Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Mechalich

2021-02-09, 12:27 AM

You’re in charge of a small city and its surrounding countryside, and the omens couldn’t be worse. A great mountain from above the sky is predicted to plunge down to earth, followed by a smothering darkness and a winter that may last a thousand years.

Okay, here's the thing. A massive asteroid strike wouldn't actually cause a winter that lasts a thousand years. It would cause a short period of greatly reduced temperatures, perhaps including a decade or two where temperatures dropped sufficiently that most areas had no growing season at all, but then it would fade into a fairly ordinary ice age (with significantly reduced biodiversity). Without any better idea of the actual parameters of the disaster, and whether the planet will respond in a natural vs. magically mediated fashion, all strategies will likely be extremely mismatched for what will actually happen. There's a huge difference between global temperatures dropping a dozen degree for a thousand years and 'It's Boston in January for the next thousand years, planet-wide.'

Everyone has been receiving the same news, so it’s every community for themselves; there is nowhere on earth that will escape the impending calamity. Your city is more fortunate in two respects: you’re somewhat isolated in a steep mountain valley, and there are extensive caves nearby.

Even if the calamity is global in scope - which would make sense in the context of an asteroid strike - it's hard to imagine it would impact everywhere equally. I mean, in terms of immediate impact, preparing to survive the climate shift is pointless if you're going to get obliterated by massive tsunamis within hours of the impact. Relocating towards the equator, to a region where the climate resembles pre-shift conditions, seems like a viable long-term solution. And by the way, if it isn't, and the whole planet is frozen over for a thousand years, then you're talking about complete ecological obliteration.

You have a modest contingent of clerics, wizards and druids up to 12th level, food reserves that will last roughly two years, and a city of twenty thousand terrified citizens with nowhere to run.

Well...the simple solution here is to simply murder 90% of the non spellcasting population, move the rest to the caves, and feed them off spells in perpetuity. This little bit of thought begs the question, is this primarily a political problem - in terms of actively managing the reactions of thousands of citizens, or do I have tyrannical autocratic power to make things happen how I want them too? How allied are the spellcasters? How seriously does the population consider the threat?

All of the more exotic escape options are right out—no wishes or miracles, no plane shifting or demiplane hideaways. Somehow you have to survive right there in your own secluded valley. You have only weeks to prepare before the catastrophe strikes and the snowdrifts are two hundred feet high. What’s your plan to survive?

Cutting off planar access has a lot of other consequences. Does it shut down summoning and planar binding/ally? If so, that's a huge deal that massively changes potential strategies. And, this also raises the issue of where is the city starting from, magitech wise? I mean, does it already have a fully functional system of nighttime illumination through the use of omnipresent Continual Flame spells (and if not, why not, a single Hound Archon can cast use that SLA 14,400 times per day and can be called up with Lesser Planar Ally)? And so forth.

ezekielraiden

2021-02-09, 06:04 AM

Preliminary effort: Ensure every single able-bodied person receives basic training from the city's clerics, druids, or wizards--preferably favoring the first two, but if there's a lack of time or an excess of wizard teachers, you gotta make sure everyone is getting training. Even being just a 1st level character with access to magic can be huge. Target faith toward deities relevant to the coming situation, either those of plenty and warmth to call on their aid, or those of ice and cold to propitiate them. Paladin and Ranger are also acceptable, but not preferred.

Find ways to get additional XP for the casters. If there's any way to get even ONE 13th level Cleric, Druid, or Wizard, you have access to control weather. Druid is ideal, but anyone with access is desirable. That alone saves the city from the cold, and since each casting lasts 4d12 hours (doubled for Druids), you'll rarely need more than a couple casts a day.

Have every caster that can spare it cast create water as often as possible into the communal water storage. Clean water is even more important than food, and an ample supply ensures sanitation. Try to have scrolls of endure elements crafted on the regular, though with most of the city being trained as a spellcaster it might not be all that necessary (as long as you can cast 1/day endure elements, there's far less need to bundle up against the cold, reducing the need for conjuring fuel sources.)

On that subject, conjuring fuel sources: minor creation lets you mimic other "organic non-living material," which is exactly what wood, charcoal, oil, etc. is. And once it's burned, it's fine if it disappears after an amount of time. Other spells that can transform one material into another or spontaneously generate material would be invaluable.

Set up a protected hothouse type area where mid-level (5-6th) druids can cast plant growth on cultivated berry-producing bushes of various kinds. If a true crop-rotation system can be set up, it may be possible to produce fresh berries year-round, especially since there's two years worth of food to wait on. Supplemented by create food and water (which should be able to support several people per cleric per day), it should be possible to reach a reasonable level of food production even in the absence of ordinary agriculture.

Strictly regulate the population. It sucks, but it will almost certainly be necessary to prevent widespread starvation.

I'm sure there's more that can be done, I'm just not thinking of it right this second.

Edit: If allowed to use PF rules, abstemiousness. Turns a mere handful of food into enough to feed a medium creature for a day, 1st level Bard/Cleric/Druid spell. Easily able to extend "two years" worth of regular rations. Might even allow livestock and other animals to be preserved even in the absence of ordinary feed, assuming the emphasis on feeding a "medium" creature means it can be split among small ones or that multiple castings can feed a large one.

Also, working toward everyone having a ring of sustenance. As long as the materials are available, this would be a lifesaver; coupled with some kind of magic item of endure elements, you could have completely self-sufficient members of society who never need food or water and never mind the cold, and can thus work independently of the ordinary food supply. You'd still want to produce food, just in case someone loses their ring, a child is born, etc. but overall that would make a huge, huge impact on keeping things working. Even if only 10% of the population has rings, they cut down on food consumption significantly.

Saintheart

2021-02-09, 06:21 AM

Anthrowhale

2021-02-09, 07:18 AM

Celestial Brilliance (L4 Cleric/Wizard/Sorcerer spell) provides light "brighter than bright sunlight" in a 60' radius for a day per level. If this works for growing food and sufficient cave space can be created over a 2 year period then a 12th level wizard with (modified) Int 22, extend spell, and access to a bead of karma (+4 caster level), could maintain 296 spells alive at all times providing ~75 acres in a state of better-than-sunlight. With twice the cavern space, you could move the stone this is cast on to provide a day/night cycle for plants yielding the equivalent of 150 acres worth of plant life. Plant Growth (Druid 3) makes this effectively 200 acres and a year-round growth plan probably makes this the equivalent of 400 acres of arable land. Online, I see estimates of ~5 acres/person, so this provides food for ~80 people.

A Cleric has access to Sustain (L4 spell) which at caster level 16 provides 128 person-days with no need to eat suggesting a level 12 cleric with a bead of karma can keep ~2K people alive.

Coming from the other direction, Hibernate (Druid 5) removes the need for food for a week/level, suggesting that a Druid 5 could keep ~1K people under indefinitely.

Biggus

2021-02-09, 07:53 AM

If you have two years worth of food, casting Flesh to Stone on large sections of the populace would be more humane than killing them as you could return them to life when conditions improve. If you have a single metamagic rod of Chain Spell you could do a dozen people per casting, enough to do a large chunk of the population before food stores run out. Anyone who shows even the slightest bit of magical talent doesn't get petrified, obviously.

A more radical solution; since you have lots of time, have your Druids descend deep into the earth and repeatedly cast Stone Tell and Commune with Nature to discover the nearest source of geothermal heat, and then use spells like Stone Shape and Transmute Rock to Mud to bring it to the surface, creating an area of permanent warmth.

Doctor Despair

2021-02-09, 08:24 AM

Gnaeus

2021-02-09, 09:01 AM

Telonius

2021-02-09, 09:45 AM

If you have two years worth of food, casting Flesh to Stone on large sections of the populace would be more humane than killing them as you could return them to life when conditions improve. If you have a single metamagic rod of Chain Spell you could do a dozen people per casting, enough to do a large chunk of the population before food stores run out. Anyone who shows even the slightest bit of magical talent doesn't get petrified, obviously.

This actually sounds like a pretty good solution. I'd take it one step farther: Team Undead. Get the highest level characters you can find to go Necropolitan. They're now statue guards for the next thousand years, with no need for things like food, water, or air. If there's something that can kill the guardians, it would have killed the whole society anyway, so there's not much additional risk.

When they wake everybody back up, they're a True Res away from normal life.

Palanan

2021-02-09, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by ezekielraiden
*snip*

Whole stack of solid ideas there, thanks.

I should’ve mentioned that Pathfinder rules are available, so Abstemiousness is a good catch.

Originally Posted by Anthrowhale
Coming from the other direction, Hibernate (Druid 5) removes the need for food for a week/level, suggesting that a Druid 5 could keep ~1K people under indefinitely.

Good ideas here too, but wanted to focus on Hibernate in particular. I assume when you mention “a Druid 5” you actually meant a Druid 12, since a fifth-level druid can’t cast this spell.

But even with a Druid 12, can you explain the math in a little more detail?

Originally Posted by Biggus
If you have two years worth of food, casting Flesh to Stone on large sections of the populace would be more humane than killing them as you could return them to life when conditions improve.

This is an interesting long-term approach. Is there any way to put a timer on that? Is there some way to specify how long they’ll remain petrified, or an automatic way to de-petrify them?

Because it’s a real concern if anyone will still be around to bring them back after a thousand years. If the period of winter is just a handful of years, there’s a good chance that most of the spellcasters will be alive and well, if a good deal thinner. But keeping a self-contained society alive for a thousand years, much less one that retains higher-level magical knowhow, is a very different proposition, and it would make sense to have a failsafe to restore the petrified people even if all the spellcasters are centuries gone.

Anthrowhale

2021-02-09, 10:27 AM

But even with a Druid 12, can you explain the math in a little more detail?

I meant a Level 5 spell for a druid. A level 12 Druid with Extend Spell using a prayer bead of good karma to hit caster level 16 with a modified wisdom of 22 has 3 castings of Extended Hibernate and 4 casting of Hibernate. Hibernate at caster level 16 lasts for 112 days. Extended Hibernate at caster level 16 lasts for 224 days. Together, these imply that you can generate 1120 person-days of hibernation per day.

Fouredged Sword

2021-02-09, 10:43 AM

You don't need 12th level characters. The city is perfectly savable with something like 4 really dedicated 5th level adepts with craft wonderous item and a single 3rd level cleric.

Ok, so let's talk food and people and long term survival.

You need to set up a system to get food into people or get people no longer needing food.

Let's talk magic items.

A Field Provisions box costs 2000gp and feeds 15 people. That is a rate of 66.6gp and 5.333 exp per person. It would take 1334 field provision boxes to feed everyone in your 20,000 person city.

Field provision boxes are the lowest cost to create per person fed I can find.

So... does your city have 1,334,000 gold or other valuables they can liquidate into "materials" to make provision boxes with.
Does your city's spellcasters have 106,720 exp available to spend on item crafting?
Does your city have 4 people with the craft wonderous item feat who are at least 5th level?

If the answer to these questions are yes, take a deep breath. You are fine. You can craft the 1334 field provision boxes required to feed all of your population before your 2 years of food run out.

Ok, but how likely is your city to have any of those things.

First, gold. I am AFB right now, but someone should look up the DMG gold limit for a city of 20,000. I am pretty sure it's WAY over 1,334,000. A 12th level NPC should have 27,000 gold in resources. You need the equivalent of the NPC wealth of 50 NPC's to have enough raw gold to make enough provision boxes.

Raw gold resource shouldn't be a problem.

Second, exp. At first this seems thornier as your item crafting spellcasters will risk running out of EXP. This is a solvable problem though, as you can have multiple people contribute to item creation. Simply have other people contribute the EXP portion of the crafting. I would assume that on average characters are halfway to leveling. This means that a city should have 50 exp per HD of exp floating around. A city of 20,000 should have at minimum 100,000 exp available even if everyone was level 1.

Exp for crafting shouldn't be a problem.

And I would assume a city of 20,000 has 4 people with the craft wonderous item feat and CL 5. It takes 2 days to enchant a field provision box and you can make blanks en mass with fabricate (or just mass applications of low DC craft checks, it's a fricken box) for them to enchant. What more, as you make your first set of boxes you have 60 people no longer eating your stored food. You make a set of boxes every 2 days. Your 2 years of supplies actually stretch out to 3 or 4 years as people simply stop leaning on them.

Congratulations, you have a post food scarcity society. Rebuild your society deep enough that the earth keeps you warm. Supply light with everburning torches. Spend the copious amount of spare time everyone has teaching the next generation to be wizards and clerics.

Biggus

2021-02-09, 11:07 AM

This is an interesting long-term approach. Is there any way to put a timer on that? Is there some way to specify how long they’ll remain petrified, or an automatic way to de-petrify them?

Because it’s a real concern if anyone will still be around to bring them back after a thousand years. If the period of winter is just a handful of years, there’s a good chance that most of the spellcasters will be alive and well, if a good deal thinner. But keeping a self-contained society alive for a thousand years, much less one that retains higher-level magical knowhow, is a very different proposition, and it would make sense to have a failsafe to restore the petrified people even if all the spellcasters are centuries gone.

If a 12th-level Wizard could temporarily boost their CL to 18, you could do the following: they cast Contingency: Stone to Flesh on themselves, the condition being that the temperature reaches a certain level, maybe 10C/50F or so. Then they're given the rod of Chain Spell and cast Flesh to Stone on themselves. This has the advantage that if they're desperately needed in the meantime, all you have to do is warm them up.

I'm not sure if they could realistically boost their CL that high using only WotC material unless they were a Red Wizard or something, but there might be stuff in PF you could use to get it there (I don't know PF very well).

Batcathat

2021-02-09, 11:17 AM

This actually sounds like a pretty good solution. I'd take it one step farther: Team Undead. Get the highest level characters you can find to go Necropolitan. They're now statue guards for the next thousand years, with no need for things like food, water, or air. If there's something that can kill the guardians, it would have killed the whole society anyway, so there's not much additional risk.

When they wake everybody back up, they're a True Res away from normal life.

I like this. It sounds like a good setup for an adventure, whether the PCs are the undead guardians (excellent opportunities for developing all sorts of quirks and issues from their long watch, if the players are into that sort of thing) or the intruders facing them.

AvatarVecna

2021-02-09, 11:58 AM

First off, what does a town of 20k look like in general, given the limitation of 12th lvl for the big casters? Well, 20k is a Large City, which is +9 modifier. Wizard 1d4 and cleric/druid 1d6 means the most powerful would range from 10-13 and 10-15, so capping at 12th level isn't the most unreasonable thing in the world, and let's us avoid messing with the random generation methods too much.

Class
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21

Adept
94
24
4
8
2

2
2

1

1

1

Aristocrat
94
24
8
4
2
2
2

1

1
1

Barbarian
48
24
8
4
2
2
2

1

1
1

Bard
48
24
4
8
2

2
2

1

1

1

Cleric
48
24
12

6

3

Commoner
16991
48
24

8
4

2
2
2

1

1

1

Druid
48
24
12

6

3

Expert
560
40
16
4
8

2
4

1

1
1

Fighter
48
24
4
8

2
2
2

1

1

1

Monk
48
24
8
4
2
2
2

1

1
1

Paladin
48
24
12

2
4

1
1
1

Ranger
48
24
12

2
4

1
1
1

Rogue
48
24
4
8

2
2
2

1

1

1

Sorcerer
48
24
12

6

3

Warrior
933
24
4
8

2
2
2

1

1

1

Wizard
48
24
12

6

3

A large city with population 20000 had a gp limit of 40,000 (so that's the most expensive thing you could realistically get), and a ready cash supply of 40,000,000. Hopefully that gives people an idea of what they've got to work with.

Biggus

2021-02-09, 12:40 PM

First off, what does a town of 20k look like in general, given the limitation of 12th lvl for the big casters? Well, 20k is a Large City, which is +9 modifier. Wizard 1d4 and cleric/druid 1d6 means the most powerful would range from 10-13 and 10-15, so capping at 12th level isn't the most unreasonable thing in the world, and let's us avoid messing with the random generation methods too much.

A large city with population 20000 had a gp limit of 40,000 (so that's the most expensive thing you could realistically get), and a ready cash supply of 40,000,000. Hopefully that gives people an idea of what they've got to work with.

Randomly generated NPCs are capped at level 20 (DMG p.138) so you wouldn't get the 21st-level Commoner.

@OP: another thought: automatically-resetting traps are a potentially near-unlimited source of heat/energy, if people aren't keen on the idea of having undead around.

ezekielraiden

2021-02-09, 03:17 PM

With a ready cash supply of 40 million, getting everyone a ring of sustenance isn't hard, so long as you have crafters with Forge Ring. There's also the vest of endure elements (https://www.aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Vest%20of%20En dure%20Elements), which are dirt cheap. Those two cover nutrition and warmth, so you'd just need to focus on keeping people alive, happy, and productive.

In fact, you could get one each for every person with over 5.7 million gold remaining. It would definitely be costly, but it's totally doable. Coupled with keeping a portion of the population in certification stasis until stable infrastructure is built up, and you have a recipe for reasonable success.

I imagine this culture would develop in very unusual ways due to being either post-scarcity, or at least radically reduced manual labor practice, and that there would be a significant culture shock at first especially for the farmers and other laborers. If they really did emphasize magical training for all, I could see a magocracy evolving out of it--one where community values are stressed because they had to learn to live with each other without leaving the confines of the city. Assuming the caves have access to moderate mineral resources, I could actually see this place being incredibly prosperous as soon as the world warms again.

Efrate

2021-02-09, 03:31 PM

5 dfas working 8 hour shifts, maybe 10 to keep it up easier, can provide endure elements for everyone with the endure exposure invocation which almost every DFA takes as their first. If PF is on the table anyone lvl 5 or higher with some ranks can take master craftsman then craft wonderous and can handle making food and/or endure elements items. No XP crafting means its just a matter of time and gold. You can take 10 on craft as well so with MW tools and your ranks hitting craft DCs should be pretty easy even with +5 per prereq. And PF crafting is 1k made a day so post food scarcity might be achievable before meteor hits.

Zanos

2021-02-09, 03:39 PM

Wizards of up to 12th level, you say? Have you considered converting your population into, say, bone creatures? They're rather unbothered by minor things like subzero temperatures and starvation. :smallbiggrin:

Gnaeus

2021-02-09, 03:42 PM

Fouredged Sword

2021-02-09, 04:18 PM

D+1

2021-02-09, 04:27 PM

"Mister president, we must not allow a mine-shaft gap!"

"You're right General Turgidson. We attack the neighbors at dawn. Meanwhile, the clerics, druids, and wizards will move into OUR nearby mines, along with the entire treasury, and all the most beautiful women..."

Quertus

2021-02-09, 04:31 PM

Well. It depends.

What are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? Cold, starvation, nothing to kill to get XP from. Also, the gods weakening / dying from the loss of followers. How could we handle these three - four (Spanish Inquisition) dilemmas?

There's lots of ways. Here are a few sample colonies:

-----

Well, Necropolitans don't starve or freeze to death. And those 12th level casters might well be liches. So lots of problems solved already, if we're an undead community.

However, we still might want to grow our numbers, and preserve at least *some* of the deities.

In the most selfish version, maybe we just volunteer to travel between communities (since we won't freeze or starve), and keep them aware of the world. We will accept… suitable volunteers (max ranks in Craft: snow shovel, for example)… into our number, granting them the blessings of eternal numbness. If entire communities die off (which we won't encourage, and will actively prevent if it's no bother), we will animate the corpses, scrub the ground clean, and eventually create a new settlement there.

Ultimately, hopefully the god(dess) of undead gains power and/or popularity.

Less selfishly, we may take a more active hand in providing for the other villages. Standard XP farming cheese for resources to create magical items (like Travel Cloak or Ring of Sustenance).

-----

Illithids are likely Epic by 12th level. Maybe some emergency crafting of Rings of Sustenance is in order, maybe direct some lava for heated pools. Hope someone took maximum cheese "Thrall Herder", and free meals just magically keep showing up daily :smalltongue: Maybe just Tarrasque regeneration solves everything.

-----

For Dragons, well, they can eat anything, so that's covered. Cold Dragons - especially White Dragons - smile at this turn of events, while the rest start investigating lava-based heating solutions. XP isn't an issue, as they'll "level" with age.

Gaining XP as a Dragon is *hard*. The classed Dragons are probably all really young. Once they get old enough, they should use retraining rules to take Ur-Priest levels. The gods couldn't stop the mountain, what are they going to do now, in their weakened state, against an organized *city* of Dragons, huh?

-----

For lesser races, it's tough.

-----

Humans (etc) need to know whether Continual Light / Flame can grow crops. I'm picturing the total Minecraft home, with (Continual Flame) torches lining the hollowed-out stone cave walls filled with imported dirt, growing crops with flows from Create Water (more "Decanter of Endless Water").

As the Decanter can create hot water, it is also our source of "geothermal" warmth (the water is allowed to cool before being brought by the bucketful to the plants or something).

Everything essential is carefully guarded… and built with backup copies.

Gladiatorial fights serve many purposes: entertainment, disposal of criminals, reduction of surplus population beyond our means to support, and a supply of XP.

Inflicting the *entire population* with lycanthropy is a smart move: free fur coats, unified pack mind, and the Gladiatorial fights are worth more XP. Also, stronger vs invaders.

Not sure about "werebear", though.

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Gods need to make hard choices, and get ready to get *real* intimate with like-minded deities. Because, most likely, most gods and goddesses will be subsumed into a much smaller pantheon.

-----

Note that I mostly gave *magical* answers. Doubtless, psionic, incarnum, and muggle responses exist, too.

-----

So far, my post-arctic-apocalypse surviving pantheon looks like…

Tzeentch, god of planning, madness, and change.

Luna, goddess of lycanthropy.

Bahamut / Tiamat, dragons.

Wejas, Magic and Undead.

Ilsensine, Illithids.

AvatarVecna

2021-02-09, 04:58 PM

Most of these answers assume that a city happens to have on hand or easily available the components needed to craft 1,000,000 GP of items. I think that’s a pretty absurd assumption. It is abstracting rules designed for players (obviously you can find the stuff in a city of 20,000 to make a ring of sustenance or field provisions box 👍) up to an economy scale (obviously this means you can make 1200 or 20,000 since you could make one 😬) without taking outside factors into account (the city down the road will also be seeking the same supplies so you can’t handwave it to “it will be here in a few weeks by transport”. 😳) So the question would be, of those GP material costs, how much is readily available to be gathered or made locally versus how much is a hand waved part of the magical economy that is actually difficult to acquire. Are we to assume that the city of 20k has giant warehouses of material components that could be bought (or commandeered) or it’s just a bunch of stuff you can make in 2 years (part of the cost is a masterwork box or ring, probably all good there) or does each ring of sustenance actually require a thread of unicorn mane gathered on a full moon and there happen to be 20 in the city and good luck getting more, and those are 800 GP of the components of the ring. I’d really say there is a big “ask the DM” element here.

Every community has a gold piece limit based on its size and population. The gold piece limit (see Table 5-2) is an indicator of the price of the most expensive item available in that community. Nothing that costs more than a community's gp limit is available for purchase in that community. Anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical. While exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought), these exceptions are temporary; all communities will conform to the norm over time.

To determin the amount of ready cash in a community, or the total value of any given item of equipment for sale at any given time, multiply half the gp limit by 1/10 of the community's population. For example, suppose a band of adventurers bring a bagful of loot (one hundred gems, each worth 50 gp) into a hamlet of 90 people. Half the hamelet's gp limit times 1/10 its population equals 450 (100 / 2 = 50; 90 / 10 = 9; 50 x 9 = 450). Therefore, the PCs can only convert nine of their recently acquired gems to coins on the spot before exhausting the local cash reserves. The coins will not be all bright shiny gold pieces. They should include a large number of battered and well-worn silver pieces and copper pieces as well, especially in a small or poor community.

If those same adventurers hope to buy longswords (price 15 gp each) for their mercenary hirelings, they'll discover that the hamlet can off only 30 such swords for sale, because the same 450 gp limit applies whether you're buying or selling in a given community.

That "40 million gold" figure? That's their economic capabilities, their ability to get their hands on goods. Even with the sudden issues the world is going to be facing, lvl 12 casters means access to the infinite markets available in the outer planes, which means economy can still function and they can get access to those magic items that they don't happen to already have in-town. It's smaller towns - those with access to neither large pools of resources nor high-level magic - that are absolutely screwed in this scenario.

RNightstalker

2021-02-09, 05:03 PM

OracleofWuffing

2021-02-09, 05:26 PM

Get a few immovable rods, send a Druid and a Commoner up to the incoming mountain, Druid uses the mountain to cast Rockburst on the Commoner for 1d4 damage. Druid and Commoner climb back down, Commoner gets healed by a Cleric. Mountain is now destroyed, no longer a threat, Fireball and Cloudkill the city, use divination spells to locate any survivors, and feed them to the Druids' animal companions. Locate any Portable Holes or Bags of Holdings, loot the buildings, head to the next town over, rinse and repeat. Eventually get slain by adventuring party for being some sort of big guy, joke's on them, the next mountain's their problem now. :smalltongue:

Maat Mons

2021-02-09, 06:14 PM

Sadly, it isn't difficult to ensure survival. Sadly for us, and having an interesting discussion, I mean. It's not sad for the people who get to not die.

Stronghold Builder's Guide has a magic item called Everfull Larder. It conjures enough food for 5 people each time it's opened. And it can be opened an unlimited number of times per day.

The only upper limit on on how many people you can feed out of one of those is how fast you can open the door, get in, grab food, get out again, close the door, and repeat. Unless it's one of those larders that's a cabinet rather than a room. Then skip the part about getting in and out.

I'm not sure exactly how many of those it will take to feed 20,000 people. But it's not going to be very many. So whatever the necessary materials are for building and magic-ifying one, you can probably get together enough to craft as many as you need without too much fuss.

Side note: In this situation, as in all situations, it's good to be an elan. They have no cap on their lifespans. And they don't need food or water. They do need humanity as a whole to survive in order to have a source of new recruits though.

If there were going to be a 1,000-year long famine that would wipe out large swaths of humanity, elans would have to do some fast recruiting. Gotta get a good chunk of new elans made before the pickings get too slim.

And, obviously, they'll work to make sure a good, genetically-diverse chunk of humanity survives to repopulate the world when things get better. That will be easy for them though, since they're an organization composed of ancient, magically-inclined individuals, chosen from only the best of the best.

I'd be interested to see the "human reserves" that elans construct for such a disaster. The social dynamic would be interesting, since the humans would sort of be cattle, but exceptional humans would be periodically chose to join the ranks of the "caretakers."

"Oh, I hope our wise and benevolent overlords deem me a worthy genetic specimen, that I may be chosen for the honor of receiving a license to reproduce!"
"Your fitness index is among the highest of this years crop. Doubtlessly you will be selected. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if, after bearing your allotted number of children, you are given consideration for ascension to immortality!"
"Oh stop! You're making me blush!"

Jack_Simth

2021-02-09, 06:41 PM

Stronghold Builder's Guide is your friend.

An Everfull Larder, A Decanter of Endless Water, one Chamber of Comfort, a permanent Gust of Wind, and a permanent Wall of Fire cover basic necessities of life for everyone.

The Everfull Larder provides simple food.
The Decanter provides water.
The Chamber of Comfort enchantment provides fresh air.
Wall of Fire provides warmth.
Gust of Wind spreads the air and heat to the rest of the caverns.

You'll want at least a few such nodes in case of calamity.

The rest is just digging out rooms and Continual Flame lighting. A Lantern Archon is liable to be willing to help, either via Lesser Planar Ally (preferred) or Binding

Raven777

2021-02-09, 07:41 PM

Just mentioning that a one off campaign setting based on this premise, and several isolated city-states implementing the various different proposed solutions, would be hella cool.

Silent Lornia, its temples filled with the mute vigil of petrified citizens under the timeless stewardship of the risen dead.

Resolute Karst, parlaying its newborns against supplies with slavers from the dark under.

Militant Ulver, forcing rings that enforce both sustenance and obedience upon every citizen's finger.

Fallen Qinas, it's mountain cave sanctuaries overtaken by magical crops under the violet glow of artificial suns.

Devout Osria, blessed by the jealous gods of winter to endure the elements while all other faiths are brought low.

Gnaeus

2021-02-09, 07:49 PM

@ AvatarVecna and Fouredged

I agree that under normal circumstances you could trivially zip off to Sigil or the like and fill your order. But in this case we are specifically banned by the problem from plane shift or other inter dimensional travel. So we get the limits of what is there.

And Avatar, the passage you cited supports my argument better than yours. “While exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought), these exceptions are temporary; all communities will conform to the norm over time.” Here we have a global catastrophe combined with something blocking planar access, so whatever trade routes are selling survival goods are going to be FUBAR. Because every other city is going to want the exact same stuff. The merchant wizard zips down to the local Metropolis with his portable holes, only to find that the stuff he wants to buy in bulk has already been cornered or rationed or nationalized. (Or, assuming a realistic economic outcome for a lifesaving material in an apocalypse, the price has skyrocketed along with demand). So we’re squarely in that unusual circumstance exception. And arguing that they are storing 50gp/person of the specific components that you need doesn’t seem remotely rational, even if you assume that magic crafting stuff is essentially interchangeable, which I also don’t think is necessarily true.

Quertus

2021-02-09, 08:19 PM

Mechalich

2021-02-09, 09:11 PM

Sadly, it isn't difficult to ensure survival. Sadly for us, and having an interesting discussion, I mean. It's not sad for the people who get to not die.

Stronghold Builder's Guide has a magic item called Everfull Larder. It conjures enough food for 5 people each time it's opened. And it can be opened an unlimited number of times per day.

The only upper limit on on how many people you can feed out of one of those is how fast you can open the door, get in, grab food, get out again, close the door, and repeat. Unless it's one of those larders that's a cabinet rather than a room. Then skip the part about getting in and out.

I'm not sure exactly how many of those it will take to feed 20,000 people. But it's not going to be very many. So whatever the necessary materials are for building and magic-ifying one, you can probably get together enough to craft as many as you need without too much fuss.

I'm going to do a bit of quantification here to make a point about how setting-smashing this particular item actually is. Assume a dedicated team of six: one opens and closes the door, one runs in and grabs the food, one helps pull the grabber out, three carry the piles of food out for distribution. This team works one hour on, one hour off, for an eight hour shift, with six teams or 36 total handlers per larder. Allowing for some inefficacies with change-overs, the occasional slip and fall, and so on, we'll assume they only manage 500 pulls per hour instead of the theoretical 600 you'd get at 1 per round. That means each hour you acquire 2500 meals. The operation runs 24 hours a day, which means you get 60,000 meals out of one larder - enough to feed 20,000 people. Each day, every day, forever. That's a high end assessment, but even if you can only open the larder once per minute, you still pull out 7200 meals a day and feed 2,400 people, so ten larders comfortably feed a city of 20,000 even at this much lower rate.

Now, here's the setting-breaking part. An Everfull Larder costs 15,000 gp. A common meal costs 0.3 gp. At the 60,000 meals rate a single Everfull Larder outputs 18,000 gp worth of meals per day. It literally pays for itself, plus interest, inside one day. These things destroy the very idea of an agrarian economy utterly. There's really no reason, in a setting where they already exist, why any city would face any level of food scarcity under any circumstances.

This is sort of a general problem with D&D hypotheticals. In order to impose any sort of environmental catastrophe on such a society, you have to scale back magic massively.

Endarire

2021-02-09, 11:07 PM

I wrote a food and travel guide (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=18325.0). Food-producing planar bound minions seem very handy to have!

Remember, shape the terrain to your liking and start farming it. You have plant growth. You can seemingly train some non-casters to be casters. You're an overlord. You have resources!

Vizzerdrix

2021-02-09, 11:25 PM

The halaster`s fetch line of spells, polymorphing useless people into egg laying hens, and hydra farming will provide more than enough food. Minor servator cast on shovels will keep the cave entrance clear for fresh air to get in, and eventually clear paths out (why spend a thousand years in a cave when you can rebuild under the deep snow). Water isn't a problem with snow all around so long as you have heat, and any number of flame weapons are basic enough that they should already be available (everyone is a mark for a flaming sword).

Gruftzwerg

2021-02-10, 04:40 AM

All of the more exotic escape options are right out—no wishes or miracles, no plane shifting or demiplane hideaways. Somehow you have to survive right there in your own secluded valley. You have only weeks to prepare before the catastrophe strikes and the snowdrifts are two hundred feet high. What’s your plan to survive?

May not been your intention but you left Planar Bubble out.

As such, we can emulate cryostasis with the following ingredients:
1: a Planar Shepherd for Planar Bubble all day long with plane where time flow is slowed to "1 day on material plane = 1 round on the time plane". This is a 14,400:1 factor. (1round x 10 x 60 x 24 = 14,400 rounds for a day)
2: A wizard/sorcerer to cast Endless Slumber

1 day on the time plane equals 14,400 days on the material plane. Roughly ~40 years (14,400 / 365 = 39,45..).

10,000 / 40 = 250 days

The Planar Shepherd will watch over everybody for these 250 days and is the sole person who needs food & water. The rest will be put into "Endless Slumber" and will be willingly fail their saves rolls until they are forced (with some damage: e.g. a slap from a non-lethal unarmed strike).

________________

Without Planar Bubble:

Well, no one of the people who live "now" will see the "good days to come" after the 10,000year period anyway. So it is a question of how to make the live for the generations in the meanwhile as comfortable as possible and least stressful as possible. Further, we need enough diversity in genetic DNA pool to survive the long time span.

1. Everybody should get a basic cleric education to increase the numbers of 5th lvl clerics that can create water and food.

2. Everybody who is free willing can get an "Endless Slumber" to sleep most of the harsh time of his live if he really wishes.

Edit: corrected spell name..^^

Jack_Simth

2021-02-10, 07:23 AM

Oh, yes, there's another way!

Stat drain some trolls (or other creatures with regeneration) down to 0 in a mental ability score. Put rings of Sustenance on them.

Carve 'em up.

Elkad

2021-02-10, 08:30 AM

40,000 man/years of food. Only a thousand years to wait.
Use goodberry, create food, and other such things to stretch your food ration during the early rush.

Petrify almost everyone.
Guardians eat the food supply until the snow melts.

Bronk

2021-02-10, 10:21 AM

I like the idea of giving everyone lycanthropy, but I'd make sure to stick to arctic animals like polar bears and arctic foxes.

My idea would be less invasive. First, I'd order the magic users to train as many people as possible, so that they can either cast the first level 'endure elements' spell, or second level spells like 'tree shape' for sentinels, and if they're really lucky, druids might eventually be able to wild shape into something able to keep itself warm.

For all the other non-magically inclined people, expected to be the majority, I'd prepare for the present by first making sure everyone has warm clothes, which should be pretty easy if we're in the normally expected temperate setting where winters are already an annual event. I'd identify all commoners with the chicken infested flaw, and have them mass produce poultry. Larger beasts suitable for feasts to keep the populace happy will be obtained by attracting monsters via dangling commoners with the delicious flaw outside city walls, then riddling them with arrow swarms.

I'd prepare for the future by:

1: Mandating that everyone unable to use magic take at least their first level in commoner, so that more chicken infested and delicious people could be created.

2: Sponsoring a bard college, where performers could be trained even if they're not actually bards, in order to keep the populace entertained long term.

3: Sourcing plant seeds suitable for cold weather environments, perhaps conjuring or creating them via magic, or trading for them via lesser planar binding creatures from a cold dominant plane.

4: Shift everyone in the city to cold resistant versions of their races by cornering the market on wands of alter self (and having the spellcasters create more of them), then mandating their use at certain crucial moments of people's relationships such that future generations have straight up cold resistance.

Backup plan would be to use the 'were polar bear' lycanthropy thing on everyone, then become a nomadic tribe.

Second backup plan would be to train everyone up as best they can, then hitting the caves, swarming through them until someone finds their way to the underdark, then set up a self sufficient community there, eating underground fungus, herding rothes, and fending off drow.

Third backup plan would be to pack everyone into the caves in waves, with each layer being petrified by summoned medusas, really just packing everyone in there, weakest in back. Find the elf mages, turn them into baelnorns, and have them wake everyone up when convenient, strongest (highest level) first so they can protect the rest.

I'd leave the mass undead ideas to other cities.

Palanan

2021-02-10, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by Biggus
*Flesh to Stone, Stone to Flesh*

I like the petrification approach, but I do note that there’s a DC 15 Fort save required to survive Stone to Flesh.

This may pose a problem for a fair number of the citizens. Since the goal here is to save as many people as possible, is there a way to increase their chances of making that Fort save?

Originally Posted by Mechalich
I'm going to do a bit of quantification here to make a point about how setting-smashing [the Everful Larder] actually is.

True, as worded it’s not especially well-thought-out. Were there ever any errata or updates for 3.5? And does Pathfinder have anything similar?

Originally Posted by Gruftzwerg
May not been your intention but you left Planar Bubble out.

I did overlook that, and while I probably would have included it in things that are right out, this is an intriguing approach.

However, I’d say the odds of any given city having a Planar Shepherd druid are extremely low, and even lower for one that happens to specialize in time. But it’s certainly an interesting idea.

Also, please note the scenario is for a thousand-year winter, rather than ten thousand years, so in your example the Shepherd would need to stand watch for only 25 days.

Originally Posted by Bronk
First, I'd order the magic users to train as many people as possible, so that they can either cast the first level 'endure elements' spell….

Are there any specific rules about how long it takes to train someone in their first level of a spellcasting class?

Quertus

2021-02-10, 12:18 PM

I can't help but goggle at the number of people who look at a scenario involving massive population loss, where the gods will be weakened by the lack of followers, and respond with, "let's solve this by making more Clerics!" :smallconfused: :smallamused:

I expect most gods will die off during this fiasco.

-----

What is the size, temperament, hibernation habits, and alignment of a polar bear? An Arctic fox? I'm not sure if either will be conducive to my intended society (although, trapped in a cave, with nothing to do, surrounded by women who are all foxes doesn't exactly sound horrible :smallwink:)

Gnaeus

2021-02-10, 12:21 PM

I can't help but goggle at the number of people who look at a scenario involving massive population loss, where the gods will be weakened by the lack of followers, and respond with, "let's solve this by making more Clerics!" :smallconfused: :smallamused:

I expect most gods will die off during this fiasco.:)

Focus on gods with worshipers on more than one plane? Or godlike beings like Demon Lords or Archdevils or their good equivalents who can grant cleric spells but don’t rely on worshipers to live? Or anything worshipped by aquatic or subterranean races? Seems like you could predict the winners in the divine mass death.

Maat Mons

2021-02-10, 01:52 PM

Were there ever any official rules making gods dependent on followers? I thought gods dying without enough worship was just a common houserule.

Anyway, even if a god is dead, you can still get spells as a cleric of him/her. That's what the feat Servant of the Fallen is for. And in most campaign settings, you can be a Cleric with no patron deity. There's also the Mystic class, which is a kind of spontaneous Cleric that is explicitly forbidden from having a patron. Mystic was, lore-wise, a class that originated when all godly power was shut off from the mortal realm. So they don't give a crap if gods die.

Cold resistance isn't actually too hard to get.

Shape Soulmeld (Planar Chasuble) gets you Cold resistance 10 if you're Good-aligned. Shape Soulmeld (Necrocarnum Vestments) gets you Cold resistance 5, but it's Evil. If you have a point of essentia, which can be acquired via a feat, Shape Soulmeld (Frost Helm) or Shape Soulmeld (Urskan Greaves) would work too.

Frostblood orcs and frostblood half-orcs also get Cold resistance 10. According to the text, frostblood orcs resulted from a bunch of orcs drinking white dragon blood. I think it said they killed the dragons to get the blood, but that's stupid. Dragons are powerful, you don't want to fight them.

Instead, if you're an orc tribe, you should approach a white dragon about being it's loyal subjects in exchange for getting to use it's blood to make yourselves better suited to survive in this harsh new world, and consequently also become more useful minions to the dragon. And if you're a human civilization, find yourself an tribe of frostblood orcs and get to making some babies. That's the great thing about being a D&D human. You can crossbreed with anything. Just find whatever's doing well, mix your genes, and your offspring will do well. Like friggin' xenomorphs.

Dungeon 109 has a feat called Flesh of the Icy Tomb that converts all Cold damage you receive into nonlethal damage. But you need Tomb-Tainted Soul and Endurance as prerequisites.

Dragonscale Husk gives you resistance 5 to Acid, Cold, Electricity, and Fire damage at 5th level. It can be applied to a wide variety of classes. For example, Warrior, for the lowest barrier to entry. Or Cleric, for an actually useful class. You do need to have the Dragonblood subtype. But you can ensure that in future generations by crossbreeding with dragons! If you're human, I recommend silver dragons, to eventually wind up with a society of silverbrow humans. Or if you're impatient, turn everybody into dragonborn of Bahamut.

Roninblack

2021-02-10, 03:24 PM

It's worth mentioning here that Frostburn is your friend for this, as it lists temperature bands and ways to resist the cold.
For instance, your polar bears still need an additional layer of protection in extreme or unearthly cold temperatures, but cold resistance 5 is almost enough to ignore unearthly cold, and cold resist 10 means you're completely protected.

Thac0 Redeye

2021-02-10, 03:27 PM

make sure you get a room on Snowpiercer? ......

Mechalich

2021-02-10, 05:46 PM

True, as worded it’s not especially well-thought-out. Were there ever any errata or updates for 3.5? And does Pathfinder have anything similar?

It's just one item. There are other ways to provide effectively limitless food on the cheap. Endairre's travel guide linked above mentions the Movanic Deva - a 6hd outsider that has Create Food and Water, as a 9th level caster, at will! A 10th level cleric can bind one for 10 days for a mere 3000gp (half price because creating food is a non-violent task, and you can even donate that money to an appropriate temple which will then spend it on other social services, so it counts double).

Create Food and Water feeds 3 people/caster level for a day. Cast at 9th level it feeds 27. Cast every round it feeds 27*14400 = 388800 people.

Ultimately this is a problem with how D&D is built. The system is designed so that modest investment can simply erase everyday problems for a dungeon crawling group (meaning the PCs, plus hirelings and pack animals, so a few dozen people equivalents) at a modest investment in order to simplify the accounting and make wilderness travel less complicated for groups uninterested in that sort of thing. Unfortunately, if you scale up basically any of these methods, you make it easy for a city to survive without any outside inputs at all. This really isn't surprising, a lot of D&D items allow you to create something from nothing, which makes them effectively perpetual motion machines, and a world in which perpetual motion machines work is a world with fundamentally different problems than our own.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-10, 06:07 PM

It's just one item. There are other ways to provide effectively limitless food on the cheap. Endairre's travel guide linked above mentions the Movanic Deva - a 6hd outsider that has Create Food and Water, as a 9th level caster, at will! A 10th level cleric can bind one for 10 days for a mere 3000gp (half price because creating food is a non-violent task, and you can even donate that money to an appropriate temple which will then spend it on other social services, so it counts double).

