane Thesis
Extra: Cerebrosis (Dragon #330) //Provides an extra 2nd & 4th level spell known which can late be swapped for something else.
Frog God's Fane: Skill Focus[Knowledge[religion]] //For access to Loremaster later.
Incantatrix 3. Metamagic Effect //Persistent Suffer the Flesh / Mark of the Enlightened Soul / (Greater) Consumptive Field, max check = 54
Incantatrix 4. Energy Admixture[Fire] //+100% damage
9. Halruaan Adept //Prereq for Halruaan Elder, and allows Simulacrum's to participate in circle magic.
Halruaan Elder 1. Adroit[Energy Admixture] //Reduce metamagic cost by 1
12. Enervate Spell //+50% damage vs. living creatures
Halruaan Elder 4. Adroit[Repeat Spell] //Reduce metamagic cost by 1
Halruaan Elder 5. Circle Magic //Set Caster level to 40
15. Repeat Spell //Spell goes off twice
Incantatrix 7. Easy[Repeat] //Reduces spell slot level by _2_ with arcane thesis
18. Persistent Spell //Persistent Suffer the Flesh / Mark of the Enlightened Soul / Touch of the Blackened Soul / (Greater) Consumptive Field / Mystic Surge
Loremaster 3. Arcane Thesis[Erupt] //Reduce metamagic cost by number of metamagics, need Intelligence 20

Partial list of Spells known:
9. Erupt //via Dragonblood Spell-pact
9. Shapechange //Use a marilith form for 6 arms
8. Polymorph any object //anyone can Dragonblood Spell-pact
7. Simulacrum // Power up circle magic
7. Greater Consumptive Field //via Dragonblood Spell-pact, +50% to caster level, persistent
7. Limited Wish //Simulate Touch of the Blackened Soul for bonus damage to good.
6. Greater Channel the Mishtai//+1 caster level
6. Contingency //Enable Spell Enhancer and Mystic Surge to work together
6. Energy Immunity //via Dragonblood Spellpact. Survive fire damage
5. Dragonblood Spell-Pact //Get off list spells.
5. Surge of Fortune // via Dragonblood Spell-pact, roll 20 on spellcraft check at will
5. Acid Sheath //With Energy Substitution[Fire] adds +1 damage / die
4. Mark of the Enlightened Soul//+50% to damage vs. evil, persistent
4. Consumptive Field //via Dragonblood Spell-pact, +50% to caster level, persistent
4. Mystic Surge //+1 caster level, last spell cast before Erupt
4. Spell Enhancer //+2 caster level, applies to spell cast in same round, use via Contingency.
4. Forceward //Immune to force damage
3. Sonorous Hum //Enables Harmonic Chorus
3. Arms of Plenty //store two more nukes
3. Girallon's Blessing //store two more nukes
2. Harmonic Chorus //via Dragonblood Spell-pact, +2 caster level
2. Create Magic Tatoo// +1 caster level
2. Death Knell//Via Dragonblood Spell-Pact, +1 caster level
2. Suffer the Flesh//+5 caster level, persistent
2. Guidance of the Avatar //Via Dragonblood Spell-pact, +20 competence bonus on spellcraft checks for Incantatrix
(2. Planar Sorcerer)// Known spell lost for half force damage.
1. Spellflower//store nukes in each forelimb

Items:
Cloak of Charisma+6 36K
Tome of Leadership and Influence +5 137.5K
Greater Metamagic Rod of Empower Spell x5 365K
Ring of Mystic Fire x10 70K
Orange Prism Ioun Stone 30K
Bolt of Heironeous .35K
Domain Draught 3.3K
Hero's Tears x7 4.725K
Prayer Bead Karma 20K
Ring of Arcane Might 20K
Robe of Arcane Might 20K
Terran Brandy x4 2K
Vial of the Last Gasp x6 13.2K
Rod of Elemental Might, 9.6K
Hand of Glory, 8K //Allows the use of two rings of mystic fire, handy for repeat spells.

Total: 739.675


A big part of making a big boom is increasing caster level which we can get up to 138 using many tricks from diverse sources.

Spell-based: +8+1(insight)+2(morale) +2(for 1-round spells)
Create Magic Tatoo +1
Mystic Surge +1
Death Knell +1
Greater Channel the Mishtai +1(insight)
Suffer the Flesh +5
Harmonic Chorus +2 (morale)

Spell Enhancer +2 (but only for 1-round spells)

Item-based: +11+1(competence)+2(alchemical) +2(fire only)
Orange Prism Ioun Stone: +1 30K
Bolt of Heironeous: +1 .35K (good spells)
Domain Draught: +1 3.3K gp (good spells, 1 day)
Hero's Tears: +2 .675K gp (1 use)
Prayer Bead Karma: +4 20K gp (need divine spell, 10 minutes/activation)
Ring of Arcane Might: +1 20K gp
Ring of Mystic Fire: +1 (competence) 7.5Kgp / Robe of Arcane Might +1 20Kgp(competence, Necro only)
Terran Brandy: +2 (alchemical) .5K gp, 1-use 1d20+20 minutes
Vial of the Last Gasp: +1, 2.2K gp, 1 use, 10 minutes

Rod of Elemental Might: +2 (fire only, requires Use Magic Device, powered via Guidance of the Avatar)

Feats:+1 +2(Erupt only)
Spell Thematics +1
Reserves of Strength +3

Arcane Thesis +2

(Greater) Consumptive Field base Caster level: 71 = 40(Circle Magic)+14(items)+13(spells)+4(feats)

Erupt Caster Level: 143 = 40(Circle Magic)+16(items)+11(spells)+6(feats)+35(Consumptiv e Field)+35(Greater Consumptive Field)


Another big part is getting more damage per caster level.

Persistent Mark of the Enlightened Soul (x1.5 vs evil)
Persistent Touch of the Blackened Soul (x1.5 vs good) //cast via limited wish if desired.
Enervate Spell (x1.5 vs living x.5 vs undead and objects)
Ring of Mystic Fire (add 4d6 fire damage, making the spell eligible for empower spell)
Rod of Empower Spell (x1.5 damage)
Energy Admixture (x2 damage)

There's a trick here: we use the Ring of Mystic Fire to add some variable numeric damage to Erupt, which makes it eligible for Empower Spell delivered via a metamagic rod.

Altogether the damage per level is multiplied by x2.5 = x1 +1(Energy Admixture)+0.5 (Empower Spell) which is cast. Against living foes, Enervate can be used to increase the damage multiplier by .5 and against good or evil foes another 0.5 is imposed giving us a maximum damage modifier of x3.5, which is cast twice for an effective factor of 2 more.


The last powerful multiplier comes from Spellflower which allows you to precast touch spells.

Spellflower allows the storage of one touch spell per forelimb. We'll get 10 forelimbs by using Shapechange[Marilith], then casting Girallon's Blessing and Arms of Plenty.

To cast Erupt 10 times we'll cast it 5 times with Repeat Spell to load up each limb with a touch spell.


Altogether, one casting of Erupt can deliver an expected 5068 = (143(caster level)*10(erupt)+14(Mystic Fire)+4(Energy Substitution[Fire] Acid Sheath))*3.5 damage with a fortitude save for half. Half the damage is fire and half force, implying that it affects incorporeal and ethereal creatures. If creatures or objects are not alive, not undead, not good, or not evil they take somewhat less damage. Since 10 castings can be stored and all of them unleashed as a full attack action, we reach 50680 damage.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Ardent with the Magic mantle and the Dominant Ideal and Substitute Powers ACFs (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) (on a mantle with war magic energy wave on it), War Magic Study, Empower Power, Widen Power, war magic energy wave, and Metapower (Widen + war magic energy wave).

Note that the only limit to the number of times you can apply a metapsionic feat to a power is however many psionic foci you've got; if you've got multiple foci, you can apply a meta feat that many times. And since Dominant Ideal erases your need for foci, you can apply both Empower and Widen as many times as you want (since war magic energy wave has Long Range instead of 120'), leading to NI damage and NI Area. All that will survive in the AoE will be stuff that's flat-out immune to your choice of energy damage (which can be fixed next round), those with improved evasion (which is what cold damage and Fort saves are for), stuff that's immune to death from hp damage, and stuff that just can't be killed normally (like astral projecting wizards and ghosts).

So have fun with that.

[Anthrowhale]

...
I'm trying to avoid infinite damage exploits here.

Any other ideas?

[Darrin]

The Apocalypse Martini (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=15634823&postcount=19). 3.5 trillion damage over 90,746 square miles.