Create Food and Water feeds 3 people/caster level for a day. Cast at 9th level it feeds 27. Cast every round it feeds 27*14400 = 388800 people.

Note: That critter only works that well if you're going with standard action casting times for spell likes, rather than inheriting the casting times from the base spells. If you go with the casting time of the base spell.... Create Food and Water has a ten minute casting time: That 388,800 drops down by a factor of 100, to 3,888. That's not to say it's a serious problem with the plan: One Sorcerer-10 (because better Charisma checks, and can get away with doing it without any expensive material components) Lesser Planar Binding one such creature successfully every day works out to ten of those running for the duration, which means 38,880 folks fed by one person's efforts (which are snitched form the outer planes, but still....), which is nearly double the population listed in the exercise.

Calthropstu

2021-02-10, 07:06 PM

For shelter, we will use the caves. For meat, we use wall of stone and stone to flesh. For clothes we use... eh, who needs em. For vegetables it gets a little tricky. Planar binding a bunch of extraplanar plant creatures might be the way to go. Worst case, we alter everyone into meat eaters only and eat fleshwalls.

In order to keep the region alive, we find some way of getting stasis placed on large amounts of land. If that is undoable, planar binding something that radiates sunlight to keep plants alive as well as crafting decznters of endless water.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-10, 08:33 PM

I should’ve mentioned that Pathfinder rules are available, so Abstemiousness is a good catch.Oh. Then you want to craft a bunch of Darkskulls (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/c-d/darkskull/), tied to Daylight. You can use them to grow plants, complete with a day/night cycle (you move them around the caverns).

And, of course, if Pathfinder rules are in play, you can craft useful outsiders, rather than binding them: Make several Trompe L'oeil's (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/trompe-l-oeil-cr-1/). A few Juvenile Brozne Dragon (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/dragons/dragon/metallic-bronze/bronze-dragon-juvenile)s will do the job. Create Food and Water, CL 12, at-will. Even with the ten minute casting time, that's 5,184 people fed per dragon. You need four of them to keep everyone in food (but do build a few extras in case of disaster). They're quite durable, and they double as guards.

Quertus

2021-02-10, 08:42 PM

Focus on gods with worshipers on more than one plane? Or godlike beings like Demon Lords or Archdevils or their good equivalents who can grant cleric spells but don’t rely on worshipers to live? Or anything worshipped by aquatic or subterranean races? Seems like you could predict the winners in the divine mass death.

Were there ever any official rules making gods dependent on followers? I thought gods dying without enough worship was just a common houserule.

Anyway, even if a god is dead, you can still get spells as a cleric of him/her. That's what the feat Servant of the Fallen is for. And in most campaign settings, you can be a Cleric with no patron deity. There's also the Mystic class, which is a kind of spontaneous Cleric that is explicitly forbidden from having a patron. Mystic was, lore-wise, a class that originated when all godly power was shut off from the mortal realm. So they don't give a crap if gods die.

Touché.

make sure you get a room on Snowpiercer? ......

Lol. I think that the only world where that's likely an option, you'd probably prefer the warmth of the Fire rings around their sky ships.

Note: That critter only works that well if you're going with standard action casting times for spell likes, rather than inheriting the casting times from the base spells. If you go with the casting time of the base spell.... Create Food and Water has a ten minute casting time: That 388,800 drops down by a factor of 100, to 3,888. That's not to say it's a serious problem with the plan: One Sorcerer-10 (because better Charisma checks, and can get away with doing it without any expensive material components) Lesser Planar Binding one such creature successfully every day works out to ten of those running for the duration, which means 38,880 folks fed by one person's efforts (which are snitched form the outer planes, but still....), which is nearly double the population listed in the exercise.

A) is this a major point of contention?

B) what's the cost on maintaining those?

C) what's the expected financial output of 20k civilians?

Palanan

2021-02-10, 11:36 PM

Quertus

2021-02-11, 12:24 AM

For my purposes, it would be very helpful to have answers to these particular questions:

1. Given the DC 15 Fort save necessary to survive Stone to Flesh, is there any way to increase the chance of making that save?

2. For the Everful Larder, were there any errata and/or updates for 3.5? Does Pathfinder have a similar contraption?

3. Are there any specific rules about how long it takes to train someone in their first level of a spellcasting class?

1) lots of ways. Cloak of Resistance +5 (placed over the statue's shoulders shortly before "soft"), Fate of One, probably some alchemical mixture or another, Prayer, etc. I'm fairly confident that the Playground can get you from "Commoner with +0 Fort" to "99.75% survival rate". A given settlement will likely think of *some*, and this give a higher survival rate than "rest in snow", at least.

2) "nope" was also given as an answer - do you have anyone on "ignore"? Also, the "1 second gathering time" seems a bit slow. However, it was also pointed out that the Pathfinder Trompe L'oeil of a creature with "Create Food and Water" SLA at will… will *also* solve this problem. So… yes, Pathfinder *does* have equivalent items, kinda.

3) PCs, it's just "how long to get XP"… oh, *first* level? There's "starting age" charts. Compare them to Milo and his shenanigans, a little subtraction, and you'll have the answer of how many years it takes. Quite a few, depending on the class, I'm afraid.

smasher0404

2021-02-11, 03:20 AM

So a potentially awful idea (as in this will likely also result in the death of the settlement, just not via cold):

Anhydruts (Sandstorm pg 191) get the epic spell Global Warming (Sandstorm pg 130) as a spell-like ability once per century. Global Warming (the spell) would forcibly and permanently set a 100 mile raidus area to be either Warm (which is a livable 60-90 degrees) or 1 temperature band higher (whichever is higher) but evaporates moisture to create desert-like conditions. Anhydruts specifically come to the Material Plane when some creatures commit transgressions against the deserts. They are also only 8 HD, which is within range of a Cleric with the Warforged Domain and an effective Cleric Level of 16 (which is reachable with a Talisman of Undead Mastery (MIC, 188) for 3K gold).

Assuming one had a suitable Cleric with the Warforged Domain, the city could teleport their clerics to the Waste, offend the Anhydruts enough to force them to come out of Mechanus (exact method would depend on the DM), command them using the Warforged Domain, and then use their spell-like ability to effectively artificially maintain a livable (albeit uncomfortable) enviroment. It will also explicitly melt the snow which will create a flooding issue, but Wall of Stone could probably be utilized to create a dam system to help control where the flooding goes.

More obscurely, to get a water supply for potential irrigation (beyond the melted snow you just created), a Wyrm Wizard could have selected the Shaman spell Create Spring (Oriental Adventures), which creates a more permanent source of water every 100 yards (depending on how fast Global Warming actually evaporates the water) at 6 gallons an hour. If you have access to Shamans, they'd notably always be able to prepare the spell provided they have a 2nd level spell slot.

If self-resetting traps are allowed, but self-resetting traps of food-producing spells are not allowed: you can possibly produce natural sunlight to grow plants via self-resetting traps of Sunrise (gained via the Initiate of Lathander feat in Player's Guide to Faerun) which is explicitly equivalent to natural sunlight. Continual Flame could be used as a substitute, if self-resetting traps are not-kosher and desert plants that don't have high sunlight requirement can be found. Depending on what moisture you can retain, fungi don't require a lot of sunlight and could probably be grown within the cave structures.

Downside? You've just enslaved a bunch of Inevitables to pull this off, and now you have to deal with the fact that they are probably going to send more after you. You also still have to find a more permanent solution to the eternal darkness issue (which significantly hampers agriculture).

Quertus

2021-02-11, 07:21 AM

Downside? You've just enslaved a bunch of Inevitables to pull this off, and now you have to deal with the fact that they are probably going to send more after you. You also still have to find a more permanent solution to the eternal darkness issue (which significantly hampers agriculture).

Your looking at that all wrong - a fresh brand is… I mean, inevitable coming after you is *great*!

That's "steady supply of XP", "steady supply of metal" and "steady supply of minions for your Warforged-domain Clerics".

That's wins all around, any way you slice it!

Jack_Simth

2021-02-11, 07:37 AM

A) is this a major point of contention?

It's debated enough in 3.5 that the answer is "ask your DM." Which in turn means that any reliance on the more favorable interpretation is problematic.

But as noted: Hardly an issue when a Wizard or Sorcerer-10 can have ten of them constantly, and you only need to worry about 20,000 folks.

B) what's the cost on maintaining those?

"It depends".

If you have to hire spellcasting services from your own casters? Quite a bit. If you only have to worry about material components, potentially free (Planar Binding line doesn't have expensive materials). Using Planar Ally for same, and just the material components, going by a "nonhazardous" days/level task for a 6 HD outsider? 3500 gp/casting (3,000 gp in gifts, 500 xp), or 350 gp/day/angel for a 10th level caster. 200 gp/day/angel, if feeding folks is considered sufficiently in line with their ethos to be halved again. We need six, so we need a sustained output of either 1,200 or 2,100 gp/day.

And, of course, the Pathfinder base makes this easier, as there are no XP requirements in Pathfinder, just component requirements.

C) what's the expected financial output of 20k civilians?
Pretty high. With a pathfinder base, if we assume each civilian has an ability score of 10, and one rank in a class skill of either profession or craft (3.5's would be equivalent - four ranks in a class skill), that they take ten, and that you can get all the money because you're also taking care of all their needs via magic? 20,000 * (((10+4)/2)/7) = 20,000 gp/day. Even if only half of them are of working age, and you can only capture half of their output, you're still ahead by either 3,800 or 2,900 gp/day. And that's assuming none of them have Skill Focus, a suitable Masterwork Tool, and/or an ability modifier of +1 or better (most of them should have at least one of the above, really).

Palanan

2021-02-11, 08:33 AM

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
Were there ever any official rules making gods dependent on followers? I thought gods dying without enough worship was just a common houserule.

I’d be interested in this myself, since it would certainly have an impact on the setting if true. But I don’t recall any setting where the lack of worshipers explicitly ends a god.

Lost Empires of Faerûn only alludes to this on p. 43:

“…the death of a god takes a long time, and even a deity that has long since lost its mortal worshipers may persist as a universal principle or a symbol that still retains a tiny spark of divine power.”

This could be taken either way, so if there’s other text that explicitly draws a connection between loss of worshipers and permanent demise of a deity, I’d be interested in seeing it.

Originally Posted by Palanan
2. For the Everful Larder, were there any errata and/or updates for 3.5?

Originally Posted by Quertus
…”nope" was also given as an answer….

I haven’t seen an answer to this question.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Compare them to Milo and his shenanigans….

Who’s Milo? No idea what you mean here.

Whyareall

2021-02-11, 09:46 AM

Pretty high. With a pathfinder base, if we assume each civilian has an ability score of 10, and one rank in a class skill of either profession or craft (3.5's would be equivalent - four ranks in a class skill), that they take ten, and that you can get all the money because you're also taking care of all their needs via magic? 20,000 * (((10+4)/2)/7) = 20,000 gp/day. Even if only half of them are of working age, and you can only capture half of their output, you're still ahead by either 3,800 or 2,900 gp/day. And that's assuming none of them have Skill Focus, a suitable Masterwork Tool, and/or an ability modifier of +1 or better (most of them should have at least one of the above, really).

Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components

Gnaeus

2021-02-11, 10:39 AM

Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components

True. But once you get rid of the short term time constraints, you could ultimately make a trade route with somewhere in the underdark or deep ocean and produce trade goods that the underdark race wants. This where that DMG section AvatarVecna quoted comes in. Eventually, trade will normalize and all listed goods will again be available as per the DMG. I don’t think that’s going to happen in time to stop mass starvation upon disaster. But I do think you could include trade in a long term survival strategy.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-11, 12:26 PM

Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components

No, they don't come from nowhere. So? Most material components- PF especially- are gemstones, which can be found underground. You're going to need to do a lot of digging anyway. Find the raw gems and ore with profession(miner) or whatever, process to coins or cut gems or art objects or whatever with Craft. The raw productivity of 20,000 folks at a +4 skill check is quite high, and the Pathfinder Planar Ally route needs about 10-15% of the output. You've got enough leeway that it's OK if not everyone has an immediately applicable skill. Retrain as needed.

Calthropstu

2021-02-11, 01:06 PM

To be honest, I would think prematurely ending the winter would be the main focus. Surviving would be possible. But thriving would be difficult.
Plus, spell research would begin somewhere on "end global winter" spell.

Palanan

2021-02-11, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
But once you get rid of the short term time constraints, you could ultimately make a trade route with somewhere in the underdark or deep ocean and produce trade goods that the underdark race wants.

In the scenario as I’ve conceived it, the nearby cave system will be extensive laterally, but not vertically, and no feasible connection with any under-realms far below.

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
I don’t think that’s going to happen in time to stop mass starvation upon disaster. But I do think you could include trade in a long term survival strategy.

There certainly won’t be any way for trade to help with the immediate crisis—as noted previously, in this scenario the town is secluded and essentially cut off from other communities. And since the crisis is equal or worse everywhere else, there’s effectively no trade to speak of, with hoarding and panic pricing making non-local items effectively unavailable.

For some spell components and other rare essentials, it’s possible that there could be attempts by a few mid-level wizards to teleport out and try to find them elsewhere…but all the other mid-level wizards in the world will have that same idea, so it may be a bit of a feeding frenzy beyond the borders of the valley.

In fact, it may be an essential aspect of preparation to organize some of the wizards to prevent exactly that sort of resource depletion from their own community. Rather than going out and taking from elsewhere, they may be needed just to protect whatever the town has on hand.

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth
The raw productivity of 20,000 folks at a +4 skill check is quite high….

Not quite sure what you mean here. Hardly anyone in the town will have a background in mining, and if they’re petrified or otherwise unavailable, there won’t be a workforce per se. But I may not be grokking your broader point.

Originally Posted by Calthropstu
In order to keep the region alive, we find some way of getting stasis placed on large amounts of land.

Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean Temporal Stasis, or something else?

Calthropstu

2021-02-11, 01:22 PM

Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean Temporal Stasis, or something else?

Yes, temporal stasis. But research a weaker one, one that has limits to be the stated max of 6th lvl.

Quertus

2021-02-11, 01:57 PM

so we need a sustained output of either 1,200 or 2,100 gp/day.

20,000 * (((10+4)/2)/7) = 20,000 gp/day. Even if only half of them are of working age, and you can only capture half of their output, you're still ahead by either 3,800 or 2,900 gp/day. And that's assuming none of them have Skill Focus, a suitable Masterwork Tool, and/or an ability modifier of +1 or better (most of them should have at least one of the above, really).

So, ½ population working, only ½ of the time (off weekends, holidays, sick days, etc), "food by outsider" consumes 21/29 of the minimal baseline productivity of your civilization.

Possible, but painful.

Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components

I was kinda picturing baking the Angel/Dragon/Modron/whatever some pies, building sculptures of good deeds, whatever combination of "crafts + materials + summoned being's interests" the town could manage.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-11, 03:04 PM

So, ½ population working, only ½ of the time (off weekends, holidays, sick days, etc), "food by outsider" consumes 21/29 of the minimal baseline productivity of your civilization."Ahead by" is net, not gross. Half of the folks doing useful work towards this is 10k per day. Capturing half of that for the purpose is 5k per day. The high end cost is 2,100 gp/day. So that's 21/50 of your productivity, assuming only 25% efficiency with very non-optimized skill checks.

Palanan

2021-02-11, 03:04 PM

So, Quertus, would you be willing to repost those statements from the Fort saves thread in this one?

Because those are both great segues into some other thoughts I had.

Maat Mons

2021-02-11, 03:40 PM

If all else fails, there's always human sacrifice.

One sacrifice can easily get you enough dark craft GP to craft Everlasting Rations. No exotic and difficult-to-obtain materials required.

If people are going to be fighting over scarce resources anyway, they might as well make efficient use of captured enemies.

Gnaeus

2021-02-11, 03:42 PM

In the scenario as I’ve conceived it, the nearby cave system will be extensive laterally, but not vertically, and no feasible connection with any under-realms far below.

There certainly won’t be any way for trade to help with the immediate crisis—as noted previously, in this scenario the town is secluded and essentially cut off from other communities. And since the crisis is equal or worse everywhere else, there’s effectively no trade to speak of, with hoarding and panic pricing making non-local items effectively unavailable.

For some spell components and other rare essentials, it’s possible that there could be attempts by a few mid-level wizards to teleport out and try to find them elsewhere…but all the other mid-level wizards in the world will have that same idea, so it may be a bit of a feeding frenzy beyond the borders of the valley.

In fact, it may be an essential aspect of preparation to organize some of the wizards to prevent exactly that sort of resource depletion from their own community. Rather than going out and taking from elsewhere, they may be needed just to protect whatever the town has on hand.?

I get that. But how many years could it take for 12th level casters to reestablish ties with the outside world. 5? 10? 20? 50? 100? There’s gonna be someone you can trade with in a lot less than 1000 years. There should be a tunnel to the underdark or a ring gate to the merfolk kingdom somewhere. Unless your scenario is assuming that there is something unique about your 20,000 person valley and everyone else died, including the people living near very high level casters who should be able to solo this issue. Like, if this is Faerun, Szass Tam is absolutely still animate and running a kingdom. Virtually every 15+ level caster is still going to be alive for decades, if not centuries. Most of them will have a large crew of living or unliving things with them. Some will likely be looking for you.

And if you tunnel to a metropolis 20 years after the disaster, there are really 2 likely alternatives. Either it is a surviving settlement you could trade with. Or it’s a ruin you could loot. Win-Win.

Palanan

2021-02-11, 04:45 PM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
But how many years could it take for 12th level casters to reestablish ties with the outside world. 5? 10? 20? 50? 100? There’s gonna be someone you can trade with in a lot less than 1000 years.

Good point. Depending on the survival approach that’s taken, possibly. I’ve been assuming this is a fairly secluded region, but 12th-level casters do have some options on their end.

This ties into something else I’ve been considering, which is how many population centers will survive the initial catastrophe, how distant they are from each other, how they could reestablish some form of communication, and whether any kind of contact would be feasible.

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
And if you tunnel to a metropolis 20 years after the disaster, there are really 2 likely alternatives. Either it is a surviving settlement you could trade with. Or it’s a ruin you could loot.

Or taken over by something horrendous, something not so easily defeated. There are a lot of other potential outcomes here.

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
There should be a tunnel to the underdark….

Well, as mentioned, I’ve been envisioning this particular community with zero access to the Underdark, both to enforce their isolation for this scenario, but also for their own safety as much as anything.

As for their deliberately seeking out the Underdark, that seems unlikely. If anyone has even heard of something like the “under-realm,” it’ll be through stories of monsters and horrors in a savage and forever lightless world, and that’s not something anyone wants to make contact with.

And for good reason, because I can’t see the drow viewing a cave full of refugees as anything but easy pickings. If anything, the more advanced races of the Underdark may take advantage of the global catastrophe to expand their presence on the surface, which will be one more factor for any surface survivors to contend with.

Gnaeus

2021-02-11, 05:28 PM

And for good reason, because I can’t see the drow viewing a cave full of refugees as anything but easy pickings. If anything, the more advanced races of the Underdark may take advantage of the global catastrophe to expand their presence on the surface, which will be one more factor for any surface survivors to contend with.

I agree. Although they might trade for slaves. And if it’s particularly remote, the underdark does have trading cities. I don’t find it terrifically unlikely that a heavily armed human party might show up every 5 years to trade for some components that are hard to access on the surface. Or one of the countless drow houses makes a deal to increase their personal power. Or some intermediate party makes it happen. Dwarves dislike duergar but are also known to trade with them, for example. 1000 years is a long time for a valley-dwarf outpost-duergar-drow trade route to emerge.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the less concerned about 1000 years of survival I would be. While human empires would collapse, there are plenty of 3.5 races which would thrive. Frost giants. Ice trolls. Undead. Underdark races. Urskan. Glacier dwarves. Neanderthals. There are lots of cold adapted races which would move into expansion mode quickly. I would anticipate that by a century after winter, your area is going to either be a part of a civilization, or under constant threat of being overrun. And if they have access to pre winter maps, they will again be headed directly to your valley to scavenge.

Palanan

2021-02-11, 06:07 PM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
I don’t find it terrifically unlikely that a heavily armed human party might show up every 5 years to trade for some components that are hard to access on the surface.

This is something I was wondering: how many normal human communities have trading relationships with the drow?

I would think very few. Apart from the dwarf-duergar trade you mentioned, are there any references to surface races trading frequently with the Underdark, either in the Realms or in other settings? My impression of the Realms is that the drow are a hidden threat who occasionally appear to wreak havoc, but I don’t know if there are exceptions to this.

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
While human empires would collapse, there are plenty of 3.5 races which would thrive. Frost giants. Ice trolls. Undead. Underdark races. Urskan. Glacier dwarves. Neanderthals.

Not to mention uldra and snow elves. I could see a new “cold war” (so to speak) developing among these races on the surface, while the last remnants of the previously dominant races huddle in tiny, hidden refuges.

Originally Posted by Raven777
Just mentioning that a one off campaign setting based on this premise, and several isolated city-states implementing the various different proposed solutions, would be hella cool.

Glad you like the concept, and I could certainly see this developing into a campaign setting. Just to round out your summary a little more:

Silent Lornia, its temples filled with the mute vigil of petrified citizens under the timeless stewardship of the risen dead.

Resolute Karst, parlaying its newborns against supplies with slavers from the dark under.

Militant Ulver, forcing rings that enforce both sustenance and obedience upon every citizen's finger.

Fallen Qinas, it's mountain cave sanctuaries overtaken by magical crops under the violet glow of artificial suns.

Devout Osria, blessed by the jealous gods of winter to endure the elements while all other faiths are brought low.

Ensorcelled Habaddan, a vast chamber of timeless sleep, with strange guardians whose movements are too slow to be seen.

Glittering Kasu'ali, trading gems hewn from the caverns for kelp and clams through a mysterious passage to a faraway sea.

The Swarm, a ragtag fleet of airships traversing the frozen wastelands, with 10,238 survivors searching for a home called Haven.

Quertus

2021-02-11, 07:54 PM

So, Quertus, would you be willing to repost those statements from the Fort saves thread in this one?

Because those are both great segues into some other thoughts I had.

Sure. (I happen to have noticed "quickly" this time rather than days later - feel free to quote me if you like if it comes up again)

So, in the child thread about maximizing Fort saves, I said…

…there are 12th level casters at the *start* of the scenario. The depetrification is scheduled for T + 1,000 years (plus a few weeks) from that point.

The level and assortment of casters available at that moment is (or *should* be) one of the unknowns, one of the variables of that thought experiment.

Also, alchemical solutions that can be administered immediately before the petrification process should function, IMO. In that vein, my Necropolis - not needing such things - will happily foster good will by providing as much as they can (if, unlike myself, any Playgrounders make their Knowledge roll, and come up with alchemical items that give Fort bonuses).

In short, my "city that was already mostly undead", where the 12th level casters were probably liches (and/or the good Elf variant) would attempt to establish / retain contact between the cities, and offer to help their undead-impaired relatives through this difficult time. And, not hindered by cold, could facilitate trade, and freely provide what knowledge they have of the current state of the world. (As immortals, they take a really long view on "PR". Also, living beings are kinda their "larval stage" before they become the beautiful butterflies of undeath :smallwink:)

To which I'll add that my Necropolitans will definitely be raiding all the great libraries before some illiterate morons in future generations come through and burn all the books for warmth!

Also, they will offer to preserve (grant the gift of undeath to) worthy experts of unnecessary skills (gardeners, sushi chefs, ox cart racers, you name it) to try to facilitate the continuation / revival of culture. OK, more likely, their preferred solution would be to kindly request that the "city of petrification" be so kind as to take in some extra citizens for "when the time is right". Gifting them with undeath would be their fallback option.

Seeds will, if possible, be stored in quintessence; otherwise, on petrified livestock (and kindly request that the "petrification city" accept their gift of seeds from species from around the world, and do likewise)

I get that. But how many years could it take for 12th level casters to reestablish ties with the outside world. 5? 10? 20? 50? 100? There’s gonna be someone you can trade with in a lot less than 1000 years.

Between Teleport and Sending? Contact might never be *lost*.

That's certainly the plan for my Necropolis.

That, and lots of walking.

Good point. Depending on the survival approach that’s taken, possibly. I’ve been assuming this is a fairly secluded region, but 12th-level casters do have some options on their end.

This ties into something else I’ve been considering, which is how many population centers will survive the initial catastrophe, how distant they are from each other, how they could reestablish some form of communication, and whether any kind of contact would be feasible.

I didn't realize that "survive the initial catastrophe" was a major concern.

This is something I was wondering: how many normal human communities have trading relationships with the drow?

I would think very few. My impression of the Realms is that the drow are a hidden threat who occasionally appear to wreak havoc, but I don’t know if there are exceptions to this.

Few, but not none.

Silent Lornia, its temples filled with the mute vigil of petrified citizens under the timeless stewardship of the risen dead.

Resolute Karst, parlaying its newborns against supplies with slavers from the dark under.

Militant Ulver, forcing rings that enforce both sustenance and obedience upon every citizen's finger.

Fallen Qinas, it's mountain cave sanctuaries overtaken by magical crops under the violet glow of artificial suns.

Devout Osria, blessed by the jealous gods of winter to endure the elements while all other faiths are brought low.

Ensorcelled Habaddan, a vast chamber of timeless sleep, with strange guardians whose movements are too slow to be seen.

Glittering Kasu'ali, trading gems hewn from the caverns for kelp and clams through a mysterious passage to a faraway sea.

The Swarm, a ragtag fleet of airships traversing the frozen wastelands, with 10,238 survivors searching for a home called Haven.

Glad you included The Swarm. Ulver sounds like my 1st 3e post-apocalyptic city. No necropolis or were-Furries? :smallconfused:

(EDIT: OK, the were-Furries could *easily* result in Qinas…)

Gruftzwerg

2021-02-11, 10:15 PM

I did overlook that, and while I probably would have included it in things that are right out, this is an intriguing approach.

However, I’d say the odds of any given city having a Planar Shepherd druid are extremely low, and even lower for one that happens to specialize in time. But it’s certainly an interesting idea.

Also, please note the scenario is for a thousand-year winter, rather than ten thousand years, so in your example the Shepherd would need to stand watch for only 25 days.

Other option would be an Incantatrix with Persistent Spell "Planar Bubble".
Spellcraft DC: 18 + 3x(7+6)= 57

Planar Bubble is 7th lvl and thus requires the Incantatrix to be at least lvl13.
Spellcraft should have 16 ranks by now. INT 27 (18 + 3 lvlUp + 6 item) provides a +8 modifier

We need a Cleric with the 2nd lvl spells Divine Insight and Guidance of the Avatar (assuming clvl 12)

Spellcraft roll: take 10 + 16 + 8 + 12 + 12 = 58

Note the small size of the bubble. The Incantatrix could cast as many as she has 7th lvl slots per day. But would still only be enough space for VIPs.

Telok

2021-02-11, 11:18 PM

Hmm. Lets see if we can minimize the dependence on casters.

Step 1: All capable casters spend a day casting bestow curse on commoners to inflict something like chicken infested. That buys us some time and starts the down filled chicken leather coat industry.

Step 2: All capable casters spend a day in scry & die style teleport raids to capture a breeding population of trolls. Drain the trolls to Str 2 so mid-level commoners can grapple & subdue. Feed chickens to the troll-farms for multiplied meat, better leather, and troll fat for burning/cooking.

Step 3: The casters spend the next day using the xp from the raids making permanent walls of fire. The ones who can't do flooding prevention & general construction. Someone makes a bestow curse spell trap that inflicts chicken infested.

Step 4: The casters sod off and go have a party or something. Commoners can handle the troll farms from here on out, build hot houses by the walls of fire for veggiies, and engage in chicken related entertainment.

Palanan

2021-02-11, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
Seeds will, if possible, be stored in quintessence; otherwise, on petrified livestock (and kindly request that the "petrification city" accept their gift of seeds from species from around the world, and do likewise)….

Sounds like you’re going full Svalbard on seed preservation; good thinking there. Druids will approve.

But how are you storing seeds on petrified livestock? All I can think of is an oversized chia pet.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Between Teleport and Sending? Contact might never be *lost*.

...maybe. It’ll be a madhouse and a feeding frenzy even before the sky-mountain hits, and Sending requires a recipient you’re familiar with. By definition, not everyone is going to make it, so that’ll be fewer and fewer potential recipients.

Teleport offers the prospect of creating new contacts for Sending, but every teleport is also a risk of loss, either to teleport error or the general madhouse and feeding frenzy. Everyone will have their own priorities, but some communities may want to be strategic with their few high-level casters, preferring to keep them close as opposed to risking them out in the world. The benefits of having a high-level caster safe in your caves may outweigh the benefits of teleporting into an uncertain situation hundreds of miles away.

Originally Posted by Quertus
I didn't realize that "survive the initial catastrophe" was a major concern.

For most people in most communities, that’s their only concern, and rightly so. In this scenario as I envision it, the vast majority of settlements will be destabilized and wiped out.

Note that I’m using “initial catastrophe” as shorthand for the impact itself (debris and megatsunamis) plus the first snows, sulfuric acid rain, crop failures and broad-scale societal collapse. That’s just the first few months.

Also note that the sulfuric acid rain will cause a rapid acidification in the upper layers of the global ocean, which will likely cause a mass dieoff of merfolk and other undersea species.

Originally Posted by Quertus
No necropolis or were-Furries?

I thought the very first one referred to the necropolis approach.

As for were-walruses or whatever, that seemed a little iffy. Ordinary people aren’t likely to want an infection that turns them into ravening beasts. Whether it actually does is beside the point; it’s the optics of the whole lycanthropy situation.

However, I would expect that if there are any were-polar bears already present in the environment, they would join the scrimmage for control of the wintry wastes by all the newly prominent cold factions.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-12, 07:22 AM

Not quite sure what you mean here. Hardly anyone in the town will have a background in mining,
They don't have to have the background at first. Retraining is a thing, both in Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/more-character-options/retraining/) and 3.5 (found in the PHB II). Hold classes from the few that do; most medieval-like communities will have a year or two of food stored up, just as a necessity of how the harvest cycle works. Even a single skill point in Profession(Miner) allows making the checks, and it's taking 10 that does most the production for commoner-1's. Four ranks (or in Pathfinder, 1 rank and the +3 class skill bonus) is just 2/7ths of the production at 1st taking ten. Then start mining and refining, so you'll be able to pay off the outsiders.

and if they’re petrified or otherwise unavailable, there won’t be a workforce per se. But I may not be grokking your broader point.Not every community is going to implement all plans at once: Among other things, they're largely mutually contradictory. The guys paying extraplanar allies to produce food for everyone are NOT the guys petrifying everyone and setting a few guardians to watch over them and wake them when the world is warm again, which are in turn NOT the guys making a few Tromp L'Oeils of creatures that can cast Create Food and Water at-will to feed everyone.

But how are you storing seeds on petrified livestock? All I can think of is an oversized chia pet.Flesh to stone petrifies the gear as well. Load up a bunch of sorted & labeled seeds on a mule in a pack saddle, petrify the mule, and you petrify the seeds, too. 1,000 years later, flesh to stone the mule to restore it (or kill it, whatever, the mule isn't the point), and you restore the seeds as well.

Quertus

2021-02-12, 10:25 AM

Sounds like you’re going full Svalbard on seed preservation; good thinking there. Druids will approve.

Full what now?

But how are you storing seeds on petrified livestock? All I can think of is an oversized chia pet.

Humans get petrified with their clothes; livestock get petrified with tied-on baskets.

At long last, a use for Craft(Underwater Basket Weaving)! Because, **** it Jim, we're saving the whales. :smallbiggrin:

...maybe. It’ll be a madhouse and a feeding frenzy even before the sky-mountain hits, and Sending requires a recipient you’re familiar with. By definition, not everyone is going to make it, so that’ll be fewer and fewer potential recipients.

Not every elven Lich lives at the necropolis. And making new contracts among the cycle that is living beings is an advantage of traveling to the cities in person.

Teleport offers the prospect of creating new contacts for Sending, but every teleport is also a risk of loss, either to teleport error or the general madhouse and feeding frenzy.

Uh, Lich. Teleport inside a lava bath, and 1d10 days later, I'm back, baby!

Everyone will have their own priorities, but some communities may want to be strategic with their few high-level casters, preferring to keep them close as opposed to risking them out in the world.

Oh, we will encourage that others keep their power close at hand… while providing information regarding the safety of areas, so that low level adventurers can level up. That's how we get suitable new recruits, after all.

We will gladly shoulder the burden of "risk" to ensure the survival of humanity. Not that there's really much risk to our Liches, and *most* of our powerhouses are back home, too.

The benefits of having a high-level caster safe in your caves may outweigh the benefits of teleporting into an uncertain situation hundreds of miles away.

Agreed.

For most people in most communities, that’s their only concern, and rightly so. In this scenario as I envision it, the vast majority of settlements will be destabilized and wiped out.

Note that I’m using “initial catastrophe” as shorthand for the impact itself (debris and megatsunamis)

This will be important to know..

plus the first snows, sulfuric acid rain, crop failures and broad-scale societal collapse. That’s just the first few months.

Shrug. There "average" generated D&D town should - if possessed with even a drop of Playgrounder know-how - find a way to shrug such inconveniences off.

Also note that the sulfuric acid rain will cause a rapid acidification in the upper layers of the global ocean, which will likely cause a mass dieoff of merfolk and other undersea species.

Craft Underwater Basket Weaving!

I thought the very first one referred to the necropolis approach.

Eh, no. They *went* undead *in response* (but mostly went statue). The point of the necropolis was that it was *already* an undead-centric city before news of the apocalypse from the sky.

My initial post was intentionally less human-centric, trying to ask, "what would the *world* do?".

As for were-walruses or whatever, that seemed a little iffy. Ordinary people aren’t likely to want an infection that turns them into ravening beasts. Whether it actually does is beside the point; it’s the optics of the whole lycanthropy situation.

Your call - accept the Bite of Change, or be meat for those who do (playing up that fear).

However, I would expect that if there are any were-polar bears already present in the environment, they would join the scrimmage for control of the wintry wastes by all the newly prominent cold factions.

The threat of such is one of the reasons to get preemptively infected be a "nice" lycanthrope.

I'm thinking… Planar Binding / Ally for a… can we get a Paragon Celestial Werefox of Legend?

Of course, I'm no Druid - I have no idea what critter would have the correct temperament for the society that I want - or what size they are. For all I know, Qinas may be a *halfling* city. :smallwink:

Batcathat

2021-02-12, 10:37 AM

Full what now?

It's probably a reference to the seed vault on Svalbard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault).

Efrate

2021-02-12, 12:11 PM

As far as trading with drow, in Faerun at least see skulkport under waterdeep. In pathfinder they have ties in Riddleport iirc. Pathfinder has a few other underdark societies of various nastiness, snake folk come to mind immediately. They may trade merely as a stopgap to getting information and trying to use surface races. Pathfinder also has a nation of Rakshashas, and mage academies run by fiends so there are a lot more angles there. Asmodaeus is a highly openly venerated diety in many Lawful areas, so access to fiends or planar hopping for some is a great bargain, just sign here to be warm and safe under the guard of our death knights.

Also canonically this has happened before in Golarion, and the Drow came about because of it, they are well prepared. Gift them some surface elves and they might teach you things. In that case it killed or sent into sleep all the great runelords so it was a massive magnitude worse, and it lasted 10k tears? Resources exist of you look for them. Use that divination magic.

Gnaeus

2021-02-12, 12:40 PM

This is something I was wondering: how many normal human communities have trading relationships with the drow?

I would think very few. Apart from the dwarf-duergar trade you mentioned, are there any references to surface races trading frequently with the Underdark, either in the Realms or in other settings? My impression of the Realms is that the drow are a hidden threat who occasionally appear to wreak havoc, but I don’t know if there are exceptions to this. .

There are definitely precedents. For example, the classic first adventure path (scourge of the slave lords/against the giants/vault of the drow) begins with covert drow support of a human government (the slave lords) in exchange for a steady supply of slaves.

Drow are overwhelmingly evil and don’t like elves. But their religion is divided. Their rule is strongly divided. They won’t respect, trust or like you. But that doesn’t mean that house X, under constant threat from houses Y and Z, wouldn’t jump at the chance to get fresh slaves or other trade goods on beneficial terms if that would help them get ahead. Or that any drow merchant, faced with a stranger in their shop with a bag of goods they want asking for a pallet of common reagents or foodstuffs, isn’t going to be greedy enough not to look too carefully at what exactly is generating that transmutation or illusion aura on the guy offering them money as long as it isn’t touching the goods. “Obviously that guy was a drow. I mean he looked like a drow. How was I to know” or “he said he was a slave for house Z. He had a slave collar and everything. What am I, the fake slave police?” They’re also very long lived, and just because they have no scruples about betraying an ally that doesn’t mean they are above maintaining a deal that works in their favor for several hundred years. Chaotic in the sense of “I break the law when it benefits me” not “I act irrationally”.

Actually, it’s even better than that. The population of Menzoberranzan is listed as: Free:
Drow 98%
Human 1%
Orc 1%
Slaves:
Goblin 17%
Grimlock 17%
Kobold 15%
Orc 13%
Quaggoth 9%
Bugbear 7%
Human 7%
Ogre 4%
Svirfneblin 4%
Minotaur 3%
Troll 2%
Gloaming 1%
Tiefling 1%.

COMMERCE
IMPORTS
surface produce[5], slaves
EXPORTS
poisons, mushrooms, riding lizards, slaves, spell scrolls, wine, water[3]

So 1% of the free inhabitants are human. And about 1 in 15 slaves. Show up once every couple years with a bag of goods and a cover story, why would anyone know or care who you are? Their markets are obviously geared towards accepting surface stuff and slaves in exchange for magic stuff. Perfect.

A quick scan of other locations in the upperdark show several other locations with free human minorities. And a couple more I think you could fake pretty easily with a hat of disguise and a working knowledge of Orcish or Goblin.

Palanan

2021-02-12, 01:36 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
Full what now?

Originally Posted by Batcathat
It's probably a reference to the seed vault on Svalbard.

It is indeed.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Shrug. There "average" generated D&D town should - if possessed with even a drop of Playgrounder know-how - find a way to shrug such inconveniences off.

Safe to say we’re assuming different levels of optimization for the society as a whole.

I’m assuming this is a standard game setting, with the specific communities we’re discussing here being the rare exceptions in terms of successful survival strategies.

Originally Posted by Efrate
Pathfinder has a few other underdark societies of various nastiness, snake folk come to mind immediately.

Do you mean serpentfolk? Do you happen to know where this is fleshed out? I don’t know much about the Golarion version of the Underdark.

Originally Posted by Efrate
As far as trading with drow, in Faerun at least see skulkport under waterdeep.

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
There are definitely precedents. For example, the classic first adventure path (scourge of the slave lords/against the giants/vault of the drow) begins with covert drow support of a human government (the slave lords) in exchange for a steady supply of slaves.

It does look like there are some examples, although I have a feeling these are the exceptions to the rule.

The question is what could a caveful of refugees offer that the drow would want, but want just enough to trade for it, rather than simply attacking and carrying off the survivors and their possessions wholesale?

If a community of refugees makes contact with the drow, they won’t have the resources of a surface kingdom to back them up, which is usually the detente that keeps drow from conquering regions of the surface wholesale. In this situation, it’ll just be the refugees, whereas the drow will have at least a city’s worth of soldiers and casters to bring to bear.

So the drow would have a strong if not overwhelming advantage, and I’m not sure what the refugees have to offer that the drow can’t get for themselves. If I were responsible for the safety of a large number of survivors—who may or may not be the last people in the world—dealing with the drow might seem like far more risk than it’s worth.

Gnaeus

2021-02-12, 02:56 PM

It does look like there are some examples, although I have a feeling these are the exceptions to the rule.

The question is what could a caveful of refugees offer that the drow would want, but want just enough to trade for it, rather than simply attacking and carrying off the survivors and their possessions wholesale?

If a community of refugees makes contact with the drow, they won’t have the resources of a surface kingdom to back them up, which is usually the detente that keeps drow from conquering regions of the surface wholesale. In this situation, it’ll just be the refugees, whereas the drow will have at least a city’s worth of soldiers and casters to bring to bear.

So the drow would have a strong if not overwhelming advantage, and I’m not sure what the refugees have to offer that the drow can’t get for themselves. If I were responsible for the safety of a large number of survivors—who may or may not be the last people in the world—dealing with the drow might seem like far more risk than it’s worth.

You don’t show up with a cave full of refugees. You show up with a team of adventurers with some goods in a portable hole or some peons in chains. Yeah, if you lead your population down a hole you are boned. So don’t do that. They could kill your adventurers. Like they could kill any other merchants in the underdark. But as long as you can demonstrate that it’s in their interests to trade on favorable terms to them for the next 200 years rather than fight some tough humans for a one time haul, they have no reason to. Or you walk into one of their big cities like one more merchant wagon, pay the guards their normal bribes. Sell your ore. Buy your eyes of newt and gtfo. Or sit on a trade corridor and wait for a caravan to come by. A drow trading party isn’t likely to pick a risky fight over guaranteed profits.

Really, all you the surface dweller care about is occasionally replenishing whatever material components you can’t gather in your valley. The petroleum equivalent to keep your magic industry running.

And if you are negotiating with some minor drow house, even if they have superior individual troops, attacking a town of 20,000 people some distance from their territory runs some pretty significant risks, like losing or being backstabbed while their military is away. The drow HAVE big cities. But they also have lots of little enclaves with local greedy rulers who would have a rough time with 2000 humans, let alone 20,000 with non-trivial caster muscle.

Efrate

2021-02-12, 03:12 PM

Serpentfolk are fleshed out in some AP pathfinder chronicles fluff pieces, also in at least one book covering the underground which I am blanking on. The Rakshasha nation has a thriving slave trade and would have no issues with dealing with drow. Regardless, some alter self following some intell gathering via knowledge or divinations can ease you into trading with drow. You have resources of your ores and gems, or whatever you have planar bound. Some angel feathers or something might be highly valuable. Golarion also have several major spy networks that can get you information.

Palanan

2021-02-12, 03:32 PM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
You don’t show up with a cave full of refugees.

…Really, all you the surface dweller care about is occasionally replenishing whatever material components you can’t gather in your valley.

If there’s a pre-existing relationship between some of the drow and some in the city, I can see that continuing post-crisis, and possibly being the edge that allows one community to survive where others perish.

But if the survivors of a community are trying to establish relations with the drow, post-surface-collapse, that could be more problematic. In that situation there really won’t be much that the survivors can do.

Originally Posted by Efrate
Serpentfolk are fleshed out in some AP pathfinder chronicles fluff pieces, also in at least one book covering the underground which I am blanking on.

Thanks, that’s probably Into the Darklands.

Quertus

2021-02-12, 04:13 PM

If there’s a pre-existing relationship between some of the drow and some in the city, I can see that continuing post-crisis, and possibly being the edge that allows one community to survive where others perish.

But if the survivors of a community are trying to establish relations with the drow, post-surface-collapse, that could be more problematic. In that situation there really won’t be much that the survivors can do.

There's *plenty* that the survivors could do. But, really, selling your criminals / captured enemies into slavery - other than striking some real-world nerves - *could* work well, or *could* end badly. It just all depends on how it's handled. And what's going on with the Drow you're trying to trade with.

It does tend to ensure that the Drow are in the loop, information-wise, making their conquest of the surface that much more likely.

Wait a minute… Drow invasion forces in an Arctic environment? This sounds familiar. I think I've already got a party spec'd to deal with this.

Gnaeus

2021-02-12, 04:14 PM

[I]
But if the survivors of a community are trying to establish relations with the drow, post-surface-collapse, that could be more problematic. In that situation there really won’t be much that the survivors can do.

Well it’s your world. Just put it up in the OP in the list of stuff that doesn’t work as it does in most D&D worlds like no planar travel. I could walk through drow city by drow city and demonstrate their human populations or their notes describing trade with the surface world. But if you say it doesn’t it’s just one more way winter world differs from published settings.

I actually see very little risk. I mean by that the drow undoubtedly already have maps of the surface world. The groups which might reasonably launch an invasion know where the surface world is, and where your valley is. “These guys in this valley sell us trade goods or ore or slaves occasionally” isn’t going to make you an easier target for conquest. Might in fact put you lower on the list compared with human settlements that aren’t playing well with the nearest drow settlements. Not because they would feel any particular loyalty or sympathy, as much as that you don’t slaughter the cow that’s giving you milk when you have your pick of cows who aren’t.

Palanan

2021-02-12, 04:35 PM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
I could walk through drow city by drow city and demonstrate their human populations or their notes describing trade with the surface world.

No need to go through them all, but do you have a source you’re referencing?

I’m basing my assumptions on my general sense of the drow from playing various campaigns and looking through sourcebooks—but if there’s more information I haven’t seen, I don’t mind incorporating it.

As for the perception of risk—both in and out of setting—that will vary a lot. “Never but never trust a drow” has been ingrained in me for many years, but that may be because all of my in-game experiences with drow have been uniformly negative.

Starting with the guy who wanted to play a “not-so-secretly evil” drow in a party of otherwise good characters, “because evil characters in the party make it more interesting.” That didn’t end well.

Malphegor

2021-02-12, 05:20 PM

I assume no psions? Because a Quintessence suit to live out a few millenia or two in stasis is relatively low level there

smasher0404

2021-02-12, 05:39 PM

I assume no psions? Because a Quintessence suit to live out a few millenia or two in stasis is relatively low level there

That'd require a LOT of quintessence, depending on the time scale involved there might not be enough time to coat everyone in the city without resorting to means of artificially restoring power points. A 12th-level Psion with an Intelligence of 22 has 162 power points per day, or enough to create 23 ounces of Quintessence per day. Being very generous and saying it takes about 20 ounces to submerge an adult human male (assuming Quintessence can cover a square foot, avg. human surface volume is 1.9 square meters or very roughly 20 square feet), a psion can only realistically freeze about one person per day in Quintessence. A 12th-level generalist wizard with 22 Int can convert 7 people per day into stone using Flesh to Stone. Quintessence is very useful as a substance, but is probably not the most efficient way of putting people into stasis.

Gnaeus

2021-02-12, 06:02 PM

No need to go through them all, but do you have a source you’re referencing?

I’m basing my assumptions on my general sense of the drow from playing various campaigns and looking through sourcebooks—but if there’s more information I haven’t seen, I don’t mind incorporating it.

As for the perception of risk—both in and out of setting—that will vary a lot. “Never but never trust a drow” has been ingrained in me for many years, but that may be because all of my in-game experiences with drow have been uniformly negative.

Starting with the guy who wanted to play a “not-so-secretly evil” drow in a party of otherwise good characters, “because evil characters in the party make it more interesting.” That didn’t end well.

I’m referencing the Forgotten Realms wiki. It references the forgotten realms campaign supplement for population data, and a number of other supplements and novels, mostly Drizzt’s guide to the underdark, for discussion of trade.

And nowhere have I suggested that you should trust the drow. Or give them advantages over you. They don’t trust you. Don’t like you. Have no moral qualms about betraying you. But they will trade with you when that is an easier way to get an advantage than murdering you. They almost certainly hate you less (unless you are an elf) than they hate the Drow the next cavern over. Some Drow are likely in a position to begin wars of conquest. This inevitably means other Drow are now incentivized to sabotage wars of conquest. Like by selling you stuff, making money off you while they make you a harder target.

If your casters don’t have components to make items, you are screwed. Screwed by invading Drow. Screwed by armies of undead from Thay. Screwed by frost giants or white dragons leading hordes of arctic kobolds. Screwed by cold Fey and every other monster in the frostburn book.

There’s not really any good rules source I have seen that tells you how much of the costs of item creation and other spellcasting are things you can make or mine in a cave or gather from local Ice fauna versus stuff that’s normally assumed to just come through the trade network. Maybe the stuff to make everfull lockers is all locally available precious metals but the stuff you need for resetting magical traps requires something you can’t get to. But assuming that most (or at least some required bottleneck) material/crafting components aren’t things you can get or get substitutes for locally with available magics, you need a trading partner that can trigger those DMG availability guidelines. You’d probably much rather engage with something like aquatic elves or merfolk who live deep enough as to have reduced environmental impacts. But if you can’t manage that, Drow are way better than having your crafters idle for 980 years.

Palanan

2021-02-12, 06:28 PM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
I’m referencing the Forgotten Realms wiki. It references the forgotten realms campaign supplement for population data, and a number of other supplements and novels, mostly Drizzt’s guide to the underdark, for discussion of trade.

As it happens, I was just looking through the 2E Drizzt’s Guide for mentions of trade. There’s abundant trade among the various races and factions native to the Underdark, but only one reference to drow trading with surface folk:

“Eryndlyn’s far-ranging merchants periodically emerge under darkness to trade with unscrupulous merchants along the Sword Coast.” (First sentence on p. 49.)

So, clandestine trade in a few places is what it sounds like.

Also, I’ve been meaning to bring in these pertinent quotes from a related thread:

Originally Posted by Quertus
The level and assortment of casters available at that moment is (or *should* be) one of the unknowns, one of the variables of that thought experiment.

Originally Posted by Quertus
In that vein, my Necropolis - not needing such things - will happily foster good will by providing as much as they can….

The first quote refers to how many casters will be on hand when it comes time to de-petrify those refugees who have chosen to wait out the centuries in statue form. More generally, it’s worth asking how magical knowledge will be retained in each of the survivors’ enclaves.

The second quote brings up another point, which is that Quertus specified his necropolis predated the catastrophe. It seems likely that those communities with some pre-existing, unconventional arrangement will have an edge in surviving the catastrophe and long winter--either trade contacts with drow, or a gate to a deep merfolk city, or even an unusual tolerance for werebears and their kin.

Also, Quertus pointed out that his elf-liches will be preemptively raiding magical libraries to preserve lore in his own enclave, which of course is motivated entirely by altruism. Rocket Raccoon is using his left eye here.

But it occurred to me that this would make a great storyline for an outside group:

Liches are hoarding magical knowledge—the very same knowledge that could make the difference between survival and extinction. A hardy group of adventurers is tasked with tracking the liches to their hidden lair and reclaiming the stolen lore!

That’s a whole AP chapter right there.

Quertus

2021-02-12, 09:24 PM

“Never but never trust a drow”

Good advice.

The first quote refers to how many casters will be on hand when it comes time to de-petrify those refugees who have chosen to wait out the centuries in statue form. More generally, it’s worth asking how magical knowledge will be retained in each of the survivors’ enclaves.

Well, if the gods survive (or "clerics of an idea" are a thing, *and* continue functioning without the gods), divine magic is fine. Psionics should probably be fine. Sorcerers are *probably* fine (in fact, they'll likely become more common, as you've got a bunch of randy humans and Dragons with nothing better to do with their time than each other). It's only Wizards who really care - and I expect that "Eschew Materials" will become a *very* popular feat.

The second quote brings up another point, which is that Quertus specified his necropolis predated the catastrophe. It seems likely that those communities with some pre-existing, unconventional arrangement will have an edge in surviving the catastrophe and long winter--either trade contacts with drow, or a gate to a deep merfolk city, or even an unusual tolerance for werebears and their kin.

Advantages *are* advantageous. :smallwink:

However, only slightly less well known than "never trust a Drow" is this: "die, undead abomination, die!". The necropolis is… trying to take advantage of the 1,000 year apocalypse to improve their PR.

I mean, it's completely reasonable even from selfish motives: human extinction means no new undead. But the PR spin is one of pure (and honest) benevolence: our intention is to aid humanity's survival.

Also, Quertus pointed out that his elf-liches will be preemptively raiding magical libraries to preserve lore in his own enclave, which of course is motivated entirely by altruism. Rocket Raccoon is using his left eye here.

But it occurred to me that this would make a great storyline for an outside group:

Liches are hoarding magical knowledge—the very same knowledge that could make the difference between survival and extinction. A hardy group of adventurers is tasked with tracking the liches to their hidden lair and reclaiming the stolen lore!

That’s a whole AP chapter right there.

Who said anything about *magical* knowledge? We're hoarding "Babbitty Rabbity" and "The Open Door". And "Babbity Rabbity and the Open Door". And all the other classics.

Magical knowledge? We're a group led by immortal Lich Wizards - we've probably got more magical knowledge than most anywhere outside Boccob's library already. But, sure, we're keeping magical library knowledge from getting burned, too.

If anyone *asks*, the Undead might be willing to *share* (some¹) magical knowledge - *especially* if the other cities *shared* their skilled elders with us (ie, let us gift their members with undeath). And *certainly* if the abandoned library that we plundered legally belonged to them.

*Active* libraries (ie, ones that weren't left in the snow to rot, but actually have librarians, visitors, and active upkeep), we would simply… request the privilege of *copying* their manuscripts. For posterity.

Do the undead want to come out "on top"? Absolutely. Do they want to "rule the world"? Nah, too much trouble. Other people no longer hunting them, and willingly becoming undead is pretty much a win for the Liches. And other people *losing* magical knowledge means no new Liches. What sane race world intentionally sterilize themselves that way?

Of course, casters who have reached 12th, but have shown no interest in becoming undead? We have no interest in helping them gain more power, as there's no inherent advantage to us in that (beyond the continued survival of the population they're defending, which isn't nothing).

So we're very interested in helping Wizards *reach* 12th level - and in helping them achieve Lich status, if they so desire. More immortal liches, protecting towns, means better protected towns throughout the 1,000 year winter.

*Our* level 12 casters are periodically out earning XP (and they don't (permanently) die when they get in over their head), whereas we encourage the *other* level 12 casters to stay home and guard their towns.

We provide maps of *safer* routes, to let the *lower level* adventurers level up (to 12th, and potential Lich status).

Also, if our Divinations let us save anyone - especially adventuring parties that might go on to save others - we would deploy resources to do so. PR, and efficient.

Yes, selfish motivations in parallel with selfless ones. Divinations could doubtless reveal this. But the selfless / stated motivations are completely genuine (even if the survival of the species is also arguably selfish, long-term).

We *hope* that we build good PR with the other survivors, and that they would be willing to help defend us (or even that *some* Liches would eventually relocate to the necropolis, like the Necropolitans of skilled individuals are kinda expected to), but it is in no way a condition of our continued aid and good will.

So, devious? Yes. But benevolent. *And* self-serving. Because undead cannot reproduce without humanity surviving, so benevolence *is* self-serving. Also, Luke, I am your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather. :smallwink:

¹ spells to help survive the cold, create food, cure disease? Absolutely. (Not that Wizards get many such spells… but Archivists do!). Spells designed to destroy Undead, or their riverine phylacteries? Probably not so much.

Efrate

2021-02-12, 11:03 PM

It was into the darklands in reference to the serpentfolk. A lot of mostly rumor stuff but its a good fluff piece with some mechanics. I think they are fleshed out in one other source but memory fails me as I read all of this years ago.

Also dark folk are a much safer go between/trade partner than most, and iirc have minor cold res? They at least are mentioned as isolated commmunities in other larger areas and can be convinced to trade. CN > CE most of the time. You at least even if it goes bad are more likely robbed than murdered then robbed.

In 3.5 you have things like Yak folk and other options as well that do not mind the cold. Finding a trading partner should not be too hard. The frontier between the cities or areas that might survive could see various minor trading posts pop up for rothe fur clothing and such, and from there you have paths to rebuild society or gather intell to invade for major resource reallocation. It might actually be a step that forces disparate races together for survival and improve dnd society by a big margain. Or trigger another round of race wars between everyone because only race X ahould exist we are best suited! YMMV.

For gods elemental dieties should rise, as would weather gods. Fire gods in particular will likely see a a spike in worship, and cold gods in appeasement.

On crafting, assuming retraining for eschew materials, nothing I can think of actually requires a certain material or whatever. It is fluffed but not crunched. Its GP value and spells and XP, and in PF just GP. It covers rare ingredients etc. but I cannot think of anything RAW actually saying you cannot find thing X in settlements smaller than Y. Maybe rare now is different that rare pre fall, but nothing as far as I am remembering says must be item Z only found in this climate in a metropoilis. It is handwavium stuff.

You are free to make "it must be thing that does not exist anymore" or requires a special quest to go on, but thats your rule for your table not RAW. Your game your call. Obv.

Also binding might be great here because it lets you ignore reqs as well for crafting so you can likely use that. Also zycrell provided limitless minions/materials/you name it with up to SM 7 at will every 5 rounds with improved binding which all binders will have. That a whole nother tier of SM targets that even your druids and wizards cannot get.

Highlights include movanic deva create food and water at will, djinni, marid, efreeti (wish anyone), succubus (social for trading), Xorns for finding metals and gems, ecalypse epherma (find the path at will for whatever), and more. Its all a bit tentacley but eh.

Also of note for food, festival feast (bard 2 cleric of ololidammara 2) feeds 3 people per CL but takes 10 minutes to cast. Food lasts 2 hours or 24 with purify food and drink cast on it (dragon 342). Possibly easier to use as a basis for a feeding folks. Also provides mild but tasty drinks fwiw.

smasher0404

2021-02-12, 11:58 PM

Also binding might be great here because it lets you ignore reqs as well for crafting so you can likely use that. Also zycrell provided limitless minions/materials/you name it with up to SM 7 at will every 5 rounds with improved binding which all binders will have. That a whole nother tier of SM targets that even your druids and wizards cannot get.

Highlights include movanic deva create food and water at will, djinni, marid, efreeti (wish anyone), succubus (social for trading), Xorns for finding metals and gems, ecalypse epherma (find the path at will for whatever), and more. Its all a bit tentacley but eh.

So Zycrell isn't as useful as you might think. Harvesting materials becomes a bit more difficult, since summons disappear if they fall below 0 hp, elminating it as a food source. Zycrell doesn't gain access to Summon Monster VI and Summon Monster VII until level 14 (13 with Favored Vestige) (Improved Binding only works towards what vestiges you can bind, and I'm unaware of any feats/items besides Favored Vestige that boost binder level). That eliminates Djinni (Summon Monster VI), Movanic Deva (Summon Monster VII), Marid (Summon Monster VII with Dragon Magazine), Efreeti (same as Marid, and they can't use Wish as a summon due to the XP requirement and the restrictions of the Summoning subschool), Xorns greater than Small (and then only with Dragon Magazine), Succubus (Summon Monster VII with Dragon Magazine), and Ecalypse Epherma (Summon Monster VII with Dragon Magazine).

Maybe some useful things on the list from a glance through:

Cervidal Guardinals can limit the spread of disease due to cramped living conditions with at-will Remove Disease (Summon Monster IV with Dragon Magazine)
Steam Mephits produce an unspecified water as a spell-like ability with no duration (specifically boiling hot water) (Summon Monster II)
The Unholy Scion Bugbear can desecrate areas for free to aid with undead labor production (Summon Monster IV with Dragon Magazine)
Elysian Thrush can alleviate hunger pangs (but not hunger), and provide entertainment (Summon Monster I)
Clockwork Mender provides free repair work (Summon Monster II)

Efrate

2021-02-13, 12:51 AM

Ipos plus favored vestige hits ebl 14 for vestige effects. I have always had DMs count improved binding as a flat +2 but looked at it again and you were right.

Calthropstu

2021-02-13, 02:01 PM

Lichdom for everyone!

smasher0404

2021-02-13, 02:38 PM

Ipos plus favored vestige hits ebl 14 for vestige effects. I have always had DMs count improved binding as a flat +2 but looked at it again and you were right.

But then you are either Crafting or Summoning but not both on a given day. Plus double checking Astaroth (assuming that's the one you were grabbing for the crafting), you still have to meet the prerequisites for the item outside of the feat requirement. This is notably also harder for Binders (unless they are Anima Mages or Tenebrous Apostates), as they do not have spellcasting of their own.

Quertus

2021-02-13, 03:15 PM

Lichdom for everyone!

As nice as that sounds, "Daddy, where do baby Liches come from?"

Until the goddess of the undead can just state, "Liches can spontaneously reproduce, by act of will", and make that reality, humanity will remain a (n undead-icidal) necessity, the larval form of undead.

Actually, I'm kinda liking the idea of, "when a Mommy Lich and a Daddy Lich love each other very much…" being the new, post-apocalyptic Lich reproductive technique - or at least an emergency fallback, should humanity die off.

Maybe there's some value to the necropolis collecting magical lore, after all!

Jack_Simth

2021-02-13, 04:38 PM

As nice as that sounds, "Daddy, where do baby Liches come from?"

Until the goddess of the undead can just state, "Liches can spontaneously reproduce, by act of will", and make that reality, humanity will remain a (n undead-icidal) necessity, the larval form of undead.

Actually, I'm kinda liking the idea of, "when a Mommy Lich and a Daddy Lich love each other very much…" being the new, post-apocalyptic Lich reproductive technique - or at least an emergency fallback, should humanity die off.

Maybe there's some value to the necropolis collecting magical lore, after all!
3.5's Polymorph line does change types.

But then, a dragon polymorphed into a humanoid produces half-dragon children, so it does seem that seed is largely unchanged. Although that might be from the Separation clause in Alter Self (things revert). If it is from that separation clause of Alter Self, that doesn't get overridden until... looks like Shapechange?

So if one Lich Shapechanges into a male humanoid, and another lich shapechanges into a female humanoid (and stays that way for a long enough time)..... but that requires the cooperation of two casters with 9th level spells to pull off - and one of them has to be capable of maintaining that spell for a very long time. And it also relies on some shaky inferences.

Zaile

2021-02-13, 05:07 PM

The underdark wouldn’t be significantly affected by this kind of disaster. It’s full of food and monsters that could become food. If you go down from your deepest cave, with wizards to cast disintegrate and rock to mud and druids to scout for nearby caves as earth elementals, you should reach it in under 2 years.

Be ready to fight. Most of its inhabitants are tougher than a human commoner and none will be excited to see refugees (unless selling a chunk of your people as slaves is cool with you. Arguably better than starving while freezing but also arguably worse. You could at least offer people the option of being sold rather than murdered or turned to stone for millennia while hoping to be turned back ever. And you might get resources in exchange)

I would use this for a campaign setup. Natural disaster caused a big city to find refuge underground. They get to the underdark, but have neither the warriors nor casters to fight, so they offer themselves as slaves to the Drow in exchange for survival and protection. PCs would play the children/grandchildren/ Gert, great etc. and their goal is to gain power and free their people without the Drow killing them all. Would be one hell of a political intrigue campaign.

Zaile

2021-02-13, 05:09 PM

3.5's Polymorph line does change types.

But then, a dragon polymorphed into a humanoid produces half-dragon children, so it does seem that seed is largely unchanged. Although that might be from the Separation clause in Alter Self (things revert). If it is from that separation clause of Alter Self, that doesn't get overridden until... looks like Shapechange?

So if one Lich Shapechanges into a male humanoid, and another lich shapechanges into a female humanoid (and stays that way for a long enough time)..... but that requires the cooperation of two casters with 9th level spells to pull off - and one of them has to be capable of maintaining that spell for a very long time. And it also relies on some shaky inferences.

Or use Blade's origin. When a woman is pregnant, change her to a vampire/lich. Baby half-immortal, lol.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-13, 05:31 PM

Speaking of seeds you’re going to need to save more than just citizens if you’re going to be serious about underground farms. You’re going to need to save some beehives or similar creatures unless you plan to do all of your crop pollination by hand. There is probably a spell or magic item that could address that, but it’s going to take some allocation of resources. Keeping the soil productive might be an issue too, since we’re dealing with a long stretch of time here.

You also might want to look into preserving creatures that are used for spell components - EX: no bats => no bat guano => Fireball free future. No owls => no owl feathers = no Owl’s Wisdom. Etc. So maybe do a sort of Noah’s Arc thing with your petrification if you have the time and resources. Either that or everyone wanting those spells needs to take Eschew Materials, or find some other work-around, for the rest of time.

Re: Stone to Flesh, I thought Break Enchantment (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/breakEnchantment.htm) did the same thing without having to make a save?

Maat Mons

2021-02-13, 05:50 PM

Palanan

2021-02-13, 06:25 PM

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
You’re going to need to save some beehives or similar creatures unless you plan to do all of your crop pollination by hand.

Good point here. More than likely any cave-dwelling refugees will include a larger component of mushrooms in their diet, since mushrooms can be grown in a fairly compact area without needing pollination.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
You also might want to look into preserving creatures that are used for spell components - EX: no bats => no bat guano….

Over the short term, if the refugees are in a cave system there’s a good chance it has (or once had) a bat colony, in which case bat guano won’t be a problem. It might even be something to trade with other surviving enclaves that don’t have ready access, both as a spell component and as fertilizer.

But a winter that lasts centuries will quickly drive most bat colonies to extinction. Some bats can hibernate, but that’s seasonal rather than multi-year, to say nothing of multi-century. Stockpiling guano might end up being a priority, and scouting distant cave systems for former bat colonies could be an important (if tedious and unglamorous) assignment for low-level adventurers.

Quertus

2021-02-13, 08:53 PM

So if one Lich Shapechanges into a male humanoid, and another lich shapechanges into a female humanoid (and stays that way for a long enough time)..... but that requires the cooperation of two casters with 9th level spells to pull off - and one of them has to be capable of maintaining that spell for a very long time. And it also relies on some shaky inferences.

Meh. Once the child is conceived, we'll just use magic to offload it to a magical incubator.

You’re going to need to save some beehives or similar creatures unless you plan to do all of your crop pollination by hand.

You also might want to look into preserving creatures that are used for spell components - EX: no bats => no bat guano => Fireball free future. No owls => no owl feathers = no Owl’s Wisdom. Etc.

Either that or everyone wanting those spells needs to take Eschew Materials, or find some other work-around, for the rest of time.

Re: Stone to Flesh, I thought Break Enchantment (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/breakEnchantment.htm) did the same thing without having to make a save?

Eschew Materials. Not concerned with spell compliments.

Forget Break Enchantment or Stone to Flesh - the Necropolis will suggest Resurgence!

Bees for pollination *are* a problem (alongside a generally functioning ecosystem), *if* reality works that way. Which it probably does. If it does, is it common knowledge? Or sufficiently easily recognizably known that the level 12 Druids can inform us of that fact? How many can we fit in a painting for Trompe L'oeil? How many can we summon? 2e Wild Magic could get us butterflies - anything similar? … actually, I'll bet a Rod of Wonder has a "creates butterflies" entry. Anybody not AFB want to confirm?

Hopefully, the gods will help / we'll get planar access back / we'll get some volunteers to Shapechange into all the missing life forms for breeding purposes / otherwise be able to restore a functioning planet 1,000 years from now, but keeping food producing for those 1,000 years is the more immediate concern.

Palanan

2021-02-13, 09:26 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
Or sufficiently easily recognizably known that the level 12 Druids can inform us of that fact?

Beekeepers will probably know this, but even first-level druids should definitely be aware of it.

Keeping the bees alive will definitely be a challenge, but mining-bees (https://www.honeybeesuite.com/mining-bees-are-wild-bees-that-live-underground/) could be an option. I have hundreds of Andrena nests in my yard every spring; they’re completely innocuous and all they ask is an area of sandy soil. They’re solitary, so no honey in usable quantities, but they should be serviceable pollinators.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Not concerned with spell compliments.

I’ve never had anyone compliment my spells anyway.

:smalltongue:

Maat Mons

2021-02-13, 09:30 PM

Bumblebees do great in greenhouses. Not sure how many bumblebee colonies it takes to form a healthy breeding population. Or how big a greenhouse it would take to sustain them all. People who want bumblebees in their greenhouses just get boxes of bees mailed to them from bee breeders. It's important not to open the boxes until the bees have settled down from being jostled around in shipping.

Honeybees do not do well in greenhouses. They need both more pollen and a wider variety of pollen than a greenhouse provides. But maybe that would stop being true if the greenhouse were ridiculously giant. But we have some pretty darn big greenhouses even now. I don't know.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-13, 10:21 PM

Re: Rod of Wonder, I checked d20srd and that is correct:

Stream of 600 large butterflies pours forth and flutters around for 2 rounds, blinding everyone (including wielder) within 25 ft. (Reflex DC 14 negates).

Dunno how much pollinating they could do in 12 seconds though. :smallconfused: Custom magic item might be more efficient?

But a winter that lasts centuries will quickly drive most bat colonies to extinction. Some bats can hibernate, but that’s seasonal rather than multi-year, to say nothing of multi-century. Stockpiling guano might end up being a priority, and scouting distant cave systems for former bat colonies could be an important (if tedious and unglamorous) assignment for low-level adventurers.

It occurs to me that the spell description doesn’t specify what kind of bat guano and vampire bats are a thing. Some of them will drink human blood (saving some livestock raises the options here; Wikipedia tells me some species are pickier), so it might be worth trying to farm them. Or fruit bats, if you can get fruit growing reliably to feed them. And actually it looks like there are nectarivorous species if you can’t get bees to work. I think you could eat the culls; I’ve heard of bats being used as food.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-14, 08:00 AM

Meh. Once the child is conceived, we'll just use magic to offload it to a magical incubator.
So you're gambling on the DM permitting that sort of magical research, then?

Forget Break Enchantment or Stone to Flesh - the Necropolis will suggest Resurgence!
Only works on "ongoing effects" - Flesh to Stone is Instant, unfortunately. A pet Basilisk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/basilisk.htm)'s gaze, however, is Permanent.

Bees for pollination *are* a problem (alongside a generally functioning ecosystem), *if* reality works that way. Which it probably does. If it does, is it common knowledge? Or sufficiently easily recognizably known that the level 12 Druids can inform us of that fact? How many can we fit in a painting for Trompe L'oeil? How many can we summon? 2e Wild Magic could get us butterflies - anything similar? … actually, I'll bet a Rod of Wonder has a "creates butterflies" entry. Anybody not AFB want to confirm?

Result of 47 to 49, yes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#wonder). However, its a 2-round effect. Unclear if the butterflies themselves are Instant and that's just how long they stay local, or if they're a 2-round summon swarm effect.

Hopefully, the gods will help / we'll get planar access back / we'll get some volunteers to Shapechange into all the missing life forms for breeding purposes / otherwise be able to restore a functioning planet 1,000 years from now, but keeping food producing for those 1,000 years is the more immediate concern.
As has been demonstrated: It's largely a non-issue. There's many ways to keep a population alive for that long.

Quertus

2021-02-14, 02:02 PM

So you're gambling on the DM permitting that sort of magical research, then?

Only works on "ongoing effects" - Flesh to Stone is Instant, unfortunately. A pet Basilisk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/basilisk.htm)'s gaze, however, is Permanent.

Result of 47 to 49, yes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#wonder). However, its a 2-round effect. Unclear if the butterflies themselves are Instant and that's just how long they stay local, or if they're a 2-round summon swarm effect.

As has been demonstrated: It's largely a non-issue. There's many ways to keep a population alive for that long.

D) while it may be trivial for the combined intellectual might of the Playground to plan numerous ways to feed 20k people under these circumstances, it's still the more immediate concern - and, even if the ecosystem is unrecoverable, humanity can still survive off these numerous techniques. That's all I was trying to say.

C) so, Rod of Wonder butterflies are "ask your GM". OP?

B) rats! Still, a pet basilisk (or Polymorph + Assume Supernatural Ability) would make the petrification process quicker…

A) allow research? Uh, yeah. Allow it to *succeed*? That's another story. Still, there's numerous approaches, like "moving babies between species" or "accelerating gestation period", in addition to the artificial womb. 1,000 years is an awfully long time to research - the necropolis wouldn't be worried. (That they also don't benefit beyond PR by the success or failure of the project may impact *why* they aren't concerned)

O) was it "common knowledge" in… whatever time period D&D most closely matches… that bees (etc) were required for plants to reproduce? Sure, "bees need flowers"… but… "flowers *need* bees"?

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-14, 04:41 PM

Adding to the list of ‘spells that will become uncastable after the ecosystem is annihilated’: Magic Mouth (honeycomb) and Foresight (hummingbird feather).

Is there a list of spells with material components somewhere?

O) was it "common knowledge" in… whatever time period D&D most closely matches… that bees (etc) were required for plants to reproduce? Sure, "bees need flowers"… but… "flowers *need* bees"?

I have no idea what time period D&D would match, but in the real world it looks like pollination was discovered late 1600s - early 1700s.

I would hope that at worst it would be something a low level Druid would know, with a better scenario being any crop farmer (at least regarding the crops they’re familiar with). Someone at some point in the past casting a permanent Repel Vermin on their apple tree and it resulting in exactly zero apples, then passing that information on seems like a plausible scenario to me. (Also low-level adventuring hook, but never mind that.)

Palanan

2021-02-14, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
…while it may be trivial for the combined intellectual might of the Playground to plan numerous ways to feed 20k people under these circumstances….

I see this as less trivial, because unlimited access to some of the items mentioned earlier (e.g. trompe l’oeil, everful larder, etc.) raises broader questions about why the setting isn’t post-scarcity already. In particular, this begs the question why—if those items weren’t just invented last Tuesday—the setting hasn’t been post-scarcity for centuries or millennia, and why it hasn’t evolved into something completely unrecognizable.

Originally Posted by Quertus
…so, Rod of Wonder butterflies are "ask your GM". OP?

It’s a nice catch, but the description states that the butterflies flutter around in a 25 ft. radius of the wielder. Not much potential for pollination there.

Butterflies in general aren’t the best pollinators of crops, and there’s a real drawback in this situation—butterflies (apart from the two-round variety) come from caterpillars, and caterpillars need a lot of fresh leaves, to say nothing of time and attention. You would need a small forest growing in the cave system just to support the caterpillars—and if you can get a small forest to grow, you probably don’t need the butterflies.

Also, a cave is about the worst possible environment for rearing caterpillars. They need open air and sunlight, in particular because caterpillars are extremely susceptible to diseases. Whether magical or mundane, butterfly pollination isn’t likely to be a successful approach.

Originally Posted by Quertus
...was it "common knowledge" in… whatever time period D&D most closely matches… that bees (etc) were required for plants to reproduce? Sure, "bees need flowers"… but… "flowers *need* bees"?

It's a good question, and this depends in part on which timeframe any given campaign is based. Awareness of insect pollination seems to have arrived in the English-speaking world around the early- to mid-1700s (https://www.nature.com/articles/131392b0), but I wouldn’t be surprised if this had already been discovered much earlier elsewhere in the world.

That said, I think the presence of druids makes it all but certain that druidic communities would be very aware of this, which in turn means that the knowledge would likely filter into the general population, and most readily to beekeepers. I would expect some druids to keep bees themselves, especially those who enjoy their mead.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-14, 05:45 PM

I don’t claim this is complete, and there were a few spells I omitted because I was sketchy on them, but this is what I dug out of d20srd:

Fireball (bat guano)
Owl’s Wisdom (owl feathers)
Magic Mouth (honeycomb)
Foresight (hummingbird feather)
Unseen Servant (wood)
Mnemonic Enhancer (squid ink)
Spider Climb (spider)
Invisibility (gum arabic -> tree sap)
Stinking Cloud (rotten egg OR skunk cabbage leaves)
Fire Seeds (acorns OR holly berries)
Wind Wall (“feather of exotic origin”)
Scrying (eye of hawk/eagle/roc)
Ghost Sound (wool or wax)
Brain Spider (spider)
Secure Shelter (wood splinters)
Persistent Image (fleece)
Ironwood (wood)
Polymorph any Object (gum arabic -> tree sap)
Telepathic bond (eggshells from 2 different kinds of creatures)
Darkness (bat fur)
Identify (owl feather)
Lightning Bolt (fur)
Sleep (? Unclear from the description if it needs fine sand + (rose petals OR a live cricket) or if any one of the three things will do.)
Locate creature (fur from a bloodhound)
Bull’s Strength (bull hairs or dung)
Arcane Eye (bat fur)
Rope Trick (powdered corn extract)
Slow (molasses -> either sugar cane or sugar beets)
True Seeing (saffron)
Cat’s Grace (cat fur)
Sequester (basilisk eyelash, gum arabic)
Haste (licorice root)

Some of these might be more trivial than others (if we manage to save the sheep herds for food and clothing, for example, anything that needs wool will be castable, and I doubt there will be a lot of pushback from the townspeople about preserving their livestock. But having a bunch of the town’s high level casters pop over to the nearest sea to obtain a breeding population of squid in the last weeks before the apocalypse might not go over so well). Wood, assuming we can preserve the tree seeds to plant once things warm up again, might be obtainable after the apocalypse starts - tunnel through the ice to the nearest frozen-to-death forest, take what you need. It’s not a permanent solution but (depending on the region and needs for wood other than spellcasting) would probably last a good long while.

Maat Mons

2021-02-14, 08:51 PM

Do we really need the caves? I mean, we're not talking about Ragnarok, where the whole world is burred by endless snowfall. If the whole world is cold, evaporation from the oceans will slow way down. So everything will probably wind up like Antarctica, where anything far from the coast gets surprisingly little snowfall. Can't we just live in houses?

Actually, let's go back to getting out water from Decanters of Endless Water. Lots of parts of Antarctica only get enough snow to equate to about 2 inches of rain per year. If we've got a lot of people harvesting and melting snow for drinking water, I think we're going to use it up faster than it falls.

And isn't the Underdark kind of screwed? As best I understand, most of the races down there still nee to drink fresh water. Right now, they've got aquafers and stuff. But those ultimately come from liquid water soaking into the ground. That's not going to be happening anymore. I mean, on the plus side, they no longer have to spend so much time and energy pumping water out of their cave and tunnel systems. (Man, it's a good thing adventurers never think to question all those "abandoned windmills" that keep the residents of the Netherlands Underdark dry. They could really throw a wrench in the works by... throwing a wrench in the works.)

But the down side is, now the drow et al. have to compete with surface dwellers from whatever scarce recourses are needed to craft Decanters of Endless Water. And the surface dwellers have a head start, because they're going to notice that they keep needing to dig their wells deeper and deeper long before things start getting dryer way down where the under-folk live.

Harrow

2021-02-15, 12:04 AM

Break Enchantment only works on things up to 5th level. (Unless it's something Dispel Magic would also have worked on.) I haven't been able to find a Flesh to Stone effect of lower than 6th level. (Except for Sanctum Spell cheese.) If there's a spell list on which Flesh to stone is 5th level or less, or if there's some sort of higher-level equivalent of Break Enchantment with a higher cap, then we're good to go.

Oooo, I have just what you need. Call of Stone from the Player's Handbook II is a 4th level Druid/Wizard/Sorcerer/Spellthief spell. It lasts 1 round for every 2 caster levels you have and forces a Fortitude save ever round. "If the target fails four or more saves, it permanently transforms into a statue as if affected by flesh to stone." Break Enchantment should work on people petrified by Call of Stone.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-15, 08:18 PM

I see this as less trivial, because unlimited access to some of the items mentioned earlier (e.g. trompe l’oeil, everful larder, etc.) raises broader questions about why the setting isn’t post-scarcity already. In particular, this begs the question why—if those items weren’t just invented last Tuesday—the setting hasn’t been post-scarcity for centuries or millennia, and why it hasn’t evolved into something completely unrecognizable.It's been asked before in different forms with different prodding.

The usual answer is "various forms of social reasons". From the deities of the setting stopping it somehow, variations on "it already happened, went boom, and there's enough lingering distrust of magic in general from that disaster that folks don't want to go 'all in' on it enough to generate another post-scarcity economy" or something else. Sometimes folks invent a "physics reason" such as "magic is parasitic, and folks who use such things need to have the 'spiritual strength' to use them, or they perish" (WBL exists because using too much magic items risks ripping your soul from your body kind of thing).

Quertus

2021-02-16, 09:41 AM

in the real world it looks like pollination was discovered late 1600s - early 1700s.

That doesn't sound encouraging. :smallfrown:

if we manage to save the sheep herds for food and clothing

Clothes! I knew I forgot something. Wait... liches and lycanthropes. Bones, and their own fur coats. I think that clothing is pretty optional for both, actually, at least as far as "modesty" goes. :smallwink:

Palanan

2021-02-16, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by Quertus
That doesn't sound encouraging.

Well, again, druids. They will almost certainly know this themselves, and it's reasonable to assume that they're interacting with farmers, beekeepers, etc.. So some of that knowledge will likely (heh) cross-pollinate.

.

Quertus

2021-02-16, 01:31 PM

Well, again, druids. They will almost certainly know this themselves, and it's reasonable to assume that they're interacting with farmers, beekeepers, etc.. So some of that knowledge will likely (heh) cross-pollinate.

.

Why would they? Just because it's common knowledge to us today doesn't mean that it's an easy - or even possible - knowledge check in D&D. If it's anachronistic, many settings / GMs will rule it impossible.

Now, arguably, the gods *might* know (although they couldn't stop a space rock, so…), so Divinations of "what's the most important thing we're missing?" might return "bees". Or world physics might be different, and bees aren't necessary. Or crops might die out "mysteriously". OP?

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-16, 02:17 PM

Why would they? Just because it's common knowledge to us today doesn't mean that it's an easy - or even possible - knowledge check in D&D.

I dunno Commune With Nature (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/communeWithNature.htm) seems like a plausible reason to me. Or is there a fruit tree equivalent to a dryad? I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of nature spirit bound to some kind of crop or fruit-bearing plant. Druids can learn Sylvan, so it could have come up in conversation at some point.

Palanan

2021-02-16, 03:01 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
Just because it's common knowledge to us today doesn't mean that it's an easy - or even possible - knowledge check in D&D.

I mean, you were just talking about developing a magical incubator for the spawn of two liches shapechanged into humanoids, but it’s too hard a knowledge check to figure out that bees pollinate plants?

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of nature spirit bound to some kind of crop or fruit-bearing plant. Druids can learn Sylvan, so it could have come up in conversation at some point.

Agreed. I see this as one of the countless bits of information that a druidic tradition would incorporate into their lore, informed by their own observations as well as interchange with other creatures.

Quertus

2021-02-16, 06:16 PM

I mean, you were just talking about developing a magical incubator for the spawn of two liches shapechanged into humanoids, but it’s too hard a knowledge check to figure out that bees pollinate plants?

Yup.

I imagine pretty much every civilization has, at some point, come to understand where babies come from.

And I imagine pretty much every civilization has noticed that women "carry" the babies in their bellies.

And I expect *most* civilizations with pets and/or livestock has noticed some similarities with animals.

And certainly some have used "artificial sustenance" of wet nurses, or cow's milk, or similar tech.

And I imagine most have had butchers/hunters/farmers (or equivalent) who cut up the meat of animals, and recognize different parts - especially if one part has a baby animal inside it.

Ring of Sustenance / magic to feed the hungry is clearly one of the top concerns for the population - especially if plants "mysteriously" stop reproducing.

So it's simply a logical continuation of the current advancements in / the current focus of magical "science" to investigate prenatal artificial sustenance (or "slotless" sustenance to animals without the capacity to wear rings, or "Chambers of Sustenance", or similar related variants). It'd be more strange if such tech *didn't* develop in 1,000 years of idle research (freed from all the wars and crusading Paladins and whatnot that usually disturb a Lich).

Now, there *are* two logical leaps in this process (and two additional potential issues) Do you have the role-playing chops - the ability to think as a character in the setting, and not as someone with your knowledge - to spot them? If so, then we can discuss the *actual* flaws in the plan.

Of course, if you *do* spot the flaws, you may understand why I went the "magical incubator" route, rather than suggesting a different implementation. Hint: the first necessary logic leap was made before I joined the "repopulation" subtopic.

I dunno Commune With Nature (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/communeWithNature.htm) seems like a plausible reason to me. Or is there a fruit tree equivalent to a dryad? I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of nature spirit bound to some kind of crop or fruit-bearing plant. Druids can learn Sylvan, so it could have come up in conversation at some point.

Agreed. I see this as one of the countless bits of information that a druidic tradition would incorporate into their lore, informed by their own observations as well as interchange with other creatures.

I'm… not sure how many dryads would be willing to talk about something so… personal.

And, even if they *were* willing, they might not *understand* that part of the process. After all, how many Dryads end up alone in a cave deep in the underdark with an amorous Ent long enough to notice that they aren't budding baby plant monsters like they would on the surface? (or whatever their reproductive cycle actually looks like)

I'm not buying the idea that it would be any more obvious to them than it was to humans IRL.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-16, 07:37 PM

I'm… not sure how many dryads would be willing to talk about something so… personal.

And, even if they *were* willing, they might not *understand* that part of the process. After all, how many Dryads end up alone in a cave deep in the underdark with an amorous Ent long enough to notice that they aren't budding baby plant monsters like they would on the surface? (or whatever their reproductive cycle actually looks like)

I'm not buying the idea that it would be any more obvious to them than it was to humans IRL.

???

Oh you’re talking about the dryad reproducing. I’m talking about her tree. She can’t go more than 300 yards away from it, she’s going to notice how it makes seeds. Now the Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/fey/dryad/) article says they’re usually bonded to oak trees, but not always and it would only take one or two bonded to peach trees or apple or something that is bee-pollinated to figure out that the bee is a requirement. And per the “Dryads’ main interests are their own survival and that of their beloved forests” line, she has zero reason to keep the information to herself and every reason to share with the local Druid coven.

Quertus

2021-02-17, 02:15 AM

???

Oh you’re talking about the dryad reproducing. I’m talking about her tree. She can’t go more than 300 yards away from it, she’s going to notice how it makes seeds. Now the Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/fey/dryad/) article says they’re usually bonded to oak trees, but not always and it would only take one or two bonded to peach trees or apple or something that is bee-pollinated to figure out that the bee is a requirement. And per the “Dryads’ main interests are their own survival and that of their beloved forests” line, she has zero reason to keep the information to herself and every reason to share with the local Druid coven.

I'm not buying that observing that the bees need the pollen in any way obviously correlates to "and that's how trees make baby trees".

Palanan

2021-02-17, 10:25 AM

Well, clearly we have different views on what druids know, so let’s leave that aside.