[Anthrowhale]

The Apocalypse Martini (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=15634823&postcount=19). 3.5 trillion damage over 90,746 square miles.

AfTS definitely has more area creating a nice potential aggregate damage, but the damage is so marginal that it's more like a bad case of sunburn than a nuke to high level characters.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Get a really high movement speed (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?287080-Movement-speed-optimization) (like, seriously, hundreds or thousands of mph) and use detect magic as the base for a Widened locate city bomb. You zip forward, the detect magic bomb hits an enemy as soon as it enters the AoE, and it's blasted backwards, since the nearest way out of the AoE is where it entered at. It takes damage for getting asploded back and is knocked prone. Then you move another 5' forward as the next step in your movement, and it enters the AoE again. Wash, rinse, repeat until your movement speed runs out. Then use one of the myriad ways of moving your speed as a swift action, and...

Even better if you also add Fell Drain to it, so each time the critter enters the AoE it gets a negative level.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Spellthief 1 + [Nar Demonbinder or Sublime Chord or similar] + Master Spellthief will boost the CL some more. Might not be worth the investment.

Fast casting PrCs like those two start with a CL based on your highest casting class; with Master Spellthief, that's another net 5-6 CL for just two levels (counting the Spellthief level), or 9-11 for three levels if you take both (variability based on whether you had to lose a base class level to fit it in or not). There's also an argument that Sublime Chord gets even crazier than that due to the way it calculates CL for its own spells, but it's my opinion that that doesn't actually interact with Master Spellthief.

[AvatarVecna]

Race: TN Mind Flayer (HD 8/LA 7)
Attributes: 18/12/12/20/20/22

Get two negative levels, and deliberately fail the saves to become HD 6/LA 7.

Feats at this point are Favored, Primary Contact (Knowledge: Arcana), and Leadership.

Go into Illithid Savant 7 for class levels. HD 8/12 attribute bumps to go Str/Cha. HD 9/12 feats are Might Makes Right and Extra Followers. Buy +5 tomes for Str and Cha. Leadership Score is therefore 36 (35 for attracting cohorts initially, assuming different alignment). Let's assume reputation balances out. I start out consuming a cohort, recruiting another one, and continuing like that until I'm no longer capable of attracting cohorts. Initial cohort has leveled with me, but subsequent ones are recruited and thus are brought in at the level indicated in the leadership table for my LS.

As an Illithid Savant 7, each consumed brain grants me:
Target's ranks in 3 skills added to me own ranks (even if it goes past normal maximum for my HD).
3 of target's feats I qualify for.
2 of target's class features.
1 of target's special attacks/qualities.

Target list: 270 lvl 1, 27 lvl 2, 15 lvl 3, 8 lvl 4, 5 lvl 5, 5 lvl 6, 1 lvl 7, 1 lvl 9, 1 lvl 10, 1 lvl 12, 1 lvl 13,1 lvl 15, 1 lvl 16, 5 lvl 17, 1 lvl 18.

5007 skill ranks spread across at least 3 skills, 1029 feats, 686 class features, 343 SAs/SQs. No gating in extra targets, no eating anybody who I didn't get via Leadership. The number of high-level features is the real limiter here, so let's focus attention there:

1 lvl 18: Generic Arcane Spellcaster 8/Incantatrix 10
GAS Casting lvl 18
Improved Metamagic

1st lvl 17: Generic Arcane Spellcaster 6/Generic Divine Spellcaster 1/Dweomerkeeper 10
GAS Casting lvl 16
Cloak Of Mysteries

2nd lvl 17: Generic Arcane Spellcaster 7/Halruuan Elder 10 (Vertatile Spellcaster + Heighten Spell shenanigans)
GAS Casting lvl 17
Adroit Casting (4)

3rd lvl 17: Generic Arcane Spellcaster 7/Halruuan Elder 10 (Vertatile Spellcaster + Heighten Spell shenanigans)
GAS Casting lvl 17
Adroit Casting (4)

1 lvl 16: Generic Arcane Spellcaster 6/Vermin Lord 10 (Vertatile Spellcaster + Heighten Spell shenanigans)
GAS Casting lvl 12
Hivemind

1 lvl 15: Generic Arcane Spellcaster 6/Vermin Lord 9 (Vertatile Spellcaster + Heighten Spell shenanigans)
Vermin Servant (4 HD)
Vermin Servant (16 HD)

1 lvl 9: Wizard 1/Fighter 6/Arcane Archer 2
Imbue Arrow

There's plenty more that could be stolen, but let's leave it there for casting stuff - presumably the rest would be spent nabbing interesting immunities and the like. Two "Wasp Swarms" (fiend folio) gets you 20k individuals, for Int 407/Cha 399/198 skill points per HD/198 feats per HD/Casting as sorcerer 382. The vermin lord doesn't get the Int/Cha but gets the rest. Use the aforementioned Spell-Pact to have the Vermin Lord give the hivemind Erupt.

Get a +7 bow (well specifically, a +1 bow with Distant Shot on it).

Circle Magic allows me to add Empower (useless), Maximize (useless), and Heighten (useful) up to a maximum of a 20th lvl spell slot.

Adroit Casting is used on the seven MM +4 feats. Incantatrix is the only MM reduction here that affects Heighten Spell.

Relevant Feats:
Ability Focus (Spellcasting): Save DC +2
Arcane Thesis: CL +2, MM -1 per MM feat besides Heighten
Born Of Three Thunders: 50% electricity damage is now sonic damage. Spell adds Fort vs stunned 1 round; if stunned, also Ref vs prone (MM +0)
City Spell: 50% fire damage is now city damage (MM +0)
Corrupt Spell: 50% fire damage is now divine damage (MM +1)
Delay Spell: Spell can be delayed 1-5 rounds (MM +3)
Earth Spell: Heightened Spells are heightened +1 level for free, and also grant CL +17.
Easy Metamagic (Irresistible Spell): Irresistible Spell MM -1
Echoing Spell: Can recast the spell later, each subsequent casting at CL -4 until CL is too low to cast spell (MM +3)
Energy Admixture (acid): Spell deals +100% damage that's acid instead of fire (MM +4)
Energy Admixture (cold): Spell deals +100% damage that's cold instead of fire (MM +4)
Energy Admixture (electricity): Spell deals +100% damage that's electricity instead of fire (MM +4)
Energy Admixture (Fire): Spell deals +100% damage (MM +4)
Energy Admixture (sonic): Spell deals +100% damage that's sonic instead of fire (MM +4)
Explosive Spell: On a failed Ref save as part of spell, target is moved to edge of AoE, taking damage based on distance (MM +2)
Greater Spell Focus: Save DC +1
Heighten Spell: Spell counts as 17 levels higher for all purposes (MM +17).
Improved Heighten Spell: Some kobold donated this, and it just lets you heighten beyond 9th even though Circle Magic implies you should be able to anyway.
Invisible Spell: Spell effect is invisible (MM +0)
Irresistible Spell: Save DC +10 (MM +6)
Lord Of The Uttercold: 50% cold damage is now negative energy damage (MM +0)
Practical Metamagic (Irresistible Spell): Irresistible Spell is MM -1
Repeat Spell: Spell is cast a third time in the second round (MM +3)
Sanctum Spell: Counts as 8th lvl spell outside Sanctum (MM +0)
Silent Spell: No verbal component (MM +1)
Spell Focus: Save DC +1
Spell Thematics: CL +1
Still Spell: No somatic components (MM +1)
Twin Spell: Spell is cast a second time in the first round (MM +4)
Widen Spell: Radius is doubled (MM +3)

Erupt
(Serpent Kingdoms)

Transmutation [Fire]
Level: Sorcerer 9
Components: DF
Casting Time: Standard action
Range: Sight
Area: Burst, 156800 ft radius
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: see text (save DCs 59)
Spell Resistance: Yes (1d20+784 vs SR)

You draw molten lava up through the ground.

Every creature within the area that fails a Fortitude saving throw takes 10 points of fire damage per caster level and catches on fire (see Catching on Fire, page 303 of the Dungeon Master's Guide). Furthermore, anyone wearing metal armor who fails the saving throw is also affected as though by a heat metal spell. A successful saving throw negates the heat metal effect and halves the damage. Structures and unattended objects automatically take full damage (no save).

Erupt leaves its entire area a blackened ruin incapable of supporting plant or animal life for a full year.

....