Another question is what sort of defenses some of these enclaves will require, especially the ones in caves. As noted above, there will probably be a variety of cold-tolerant creatures who will be roaming the icy wastes. And as also noted, anyone will access to pre-catastrophe maps will know right where our example town is located, and any scavengers probably won’t take long to find the caves—even if they’re not pinging divinations for survivors.

If any scavengers get into a cave with petrified refugees, they could do any number of things—either break the statues, wall them off, cart them away, who knows what. Clearly the refugees won’t want to be petrified until they know there are protective measures in place. This would also hold true for refugees in other enclaves who are in an enchanted slumber, stasis, etc. For these situations, what sort of defenses could be established?

Endarire

2021-02-17, 05:15 PM

In short, think of this like medieval fantasy winter Fallout.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-17, 05:23 PM

Another question is what sort of defenses some of these enclaves will require, especially the ones in caves. As noted above, there will probably be a variety of cold-tolerant creatures who will be roaming the icy wastes. And as also noted, anyone will access to pre-catastrophe maps will know right where our example town is located, and any scavengers probably won’t take long to find the caves—even if they’re not pinging divinations for survivors.

If any scavengers get into a cave with petrified refugees, they could do any number of things—either break the statues, wall them off, cart them away, who knows what. Clearly the refugees won’t want to be petrified until they know there are protective measures in place. This would also hold true for refugees in other enclaves who are in an enchanted slumber, stasis, etc. For these situations, what sort of defenses could be established?

A lot of this is going to depend on where we are (if we’re in the tropics pre-apocalypse there will probably be less in the way of cold-resistant wildlife, at least until it migrates to our area in however many decades/hundreds of years) and what we did to survive in the first place.

For the first few years I think refugees will be a possibility, as will bandits, in addition to any predators that survive the cold. We’re going to need a plan to deal with those, especially the refugees - if our starting population is 20,000 we might be able to squeeze in one or two extra people but if the entirety of the next city over comes knocking on our door looking for shelter we might have to lock them out. :smallfrown: And possibly fight them off afterwards.

So as a general precaution, I would definitely find some way to seal the entrance(s) to our settlement, if only with a lockable door, and ideally hide it too. (Hiding it would probably be easier with the caves. Some kind of permanent illusion of an avalanche/rockslide over the area? For the statue route, possibly an ACTUAL rockslide/avalanche, as long as we make a plan to dig out in a thousand years.)

We’re also going to want some kind of sentinels. Golems maybe? (Stone looks like we’d need someone higher level than we’d start out with, which is a pity as we’d presumably have lots of that on hand.) Permanent Animated Objects? Some kind of guardian spirits? My D&D knowledge here is sketchy, but ideally we have some type of guardian that doesn’t need to eat (and therefore cut into our rations) or sleep and more than one type of guardian. This is regardless of if everyone is a statue or not, so if the city’s population is awake I’d keep the town guard active in addition to the magical guardians, not instead of.

If we’re going the statue route for the citizenry, some permanent Shrink Item use on the statues could be useful as far as decreasing the amount of space we actually have to defend, but on the flip side would also make the tiny statue people easier to steal/kidnap. Maybe make a hollow golem to store them in? With instructions to flee or hide if threatened. Having everyone be statues that don’t need to breathe also opens up the possibility of stashing them underwater or in a cave filled with poisonous gas...

Keeping everyone conscious and just trying to maintain civilization through the apocalypse means that people could be trained as defenders or at least could run away and hide, but also raises the chance of someone doing something stupid to wreck the necessary food supplies, defenses etc. Our food and water supplies will need to be guarded and kept viable which will increase the amount we actually have to defend. Also if people start getting crazy from cabin fever there isn’t anywhere for them to go. Disease will be an issue for the same reason. (Another reason to have golem guards.) So I would mandate at least basic combat training for everyone, both to keep the settlement safe and keep people busy. If possible I would build a number of fall-back areas for if the main settlement gets attacked or people need to quarantine.

In short, think of this like medieval fantasy winter Fallout.

In that case from here on out I reserve the right to refer to our hypothetical settlement as the Vault. :smallbiggrin:

Quertus

2021-02-18, 08:57 AM

Oh, something I've been wondering about for some time: any reason Control Weather doesn't make survival / crops / warmth trivial? Or is that just the 2e version?

Well, clearly we have different views on what druids know, so let’s leave that aside.

Clearly. Or, rather, I view *either* stance as potentially valid (and know which ways I'd rule it for my worlds, based largely on how much contact they've had with "modern" worlds: Placia? Yeah, it's knowable. Everday? Not so much.). Which is why I asked the OP which is the case on *this* world. Just like I asked whether butterflies from a Rod of Wonder persist, or whether it even matters on this world. OP?

Another question is what sort of defenses some of these enclaves will require, especially the ones in caves. As noted above, there will probably be a variety of cold-tolerant creatures who will be roaming the icy wastes. And as also noted, anyone will access to pre-catastrophe maps will know right where our example town is located, and any scavengers probably won’t take long to find the caves—even if they’re not pinging divinations for survivors.

If any scavengers get into a cave with petrified refugees, they could do any number of things—either break the statues, wall them off, cart them away, who knows what. Clearly the refugees won’t want to be petrified until they know there are protective measures in place. This would also hold true for refugees in other enclaves who are in an enchanted slumber, stasis, etc. For these situations, what sort of defenses could be established?

The necropolis is handing out post-catastrophe maps.

Other than a hungry basilisk, who would bother breaking statues? And what madman loots enormous statues in a world where a) you can't eat them; b) you can't afford the calories to carry them; c) you can't burn them; d) you can't wear them for warmth; e) it's just that bloody cold out? I think that miniaturizing the statues is actually an increased vulnerability. Oh, and F) there's a necropolis (and possibly others) willing to *track the statues down* and *make you wish that they had only murdered you* if you are dumb enough to steal them.

As far as golems go… do you want to build a snowman? I expect *most* vaults - especially those powered by Decanter of Endless Water - will have plenty of snow.

What they won't have is reagents. Which is why undead (and blood money for components) make the ideal guardians in such a scenario. In fact, historically, that's exactly what a Canon D&D city under siege started utilizing, because undead are what can be made easily with limited resources. (Yes, PR is a thing, and that is the goal of the necropolis - one that this scenario is well suited for)

The necropolis may well be guarded by miles of black sand (it kinda grows itself as it transforms new victims into more black sand, right?), to discourage visitors. And liches. Every enclave is guarded by level 12 casters (and, presumably, level 12 muggles, as well).

The halfling fury town is guarded by Kobold-sized caves (if they weren't before, Wall of Stone says that they are now), and 20,000 lycanthropes. Who would want to mess with that?

And, if it isn't just a myth, New New Utopia, under the constant warmth and sunny days of Control Weather? They're guarded by "the light! It burns my eyes (and my scaly alien skin)!". And… any Epic beings (like Dragons) that accepted their invitation to retire to paradise.

A lot of this is going to depend on where we are (if we’re in the tropics pre-apocalypse there will probably be less in the way of cold-resistant wildlife, at least until it migrates to our area in however many decades/hundreds of years) and what we did to survive in the first place.

For the first few years I think refugees will be a possibility, as will bandits, in addition to any predators that survive the cold. We’re going to need a plan to deal with those, especially the refugees - if our starting population is 20,000 we might be able to squeeze in one or two extra people but if the entirety of the next city over comes knocking on our door looking for shelter we might have to lock them out. :smallfrown: And possibly fight them off afterwards.

So as a general precaution, I would definitely find some way to seal the entrance(s) to our settlement, if only with a lockable door, and ideally hide it too. (Hiding it would probably be easier with the caves. Some kind of permanent illusion of an avalanche/rockslide over the area? For the statue route, possibly an ACTUAL rockslide/avalanche, as long as we make a plan to dig out in a thousand years.)

We’re also going to want some kind of sentinels. Golems maybe? (Stone looks like we’d need someone higher level than we’d start out with, which is a pity as we’d presumably have lots of that on hand.) Permanent Animated Objects? Some kind of guardian spirits? My D&D knowledge here is sketchy, but ideally we have some type of guardian that doesn’t need to eat (and therefore cut into our rations) or sleep and more than one type of guardian. This is regardless of if everyone is a statue or not, so if the city’s population is awake I’d keep the town guard active in addition to the magical guardians, not instead of.

If we’re going the statue route for the citizenry, some permanent Shrink Item use on the statues could be useful as far as decreasing the amount of space we actually have to defend, but on the flip side would also make the tiny statue people easier to steal/kidnap. Maybe make a hollow golem to store them in? With instructions to flee or hide if threatened. Having everyone be statues that don’t need to breathe also opens up the possibility of stashing them underwater or in a cave filled with poisonous gas...

Keeping everyone conscious and just trying to maintain civilization through the apocalypse means that people could be trained as defenders or at least could run away and hide, but also raises the chance of someone doing something stupid to wreck the necessary food supplies, defenses etc. Our food and water supplies will need to be guarded and kept viable which will increase the amount we actually have to defend. Also if people start getting crazy from cabin fever there isn’t anywhere for them to go. Disease will be an issue for the same reason. (Another reason to have golem guards.) So I would mandate at least basic combat training for everyone, both to keep the settlement safe and keep people busy. If possible I would build a number of fall-back areas for if the main settlement gets attacked or people need to quarantine.

In that case from here on out I reserve the right to refer to our hypothetical settlement as the Vault. :smallbiggrin:

I've been thinking of this as the vault from the beginning so you're no more mad than I. :smallwink:

As above: Other than a hungry basilisk, who would bother breaking statues? And what madman loots enormous statues in a world where a) you can't eat them; b) you can't afford the calories to carry them; c) you can't burn them; d) you can't wear them for warmth; e) it's just that bloody cold out? I think that miniaturizing the statues is actually an increased vulnerability. Oh, and F) there's a necropolis (and possibly others) willing to *track the statues down* and *make you wish that they had only murdered you* if you are dumb enough to steal them.

The necropolis actually hopes that bandits come to visit - they could always use more mindless undead laborers.

But, in general, hiding the vault entrance is probably a really good idea.

Speaking of PR - if the necropolis can make (perhaps by looting reagents from fallen cities) them, they may donate Eternal Wands of Resurgence and/or Cause Light Wounds (via Arcane version of UA Spellcaster) to… "Silent Lornia", or any similar projects. Or occasionally stop by to ask if anyone needs any "Cause Light Wounds" upkeep (in case the defending Clerics die… or the gods do). Seems a small price to pay for PR.

Efrate

2021-02-18, 09:33 AM

Shrink item statues. Hollow out a hollow in a high cave ceiling. Place statues, seal hole. No one will bother examining whats behind a vaulted ceiling. You have access to wall of stone an disentigrate, just wall yourselves in, melt a hole if you need to get out.

If you really want, make false tunnels and put bodies of invaders/any other corpses in them. Someone find it, oh they must have died here, loot what we can and move on.

I would advise wall of stone/stone shape more than illusions. Illusions have ways of being detected. 3 feet of stone is impenetrable for most things. It is also natural, so you do not need sheet of lead or other stuff to make enemies go hmmm.

Isolationism sounds significantly better, once you have food and shelter and warmth taken care of. Why interact with other folk who will try to take what is yours. Once winter ends you can rejoin the world and tell the rest whatever to be recognized as a nation again. It will cause some tension, "Why did you not help nation xyz?" I had to look out for my people first. Simple reasonable answer.

Palanan

2021-02-18, 12:18 PM

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
For the first few years I think refugees will be a possibility, as will bandits, in addition to any predators that survive the cold.

Refugees will probably be a major problem before and during the establishment of the enclave, and likely for a year or more afterwards. Those who show up before the enclave is sealed off will likely cause a lot of trouble, but there may also be some demand for whatever skills they might have. I could see a few semi-organized caravans, perhaps led by low- or mid-level adventurers, who were inspired to seek out the valley either by a divine vision or by careful divinations.

There will also be plenty of thieves and opportunists just taking advantage of the general chaos. I’m expecting that some of the city’s original residents will flee towards larger settlements—not necessarily rational, but people don’t always make rational decisions in crises like these. So there will be a lot of turbulence and back-and-forth, and there may well be calls for the local gendarmes to separate or even drive off anyone who isn’t a known resident.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
So as a general precaution, I would definitely find some way to seal the entrance(s) to our settlement, if only with a lockable door, and ideally hide it too.

Definitely so. The druids will have Stone Shape, which should allow them to conceal the entrance completely.

The trick here is that if anyone is observing this from the outside—say, refugees who were forcibly kept away—they’ll know the exact location of the cave entrance, and they can share this information with anyone else who comes by. They wouldn't even need to watch the actual sealing-off; anyone who’s been in town during the preparations would know the city was planning to relocate inside the caves, and that could cause some issues down the road.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
So I would mandate at least basic combat training for everyone, both to keep the settlement safe and keep people busy. If possible I would build a number of fall-back areas for if the main settlement gets attacked or people need to quarantine.

These are good ideas, but they also raise the possibility of a military takeover, probably early on but more and more likely once the enclave is established. The city’s leaders will most likely be politicians, and while they may have shown some foresight by planning to evacuate into the cave system, once combat training becomes widespread (and especially if the town guard has to fight off looters and/or refugees) the politicians will inevitably lose their influence in a society where the focus is on military readiness rather than business as usual. Martial prowess will become increasingly important, at the expense of political savvy and business acumen.

If the civilian leadership is skillful and/or lucky, they may be able to keep some voice in how the enclave is run; but if not, the town’s original leaders might end up disappearing or being made examples of by the military leaders.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Oh, something I've been wondering about for some time: any reason Control Weather doesn't make survival / crops / warmth trivial? Or is that just the 2e version?

In 3.5, Control Weather is a seventh-level spell, so outside the scope here.

Beyond that, it only brings about “weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in.” So in the case of winter weather, it could temporarily melt snow, but not change overall temperatures. The description is a little sketchy beyond this, but I’d say continually melting large amounts of snow would just create sodden ground at near-freezing temperatures, which isn’t good for any kind of agriculture.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Which is why I asked the OP which is the case on *this* world. Just like I asked whether butterflies from a Rod of Wonder persist, or whether it even matters on this world. OP?

I addressed butterflies and the Rod of Wonder in post #110 on the previous page.

And yes, in this scenario as I envision it, the druids will know a thing or two about bees, crops and pollination.

Originally Posted by Quertus
The necropolis is handing out post-catastrophe maps.

Do you mean they’re handing out pre-catastrophe maps, or that they’re engaged in their own post-catastrophe cartography effort? Are they sharing locations from the World Before, or mapping the world as it is? Or both?

Originally Posted by Quertus
…who would bother breaking statues? And what madman loots enormous statues….

There could be any number of reasons, few of them rational.

For one of the less irrational reasons—if someone got inside and realized the statues were intended to be brought back at some point, then every statue represents a hungry mouth and a potential competitor for extremely limited resources. Every statue broken is one less competitor—and breaking all of them means that many fewer occupants in a cave complex that the intruders might want for themselves.

Originally Posted by Quertus
In fact, historically, that's exactly what a Canon D&D city under siege started utilizing, because undead are what can be made easily with limited resources.

Which canon city do you mean here? Is this from Eberron, or somewhere else?

Originally Posted by Quertus
The necropolis actually hopes that bandits come to visit - they could always use more mindless undead laborers.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Speaking of PR….

If it gets out that the necropolis is converting anyone to mindless undead, the PR campaign will not go their way.

I'd say it's even odds that if the necropolis makes themselves known, someone somewhere will blame them for having caused the catastrophe (directly or indirectly) and launch a crusade against them.

Originally Posted by Efrate
No one will bother examining whats behind a vaulted ceiling.

Have you met any adventurers? :smalltongue:

Originally Posted by Efrate
Isolationism sounds significantly better, once you have food and shelter and warmth taken care of. Why interact with other folk who will try to take what is yours.

Definitely this, and I’m assuming many of the survivor enclaves will default to this approach. Others will take the opposite tack, of surviving by hunting and preying on hidden refuges, so there will be an interesting cat-and-mouse dynamic.

And in this dynamic, the Necros’ habit of handing out maps will probably not be looked on favorably by anyone a) aware of this policy and b) trying to avoid discovery.

That could be an interesting scenario in itself—a group of mid-level adventurers tasked with tracking down the source of these maps and putting a stop to their circulation. That could lead to either an all-out assault on the Necropolis, or perhaps some sort of deal whereby the adventurers’ home refuge receives “unlisted” status on any future versions of their maps.

.

Quertus

2021-02-18, 04:47 PM

In 3.5, Control Weather is a seventh-level spell, so outside the scope here.

Rats. Big rats.

Although a) someone in the world might have it; b) the "brave" liches might gain it (but not in time to save the bees).

Beyond that, it only brings about “weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in.” So in the case of winter weather, it could temporarily melt snow, but not change overall temperatures. The description is a little sketchy beyond this, but I’d say continually melting large amounts of snow would just create sodden ground at near-freezing temperatures, which isn’t good for any kind of agriculture.

Well, if we're "tropical, summer", I'd think "warm, clear skies" would be a possibility.

Also, in a temperate climate, by definition, the *average* winter temperature can reach almost 70°. So certainly warm weather should be possible.

I addressed butterflies and the Rod of Wonder in post #110 on the previous page.

Eh, maybe I'm failing my reading comprehension here, but… I'm not seeing where you specify whether the butterflies continue to exist after the 2r swarm effect, only that the Rod would need to be used repeatedly rather than relying on successive generations.

And yes, in this scenario as I envision it, the druids will know a thing or two about bees, crops and pollination.

Well rats. That makes things much more challenging.

I guess we'll say that… the halfling Furries (in "Fallen Qinas"?) were using the Rod of Wonder (and maybe bee hives, because honey is tasty), and the necropolis was trying (unsuccessfully) to get them to share it (and the rest of their redundant tech) with the community at large.

Do you mean they’re handing out pre-catastrophe maps, or that they’re engaged in their own post-catastrophe cartography effort? Are they sharing locations from the World Before, or mapping the world as it is? Or both?

You're on your own for remembering the Before time (at least, until the promised Days of Warmth return).

The liches are…
In short, my "city that was already mostly undead", where the 12th level casters were probably liches (and/or the good Elf variant) would attempt to establish / retain contact between the cities, and offer to help their undead-impaired relatives through this difficult time. And, not hindered by cold, could facilitate trade, and freely provide what knowledge they have of the current state of the world. (As immortals, they take a really long view on "PR".

Between Teleport and Sending? Contact might never be *lost*. That's certainly the plan for my Necropolis. That, and lots of walking.

Not every elven Lich lives at the necropolis. And making new contracts among the cycle that is living beings is an advantage of traveling to the cities in person.

Oh, we will encourage that others keep their power close at hand… while providing information regarding the safety of areas, so that low level adventurers can level up. That's how we get suitable new recruits, after all.

We will gladly shoulder the burden of "risk" to ensure the survival of humanity. Not that there's really much risk to our Liches, and *most* of our powerhouses are back home, too.

In short, the liches are "taking turns" walking the world, finding out what's too dangerous to risk the living on vs what's safe enough for them to venture out into.

Those who want to keep in touch with / trade with others, the liches will facilitate, via maps or just carrying the products themselves.

Those who want in on joint research efforts, the liches will coordinate.

Those who don't want to find out what kind of vengeful, soul-eating undead the necropolis has cooked up in the past 1,000 years to turn "dead statues" into won't break the statues.

There could be any number of reasons, few of them rational.

For one of the less irrational reasons—if someone got inside and realized the statues were intended to be brought back at some point, then every statue represents a hungry mouth and a potential competitor for extremely limited resources. Every statue broken is one less competitor—and breaking all of them means that many fewer occupants in a cave complex that the intruders might want for themselves.

That's irrational in the extreme - they're not "hungry mouths" or "competitors" *as statues*.

Which canon city do you mean here? Is this from Eberron, or somewhere else?

Unknown. I just remember that they learned to make 3 undead out of each corpse: one from the skin, one from the meat, and one from the bones.

Any Playgrounders with better memories / D&D lore rolls know what half-remembered story I'm referencing?

If it gets out that the necropolis is converting anyone to mindless undead, the PR campaign will not go their way.

If it gets out that the realm of undead is making undead? I think that that ship has sailed :smallamused: Being undead is kinda *why* the necropolis needs PR.

If it gets out that the lifesaving "Soylent Green" burgers are the "life gave us bandits, and we made lemonade"? Actually, we'd hint hard enough that only small children might miss that fact before offering them as an alternative to starvation or suicide.

I'd say it's even odds that if the necropolis makes themselves known, someone somewhere will blame them for having caused the catastrophe (directly or indirectly) and launch a crusade against them.

If they believe their prejudices over the word of the gods? Well, they're clearly too dumb to survive the apocalypse. The only thing people should worry about about such folks is whether they'll taste good with ketchup.

Have you met any adventurers? :smalltongue:

So glad I wasn't eating when I read that!

Definitely this, and I’m assuming many of the survivor enclaves will default to this approach. Others will take the opposite tack, of surviving by hunting and preying on hidden refuges, so there will be an interesting cat-and-mouse dynamic.

And in this dynamic, the Necros’ habit of handing out maps will probably not be looked on favorably by anyone a) aware of this policy and b) trying to avoid discovery.

That certainly is a potential issue.

Personally, I was more concerned with the maps facilitating Drow invasion forces.

In the case of early raiders, I'd say that Divinations, knowing where they're going, and consolidated strength make the work of the necropolis a benefit for surviving such raiders / wiping them out. And storing their corpses in quintessence until people get hungry enough to be willing to eat Soylent Burgers.

That could be an interesting scenario in itself—a group of mid-level adventurers tasked with tracking down the source of these maps and putting a stop to their circulation. That could lead to either an all-out assault on the Necropolis, or perhaps some sort of deal whereby the adventurers’ home refuge receives “unlisted” status on any future versions of their maps.

Well, everyone should know that the friendly visiting Lich is the source of the maps. Simply asking him(her?) is all that is required. (Children and their "crusades". Our larval form is so… foolish.)

However, the emphasis of the maps is a) to indicate safe paths vs hazards in their nearby regions; b) to allow communication and trading between groups interested in such things. If they're not interested, there's little point.

So this should only come up with a change of administration / change in priorities in the first place.

-----

If the location of the necropolis is known, then it wasn't previously wiped out either because getting there was too arduous, or its defenses were too great. I don't see either of those variables changing in any way but to the benefit of the necropolis during the Endless Winter.

If the location of the necropolis wasn't known… in a 3e/pf, divination-heavy world? I don't see that becoming easier during the Endless Winter.

-----

Sealed caves (unless, like the halfling Furries, they have *lots* of plants) will quickly become crypts. Unless, unlike rules for pollination and plant reproduction, rules for how oxygen works don't match the real world here.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-18, 05:18 PM

Other than a hungry basilisk, who would bother breaking statues?

A white dragon/remorhaz/anything large enough to decide that a cave system big enough to hold a town of 20,000 would make an awesome new lair just as soon as it got rid of all those funny shaped rocks. If the statues get smashed out of ignorance rather than malice the people would still be dead. :smallfrown:

Alternatively, if the statues remain undamaged but a huge tribe of goblins/pack of wolves/whatever has moved in by the time the contingency de-petrifies everyone, that could likewise be problematic.

As far as golems go… do you want to build a snowman? I expect *most* vaults - especially those powered by Decanter of Endless Water - will have plenty of snow.

Ooo. *makes note*

What they won't have is reagents. Which is why undead (and blood money for components) make the ideal guardians in such a scenario.

I suspect the few weeks available before the apocalypse hits would be insufficient to convince a living populace to set aside a lifetime of conditioning against the undead to reanimate their dead relatives. Maybe decades or centuries in, but not soon enough for the initial craziness of trying to convince the townspeople to go along with the survival plans.

(I’m assuming a town of 20,000 would have an extensive enough graveyard and access to enough onyx that the issue of supply for making lots of undead wouldn’t be an issue.)

If you really want, make false tunnels and put bodies of invaders/any other corpses in them. Someone find it, oh they must have died here, loot what we can and move on.

I like this idea.

I would advise wall of stone/stone shape more than illusions. Illusions have ways of being detected. 3 feet of stone is impenetrable for most things. It is also natural, so you do not need sheet of lead or other stuff to make enemies go hmmm.

For a statue vault real stone would probably be better yes, my concern is if the population remains awake and conscious, would it be better to keep access open? I’m assuming at some point we’re going to want to send out scouting parties or something. Plus the general population knowing they’re effectively trapped and only a tiny handful of people can unblock the exit...I can see it causing morale problems. :/ Or it might not, maybe people are more afraid of the apocalypse than being stuck in a cave for the rest of their lives and would be fine with it.

These are good ideas, but they also raise the possibility of a military takeover, probably early on but more and more likely once the enclave is established. The city’s leaders will most likely be politicians, and while they may have shown some foresight by planning to evacuate into the cave system, once combat training becomes widespread (and especially if the town guard has to fight off looters and/or refugees) the politicians will inevitably lose their influence in a society where the focus is on military readiness rather than business as usual. Martial prowess will become increasingly important, at the expense of political savvy and business acumen.

If the civilian leadership is skillful and/or lucky, they may be able to keep some voice in how the enclave is run; but if not, the town’s original leaders might end up disappearing or being made examples of by the military leaders.

Couple of thoughts:

The politicians would be getting this training too, so they wouldn’t be useless or helpless. (I will clarify that I’m counting spellcasting and similar as combat training - not everyone needs to be a Fighter but they need to be able to fight, if that makes sense. So someone with no Strength score to speak of could train to be a Wizard instead, that would count.)
If we’re an edge-of-civilization settlement in the first place, the politicians should logically have some experience with dealing with bandits and such, might they already be part of the military? Or otherwise combat-savvy?
If the entire vault is essentially military anyway, would a military takeover necessarily be a bad thing? I mean, ideally everyone gets saved, but the vault also needs a social structure that can endure for a thousand years, or no one survives. Might end up being a needs of the many vs. needs of the few situation.

EDIT: Regarding turning corpses into three types of undead, the closest I remember was one of (IIRC) Richard Lee Byer’s Forgotten Realms books, I want to say the Rage of Dragons trilogy but I wouldn’t swear to it, I was wrong it was a different series, but regardless a dracolich peeled the skin off his body and reanimated it.

Palanan

2021-02-18, 06:20 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
Also, in a temperate climate, by definition, the *average* winter temperature can reach almost 70°. So certainly warm weather should be possible.

What’s your source on this? Because this seems highly unlikely.

I did a simple search and the first result (https://temperatedeciduousforesttcieslin.weebly.com/climate.html) gives me an average of 30°F for temperate winter. It also lists a summertime average of 70°F, so if you found this page you may have transposed the seasons.

Originally Posted by Quertus
That's irrational in the extreme - they're not "hungry mouths" or "competitors" *as statues*.

For all anyone knows, those statues could reanimate at any minute, so safer to break them while it’s easy.

Originally Posted by Quertus
If the location of the necropolis is known, then it wasn't previously wiped out either because getting there was too arduous, or its defenses were too great.

There could be any number of reasons why a crusade wasn’t mounted earlier. The likeliest is that the potential crusaders were otherwise occupied with more immediate threats, and the necropolis—despite its high opinion of itself—was rather far down on the target list.

Post-catastrophe, if the necropolis is known to have survived, then it might well be the last bastion of necromantic lore, which could make it worth crusading against. If there’s a chance that necromancy could finally be wiped from the world, that could be reason enough.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Sealed caves…will quickly become crypts.

Sealing the main entrance doesn’t mean sealing off all airflow. Many caves have fine cracks and fissures which connect with the surface, and depending on the temperature differences will either vent air out or draw it in.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I suspect the few weeks available before the apocalypse hits would be insufficient to convince a living populace to set aside a lifetime of conditioning against the undead to reanimate their dead relatives.

Very much this.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
The politicians would be getting this training too, so they wouldn’t be useless or helpless.

Certainly possible, and it depends on the politicians. But they rose to power in the pre-catastrophe world, in a relatively stable and prosperous city where their skillsets could keep them at the top.

They might receive some training, either magical or martial, but they’ll be years behind the professionals and their training will probably be mainly for show. There might be one or two exceptions, but I think for the most part the local politicians will find their talent for actual fighting is minimal, and I’d expect their influence to dwindle relatively quickly.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
If we’re an edge-of-civilization settlement in the first place, the politicians should logically have some experience with dealing with bandits and such, might they already be part of the military? Or otherwise combat-savvy?

The city as I envision it is somewhat isolated in its valley, but not really on the edge of civilization per se. The city would more likely have had issues with invading armies and mercenary companies, and would certainly have its own forces; but I would expect the politicians would be giving orders and hiring their own mercenaries, rather than leading the fight themselves.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
If the entire vault is essentially military anyway, would a military takeover necessarily be a bad thing? I mean, ideally everyone gets saved, but the vault also needs a social structure that can endure for a thousand years, or no one survives.

This is a great question, and worth exploring. This could end up being a pivotal issue early on, when everyone is sealed into the cave system and trying to work out how they’ll survive for centuries.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-18, 07:13 PM

Unknown. I just remember that they learned to make 3 undead out of each corpse: one from the skin, one from the meat, and one from the bones.

Any Playgrounders with better memories / D&D lore rolls know what half-remembered story I'm referencing?

I went digging some more and there is apparently a thing called a Forsaken Shell and a different skin monster called a Skin Kite. Dunno if that helps or not.

smasher0404

2021-02-18, 08:28 PM

In 3.5, Control Weather is a seventh-level spell, so outside the scope here.

While it is a 7th level spell for Wizard/Clerics/Druids (the casters given in the OP), it is a 6th level spell for Wu Jen, so a new Recaster (Races of Eberron) or Wyrm Wizard (Dragon Magic) could in theory poach the spell if it is particularly needed for a long term plan. Assuming that the local Wizard happened to decide to pursue those PRCs.

Maat Mons

2021-02-18, 08:33 PM

If you really want Control Weather, an Artificer can craft an Orb of Pleasant Breezes (SBGp81). It perpetually keeps a 2-mile radius "mild and pleasant, no matter the time of year." Whatever that means.

I'm guessing it means a mild winter's day, in this case. So only slightly below freezing.

Reasonably, any large city would already have an Orb of Pleasant Breezes. They would have had it for generations. According to the DMG, they have magic items worth more than that lying around. And it's the logical thing for them to seek out, once they've got walls, guards, and a few Everfull Larders.

Palanan

2021-02-18, 09:41 PM

Originally Posted by smasher0404
While it is a 7th level spell for Wizard/Clerics/Druids (the casters given in the OP), it is a 6th level spell for Wu Jen, so a new Recaster (Races of Eberron) or Wyrm Wizard (Dragon Magic) could in theory poach the spell if it is particularly needed for a long term plan. Assuming that the local Wizard happened to decide to pursue those PRCs.

Excellent catch. I’d say it would be extremely unlikely for the local top wizard to happen to have those PrCs, but this will probably show up somewhere in the world.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
If you really want Control Weather, an Artificer can craft an Orb of Pleasant Breezes (SBGp81). It perpetually keeps a 2-mile radius "mild and pleasant, no matter the time of year."

What is the SBG? I can’t find anything for that acronym or for this orb.

Maat Mons

2021-02-18, 10:00 PM

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook

Quertus

2021-02-19, 01:09 AM

I lost the rest of a lengthy reply - maybe I'll recreate it later. For now,

What’s your source on this? Because this seems highly unlikely.

Wikipedia. Definition of "temperate" climate. Lists range of "average" winter temperatures to qualify. Since the "60's" are in the acceptable *average*, that means that over 70 is clearly possible for a temperature zone winter day. Probably higher. Unlike my signature academia mage, I generally *hate* and *loathe* research.

Reading comprehension isn't my strong suit, but… "The Köppen climate classification defines a climate as "temperate" when the mean temperature is above −3 °C (26.6 °F) but below 18 °C (64.4 °F) in the coldest month."

Quertus

2021-02-19, 01:42 PM

Two little additions (for now - I'll try and recreate my larger response later):

Kudos to Nifft and smasher0404 for recognizing my "city under siege" as being from d20 Sword and Sorcery scarred lands.

Now I'm wondering just how a Walker in the Waste might be a great neighbor to have in this scenario.

Palanan

2021-02-19, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
Stronghold Builder's Guidebook

Thanks for clarifying the acronym, for some reason it wasn’t clicking for me.

I’ll have to think about that orb. A mild winter’s day still wouldn’t be good for most crops, but worth considering.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Also, in a temperate climate, by definition, the *average* winter temperature can reach almost 70°.

Originally Posted by Quertus
…over 70 is clearly possible for a temperature zone winter day.

You’ve changed your claims here—from your original claim that the average winter temperature is 70°, to a new statement that 70° is possible. Those are very different things.

At any rate, it’s not especially relevant twice over: first, because the spell isn’t available to casters in this scenario; and second, as mentioned, it wouldn’t create conditions amenable to agriculture.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Kudos to Nifft and smasher0404 for recognizing my "city under siege" as being from d20 Sword and Sorcery scarred lands.

Good on them for figuring it out. Not familiar with D20 S&S, glad it could be identified.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Now I'm wondering just how a Walker in the Waste might be a great neighbor to have in this scenario.

In practical terms, this is probably far more niche than the PrCs that smasher0404 brought up. As I envision it, the city in this scenario is in an Alpine-style valley, with no Sandstorm-style wastes for thousands of miles in any direction.

More broadly, the Walker’s Greater Drought ability is a pinpoint on the landscape, and if a Walker tried that on top of a hundred-foot snowpack the results could be…amusing, at least from a safe distance.

On the other hand, a Walker who goes full dry lich might declare a personal crusade against the Great Ice and begin an endless journey attempting to melt all the ice in the world. That’s just comedy gold.

Angrith

2021-02-19, 02:43 PM

Thanks for clarifying the acronym, for some reason it wasn’t clicking for me.

I’ll have to think about that orb. A mild winter’s day still wouldn’t be good for most crops, but worth considering.

You’ve changed your claims here—from your original claim that the average winter temperature is 70°, to a new statement that 70° is possible. Those are very different things.

At any rate, it’s not especially relevant twice over: first, because the spell isn’t available to casters in this scenario; and second, as mentioned, it wouldn’t create conditions amenable to agriculture.

Emphasis mine.

I hate to be the pedantic one, but this is a DnD forum, so... Winter wheat, a common U.S. crop actually requires temperatures between 40-50 'F for maturation (freezing is 32 'F for the metric folks), and can survive temperatures as low as 27 'F near indefinitely. The crop can also survive brief periods down to as low as -15 'F (-26 'C). Provided you can raise the temperature to just above freezing, well within what I think most people consider a mild winter's day, then you could grow food. In fact, with a few inches of snow on the ground, the crop can survive as low as -22 'F due to snowfall insulating the roots. My source is North Dakota State University (https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/crops/winter-wheat-articles/winter-wheat-survival).

So the Orb of Pleasant breezes should be enough for agriculture. And speaking as someone in a temperate climate, our average winter temperatures are in the 40s 'F, so even the average temperature is enough for winter wheat. A "mild" day might be in the 50s 'F (or even 60s 'F).

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-19, 04:11 PM

Emphasis mine.

I hate to be the pedantic one, but this is a DnD forum, so... Winter wheat, a common U.S. crop actually requires temperatures between 40-50 'F for maturation (freezing is 32 'F for the metric folks), and can survive temperatures as low as 27 'F near indefinitely. The crop can also survive brief periods down to as low as -15 'F (-26 'C). Provided you can raise the temperature to just above freezing, well within what I think most people consider a mild winter's day, then you could grow food. In fact, with a few inches of snow on the ground, the crop can survive as low as -22 'F due to snowfall insulating the roots. My source is North Dakota State University (https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/crops/winter-wheat-articles/winter-wheat-survival).

So the Orb of Pleasant breezes should be enough for agriculture. And speaking as someone in a temperate climate, our average winter temperatures are in the 40s 'F, so even the average temperature is enough for winter wheat. A "mild" day might be in the 50s 'F (or even 60s 'F).

There might still be another practical problem: how many people will that 2 mile radius feed? Someone PLEASE check my math on this: I got 8042.47 acres for the Orb of Pleasant Breezes. Nearly every Google entry disagreed on the number of acres it takes to feed a person for a year but I’m going to go with this site’s estimate (https://www.farmlandlp.com/2012/01/one-acre-feeds-a-person/#.YDAlFy08Lmo) of one acre per person. So we’d need (assuming half an Orb is not doable) at least three of them to feed everyone in our vault of 20,000, assuming all of the area covered is viable farmland. Serious question, is that a likelihood?

Palanan

2021-02-19, 05:10 PM

Originally Posted by Angrith
Winter wheat, a common U.S. crop actually requires temperatures between 40-50 'F for maturation (freezing is 32 'F for the metric folks), and can survive temperatures as low as 27 'F near indefinitely.

Actually, this is great. I thought of winter wheat earlier, but didn’t follow up on it, so I’m glad you did.

Note that in the comments you quoted, I’m responding to two separate things—the (unavailable) Control Weather spell, and the Orb from the Stronghold Builder’s Guide. When I was referring to "conditions amenable to agriculture," I specifically meant the results of a thaw from Control Weather, since thawing a hundred-foot snowpack would lead to massive flooding and saturated ground.

Now, it’s worth asking if winter wheat is a relatively modern development, or if strains were cultivated in the Middle Ages or Renaissance. I don't know much about the origins of crops, but I’m glad you brought it up.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
So we’d need (assuming half an Orb is not doable) at least three of them to feed everyone in our vault of 20,000, assuming all of the area covered is viable farmland. Serious question, is that a likelihood?

I’d never heard of this item before this thread, so I haven’t really thought about incorporating it into any game or setting I’ve ever dealt with. I’m not sure it’s automatic that every city would have one—but if a city does have one, why would they need three?

Now, I could see these items suddenly flying off the shelves once the divinations start rolling in about the thousand-year winter just around the corner—which could make hunting them a major goal for a great many cities and principalities. I could see kingdoms and empires competing to acquire as many as possible, to create as many acres of potential farmland as possible.

So, I think “collect all the orbs” would be top of the to-do list for major powers around the world, so I would expect a lot of scrying, teleporting and high-level spellspats over these things. The low- to mid-level casters of this particular city would probably recognize they were outclassed, and wouldn’t try to compete in the hard-magic environment around these orbs.

And there’s another complication: if this city did have an orb, and tried to use it to create 8000 acres of farmland, that’s eight thousand acres that would need to be worked by farmhands. A quick search turns up an estimate of four workers per acre, so the area within the orb would need 32,000 workers, or more than the city's entire population. And that would still only feed one-third of the city’s population.

Beyond this—assuming that druidic spells can make up for the workforce problems—that’s eight thousand acres that not only needs to be worked, but defended from all the refugees, bandits, mercenary companies and assorted riffraff that will be showing up, not to mention the cold-adapted creatures.

A circle with a two-mile radius has a circumference of 12.5 miles, which is a lot of fortification to build. While Stone Shape and Wall of Stone could help with that, it still needs to be defended—and twelve miles of ramparts will call for a lot of defenders. Between the required numbers of the workforce and the defenders, I think that will far exceed the available population.

And even if they made a go of it, I’d say it’s more than likely that the defenses would be repeatedly breached and the crops stolen, or even burned by one group of marauders to deny them to rival groups of marauders. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a feature found elsewhere in the world after the catastrophe—abandoned cities with abandoned defensive rings, centered on where an orb used to be.

smasher0404

2021-02-19, 05:50 PM

I’d never heard of this item before this thread, so I haven’t really thought about incorporating it into any game or setting I’ve ever dealt with. I’m not sure it’s automatic that every city would have one—but if a city does have one, why would they need three?

Now, I could see these items suddenly flying off the shelves once the divinations start rolling in about the thousand-year winter just around the corner—which could make hunting them a major goal for a great many cities and principalities. I could see kingdoms and empires competing to acquire as many as possible, to create as many acres of potential farmland as possible.

So, I think “collect all the orbs” would be top of the to-do list for major powers around the world, so I would expect a lot of scrying, teleporting and high-level spellspats over these things. The low- to mid-level casters of this particular city would probably recognize they were outclassed, and wouldn’t try to compete in the hard-magic environment around these orbs.

And there’s another complication: if this city did have an orb, and tried to use it to create 8000 acres of farmland, that’s eight thousand acres that would need to be worked by farmhands. A quick search turns up an estimate of four workers per acre, so the area within the orb would need 32,000 workers, or more than the city's entire population. And that would still only feed one-third of the city’s population.

Beyond this—assuming that druidic spells can make up for the workforce problems—that’s eight thousand acres that not only needs to be worked, but defended from all the refugees, bandits, mercenary companies and assorted riffraff that will be showing up, not to mention the cold-adapted creatures.

A circle with a two-mile radius has a circumference of 12.5 miles, which is a lot of fortification to build. While Stone Shape and Wall of Stone could help with that, it still needs to be defended—and twelve miles of ramparts will call for a lot of defenders. Between the required numbers of the workforce and the defenders, I think that will far exceed the available population.

And even if they made a go of it, I’d say it’s more than likely that the defenses would be repeatedly breached and the crops stolen, or even burned by one group of marauders to deny them to rival groups of marauders. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a feature found elsewhere in the world after the catastrophe—abandoned cities with abandoned defensive rings, centered on where an orb used to be.

Assuming there is someone capable of crafting it on hand (Artificer, Wu Jen, Shugenja, or another caster class cheesing the 6th level version of the spell onto their list), crafting the item only requires about a month of time, unspecified physical materials, and a sufficient supply of experience points to create an orb. Assuming the community can preserve enough materials for the orbs (stuff it in a cave under heavy guard), any of the crafters can create 11 of these orbs before food supply becomes a concern for communities (assuming it takes a year to get the agriculture ball rolling). Notably, both experience points (and materials), can be supplemented with human(oid) sacrifices via the sacrifice rules in Book of Vile Darkness (pg. 27) to create Dark Craft Experience and Dark Craft Gold through either an evil crafter, or the aid of an evil crafter.

Any sufficiently powerful sacrificer (capable of making the DC 50 Knowledge Religion check) can produce the effects of a Wish spell for the sacrifice which can by the listed effects:

1) Potentially create the orb directly via "Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item."
2) Conjure the raw materials needed to create the orb via "Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value."
3) Provide the necessary Control Weather spell for crafting via "Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you."

Notably, a 12th level evil Cleric likely has 15 ranks in Knowledge(Religion), a +20 insight bonus from Guidance of the Avatar can be applied (a 3rd level cleric spell). Before any intelligence modifier, or sacrifice-specific modifiers (of which they can easily get a few), they already have a 25% chance of being able to get that Wish spell (although they are limited to a singular Wish via this method).

Palanan

2021-02-19, 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by smasher0404
Notably, both experience points (and materials), can be supplemented with human(oid) sacrifices via the sacrifice r—

*record scratch*

Thanks, but no sacrifices in this particular city.

That said, it might be an approach taken somewhere else.