You draw molten lava up through the ground. The spell's effect goes off twice this round, and once next round. Whenever the effect goes off, every creature within the area of effect must make a Fortitude save vs the following damage (success halves damage):
7840 acid
3920 city
3920 cold
3920 divine
3920 electricity
7840 fire (ignores fire resistance/fire immunity, but deals 3920 fire damage to normally-immune targets)
3920 negative energy
11760 sonic

Any creature damaged by this effect must make an additional Fortitude save to avoid being stunned for 1 round. Any creature stunned by this effect must make a Reflex save to avoid being knocked prone and pushed to the edge of the effect's AoE. For every 10 ft pushed by failing that Reflex save, the target takes an additional 1d6 damage.

141,120 damage per target (over an area that covers 3,089,598,040 squares), a good deal of which is close to impossible to be immune to. A target immune to the five basic energy types who makes their save is still looking at 7840 damage unless they have Mettle. On the off-chance something takes damage, and still alive somehow, and despite surviving thousands of points of damage can still fail a DC 57 save, they might get pushed to the edge of the AoE for up to an additional 15680d6 damage.

But also, saying "An Illithid Savant with a Hivemind could do better" isn't exactly the hottest take in existence, so this is probably kinda just meaningless oneupsmanship that anybody could've done. >.>

[Anthrowhale]

Spellthief 1 + [Nar Demonbinder or Sublime Chord or similar] + Master Spellthief will boost the CL some more. Might not be worth the investment.

Fast casting PrCs like those two start with a CL based on your highest casting class; with Master Spellthief, that's another net 5-6 CL for just two levels (counting the Spellthief level), or 9-11 for three levels if you take both (variability based on whether you had to lose a base class level to fit it in or not). There's also an argument that Sublime Chord gets even crazier than that due to the way it calculates CL for its own spells, but it's my opinion that that doesn't actually interact with Master Spellthief.

We'd need to use Sublime Chord, since Erupt is a 9th level spell.

Master Spellthief translates levels of arcane spellcaster classes into caster level and Sublime translates levels in one other arcane spellcaster class into caster level. My RAW reading here is that these are two different non-interacting ways to set caster level, from which you can choose the best with a maximum value of 20.

However, there is an interaction between Master Spellthief and Theurgic Specialist which translates the sum of caster levels into caster levels. Maybe something can be done there? It's delicate due to the loss of metamagic feats here. Anywhere, it bears some thought.


...
Explosive Spell does nothing if the save is made.



But also, saying "An Illithid Savant with a Hivemind could do better" isn't exactly the hottest take in existence, so this is probably kinda just meaningless oneupsmanship that anybody could've done.
Sure.

One thought here: can you use Energy Admixture multiple times on the same spell? Although you can take the feat multiple times, there are rules against using the same metamagic feat twice on a spell.

The use of Repeat Spell is somewhat interesting although it's unclear how to avoid letting anything which survives the first Erupt escape.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Explosive Spell does nothing if the save is made.Add in Twin Spell and Repeat Spell and have a way to concentrate on multiple spells at once, then start the process during the second round? The chances of failing all saves (assuming some DC optimization and forced rerolls) would be fairly low for anything without a REALLY good Ref save. Assuming only failing on a Nat 20, they'd have a 1/20x20x20x20x20x20x20x20 = 1/25,600,000,000 chance of succeeding on all saves. I think. Even if they succeeded on 11+, those still aren't good odds (1/100,000,000).

Of course, that's assuming a significant amount of optimization, including a very high DC for a low level spell AND the ability to force the foe to reroll saving throws. Not impossible, but this IS T.O., so...

[AvatarVecna]

One thought here: can you use Energy Admixture multiple times on the same spell? Although you can take the feat multiple times, there are rules against using the same metamagic feat twice on a spell.

It's not entirely clear: my understanding is that it's different enough, but that's based on how I'd rule it. "Energy Admixture (Fire)" definitely can't stack with itself, but it's less clear if it can stack with its acid version. If it can't, then we're probably looking at Energy Admixture (Sonic), City Spell, and Corrupt spell and dealing 7840 sonic/3920 city/3920 divine damage 2-3 times, and just have a [fire] spell that deals no fire damage.


The use of Repeat Spell is somewhat interesting although it's unclear how to avoid letting anything which survives the first Erupt escape.

Honestly this is also part of my problem with the Explosive Spell. Repeat Spell was added more or less because there's no reason I couldn't or wouldn't. At best, it's maybe going to be a nasty surprise for anybody 'porting in to see what the 30 mile radius explosion was.

EDIT: The big advantage of doing fire damage instead of sonic (for example) would be searing spell - you can be immune to sonic, but you can't be quite as immune to fire, if the caster is using that. So EA (Fire) might be the better way to go actually, although EA (Sonic) opens up the Bo3T-->Explosive combo that probably won't do anything.

[Anthrowhale]

I looked into the Sublime Chord/Master Spellthief/Theurgic Specialist approach. You can get a caster level of 180 for [evil] spells via:
Spellthief 1/Warmage 1/Wizard(Abyssal Specialist) 3/Beguiler 1/Bard 1/Warmage 1/Wu-Jen 1/Duskblade 1/Sublime Chord 10 + Master Spellthief + Theurgic Specialist. However, it seems rather tricky to turn this into more damage, because there is relatively little room to play metamagic games. A strict reading suggests a steep decline in caster level with prestige class.


...
Yeah, the details here are a little bit to sketchy for me.



EDIT: The big advantage of doing fire damage instead of sonic (for example) would be searing spell - you can be immune to sonic, but you can't be quite as immune to fire, if the caster is using that. So EA (Fire) might be the better way to go actually, although EA (Sonic) opens up the Bo3T-->Explosive combo that probably won't do anything.
I generally approve of fire, but one minor disadvantage is fireshield[chill] which halves the damage from a searing spell. If you can save for half damage, then the abstract multiplier rule leaves you doing 0 damage.

[AvatarVecna]

I generally approve of fire, but one minor disadvantage is fireshield[chill] which halves the damage from a searing spell. If you can save for half damage, then the abstract multiplier rule leaves you doing 0 damage.

Actually if we're taking that reading of halved damage, which yeah should be RAW...

1) Searing deals half damage to normally-immune targets
2) A successful save halves the damage
3) Fire Shield halves the damage

Thus, somebody who benefits from all three "halvings" is taking -50% damage, so is...healed?

EDIT: Oh hell, I bet you can abuse this to make some seriously good combat heals, and on an arcane caster at that! Hmm...

[ExLibrisMortis]

This is something I've been playing with to recreate the Rain of Colourless Fire. The idea is that each CL buff applies only once to each spell (no stacking of consumptive field), though you can use the same CL buff on different spells.

Three casters:
1) Theurgic Specialist necromancer 1/cleric 3/mystic theurge 10/something-with-circle-magic 6.
2) Theurgic Specialist transmuter 3/cleric 1/mystic theurge 10/something-with-circle-magic 6.
3) Psiotheurgist Theurgic Specialist transmuter 2/cleric 1/mystic theurge 9/wyrm wizard 2/egoist 1/something-with-circle-magic 5. Has Searing Spell, Invisible Spell, Transdimensional Spell, and Astral Fire.
N.B. Psiotheurgist only applies to Transmutation spells that target creatures (because psions aren't allowed to transmute other creatures, for some stupid reason), which may be a problem for erupt. Apocalypse from the sky is a Conjuration (creation) spell, so that does work, but I'm going to do all the math with erupt. If anyone asks, we'll say we researched an Evocation version or something.

You also need a host of support casters to fuel Circle Magic, two bards, and a bunch of castings of gate. A wu jen/Incantatrix to Persist some of the low-duration CL buffs doesn't hurt, but I think you can do all of this within the ten or so minutes you have on consumptive field. Of course, Incantatrices can be useful for adding Twin/Repeat/Admixture to anything you cast, octupling the damage output, so maybe include them anyway.

Each caster gets CL 40 with Circle Magic.
Using shapechange to take symbiont form, (2) and (3) attach to (1).

The necromancer casts consumptive field and greater consumptive field with a bunch of CL boosters (bead of karma +4, suffer the flesh +5, create magic tattoo +1, ankh of ascension +4, spell enhancer +2, orange ioun stone +1, mystic surge +1, harmonious chorus +2, hymn of praise +2, Arcane Thesis +2) for a total of CL 64 on the arcane and divine side (the bard spells affect the caster level of divine spellcasters, which our wizard happily is), for a total CL of 128. That results in CL boosts of +64 and +96, shared with the other two via symbionts' Share Spells. Edit: the ankh will only boost divine CL, so another boost is needed. Make all of the casters spellgifted red wizards or something. I just like having a base CL of 128.