Originally Posted by smasher0404
Assuming there is someone capable of crafting it on hand (Artificer, Wu Jen, Shugenja, or another caster class cheesing the 6th level version of the spell onto their list), crafting the item only requires about a month of time, unspecified physical materials, and a sufficient supply of experience points to create an orb. Assuming the community can preserve enough materials for the orbs (stuff it in a cave under heavy guard), any of the crafters can create 11 of these orbs before food supply becomes a concern for communities (assuming it takes a year to get the agriculture ball rolling).

This is interesting, but two challenges occur.

First, if the city can’t find enough workers to work and defend the 8000 arable acres created by one orb, they’re going to have a real problem with ten more orbs. That’s another 80,000 acres requiring 320,000 workers, which is an immense number of people. It’s sixteen times the population of the original city.

Also, if these orbs are the hot property I’m assuming they’ll be, then a concentration of eleven of them in one spot will be a target for anyone out there hoping to add to their collection. Odds are a high-level team will pop in, take the orbs and vanish—and probably take the crafter as well.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-19, 06:23 PM

Now, it’s worth asking if winter wheat is a relatively modern development, or if strains were cultivated in the Middle Ages or Renaissance.

Winter wheat isn’t the only thing that grows in colder conditions. (https://www.seedsnow.com/blogs/news/fall-and-winter-crops) So if it isn’t available something else could be.

As an unrelated side note I now understand why Skyrim has the crops it does. :smallbiggrin:

Beyond this—assuming that druidic spells can make up for the workforce problems—that’s eight thousand acres that not only needs to be worked, but defended from all the refugees, bandits, mercenary companies and assorted riffraff that will be showing up, not to mention the cold-adapted creatures.

For working the fields I was looking at permanent Animate Object but that apparently just makes the objects in question attack. :smallyuk: Unseen Servant maybe?

Re: walls, you’re going to need to defend against things that can fly - down to and including things like crows and sparrows, if nothing is growing outside those circles. I thought about things like deer, but with an army of hungry omnivorous humans (or whatever) they’d probably get eaten by the besiegers.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-19, 06:24 PM

smasher0404

2021-02-19, 06:35 PM

This is interesting, but two challenges occur.

First, if the city can’t find enough workers to work and defend the 8000 arable acres created by one orb, they’re going to have a real problem with ten more orbs. That’s another 80,000 acres requiring 320,000 workers, which is an immense number of people. It’s sixteen times the population of the original city.

Also, if these orbs are the hot property I’m assuming they’ll be, then a concentration of eleven of them in one spot will be a target for anyone out there hoping to add to their collection. Odds are a high-level team will pop in, take the orbs and vanish—and probably take the crafter as well.

I mean if a high-level team of casters exists that can overwhelm the defenses put in place by your own 12th-level casters (which you should absolutely be employing in defense/aid of crafting your only sources of sources agriculture) and would, then you are going to be screwed either way. Any permanent solution you could come up with that requires any specialization could have the required specialists taken away by said team. Could it happen? Sure, but any city where they are unable to defend against such a team would also be unlikely to survive with most methods.

Also, you don't need to keep all 11 orb (nor should you), by your calculations only 3 are needed to maintain enough arable land to feed your population (probably less if you consider the assistance of druidic magic such as Plant Growth). The other 8 that your crafter can make in that time frame can be traded with other cities at a premium for materials/goods/services that your city is unable to/unwilling to produce with your own resources (such as spells cast by specialized casters that you don't have, commissioning disposable labor such as constructs and undead to overcome manpower shortages, physical materials that are not native to your prior climate etc.).

Harrow

2021-02-19, 07:43 PM

I don't know how you feel about setting specific material, but the Mark of Storms could be useful here. A 6th level half-elf could pick up the Lesser Mark of Storms, which gives Sleet Storm once a day with the option to "create either warm rain or freezing sleet." Combined with one of those weather orbs, you could get some real agriculture going. With a 9th level half-elf, you're looking at the Greater Mark of Storms which gives... Control Weather. Likely pointless, as it's hard to get dragonmarks approved outside Eberron, but it seemed worthy of discussion.

A quick search turns up an estimate of four workers per acre, so the area within the orb would need 32,000 workers, or more than the city's entire population.

You, uh, might want to check that estimate. If it takes an acre to feed a person (and, I could be misremembering, but I believe that's a modern estimate including things like chemically advanced fertilizers and pesticides) and it takes four workers to farm an acre (which, I can guarantee you, it doesn't. An acre is not that large) then no amount of farmland could sustain the population.

Palanan

2021-02-19, 08:17 PM

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
For working the fields I was looking at permanent Animate Object but that apparently just makes the objects in question attack. Unseen Servant maybe?

Plant Growth will be essential here, and I’m thinking druids with multiple castings of Wood Wose could at least help with some aspects of the labor. A druid with four Wood Woses could plant four rows of seed simultaneously, although the druid would have to walk with them so they won’t wink out. And Unseen Servant would definitely help with winnowing and other simple, stationary tasks such as pounding, hulling, churning, etc.

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth
They can't all be in one spot and do their jobs. They need to be gridded out, about four miles apart each (they affect a 2 mile radius, so the ideal arrangement is basically a hex grid, with the corner-to-corner dimension of each hex being 4 miles).

I’m aware of this. I was responding to smasher’s comment about crafting them.

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth
You'll want to guard your borders, but you've guarding a perimeter and getting supported by an area. From a guarding perspective, the more of them, the better.

In theory, yes, but in practice there are issues with the infrastructure and numbers required for the guarding.

Guarding the area made arable by a dozen orbs will most likely require kingdom-level resources, in terms of casters and some form of standing army, which won’t be feasible for a single city.

Originally Posted by smasher0404
Any permanent solution you could come up with that requires any specialization could have the required specialists taken away by said team. Could it happen? Sure, but any city where they are unable to defend against such a team would also be unlikely to survive with most methods.

Exactly this. It’s going to be a continental cagefight over resources, which will probably lead to the cat-and-mouse strategy I mentioned earlier.

In the case of this city, the local casters know they’re mice. Their best bet is to keep their heads down, do what they can for their own community and try not to attract any attention.

Originally Posted by smasher0404
Also, you don't need to keep all 11 orb (nor should you), by your calculations only 3 are needed to maintain enough arable land to feed your population….

Angrith’s calculations, actually. :smallsmile:

And yes, only three orbs to provide the arable land, but no orbs to provide the workforce and defense force, which exceed the city’s total population. Even if my estimates are off (see Harrow's comment below) it'll likely require more people than the community has available.

Originally Posted by Harrow
With a 9th level half-elf, you're looking at the Greater Mark of Storms which gives... Control Weather. Likely pointless, as it's hard to get dragonmarks approved outside Eberron, but it seemed worthy of discussion.

Definitely worth mentioning. I have close to zero experience with Eberron and don’t know a thing about dragonmarks, so I never factor them in.

Probably wouldn’t include them here, since I think dragonmarks are tied into specific aspects of the Eberron setting. Even so, glad you mentioned them.

Originally Posted by Harrow
You, uh, might want to check that estimate. If it takes an acre to feed a person (and, I could be misremembering, but I believe that's a modern estimate including things like chemically advanced fertilizers and pesticides) and it takes four workers to farm an acre (which, I can guarantee you, it doesn't. An acre is not that large) then no amount of farmland could sustain the population.

Yup, noticed that. I’m very open to more historically grounded estimates of workforce per acre. My numbers are based on a very quick search and could be completely off, so better numbers are more than welcome.

Quertus

2021-02-19, 10:16 PM

Not interested in playing the mice. So here's what some cool cats might do:

Scry and fry (boring).

Scry and abduct.

Scry and loot.

Decanter of Endless Water (or abducted Walker in the Wastes) flood the enclaves. Bonus points if coupled with creating a Null Magic Zone there, to prevent Stone Shape / Disintegrate style escape plans.

Drop Cloud Kill (with metamagics) down the air holes.

Nurgle some disease into those confined spaces. Bonus points if coupled with creating a Null Magic Zone there, to prevent even attempting Cure Disease.

Shadow Apocalypse / Wight Armageddon.

Sell the Drow / Illithids / whoever a map to your town (pretty unnecessary, because Divinations, but still).

Control Weather for some really bad weather.

Drop a mountain on you (nobody could stop it before, so it's clearly a winning tactic). Bonus points if it's made of petrified beings, with Contingent "Rock to Mud".

Nether of my civilizations would survive all these. Anyone else?

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-19, 10:21 PM

You’re in charge of a small city and its surrounding countryside, and the omens couldn’t be worse. A great mountain from above the sky is predicted to plunge down to earth, followed by a smothering darkness and a winter that may last a thousand years.

Everyone has been receiving the same news, so it’s every community for themselves; there is nowhere on earth that will escape the impending calamity. Your city is more fortunate in two respects: you’re somewhat isolated in a steep mountain valley, and there are extensive caves nearby.

You have a modest contingent of clerics, wizards and druids up to 12th level, food reserves that will last roughly two years, and a city of twenty thousand terrified citizens with nowhere to run.

All of the more exotic escape options are right out—no wishes or miracles, no plane shifting or demiplane hideaways. Somehow you have to survive right there in your own secluded valley. You have only weeks to prepare before the catastrophe strikes and the snowdrifts are two hundred feet high. What’s your plan to survive?
Travel further north to a crater with a steam engine inside? (https://www.frostpunkgame.com/)

Jokes aside, you have access to almost every 6th-level spells that doesn't let you just ignore the question. Critically, this includes permanency[/irl]. For a couple thousand XP (a small price when the lives of everyone you know and a metropolis besides are on the line), [url=http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=4544.msg63345#msg63345]any of these spells (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm) on the cleric, druid, or sor/wiz lists can be made permanent. Three spells that jump out immediately are Darrson's fiery furnace, wall of fire, and wall of magma, all for the same reason—convection exists.

DFF probably costs 1,000 or 1,500 XP to make permanent, compared to 2,000 for WoF (and probably WoM). So if DFF can heat up more than 50-75% the space of WoF, it's definitely a better choice—it saves more 5th-level slots for permanency, on top of being more efficient XP-wise.

DFF heats up to one 10-foot cube per level (12,000 cubic feet for a 12th-level caster), dealing 1d6 damage to anyone in that area. A WoF is 20 feet long per level and 20 feet high (4,800 sq ft at 12th level), dealing 2d4 damage to anyone within 10 feet of one side and 1d4 within another 10 feet (48,000 cubic feet each). A WoM can be up to one 5-foot square per level (300 sq feet at 12th level), but heats both directions, 2d6 within 10 feet and 1d6 within 20 (6,000 cubic feet each).

A WoF heats up four times as much space as a DFF or WoM, but only in 20-foot-high increments; the WoM would be competitive, if it wasn't even higher-level, and the DFF is worth considering. Of course, none of these areas are places you'd want to live; it's just a way of roughly estimating how much useful heat each would produce. I'm not sure how to effectively channel that into a medieval-style city; that's a problem for engineers.
A few dozen WoF's could surround a city a mile across. This wouldn't be enough for everyone—the population density would be around 25k per square mile, fairly dense even for modern cities. Then again, pre-car Rome crammed something like a million people in less than 14 square kilometers; it wouldn't be impossible, I suppose.
Anyways, heating the whole city this way isn't terribly practical (not the least of which because most of the city would be really far from the walls), but it should be well within the capabilities of a "modest contingent" or 12th-level casters to create a decent-sized heated area, or at least enough epic permanently-blazing fires that keeping everyone warm is trivial.

I'm a bit disappointed that the obvious, core-only answer is by far the best, but...oh well.

I guess control temperature from Frostburn should be on the list too, but A. it lasts one hour per level (and so would need to be recast twice a day) and B. the wording on the area is vague but it sounds like it only affects 20 cubic feet per level (ie 240 cubic feet, a sphere about 7 feet from edge to edge), centered on the caster. If it's supposed to affect everything within 20 feet per level, that's quite another matter entirely! That would cover ~181,000 square feet, without subjecting anywhere to fire damage, a small price to pay for .

Combine permanent walls of fire with sweaters and the heat issue should be solved. Next we have the basic necessities of life, food and water. I'll assume that any city of significant size already has a source of fresh water that can be used as long as it didn't freeze (and gee, we have solutions for that). So that leaves food.

Goodberry (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/goodberry.htm) is a 1st-level druid spell that imbues 2d4 berries with one meal and one hit point's worth of magical energy. Each casting could sustain about 2-3 people (depending on how thin you wanted to cut your rations), or more if you can supplement that with hunting/fishing/agriculture. Create food and water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) is much better, making enough food to feed three humans per level (that is, 36 humans) for a whole day. A 12th-level cleric has at least a dozen non-domain spell slots of 3+ level, while a 12th-level druid has at least 21 non-orison spell slots. This increases with high Wisdom scores; let's assume an 18 (they've had three ASIs, after all), giving the cleric up to 14 CFaW's and the druid up to 25 Gb's, feeding ~500 and ~60 people respectively. So, um, the druids should probably be the ones casting those walls of fire. Since it would take fully 40 high-level clerics to feed the entire town, we'll need to supplement this with traditional food production (while training acolytes, ideally).

Speaking of food production, there's one spell worth discussing. Plant growth (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/plantGrowth.htm)'s Enrichment mode can affect all fields within half a mile, aka ~500 acres. One casting only increases yields by a third, but it's not clear what the effect of casting the spell multiple times on the same plot of land would do. (Unless it's subject to the normal rules for stacking spells, but it doesn't provide a numerical bonus, so it's arguable that RAW doesn't apply.) If I was the DM, I'd probably let the spell stack somewhat; if I was a setting-builder, I'd say repeated casting of plant growth would let you harvest multiple crops per year, possibly per month. With enough druids, you'd be limited by how quickly farmers can sow and reap the crops, not your druids; even so, it probably makes sense to improve the land in other ways (such as irrigation, permanent lights, and especially heating).
Obviously, this kind of intensive farming would require a lot of labor, but we've got 20,000 souls crammed into this city and statistically speaking a lot of them are going to be farmers. The biggest problems are social rather than practical.

We're also going to need plenty of fertilizer to keep the soil healthy, but there's probably a way to use these high-level spells to make that happen. (This might be the one time someone would have a use for that wall of crap spell Dungweller the Brown invented...)
On that note, using the Overgrowth mode of plant growth and burning it between crops, a la slash-and-burn, probably won't do the trick. Each casting of that spell covers ~0.2 acres (if you pick the semicircle mode; the others cover slightly less area), and a 12th-level druid with 18 Wisdom can only cast it 14 times per day, for just under three acres per day. By my calculations, it would take 180 druid-days to completely rejuvenate the entire field this way. A plausibly-sized six-druid team spending all their magic on this would still take a month to overgrow the entire area, and at that rate you'll probably be fine just switching to legumes every second or third growth period.

Anyways, if we have our heat and food situations sorted out, all we have left are social and fantasy issues, and while those are at least as interesting as the food and heat, we don't have any information on them in the quoted post. Though having some high-level spell slots set aside for divinations is a good idea.

The underdark wouldn’t be significantly affected by this kind of disaster.
Fair point. I didn't consider the fantasy resources available even with those constraints. Still, I'm not sure how practical underdark hunting/farming would be if you have a couple dozen high-level casters and thousands of low-level refugees. Even with a more typical level spread, with hundreds of mid-level adventurers, I'm not sure there would be enough people to sustain the entire community. Maybe if you used this ragtag company to clear out some fertile subterranean land and then patrol the border? You've got two years, after all...though this plan would require that we somehow get some crops that can grow underground, without sunlight, with cold winds wafting in from aboveground.

Yes, but you fail to consider that 12th castors place the city well within the means to extraplanar markets via 12 level characters using planeshift (cleric 5) and teleport (wizard 5).
Extraplanar markets, on the other hand, are extremely reasonable to not consider, considering that plane shift was explicitly banned. Beyond that, liquidating a million GP worth of goods from the possessions of 20,000 refugees or cityfolk is...implausible. You'd basically have to take everything of value from every man, woman, and child in the city, possibly including many of the inhabitants, to sell it for some magical gunk that might eventually let some of them live better if they A. survive that long and B. trust these people. Neither of those can be guaranteed. How well do you think your casters would fare against riots? (And before you say "fireball," keep in mind how poorly soldiers shooting into protestors went in the early modern era...or other times, but those probably qualify as political.)

Now, here's the setting-breaking part. An Everfull Larder costs 15,000 gp. A common meal costs 0.3 gp. At the 60,000 meals rate a single Everfull Larder outputs 18,000 gp worth of meals per day. It literally pays for itself, plus interest, inside one day.
This does, of course, require someone to have 15,000 gp worth of capital, a supplier for a fairly obscure magic item, and a market. There aren't many places in a medieval-style world where you could sell 60,000 meals per day, or even 1,000, whatever your prices.

Continual Flame could be used as a substitute, if self-resetting traps are not-kosher and desert plants that don't have high sunlight requirement can be found.
Note that continual flame requires ruby dust. You'll need to set up serious mining operations if you want to illuminate anything more than a garden with that.

Stronghold Builder's Guide has a magic item called Everfull Larder. It conjures enough food for 5 people each time it's opened. And it can be opened an unlimited number of times per day. The only upper limit on on how many people you can feed out of one of those is how fast you can open the door, get in, grab food, get out again, close the door, and repeat. Unless it's one of those larders that's a cabinet rather than a room. Then skip the part about getting in and out.
Excellent point. Everfull larders would be pretty great.
It's not mentioned as consuming stronghold spaces, so it's probably more of a cabinet than a room. If we assume it takes a couple minutes for the larder-unloader to properly unload the larder, 150 people can be fed per hour, or 3,600 per day if you keep someone at it 24/7. It's not clear whether the food produced is enough for five people to have a meal, or to survive an entire day; this makes the difference between being fine with seven and needing seventeen.

True, as worded it’s not especially well-thought-out. Were there ever any errata or updates for 3.5?
I'd be surprised; a ladder-splitting business is more practical.

I can't help but goggle at the number of people who look at a scenario involving massive population loss, where the gods will be weakened by the lack of followers, and respond with, "let's solve this by making more Clerics!" :smallconfused: :smallamused:

I expect most gods will die off during this fiasco.
Clerics can worship abstract non-anthropomorphized forces, such as light, elemental earth, or hand puppets. Reject the gods, mortals; you have nothing to lose but your chains. (Well, and the millions of people dying of cold, but the gods weren't gonna save them either way.)

1) lots of ways. Cloak of Resistance +5 (placed over the statue's shoulders shortly before "soft"), Fate of One, probably some alchemical mixture or another...
Nitric acid, maybe?
Okay, someone else referenced Dr. Stone before me, but not so specifically.

Assuming one had a suitable Cleric with the Warforged Domain, the city could teleport their clerics to the Waste, offend the Anhydruts enough to force them to come out of Mechanus (exact method would depend on the DM), command them using the Warforged Domain, and then use their spell-like ability to effectively artificially maintain a livable (albeit uncomfortable) enviroment.
I love any plan that involves deliberately tricking agents of the Outer Planes into doing your work for you. It's so Coyote.

So, ½ population working, only ½ of the time (off weekends, holidays, sick days, etc), "food by outsider" consumes 21/29 of the minimal baseline productivity of your civilization.

Possible, but painful.
Considering how many historical civilizations got by with ~27/30 of their baseline productivity being food? Not really.

3.5's Polymorph line does change types. But then, a dragon polymorphed into a humanoid produces half-dragon children, so it does seem that seed is largely unchanged.
I assume that's where dhampirs come from.

Bumblebees do great in greenhouses.
lightbulb
searches for a "wall of glass" spell
smashes lightbulb in irritation
There's a wall of ooze, a wall of salt, a wall of freaking scales, but not glass?

Other than a hungry basilisk, who would bother breaking statues?
Dammit, I'm trying to limit my Dr. Stone references!
Season 2's pretty good so far though.

*record scratch*
Thanks, but no sacrifices in this particular city.
I understand that some people think humanity will be willing to abandon its social norms and morals as soon as the going gets tough, coldly willing to do whatever it takes to survive, and I desperately hope that I'm never trapped in a crisis with those people.

EDIT: This article (https://acoup.blog/2020/08/06/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-actually-farming/) references winter wheat being planted in antiquity, so I think its fair to say it'd be available.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-20, 07:54 AM

Yup, noticed that. I’m very open to more historically grounded estimates of workforce per acre. My numbers are based on a very quick search and could be completely off, so better numbers are more than welcome.

Per the Wikipedia article for ‘acre’:

Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, an acre was conceived of as the area of land that could be ploughed in one day by a team of eight oxen.

So about one worker per person fed if you ploughed the whole thing in one day, assuming you could get the equivalent of eight oxen for each of them.

But given that this is a year’s supply of food being grown in that area and people don’t generally eat their entire year’s rations all at once, you could probably spread it out over a week or two, thus splitting the number of workers you’d need and saving some for defense.

Also is some of that farmland being used for livestock instead of crops? Not sure what the shepherd-to-sheep-herd ratio is.

lightbulb
searches for a "wall of glass" spell
smashes lightbulb in irritation
There's a wall of ooze, a wall of salt, a wall of freaking scales, but not glass?

Why not Wall of Force? Make your greenhouses out of that. Spell description says it’s invisible, just put your heating spells inside of it. Might take some fudging for things like doors; what I’d try is to repurpose a barn or shed or other building that’s mostly outer walls, knock off the roof and maybe the upper walls and replace them with the spells, pack insulation around the edges. You want to get fancy Wall of Stone/Stone Shape the foundation and then build in things like irrigation trenches, an empty space under the floor so you can heat it non-magically (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondol), whatever you can mold.

Or maybe Fabricate glass panes; they don’t have to be perfect just let light through, and then you could skip the XP cost for Permanency on all the Walls of Force.

Asmotherion

2021-02-20, 09:08 AM

Get as many herbivor animals as possible inside the citty, and have them breed. Most of the townpeople who have no class levels will be farmers.

Get as many seeds as possible; Plant everything, and have the Local druids use Overgrowth on them (Both versions of the spell). This will feed the animals, and provide wheat etc. Every harvest, plant half the consumable seeds, and use the rest for consumption. They will also Move Earth the ground around the boarders of the town with multiple castings of Move Earth together with the Wizards. This shall put the town around 100 feet underground.

Then, wall of stone will be used multiple times to create a dome above the citty and walls to support the sides, as well as stairs that lead above the citty. Some slides will be made on the dome, that lead to a series of holes. This holes will have 100 feet tubes, connecting the surface of the dome to the citty bellow it, and valves at the end. The base of the Dome, will have many oppen sections for oxygen to flow in the citty. At the center of the dome, a multi-layer of Permanent Walls of Fire will be casted, to act as an artificial Sun to provide the citty with the necessary heat and the plants with all the nourishment they need. The Heat of the Wall of Fire will heat the dome as an oven, melting the snow/ice that forms on it's top, and providing hot water for the citty. Using the hot water, modern plumbing is conceivable to be created. Finally, a large sewer system under the town will lead the "contaminated water" in a second, independant underground chamber (again, applications of Move Earth and Wall of Stone).

Quertus

2021-02-20, 09:35 AM

Let's have the cats add the classic meme: the floor is lava (via PaO). That should kill off most settlements :smallcool: Not so good for looting, though.

A white dragon/remorhaz/anything large enough to decide that a cave system big enough to hold a town of 20,000 would make an awesome new lair just as soon as it got rid of all those funny shaped rocks. If the statues get smashed out of ignorance rather than malice the people would still be dead. :smallfrown:

That is a problem.

Alternatively, if the statues remain undamaged but a huge tribe of goblins/pack of wolves/whatever has moved in by the time the contingency de-petrifies everyone, that could likewise be problematic.

For all anyone knows, those statues could reanimate at any minute, so safer to break them while it’s easy.

Did I miss a memo here? I thought that the idea was to manually release them - did someone somehow add Contingency to the plan?

Because never have I witnessed an adventuring party see a bunch of statues, and suddenly start smashing them because they were worried that they could spontaneously reanimate at any moment.

Ooo. *makes note*

:smallbiggrin:

I suspect the few weeks available before the apocalypse hits would be insufficient to convince a living populace to set aside a lifetime of conditioning against the undead to reanimate their dead relatives. Maybe decades or centuries in, but not soon enough for the initial craziness of trying to convince the townspeople to go along with the survival plans.

(I’m assuming a town of 20,000 would have an extensive enough graveyard and access to enough onyx that the issue of supply for making lots of undead wouldn’t be an issue.)

Immediately? No, this is long-term PR plan.

Also, not all undead are Wee Jas hipsters - some are more "god of (karmic) Justice" approved variants. He tried to kill you? He will serve as your immortal shield. He tried to burn your crops? He will toil forever in your fields.

Convincing people to animate bandits for great justice is an intermediate step towards building a brighter future.

Plus the general population knowing they’re effectively trapped and only a tiny handful of people can unblock the exit...I can see it causing morale problems. :/

Muh Freedoms! … Yeah, I think it could, at that.

There could be any number of reasons why a crusade wasn’t mounted earlier. The likeliest is that the potential crusaders were otherwise occupied with more immediate threats, and the necropolis—despite its high opinion of itself—was rather far down on the target list.

Post-catastrophe, if the necropolis is known to have survived, then it might well be the last bastion of necromantic lore, which could make it worth crusading against. If there’s a chance that necromancy could finally be wiped from the world, that could be reason enough.

The city as I envision it is somewhat isolated in its valley, but not really on the edge of civilization per se.

In practical terms, this is probably far more niche than the PrCs that smasher0404 brought up. As I envision it, the city in this scenario is in an Alpine-style valley, with no Sandstorm-style wastes for thousands of miles in any direction.

I was actually picturing the necropolis as living on the border between the Elven Nation and the Great Wastes. It would explain why nobody had wiped them out (friendly neighborhood), and what the Elven liches were doing there.

You’ve changed your claims here—from your original claim that the average winter temperature is 70°, to a new statement that 70° is possible. Those are very different things.

Not at all!

Also, in a temperate climate, by definition, the *average* winter temperature can reach almost 70°.
Originally Posted by Quertus
…over 70 is clearly possible for a temperature zone winter day.

Let's look at what I said: the average is nearly 70, so over 70 is clearly possible. This is just simple extrapolation based on observations of temperature variance, and understanding simple math concepts like "average". Do I need to spell it out in more detail for you?

Actually, based on "Druids and bees", I probably do. We don't come at things from anywhere near the same starting point.

A quick Google search tells me that the temperature in Washington DC (presumably one of the best known places in what I think was labeled "temperature zone" on Wikipedia) in January of 2021 ranged from 33°-59°.

If the average being used was simply the midpoint of those numbers (it isn't, but to make the example simple), then the average temperature would be… 46°.

Yet, despite having *average* temperatures in the 40's, magically, temperatures in the 50's were *possible*. And I'd imagine that the *record* temperature for January weather in DC (ie, the *limit* for what is *known* to be possible) might be higher still.

So what is *possible* in a temperate zone (especially an area naturally a bit warmer than DC) could be quite comfortable, even in winter. And in summer could clearly allow for crop growth.

Have I explained it in a way that you can grok yet? I hope so, because I'm about out of easy ways to explain that those two sentences are *complimentary*, not *contradictory*.

At any rate, it’s not especially relevant twice over: first, because the spell isn’t available to casters in this scenario; and second, as mentioned, it wouldn’t create conditions amenable to agriculture.

Again, 1,000 years is a *long* time to gain levels. It'll be available.

Heck, if bandits come preemptively knocking, or someone commits an adventurer standard "home invasion", it could easily be available before the mountain drops.

More broadly, the Walker’s Greater Drought ability is a pinpoint on the landscape, and if a Walker tried that on top of a hundred-foot snowpack the results could be…amusing, at least from a safe distance.

Indeed.

On the other hand, a Walker who goes full dry lich might declare a personal crusade against the Great Ice and begin an endless journey attempting to melt all the ice in the world. That’s just comedy gold.

:smallbiggrin:

*record scratch*

Thanks, but no sacrifices in this particular city.

That said, it might be an approach taken somewhere else.

Actually… with standard alignment distribution, and the general hopelessness of the situation, I think that it would be bad role-playing for there to be even a single city this size where at least 1 of its citizens didn't go "lawless bandit" / dark side enough to be willing to attempt this path.

So, even if it wasn't state approved or optimized, the necropolis might, in fact, be the *only* city where its citizens were unconcerned enough that the practice never occurred.

This is interesting, but two challenges occur.

First, if the city can’t find enough workers to work and defend the 8000 arable acres created by one orb, they’re going to have a real problem with ten more orbs. That’s another 80,000 acres requiring 320,000 workers, which is an immense number of people. It’s sixteen times the population of the original city.

Also, if these orbs are the hot property I’m assuming they’ll be, then a concentration of eleven of them in one spot will be a target for anyone out there hoping to add to their collection. Odds are a high-level team will pop in, take the orbs and vanish—and probably take the crafter as well.

This brings up 2 additional ideas (one I've hinted at already): areas naturally warmed by magma ("hot springs"), and areas with a "natural" magical climate effect already in place.

Hard to "scry and loot" either of those.

Speaking of scry and snatch - I imagine someone grabbed up any "Walker in the Waste" resources. So let's add a new city… Wise Aridia, whose insightful loremongers traded <things most cities thought were useful> for a "useless" Cowl of Warding, to protect their most valued resource: their abducted Walker in the Waste, content to wage his invisible war against the encroaching ice. Or something like that.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-20, 10:01 AM

lightbulb
searches for a "wall of glass" spell
smashes lightbulb in irritation
There's a wall of ooze, a wall of salt, a wall of freaking scales, but not glass?

Why not Wall of Force? Make your greenhouses out of that. Spell description says it’s invisible, just put your heating spells inside of it. Might take some fudging for things like doors; what I’d try is to repurpose a barn or shed or other building that’s mostly outer walls, knock off the roof and maybe the upper walls and replace them with the spells, pack insulation around the edges. You want to get fancy Wall of Stone/Stone Shape the foundation and then build in things like irrigation trenches, an empty space under the floor so you can heat it non-magically (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondol), whatever you can mold.

Or maybe Fabricate glass panes; they don’t have to be perfect just let light through, and then you could skip the XP cost for Permanency on all the Walls of Force.

Glass is super-fragile, and Wall of Force explicitly requires it be vertical (so no roof). You want Invisible Spell (+0 metamagic, Cityscape) on Wall of Stone. Transparent, reasonably tough, can shape it however, no XP cost.

Get as many herbivor animals as possible inside the citty, and have them breed. Most of the townpeople who have no class levels will be farmers.

Get as many seeds as possible; Plant everything, and have the Local druids use Overgrowth on them (Both versions of the spell). This will feed the animals, and provide wheat etc. Every harvest, plant half the consumable seeds, and use the rest for consumption. They will also Move Earth the ground around the boarders of the town with multiple castings of Move Earth together with the Wizards. This shall put the town around 100 feet underground.

Then, wall of stone will be used multiple times to create a dome above the citty and walls to support the sides, as well as stairs that lead above the citty. Some slides will be made on the dome, that lead to a series of holes. This holes will have 100 feet tubes, connecting the surface of the dome to the citty bellow it, and valves at the end. The base of the Dome, will have many oppen sections for oxygen to flow in the citty. At the center of the dome, a multi-layer of Permanent Walls of Fire will be casted, to act as an artificial Sun to provide the citty with the necessary heat and the plants with all the nourishment they need. The Heat of the Wall of Fire will heat the dome as an oven, melting the snow/ice that forms on it's top, and providing hot water for the citty. Using the hot water, modern plumbing is conceivable to be created. Finally, a large sewer system under the town will lead the "contaminated water" in a second, independant underground chamber (again, applications of Move Earth and Wall of Stone).
Not a problem, but this will need regular inspections and repair: Lots of snow produces glaciers & ice sheets, which flow towards the empty areas. They melt fastest at the contact point with your hot dome, so the bottom of the stuff over your home melts first. This means you've got large chunks of ice held on by their sides, with progressively more of the ice being held on the side as more gets pushed in. Eventually, these large chunks fall, and you have several thousand pounds of ice falling 50 feet to hit the rock dome. The chunks then melt (the stone's hot) clearing the way for more chunks of ice to do the exact same thing. The rock dome has a lot of HP (it's several feet of ROCK), but the ice chunks will exceed it's hardness quite regularly. Which means you'll need to repair it regularly, or eventually have a very nasty cave-in.

Note that this effect also advertises your town's position ("calving" as it's called, is very, very loud).

Palanan

2021-02-20, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
Combine permanent walls of fire with sweaters and the heat issue should be solved.

Interesting analysis of the various wall spells. I’ve been thinking that in the cave system, there would be heating stations involving Heat Metal and tubs of water. Huge walls of fire, etc. might be overkill, certainly a safety hazard, and might also cause issues with oxygen in the caves.

And beyond this—if we assume a normal cave system with fine cracks and fissures leading up to the surface, then heated air rising through those cracks would create steam and telltale melting, which could be a giveaway that a refuge is somewhere below.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
Speaking of food production, there's one spell worth discussing. Plant growth's Enrichment mode can affect all fields within half a mile, aka ~500 acres.

Yup, I mentioned Plant Growth a little earlier, and I’ve been assuming it will be a factor in any kind of agriculture.

Originally Posted GreatWyrmGold
Obviously, this kind of intensive farming would require a lot of labor, but we've got 20,000 souls crammed into this city and statistically speaking a lot of them are going to be farmers.

Working out the exact labor requirements is certainly key to knowing whether this approach will work.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
We're also going to need plenty of fertilizer to keep the soil healthy….

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
…we've got 20,000 souls crammed into this city….

I see fertilizer as the flip side of waste management, which will be a real issue.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
There's a wall of ooze, a wall of salt, a wall of freaking scales, but not glass?

There’s your solution. A thin sheet of salt would essentially be frosted glass.

There is the issue of its dissolving in water (including snowmelt) but as an alternative, a very thin sheet of sandstone would also be translucent. Either way would still be extremely fragile, though.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
This article references winter wheat being planted in antiquity, so I think its fair to say it'd be available.

Excellent, thanks.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Also is some of that farmland being used for livestock instead of crops? Not sure what the shepherd-to-sheep-herd ratio is.

A good point. There would likely be oxen for plowing and some sheep, but I’ll need to look into that further.

Originally Posted by Asmotherion
Then, wall of stone will be used multiple times to create a dome above the citty and walls to support the sides….

Wizards aren’t architects or engineers, so they won’t have any special understanding of how to design load-bearing structures. And a dome like you’re suggesting would be radically different from anything they had done before, so there would be a lot of trial and error.

Beyond this, it would take a great many castings of Wall of Stone to create a dome over an entire city, probably too many to accomplish before the impact happens and the heavy snows begin. It might be part of a long-term plan to return to the city, but if so it will take more effort than the spellcasters may be able to afford. And of course it will attract attention from anyone or anything else moving through.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Alternatively, if the statues remain undamaged but a huge tribe of goblins/pack of wolves/whatever….

Originally Posted by Quertus
Because never have I witnessed an adventuring party see a bunch of statues, and suddenly start smashing them because they were worried that they could spontaneously reanimate at any moment.

We’re not talking about adventurers here; we’re talking about monsters, bandits, scavengers and marauders, anyone who might find their way in.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Do I need to spell it out in more detail for you?

Actually, based on "Druids and bees", I probably do.

This tone doesn’t help.

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth
You want Invisible Spell (+0 metamagic, Cityscape) on Wall of Stone. Transparent, reasonably tough, can shape it however, no XP cost.

If it works, this is an excellent solution.

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth
Lots of snow produces glaciers & ice sheets, which flow towards the empty areas. They melt fastest at the contact point with your hot dome….

Extremely good points here.

Also worth remembering that as glaciers flow, they drag along a carpet of stones on their underside, so there will be rocks and small boulders falling together with the ice chunks, as well as constantly scraping and gouging at the roof of the dome.

Asmotherion

2021-02-20, 11:38 AM

On Repairs; That seems logical. I don't expect the whole thing to keep operating on it's own.

On a defence system; I designed this with the sole purpose of surviving the winter. I could include a defence system if you want. I would however like to have an exact number of Casters for each level. Otherwise, "everyone spams magic missile" sounds like a solid deffance plan.

On knowing how to build it; That's just a matter of ranks in Architecture & Engineering, not only an Int skill, but also a class skill for a Wizard. I'm pretty sure a bunsh of people, each with over 12 ranks and an average +17 bonus in A&E will be able to figure it out, if not by taking 10, definitelly by taking 20.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-20, 12:33 PM

Glass is super-fragile, and Wall of Force explicitly requires it be vertical (so no roof). You want Invisible Spell (+0 metamagic, Cityscape) on Wall of Stone. Transparent, reasonably tough, can shape it however, no XP cost.

*looks it up* I’m not seeing anything in the description suggesting it wouldn’t work with Wall of Stone. But since Palanan mentioned Heat Metal what about Walls of Iron instead, and then combine them to deal with snow buildup blocking the sun? I admit to being unsure how to deal with the rust problem.

On knowing how to build it; That's just a matter of ranks in Architecture & Engineering, not only an Int skill, but also a class skill for a Wizard. I'm pretty sure a bunsh of people, each with over 12 ranks and an average +17 bonus in A&E will be able to figure it out, if not by taking 10, definitelly by taking 20.

On Architecture and Engineering, does it have to be the caster who makes the check? Because in a city of 20,000, I would think odds would be good someone would build new buildings for a living and have those ranks. Just hire them to do your design work, and have the casters do the heavy lifting.

Palanan

2021-02-20, 01:09 PM

Originally Posted by Asmotherion
That's just a matter of ranks in Architecture & Engineering, not only an Int skill, but also a class skill for a Wizard.

Is there a DC for building a stone dome over a city?

I’ve never heard of a stone dome over any city in any setting. There’s probably one somewhere, but not anywhere in the Realms or other settings that I’m familiar with.

So, this will be something completely new the spellcasters are attempting. That will involve a lot of failures, which means a lot of falling stone, so there’s potential for damaging sections of the city.

Beyond this, there’s the issue of time.

Using the much-cited example of medieval Troyes, the city walls enclose an area roughly 2000 x 4000 feet, or roughly 180 acres. The total length of the walls is 12,000 feet. If our twelfth-level wizard is doing the casting, then each casting of the spell creates a strip of stone five feet high and 60 feet long.

Assuming an Int of 22, he can cast the spell seven times a day. That gives us a strip of stone five feet high and 420 feet long for a day’s casting. It takes him nearly a month to create a five-foot-high strip of stone running around the city walls. With a handful of other wizards cooperating, it might be possible to make that strip 15 or 20 feet high in that month, but that still leaves the city open to the sky—and this doesn’t include the necessary extra mass for structural elements, which are explicitly called out in the spell description.

So, there’s no way the city can be domed over before the catastrophe hits—and there will probably be other urgent needs for those spell slots. Doming over the city might be a long-term project, but the work would have to continue through the constant snow and other hazards of the post-catastrophe world. I could easily see the remains of the city being occupied by all manner of things, which could make the doming project all the more complicated.

More than likely the attempt would be abandoned partway through the first few years, although it might be revived at some point in centuries to come. But even if the project is completed, there will be a lot of other challenges to deal with, as Jack_Simth pointed out.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
On Architecture and Engineering, does it have to be the caster who makes the check? Because in a city of 20,000, I would think odds would be good someone would build new buildings for a living and have those ranks. Just hire them to do your design work, and have the casters do the heavy lifting.

Possibly, but again, this sort of structure has never been attempted before by anyone in the city, and probably nowhere in the world. This is an oblong dome covering nearly two hundred acres, so it’s on a scale no one has any experience with. I have no idea what the DC would be for that.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I admit to being unsure how to deal with the rust problem.

To say nothing of the rust-monster problem.

:smalltongue:

Efrate

2021-02-20, 02:08 PM

DC 30 or 40 for the engineering check at max. Easily doable.

Also, any reason not to immovable rod/wall of force to stop the thing falling? Giving time and a bit of resources can probably make it land if not safely at least non-disastrously. Falling from 2 feet above ground for example with no momentum is a lot less severe than say terminal velocity from whereever in space.

As for the wall of stone, make your outer wall stone, then the inner fall supporting the stone wall of force. Probably need dark crafting XP but its doable and makes your city more or less impenetrable. Just use architecture and engineering/necklaces of adaptation/dungeoneering to fix the issues with air flow and such and you are good.

Defense of the denizens of your cities should be pretty easy. The creatures that live and thrive in winter do not really need to assault you. They are adapted. Some might want more/easier resources, but they live just fine in cold climes so it is not an issue.

So your foes are likely to be humanoid raiders looking for stuff, whether it be home or a nomadic people expanding territories. Most humanoid raiders if they can already survive likely have something making them able to survive, and trekking to BFE mountain valley is not exactly in their best interest. Nomadic peoples likely just want easy pickings because if they live on the move there is not exactly a lot of stuff they could take with them.

So you have other societies that survived in spite of this, which means they likely have a reasonable approach and already have things taken care of, or they were underdark folk or something which makes it less of an issue. Folk from the underdark likely are not adapted to endless winter, living in geothermal hot spots underground, and they would need to find access to you from underground to strike at you. The domed city idea shuts a lot of that down, sieging in winter when your target has more or less limitless supplies is a nice way to kill your army whose supplies are not limitless.

Your biggest issue as always is hostile casters. But if you are set up to survive, they probably are too. Trade and information seems reasonable in those circumstances. Most non-dragons monsters if not defeated by walls of stone are easily dealt with by casters of reasonable levels. Especially in the case of consolidating resources by petrification/undeadification of residents. Dragons looking to increase their hordes might fall back at resistances, and the wall of force supporting walls of stone really limits what can get in, needing disintegration, a burrow speed, or dimension door or the like. And mutual beneficial pacts between such players are going to be better the the long run. Maybe your temperate dome and some controlled breeding of livestock gets you an ally of a metallic dragon, and whites are the ones most likely to attempt and assault in winter and are the weakest of all dragons. Maybe a few silver or gold dragons hang out in a warm area with free food, and "tribute" of some type as a protection fee. They ruthlessly murder interlopers. They get accolades, free food, built up hordes, and a nice place to live. Wins all around.

Asmotherion

2021-02-20, 02:28 PM

*looks it up* I’m not seeing anything in the description suggesting it wouldn’t work with Wall of Stone. But since Palanan mentioned Heat Metal what about Walls of Iron instead, and then combine them to deal with snow buildup blocking the sun? I admit to being unsure how to deal with the rust problem.

On Architecture and Engineering, does it have to be the caster who makes the check? Because in a city of 20,000, I would think odds would be good someone would build new buildings for a living and have those ranks. Just hire them to do your design work, and have the casters do the heavy lifting.

It doesn't necessarily have to, I'm just pointing at their profficiency to do so, and that it's not unheard of to have a Wizard who maxes out all his Knowlage Skills. The whole point is, it's not unlikelly for there to be a Master Architect in the city to make the design.

Is there a DC for building a stone dome over a city?

I’ve never heard of a stone dome over any city in any setting. There’s probably one somewhere, but not anywhere in the Realms or other settings that I’m familiar with.

So, this will be something completely new the spellcasters are attempting. That will involve a lot of failures, which means a lot of falling stone, so there’s potential for damaging sections of the city.

Beyond this, there’s the issue of time.

Using the much-cited example of medieval Troyes, the city walls enclose an area roughly 2000 x 4000 feet, or roughly 180 acres. The total length of the walls is 12,000 feet. If our twelfth-level wizard is doing the casting, then each casting of the spell creates a strip of stone five feet high and 60 feet long.

Assuming an Int of 22, he can cast the spell seven times a day. That gives us a strip of stone five feet high and 420 feet long for a day’s casting. It takes him nearly a month to create a five-foot-high strip of stone running around the city walls. With a handful of other wizards cooperating, it might be possible to make that strip 15 or 20 feet high in that month, but that still leaves the city open to the sky—and this doesn’t include the necessary extra mass for structural elements, which are explicitly called out in the spell description.

So, there’s no way the city can be domed over before the catastrophe hits—and there will probably be other urgent needs for those spell slots. Doming over the city might be a long-term project, but the work would have to continue through the constant snow and other hazards of the post-catastrophe world. I could easily see the remains of the city being occupied by all manner of things, which could make the doming project all the more complicated.

More than likely the attempt would be abandoned partway through the first few years, although it might be revived at some point in centuries to come. But even if the project is completed, there will be a lot of other challenges to deal with, as Jack_Simth pointed out.

Possibly, but again, this sort of structure has never been attempted before by anyone in the city, and probably nowhere in the world. This is an oblong dome covering nearly two hundred acres, so it’s on a scale no one has any experience with. I have no idea what the DC would be for that.

To say nothing of the rust-monster problem.

:smalltongue:

I think Dark Sun and Eberon have something like that? Not sure though.

In any case, it's very DM dependant, how to implement a new Design. I don't think there is a direct way to calculate the DC. My take would be basing the concept on a Colosal Pyramid, and working your way from that. Nothing a DC 37 check wouldn't take care of.

If we're talking about FR specifically, a similar design could be implemented in the Underdark, by connecting the Surface with a smaller version of the dome.

Sure, it will need more effort to defend a town in the underdark, but with enough 12th level casters, it's not that hard, at least from non-exceptional threats.

Also, 7 castings, each covering an area of 120 sqare feet, means each caster can provide 840 feet of Work per day. Assuming at least 4 Casters able to cast Wall of Stone, this would make for 3360 feet of work per day, more than half a mile. It's not an exageration that the Dome would be ready in more or less 5 days. And, let's not underestimate the work force of 20.000 citizents, who may not be experts, but their sheer number reduces the time needed to complete any job significantly.

Finally all casters have access to summon spells, and more importantly, Wizards have access to Planar Binding, which means they can get Specialised Work at will (Things with Burrow Speeds, Water Elementals for Water supply, Earth Elementals to move Large Bulders etc)

Finally, the end goal is to turn the whole city into a stronghold, and apply stronghold logic to it, which I will latter use in the "defences" section (but honestly, I don't have time to right now).

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-20, 02:31 PM

To say nothing of the rust-monster problem.

:smalltongue:

Their environment is listed as underground. If we’re building invisible greenhouses outside then by definition we are not underground. And they only scent metal up to 90 feet away so that wouldn’t be a problem either. :smalltongue:

Maat Mons

2021-02-20, 04:19 PM

Glass is mostly just quartz. And the stuff that's not quartz is only really needed to reduce the melting point. You only care about the melting point if you use normal, muggle processes to manufacture things.

So just cast Wall of Stone and Stone Shape to get some greenhouse-shaped structures. Then cast Stone Metamorphosis to change it from granite to quartz. Or one of the many other transparent minerals.

… Oh wait, someone already said Invisible Spell? … Yeah, that's a much better idea. … I keep forgetting that exists.

Palanan

2021-02-20, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by Efrate
The creatures that live and thrive in winter do not really need to assault you. They are adapted. Some might want more/easier resources, but they live just fine in cold climes so it is not an issue.

They live just fine in cold climates by preying on whatever they can find.

Originally Posted by Asmotherion
Also, 7 castings, each covering an area of 120 sqare feet, means each caster can provide 840 feet of Work per day.

Your math seems a little off here. A single casting of Wall of Stone at 12th level gets you 12 five-foot squares, which is 12 squares of 25 square feet, or 300 square feet. Seven castings will get you 2100 square feet per day.

Simply roofing over the city, which takes less stone than a dome, requires covering an area of 2000 x 4000 feet, which is eight million square feet. That’s 3810 wizard-days of casting, or more than ten years.

A dome will require a greater amount of stone, so ten years is a steep underestimate. And a dome of stone that size won’t be able to support its own weight, so it will need a superstructure of pillars and buttresses to keep it up. Per the spell text, that superstructure will reduce the area of each casting by half, so at a minimum it will take twenty years.

Also, snow weighs 20 pounds per cubic foot, so even with only a hundred feet of snow (half of what's predicted) there’s an additional 2000 pounds on each square foot of the dome. Given that it’s only three inches thick, the dome will almost certainly pancake down once snowpack begins to accumulate.

As Jack_Simth pointed out, if the city is heated then the snow will be melting on contact, but a hundred feet of snow won’t melt all at once, and there will still be the other issues already mentioned.

Originally Posted by Efrate
Also, any reason not to immovable rod/wall of force to stop the thing falling?

The immovable rod is great for adventurers, but I’m not sure if it works as magical rebar.

A four-inch thick slab of granite weighs 60 pounds per square foot (according to the fine folks at Troy Granite), which means 1500 pounds per five-foot square. One immovable rod can support 8000 pounds, so one rod can support five (5) five-foot squares.

A sheet of rock 2000 x 4000 feet is 8 million square feet, or 320,000 five-foot squares. That works out to 64,000 immovable rods. That’s probably more immovable rods than have ever existed in the history of the world. The cost to craft that many would be 160,000,000 gp.

And of course that doesn’t take into account the extra 2000 pounds per square foot from the snowpack.

Originally Posted by Efrate
Your biggest issue as always is hostile casters.

Which could be a real headache if you’re using walls of force to hold up your city’s 480-million-pound stone roof.

Originally posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Their environment is listed as underground. If we’re building invisible greenhouses outside then by definition we are not underground. And they only scent metal up to 90 feet away so that wouldn’t be a problem either.

Beware the cold-adapted, surface-roaming rust monster! :smalltongue:

Maat Mons

2021-02-20, 05:45 PM

Or maybe start breeding cold-adapted rust monsters as livestock.

Now that'll deter attackers. Especially high-level ones. Nobody's gonna risk loosing tens of thousands of gp-worth of gear just to take whatever it is you have that they want.

It'll be a bit of a pain to redesign your entire civilization to use no metal. But maybe worth it?

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-20, 06:14 PM

So about one worker per person fed if you ploughed the whole thing in one day, assuming you could get the equivalent of eight oxen for each of them.
Note: You can't get a team of eight oxen for every worker. Historically, such livestock were pretty rare, usually being owned either communally by a village or by a local sristocrat (who would "rent" them out to peasants, usually in exchange for working on his land). More information on ancient/medieval farming. (https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/comment-page-1/)

Why not Wall of Force?
Because I didn't realize it was only 5th level.
Also, I'm not sure whether it's transparent to infrared or not. If it is, then the greenhouse would only trap moisture and keep pests out, which isn't nothing but it's not the most pressing issue.

Or maybe Fabricate glass panes; they don’t have to be perfect just let light through, and then you could skip the XP cost for Permanency on all the Walls of Force.
Fabricate makes a lot more stuff per casting than I realized. I'm not sure whether you'd need to provide it an equal quantity of glass (which would defeat the point) or if sand would do.

QUOTE=Asmotherion;24937503]Get as many seeds as possible; Plant everything, and have the Local druids use Overgrowth on them (Both versions of the spell).[/quote]
I assume you mean plant growth? The overgrowth version doesn't give any indication that the plants will be usable in any way, only that they become overgrown (which I don't consider
a synonym for "ready to harvest). The enrichment version absolutely improves yield, but it doesn't make harvest come any sooner and I'm not sure it stacks. Maybe some use of plant growth would enable massive rapid harvests by RAI, but RAW it's on shaky ground at best.

Because never have I witnessed an adventuring party see a bunch of statues, and suddenly start smashing them because they were worried that they could spontaneously reanimate at any moment.
Your friends must never have heard of stone golems. Or animated objects. Or gargoyles.
Or you're just being more restrictive in your use of "spontaneously".

Glass is super-fragile, and Wall of Force explicitly requires it be vertical (so no roof). You want Invisible Spell (+0 metamagic, Cityscape) on Wall of Stone. Transparent, reasonably tough, can shape it however, no XP cost.
I'd be shocked if invisible spell was opaque to infrared, so see above. Also, I think that arguing the wall would be invisible would be a bit like arguing that an invisible fireball's damage would also be invisible.

Interesting analysis of the various wall spells. I’ve been thinking that in the cave system, there would be heating stations involving Heat Metal and tubs of water. Huge walls of fire, etc. might be overkill, certainly a safety hazard, and might also cause issues with oxygen in the caves.
And beyond this—if we assume a normal cave system with fine cracks and fissures leading up to the surface, then heated air rising through those cracks would create steam and telltale melting, which could be a giveaway that a refuge is somewhere below.
1. Who said anything about caves?
2. Heat metal doesn't last long enough to be an effective civil heating solution.

There’s your solution. A thin sheet of salt would essentially be frosted glass.

There is the issue of its dissolving in water (including snowmelt) but as an alternative, a very thin sheet of sandstone would also be translucent. Either way would still be extremely fragile, though.
The problem being that a wall of salt/stone isn't arbitrarily thin—it's five feet thick.

Wizards aren’t architects or engineers, so they won’t have any special understanding of how to design load-bearing structures.
They don't need such understanding, they just need a friendly architect and to know how blueprints work. Given how many settings have Gothic-style cathedrals for major gods, I'd say they could dig up an architect able to design a single dome. Hell, there were big domes in antiquity, never mind the late medieval period! Not on this scale, but the physics scale up even when designs don't.

Glass is mostly just quartz. And the stuff that's not quartz is only really needed to reduce the melting point. You only care about the melting point if you use normal, muggle processes to manufacture things.
So just cast Wall of Stone and Stone Shape to get some greenhouse-shaped structures. Then cast Stone Metamorphosis to change it from granite to quartz. Or one of the many other transparent minerals.
… Oh wait, someone already said Invisible Spell? … Yeah, that's a much better idea. … I keep forgetting that exists.
For the third time this post, I'm going to point out that greenhouse materials need to be opaque to infrared light, so quartz is probably better.

Simply roofing over the city, which takes less stone than a dome, requires covering an area of 2000 x 4000 feet, which is eight million square feet. That’s 3810 wizard-days of casting, or more than ten years.

A dome will require a greater amount of stone, so ten years is a steep underestimate.
Not that steep. Assume a circular city and hemispherical dome, even though a flatter (= lower surface area) dome would probably be more practical. The area of the city would be equal to πr2, where r is the radius of the city (duh). A sphere with a radius r would have a surface area of 4πr2, so the hemisphere's area would be only twice the circle's. So we're talking a couple decades if just the one wizard is working on it.

And a dome of stone that size won’t be able to support its own weight, so it will need a superstructure of pillars and buttresses to keep it up.
This is a problem. But even a modest four-wizard team would still only take about a decade to build the whole hemispherical dome, and less if they didn't build it as high.

As Jack_Simth pointed out, if the city is heated then the snow will be melting on contact, but a hundred feet of snow won’t melt all at once...
If it's heated before the snow falls, or as the dome is built (ie before 100 feet of snow can fall), then you just need to melt snow faster than it falls. Which isn't exceptionally hard, compared to the effort of heating the roof at all.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-20, 06:21 PM

Beware the cold-adapted, surface-roaming rust monster! :smalltongue:

Truthfully Wall of Stone would probably be simpler - I think it’s a lower level spell, and thus more accessible, if nothing else. We could probably use Unseen Servant to clean off snow or just some guys with ladders and shovels.

(If it’s not obvious, I’m fond of solutions that don’t completely rely on our high level casters - or casters in general - doing everything. It makes it less likely they’ll run out of magic before the mountain hits, frees them up for stuff that only they can do, and provides redundancy if they all get up and leave.)

Separate topic, you mentioned acid rain at one point I believe? Do the divinations give us any idea of how long that will last? We’re going to need some way of keeping it out of our drinking/irrigation water. (Yes, I remember someone brought up the Decanter of Endless Water already. Redundancy.)

Or maybe start breeding cold-adapted rust monsters as livestock.

Now that'll deter attackers. Especially high-level ones. Nobody's gonna risk loosing tens of thousands of gp-worth of gear just to take whatever it is you have that they want.

It'll be a bit of a pain to redesign your entire civilization to use no metal. But maybe worth it?

If we have Druids, we’ll be fine. :smallwink:

Calthropstu

2021-02-20, 06:39 PM

First problem: giving all the citizens a 1000 year life time. Even normal circumstances, few races would survive 1000 years. If, instead we set the community, not individuals, this part can be skipped.

Second problem: Find (or make) somewhere with livable temperatures.

Third problem: secure a source of renewable food.

4th problem: keeping a way to restore the countryside when the winter ends.

I feel all of these problems have been solved in previous responses.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-20, 07:59 PM

I'd be shocked if invisible spell was opaque to infrared, so see above.
A greenhouse needs to trap infra-red only if sunlight is it's primary source of heat. If you've got another source of heat (such as say, a Permanent Wall of Fire sealed between some walls of stone to bypass questions of oxygen), that's not particularly necessary.

Also, I think that arguing the wall would be invisible would be a bit like arguing that an invisible fireball's damage would also be invisible.
Where do you get that equivalency from? A fireball's visual effect is fire. A Wall of Stone's visual effect is stone.

Palanan

2021-02-20, 08:42 PM

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
Your friends must never have heard of stone golems. Or animated objects. Or gargoyles.

In my current campaign I had a ranger who spontaneously attacked a stone hearth. We’re still not sure why.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
1. Who said anything about caves?

The OP specifies that the city has access to a nearby cave system, so much of the discussion has involved transferring the city’s population to the caves.

Given the chaos and destruction of the impact, and the overall disintegration of society in the aftermath of the catastrophe, taking refuge in the caves offers a much greater chance of survival than trying to ride it all out in the city.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
2. Heat metal doesn't last long enough to be an effective civil heating solution.

On its own, probably not. I’m thinking of using it to heat metal ingots, which can be dumped into metal tubs of water. The ingots are “searing hot” for three rounds, which should heat the water nicely. If this is done in an enclosed area of the caves, it should serve as a workable space heater.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
Given how many settings have Gothic-style cathedrals for major gods, I'd say they could dig up an architect able to design a single dome. Hell, there were big domes in antiquity, never mind the late medieval period!

It’s not a given that this city will have a cathedral, but even if it does, it could be centuries old and the architect and builders long dead. Although that could be a nice low-level task during the run-up to the catastrophe—search the city’s archives for the long-lost plans of the cathedral, since they may hold secrets that will help the city survive.

As for domes in antiquity, the original Hagia Sophia had a dome over a hundred feet across, which was one of the largest if not the largest at the time of its completion in ca. 538. It took six years to build, but it was a rush job; the structure was notoriously unstable and collapsed twenty years later. It had to be completely rebuilt, which may be a note of warning for attempts to dome an entire city.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
So we're talking a couple decades if just the one wizard is working on it.

Even though the city isn’t circular, your estimate of twenty years lines up nicely with mine.

We can assume there will be at least a couple other wizards working on this, and maybe a couple druids with Stone Shape, so we might be able to shave this down to fifteen years—but that’s still hella long time to be out in the blizzards, and a lot of things can happen in fifteen years.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
If it's heated before the snow falls, or as the dome is built (ie before 100 feet of snow can fall), then you just need to melt snow faster than it falls.

As Jack_Simth and I both pointed out, it’s not just a question of falling snow, but sheets of ice building up and flowing across the landscape.

Not to mention that during the fifteen-plus years of dome construction, the snow will be constantly falling, quickly smothering the entire city. You might finally finish covering the city with a protective dome, but the city will already be entombed in ice.

Walls of fire might help with that, slowly, but you’ll have millions of cubic feet of meltwater to deal with, not to mention the risk of fire damage to the mainly wooden buildings. End result, the city will be a mess.

I’m just not seeing how building a dome over the existing city won’t end up being far more trouble than it’s worth. Rather than trying to build one huge structure, which would take decades and way too much effort from the higher-level casters, I think it would be much easier to start small, with a few stone yurts that can be easily set up, and then grown in a modular fashion.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I’m fond of solutions that don’t completely rely on our high level casters - or casters in general - doing everything. It makes it less likely they’ll run out of magic before the mountain hits, frees them up for stuff that only they can do, and provides redundancy if they all get up and leave.

I endorse this view wholeheartedly.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Separate topic, you mentioned acid rain at one point I believe? Do the divinations give us any idea of how long that will last?

The acid rain is a direct result of the huge amounts of water and sulfur blown into the stratosphere, which will combine to form sulfuric acid rain as well as sulfuric aerosols. I can’t say how long the acid rain would fall, but it’s probably a shorter-term effect, and as a guess I’d say the worst of it would be over in two or three years.

So the sulfuric acid rain will destroy crops and other vegetation around the world, leading to wide-scale famines and forest die-offs, which in turn will lead to massive loss of topsoil without living vegetation to keep it in place. The topsoil loss should be stabilized once the snowpack starts building up, but that's still an immense volume of soil lost to future generations.

As for water security, I’m not sure how much of the acid rain will work its way down into the aquifers, or how the chemistry will change once it does—that’s something else worth looking into.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-20, 10:21 PM

The acid rain is a direct result of the huge amounts of water and sulfur blown into the stratosphere, which will combine to form sulfuric acid rain as well as sulfuric aerosols. I can’t say how long the acid rain would fall, but it’s probably a shorter-term effect, and as a guess I’d say the worst of it would be over in two or three years.

‘No, Kareeah, using Control Weather for two or three months to cause a drought is not going to save the local forests/soil fertility in any meaningful way, save the resources to do something else’ is what I’m hearing.

So the sulfuric acid rain will destroy crops and other vegetation around the world, leading to wide-scale famines and forest die-offs, which in turn will lead to massive loss of topsoil without living vegetation to keep it in place. The topsoil loss should be stabilized once the snowpack starts building up, but that's still an immense volume of soil lost to future generations.

As for water security, I’m not sure how much of the acid rain will work its way down into the aquifers, or how the chemistry will change once it does—that’s something else worth looking into.

This (https://agwt.org/content/acid-rain-and-ground-water-ph) is admittedly the very first article I found on the subject, but my takeaway is ‘it depends on what the soil is made of.’ Marble and limestone are better at neutralizing acid rain than granite. This (https://www.safewater.org/fact-sheets-1/2017/1/23/acid-rain-fact-sheet) one is a little more informative, and mentions combating the effects on crops with crushed limestone. (They also need to fire their editor because they mention an experiment with chalk and white sugar where I’m reasonably certain they meant to say white vinegar - but I digress.) I gather the big danger with drinking water isn’t the acidity itself so much as the fact that it dissolves other things into the water (metals were mentioned) that may be toxic. And the longer it’s in the ground the more the ground affects it.

Tentatively: if the vault has a deeply-sourced natural spring that was safe to drink out of before, it will remain safe. And if the Underdark exists its ecosystems aren’t going to spontaneously die from the water supply turning acidic, the acidity might not even reach them. I would avoid using rain/snow as drinking water or for irrigation where possible.

Palanan

2021-02-21, 09:45 AM

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
‘No, Kareeah, using Control Weather for two or three months to cause a drought is not going to save the local forests/soil fertility in any meaningful way, save the resources to do something else’ is what I’m hearing.

Pretty much. And causing a drought would only stress the local forests even further, making them more vulnerable to the acid rain.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
…my takeaway is ‘it depends on what the soil is made of.’

Very much so. Local soil composition, geomorphology and drainage patterns all have an effect, so not everything will die off equally. But what the acid rain doesn’t kill outright will be weakened severely and more vulnerable to the cold.

Interestingly, there’s what’s called a “fern spike” after some impacts, since some ferns are more tolerant of soil acidity, so they’ll take advantage of the loss of competition and grow up thickly among the dead trees and woody vegetation. But many ferns are also sensitive to freezing temperatures, and of course they’ll be killed off beneath deep snow.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
…they mention an experiment with chalk and white sugar where I’m reasonably certain they meant to say white vinegar….

Well-spotted. They also wrote “bowl white sugar” instead of “bowl of….”

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Tentatively: if the vault has a deeply-sourced natural spring that was safe to drink out of before, it will remain safe. And if the Underdark exists its ecosystems aren’t going to spontaneously die from the water supply turning acidic, the acidity might not even reach them. I would avoid using rain/snow as drinking water or for irrigation where possible.

Most water in caves enters from above and seeps down, and since rainwater is naturally slightly acidic that contributes to cave formation. Caves close to the surface would probably receive a strong dose of the sulfuric acid rain.

If you’re lucky enough to have thermal caves (https://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn/nature/hotsprings.htm), then you’ll be fine, since the water emerging in the thermal springs has been percolating through deep stone for thousands of years. If there’s any kind of Underdark, then it should be relatively insulated, but in this scenario as I envision it there’s no direct connection to the Underdark.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-21, 10:52 AM

Pretty much. And causing a drought would only stress the local forests even further, making them more vulnerable to the acid rain.

Drought issues over a short term could be countered with irrigation (I’m assuming a city containing 20,000 people has a working well, or something along those lines). But keeping it going for years on top of whatever weather control methods is probably going to be a bigger drain on resources than any benefit the vault would get.

Most water in caves enters from above and seeps down, and since rainwater is naturally slightly acidic that contributes to cave formation. Caves close to the surface would probably receive a strong dose of the sulfuric acid rain.

So it sounds like if our cave complex has water of its own it’s going to need to be purified before use.

Efrate

2021-02-21, 11:10 AM

Purify food and drink is a 0 level cleric/druid spell, and pathfinder has unlimited 0 levels thats easily taken care of.

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-21, 11:29 AM

A greenhouse needs to trap infra-red only if sunlight is it's primary source of heat. If you've got another source of heat (such as say, a Permanent Wall of Fire sealed between some walls of stone to bypass questions of oxygen), that's not particularly necessary.
If it's transparent to infrared, the infrared will escape whether or not the original radiation comes from the sun.

[quite]Where do you get that equivalency from? A fireball's visual effect is fire. A Wall of Stone's visual effect is stone.[/QUOTE]
A fireball's effect is fire damage. That's what it does. A wall of stone's effect is making a stone wall.
Also if anyone tried to do that in a game I was DMing I'd shoot it down hard. You might as well argue that you get a free greater invisibility spell on any summoned/called creatures, for instance, and that's definitely not what's supposed to happen.

Given the chaos and destruction of the impact, and the overall disintegration of society in the aftermath of the catastrophe, taking refuge in the caves offers a much greater chance of survival than trying to ride it all out in the city.
Why? Caves suck if you're trying to build a society; ventilation alone makes the prospect untenable without a lot of magic and/or technology, to say nothing of whether or not there's enough space in the caverns for 20,000 people and the tens of thousands of acres of good farmland you need to feed them. (Assuming you can get good farmland down there!) Let's consider the dangers:

1. Cold. That's what the walls of fire are for.
2. Starvation. This will be trickier to solve; we don't have a clear snow-melting radius for our wall of fire (we just know it's probably bigger than the radius for the other spells I looked at). However, it isn't unsolvable, and it's a lot easier to solve on the surface, with its topsoil and sunlight. You don't need to be a farmboy to know that you need a lot more handwavey magic to farm in a cave.
3. Refugees. Maybe this is just my crass empathy showing, but I don't consider it a bad thing if we can rescue more people. Besides, 20,000 people is pretty close to a D&D metropolis; I assumed that figure already included a fair number of refugees from the surrounding countryside. Meanwhile, if it is just a near-metropolis city, we desperately need those refugees, because blacksmiths and potters don't know how to farm.
4. Bandits, raiders, etc. This is a potential problem, but most spells in D&D are combat-focused and most people who would become desperate enough to raid peaceful settlements are low-level. It's not a problem.
5. Monsters. I don't see this being a bigger problem now then it was before the meteor impact/ice age.

On its own, probably not. I’m thinking of using it to heat metal ingots, which can be dumped into metal tubs of water. The ingots are “searing hot” for three rounds, which should heat the water nicely. If this is done in an enclosed area of the caves, it should serve as a workable space heater.
Imagine turning the stove to high, putting a pot of water on it for 40 seconds, and taking it off. Will the water be boiling? Will it stay boiling for hours on end? That's basically what you're proposing, just from the inside out. (Heating the pots themselves would probably work better, just because there's more surface area in contact with the water, but the duration is still too low for enough heat flow.)

It’s not a given that this city will have a cathedral, but even if it does, it could be centuries old and the architect and builders long dead.
Because as we all know, there was one big rush of cathedral construction, after which the church didn't spend any money on architecture at all. (Not to mention that, barring heavy magic use, if there's a cathedral in town there's a good chance that it's still under active construction!)
My point wasn't "There's a new cathedral in town! We can talk to whoever designed that!" and more "People build cathedrals, architecture isn't a long-lost intellectual treasure".

As for domes in antiquity, the original Hagia Sophia had a dome over a hundred feet across, which was one of the largest if not the largest at the time of its completion in ca. 538. It took six years to build, but it was a rush job; the structure was notoriously unstable and collapsed twenty years later. It had to be completely rebuilt, which may be a note of warning for attempts to dome an entire city.
Note that Justinian's architects didn't have access to magic. That makes it a little easier (and safer) to rush a bit.

Even though the city isn’t circular, your estimate of twenty years lines up nicely with mine.
Your estimate was "way more than 10 years because domes are bigger than circles". Mine was "20 years under the worst possible set of assumptions". Those are not the same estimate.
And the circular thing was just to establish a relationship between city area (which we know) and dome area (which we don't)—the latter wouldn't be more than twice the former unless we really stretched the definition of "dome".

Walls of fire might help with that, slowly, but you’ll have millions of cubic feet of meltwater to deal with, not to mention the risk of fire damage to the mainly wooden buildings. End result, the city will be a mess.
1. Cities already deal with millions of cubic feet of meltwater. It's called rain.
(Snark aside, all rain starts its life as snow in the upper atmosphere, so it is technically meltwater.)
2. Walls of fire are only deal fire damage within 20 feet of one side. But you can melt snow and ice with heat that wouldn't deal fire damage (citation: I watched a snowflake melt on my finger the other day), so it would clear snow out from a much larger area than its fire-risk zone.

I don't think doming the city is a practical solution, but it's not as impossible as you're making it out to be.

I endorse this view wholeheartedly.
You're not wrong, but at the same time mundane solutions are mostly an excuse for history buffs to flex their muscles and everyone else to show how badly they understand historical societies. Not to mention that, historically, there's a reason our magic-free societies didn't have big cities in the Ice Age.

Jack_Simth

2021-02-21, 04:07 PM

If it's transparent to infrared, the infrared will escape whether or not the original radiation comes from the sun.Right. So? Plants don't need infra-red, they need heat and light. Trapping infra-red makes greenhouses warmer than the surrounding area, sure, but it's really just a way of avoiding heat loss. You could duplicate the effect from another direction by way of a double or triple layer Invisible Spell Wall of Stone with air gaps. But then, when you have a permanent wall of fire warming the place, it really doesn't matter.

Where do you get that equivalency from? A fireball's visual effect is fire. A Wall of Stone's visual effect is stone.
A fireball's effect is fire damage. That's what it does. A wall of stone's effect is making a stone wall.
Also if anyone tried to do that in a game I was DMing I'd shoot it down hard. You might as well argue that you get a free greater invisibility spell on any summoned/called creatures, for instance, and that's definitely not what's supposed to happen.
A fireball still evokes a ball of fire whether anyone's in the area to get damaged or not.

Summoning and Calling spells transport a creature - it's brought from elsewhere and controlled. Wall of Stone creates stone. They're completely different classes of spells.

Palanan

2021-02-21, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
Caves suck if you're trying to build a society; ventilation alone makes the prospect untenable without a lot of magic and/or technology, to say nothing of whether or not there's enough space in the caverns for 20,000 people and the tens of thousands of acres of good farmland you need to feed them.

These and other issues have been extensively discussed earlier in the thread.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
4. Bandits, raiders, etc. This is a potential problem, but most spells in D&D are combat-focused and most people who would become desperate enough to raid peaceful settlements are low-level.

Two points here. First, the raiders will be coming in numbers, and flashy spells will be a sure sign that there’s something worth protecting. That news will get out, and bring more raiders and potentially higher-level threats.

Second, spell slots used to fight off raiders are spell slots not being used to support the community in other ways. If there’s a way to avoid having to fight the raiders at all, e.g. avoiding their notice in caves, then that’s the smarter solution.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
5. Monsters. I don't see this being a bigger problem now then it was before the meteor impact/ice age.

It’s safe to assume that prior to the impact, there was a functioning society with the usual range of kingdoms and other principalities, with military and civil resources to protect their citizens.

With those kingdoms and principalities now gone and buried under snow, there’s nothing to prevent magical predators and other things from spreading far and wide, and those which are cold-adapted will obviously have the competitive edge. What used to be humanoid regions will now be monstrous regions, with many more monsters than there were before. By definition it’s a bigger problem.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
Note that Justinian's architects didn't have access to magic. That makes it a little easier (and safer) to rush a bit.

Are there specific spells you’re thinking of that would harden or augment the stone from Wall of Stone?

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
My point wasn't "There's a new cathedral in town! We can talk to whoever designed that!" and more "People build cathedrals, architecture isn't a long-lost intellectual treasure".

The architects who built those cathedrals zealously guarded their techniques, so that information isn’t likely to be public.

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold
I don't think doming the city is a practical solution, but it's not as impossible as you're making it out to be.

I never said it was impossible, only time-consuming and very likely more trouble than it’s worth.

.

Quertus

2021-02-21, 04:40 PM

This tone doesn’t help.

First things first: apologies for coming across like I was taking a tone with *you*. My frustration is, as usual, with *myself* - both at my inability to find a means to communicate to my audience effectively, and at my own… inability to enjoy or even tolerate conducting any but the most trivial of research.

So, again, apologies if my frustration with myself bled through to my post.

However, i must ask - do you have any suggestions for what *might* help?

Interesting analysis of the various wall spells. I’ve been thinking that in the cave system, there would be heating stations involving Heat Metal and tubs of water. Huge walls of fire, etc. might be overkill, certainly a safety hazard, and might also cause issues with oxygen in the caves.

This is an interesting question: *does* Wall of Fire consume oxygen?

Are there any canon locations with the combination of, say, "sealed area" and "permanent Wall of Fire" to suggest that it doesn't? Any official ruling in either direction?l

And beyond this—if we assume a normal cave system with fine cracks and fissures leading up to the surface, then heated air rising through those cracks would create steam and telltale melting, which could be a giveaway that a refuge is somewhere below.

So, the necropolis has *no* need of heat (undead); the halfling Furries have minimal heating needs (small, furry). So, all things being equal, they would be the hardest to find (among those in caves)?

Yup, I mentioned Plant Growth a little earlier, and I’ve been assuming it will be a factor in any kind of agriculture.

When life serves you Druids… :smallwink:

I see fertilizer as the flip side of waste management, which will be a real issue.

Yup. Well, it's only a problem for those relying on magical food, because fertilizer.

Wizards aren’t architects or engineers, so they won’t have any special understanding of how to design load-bearing structures. And a dome like you’re suggesting would be radically different from anything they had done before, so there would be a lot of trial and error.

C'mon, Druids can know anachronistic facts about plant reproduction, but you're gonna grief 12th level characters with access to spells to give 20 point bonuses on skill checks about building something *round*, when that was well within the capabilities of the ancients on this purportedly e7 world?

Honestly, I'm a software engineer, not a physical one - I have no concept how hard a *stable* city-sized dome should be to design.

OTOH, I feel comfortable saying that if 100 cities tried, at least 90 would rush the project, and it would collapse due to cutting corners, *unless* Divinations could be used to say, "I *told* you that was a dumb idea".

However, whether backed by magic (like Wall of Force) or not, this *feels* vulnerable to enemy attack.

Then again, cave dwellers have even *more* rock over their heads, which, supposedly, if heated will be noticeable, so I'm not sure that there *is* a winning answer.

Beyond this, it would take a great many castings of Wall of Stone to create a dome over an entire city, probably too many to accomplish before the impact happens and the heavy snows begin. It might be part of a long-term plan to return to the city, but if so it will take more effort than the spellcasters may be able to afford. And of course it will attract attention from anyone or anything else moving through.

This *is* a potential problem.

However…

What's the full list of classes with Wall of Stone?

What's the full list of "X characters of Level Y" in the town, capable of casting the spell?

What's the max "Pearl of Power", "Necklace of Prayer Beads", etc support that we can give them?

What if they started in the *middle*, and worked their way out? What if they attached the supports to existing structures / used existing structures *as* the supports?

And how much help can muggle craftsmen be?

So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that there were existing sturdy stone structures, well-placed watchtowers, etc, that could actually serve as *half* the necessary support structure, so that they only need 150% of the "dome-sized" castings.

Let's further suppose that, between chemistry and magical plants, the anachronistic Druids have no problem devising ways to counteract the acid rain and reclaim the soil.

And that they utilize the Lich "seed arc", build their own rooftop gardens, and otherwise do absolutely everything they can (Plant Growth, Create Food and Water, etc) to stretch their rations.

Can they - if left unmolested (perhaps by dent of having a friendly Dragon see their efforts, and decide that it would like a nice warm home too) - manage to build their dome before their stockpile runs out?

We’re not talking about adventurers here; we’re talking about monsters, bandits, scavengers and marauders, anyone who might find their way in.

Sure, but… the logic just didn't follow from what I knew, *and* was not irrational behavior that I had seen before.

Also, seems to me that most of those willing murder innocents might well be willing to sell them into slavery. Or even eat them. Breaking the statues is just… odd.

For humans. Monsters, Yeah. Sure.

Also worth remembering that as glaciers flow, they drag along a carpet of stones on their underside, so there will be rocks and small boulders falling together with the ice chunks, as well as constantly scraping and gouging at the roof of the dome.

So you just need to melt the ice in a larger radius?

Your friends must never have heard of stone golems. Or animated objects. Or gargoyles.
Or you're just being more restrictive in your use of "spontaneously".

Actually, I'm being "more restrictive" on the "re" portion of the word "reanimate" :smalltongue:

Palanan

2021-02-21, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
So, again, apologies if my frustration with myself bled through to my post.

That’s fair, and certainly accepted.

Originally Posted by Quertus
This is an interesting question: *does* Wall of Fire consume oxygen? …Any official ruling in either direction?l

Good question. Continual Flame is specifically described as not consuming oxygen, but it’s a [Light] rather than a [Fire] spell. Wall of Flame is a [Fire] spell, and both radiates heat and deals fire damage, so I’d say it’s actual fire and consumes oxygen as such. But there may be other rulings out there.

Originally Posted by Quertus
So, the necropolis has *no* need of heat (undead); the halfling Furries have minimal heating needs (small, furry). So, all things being equal, they would be the hardest to find (among those in caves)?

A necropolis at cold-ambient is pretty much in stealth mode, so unless they’re using a forge to craft something, there won’t be any overt heat signature. There still might be a few tiny melted points where the vertical fissures reach the surface, since the interior cave temps will probably be above the subzero temperatures topside; but those will be natural and indistinguishable from any other natural cave vents, and extremely easy to overlook.

As for the halflings, probably only slightly more noticeable than the necropolis. Although the cheerful scent of baked goods might be wafting upwards.

Originally Posted by Quertus
…I have no concept how hard a *stable* city-sized dome should be to design.

It’s a massive challenge. I could see something like this being a prestige project in a prosperous kingdom that wanted to flaunt its wealth, but that would be a colossal endeavour even in times of peace and good weather.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Then again, cave dwellers have even *more* rock over their heads, which, supposedly, if heated will be noticeable, so I'm not sure that there *is* a winning answer.

It’s a whole series of tradeoffs, and it’s certainly fair to assume that for every surviving enclave that found a working strategy, there are nine more that are frozen over.

Originally Posted by Quertus
However…

…let's say, for the sake of argument, that there were existing sturdy stone structures, well-placed watchtowers, etc, that could actually serve as *half* the necessary support structure, so that they only need 150% of the "dome-sized" castings….

…Can they - if left unmolested (perhaps by dent of having a friendly Dragon see their efforts, and decide that it would like a nice warm home too) - manage to build their dome before their stockpile runs out?

A lot of good questions here. It’s feasible that there would be towers throughout the city; medieval Florence was known for its towers (https://www.arttrav.com/florence/medieval-towers-of-florence/). But these towers were designed to support their own weight, not anything else.

That said, we may be putting too much emphasis on the “dome” aspect. What’s the point of doming over an entire city? You end up enclosing a lot of empty air within the dome, but is there any benefit to having that air enclosed?

Rather than building an immensely resource-intensive dome, it might be more efficient to simply stretch buttressed sheets of rock over city streets, reinforcing the roofs of individual buildings as necessary. This would still be a years-long project, but it won’t spend years and thousands of spell slots enclosing a huge volume of unproductive air.

As for finishing this before the stockpile runs out…I think not likely, and my instinct is that most of the population will still need to retreat to the caves. But roofing over the main streets would allow the work to progress outwards from the center, as you mentioned, and would provide living and working space immediately, rather than waiting 15-20 years for the entire dome to be completed.

Maat Mons

2021-02-21, 06:07 PM

Here's something I wrote up yesterday, but didn't post because I noticed Efrate posted something that I felt covered the same idea.

I feel like a lot of plans are getting shot down on the basis that there exist bad men who would sooner take what you've worked so hard to create than create things for themselves. That's not an invalid point. But it's by no means unique to this scenario. Defending themselves against various monsters and armies is a necessary part of survival for a D&D city even under the best of circumstances.

It could be argued that the number and scale of attacks will increase. But let's examine that. Every city will be trying to plan for its own survival. If every city succeeds, there won't be any starving masses who need to go pillaging just to survive. Every city succeeding is an overly-optimistic assumption. But if even a decent percentage do, the marauders will be spread out over enough targets that each city should be able to manage the bands that come their way.

Moreover, I feel like anyone with the capacity to be a threat has little incentive to attack. If they can't muster enough spellcasting power to overcome the environment without needing to steel from others, well then they clearly don't have enough magic at their disposal to succeed at taking anything from the (clearly superior) communities that do have the wherewithal to sort their own situations out.

Anyway, people keep saying the world's going to go all Mad Max in this situation. But I don't feel anyone's provided any sound reasoning why it should. Basically, there's need to be widespread shortages of basic necessities for that to happen. And people in this thread have outlined many ways of ensuring an abundance of basic necessities.

For most of them, the only counter argument for why the plans wouldn't work is that everyone would be at everyone else's throat. But people will only be at each other's throats if the plans don't work. So it's really quite circular. Attempts to farm in greenhouses fail because hungry people show up and ruin things. But the only reason there even are hungry people how can show up and ruin things is because attempts to farm in greenhouses fail.

If an average city can provide for itself in this "apocalypse" with only their internal resources, then all the cities will do that, and there will be no bands of desperate raiders. So if the only reason an average city couldn't provide for itself is desperate raiders, no problem, because there aren't any. First you need society to fail, then you get rooving warbands. Which means roving warbands can't be what causes society to fail, because they come later.

On a largely-unrelate note, the OP said our city isn't using human sacrifices. But I see no reason to suppose that other, less scrupulous cities won't. And that's important, because it's other, less scrupulous cities that you keep worrying about us being attacked by. So if the Evil-ly inclined can get their magic items easily and safely by sacrificing some dumb 1st-level Commoners who show up seeking refuge, they're clearly going to prefer that option to risking an attack on an organized force. The only reason anyone might need to steel supplies for crafting magic items is if they're too moral to kill innocents to get what they want. And if they're too moral to kill innocents, they're not going to come and kill us, because we're innocents.

And speaking of Evil solutions, there's always Planar Binding. I mean, it's not explicitly tagged as Evil, but come on! Kidnapping outsiders, forcing them to do your bidding, and then maybe not even paying them? That's some dark stuff.

But anyway, there are outsiders with Wish as a spell-like ability. And Wish can create magic items out of nothing. … Man, the whole concept of scarcity just falls apart in this game, doesn't it?

On a completely-unrelated note, isn't there a spell called Suspend or something that levitates a massive chunk of rock in the air? Feels like it might be relevant to the "let's have tons of rock over our heads" plan.

Palanan

2021-02-21, 06:29 PM

Originally Posted by Efrate
…whites are the ones most likely to attempt and assault in winter and are the weakest of all dragons.

I meant to address this earlier, and I’d like to take this opportunity to link to Blackhawk748’s outstanding post on white dragons (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23889929&postcount=10).

Also, I’m thinking on some of Maat Mons’ points before I respond. For now I’ll just comment on this:

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
On a completely-unrelated note, isn't there a spell called Suspend or something that levitates a massive chunk of rock in the air? Feels like it might be relevant to the "let's have tons of rock over our heads" plan.

You’re thinking of Suspension, from p. 51 of Shining South. This levitates objects of up to 1000 pounds per level.

It also has a duration of 1d4 days + 1 day per level, so not automatically permanent. Whether this spell qualifies for Permanency is a good question, although it doesn’t show up in this list of candidates (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=4544.msg63345#msg63345).

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-21, 07:04 PM

Anyway, people keep saying the world's going to go all Mad Max in this situation. But I don't feel anyone's provided any sound reasoning why it should. Basically, there's need to be widespread shortages of basic necessities for that to happen. And people in this thread have outlined many ways of ensuring an abundance of basic necessities.

For most of them, the only counter argument for why the plans wouldn't work is that everyone would be at everyone else's throat. But people will only be at each other's throats if the plans don't work. So it's really quite circular. Attempts to farm in greenhouses fail because hungry people show up and ruin things. But the only reason there even are hungry people how can show up and ruin things is because attempts to farm in greenhouses fail.

If an average city can provide for itself in this "apocalypse" with only their internal resources, then all the cities will do that, and there will be no bands of desperate raiders. So if the only reason an average city couldn't provide for itself is desperate raiders, no problem, because there aren't any. First you need society to fail, then you get rooving warbands. Which means roving warbands can't be what causes society to fail, because they come later.

Yell if I’m completely off-base here, but I think part of the disconnect is that our city has a dozen potential ways of saving itself. But not everyone lives in cities, and there will be other cities that don’t have high-level casters to conjure up food or make necessary magic items. (Or a horde of Playgrounders with access to obscure spells and feats, as I believe someone brought up earlier.) Ever heard of Chessenta? Very anti-wizard, probably not a lot of high level casters there. And any number of tiny villages that only have maybe a low-level Cleric or Adapt to see to their magic needs isn’t going to be able to pull off most of the feats we’ve gone over. So what are those people going to do? Their options are:

Try to take refuge in one of the big cities that seems to have a working plan
Try to steal what they need from said cities
Stay put and starve to death as their crops fail and everything freezes

That’s where the raiders are coming from.