The casters separate and now (3) attaches to (2).

The transmutation theurge has CL 224 for Transmutations, both arcane and divine. So he casts a CL 448 mental pinnacle and shares the result with the psiotheurgist.

The psiotheurgist has a ML of 448 and an arcane and divine CL of 224 for Transmutations. So he adds his ML to his arcane and divine CL, and then adds those together, and casts a CL 1344 Invisible Transdimensional Reach Searing Astral Fire erupt (Heightened to 20th level) with a greater metamagic rod of chain spell through 20 gates aimed at various cities you want to destroy. The initial damage is 13 440 searing fire, and the spell continues to burn for about 15 rounds (at INT 40), dealing 2688 damage per round. As mentioned above, a wu jen/incantatrix octuples this.

Overall, I like the idea of a cabal of different specialists working together to achieve something special (for a rather destructive value of "special"). And there's no loops involved--every ability stacks exactly once per spell (although the stacking used is decidedly cheesy).

[Anthrowhale]

Actually if we're taking that reading of halved damage, which yeah should be RAW...

1) Searing deals half damage to normally-immune targets
2) A successful save halves the damage
3) Fire Shield halves the damage

Thus, somebody who benefits from all three "halvings" is taking -50% damage, so is...healed?

EDIT: Oh hell, I bet you can abuse this to make some seriously good combat heals, and on an arcane caster at that! Hmm...

I looked around for raw support about what happens with negative energy damage. We have (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#damage):

Damage reduces a target’s current hit points.
...which implies healing with negative damage. But also:

If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage.
which implies this effect doesn't occur with weapon-like spells.

So, I think healing damage from non-weapon-like fire spells works by RAW, which is hilarious.

I'm still not sure though. Piercing cold has a clause:

(or one-quarter on a successful saving throw)
The fact that it's in parenthesis suggests this is implied by other rules. Am I missing something?

[AvatarVecna]

The fact that it's in parenthesis suggests this is implied by other rules. Am I missing something?

I mean, really what you're missing is that WotC wasn't constantly thinking about "half damage" as "-50% damage", but rather as "damage / 2", so obviously two halvings is a quartering, even though two doublings is a tripling. They're pretty inconsistent about it - they make sure to mention that two doublings is a tripling in the Improved Darkvision epic feat (which doubles your darkvision range per feat), but darkvision range is measured in feet, which is a realworld measurement, and thus multiplies as normal, so "two doublings is a tripling" shouldn't apply.

[Anthrowhale]

1) Theurgic Specialist necromancer 1/cleric 3/mystic theurge 10/something-with-circle-magic 6.
3) Psiotheurgist Theurgic Specialist transmuter 2/cleric 1/mystic theurge 9/wyrm wizard 2/egoist 1/something-with-circle-magic 5. Has Searing Spell, Invisible Spell, Transdimensional Spell, and Astral Fire.

An issue here: Theurgic Specialist requires Specialist Wizard 3. That seems to matter here as you need 5 levels for circle magic and 13 levels for 7th level cleric spells. Maybe Wizard 6/Red Wizard 5/Ur-Priest 1/MT 8 instead?

Where/what is Astral Fire?


ankh of ascension +4 ... Arcane Thesis +2

I believe these two are incompatible as a spell must be divine for the former and arcane for the latter.



for a total of CL 64 on the arcane and divine side... for a total CL of 128.

This is a bit messy, but Theurgic Specialist uses "caster levels of all your spellcasting classes...". Some of these caster level boosters apply explicitly to the caster level of spells, not the caster level of your class. Others change your "effective caster level" which isn't altering your caster level and hence may not be picked up by Theurgic Specialist. The third issue is that bonuses from the same source do not apply twice to checks, so anywhere there is a level check, the caster level would not combine via Theurgic Specialist.



That results in CL boosts of +64 and +96

Above, I'm treating the maximum CL boosts of GCF and CF as dependent on the CF-independent caster level. This is the other way, and if you keep alternating you can reach an arbitrarily high caster level.



The casters separate and now (3) attaches to (2).

The transmutation theurge has CL 224 for Transmutations, both arcane and divine. So he casts a CL 448 mental pinnacle and shares the result with the psiotheurgist.

The psiotheurgist has a ML of 448 and an arcane and divine CL of 224 for Transmutations. So he adds his ML to his arcane and divine CL, and then adds those together, and casts a CL 1344 Invisible Transdimensional Reach Searing Astral Fire erupt (Heightened to 20th level) with a greater metamagic rod of chain spell through 20 gates aimed at various cities you want to destroy. The initial damage is 13 440 searing fire, and the spell continues to burn for about 15 rounds (at INT 40), dealing 2688 damage per round. As mentioned above, a wu jen/incantatrix octuples this.

Overall, I like the idea of a cabal of different specialists working together to achieve something special (for a rather destructive value of "special"). And there's no loops involved--every ability stacks exactly once per spell (although the stacking used is decidedly cheesy).

I like the psiotheurgist trick here. That seems particularly important as it translates spell caster level (which is generally easier to boost with no nonsense about whether "effective" matters) into caster level.

Edit: looks like there is a problem with the Psiotheurgist trick, because Mental Pinnacle shuts off all spellcasting ability :annoyed:

[Anthrowhale]

I mean, really what you're missing is that WotC wasn't constantly thinking about "half damage" as "-50% damage", but rather as "damage / 2", so obviously two halvings is a quartering, even though two doublings is a tripling. They're pretty inconsistent about it - they make sure to mention that two doublings is a tripling in the Improved Darkvision epic feat (which doubles your darkvision range per feat), but darkvision range is measured in feet, which is a realworld measurement, and thus multiplies as normal, so "two doublings is a tripling" shouldn't apply.

If it's just inconsistency, then the RAW leaves potent healing with fire damage. This appears more difficult with cold damage because of the quartering parenthetical, if you believe it. It looks impossible for acid or electricity---they have fire shield equivalents, but no searing spell equivalents.

[Ruethgar]

It’s a little weak, but hey, more is more right? The Elemalific spell template adds some damage over time effects to a spell based on spell level which, correct me if I’m wrong, would be 20 for this instance without adding anything extra. That would be 20d4 more IIRC which I very likely am not. Have the Dragon #302 side effects to add 2d6 more damage to the overall spell. A Fiery Blistering spell would add 64 more damage. I need to find which Dragon or Dungeon Elemalific was in.

Away from books atm but looks like Dragon #311.

[Anthrowhale]

It’s a little weak, but hey, more is more right? The Elemalific spell template adds some damage over time effects to a spell based on spell level which, correct me if I’m wrong, would be 20 for this instance without adding anything extra. That would be 20d4 more IIRC which I very likely am not. Have the Dragon #302 side effects to add 2d6 more damage to the overall spell. A Fiery Blistering spell would add 64 more damage. I need to find which Dragon or Dungeon Elemalific was in.

Away from books atm but looks like Dragon #311.

The issue with Elemalific, Fiery, and Blistering Spell is feat opportunity cost. Obviously, we could acquire an unbounded number of metamagic feats via the Heartfire Fanner minions, play games with embrace/shun the dark chaos and an otyugh hole, or just take flaws, but I've been trying to avoid that. So, is there a non-feat based way to increase damage? (Some overlooked caster level booster?) Or a different configuration of feats which generates more? Or some entirely different configuration with a similar level of conservatism? Side effects looked promising until I noticed the DC 13 save to resist entirely.

Minor: the spell level is actually 8 (9th level spell with Sanctum Spell). This enables Persistent Mark of the Enlightened Soul / Touch of the Blackened Soul to deliver +50% damage vs. good or evil creatures.

[Ruethgar]

Was pretty sure Circle Magic can boost it to spell level 20, so 19 with Sanctum.

[Anthrowhale]

Was pretty sure Circle Magic can boost it to spell level 20, so 19 with Sanctum.

The difficulty is that it would cost a sorcerer a feat for arcane preparation and decrease damage by a .5 multiplier since the highest level sorcerer spell slot available for Mark of the Enlightened Soul is 9.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Okay, so, Magic mantle + Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) + psionic spellthief 1 + Master Psithief + 1 level dips in all the manifesting classes you can manage. If you manage 20 1-level dips, your ML will be 20 x 20 = 400, and your bonus power points for all of your classes will be based on that. So enjoy the 400d6+400 fiery energy rays. And if you make sure ardent is one of your later dips, you can even get much higher level powers.

Or just minionize a telepath with psychic chirurgery to teach you a bunch of powers of higher levels. Or both!