Efrate

2021-02-21, 07:25 PM

Most of those places though go extinct very fast. Without magic to protect and provide they die. They will not be able to survive impact plus climate change. They will either panic and be a disorganised rabble when it happens, and by the time they get together defenses are in place, or they stubbornly refuse to budge on principals and perish from the inside.

If neither of those happens, its a bunch of nearly non magical with no support people attempting in a horrid winter to assault a fortified position of multiple casters much higher level than them. Assumimg they survive the environment, figure out how to feed and keep warm their populace or fighting force, while on the march to a somewhat secluded mountain valley with no usable roads. Also contend with a bunch of cold adapted predators and monsters. And keep morale up so most do not just quit and try to find their own way.

If they manage all of that, and get wizard city with a reasonably healthy and ready to fight army, now they need to seige. In winter with no protection. One golem or bound outsider with DR, can probably kill the entire army. Not to mention a force big enough to be a threat is very easily noticed and a few cloudkills or the like would wreck them.

Also without magic they need to keep this seiging army fed and warm and most available nearby resources are likely already taken. So again you have issues with morale, starvation, freezing to death, etc. It breaks before it starts.

And even if ALL of that somehow happens, you are still a bunch of mostly mundanes versus higher level casters. Fireball and flight will probably break them alone, seeing as how your wizards, maybe with wind wall if needed, can just throw fireballs from long range flying above them. Which probably causes some amount of near avalanches as a huge radius circle of snow is vaporized causing everything to shift and maybe collapse.

edit: spelling

Quertus

2021-02-21, 09:17 PM

So, my idea was that the city used *stone* buildings, and war-ready watchtowers.

The watchtowers don't collapse when a butterfly lands on them - they're designed to hold more than just their own weight. Probably a lot more, as they're designed to hold their own weight even when they've suffered battle damage.

*And* you're not necessarily using them "as is" - you're using them as the *basis* for your ceiling support structure.

So, even if they *would* have previously fallen over from butterflies, they're still my arbitrary "50%" of the materials you need for support structures.

The optimal town for this tactic would *already* have rooftop gardens.

The reason for the dome, I believe, is to channel the melting ice / water outside the city zone.

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be more efficient to create "Venice", with channels and rivers surrounding covered islands of civilization. Perhaps "Venice" could use simple, slanted stone "roof" / pyramids - like many "normal" houses, so trivial to engineer. Perhaps some stone "tunnels" connecting the "islands", or perhaps actual boats for transport? That way, it's harder to invade, and an attack on / fault in a single ceiling won't threaten the entire city.

Might be a bit harder to heat, though.

-----

In another thread, it was commented that, the reason that beasts of burden were inefficient for travel was because they consumed their carrying capacity in food too quickly.

What if there was a culture that understood this, and had already organized their army accordingly, crafting "not-ring" Ring of Sustenance for their War Elephant transports / cavalry? Or even for creatures more exotic than that?

Outside warfare / raiding, would they have any advantages in this scenario?

-----

Anyone with enough power to threaten one of these towns… what could they possibly want to raid?

Monsters may *some day* be an issue, but, without humanity's intelligence, magic items, sense of community, etc? They're gonna die out much faster than these Playground towns are. So things should get much *easier*… at least in the short term, until the Arctic monsters migrate South.

Citation on how long that took with animals IRL during the ice age?

I expect that White Dragons (which don't care about cold, can survive off eating *anything*, are intelligent, and want treasure) will be among the fastest to spread and among the greatest challenges. Of course, they're pathetically weak next to their good counterpart, so… maybe we'll hunt *them* to extinction instead.

-----

Why the acid rain again?

Palanan

2021-02-22, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
Anyway, people keep saying the world's going to go all Mad Max in this situation. But I don't feel anyone's provided any sound reasoning why it should.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that a lot of people will panic when the news first breaks. People will be seeking safety wherever they think they can find it, whether or not their hopes are justified. Some people will set out for larger cities, others for this or that rumored safe haven, and soon enough the roads and passes will be crammed with people hoping that wherever they’re going will be safer than where they were.

It’s not rational. It’s not sensible. It’s how people behave.

So panicked travelers lose their way, or discover their rumored haven doesn’t exist, or the strong castles have barred their gates. Travelers become refugees and wanderers; people steal from each other to survive; people fall into gangs for protection and those gangs grow into marauders. Some militaries may try to preserve a semblance of order, but soon enough groups of soldiers will peel off to become organized bandits themselves, and it snowballs from there.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
But people will only be at each other's throats if the plans don't work.

As Kareeah pointed out, many people are living in small communities which won’t be able to carry out any plans, full stop. They’ll try to reach somewhere else that might have a plan, but that’s not a guarantee, and they’ll be out in the world with no options to speak of.

Originally Posted by Quertus
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be more efficient to create "Venice", with channels and rivers surrounding covered islands of civilization…. Perhaps some stone "tunnels" connecting the "islands", or perhaps actual boats for transport? That way, it's harder to invade, and an attack on / fault in a single ceiling won't threaten the entire city.

Interesting idea, but keep in mind that any channels will quickly freeze over, and there will still be 100-200 feet of snow on top of everything.

I mentioned earlier the idea of building small stone yurts and growing in modular fashion from there. Your idea of tunnels and covered islands is along the lines of what I was thinking—essentially a “moonbase” style of community, with a series of small domes connected by low hemispherical tunnels.

These would be under the snow, and expanding them would require tunneling through the snow and creating hollows from below—but these would be house-sized and easy to create in a day or two. And as you point out, a fault or collapse in one won’t be a major threat to the others.

Originally Posted by Quertus
What if there was a culture that understood this, and had already organized their army accordingly, crafting "not-ring" Ring of Sustenance for their War Elephant transports / cavalry? Or even for creatures more exotic than that?

Now that is an idea.

This might allow for slightly increased carrying capacity, but not greater speed, since a fed animal will move at the same speed no matter the source of the food. But it would mean less time required for resting and foraging, so even though the walking pace wouldn’t be affected, overall transit times would be noticeably quicker.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Citation on how long that took with animals IRL during the ice age?

Really good question. For human bands of hunter/foragers at the end of the last glacial period, the rule of thumb is about one kilometer per year, but that’s general diffusion of a small population.

But for Pleistocene megafauna…that’s another one worth looking into.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Why the acid rain again?

In brief—the impact will kick up huge quantities of vaporized rock and water, which will include sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, the ingredients for sulfuric acid. This will circulate in the stratosphere, helping to reduce global temperatures, and will also be vectored down to the surface in rain.

GeoffWatson

2021-02-22, 01:18 AM

The Hagia Sophia dome is 100' across and is considered amazing architecture for it's time, and you want to build one over an entire city, and make it thicker and stronger and heavier, and think it would be easy?

Quertus

2021-02-22, 08:28 AM

Interesting idea, but keep in mind that any channels will quickly freeze over, and there will still be 100-200 feet of snow on top of everything.

The idea was a) heated dome (so no 100' of snow); b) heated (so no frozen channels); c) flowing water (ie, the channels empty somewhere - like into the underdark :smalltongue:, or even into a ruptured bag of holding - a "cheap" portal to the Astral)

Flowing channels probably precludes boats, though. So large open-air yurts, that can be made more quickly than their enclosed counterparts.

What was the tech to heat the stone dome, again? I'm concerned whether or not it will work for this variant.

Palanan

2021-02-22, 09:35 AM

Originally Posted by GeoffWatson
The Hagia Sophia dome is 100' across and is considered amazing architecture for it's time, and you want to build one over an entire city, and make it thicker and stronger and heavier, and think it would be easy?

Very much this. Hagia Sophia is 100’ across, but the area of our city is 2000 x 4000’.

Originally Posted by Quertus
What was the tech to heat the stone dome, again? I'm concerned whether or not it will work for this variant.

I’m not sure if it was ever specified—I think it was assumed that with walls of flame or other heat sources, the entire area under the dome would be toasty, and that would radiate up through the surface of the dome.

That’s another argument against a single massive dome—most of your heated air will be rising into the uppermost air directly beneath the dome, so it’s extremely inefficient.

Also worth remembering that a heated dome of any size that’s constantly melting off snow will be giving off a strong vapor plume, and will be far more noticeable than a few steam vents from the roof of a cave. And of course a melted pit deep inside a snowfield will attract attention from the air, if anyone or anything is flying over.

Flyovers may be rare, but even so, feels like white-dragon-bait.

Quertus

2021-02-22, 10:55 AM

Flyovers may be rare, but even so, feels like white-dragon-bait.

That's the plus side: it's got a built-in XP farm! :smallbiggrin:

Maat Mons

2021-02-22, 01:25 PM

Hmm, okay, so some marauders makes sense. But I feel a different part of my post still stands. The circumstances that drive people to marauding apply primarily to people without access to strong magic. So we should only have to muggle attackers.

I think it shouldn't even be very strong or capable muggles either. One very sensible thing for any city like us to do at the start of all this is to go around recruiting the best talent we can. So good, experienced warriors are probably going to get offers from lots of communities interested in beefing up their defenses. And, naturally they'll be inclined to take the offers that come from places with really solid plans for keeping their people provided for.

And if a city does collapse, well the high-level casters can teleport away. Surely, one of the other cities will recognize their value, and take them in. They can probably even take the low-level casters and the high-level warriors with them. It's still a compelling package-deal for anyone they'd join up with. One day, a whole bunch of low-level commoners will look around an realize that everyone who's not dead weight has just disappeared.

Anyway, the people pounding at the gates aren't going to be the best of the best. Because the best of the best aren't going to get left out in the cold.

How sure are we on the quantity of snowfall? I've said it before, but if the tropics hit freezing temperatures, evaporation from the ocean is going to slow down. That's going to mean less precipitation.

Quertus

2021-02-22, 02:21 PM

That's the plus side: it's got a built-in XP farm! :smallbiggrin:

I really wanted to emphasize this point: after 1,000 years of "peace", the short-lived races are going to consist of nothing but weak nobodies.

Dragons, Warforged, Liches? They could come out of the 1,000 year winter and hit the ground running, but everyone else? It's Athens vs Sparta - if you're living a life of peace, you're not trained for war.

This is part of why I made the decisions I did. The were-Furries contracted lycanthropy to raise the baseline power of their citizens. They have Champions execute prisoners in gladiatorial matches… sure, for entertainment; sure, to keep the population from exceeding the capacity of the caves; sure, to keep from wasting resources feeding them… but also for XP, to ensure that the defenders remain strong.

Because, unless they earn XP when monsters walk past because they can't find / don't bother with their hideout, they might not earn much otherwise.

I think that one of the smartest things a city could do is to send out agents to spread rumors that encourage refugees / raiders to head their way… and then execute such starving fools.

Similarly, I think that the best plan for the Drow… is to do nothing. Wait until it starts to get warm again, when the feeble remnants of civilization begin to emerge from their vaults… and *then* invade the surface.

All the high-level mortals will have died off. Few of the survivors should have had the opportunity to level up to the point where they pose a threat. Their numbers will have dwindled, and they won't have established communication with their neighbors yet. A blitzkrieg strategy at that point should allow the Drow to take the surface world.

But, during those 1,000 years of patient web-building, they could be using Divinations to figure out where the pockets of civilization are, and which enclaves might prove problematic… and see what those potential problems do when the floor is lava, and the air is Cloud Kill.

Or, in Forgotten Realms style, they could be moving their pawns into position to cause trouble for such enclaves.

Palanan

2021-02-23, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
Anyway, the people pounding at the gates aren't going to be the best of the best. Because the best of the best aren't going to get left out in the cold.

There’s a vast spectrum of talent between these two sentences. The “best of the best” may indeed have a golden parachute, but that doesn’t mean that absolutely everyone else will be low-level pushovers. The slightly-less-than-best-of-the-best will still, by definition, be among the best, and there will be plenty others right below them. That’s still a significant talent pool to cause all manner of trouble.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
How sure are we on the quantity of snowfall? I've said it before, but if the tropics hit freezing temperatures, evaporation from the ocean is going to slow down. That's going to mean less precipitation.

I meant to address this earlier. The dynamics of ocean-climate interaction aren’t quite so simple, and there are cases from geological history where the tropics were glaciated along with the rest of the planet. Freezing temperatures near the equator didn’t prevent snow accumulation during those periods.

This scenario won’t be quite that severe, and the oceans will be impacted primarily by debris and acid rain, as well as runoff from topsoil loss. Sea level will gradually drop by some dozens of feet, if not more, so any coastal merfolk communities that survive the runoff and acidification may still find themselves high and dry, and freezing.

The additional exposed land area will also be buried under snow, which will further increase the planet’s albedo and reinforce the ice-age conditions. The exposed and snowed-over coastal areas may also have some formerly drowned ruins of interest, if anyone surviving on the glacial surface ever finds them.

Originally Posted by Quertus
I really wanted to emphasize this point: after 1,000 years of "peace", the short-lived races are going to consist of nothing but weak nobodies.

Not entirely sure I agree with this. I see your logic, but I’d say there’s more to the situation, on a couple of points.

First, those who struggle against these conditions for a thousand years will certainly not be weak at the end of it all. Those who survive will be all the tougher for having overcome every threat the glacial wastes have thrown at them.

Second, those enclaves who have managed to preserve their original populations through a variety of means—petrification, long sleep, some form of stasis, etc.—will reanimate their populations when conditions improve, and they won’t be weaker than the pre-Catastrophe people because they’ll be the pre-Catastrophe people.

Originally Posted by Quertus
All the high-level mortals will have died off. Few of the survivors should have had the opportunity to level up to the point where they pose a threat.

As I recall, either you or someone else mentioned recently that spell research would continue, and eventually access to spells beyond sixth level would be a given.

And given the list of cold-adapted creatures that could establish empires of their own during the glaciated period, I’d say there’s plenty of challenges and plenty of opportunities for leveling.

That said, there may not be many high-level mortals generated by that route; they may be extremely rare compared with their numbers before the Catastrophe. But I’d say there’s still the potential for some.

And the very high-level individuals, the ones who retreated to their personal fortified mountains and private time-bubble demiplanes, will also be returning to the world once conditions improve. Again, perhaps not as many as there were before—even fortified mountains have their weak spots—but there should be some, and they may have their own plans for rebuilding “their” world that conflict with those who took the long way through the previous thousand years.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Similarly, I think that the best plan for the Drow… is to do nothing. Wait until it starts to get warm again, when the feeble remnants of civilization begin to emerge from their vaults… and *then* invade the surface.

This is very likely to be the approach that most of the drow take, apart from the occasional raid on easy targets. If we take the earlier suggestion of a city trading with the drow, then the drow may be using them to take the temperature of the surface, so to speak.

Quertus

2021-02-25, 04:42 PM

So, in a "proper" 3e world, there are so many different ways to survive this threat, that most any larger civilization should have access to, that it is not unreasonable to expect that *most* cities not directly under the mountain should survive - and even be able to trade pieces of solutions that they aren't using.

Still, most beings don't enjoy a "winter wonderland", so those who leave are probably the lucky ones. And… I'm not sure how many would actually want to come back, after 1,000 years. Elves, sure, but… once it's safe, how many people IRL will return to Chernobyl because it was their ancestral home? That… doesn't feel like a common human motivation, to me. So, personally, I expect very few of those who left for greener pastures to return.

A properly sealed and hidden Vault should provide very limited opportunities for XP. The were-Furries are *hoping* for such safety, and killing their criminals for XP. The Liches of the necropolis are going out, looking for trouble. Probably the best-leveled individuals will be the faux sanctuary, slaughtering starving refugees, and the Dragon-hunters, keeping the White Dragon population in check.

That is to say, those who are willing to leave their Vault less defended, and travel out to fight the monsters, could level up. Or those whose vault is more obvious / accessable could have XP come to them (the advantage of the "heated dome" model).

It is difficult to balance power vs safety - and those who lean too far towards safety will, over time, lack the power to ensure that safety.

For their part, the Liches of the necropolis are "subtly" (heh) encouraging Vault status quo, by encouraging trading (or scrounging), and providing maps of safer routes. This will, in theory, enable ongoing sets of leveled characters, to maintain their respective vaults. And, if more liches are formed in the process - or even if the Vaults are grateful for the scouting data - all the better.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-25, 05:26 PM

Something I keep meaning to ask: is the town’s livestock considered to be part of the two years of supply? If not is their fodder included in it, or would the vault have to grow feed for them right from the start?

Maat Mons

2021-02-25, 07:48 PM

Since we've got a pretty in-depth discussion of what a pre-existing undead nation could do in this situation, would anyone like to figure out what a pre-existing elan enclave could do?

There are some similarities between the elans and the undead. Neither need food or water. Both have unlimited lifespans. And they both need humanity to survive so they can make more of themselves.

But the elans have an easier time interacting with others. They don't need to use any sort of disguise to pass for human. And they already have an extensive network of hidden bases.

Earlier, I'd speculated about elans sheltering a breeding population of humans just in case. But thinking about it more, they'd probably just use Crystalize. In a way, it's more convenient than Flesh to Stone, because restoring Crystalized people only required Dispel Magic/Psionics, and has no chance of killing the subject. But in a way it's also less convenient because, as far as I know, there's no monster with an at-will Crystalize effect.

It would actually make sense for elans to keep a stockpile of crystalized humans even without any known impending disaster. Every elan enclave should have a cellar full of them. Just in case someone or something wipes everyone out.

Oh, hey. Psionic Endure Elements is a thing. So I guess anyone could pick that up with the Hidden Talent feat. Might be useful for those few elans who aren't Psions. Like those who are Ardents and Psionic Artificers.

You know, this could be an excellent time for interested parties to increase the prevalence of psionics in the world. Go around helping people retrain a feat into Hidden Talent. Lots of common folk probably have a lame feat, like Skill Focus for a Profession, or something. And maybe you can even get a decent number of people interested in actual levels in a psionic class. Sustenance is a 2nd-level power that takes care of food, at least for the person manifesting it.

Oh sure, Goodberry's 1st level, but good luck finding freshly-picked berries to cast it on the the frozen wastes. Besides, it will probably be hard for most people to muster the reverence for nature necessary to be a Druid when nature plainly sucks for people. And yeah, Create Food and Water makes food for everybody. But that's a 3rd-level spell, which is a lot of time at the rate common folk gain levels. And widespread death and destruction is likely going to give a fair few people crises of faith. So good candidates for Cleric training might get harder to find.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-25, 08:05 PM

Oh sure, Goodberry's 1st level, but good luck finding freshly-picked berries to cast it on the the frozen wastes.

Nitpick: cloudberries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_chamaemorus). Admittedly we need to save the bees and do something to protect them from the acid rain for those.

Sorry I don’t know enough about elans or psionics to comment other than that.

Quertus

2021-02-25, 08:55 PM

Hmmm… well, the Charisma penalty doesn't help the Elan socially, and I'm not sure how long retraining takes, or how long Endure Elements lasts.

But a massive retaining effort before the mountain hits… no, wait - they'd have to choose between "Endure Elements" and "Elan Repletion" for their 1 PP / day, right? So the simple baseline citizens can't be warm *and* fed.

It greatly reduces their dependence on solutions to those problems, and certainly could allow them to a) barter away such solutions for things that they want (which are…?); b) exist with only partial solutions in place; c) survive the failing of *either* of those solutions; d) attempt to overcome that charisma penalty with offering others survival tech.

Of course, the big things people think when they hear "Elan" is Polymorph cheese for Beholder Mage and Illithid Savant early entry.

The Illithid Savant is particularly interesting, as their diet of brains make the Elan enclave the one most likely to want to go the "false Eden" route.

If faith is low, I'm thinking that Ur-Priests might become popular.

Maat Mons

2021-02-25, 10:17 PM

I went looking for how long retraining takes. This has resulted in me learning that retraining can only be done as part of level advancement. That's actually extremely limiting.

On the plus side, it takes no time and costs nothing by default. Or it takes 2 weeks and costs 50 gp, if you're in a game where leveling up normally takes time and requires training costs.

Maybe it will have to be Psychic Reformation instead. Though using that on a large scale might require using the stuff from the Getting Wired article to cheat the xp cost.

Endure Elements lasts 24 hours. For both the regular and psionic version. If you take the Hidden Talent feat, you gain the ability to manifest one 1st-level power, and you also gain 2 power points per day. So with no other source of power points, you can keep yourself and one other person warm at all times.

For those people deemed worthy of being transformed into elans, the immediate result is loosing all class levels, feats, skill points, et cetera. Then, in time, they become 1st-level characters with a class and feat that might bear no resemblance to what they were before.

Anyway, elans gain 2 bonus power points per day. One of which they'll probably be spending on Repletion every day.

I imagine that most elans, after being remade, will take their new 1st class level in Psion, or at least a psionic class. So they'll gain even more power points, and the ability to manifest powers. Probably they'd take Psionic Endure elements as one of their powers known. If they go Psion, they'll have 2 more powers to choose. And they'll have 3 power points per day from the class, plus the 2 from race, so 5. So 1 each day for Repletion. Another 1 each day for Endure Elements on themselves. And then 3 power points for other things each day. Maybe Endure Elements on 3 other people. If they have a 14+ in their manifesting stat, they'll have another power point per day.

For those elans who don't take psionic classes (what rebels!), there's still the Hidden Talent feat. And since becoming an elan causes an immediate hard-reset of your entire build, they wouldn't have to wait for a level up like those chumps using retraining to get it. They'd just have to wait however long it takes to go from a blank slate to being a 1st-level character with a PC class. Being remade sure must be taxing. I wonder if they have to relearn how to walk and feed themselves the same way they forget all their old skills. Anyway, these elans would have 4 power points per day, 2 from being an elan, and 2 from the Hidden Talent feat.

Elans have traditionally been very selective about adding new members. I guess if you go around making too many people live forever, you're going to bring on a population crisis. If they stick to their usual strategy of only recruiting a few exceptional individuals, not very many people are going to be able to benefit from Elan Repletion. Which is why I was kind of focusing on Sustenance. They wouldn't really have any issues with training more Psions.

But the elans are facing a sharp reduction in the pool of recruits for the next 1,000 years. Maybe during the lean times, they'll have to lower their standards to hit their recruitment targets. Maybe they'll do some preemptive mass recruiting before picking get too slim to try to mitigate that.

Palanan

2021-02-25, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
So, in a "proper" 3e world, there are so many different ways to survive this threat, that most any larger civilization should have access to, that it is not unreasonable to expect that *most* cities not directly under the mountain should survive….

“Most” is a little optimistic; but it’s reasonable that higher-level casters that feel some loyalty to their homes would help them weather the crisis. If the orbs of convenient balminess do exist, then there’s a place for a kingdom-sized realm that snaps them up to maximize its own agricultural output, among other options.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Still, most beings don't enjoy a "winter wonderland", so those who leave are probably the lucky ones. …I expect very few of those who left for greener pastures to return.

By leaving, do you mean departing for other planes, worlds, dimensions, etc.?

Originally Posted by Quertus
For their part, the Liches of the necropolis are "subtly" (heh) encouraging Vault status quo, by encouraging trading (or scrounging), and providing maps of safer routes.

Ahh, but what if agents of the faux sanctuary are altering those maps, showing some of those “safer routes” leading right to the faux sanctuary? Bad optics for the necropolis once word gets out.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Something I keep meaning to ask: is the town’s livestock considered to be part of the two years of supply? If not is their fodder included in it, or would the vault have to grow feed for them right from the start?

Good point here. It wouldn’t be feasible to grow enough fodder in the caves to support all of their flocks and livestock, so there would have to be some hard choices made. Probably there will be some efforts to preserve what meat they can, either through salting or smoking.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
And they already have an extensive network of hidden bases.

Is this part of elan lore? I don’t do psionics, so I don’t know a thing about elans.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
It would actually make sense for elans to keep a stockpile of crystalized humans even without any known impending disaster. Every elan enclave should have a cellar full of them. Just in case someone or something wipes everyone out.

Are these willing humans? Or kidnapped? Charmed? Mind-controlled?

Because sooner or later, someone’s relatives will hire some adventurers to find their missing kin, and that’s where the fun begins.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
Besides, it will probably be hard for most people to muster the reverence for nature necessary to be a Druid when nature plainly sucks for people…. And widespread death and destruction is likely going to give a fair few people crises of faith. So good candidates for Cleric training might get harder to find.

I can see this to a degree, especially with druids. There will certainly be a decline in the traditional forest-loving druids, but there may also be a shift to arctic-adapted druids.

As for clerics and faith, I can see that being more complex. At the very least, deities of both fire and ice should have plenty of adherents.

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
But the elans are facing a sharp reduction in the pool of recruits for the next 1,000 years. Maybe during the lean times, they'll have to lower their standards to hit their recruitment targets. Maybe they'll do some preemptive mass recruiting before picking get too slim to try to mitigate that.

Will the elans be openly advertising who and what they are? Or will they just be vaguely promising shelter and a way to survive the coming chaos?

Maat Mons

2021-02-26, 01:48 PM

Okay, checking EPH, the word it uses in conjunction with the hidden elan enclaves is "several." So maybe their network of secret bases isn't as extensive as I'd been thinking. But yes, it's totally a part of elan lore ... except in Eberron and Faerun. In Eberron, elan are created by the quori and generally serve them. In Faerun, there are exactly 12 elan, and they're all amnesiacs. Both of those drastically contradict the lore in EPH and other non-setting sources.

I figure the crystal creature collection would consist of people the elan needed to get rid of for various unrelated reasons over the previous centuries/millennia. Except any of the actually dangerous ones. Those guys aren't going to be dealt with in a way that makes it so easy to bring them back. There's still the risk of people coming looking for the victims. But if they already had to take that risk anyway for some other reason, may as well kill two birds with one stone and fill out the silent gardens while you're at it.

I've always imagined that elan recruitment strategies involve being very open and forthright with the candidates they approach … and then erasing their memories if they decline. And, obviously, erasing the memories of anyone they told about any of this … whether the accept or decline.

Quertus

2021-02-26, 02:31 PM

“Most” is a little optimistic; but it’s reasonable that higher-level casters that feel some loyalty to their homes would help them weather the crisis. If the orbs of convenient balminess do exist, then there’s a place for a kingdom-sized realm that snaps them up to maximize its own agricultural output, among other options.

Most RAW cities should either have strong caster support, and/or a way off-world.

Sure, one kingdom might try to pull all its casters to the Capitol. Sure, a few casters might try and find their old Master in the hopes of leaving this world behind.

But I expect most cities will find that most of their casters remain. And spells and items seem plenty capable of solving those problem in numerous ways, as the playground has been demonstrating. Having a convenient cave system nearby is just icing on the cake.

By leaving, do you mean departing for other planes, worlds, dimensions, etc.?

Yup. If the powerhouses who can, *don't* leave, well, hopefully my "cool cats" post shows at least enough of the tip of the iceberg to demonstrate that isolated pods don't have much hope against that level of play.

Ahh, but what if agents of the faux sanctuary are altering those maps, showing some of those “safer routes” leading right to the faux sanctuary? Bad optics for the necropolis once word gets out.

That would be a neat trick, given that the necropolis sells direct.

That is, when they make it to a town, they provide the most updated information about current local hazards, local trading partners (Agraria has the flu; the Dry Lich is AWOL), failed civilizations (the coastal merfolk froze to death), etc.

If asked, they'll provide "longer range" information, or broker trade requests between cities, or similar services.

Lying that the necropolis provided this information about the faux sanctuary… isn't likely to buy you much beyond suspicion and failure.

(Unless you were providing it to a militant theocracy that had attacked the Liches… at which point it might buy you belief… and being burned at the stake as a heretic.)

Good point here. It wouldn’t be feasible to grow enough fodder in the caves to support all of their flocks and livestock, so there would have to be some hard choices made. Probably there will be some efforts to preserve what meat they can, either through salting or smoking.

I'm not sure I'd eat 1,000 year old salted meats.

Soylent Bandit: meat's back on the menu, boys!

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-26, 05:36 PM

Right. So? Plants don't need infra-red, they need heat and light. Trapping infra-red makes greenhouses warmer than the surrounding area, sure, but it's really just a way of avoiding heat loss. You could duplicate the effect from another direction by way of a double or triple layer Invisible Spell Wall of Stone with air gaps. But then, when you have a permanent wall of fire warming the place, it really doesn't matter.
1. I know my suggestion has permanent walls of fire, but those aren't a universal feature.
2. Then...what's the purpose of the greenhouse? Greenhouses basically just trap heat and moisture, and moisture isn't going to be much of an issue here. (At least, we have no reason to think it would be worse than it was before.)

A fireball still evokes a ball of fire whether anyone's in the area to get damaged or not.

Summoning and Calling spells transport a creature - it's brought from elsewhere and controlled. Wall of Stone creates stone. They're completely different classes of spells.
The effects of Invisible Spell don't depend on the subschool, they depend on the spell's "effect". Summon monster I's Effect line reads "One summoned creature". ("Summoned" is clearly an adjective in that phrase, unless the creature being summoned by a certain web-mangaka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_(manga_artist)).) Meanwhile, teleport doesn't have an Effect line at all, and wall of stone's Effect line says "Stone wall whose area is up to one 5-ft. square/level (S)". SM1 and WoS use the same language, teleport does not.
You have to dig past mechanics and into what you assume the mechanics are supposed to mean to get an interpretation where WoS can be made invisible but SM1 can't, and even then you have to make a specific set of assumptions about how both the spells involved and the metamagic feat are supposed to function. And while you're doing that, the DM is shaking his head and saying that you can't get a free permanent invisibility spell that easily.

These and other issues have been extensively discussed earlier in the thread.
Then surely you have some kind of solution to them you could point to, instead of just saying "Oh, we talked about it" and ignoring the problem?

Two points here. First, the raiders will be coming in numbers—
From where? Where are these raiders coming from, and why are they raiding us?

Second, spell slots used to fight off raiders are spell slots not being used to support the community in other ways. If there’s a way to avoid having to fight the raiders at all, e.g. avoiding their notice in caves, then that’s the smarter solution.
Assuming that you aren't sacrificing even more to stay hidden. Which you would be, because:

Large communities are obvious by their very nature (especially when there aren't many other people around).
Unless these raiders are acting on bad video game logic, they're presumably looking for food and shelter. They would presumably be willing to work with our community if that was safer than raiding, which it would be thanks to the high-level spellcasters.
Speaking of high-level spellcasters, you'd have to hide from them too (unless all high-level spellcasters are Good Guys for arbitrary reasons). This means that hiding means not only living in poorly-ventilated caves, not lighting fires (unless you can hide several thousand chimneys' smoke), never leaving the town, etc, but also casting nondetection and similar anti-divination measures on the entire town.

Not to mention that hiding is probably impossible anyways. You would need to take 20,000 people from point A to point B; after all, anywhere 20,000 people would think to run for safety is going to be a place people know about. You need to move quickly and quietly, since you're more likely to be found the more time you spend/the more ruckus you make. And you obviously can't leave a trail, since raiders could follow your trail.
How do you propose moving 20,000 people from point A to hidden point B without being noticed or leaving a 20,000-person-sized trail? How do you propose moving all the livestock, tools, etc they need to live? Building thousands of new houses? (You can't just occupy an abandoned town or something—that's the first place They will look!) What will you do if someone stumbles on this massive operation—chase them down and force them to submit or die? What if someone runs away/gets lost/refuses to leave, and the raiders find them?

And when someone finds your new home, are you willing to go through all of that again?

TL;DR: Hiding an entire city is a fool's errand.

It’s safe to assume that prior to the impact, there was a functioning society with the usual range of kingdoms and other principalities, with military and civil resources to protect their citizens.

With those kingdoms and principalities now gone and buried under snow, there’s nothing to prevent magical predators and other things from spreading far and wide, and those which are cold-adapted will obviously have the competitive edge. What used to be humanoid regions will now be monstrous regions, with many more monsters than there were before. By definition it’s a bigger problem.
You're assuming A. that all the monsters survived the cataclysm and B. that the functioning society had no permanent effects on the local monster populations. I'm not sure which is more ridiculous—one suggests that monsters are unaffected by permanent winter, the other that monsters appear at a constant rate no matter how often soldiers/adventurers/etc kill them. The impression this gives is that monsters are either just a basic statistic of the land that can't be affected by anything, or that the world's ecosystems run on Final Fantasy logic.

In reality, settlements near areas with dangerous creatures will tend to decrease the populations of those creatures, since people kill the dangerous creatures. That's how farmers deal with wolves, it's how adventurers deal with wargs, and there's no reason it wouldn't apply to every other species of natural monster. If people moved out of a region, local wildlife populations may or may not recover—except, oh wait, there's an apocalyptic winter coming, that mass extinction will wipe out the monsters before they get a chance to recover!

P.S. The Underdark is famously full of monsters.

Are there specific spells you’re thinking of that would harden or augment the stone from Wall of Stone?
There's more to architecture than material science.

Let me take one pretty straightforward problem. The main reason the sides of a dome don't fall over is the compressive strength of the dome's top. The sides want to fall in, but they would need to squish the top out of the way, and the top is too strong, so they don't. However, when building a dome, the sides have to be put in place before the top—weeks or months before the top, because ancient construction was slow. The ancients had a bunch of techniques for solving this, but it's not really a problem for magic; you can throw up temporary scaffolding on walls of basically anything but stone or iron, then stick a stable stone structure on top of them before dismissing the scaffolding-wall spell.

And that's just something I came up with off the top of my head. I'm not an architect, but I'm willing to bet that if I was I'd be able to point out more problems that magic could solve (relatively) trivially than problems which can't be solved.

The architects who built those cathedrals zealously guarded their techniques, so that information isn’t likely to be public.
Yes, architects guard their unique and irreproducible techniques jealously. That's why no period or culture has distinctive architectural styles based around a set of solutions to construction problems that work and ideally look alright. Certainly there aren't any associated with the very kind of buildings we are discussing!

I never said it was impossible, only time-consuming and very likely more trouble than it’s worth.
Yet you think hiding an entire city in the Underdark isn't?

You’re thinking of Suspension, from p. 51 of Shining South. This levitates objects of up to 1000 pounds per level.

It also has a duration of 1d4 days + 1 day per level, so not automatically permanent. Whether this spell qualifies for Permanency is a good question, although it doesn’t show up in this list of candidates (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=4544.msg63345#msg63345).
Even if it doesn't, that's roughly one spell slot per two weeks, to hold up 12,000 pounds. If the end result is going to be stable, that's probably more than you need. Sure, dispel magic or disrupting spellcasters enough will make the whole thing come crashing down, but sabotage or attacking critical workers will destroy any civilization—we just don't think about the ways such effort could destroy more familiar communities, because we dismiss it as "normal".

I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that a lot of people will panic when the news first breaks. People will be seeking safety wherever they think they can find it, whether or not their hopes are justified. Some people will set out for larger cities, others for this or that rumored safe haven, and soon enough the roads and passes will be crammed with people hoping that wherever they’re going will be safer than where they were.

It’s not rational. It’s not sensible. It’s how people behave.
No, it isn't.
People know how people act in the moment. We have an instinctive understanding of how they react to lions, fires, flood, and other immediate dangers. But our intuition breaks down for anything long-term. The (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-stress-of-disaster-brings-people-together/) evidence (https://www.crisisprevention.com/Blog/March-2019/Considering-Human-Factors-in-Crisis-Communication#) is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_response_to_disasters#Panic/Scared) clear (https://www.forbes.com/2008/09/02/crisis-reaction-health-forbeslife-cx_avd_0902health.html?sh=41042f495391) (and goes beyond the first links I pulled from Google searches)—people work together in crisis situations rather than going insane. Which makes sense, because humanity didn't go extinct before inventing stone tools.

I really wanted to emphasize this point: after 1,000 years of "peace", the short-lived races are going to consist of nothing but weak nobodies.

Dragons, Warforged, Liches? They could come out of the 1,000 year winter and hit the ground running, but everyone else? It's Athens vs Sparta - if you're living a life of peace, you're not trained for war.
Aside from the fact that Sparta was average at battles and terrible at wars (https://acoup.blog/2019/09/27/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-vii-spartan-ends/). In fact, this whole line of reason is based on a factually incorrect reading of history which historian Bret Devereaux terms the Fremen Mirage (https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/). I don't want to repeat a four-part blog series about military structure and history, but TL;DR hard times don't make hard men.

Palanan

2021-02-26, 06:10 PM

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
I've always imagined that elan recruitment strategies involve being very open and forthright with the candidates they approach … and then erasing their memories if they decline. And, obviously, erasing the memories of anyone they told about any of this … whether the accept or decline.

Are all elans able to erase memories, or just the ones with certain feats/powers? Just curious here, since I know close to nothing about them.

Originally Posted by Quertus
That would be a neat trick, given that the necropolis sells direct.

I’m thinking that once a map is sold, it may vanish and reappear with a few minor modifications.

Going on the assumption that once a map is sold, it’s out in the world and the necropolis won’t be taking any steps to ensure it stays with the people who bought it. That’s where the faux sanctuary comes in.

Unless the necropolis has a remote track-changes feature on their maps. Status + Amanuensis, maybe?

Originally Posted by Quertus
I'm not sure I'd eat 1,000 year old salted meats.

Not likely to be an issue. Since the preserved meat isn’t self-renewing, they’ll likely run through it during the first couple of years. Although I suppose some could be petrified for longer-term storage.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Soylent Bandit: meat's back on the menu, boys!

I can only salute this mashing of memes.

Maat Mons

2021-02-26, 07:16 PM

Elans have no innate ability to manipulate memories. They do, however, have a higher-than-normal tendency to take levels in psionic classes. In fact, the process of creating new elans requires some level of psionic ability. (Exactly how much is deliberately left unspecified.) So the elans directly involved in making more elans will definitely have some psionic class levels.

Psionic Modify Memory is a 4th-level Telepath power. Not everyone is a Telepath, but psionics is kind enough to offer the Expanded Knowledge feat, which allows anyone to gain a power not on their class list (albeit one level lower than their maximum power level). This isn't a contentious thing like Extra Spell, by the way. It's explicitly stated in Expanded Knowledge that you can do this.

If you want fresh meat, someone already suggested casting Stone to Flesh on a Wall of Stone. Though it might be more efficient to cast it on whatever rock you were planning to tunnel through to expand your caverns. Then, instead of using pickaxes and hauling off a bunch of rock, you do your excavation with steak knives, and you eat the cartfulls of material you remove. Anyway, it's about 70 cubic feet of meat per casting. Google says a cubic foot of meat weights about 55 pounds. And 650 calories per pound of meat. So at 2000 calories per day, that's ... well over 1200 people fed. Some might argue that eating nothing but meat would be nutritionally unbalanced. But others would argue that it would be delicious.

Quertus

2021-02-26, 09:49 PM

1. I know my suggestion has permanent walls of fire, but those aren't a universal feature.

Was that the proposed heating solution for the original dome? If so, why?

Then surely you have some kind of solution to them you could point to, instead of just saying "Oh, we talked about it" and ignoring the problem?

Agreed.

Assuming that you aren't sacrificing even more to stay hidden. Which you would be, because:

Not to mention that hiding is probably impossible anyways. You would need to take 20,000 people from point A to point B; after all, anywhere 20,000 people would think to run for safety is going to be a place people know about. You need to move quickly and quietly, since you're more likely to be found the more time you spend/the more ruckus you make. And you obviously can't leave a trail, since raiders could follow your trail.
How do you propose moving 20,000 people from point A to hidden point B without being noticed or leaving a 20,000-person-sized trail? How do you propose moving all the livestock, tools, etc they need to live? Building thousands of new houses?

Depends on… the local rules.

Being behind stone *may* render you immune to certain Divinations.

And remember: you're hiding for 1,000 years, under 100' of snow - the tracking DC is pretty crazy if they don't find you right away

(You can't just occupy an abandoned town or something—that's the first place They will look!)

The Liches will actually encourage the "occupy abandoned towns" (failed vaults) scenario.

What if someone runs away/gets lost/refuses to leave, and the raiders find them?

That is a potential issue. Sounds like a good reason to seal the vaults.

P.S. The Underdark is famously full of monsters.

Yet you think hiding an entire city in the Underdark isn't?

The primary idea was "(stand-alone) cave (complex)", not "underdark". Subtle difference (mostly lack of radiation, and lack of neighbors).

Sure, dispel magic or disrupting spellcasters enough will make the whole thing come crashing down, but sabotage or attacking critical workers will destroy any civilization—we just don't think about the ways such effort could destroy more familiar communities, because we dismiss it as "normal".

Yeah, most everyone is subject to disruption.

Aside from the fact that Sparta was average at battles and terrible at wars (https://acoup.blog/2019/09/27/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-vii-spartan-ends/). In fact, this whole line of reason is based on a factually incorrect reading of history which historian Bret Devereaux terms the Fremen Mirage (https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/). I don't want to repeat a four-part blog series about military structure and history, but TL;DR hard times don't make hard men.

Simple D&D math: all couch cave potato and no XP makes Jack a low-level fod.

I’m thinking that once a map is sold, it may vanish and reappear with a few minor modifications.

Going on the assumption that once a map is sold, it’s out in the world and the necropolis won’t be taking any steps to ensure it stays with the people who bought it. That’s where the faux sanctuary comes in.

Unless the necropolis has a remote track-changes feature on their maps. Status + Amanuensis, maybe?

Think less "map" (my words, my bad) and more "ranger gives you advice safe local paths". If you're in Honolulu, bad advice about the Yellowstone area… is probably meaningless. Whereas (if they visited you) the Liches warned that the Dragon in the Kilauea's volcano wasn't friendly, but the Coral Pass was relatively safe (just ghosts of disgruntled merfolk).

Not likely to be an issue. Since the preserved meat isn’t self-renewing, they’ll likely run through it during the first couple of years. Although I suppose some could be petrified for longer-term storage.

Petrified meats. Stone cold perfection. Just add Soft. Some assembly required.

I can only salute this mashing of memes.

What can I say, I'm prepping for a DtD40k7e game :smallwink:

If you want fresh meat, someone already suggested casting Stone to Flesh on a Wall of Stone. Though it might be more efficient to cast it on whatever rock you were planning to tunnel through to expand your caverns. Then, instead of using pickaxes and hauling off a bunch of rock, you do your excavation with steak knives, and you eat the cartfulls of material you remove. Anyway, it's about 70 cubic feet of meat per casting. Google says a cubic foot of meat weights about 55 pounds. And 650 calories per pound of meat. So at 2000 calories per day, that's ... well over 1200 people fed. Some might argue that eating nothing but meat would be nutritionally unbalanced. But others would argue that it would be delicious.

That takes me back!

Although I probably wouldn't allow it today, in one of my first games, that's exactly how my brother handled a castle with no clear entrance. :smallbiggrin:

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-27, 08:55 AM

If we’re using Pathfinder I think I found a way to save some livestock: the Pokéball spell! (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/carry-companion) It’s only second level, so we could delegate it to lower-level casters. We don’t need a basilisk or friendly medusa for this one, it already has the shrink portion built in, and it has a command word to end it so no need for more spellcasting to reverse it - in theory we could shrink down a farmer’s entire flock, and when the pasturage exists for it again the farmer can restore the sheep completely on his own.