[Ruethgar]

The issue with Elemalific, Fiery, and Blistering Spell is feat opportunity cost. Obviously, we could acquire an unbounded number of metamagic feats via the Heartfire Fanner minions, play games with embrace/shun the dark chaos and an otyugh hole, or just take flaws, but I've been trying to avoid that. So, is there a non-feat based way to increase damage? (Some overlooked caster level booster?) Or a different configuration of feats which generates more? Or some entirely different configuration with a similar level of conservatism? Side effects looked promising until I noticed the DC 13 save to resist entirely.

You want to avoid endless feats, but what about shuffling the ones you already have? Each class in the build except Sorc causes you to gain an iteration of Light Armor Proficiency, so 4 shuffleable. A Half Human Elf should still be able to qualify and that would get 4 shufflable instead of the one of your choice from Human.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Okay, so, Magic mantle + Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) + psionic spellthief 1 + Master Psithief + 1 level dips in all the manifesting classes you can manage. If you manage 20 1-level dips, your ML will be 20 x 20 = 400, and your bonus power points for all of your classes will be based on that. So enjoy the 400d6+400 fiery energy rays. And if you make sure ardent is one of your later dips, you can even get much higher level powers.

Or just minionize a telepath with psychic chirurgery to teach you a bunch of powers of higher levels. Or both!Feel free to use this:


Use energy conversion, a psicrystal (with metamorphosis to remove immunity to mind-affecting effects), schism, Chain Power, Split Psionic Ray, Overchannel, Greater/Psionic Shot, and Aligned Attack/a chasuble of fell power, along with energy wall to charge it up, to deal up to (8x[ML+3]x3)+7d6 damage (and half damage to tons of secondary creatures) every single round, and all for the cost of one energy conversion and one energy wall (both manifested beforehand) and a schism (a psychoactive skin can take care of the metamorphosis bit).

Note that's 9,672+7d6 damage plus a ton of secondary damage to nearby creatures in a rather large radius.

[Empyreal Dragon]

Is nuke in this case just high damage spells?

[Ruethgar]

Is nuke in this case just high damage spells?

Yeah, that was sort of my thought, because a Locate City Bomb for a Wightpocalypse will do a hell of a lot more destruction to the world at large than mere damage.

[Anthrowhale]

Okay, so, Magic mantle + Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) + psionic spellthief 1 + Master Psithief + 1 level dips in all the manifesting classes you can manage. If you manage 20 1-level dips, your ML will be 20 x 20 = 400, and your bonus power points for all of your classes will be based on that. So enjoy the 400d6+400 fiery energy rays. And if you make sure ardent is one of your later dips, you can even get much higher level powers.

Or just minionize a telepath with psychic chirurgery to teach you a bunch of powers of higher levels. Or both!
Is Master Psithief a real feat?


You want to avoid endless feats, but what about shuffling the ones you already have? Each class in the build except Sorc causes you to gain an iteration of Light Armor Proficiency, so 4 shuffleable.
Halruaan Elder, Incantatrix, and Loremaster do not grant any armor proficiencies.


A Half Human Elf should still be able to qualify and that would get 4 shufflable instead of the one of your choice from Human.
This is DMG page 171, I assume and you are thinking of a Half Human Elf with Human Heritage for a net 2 feats.

I'm trying to avoid variants, but that's a neat trick I hadn't seen previously.

Is nuke in this case just high damage spells?
Roughly. I think it's also good to apply that damage over an area.


Yeah, that was sort of my thought, because a Locate City Bomb for a Wightpocalypse will do a hell of a lot more destruction to the world at large than mere damage.
A nuke is definitely not a pandemic.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Is Master Psithief a real feat?Not explicitly, although Master Spellthief is, and the psithief is a psionic version of a regular spellthief. If a DM is allowing you to play a psithief and would normally allow Master Spellthief with spellthief, it follows that s/he would allow the psionic version of Master Spellthief, as well, which would be Master Psithief. It's an alternate version in the same way that psithief is an alternate version of spellthief.

[Anthrowhale]

Not explicitly, although Master Spellthief is, and the psithief is a psionic version of a regular spellthief. If a DM is allowing you to play a psithief and would normally allow Master Spellthief with spellthief, it follows that s/he would allow the psionic version of Master Spellthief, as well, which would be Master Psithief. It's an alternate version in the same way that psithief is an alternate version of spellthief.

An unstated variant of a variant doesn't seem as convincing to me. Also, if I understand correctly, you end up with an expected 9696.5 damage which is remarkably close to 9709, yet still less. Also, I'm not sure that it's possible to do a 20-psionic classes dip.

[Ruethgar]

Halruaan Elder, Incantatrix, and Loremaster do not grant any armor proficiencies.

The classes themselves don’t grant the feats, but the feat grants itself. A more conservative reading only grants it once, but you still get it.

[ExLibrisMortis]

First off, thanks for the detailed critique. I know it was a bit of a rough post, since I hadn't actually written any of it down yet prior to reading this thread.


An issue here: Theurgic Specialist requires Specialist Wizard 3. That seems to matter here as you need 5 levels for circle magic and 13 levels for 7th level cleric spells. Maybe Wizard 6/Red Wizard 5/Ur-Priest 1/MT 8 instead?
Ah right, forgot about that. Ur-Priest is good, yeah. That way, you don't need to use anything special to pick up erupt either, which is a plus.


Where/what is Astral Fire?
Astral Fire is a psi-spell feat, part of the Mind Mage section in Dragon #313. Psi-spell feats basically let you expend spell slots to add effects to powers, or power points to add effects to spells. In the case of Astral Fire, what you get is a DoT that ticks for 1 round/casting stat modifier, dealing 20% of the initial hit's damage per round. Astral Fire is super-napalm: it's sticky, cannot be extinguished by rolling around, and burns underwater. The cost is 3 pp per spell level, so 27 pp for a 9th-level spell, or 60 pp for a spell Heightened to 20th. As normal, you cannot expend more pp than your ML, but with mental pinnacle, that shouldn't ever be an issue.


I believe these two are incompatible as a spell must be divine for the former and arcane for the latter.
True. My bad. I was working from memory and trying to get to the round number 64, because adding halves is hard work.


This is a bit messy, but Theurgic Specialist uses "caster levels of all your spellcasting classes...". Some of these caster level boosters apply explicitly to the caster level of spells, not the caster level of your class. Others change your "effective caster level" which isn't altering your caster level and hence may not be picked up by Theurgic Specialist. The third issue is that bonuses from the same source do not apply twice to checks, so anywhere there is a level check, the caster level would not combine via Theurgic Specialist.
See, that's the sort of detailed point that only good optimizers spot. I.e. not WotC editors.

Generally speaking, I have a problem with the way WotC treats caster level. They pretend it's like base attack bonus, always the same number for a given character, whereas it's really more like attack bonus, different for each attack and circumstance. Caster level never got proper rules the way attack bonus did. Half the reason 3.5 casting is so broken is that nobody paid any attention to it whatsoever.

Anyway, on to the actual problems.

(1) I think "effective caster level" contributes to everything that cares about CL, because otherwise, it's not really "effective", is it? Going by Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/effective), we're looking at meaning (4) "actually in effect", which is what is intended, I think.

(2) Caster level boosts that only affect a specific spell/descriptor/school count at least once. If the spell is on both your arcane and divine spell list, any boost to that spell/descriptor/school applies to your arcane and divine CL, which can then be summed. I would argue that caster level boosts that only apply at the time of casting still work twice--again, as long as you have both an arcane and divine CL for that spell--because your CL is only calculated at the time of casting. I realize that's a bit contentious, but that's about the only way I can make sense of CL--it simply does not work if you try to calculate and stack ahead of time. Again, blame WotC for their sloppy casting mechanics.

Going by this reading, you'd need to add consumptive field and its greater version to your arcane spell list. Apart from Wyrm Wizard and Dweomerkeeper, I'm not sure what classes allow this with little investment (Rainbow Servant 10 is too much), but fusion (on a simulacrum, if needed) definitely works. Adding mental pinnacle to a divine list is easy: the Divine Magician cleric ACF takes care of everything.

Worst-case scenario, CL boosts at the time of casting have to be applied after Theurgic Specialist. In that case, they should still help you get a bigger consumptive field bonus, but the value drops considerably.

(3) I assume that something like caster level is not "transparent", in that Theurgic Specialist can't detect what bonuses were used to make up the individual caster levels, and spell effects in place can't detect what part of their caster level was the result of what bonus. If that sort of information carries through, that would really complicate the game.