Downsides are that it doesn’t work on humanoids (so pertrifing the townsfolk would still need stronger magic if we go that route) and I’m sketchy on how you could make an animal friendly, so I don’t know if the local druids could get it to work on deer or other wildlife.

There was also this (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/animal-purpose-training) which looks like it might be useful for the Orb Cities - ploughing I think would fall under ‘heavy labor’?

EDIT:

Okay I found a Charm Animal (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/charm-animal) spell to make animals friendly if we need it although it looks like it’s single target.

I also found a water source spell if the caves don’t already have a spring: Oasis. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/o/oasis) It’s high level, but judging by the description it doesn’t actually wear off, it’s just susceptible to any difficulties a non-magically-created spring could run into. The big issue I can see is the line about affecting other springs within a 1-mile radius - we can’t spam these, and if the town is still using its well we’d have to put the new spring at least a mile away to keep from draining it.

Palanan

2021-02-27, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by Quertus
Think less "map" (my words, my bad) and more "ranger gives you advice safe local paths". If you're in Honolulu, bad advice about the Yellowstone area… is probably meaningless.

Okay, that’s fair. Based on your prior mentions I was assuming there was a physical map that would be traded around. If it’s more a question of verbal lore, that’s a different story.

Although I’d say the faux sanctuary might still try to distort that somehow—perhaps if the necropolis becomes well-known for giving good directions, agents of the faux sanctuary might claim they had the information “straight from the necropolis, and you know how accurate they are, so you can trust me on this!”

Originally Posted by Quertus
What can I say, I'm prepping for a DtD40k7e game….

…What is this?

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
If we’re using Pathfinder I think I found a way to save some livestock: the Pokéball spell!

Really good find. You’d probably want some sort of cabinet or storage locker to protect against accidental breakage.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
There was also this which looks like it might be useful for the Orb Cities - ploughing I think would fall under ‘heavy labor’?

I’d say plowing would definitely count as heavy labor where animals are concerned. Although that spell would probably need several castings per day, unless you want to tie up a higher-level caster on the fields.

As an alternative, there’s the Phantom Plow spell from Lords of Darkness, which might or might not work out to be more efficient.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I also found a water source spell if the caves don’t already have a spring: Oasis.

Another good catch. That’s a fairly low rate of flow, but still has possibilities.

A lower-level option could be Sweet Water, from Defenders of the Faith. The main benefit is that it creates a well shaft up to 100 feet deep to an existing water source—and it doesn’t specify a soil type, so there’s a case to be made that it could tunnel through solid rock.

shaikujin

2021-02-27, 11:34 AM

I had a plan drawn out for a scenario similar to the OP.

More than 1 poster have already mentioned using Everfull Larder, Decanter of water and several magical enhancements for Stronghold spaces. That would take care of the food/water/air/warmth aspects.

To flourish, have crafters build self resetting mechanical traps of various DCs for the population to overcome/survive. The population will earn XP for surviving the traps, and can start taking levels.

While the traps are being built, higher level folks can party up with low level folks. The lower level folks can then use Pathfinder downtime rules to gain XP until they reach the XP of the highest level party member.

Pathfinder also has Kingdom rules that grant XP for exploring areas and for establishing settlements.

After a while, even if the highest level townsfolk is still capped at 12, you'll still have a 20,000 strong army of lvl 12 NPCs.

Additionally, activate the population to make a dungeon Stronghold large enough for them. (Dungeons have no max size). Give the Stronghold mobility enhancements like burrow, fly, teleport etc.

My plan was to model the Stronghold into something like a Battletech dropship. After it is completed, the dropshop can emerge out of the mountains if resources run out or if the current location becomes unsafe.

Or look for other survivors/enclaves etc.

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-27, 01:52 PM

Depends on… the local rules.
Being behind stone *may* render you immune to certain Divinations.
Detect X spells, sure. But not scrying, commune, contact other plane, hindsight, potentially locate object/creature or lay of the land...oh yeah, then there's locate city, which supposedly can be used for things other than carpet bombing. That's a first-level spell accessible to bards, rangers, sorcerers, and wizards which would be able to find your city unless you enclosed it thoroughly enough that it's physically impossible for people to enter or leave. Which is not going to be fast, especially if we assume these potential raiders wouldn't wait to look for targets until you actually scout out a new location and move there. (Awfully impolite, but raiders aren't noted for decorum.)

And remember: you're hiding for 1,000 years, under 100' of snow - the tracking DC is pretty crazy if they don't find you right away
"Right away" is the time I'm talking about. Speaking of which...

That is a potential issue. Sounds like a good reason to seal the vaults.
...you can't seal the vaults before you bring the people inside. I'm talking about the inevitability of being noticed before you have the vault set up, because that's the time you are both most visible and most vulnerable.

I'm not convinced that the dangers that sealing everyone in a vault would actually be significant, but if they are, sealing everyone in a vault wouldn't save you. There are too many ways for your new city to be discovered before you've finished hiding it, too many ways for the information to leak out while you're moving there, and even when you're done there will still ways for Them to find your settlement. Perfectly mundane methods might work, depending on how exactly you turn some random shallow caves into a sealed bunker-metropolis, but even if you leave no trace on the surface world, anyone who would be a concern to a town protected by high-level magic would have access to divination magic that would let them find you. As far as I know, no magic available to a 12th-level caster can hide your city from any of the asking-questions divination spells. (Not all of which are limited to yes/no questions!)

And the cost of sealing everyone in a vault isn't zero. You have to expend considerable resources to get enough light and fresh air for the population, constructing new buildings is ridiculously more difficult, farming goes from difficult to infeasible, etc. Oh yeah, and you have to build a whole new city underground, or else force everyone to just sleep in a raw cave.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-27, 01:58 PM

If you want fresh meat, someone already suggested casting Stone to Flesh on a Wall of Stone. Though it might be more efficient to cast it on whatever rock you were planning to tunnel through to expand your caverns. Then, instead of using pickaxes and hauling off a bunch of rock, you do your excavation with steak knives, and you eat the cartfulls of material you remove. Anyway, it's about 70 cubic feet of meat per casting. Google says a cubic foot of meat weights about 55 pounds. And 650 calories per pound of meat. So at 2000 calories per day, that's ... well over 1200 people fed. Some might argue that eating nothing but meat would be nutritionally unbalanced. But others would argue that it would be delicious.

There are apparently man-eating sheep (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/man-eating-ram/) in Pathfinder so if you end up making enough extra meat you can have wool and milk (and possibly butter, cheese and so on by extension) too.

Fair warning, the sheep are Evil aligned.

Really good find. You’d probably want some sort of cabinet or storage locker to protect against accidental breakage.

You mean...we should put them in Box Storage? *ducks*

But yes having the farmers put their livestock in a lockable, padded chest or something would be wise. (And if we need to petrify said farmer later, make sure they have the key on them for their chest - hopefully that will make it harder to steal.) I’d want to have a few castings of Mending at the ready too, but it would be better not to need them.

I’d say plowing would definitely count as heavy labor where animals are concerned. Although that spell would probably need several castings per day, unless you want to tie up a higher-level caster on the fields.

My thought was this might be a good use for casters whose spells aren’t necessarily useful for the other things on the list - EX: if your clerics, druids and wizards are Stone Shaping a huge wall around the field, I don’t see that on the spell list for bards or paladins but those two DO get Animal Purpose. As for the recastings...how big a threat are the plow teams under? If your perimeter defenses are keeping most of the bad stuff out, a few low-level casters who recast the spell a few times per day might be doable. Might be able to to use the utility to convince some of those farmers to take some spellcasting levels too.

A lower-level option could be Sweet Water, from Defenders of the Faith. The main benefit is that it creates a well shaft up to 100 feet deep to an existing water source—and it doesn’t specify a soil type, so there’s a case to be made that it could tunnel through solid rock.

I’ll have to look that one up; I’m curious if doing both would work - sink a bunch of wells with Sweet Water and if there isn’t any water 100 feet deep, create the spring.

EDIT: Looks like the spell just fails if there’s no water to reach, but still useful. If the lower level casters can find something it would save a higher spell slot.

Palanan

2021-02-27, 03:46 PM

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
As for the recastings...how big a threat are the plow teams under? If your perimeter defenses are keeping most of the bad stuff out, a few low-level casters who recast the spell a few times per day might be doable.

Just to clarify, I’m thinking of Animal Purpose and Phantom Plow in the context of a large kingdom that’s snapped up a number of the orbs, and placed them to create a single agricultural region, which would be subdivided into fields, roads, hedges, etc.

This would be a fairly large area in terms of acres, so it would essentially be a county in itself, in the sense of a rural division. I’m envisioning this region being established and maintained by a kingdom with the resources to collect the orbs and defend the area.

So, once past the first couple years I’d say the threat level would be moderate, mainly cold-tolerant creatures and perhaps crop-raiding by other surviving enclaves. After a couple centuries, there may be a different dynamic if a frost giant empire or something similar develops, but early on I’d say the logistics of farming efficiently would be the biggest challenge.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Might be able to to use the utility to convince some of those farmers to take some spellcasting levels too.

I haven’t worked up the exact numbers for the Orb Kingdom, but I would expect there are hundreds of low-level spellcasters available, and druids and clerics of nature deities would be required to put in their time in the Orb Farms. If this setting has an equivalent of Chauntea from the Realms, then I could see the majority of the farming class required to attend agricultural academies where they would all receive training in basic crop magic.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I’ll have to look that one up; I’m curious if doing both would work - sink a bunch of wells with Sweet Water and if there isn’t any water 100 feet deep, create the spring.

As for irrigation, these could be a partial solution, but Oasis won’t provide the thousands of gallons of water required per day for crops on this scale.

However, there’s an abundance of water in the hundred-foot snowpack surrounding the Orb Farms, and I expect there will be natural melting on the sides closest to the temperate orb environment, to the point where some form of irrigation system would be necessary simply to keep the meltwater from turning the adjacent fields into a soggy mush.

So I could see a system of viaducts and canals bringing meltwater into the Orb Farms and channeling the excess away, possibly for a combination of civic use, stock ponds, millraces, etc.

Maat Mons

2021-02-27, 04:16 PM

Maybe you can seal the vaults before you bring people in. You'd need some form of teleportation. But if teleportation is the only way anyone ever gets in or out, even during the earliest stages of construction, tracking the people coming and going gets a lot more difficult.

Transport Via Plants could work once you've managed to get a big enough plant growing in your subterranean shelter. Gemjump could work, if you can first get someone carrying a bunch of specially-prepared gems down where you want to go. City Stride could work once your underground home is populated enough to count as a city.

I'm still not convinced that high-level casters are going to attack us. In order for that to make sense, we'd need to have something they want. And taking it from us would have to be easier than other methods by which they could obtain it.

I could see that applying to powerful, portable magic items. But if the things we're crafting are all either cheep or fixed in place, I can't imagine a truly powerful caster would consider it to be worth his time to mess with us.

Speaking of valuable, mobile magic items, if the Everfull Larders are, in fact, the cabinet style of larder, can't we just suspend them from the ceiling, such that everything falls out as soon as they're opened? Then we could build a mechanism that automatically opens and closes the doors. Maybe power it with a water wheel attached to a Decanter of Endless Water.

Now, to figure out a way to keep the eggs and the food stored in jars from smashing on the floor.

Okay, so trying to get the reference. "40k" is clearly Warhammer 40k. Google says "DtD" is Demon: The Descent. And "7e" is presumably the 7th edition of... let's say Call of Cthulhu. That's what turned up when I searched 7e, anyway. Did I get it right?

Quertus

2021-02-27, 06:10 PM

Okay, that’s fair. Based on your prior mentions I was assuming there was a physical map that would be traded around.

Well, before I realized that "trees" and "paper" might be limited, I was thinking of it as a physical map… but, generally, still a *local* one, as a) that's what matters to them; b) it makes the necropolis feel "local".

If it’s more a question of verbal lore, that’s a different story.

Although I’d say the faux sanctuary might still try to distort that somehow—perhaps if the necropolis becomes well-known for giving good directions, agents of the faux sanctuary might claim they had the information “straight from the necropolis, and you know how accurate they are, so you can trust me on this!”

That… should still only work to raise the DC of their bluff check.

I had a plan drawn out for a scenario similar to the OP.

More than 1 poster have already mentioned using Everfull Larder, Decanter of water and several magical enhancements for Stronghold spaces. That would take care of the food/water/air/warmth aspects.

What handles air? How long will this take to enchant? What will you do if you cannot get enough of the reagents you need?

To flourish, have crafters build self resetting mechanical traps of various DCs for the population to overcome/survive. The population will earn XP for surviving the traps, and can start taking levels.

That's… not unlike my plans for leveling should D&D hit IRL - kudos!

While the traps are being built, higher level folks can party up with low level folks. The lower level folks can then use Pathfinder downtime rules to gain XP until they reach the XP of the highest level party member.

Well, that's an awesome rule to know about!

Pathfinder also has Kingdom rules that grant XP for exploring areas and for establishing settlements.

Bonus for the necropolis.

After a while, even if the highest level townsfolk is still capped at 12, you'll still have a 20,000 strong army of lvl 12 NPCs.

Or more - reproduction is a thing :smallwink:

Additionally, activate the population to make a dungeon Stronghold large enough for them. (Dungeons have no max size). Give the Stronghold mobility enhancements like burrow, fly, teleport etc.

Still limited by reagents? Or some other trick / tech at play here?

My plan was to model the Stronghold into something like a Battletech dropship. After it is completed, the dropshop can emerge out of the mountains if resources run out or if the current location becomes unsafe.

How did Everfull Larder, Decanter of water resources run out? :smallconfused:

Or look for other survivors/enclaves etc.

Well, that at least is a credible, mobile threat.

However, there’s an abundance of water in the hundred-foot snowpack surrounding the Orb Farms, and I expect there will be natural melting on the sides closest to the temperate orb environment, to the point where some form of irrigation system would be necessary simply to keep the meltwater from turning the adjacent fields into a soggy mush.

So I could see a system of viaducts and canals bringing meltwater into the Orb Farms and channeling the excess away, possibly for a combination of civic use, stock ponds, millraces, etc.

Isn't this all "acid rain" water? Isn't it a threat to your crops, not a solution?

I guess we know where all the bandits are coming from: failed orb kingdom. :smallfrown:

I'm still not convinced that high-level casters are going to attack us. In order for that to make sense, we'd need to have something they want. And taking it from us would have to be easier than other methods by which they could obtain it.

I could see that applying to powerful, portable magic items. But if the things we're crafting are all either cheep or fixed in place, I can't imagine a truly powerful caster would consider it to be worth his time to mess with us.

Yeah, sadly, there's definite impetus for post-apocalyptic crafts to be intentionally made non-portable.

Which also fuels the necropolis desire to move extra population to former failed projects, to utilize those static resources.

Speaking of valuable, mobile magic items, if the Everfull Larders are, in fact, the cabinet style of larder, can't we just suspend them from the ceiling, such that everything falls out as soon as they're opened? Then we could build a mechanism that automatically opens and closes the doors. Maybe power it with a water wheel attached to a Decanter of Endless Water.

Now, to figure out a way to keep the eggs and the food stored in jars from smashing on the floor.

Self-resetting traps of feather fall?

…What is this?

Okay, so trying to get the reference. "40k" is clearly Warhammer 40k. Google says "DtD" is Demon: The Descent. And "7e" is presumably the 7th edition of... let's say Call of Cthulhu. That's what turned up when I searched 7e, anyway. Did I get it right?

DtD40k7e is… Dungeons the Dragoning (clearly from D&D & WoD) 40k (clearly from Warhammer 40k) 7e (…?).

The system definitely "understands" things like Dragons, lycanthropic halfling, Liches, magic items, etc, so a lot of this thread is giving me ideas for Hoth, potential base for the rebels, to be scouted by the party, a group of Troubleshooters who will beam down as an away team from a Transformational, Armed, Really Dang Intimidating Ship.

So, yeah, point being, expect me to mix my metaphors whenever possible :smallbiggrin:

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-02-27, 06:24 PM

As for irrigation, these could be a partial solution, but Oasis won’t provide the thousands of gallons of water required per day for crops on this scale.

Wasn’t considering it for the Orb fields, I was thinking of the vault for that, since rainwater coming into the caves would be acid rain at first. There’s also Animate Water so if we could just make a big enough reservoir (or more likely multiple reservoirs) and fill it beforehand maybe we could offset some of our water needs until the acid rain stopped.

Maybe you can seal the vaults before you bring people in. You'd need some form of teleportation. But if teleportation is the only way anyone ever gets in or out, even during the earliest stages of construction, tracking the people coming and going gets a lot more difficult.

Transport Via Plants could work once you've managed to get a big enough plant growing in your subterranean shelter. Gemjump could work, if you can first get someone carrying a bunch of specially-prepared gems down where you want to go. City Stride could work once your underground home is populated enough to count as a city.

Passwall?

Palanan

2021-02-28, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by Quertus
That… should still only work to raise the DC of their bluff check.

Sure. But if invoking the good name of the necropolis helps them lure in more refugees, then sooner or later that will get out, and all too easily it’ll become a tale of the necropolis luring helpless folk to their doom.

Originally Posted by Palanan
However, there’s an abundance of water in the hundred-foot snowpack surrounding the Orb Farms….

Originally Posted by Quertus
Isn't this all "acid rain" water? Isn't it a threat to your crops, not a solution?

The acid rain will be a severe but short-term problem, and I’m assuming that it will last 2-3 years at most. Much of it will end up in the oceans as runoff through major river systems, and by time the snows start coming down in earnest, they should be back to normal composition.

Originally Posted by Quertus
I guess we know where all the bandits are coming from: failed orb kingdom.

I’m assuming that the Orb Kingdom is large and stable enough to have the surplus resources to carry its population through the first few years, until the orb farms can be established. Between abundant casters and mundane stockpiles, they should be able to feed their own people and defend their existing territories.

Originally Posted by Quertus
Which also fuels the necropolis desire to move extra population to former failed projects, to utilize those static resources.

This seems new, or maybe I overlooked it. Have you mentioned this before?

It's a different wrinkle on their foreign policy, because there's always the temptation to help nudge another community from "failing" to "ooops, failed now."

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
Transport Via Plants could work once you've managed to get a big enough plant growing in your subterranean shelter. Gemjump could work, if you can first get someone carrying a bunch of specially-prepared gems down where you want to go. City Stride could work once your underground home is populated enough to count as a city.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Passwall?

This would certainly work, and would be more feasible than Transport Via Plants, since the latter would only be able to move a handful of non-casters per day. I would also expect Transport Via Plants to quickly become dodgy and highly restricted, since most trees will perish when buried in snow.

Gemjump reminds me a little of the old board game Web and Starship. Instantaneous travel between gems, but establishing a gem at a new site could be arduous.

As for City Stride, it has one of the same limitations as Transport Via Plants, which is that it’s not really intended for mass transport. But still an interesting option for high-level exchange, and probably the default for the necropolis when moving between friendly communities.

Quertus

2021-02-28, 09:53 PM

Sure. But if invoking the good name of the necropolis helps them lure in more refugees, then sooner or later that will get out, and all too easily it’ll become a tale of the necropolis luring helpless folk to their doom.

Imagine that Santa Clause, the Queen of England, and Tax Returns were all real. Imagine that you - and possibly everyone in your hometown - have seen them, and see them regularly.

Imagine some shady guy tries to convince you that they have a gift for you, from them, in their Tainted-window van.

Are you getting in?

And, if you do, and your organs are for sale later, do you really believe that news of this event is going to affect Santa Clause's approval rating?

The acid rain will be a severe but short-term problem, and I’m assuming that it will last 2-3 years at most. Much of it will end up in the oceans as runoff through major river systems, and by time the snows start coming down in earnest, they should be back to normal composition.

The first few years… aren't contributing to the snow accumulation?

That's… something important to know when considering the viability of certain projects.

I’m assuming that the Orb Kingdom is large and stable enough to have the surplus resources to carry its population through the first few years, until the orb farms can be established. Between abundant casters and mundane stockpiles, they should be able to feed their own people and defend their existing territories.

I'm liking the kingdom based on thievery being the one that becomes the bandits, personally. It's just good karma.

This seems new, or maybe I overlooked it. Have you mentioned this before?

It's a different wrinkle on their foreign policy, because there's always the temptation to help nudge another community from "failing" to "ooops, failed now."

I have.

The necropolis will provide information on abandoned / failed towns, to those who have outgrown their britches, and are looking for somewhere to colonize.

… yes, I suppose that this policy could de-Incentivize some especially evil communities from helping outsiders.

Has anyone ever commented that you seem to have a very dark mind before?

And is anyone else concerned that the necropolis is, thus far, the most *benevolent* of the communities anyone has described?

shaikujin

2021-03-01, 11:56 AM

What handles air? How long will this take to enchant? What will you do if you cannot get enough of the reagents you need?

See page 1 of thread for Chamber of Comfort (+ perma Gust of Wind if required)
Costs 7,500 gp. Stronghold Builder default build time is 10k per week without rushing.

Spell requirement is Leomund's Tiny Hut. Which has an unpriced crystal bead as a material component.

For other rare/special reagents, use PF Downtime rules to earn Magic capital.

Quote:
For example, if you are brewing a potion, you can spend 1 point of Magic toward the cost of the materials needed to make the potion as if that point were equal to 100 gp.

Still limited by reagents? Or some other trick / tech at play here?

Yes, there are a couple of other tricks.

For special reagents, see Magic capital above. For the Stronghold itself, it's underground. Stone Walls are free for the levels of the Stronghold that are built underground. :D

For special construction materials that qualify, self resetting traps of Fabricate to Fabricate ingots of Steel, Gold etc.

How did Everfull Larder, Decanter of water resources run out? :smallconfused:

Those items are just for neccessities. There would be other resources presumably that the survivors might run out of (like space for depositing manure from 20k townsfolk). Even if they make it a totally self sufficient Stronghold, there are other good reasons for the Stronghold to be mobile, yes?

Palanan

2021-03-02, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
I'm still not convinced that high-level casters are going to attack us. In order for that to make sense, we'd need to have something they want. And taking it from us would have to be easier than other methods by which they could obtain it.

Was this in response to a specific comment, or more of a general thought?

Originally Posted by Quertus
The first few years… aren't contributing to the snow accumulation?

Heavy rains changing to a wintry mix over the first year, and snows building rapidly thereafter. There will be some acid snow at the very bottom of the snowpack once it reaches full depth (100-200’), but in spots where there’s localized melting (such as at the edge of the Orb Kingdom’s agricultural zone) the acid component will be diluted by mixing with the layers above into a thinly acid snowmelt, which should wash away fairly quickly.

The acid rains will be a major factor in the initial mortality of crops and forests, but shouldn’t persist beyond the first two or three years.

Originally Posted by Quertus
And is anyone else concerned that the necropolis is, thus far, the most *benevolent* of the communities anyone has described?

Well, the city in the mountain valley is concerned with keeping out of sight and not bothering anyone, and with keeping as many of their citizens alive as possible. Sounds benevolent to me.

Quertus

2021-03-02, 11:14 PM

Well, the city in the mountain valley is concerned with keeping out of sight and not bothering anyone, and with keeping as many of their citizens alive as possible. Sounds benevolent to me.

If you told me that you wanted to bring a character who was going to be hiding all the time, and trying to lose as few HP as possible, and that's what made them *benevolent*, I'd have to wonder if you knew what the word meant. :smallamused:

Maat Mons

2021-03-02, 11:25 PM

If memory serves, I wrote that thing about a lack of high-level casters amongst the raiders in response to some discussion of anti-divination measures for our underground base. More specifically in regard to concerns over higher-level divination spells that might be able to overcome lower-level anti-divination measures.

I was restating my belief that high-level casters can probably secure better positions in the post-apocalypse than supporting raiders, and that if the raiders had high-level casters supporting them, they probably wouldn't have needed to become raiders in the first place.

This was, after a fashion, meant to indicate that I think hiding from mundane means of detection and mid- to low-level divination spells is a sufficient goal. I mean, if we can hide from high-level divination spells, so much the better. But if we can't, being able to hide from the people who are actually likely to come after us is fine.

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-03-03, 05:46 PM

If you told me that you wanted to bring a character who was going to be hiding all the time, and trying to lose as few HP as possible, and that's what made them *benevolent*, I'd have to wonder if you knew what the word meant. :smallamused:

Apples to oranges. This is a settlement that is mostly filled with civilians. A closer comparison would be if your character was carting around a bunch of rescued orphans while adventuring. Are you really benevolent if you take them with you into an evil dragon’s lair?

Jack_Simth

2021-03-04, 09:33 AM

Imagine that Santa Clause, the Queen of England, and Tax Returns were all real. Imagine that you - and possibly everyone in your hometown - have seen them, and see them regularly.

Imagine some shady guy tries to convince you that they have a gift for you, from them, in their Tainted-window van.

Are you getting in?

And, if you do, and your organs are for sale later, do you really believe that news of this event is going to affect Santa Clause's approval rating?

When phrased like that? Nobody is. The metaphor falls apart, though. Consider:

1) Bluff isn't vs. static DCs, it's opposed by Sense Motive.
2) No large group is going to be in full agreement: the necropolis will have members that don't agree with the necropolis' policies.
3) Folks who voluntarily go undead tend towards south of neutral.
4) Not all intelligent undead will be necropolis members.

1 means that unless you're getting the info directly from a necropolis rep in every case, you're going to be dealing with folks who say they've got the info straight from the necropolis (and if everyone does demand it straight from a necropolis rep, nobody can cooperate).
2+3 combine to mean that you might have official reps in the field who give out malicious data.
3+4 means that you can have very convincing malicious fraudulent reps running around.

... so yes, it will take a rather lot of highly active work on the part of the necropolis to avoid a bad rep.

Don't get me wrong: That active work is possible: essentially, you use various forms of information gathering to identify and locate malicious folks making use of your rep, then use whatever means seem suitable to make them stop. But you're liable to have a rather lot of it to do to keep a clean reputation.

Quertus

2021-03-04, 04:04 PM

When phrased like that? Nobody is. The metaphor falls apart, though. Consider:

1) Bluff isn't vs. static DCs, it's opposed by Sense Motive.
2) No large group is going to be in full agreement: the necropolis will have members that don't agree with the necropolis' policies.
3) Folks who voluntarily go undead tend towards south of neutral.
4) Not all intelligent undead will be necropolis members.

1 means that unless you're getting the info directly from a necropolis rep in every case, you're going to be dealing with folks who say they've got the info straight from the necropolis (and if everyone does demand it straight from a necropolis rep, nobody can cooperate).
2+3 combine to mean that you might have official reps in the field who give out malicious data.
3+4 means that you can have very convincing malicious fraudulent reps running around.

... so yes, it will take a rather lot of highly active work on the part of the necropolis to avoid a bad rep.

Don't get me wrong: That active work is possible: essentially, you use various forms of information gathering to identify and locate malicious folks making use of your rep, then use whatever means seem suitable to make them stop. But you're liable to have a rather lot of it to do to keep a clean reputation.

1 means that the necropolis automatically won the PR wars millennia ago, having convinced every world leader to permaban kill anyone who was racist against undead, ages before the current necropolis administration took over.

You may want to consider implementing 1 differently, with more of an eye to realism.

-----

{Scrubbed}

Every non-hostile "Project" (city, vault, nation, whatever) interacts with the necropolis directly.

The only lie that can be told is that the speaker is a vault representative. Unless the vault administration itself chooses to lie to its citizens.

-----

The field operatives are the liches are the necropolis administration. (Technically, there's subsets going on there, but close enough)

Morons who would go against the will of the council, endanger the continuation of mankind, etc, were weeded out of the selection process, and not invited to the necropolis.

Yes, unlike the elven liches, many of the human(etc) liches are evil. Unless…

{Scrubbed} If, on your world, all evil is "stupid evil", then I suppose that the council is entirely elven liches.

-----

{Scrubbed}

Does the necropolis have nefarious members, with nefarious purposes? Yes. And that has been and will continue to be covered in my posts.

Sadly, true evil lies in the still-beating hearts of men, not in the cold stone halls of the undead. The necropolis is nowhere near as evil as, say, the orb nation, that condemned so many places to death by stealing the things that others needed for their own survival, or (obviously) the false haven rumor spreaders.

-----

{Scrubbed}

This would actually be more difficult than it sounds, however, as it would require a Lich to learn not just *that* the necropolis communicates data, but *how* the necropolis does so, *and* for the citizenry to be gullible enough to believe random evil Lich whom the necropolis hasn't vetted as *actually* being a new member.

If it were anyone but an immortal Lich priest of Tzeentch, I'd say that the idea was too much effort and too crazy, with too little chance of success to even consider.

But I will concede that a "stupid-evil", petty, vengeful immortal Lich priest of Tzeentch might actually combine willingness to make the attempt and nonzero chance of success to convince particularly foolish members of a community that he's a new Santa Claus, and there simply wasn't time to introduce him properly because of the sudden discovery of Paradise, which is a limited time, first come first served offer. So if they'd please step into his Tainted window van, he'll drive as many as he can to Paradise.

It's still a Tzeentch-worthy long shot as to whether he'll get any traction in any given town, but if he gets lucky, and rolls well on his resurrection time for when things go south, he might actually convince a few towns to send people before word spreads to the larger community (Google says that there around 10,000 cities in our world; the necropolis can't keep up with alternate near that many).

But we're *still* looking at a scenario that won't make the necropolis look bad. It will just make the towns that fell for it look foolish.

Also, an immortal Lich priest of Tzeentch *probably* knows that it doesn't need to snack on Soylent Simpleton to survive. So, for this to involve the expected slaughter for food, the Lich would probably have needed to find some bandits hungry and desperate enough to work with an insane evil abomination… and who hate the less evil (and, in fact, seemingly benevolent) necropolis.

It's a tough scenario to write.

-----

For the record, of the "not openly hostile" cities, the one that the necropolis *should* most want to fall (yes, some of the board pragmatically point out how certain town failures would be beneficial to their long-term plans) is actually the one that, by the will of the council, they are arguably most assisting: Silent Lorna.

Jack_Simth

2021-03-05, 07:40 AM

1 means that the necropolis automatically won the PR wars millennia ago, having convinced every world leader to permaban kill anyone who was racist against undead, ages before the current necropolis administration took over.

You may want to consider implementing 1 differently, with more of an eye to realism.

It is right in the bluff skill description (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/bluff.htm) that it's opposed by sense motive. But you consider this unrealistic? While admittedly there's a rather lot of things in D&D and derivatives that are very unrealistic, I don't consider that one of them. Fixed DCs imply that the guy fresh out of his parents' house from a largely honest community is exactly as difficult to trick as the ruler who's been evaluating folks day in and day out for the last fifty years or so because she grew up in royal courts. An opposed check covers that quite well (guy fresh out of his parent's house? No ranks in sense motive; the ruler who grew up in the royal courts? Max ranks + skill focus, items, other feats, et cetera as appropriate).

Also: "the necropolis automatically won the PR wars millennia ago" - presupposes no serious opposition to the necropolis. I do not buy that presupposition.

-----

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

... I'm going to stop here.

Efrate

2021-03-05, 09:52 AM

Jack_Simth

2021-03-05, 11:22 AM

Problem with bluff is problem with moat social skills. Vs. humanoids without class levels, they are near garanteed success if you have like...3 to 5 levels with a decent stat. Most folks will have 0 ranks and 11 in their stat. If you get a plus 11 bonus you always win. Thats before figuring in the absurdity that is glibness. A judge or lawyer might have as much as plus 7 for skill focus but most will not.

For those who actually take the time to invest in bluff, ie your party face, even without glibness tou should routinely trounce the vast majority of people. And thats before factoring things like charms and compulsions. You charm person that buyer and he really wants to believe his buddy so he takes a penalty on his sense motive. Plus do liches get a +8 bluff or is that vampires, or both?
Confidence men have been around for a very long time, and make a great deal of money tricking other folks out of theirs. It doesn't take much skill to trick Mr. Random Joe on the street into giving you a few hundred, but for the big scores, you need to con a wealthy businessman... which is much harder. Again: Folks that don't much deal with trickery because they're not common targets (they don't have very much)? Not hard to fool. The folks that regularly deal with people that misrepresent, over promise, or straight-up lie? They've had practice (ranks) in sensing folks' motives, and take a higher degree of skill.

You con some commoners out of a few gold pieces? Well, they'll eventually figure it out, and report it to the local authorities (same as real life). They get enough reports (or reports of big enough cons), they'll send professional anti-con folks after you (same as real life).

Quertus

2021-03-05, 12:08 PM

It is right in the bluff skill description (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/bluff.htm) that it's opposed by sense motive. But you consider this unrealistic? While admittedly there's a rather lot of things in D&D and derivatives that are very unrealistic, I don't consider that one of them. Fixed DCs imply that the guy fresh out of his parents' house from a largely honest community is exactly as difficult to trick as the ruler who's been evaluating folks day in and day out for the last fifty years or so because she grew up in royal courts. An opposed check covers that quite well (guy fresh out of his parent's house? No ranks in sense motive; the ruler who grew up in the royal courts? Max ranks + skill focus, items, other feats, et cetera as appropriate).

Also: "the necropolis automatically won the PR wars millennia ago" - presupposes no serious opposition to the necropolis. I do not buy that presupposition.

... I'm going to stop here.

Lemme explain by example.

Do you run a world where an Illithid, with Bluff beyond a city's ability to Sense Motive, could really walk into town and say,

"No, I'm not an Illithid - this is just a skin condition, an allergic reaction to something I ate."

"Here, come into this dark room, and take a look for yourself."

"Eat his brain, then animate his corpse? Don't be silly. We got to talking about food, and I mentioned these delicious peppers I'd tried, and he grew curious. This is just the natural reaction to eating the peppers. Right, Sargent? Nod for yes."

"In fact, these peppers are so delicious, you all should try one. Everybody pile into my tinted windows van, and I'll take you to them."

Party gets back from adventuring, finds a ghost town with a familiar calling card. "Dang - another town emptied by the Charismatic Rogue."

You even stated that you understood this concept earlier:

When phrased like that? Nobody is.

The problem is, the OP keeps presenting this level of ridiculous con, and seemingly not realizing how ridiculous it is.

So it begs the question, what kind of world are they running? Are they running one that is realistic, where cons like the OP described would get laughed at, where it's worth actually running a PR campaign, or one that is RAW, where the necropolis should only be concerned with throwing numbers at things?

I don't want to waste time trying to play (social) 5d Wizard chess on a checkers board. So, since the responses I've been getting don't match the game I'm playing, I'm asking for clarification regarding just what games are played there. Or whether they have been misconstruing everything I've said. Much like how you jumped to the conclusion that I wanted static DCs.

EDIT: apparently, while I was writing this post, the mods misinterpreted and butchered a previous post of mine.

To anyone who was offended by it, apologies for my unique verbiage and sentence structure, that made it appear offensive.

To anyone who hasn't seen it (and those who did, and may have misunderstood): with the edits, it is all but indecipherable, IMO. That post was *intended* as a flow chart of various possibilities regarding the nature of the campaign world: the presence or absence of nuisanced evil, RAW vs realism, etc, and the ways that things would change should the campaign differ from my assumptions.

Although it may have been poorly worded in its initial incarnation, it is all but worthless for its intended purposes in its present state. So, if you don't understand it / can't see how to turn what's left into such a flowchart… just ignore it, I guess.

Jack_Simth

2021-03-05, 01:54 PM

Lemme explain by example.

Do you run a world where an Illithid, with Bluff beyond a city's ability to Sense Motive, could really walk into town and say,

"No, I'm not an Illithid - this is just a skin condition, an allergic reaction to something I ate."

"Here, come into this dark room, and take a look for yourself."

"Eat his brain, then animate his corpse? Don't be silly. We got to talking about food, and I mentioned these delicious peppers I'd tried, and he grew curious. This is just the natural reaction to eating the peppers. Right, Sargent? Nod for yes."

"In fact, these peppers are so delicious, you all should try one. Everybody pile into my tinted windows van, and I'll take you to them."

Party gets back from adventuring, finds a ghost town with a familiar calling card. "Dang - another town emptied by the Charismatic Rogue."

You even stated that you understood this concept earlier:

The problem is, the OP keeps presenting this level of ridiculous con, and seemingly not realizing how ridiculous it is.

So it begs the question, what kind of world are they running? Are they running one that is realistic, where cons like the OP described would get laughed at, where it's worth actually running a PR campaign, or one that is RAW, where the necropolis should only be concerned with throwing numbers at things?

I don't want to waste time trying to play (social) 5d Wizard chess on a checkers board. So, since the responses I've been getting don't match the game I'm playing, I'm asking for clarification regarding just what games are played there. Or whether they have been misconstruing everything I've said. Much like how you jumped to the conclusion that I wanted static DCs.
Again: The example falls apart. Bluff has circumstance modifiers baked right in; that "skin condition" or "results of the pepper" is going to be granting the town a +20 to their Sense Motive checks (assuming he's not shot on sight, and has time to "explain"). If the illithid can get past everyone's sense motive - especially with that mod - then he's either VERY focused or sufficiently high level that he could probably just waltz through all the town's defenses anyway. Your scenario presupposes that the target has nobody who's competent in the matter on call. If they don't, then they'd probably have already been taken over by someone with a suitable skill set.

And you're severely underestimating the folks who'd try to use the Necropolis' name to con folks. It's not a living guy walking in obviously breathing saying "Hi, I'm the new Necropolis rep!" (that's a super-hard sell)... it's some lich that wants bodies for his growing undead army that did a little homework to get the real rep's name & contact methods (Gather Info, divinations of various sorts) before going in via the same methods the official rep uses and saying "Hi, [Insert real rep's name here] is currently [insert plausible reason he's not available], but we found something that'd be perfect for you and thought you could use it immediately...." which is at most a slightly difficult sell. Or it's some living person saying "Hi, the necropolis gave us some maps, and there's more treasure than we can haul away, so we want to share the wealth...." which is a hard sell, but not a super-hard one, or maybe "Help! The necropolis rep sent to our vault gutted it! He was just prepping us for slaughter the whole time! But I got away, after seeing the methods they used, and might be able to help you avoid our fate if..." or occasionally it'll be an actual rep who thinks he can get away with it this time (folks get busted for embezzling from giant corporations all the time, and while that stops some folks from trying it, it doesn't stop all folks from trying it).

There's ways to defend against this kind of thing - both as the necropolis, and as the vault - but as I said at the start of that chain "it will take a rather lot of highly active work on the part of the necropolis to avoid a bad rep."

Quertus

2021-03-05, 02:38 PM

And you're severely underestimating the folks who'd try to use the Necropolis' name to con folks. It's not a living guy walking in obviously breathing saying "Hi, I'm the new Necropolis rep!" (that's a super-hard sell)... it's some lich that wants bodies for his growing undead army that did a little homework to get the real rep's name & contact methods (Gather Info, divinations of various sorts) before going in via the same methods the official rep uses and saying "Hi, [Insert real rep's name here] is currently [insert plausible reason he's not available], but we found something that'd be perfect for you and thought you could use it immediately...." which is at most a slightly difficult sell. Or it's some living person saying "Hi, the necropolis gave us some maps, and there's more treasure than we can haul away, so we want to share the wealth...." which is a hard sell, but not a super-hard one, or maybe "Help! The necropolis rep sent to our vault gutted it! He was just prepping us for slaughter the whole time! But I got away, after seeing the methods they used, and might be able to help you avoid our fate if..." or occasionally it'll be an actual rep who thinks he can get away with it this time (folks get busted for embezzling from giant corporations all the time, and while that stops some folks from trying it, it doesn't stop all folks from trying it).

There's ways to defend against this kind of thing - both as the necropolis, and as the vault - but as I said at the start of that chain "it will take a rather lot of highly active work on the part of the necropolis to avoid a bad rep."

Those are much more reasonable cons than the ones that have been suggested thus far.

Even some of the ones you listed should still auto-fail, but, yes, some of those are believable cons.

But the funny thing is, if the necropolis has a "good name", they've already won. That was the objective they were trying to meet. Mission successful.

So your "problem" presupposes success :smallamused:

Kareeah_Indaga

2021-03-05, 04:02 PM

...I think a subject change is in order.

It’s been mentioned a time or two but not really addressed: how are non-statue vaults managing sanitation and waste disposal? I thought about a Bag of Devouring but I suspect there are better solutions. Is composting something available in-setting?

Maat Mons

2021-03-05, 04:59 PM

Well, if you're not composting, then things are being taken out of the soil by plants, those plants are being removed from the soil for food, and nothing is being added back to the soil. So there's going to be less and less soil over time. Or, at least, the soil is going to have less and less of the good stuff in it.

If you're farming an a cave with a few inches of topsoil from outside laid down, you're not exactly talking about a robust reserve of nutrients. If you're taking and not putting back, that's going to become a problem pretty darn fast.

So I'm pretty sure any subterranean farming operations that actually last long term will be composting. The ones who throw their wastes into a Bag of Devouring are soon going to find themselves needing to go out and dig into the frozen land beneath the snowpack to get new soil. Or they'll just get really confused about why their crops keep doing worse and worse, and then they'll starve.

I've given some thought to using Oozes, or some other pet creature to break down waste. A big heap of manure decomposing in an enclosed space isn't going to smell very good. Actually, are high enough concentrations of methane and whatnot dangerous? Other than the explosion hazard from being a flammable gas? The bacteria are consuming oxygen too. Well, some of them are.

You could do an anaerobic digester. Then you'll only really have the anaerobic bacteria doing the work. And all the stinky gas is concentrated in a reservoir that can be burned for heat and cooking. ... Just, you know, don't burn so much that you run out of oxygen for breathing.

Actually, compost provides heat. I've hear of people using compost to heat chicken coops in winter. New York winter. So actually decently cold. (Cue people from further north telling me that I "don't know what cold is.") Anyway, I wonder how that factors into our heating efforts. If we're deep enough underground, we're pretty well insulated. Maybe even warmed geothermally. We might have to deliberately avoid building too deep so we don't swelter.

Actually, this kind of sends me back to the idea of not going underground. We can just put the compost pile out in the open, downwind. And we don't need to worry about fresh air, or magical sunlight replacements.

Let's restart the snow accumulation argument. It will distract from that other argument, at least. I wasn't really satisfied with the example of snow accumulation in prior ice ages. Those lasted 10s of thousands of years. I don't think they're necessarily indicative of how much snow we'll be dealing with during a "mere" 1-thousand year ice age.

Regardless of what the final, equilibrium depth of snow might be (the depth at which rate of sublimation equals rate of snowfall), the difficulty of keeping pace with snow accumulation for a human settlement is going to depend on the rate at which it falls. And I'm not sure that 1,000 years is much time for massive snow packs/glaciers to both form and migrate large distances.