I don't think the game generally allows this sort of transparency. Once a value is calculated for a particular instance, it's just that set value (for that instance). Even AC--which might look like it's transparent--is not transparent: you calculate your AC versus a specific attack when it happens, using the bonuses available at the time, but there is no ad hoc removal of bonuses, only ad hoc penalties. Likewise for caster level: you calculate it at the time of casting, but the spell then sticks with that CL for its entire effect/duration.

It's not necessarily a standard reading, but one that's generally helpful in interpreting the game, I think. I don't want ongoing effects to have lingering traces of every CL buff and class level that went into creating that effect. (Actually, now that I mention it, that would be pretty cool world-building, but the DM would cry every time you cast reconstruct spellcaster.)


Above, I'm treating the maximum CL boosts of GCF and CF as dependent on the CF-independent caster level. This is the other way, and if you keep alternating you can reach an arbitrarily high caster level.
You're being very careful by not letting them stack at all; I'm being slightly less careful (but still more careful than RAW) by allowing each effect to only apply once (so the alternating is ruled out)--although my "transparency" argument above does kinda allow bonuses to factor into the final result multiple times, each creature affected by a bonus has only one copy of that effect at any one time.

The overall system is pretty much the same whichever stacking you choose, though of course the final CL is lower with the more conservative option. (Incidentally, I'm impressed that you hit CL 138 with a very strict reading.)


I like the psiotheurgist trick here. That seems particularly important as it translates spell caster level (which is generally easier to boost with no nonsense about whether "effective" matters) into caster level.

Edit: looks like there is a problem with the Psiotheurgist trick, because Mental Pinnacle shuts off all spellcasting ability :annoyed:
Hmm. On casting the spell, you lose your spellcasting ability, but if you regain it at a later point, you should be fine, right? So perhaps what you want is fusion with the Ur-Priest (who actually has erupt prepared with all the metamagic) and then use your high CL with their spellcasting. That also lets you use their arcane caster level and the Theurgic Specialist feat, even if you don't qualify. You can throw in a second fusion to pick up the Transmuter's abilities, as well.

I have to say, I'm liking this. Three archmages--one primarily divine, one primarily psionic, one primarily arcane--merging into one creature to cast a super-nuke? That's a pretty awesome plot right there.

[Anthrowhale]

The classes themselves don’t grant the feats, but the feat grants itself. A more conservative reading only grants it once, but you still get it.
I'm not following. It says:

All characters except ... sorcerers ... automatically have Armor Proficiency (light) as a bonus feat.
The current build is a sorcerer, so this is not available. Read strictly, this would imply that a sorcerer/ranger does not have Armor Proficiency (light). We don't read strictly, because the Ranger class grants it explicitly.

[Rijan_Sai]

So, not magic, and not really a "nuke," but the destructive potential ranges from somewhere in-between "Tac-Nuke" and "Goku":

Warhulking Hurler (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?166459-(3-5)What-is-it-that-makes-the-Hulking-Hurler-War-Hulk-so-powerful)

(Here (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/War_Hulking_Hurler_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Build )) is a full build-up; yes, it's on the wiki... but it is the same progression as shown in post 25 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=9259928&postcount=25), in a slightly cleaner format.)

[Anthrowhale]

Ah right, forgot about that. Ur-Priest is good, yeah. That way, you don't need to use anything special to pick up erupt either, which is a plus.

It's no longer eligible for arcane thesis though?


Astral Fire is a psi-spell feat, part of the Mind Mage section in Dragon #313.

Astral Fire looks quite nice given the lack of additional save.


Going by this reading, you'd need to add consumptive field and its greater version to your arcane spell list. Apart from Wyrm Wizard and Dweomerkeeper, I'm not sure what classes allow this with little investment (Rainbow Servant 10 is too much), but fusion (on a simulacrum, if needed) definitely works.

Sorcerer's have access to Dragonblood Spell-pact as used in the OP.


Adding mental pinnacle to a divine list is easy: the Divine Magician cleric ACF takes care of everything.

It's delicate though, because prestige classes do not advance the Arcane to Divine class ability.

...
I agree the caster level of a spell is whatever it effectively is at the moment that it is cast, with the way that you achieved that caster level independent of the effect.

My reading is that sometimes caster level is a 'base attack bonus' equivalent while other times it's an 'attack bonus' equivalent, with context mattering. For example, when something says:

increases ... effective caster level for purposes of determining level-dependent spell variables and for caster level checks.
...it seems shaky to include it for the purpose of Theurgic Specialist, which is not in the enumerated set. My reading of Theurgic Specialist is that it starts with 'bab equivalent' caster level and provides an 'attack bonus equivalent' caster level in the specialist school. This makes 'bab equivalent' caster level boosts particularly valuable, of which I'd include Suffer the Flesh, Circle Magic, and Practiced Spellcaster. Some are clearly more 'attack bonus equivalent' such as Node Casting and the Spell Power class feature.



Hmm. On casting the spell, you lose your spellcasting ability, but if you regain it at a later point, you should be fine, right? So perhaps what you want is fusion with the Ur-Priest (who actually has erupt prepared with all the metamagic) and then use your high CL with their spellcasting. That also lets you use their arcane caster level and the Theurgic Specialist feat, even if you don't qualify. You can throw in a second fusion to pick up the Transmuter's abilities, as well.

How does the Ur-Priest get the metamagic? (Arcane Thesis does not apply?)


I have to say, I'm liking this. Three archmages--one primarily divine, one primarily psionic, one primarily arcane--merging into one creature to cast a super-nuke? That's a pretty awesome plot right there.
Are you going to work it out in more detail?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Are you going to work it out in more detail?
I'm still working on an Iron Chef entry, but I should have time over the weekend. I might add Mind Mage for the cheap metamagic (and double duration on Astral Fire bleed) or Yathrinshee for a higher Necromancy CL, because why stop at a thousand, right? It would really amuse me if Yathrinshee/True Necromancer turned out to be good for something :smalltongue:.


It's delicate though, because prestige classes do not advance the Arcane to Divine class ability.
Hmm. Good catch on the Divine Magician/Arcane Disciple thing, forgot about the school limit on the former. Luckily, Arcane to Divine has a scaling limit, so Arcane to Divine gained at cleric 4 does let you pick a 6th-level spell, as long as you can cast 7th-level spells.

[Anthrowhale]

So, not magic, and not really a "nuke," but the destructive potential ranges from somewhere in-between "Tac-Nuke" and "Goku":

Warhulking Hurler (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?166459-(3-5)What-is-it-that-makes-the-Hulking-Hurler-War-Hulk-so-powerful)



The Warhulking Hurler certainly can do very impressive damage. The projectiles are a bit impractical in game play though. Iron weighs 7874 kg/m^3, so in a medium character's space you might be able to cram 36 K tons (=1.4K damage) and in a large space 291K tons (=11.2K damage). Obviously, you could ignore volume constraints as they aren't formally part of the game, but the general strategy also suffers from other easy failure modes---for example a target could have Friendly Fire cast on them.

My high level take-away from the thread so far is that no one sees a way to eak out a bit more damage without using something more broken.

Ruethgar: A few more feats (via DCFS/flaws/Half-human elf) nets a little more damage via Blistering/Fiery spell.
AvatarVecna: Hive Mind + Illithid Savant can certainly do more. These are pretty clearly meant as NPC options.
ExLibrisMortis: I don't see a good way to leverage Theurgic Specialist in a single 20 level build, at least under the conservative caster level interpretation I'm making.


In the meantime, AV discovered burn healing and ELM has some ingredients for a 3-build super-nuker.

[AvatarVecna]

The Warhulking Hurler certainly can do very impressive damage. The projectiles are a bit impractical in game play though. Iron weighs 7874 kg/m^3, so in a medium character's space you might be able to cram 36 K tons (=1.4K damage) and in a large space 291K tons (=11.2K damage). Obviously, you could ignore volume constraints as they aren't formally part of the game, but the general strategy also suffers from other easy failure modes---for example a target could have Friendly Fire cast on them.

My high level take-away from the thread so far is that no one sees a way to eak out a bit more damage without using something more broken.

Ruethgar: A few more feats (via DCFS/flaws/Half-human elf) nets a little more damage via Blistering/Fiery spell.
AvatarVecna: Hive Mind + Illithid Savant can certainly do more. These are pretty clearly meant as NPC options.
ExLibrisMortis: I don't see a good way to leverage Theurgic Specialist in a single 20 level build, at least under the conservative caster level interpretation I'm making.


In the meantime, AV discovered burn healing and ELM has some ingredients for a 3-build super-nuker.

You are correct in saying that when the initial build is combining every semi-fair way of getting CL boosts and extra/free metamagic on a spell. And from a certain perspective you're not wrong in saying anything that gets more CL boosts or more free metamagic is "more broken" - you might be broken, but that would certainly be more broken. But you must understand that at best, it's kinda an arbitrary line in the sand. Hivemind and Illithid Savant are extreme examples, but it's more the point that the things you're doing aren't the only things that can be done to eke out free whatever to stack on your casting, and that the point where you happened to personally stop pushing for more is fairly far along, but not as far along as it could be.

D&D isn't really a game meant to have impacts on scales of that magnitude. Any method of doing so is "unfair". Claiming that one nonepic character casting a nuke spell of effective spell level 20/caster level 138 is fair, and one nonepic character casting a nuke spell of effective spell level 73/caster level 382 is unfair...I mean really, they're both essentially cheating. Similar legal cheating would be to just take the hivemind further - the basic H.I.V.E. put forth by Dictum Mortuum uses a Gate to get casting of CL 4787. All they need is a single method to get access to the spell (like the method outlined in the OP, or whatever build decisions can be made/altered with thousands of CLs worth of casting to throw around), and they can be throwing out far more area than either of us, more damage than yours, and half the damage of mine...without even touching metamagic. And it can still get worse.

If I were to suggest a method that could possibly pull of something stronger than what you've got without touching well-known TO options like hivemind or illithid savant, there's a few things that could be done, but they're all various levels of cheating-without-cheating. Well, one of them isn't cheating I guess - it's a single spell being used in a straightforward manner. But anyway!

Most methods here that would actually build on what you've put forth without being "too broken" would probably involve just using the A&EG rules to buy feats - I get the impression that your character wasn't stacking up two dozen metamagic more for lack of feat slots than anything else, and while they're certainly not cheap, damage is damage.

Most methods of beating the OP Build that aren't "OP Build, but now with WBLmancy" and instead are more doing their own thing are probably going to end up being one flavor or another of "buy epic stuff pre-epic". This could be hiring an epic adventurer to follow you around - based on DMG2 rules, hiring a Wizard 21 is going to run you 4410 gp/day, so find one that can craft epic spells and at that point you can accomplish basically anything. Another option would be purchasing an epic scroll.


As a general rule, a new character can spend no more than half her total wealth on a single item, and no more than one quarter the total wealth on consumables such as ammunition, scrolls, potions, wands, or alchemical items.

There doesn't seem to be any actual limit in place that non-epic characters can't buy epic items, they just can't make them without the appropriate feats (and also the spending limits usually keep them from being able to buy them anyway, assuming they even want to sink that much cash into such things). With 760k WBL at lvl 20, we're looking at an item of market price 190k. This could be 190k, or it could be a cursed item that would otherwise be worth 380k (since the "restricted to race/alignment/skill" are not multipliers and thus stack with each other like normal, and also are explicitly a change to the market price, not the crafting price. 380k gets us a CL 1688 scroll of Erupt. Somebody with the spell on their list could use it without needing a check, but if you need to make a CL 1708 UMD check, you could use chickens, blasting spells, and sadism to pass the check pretty easily.

This would result in a spell dealing 16880 fire damage to everything within a 168800 ft radius (~32 mile radius). It's just fire damage, so it's a good deal less dependable than either of the spells we've put forth previously, but that doesn't matter for 99.99% of targets anyway, so who cares.

[/quote]...but that doesn't matter for 99.99% of targets anyway, so who cares.[/quote]

...and that's also why even an unmetamagic'd AftS is going to be more relevant than you're giving it credit for. 10d6 sonic damage to a 20 mile radius is a way bigger area than either of us was pulling off in the first place, and while the damage isn't going to wreck adventurers with more than a few HD under their belt, "it doesn't kill high-level characters" doesn't make it a bad nuke.

This assumes maximum rolls for all classes, in the smallest Metropolis (25001), because more population doesn't affect high-HD characters, but rather they're split between the NPC classes exclusively at lvl 1. Even in this ideal scenario, with the optimal number of people and rolling maximum on everything, and not accounting for children, we're looking at 23209 lvl 1 characters, who are almost certainly all going to be killed by 10d6 sonic if they don't know it's coming. That's ~92.8% of the population that's taken out by AftS, even with the "small" amount of damage it deals and assuming that everybody lvl 2 and up are completely fine. If we decide that lvl 2 characters won't have the HP to survive it, and won't be able to benefit from evasion and the like to avoid it entirely, that gets knocked up to 24137/~96.5% getting wrecked. And again, this is without any improvement to the spell at all.



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Bigger cities than 25001 will have more lvl 1 characters getting roasted. Smaller cities will have the same percentage of lvl 1 NPCs, and fewer PC classes in general, and lower levels across the board. And cities this big are the least-common kind of settlement. About the only settlement with better odds of surviving a nuke are going to be thorps that have some random nature enclave, but that's about even rarer than a metropolis.

And none of this is getting into how 10d6 damage is going to screw up all the unattended items. Basically everything except tougher walls are going to break instantly, and very little is going to qualify for arbitrary "DM says this can resist sonic damage". Most items just aren't that tough.

I vaguely recall some rules in SBG where an overwhelming amount of damage to this section of wall/floor will deal damage to adjacent walls/floors/people. If you got a TO'd Hulking Hurler or a d2 Crusader or similar to attack the ground that'd probably be a hell of a nuke, but tbh I'm getting kinda tired of this post lol

[Anthrowhale]

But you must understand that at best, it's kinda an arbitrary line in the sand.
Oh, I agree. I'm trying to draw a line somewhere around "most or a good portion of DMs might allow each individual element in an actual game". That's obviously tricky to pin down.



And it can still get worse.

Sure. For example there is genesis + planar bubble to stack your choice of any metamagics on any spell.



Most methods here that would actually build on what you've put forth without being "too broken" would probably involve just using the A&EG rules to buy feats - I get the impression that your character wasn't stacking up two dozen metamagic more for lack of feat slots than anything else, and while they're certainly not cheap, damage is damage.

Items seem like a very valid way to improve damage, and there is quite a bit of extra gold to burn. However, I'm trying to avoid custom items.

This is actually helpful though, as it's giving me a few ideas.

W.r.t. the value of additional feats, there is some marginal value associated with Fiery Spell, Blistering Spell, and Flash Frost (via Snowcasting). If these were added in somehow, the damage would grow to 9947. The difficulty here is that I don't see a good way to free up any feat slots.

It looks like Energy Substitution[Fire] Acid Sheath would also add a little bit of damage.

Maybe "Spell Flower"? That seems to have some significant potential.


Another option would be purchasing an epic scroll.

Sure. There are two issues here: this violates my estimate of 'most/many DMs would allow in game' and you need to make a caster level check to cast a scroll of a higher caster level.


...and that's also why even an unmetamagic'd AftS is going to be more relevant than you're giving it credit for. 10d6 sonic damage to a 20 mile radius is a way bigger area than either of us was pulling off in the first place, and while the damage isn't going to wreck adventurers with more than a few HD under their belt, "it doesn't kill high-level characters" doesn't make it a bad nuke.

AftS is certainly a _disaster_ as you outline, but I tend to think of "nuke" as signifying utter-destruction of even the toughest things. Note also that "metropolis" with 25001 people may very well have everyone within a radius where Erupt can take effect.


I vaguely recall some rules in SBG where an overwhelming amount of damage to this section of wall/floor will deal damage to adjacent walls/floors/people.
That's interesting, I'll see if I can track it down.

[AvatarVecna]

I tracked down the rules and they're laaaaaaaame.

So, when you destroy a section of wall on a structure (a 10ft by 10ft section), all adjacent sections take damage, which is then reduced by hardness. A section that's just adjacent takes damage equal to 10% of its normal HP, while a section that is above the destroyed section takes 50% of its normal HP. Any creature adjacent to the destroyed wall takes 1d6 damage, +1d6 per 50 HP the wall normally had (maximum total 10d6). They can maybe get buried by the collapsed wall (save to avoid), and then take nonlethal until unconscious, and then take lethal until dead or unearthed, but that takes a long time. It's certainly a way that spells of such large areas and damage get even more deadly for people who barely survived the initial blast.

There's a theoretical scenario where you're attacking an infinite-size wall, and every single 10x10 section of that wall is at 1 HP; in this theoretical scenario, you could hit one section of wall, and as long as it dealt just 1 damage to that section of wall after hardness (destroying it), then the entire infinite wall would instantly collapse. But for most situations, attacking a single section of wall (or a single section of the earth) is only going to do chip damage to the surrounding sections - you could have a d2 Crusader or a Hulking Hurler chucking the moon, but it's only gonna destroy 10x10 and slightly damage all adjacent sections.

Heck even the big blast in the OP couldn't do much to the earth itself. The top layer of 10x10 sections of "floor" will get annihilated, but they weren't supporting other sections. Even if we apply the rules in regards to being "adjacent" in three dimensions, there's no section in the second layer that's adjacent to more than 9 sections of the first layer, so they'd take 90% of their normal HP in damage at most. And really, they'd take a good deal less because of hardness - it's 9 instances of 10% damage and then subtracting hardness, not 1 instance of 90% damage and then subtracting hardness. A section of unworked stone "wall" would take 738 damage after hardness, but would still have 162 HP left after the blast, no matter how big the blast in question was - solely because the first five feet of stone provided full cover from the initial blast.

Oh and as far as nukes go, while it's not damage, Fimbulwinter that gets negative levels attached would be a pretty solid nuclear winter.

EDIT: Although...

...the max damage to adjacent creatures is per destroyed section. Somebody adjacent to 9 floor sections is looking at 9 instances. If we're talking unworked stone, they'll be 10d6 each (although DC 15 Ref for half, so anything surviving the OP blast shouldn't be inconvenienced by that). Still, it's another way that even basic Erupt/AftS could bury people in extra damage.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I recall a rule that says (more or less) that any blast that destroys a barrier continues past that barrier and deals (full?) damage beyond. So as long as you can deal 3616 damage (to deal 1800 damage after hardness, the hp of a 10' cube of stone), you can keep evaporating rock until you hit whatever depth your blasting spell can reach.

The alternative is using the hp/inch stats and ruling that you simply ablate however many inches you have damage for. So a 9016 damage blast (4500 after hardness) destroys 300 inches of stone. I prefer this reading because it's a little less continent-destroying. Erupt might not easily reach the 20+ mile radius you need to breach continental crust, and apocalypse from the sky doesn't have the damage potential, but I prefer to pre-empt this sort of thing.

[AvatarVecna]

DMG section about attacking landmarks? If not, any idea where it's from? Would love to have a quote on that.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I recall a rule that says (more or less) that any blast that destroys a barrier continues past that barrier and deals (full?) damage beyond. So as long as you can deal 3616 damage (to deal 1800 damage after hardness, the hp of a 10' cube of stone), you can keep evaporating rock until you hit whatever depth your blasting spell can reach.

The alternative is using the hp/inch stats and ruling that you simply ablate however many inches you have damage for. So a 9016 damage blast (4500 after hardness) destroys 300 inches of stone. I prefer this reading because it's a little less continent-destroying. Erupt might not easily reach the 20+ mile radius you need to breach continental crust, and apocalypse from the sky doesn't have the damage potential, but I prefer to pre-empt this sort of thing.That's only for fireball. Spreads go around things, but they don't go through things (unless they're a fireball).

[Anthrowhale]

There seems to be some rules support for leaving a crater in SBG. Just beneath the part that AV mentions, it says:

If you're attack a multilayered wall, you must overcome each layer in turn. A single attack that has "left-over" damage after destroying the previous layer must overcome the hardness of the new layer before damaging it.
Applied to crater creation, we can regard each 10'x10'x10' cube as a layer. For an Erupt doing 9709 half force / half fire damage, this implies a crater in stone about 40' deep. If the material is packed earth, the crater would be 710' deep.

[AvatarVecna]

There seems to be some rules support for leaving a crater in SBG. Just beneath the part that AV mentions, it says:

Applied to crater creation, we can regard each 10'x10'x10' cube as a layer. For an Erupt doing 9709 half force / half fire damage, this implies a crater in stone about 80' deep. If the material is packed earth, the crater would be 710' deep.

FWIW, while walls are always sectioned as 10x10 on their face, their thickness varies by wall type. Stone walls come in thicknesses of 1ft, 3ft, and 5ft (for masonries, hewn stone, and unworked stone, respectively). All three wall types has Hardness 8, and 7.5 HP per inch of thickness. For our purposes, this mostly matters for how many times we're going to be having to deal with hardness. This makes a lot of thin layers more explosion-proof than one really thick layer, which just makes sense to me.

However, since we're making rulings on how these wall rules interact with attacking the ground anyway, we can hypothesize a bit further - combining this with the other section about taking down whole walls, to have a section collapsing deal damage on its own to all adjacent sections. Since we're going topdown, we won't get the 50% for sections supported by the initially-destroyed section. So each layer after the first will take a good chunk of damage from the ones above getting destroyed, which weakens them for when the actual blast comes pushing through. This is less broken than it sounds, since again this would be 9 hits that each have to deal with hardness, and have damage based on wall HP. While unworked stone would take 9 hits of 82 damage (900/10, -8), standard masonry would take 9 hits of 1 damage (90/10, -8). Again, this makes sense for multiple layers that are individually weaker being a bit more explosion-proof than a smaller number of layers that are individually tougher.

Iron, meanwhile, is simply too tough for a layer to be hurt by the layer above, so it just has to be blasted through without the 90% extra.

OP's Erupt would punch through:
108 feet/0 inches of masonry, with the next layer down at 1/90 HP.
98 feet/0 inches of reinforced masonry, with the next layer down at 83/180 HP.
207 feet/0 inches of hewn stone, with the next layer down at 85/540 HP.
260 feet/0 inches of unworked stone, with the next layer down at 39/900 HP.
24 ft/3 inches of iron, with the next layer down at 90/90 HP.
173 ft/0 inches of wood, with the next layer down at 44/60 HP.

In general, the most explosion proof is iron, followed reinforced masonry. But none of these thicknesses are likely to be relevant individually except unworked stone - people just don't have 25 ft thick iron walls or floors unless they're super-paranoid about exactly this kind of thing. More likely for a city, you're going to be looking at 1ft of masonry on streets, some unclear amount of dirt beneath, and then endless unworked stone. This will have your blast penetrate not quite as deep as if just punching through unworked stone (regardless of how the dirt impacts things).

Oddly enough, there's a few things a city that can be done to make something more explosion-proof. Firstly, the fewer walls/floors adjacent to a particular section of wall/floor, the less damage it takes from the 10% rule. This doesn't matter for iron, but it means that empty spaces in stone walls not only turn Unworked Stone to Hewn Stone, but also means that the layers of hewn stone aren't adjacent to each other. Buildings and tunnels and city-walls with internal corridors are, weirdly enough, more explosion-resistant than if they were solid rock all the way through.

[Jazath]

The Apocalypse Martini (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=15634823&postcount=19). 3.5 trillion damage over 90,746 square miles.

uh, that's a little much for a nuke.
I think it would be more in the millions or thousands in damage.
You'll have radiation damage, heat damage, force damage (From the intensity of the explosion), render people who watch it blind, lightning damage, sonic damage (From the simple noise of it) and maybe other factors a well

[Anthrowhale]

uh, that's a little much for a nuke...
That's a statement about the total damage across all creatures rather than the damage to a single creature.


...
Thanks. I believe we are both overestimating crater depth a bit.


According to this (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#hardness) stone has 15 hp/inch of thickness.
Enervate Spell cause it to do -50% damage and presumably objects don't have a good or evil alignment. Altogether, the multiplier would be reduced to x2 rather than x3.5 when applied to neutral objects. (You could increase it to x2.5 by eliminating Enervate Spell, but that reduces the top damage multiplier vs living opponents to x3.)


Spell Flower seems to be a quite a powerful key. Using that with a Marilith form with Girallon's Blessing and Arms of Plenty allows you to carry 10 pre-cast Erupt Spells and trigger them all as a full attack action. You can only afford 5 slots, but Repeat Spell takes care of that easily. Between that, 10 rings of mystic fire, Blistering Spell (which now fits), Energy Substitution[Fire] Acid Sheath, and careful use of Forceward+Energy Immunity, it looks like damage can be increased to 49490.

[Anthrowhale]

FYI, I updated the OP with the abuse of Spellflower and added some other things. Now, you can get 50680 damage as a full attack action that unleashes 10 Erupts, each dealing 5068 damage, half of which is fire and half of which is force.

We've chewed on this pretty hard, so I expect there isn't room to do more damage without going further into DM-permisiveness territory. Still, any last ideas are welcome.